yeahhhh cool quote but just a reminder to everyone unreservedly praising this man: winfield scott is also the guy responsible for the forced removal of the cherokee on the trail of tears. he committed genocide.

end/ colonialism is why you feel you can’t enjoy things you aren’t perfect at. it’s why you have to work for someone else’s profit instead of doing things you love. if there is something causing pain & stress in your life, i can almost guarantee its origins can be traced to colonialism culture.

8/ the way colonialism warps our joys isn’t trivial. piano was a major emotional outlet during a difficult time in my life as a teenager. when i was told i wasn’t good enough at something i loved, it devastated my mental health. it almost drove me to su*c*de.

7/ even the piano itself is a colonial instrument. it’s huge, expensive, requires tons of resources to create & maintain. traditionally the white keys were made of ivory; elephants were murdered for their tusks to build pianos. rich white women learned to play to attract wealthy suitors.

6/ and that’s colonialism: it takes basic human joys and warps them into vehicles for perfectionism, judgment, competition, profit. it commands we follow someone else’s standard. it demands we create only if there’s money to be made from our creation.

5/ when i started playing again in 2020, for the first time i realized i could play for joy. i could play what i wanted, how i wanted, according to what i felt was good & fun instead of meeting someone else’s standard. piano was how i survived the covid quarantine & is now my most cherished hobby.

4/ eventually i became so discouraged i gave up my dream and didn’t play piano again for almost 15 years. my entire adulthood i internalized the narrative that i was a lazy, unmotivated person who even gave up on the one thing they loved the most. i believed i was inherently a failure as a human.

3/ classical piano teaches that you must do everything perfectly according to someone else’s definition of what is good. only the best of the best are recognized. and in our culture, if you can’t do something well enough to make money on it, you’re discouraged from doing it at all.

2/ i was a classically trained pianist growing up & as a teenager, wanted to play professionally. to prepare for college auditions, i had to learn difficult pieces that i didn’t even like that much and perform them on demand for judges who nitpicked every detail and told me how good (or not) i was.

(because ted danson plays the same character in both, if that wasn’t clear)