Floating heads up

I have spent a significant portion of my life operating as a highly sophisticated, semi-sentient floating head. It’s a classic move: we treat the body like a slightly embarrassing, high-maintenance 17th century ghost that follows us from room to room, demanding things like “hydration” and “sleep” and “not being hunched over a laptop like a gargoyle defending a cathedral.”

My head is a maximalist decorator disaster zone — vibrant, velvet-lined, and currently decorated with too many opinions and a very expensive, very dramatic rug that doesn’t quite fit the floor plan. It’s a lot of “friction.” And while friction is great for starting fires or keeping your car on the road, in the brain, it mostly just creates a high-pitched hum that sounds suspiciously like a 3 a.m. existential crisis. I don’t have those, though. Never.

Recently, I’ve been attempting a takeover of my own nervous system. Or rather, a truce. I’m trying to remember that there is actually a torso and limbs attached to this command center.

It turns out that being “grounded” isn’t some ethereal, flowing-linen-pants state of grace. For me, it feels more like a somatic glitch. It’s the moment you realize your jaw has been clenched so tight you’re basically trying to bite through your own destiny. It’s the sudden, terrifying awareness that you have feet, and they are, in fact, touching the floor. It’s the realization that my “artistic process” or my “professional strategy” is often just a very elaborate way of avoiding the fact that my gut is trying to send me a telegram in a language I haven’t bothered to learn.

So, I’ve been experimenting with a bit of social exorcism. There’s this weird, heavy ledger we all keep — the “Unspoken Appreciation File.” It’s filled with all the times we thought, “That person is a goddamn wizard,” or “I would be a puddle of unformed clay without their influence,” but instead of saying it, we just gave them a polite nod or a double-tap on a screen. We treat our deepest acknowledgments like they’re limited-edition vinyl — too precious to actually play.

I decided to break the seal. I went on a bit of a tear, reaching out to a handful of people — six, to be precise, because seven felt like a cult and five felt like I wasn’t trying hard enough. I didn’t ask for anything. I didn’t pitch a project. I just threw a metaphorical brick of pure, unadulterated “you matter to me” through their digital windows.

It broke something open. It felt like I was breaking a law of social physics. My “floating head” was screaming, “This is inefficient! This is subtext! We don’t speak the subtext!” But then, the somatic glitch happened. The moment the messages were sent, the gargoyle on my shoulders took a coffee break. My diaphragm — usually wound tighter than a vintage watch — actually expanded. My eyeballs actually relaxed. Who knew that was possible. It turns out that hoarding your gratitude is actually physically exhausting. It’s a form of internal clutter that no amount of Marie Kondo-ing can fix. You have to export it.

The point isn’t the outreach itself; it’s the weird, vibrating joy of being a body that says things out loud. It’s the friction of the “ask” (even when the ask is just for someone to accept a compliment) creating actual light instead of just mental heat.

I’m still a floating head most of the time. I’m still a maximalist mess. But for a few minutes this week, I was a person with a pulse and six open tabs of radical honesty. The 17th century ghost is satisfied. For now.

Love,

Lauren