SOL, THE INTERVIEW

This interview was performed in the living room of Sol’s apartment and creative cabin in Atlanta, Georgia on May 19, 2021 at 4:00 PM. At 21, Sol glows. Warm, rising, and inviting… Sol is as inevitable as the sun. Her art sits at the perfect intersection of art and necessity, the room is littered with her creations. Her dog, Luna, ambles about vying for attention. Love could be felt. We flow through a plethora of topics, Sol’s knowledge streaming forth on them all. Influences, art, emotions, virality, poetry, regret, Gorillaz, mediums, desires, and symbols. Sol is an emotional superhero and a student of all. Master of all.

Najee AR Fareed: Who are you? How old are you? Where are you from? What do you do? 

Sol: I am Sol. I’m 21 years old. I am from Orlando, Florida but I have lived in Atlanta for the majority of my life. I am an artist. Really, I am a creator of all sorts. 

Najee AR Fareed: What was the last thing that you watched? 

Sol: Love, Death, and Robots. The new season that just came out. Great show. 

Najee AR Fareed: Quick word association, I say a word then you say the first word or phrase that comes to mind. 

Sol: Okay. 

Najee AR Fareed: Soul. (Sol) (Sole)

Sol: Me. 

Najee AR Fareed: Art. 

Sol: Passion. 

Najee AR Fareed: Together. 

Sol: Connected. 

Najee AR Fareed: Air. 

Sol: Fly. 

Najee AR Fareed: Heart. 

Sol: Beat. 

NAF: What was the last book you read? 

Sol: I am currently reading Emotional Wellness by Osho. I've been reading it for a minute now. When it comes to self-help books, I tend to want to study them. 

NAF: Could you say it again? 

Sol: Yeah, it’s Emotional Wellness by Osho. 

NAF: It’s for helping you figure out where you are emotionally? 

Sol: Emotional intelligence. I’d say that’s the best way to describe it. Understanding your emotions. Almost mastering them. Controlling them. 

NAF: What’s the background of the author? 

Sol: Well, I actually found out about him because there is this crazy documentary on Netflix… one of those streaming services. And honestly, from watching it, it makes you not want to read anything he ever wrote because it makes him seem so crazy and erratic. But I had a friend tell me that he actually knows what he’s talking about but his followers just take what he says very literally. But I just decided to give him a try. I mess with him. He’s a cool dude. He actually has one of my favorite quotes right now.  

NAF: Do you want to share it? 

Sol: Yeah, it’s a pretty long quote but I'd have to find it on my phone really fast. The quote is… *pulls out her phone and starts to search for the quote.* “If you love a flower, don’t pick it up because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession, love is about appreciation.”

NAF: What was the last song you played? 

Sol: I think it was “Hectic” by Baby Sosa. 

NAF: When did you start doing art? 

Sol: I have been drawing forever. Since I was born, I have been creating stuff. I used to make my own dolls because my Mom would not buy them for me. So I have always been doing this. 

NAF: They were like… 

Sol: They were made of paper. 

NAF: *laughs* okay. 

Sol: They had different outfits and everything. I would make houses for my dolls. I have always been someone to create stuff. 

NAF: Were the clothes made of construction paper or did you color it? 

Sol: I colored it. It was all made of what I had, lined paper and crayons. Very low bar. It was cool though. My grandma still has all of that stuff. 

NAF: I’m surprised it had the shelf life to survive till today. 

Sol: Right! It’s literally just paper. My grandma be taking care of stuff. A lot of them got destroyed because I was playing with them but my grandma keeps all that kind of stuff, which is cool.  

NAF: What has been your biggest influence? 

Sol: Love. Yes. I would say love. 

NAF: Love in what sense? 

Sol: Just experiencing love in all senses. I am a very emotional person. Emotions drive most of what I do, art wise. That’s the only word I can think of right now. My theme for this year has been love. Learning a lot about love. Self love. Unconditional love. Unpossessive love. 

NAF: If you were any movie what movie would you be? 

Sol: If I were in a movie? 

NAF: No, if you were “any” movie. 

Sol: Oh, huh. That’s a good question. 

NAF: Doesn’t necessarily have to be a movie that you want to be, but maybe the movie that you are. 

Sol: This is a hard question for me. I am not really a movie person. I was raised not watching movies. But I guess I would pick Shark Tale. If I were a movie. I like that movie. 

NAF: I like that movie too. 

Sol: I feel like you can actually learn from it if you really pay attention but it is also fun and cute. 

NAF: I remember when it first came out, my family did not have a lot of money so we did not really go to theaters often. We had that shit on bootleg, I think my uncle had got it for us. I mainly remember the jamaican jellyfish. And the scene of the mobster sharks eating the shrimp cocktail. 

Sol: Yeah, I can really quote that movie. 

NAF: I really liked the character design. 

Sol: I like animated movies in general. Another movie would be Aladdin. 

NAF: I love Aladdin. 

Sol: Great movie. Top tier movie actually. I might change my answer. I love Aladdin. 

NAF: Even thinking back to Shark Tale and the design, Finding Nemo came out in 2003 and Shark Tale in 2004. Both movies are about cartoon fish. But if you look at the fish, both designs are so different looking. 

Sol: It’s so urban.

NAF: Yeah, the approach Pixar took was much less anthropomorphic than Dreamworks. 

Sol: Yeah they’re very humanoid. You can tell they’re fish but they’re very human.

NAF: The fish looks like Will Smith. 

Sol: Yeah, he really does. 

NAF: That’s the point I guess. 

NAF: If you could be any song, which song would you be? 

Sol: “Everlong” by The Foo Fighters. I really like that song. I don’t even need the words to be that song. Just the instrumental. It’s very dramatic and I’m very dramatic. 

NAF: I love that idea, of a song being dramatic. Have you ever listened to a song and you think it’s doing a little bit too much? 

Sol: It’s just a very emotional song. It’s impossible to listen to that song and not feel everything they put into it. And that’s cool. That’s what I want everything I make to be like.

NAF: So you wear your emotions on your sleeve? Or do you kind of keep them close to the chest? 

Sol: I definitely wear them on my sleeve. I was actually just talking to my friend about that. He was saying I try to hide my emotions but I literally can’t. And that’s very true. I kind of try, but I really don’t. I have accepted that I am an emotional person. It is what it is at this point. I look at it like a superpower. 

NAF: If your emotion is anger, if someone got you fucked up, they got you fucked up. If your emotion is happiness, that’s a big thing to project out into the world. If your emotion is sadness, being in tune with your sadness is so big. Sadness is a huge part of healing. 

Sol: You have to love every emotion equally, that’s the only way to combat that type of stuff honestly. As long as you hate being sad, I feel like you are going to always be sad. I don’t know if that makes any sense but I realized I had to love that part of myself too so I wasn’t so fixated on it. Plus, anyone who is sad wants some love. Including yourself, from yourself. 

NAF: I feel like if you’re never sad, you can’t be happy. 

Sol: Yeah, duality is powerful. You wouldn’t know what happiness is without being sad. You wouldn’t appreciate it. You would be nothing. You would just be the “default” emotion. And that’s boring. Emotions are what makes life fun and romantic. Romantic not in the sense of romance, but in like anything extra and theatrical. I am a romanticist, I romanticize everything. Everything is just blown up. It’s fun to live life that way. 

NAF: The sublime. Dramatic, extra. Like you said with the song. 

Sol: I’m the type of person like in the movies that step outside and go *deep exhale,* “IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY!” Literally just really extra. 

NAF: I know that you create art, you create a lot of different mediums of art. In today’s day and age most art, especially from artists who haven’t received professional training, main audience would come from social media and things like that. When posting art on social media, what is your thought process? Do you feel as though art loses any meaning by people chasing virality? 

Sol: For the longest, I did not post art because it felt so fake. I wouldn’t say fake. I think that’s the wrong word. But it felt like I was not making it for anybody. It felt ingenuine to even share. It was for me so I kept it for me. Then I realized the power that artists hold. The power that emotional people hold. I feel like artists are emotional people and that emotion just has to go somewhere. A lot of people want to express their emotions and be vulnerable but they just can’t. That’s why a lot of people have anger as their default emotion. Or they’re guarded off. And people like that really get inspired by artists because they want to be just as emotional as me. That’s why I feel like being emotional is a superpower. And I just want to share it. And I think the best way for me to share it is through my art. At first I definitely did feel like I lost something by sharing my art with the world, especially since people always have an opinion but I don’t even pay attention to that stuff anymore. Sometimes I post and don’t even look at the comments or what people are saying. But it’s always love, I always get love. It’s been cool. 

NAF: Posting a piece, let’s say it does not get your desired reaction… does that discount from the art for you? Or let’s say you didn’t like a piece but post it anyway and your audience likes it more than you do, does that make you like it more than you initially did? Does public perception change the way that you perceive your art? 

Sol: I would be a liar if I said no but I want to be able to say no. I want to be able to say that people’s perception of my art does not change it for me, but it definitely does. I think at the end of the day, my art is very much an extension of me so it feels as though someone is saying they don’t like me when they’re saying they don’t like my art. Sometimes I can take it personally but I know it’s not personal. When people respond well to a piece, it does make me feel good because it is close to my heart. If it is really close to my heart, I don’t really care what people have to say. But a lot of pieces like that are not even online for people to see. I feel like God tells me what pieces are for them and what pieces are for me. 

NAF: Art for you, I like that. I know a lot of people say there is no wrong way to make art. Do you feel like if somebody is making art and their thought process is, “yo, this is really gonna go up or twitter” or “this is going to get a lot of likes on Instagram.” Do you feel like that is a wrong way, quote unquote, or a bad way to go about making art? 

Sol: We all tryna eat, honestly. So I feel them. Niggas got bills to pay. Niggas want nice things. So I definitely get it. But yeah, as a person who doesn’t necessarily do it for that, you can tell who is doing it for what. But art is art. I don’t think about it too much. I focus on my own stuff. 

NAF: Yeah, there is an audience for everybody. 

Sol: I understand. At the end of the day, to be able to draw is a talent in itself. Whatever you choose to do with it, maybe that was your calling. There are artists who literally draw rappers all day. That’s just what they do. And they might really feel that. I don’t know. I really don’t. 

NAF: That’s kind of how I feel. I don’t think it’s our business. They’re talented enough to do that, more power to you. Especially those people who are super good at drawing super realistic portraits of people. 

Sol: There are artists who look down on other artists who draw realistically. The art world is so funny. 

NAF: It’s a talent. It’s definitely a talent. 

Sol: Yeah. Yeah. 

NAF: But I get a little disappointed when I see someone who’s technical skill is so amazing, but their vision is failing.

Sol: They don’t have one. 

NAF: Yeah, they don’t execute it. All their art would be them recreating images of celebrities who have passed away. It’ll be Kobe doing Wakanda Forever or something. It looks really good but… 

Sol: No, really! Those are the artists that be going up though. There are artists like me that people don’t understand. People don’t really like things they don’t understand. It is easy as an artist to conform to what pays the bill. Niggas gotta eat. I am not really looking at them and judging them because I know. Shit, sometimes I’m like “lemme just draw Wakanda Forever real quick,” *laughs* I’m really never like that. For the most part, everything I have put out, I am proud if and I genuinely fuck with it. But even with tee shirts, I never wanted to make tee shirts. But I ended up making tee shirts because it’s something that everyone wants. Sometimes I do think about the profits. So I don’t want to completely judge them but yeah we don’t want to see Kobe and XXXTentacion dapping up at Heaven’s Gates. 

NAF: [laughs] Exactly! 

Sol: But some people really want to see that! We need those artists because some people want to see that. 

NAF: I say all the time, making art for everybody is a way to make art for nobody. If you try to make art that everybody fucks with, you’ll end up making art that resonates with no one. Maybe everyone can look at your work on a surface level and go, “yeah that’s cool. Whatever.” But on a deeper level, no one is going to fuck with it if your’re trying to make it for everybody. 

Sol: At this point, I don’t care if it’s only one person, if only one person likes it then that’s what it was for. I feel like God gave me these talents. He’s using me to touch somebody else. And it might be literally one person who it is for, it may not be for the masses. 

NAF: Forms of expression.What are a few different ways you like to express yourself? 

Sol: To other people? Or in general? 

NAF: When you express yourself, what are your favorite ways to do that? It could be specific art, the way you dress, cooking, social media, anything. 

Sol: What I have on, definitely reflects my mood for that day. For sure. The music I am listening to. Outwardly, it would be music and the way I dress. The way I express myself to me, would be poetry. Something I really love. I love writing poems. I just started sharing them. I only shared one so far but that’s a big step for me. Now I’m starting to share more. Words… I made a song and that was the most vulnerable medium ever. With art, that’s open for interpretation so it can mean whatever. But with music, it’s literally putting a mic in front of your face and spilling out your heart. It’s crazy. But it was very cool. Reminded me of how I am when I am writing my poetry. 

NAF: I seen this tweet where someone said, “nobody talks about how writing poetry is so embarrassing.” 

Sol: It’s just so cheesy. 

NAF: It’s embarrassing. “Oh what do you do?” “I write poetry.” I went to school for it. I didn’t like poetry until I went to college. And they’ll teach me about the poetry movements or whatever. And most of them were awful. Most of them were white awful poets. Eventually I got to a level where I could read a poem I did understand at all a few years ago and I would wonder how the hell I didn’t understand that shit. It’s simple. 

Sol: I always liked poetry but I know there are some poems from high school that I know that would hit now. I always liked Edgar Allen Poe. Poetry is definitely cheesy but I like cheesy. 

NAF: I used to share my poetry online but I stopped. Partially it was that “cheesy” thing but I partially felt like the audience for my poetry was not there. Going back to public perception and reception. It does not make me like the poem less because I self-loathingly wrote the poem in the first place. 

Sol: Exactly, I don’t know if I ever liked the poem. It was just a release. That’s all it was. 

NAF: Most people who did respond to it, responded positively. But it kinda got to the point where I would submit to literary journals and that’s it. I got published a few times. It was cool. It felt gratifying. I actually searched my name on twitter one day and some white guy came across one of my poems on one of the online literary journals I had submitted to and he shared it on his page. He doesn’t know me, I don’t know him but he shared it. It was really cool. It was one person, just like you said. It was some old white that I had nothing in common with that read my poem. 

Sol: That’s all it takes. Exactly. That’s where we’re all connected. We are going through the exact same stuff. Same shit, different toilet. Artists don’t understand the power that we have to be vulnerable. People want to be vulnerable. As much as they pretend like they don’t want to be, “eff people, it’s just me, myself, and I.” Nah, people want someone to relate. They just don’t want to be the person to spark that. That’s why artists are powerful. We are the people to spark that, we are the catalysts. Artists are important. It’s nice to know that you aren’t that you aren’t alone in your emotions.

NAF: Monetizing art, It’s not easy. Maybe it’s easier now than it has ever been but at the same time, it’s still not easy. I say that all the time about music. It’s easier to be an unsigned rapper than it has ever been. Social media is your own hype machine, you don’t have to burn actual CDs, you can just put your music Soundcloud, not trapping CDs, on the block with it. 

Sol: But niggas are. 

NAF: There’s niggas still living in 2002. 

Sol: Like you know people don’t have CD players right? 

NAF: There are definitely still niggas, especially in Atlanta, living in 2002 tryna trap off CDs. You ain’t gotta do all that. Just put it on Soundcloud or put it on Spotify. 

Sol: Maybe someone really should tell them that, because I feel like niggas really don’t know. 

NAF: Wasting all that money burning physical disks. 

Sol: But actually, I kinda miss CDs. Look at these. *reaches onto the coffee table and grabs Aquemini by Outkast CD.*  Look at these Outkast CDs. Remember when you would get a CD and you would get a poster that you could put on your wall? Look at this. *pulls out lyric sheet*

It has all these cool pictures of them. 

NAF: Yeah the lyric book. 

Sol: Lyric book, yeah that’s what it’s called. 

NAF: Is it? 

Sol: Yeah, I’m trusting you. I think it might be though. *looks closer at words* These might be lyrics. 

NAF: Oh no, they definitely are lyrics. 

Sol: Oh shit, they are. Look at me, I suck. I never read any of it, I only looked at the pictures. But CDs are cool. I love collector’s items. 

NAF: I love the way that CDs look. 

Sol: They’re like collector’s items. They came with posters or whatever. 

NAF: I was going to start a CD collection but I started a way more expensive vinyl record collection. 

Sol: Yeah, I just love collectibles. 

NAF: But back to my question before we went off track, about monetizing art. I’m not asking if you feel any guilt around it, but do you have nerves about it? I know you said you were not interested in selling tee shirts and that was not the type of art you wanted to make. I know that you have very creative ways to sell your art. You are not just selling prints… well you sell prints but JUST selling prints or stickers. But you’re selling stickers and stuff like that. So what was your approach when coming up with ideas? 

Sol: What would I want? I used to collect plushies, then I had a house fire in middle school and I lost them all. So my thing was, what if they were all mine? What if every plushie I owned was mine? So my collection will all be my own. I’ll have a few pokemon plushies but I just want to make stuff that I genuinely like. I like clothes but as an artist, what I genuinely want to see an artist make is collectible items. Clothes are not sustainable. Clothes get worn, they get dusty, you get rid of them. But things like plushies and figurines, just cute collectors. I do not know what my next thing will be. I will not tell the interview. But just things can be collected. Novelty items. 

NAF: I definitely agree with that. I never felt like making tee shirts was my go-to thing either. I just never knew what I wanted to do. 

Sol: Trial and error is good though. 

NAF: Yeah, it went good though. 

Sol: Yeah, everyone likes tee shirts. I have nothing against tee shirts. I just wanted to be different. What could I do to set me apart from everyone else? 

NAF: That’s kind of how I got into selling tapestries. I didn't really like the idea of selling prints. I bought prints from people but I never wanted to sell them. Personally, I just felt like people buy prints more because they want to support the artist than loving the art. Original art is expensive, which makes sense. The print is most of the time has low sustainability. Not saying the customer doesn’t like the art, I just think they want the artist to be able to monetize their lifestyle. Maybe I was wrong or in my own head, but that’s how I felt. I don’t think the print is really appreciated. I wanted something that made people feel cool as shit hanging up on their wall or throwing over their couch. I wanted people to see my art and look at it as a flex where with a print, maybe they hang it up but it’ll probably be filed away into a drawer. 

Sol: People don’t really like art the way they think they do. A lot of people do, but a lot of people don’t. Things like tapestries and plushies are a way for people to connect with the art in a way that they didn’t prior to. 

NAF: Exactly. Prints are cool to look at, but technically they can just look at a picture. I just think it’s an expression of supporting the artist. That’s why I think it’s important to make it more interactive by making cool types of shit that you would want for yourself. I always look at your stuff and go, “wow that’s really fucking cool.” 

Sol: Thank You. 

NAF: I remember when you did the painting for this *holds up “What Do You Desire” plushie*... I don’t want to say it because I don’t want to mess up the name. 

Sol: What Do You Desire. 

NAF: It was really cool. First thing I thought when I saw it. It looks exactly like it. 

Sol: I wanted to do something with it for so long. It was my most popular piece. I wasn’t expecting it at all. But that’s where making art for yourself takes you. Anyways, I did not know where making art for yourself takes you. It was a pretty complex piece. And it’s smoking. And I didn’t know what they could do. But I just designed it how I wanted it to look and they made it exactly how I wanted it to look. 

NAF: They snapped. 

Sol: They really did. Shoutout to Eric. That’s my manufacturer’s name. The dude I talk to at least, not the whole business. 

NAF: What are your short term art goals? 

Sol: Right now I just want to do more passion projects. Stuff that I would not necessarily be making money from but things I really want to do. That is kinda hard when you have bills to pay. But yeah, that is my goal right now, a really big passion project. Those passion projects will follow into my long term goal of having a really nice art show. Something different from what people have seen before. 

NAF: What are your long term art goals? 

Sol: Even longer term than an art show? Traveling art shows but on some Infinity Mirrors [by Yayao Kusama] type shit. Using the whole space as your canvas. And making furniture. That’s a long term goal. But it’s not too long term, I technically made ottomans for my pop-up. But on an even grander scale than that. 

NAF: On like a creative designer scale. 

Sol: Yeah, where I can really go crazy with it. 

NAF: I love going to museums and seeing designs of things like carpets and chairs. Different interpretations of things that we use everyday. 

Sol: I love to paint and draw and stuff but I really love to create things. Things that you can interact with. 

NAF: Exactly, going back to the novelty items. 

Sol: Exactly. Paintings are beautiful, don’t get me wrong but I don’t feel like painting is my calling. I am meant to do more, to push it further. Do movies, short films. 

NAF: If you could be summoned by four physical items, what four items would they be? 

Sol: To summon me? 

NAF: Yeah, they put in the little circle thing. 

Sol: Oh okay. Hmmm. Good question… Why am I having trouble with this? I don’t know what material things would summon me. Not many of them. I’ll start with a plant of some sort. A sunflower or a lotus flower. I really like those. A really nice vintage camera. That would summon me. The full Gorillaz figurine set. I only have Noodle right now. If you really want me to pull up, tell me you have the rest of them. I really want them all. And one of Hide’s [he-day] guitars. Hide is a japanese rockstar but he had the coolest guitars ever and I want one of them. 

NAF: Okay, four items. It’s the lotus or sunflower. The vintage camera. The Gorillaz figurine set. And a guitar from Hide. 

Sol: It is spelled like hide but it is pronounced like he-day. I don't even know how to play the guitar but I would learn if it is one of his.  For sure. I am going to learn eventually anyways but if it was his, I would learn right now. 

NAF: What mediums are interested in that you may not have tackled yet? 

Sol: Making movies. Short films really. I don’t think I would ever want to make a long movie. But short films. 

NAF: Like how short do you want your short films to be? 

Sol: Like three minutes. Maybe some 30. Right now, I have a couple of short films written but most of them are written to songs. So really, they’re like music videos. 

NAF: Like visual albums a little bit. 

Sol: Yeah, I like visual albums a lot. Not in the sense of the artist performing the song. I don’t even want to see that. I want to see a visual representation of what that song meant to them. 

NAF: Kind of like Kanye West, Runaway. 

Sol: Yeah, like how FKA Twigs does her music videos. Actually, in one of her music videos, the song is literally playing for like 30 seconds throughout the whole video or playing but it’s very soft and you can barely hear it. The rest of the video is her having a sword fight with some man. That’s the music video but you can see where her mind was at when making the song.  

NAF: When it comes to the music it went… m u s i c VIDEO! 

Sol: Literally. I feel like people don’t care about music videos as much anymore. I feel like people use it to be flashy. 

NAF: That’s facts though. I feel like it’s partially because of the downfall of shit like 106&Park and MTVJams. 

Sol: That’s why I really respect artists who make good music videos because I look forward to them. Show me visually, what you were telling me. 

NAF: Music videos are losing a lot of creativity, especially with rap. I feel like the video of a whole bunch of guys jumping around with a bunch of women who aren’t wearing a lot of clothes is played out.  

Sol: I get that though, their lyrics literally reflect that reality. 

NAF: Some artists like NBA Youngboy give a video to every single song and they’re all kinda  the same. 

Sol: Really? I don’t even listen to his music. But I can imagine what his music videos look like though. It’s probably him outside with his niggas, singing a song. 

NAF: Him, his homeboys, guns. That’s what it is. Him, his homeboys, guns and occasionally he’ll hire some graphic designer to do some special effects shit to his eyes or something. He has like five videos of him being picked up from jail. Like a real life prologue. 

Sol: Raw footage? 

NAF: Yeah, like raw footage. Like documentary type shit. Then they’ll segue into the video. But honestly, I’ll be excited to see some Sol videos. 

Sol: Yeah, me and you both. Everything I do, I want to put my all into it. So until I can put my all into it, it’s going to stay just written out. 

NAF: I would hate to put out a lackadaisical product. 

Sol: Exactly. 

NAF: What’s something that you’ve done, that you will never do again? 

Sol: Art wise? 

NAF: Anything. Anything you feel comfortable sharing. 

Sol: It’s crazy because I cannot think of anything I would never do again. Except this one thing I don’t know if I want to share. Probably, do not get attached in my relationships. Something I never want to do again is be codependent or attached to any other human being. That’s my answer. There’s nothing else I’ve done that I'll never want to do again. I’m open to experiences. 

NAF: Desires or needs, which would rather have consistently met? 

Sol: I guess I would rather have my desires consistently met but needs. Yeah, needs. 

NAF: What’s your thought process? 

Sol: I need my needs. But my desires are usually what I don’t need… but actually i’m gonna say desires. Because my needs are pretty much always met, even if I don’t recognize it at the time. I’ve never lost anything I needed. I always have what I need. I would say desires.

NAF: Do you think there is a difference between creation and art? 

Sol: Nope. They’re the same thing. Art is creating something. I’d say they’re the same thing. At least synonyms. 

NAF: You can snap your fingers and one thing has changed forever, what do you want it to be? 

Sol: Capitalism. I don’t want to have to monetize my art honestly. I just want to create. But I do like nice things. I feel like everyone should have what they need. Everyone should have a home and food. At least. I would snap my fingers and there wouldn’t be people on the streets. 

NAF: That’s my dream. To have everyone’s needs properly met. I don’t know how feasible this is or what school of thought would bring us that world, but I just want a world where everyone has their needs met. I don’t really care if someone lives in excess if everyone else has what they need. 

Sol: There are people crashing whips for fun. There are people sleeping… 

NAF: In their cars. 

Sol: If that. They are boarding up places where homeless people are sleeping a lot. Where would they go? That’s a serious question, if you don’t want them sleeping on the streets and you aren’t going to shelter them, where will they go? 

NAF: They’re gonna go to jail. And that’s not a good thing.  

Sol: You know what’s crazy? Some would want that. I know there are plenty of homeless people who would prefer to sleep in a jail and that’s not a good thing. 

NAF: That’s fucked up. Plus, the privately owned prisons get money per body in each cell that’s filled. It’s really fucked up. 

Sol: When I was driving today, I saw a prisoner bus and that made me so sad. I mean, don’t get me wrong. There are probably some people in there that don’t need to be in the streets. But there are a lot of people in there that don’t deserve to be in modern day fucking slavery. 

NAF: To be treated like animals. To be herded to and from places like animals. 

Sol: Especially with COVID. Hearing the stories. One of my friend’s best friend is in jail. They’re using COVID as an excuse to not tend to them at all. They’re not even getting outside time, spending all day in their cells. Just withering away in a cell with other people. If you get covid, you’re just locked in your cell. No one is tending to your needs at all. Imagine if someone was holding a gun to your head with every mistake you made. That’s just ass. 

NAF: It’s really shitty. Great answer. Selfless answer. Well capitalism fucks up everybody but it doesn’t fuck you up as hard as it fucks up other people. 

Sol: I’m definitely blessed beyond measure. It’s hard to remember when I am blessed and other people don’t have what I have. Anytime I am not thankful, I just think of all those people out on the streets and then I get emotional over dumb shit. 

NAF: I don’t know if you’ve ever read Harry Potter, I used to read it. 

Sol: Yep, read it four times. 

NAF: At the beginning of every chapter, they have a little drawing of a symbol for the chapter. For this current chapter of your life, what do you think the symbol would be, in the book of the life of Sol? 

Sol: Whatever the symbol for chaos and calm is, merged into one. I know what the symbol for chaos is but I don’t know what the symbol for calm is. If you could fuse them into one, then that’s it. Because it’s very chaotic but I’m finding my own calm in it. And it’s been cool. 

NAF: Do you think chaos ever ends? 

Sol: Nope. I was just talking to someone about this. People are always trying to find the right time for something and it will never be the right time. It’s all about you and your perspective. The right time comes when you make it the right time. But if you’re looking for a window of opportunity, there will never be one for you. You have to kick down doors and do it. You can’t be scared. Just do shit. That’s something that I had to learn. I used to be scared to start a piece. “Oh I need the right time, with the right utensils, and the right this, and the right that.” If you never fail too… You learn so much doing things incorrectly, that’s why you can’t you can’t even be scared to fuck shit up the first time. 

NAF: That’s valid as hell. What’s your biggest fear? 

Sol: My biggest fear is heights. But I kind of conquered that fear. I just want to go skydiving. 

NAF: I would never go skydiving. 

Sol: I have this thing where I want to conquer my fears. If I’m scared of something, eI go, “okay do it.” Of course reasonably. I used to have this really big fear of being alone but I’ve been alone a lot this year because whatever I’m scared of, I have to conquer. I would not say I am fearless but none of my fears are too big. And none of them will last very long. So heights and being alone are two fears I have struggled with in my life but they are also two fears that I am looking in the eyes. 

NAF: What is your biggest freedom?

Sol: Being an artist is my biggest freedom. I can make whatever I want. And that’s cool. 

NAF: What’s next? 

Sol: I really don’t know. I do things on a whim. I move with the wind. I have just been writing a lot. And through my writing, I just make things. Most of my pieces, the quote comes first. And the piece comes later. 

NAF: So what’s next is the wind? 

Sol: Literally. What I like right now, “like moths to a flame.” I’ve been saying it in my head a lot lately. Something will probably come out of that. Soon. 

NAF: Thanks for your time. I appreciate you. 

Sol: Yessss.

published May 22, 2021