Just because I couldn’t get enough of Tarriona Ball (‘Tank’, artist of Tank and the Bangas) the first time around, I could barely fit in my seat to contain myself when I stumbled across this video. (Thank you, again, Stylelikeu.com ! There was a part 2?)

She’s bone-chillingly vulnerable. In heart-churning pros, she undresses her soul like the garments she discarded to the floor. Her face twist with the pain of each unveiling.  There’s no hiding as her poetry is carried on the acoustics. We’re beyond wall-papered rooms and a hidden voice from across the way sharing space and conversation.  We’re nearly 200k views in (collectively, video part one and two) with her courage, and I wonder how many share her sentiments.

How many feel “that’s me” but keep it stuffed away like a tangled ball of yarn wrapping around another yard?  We’re not even concerned about keeping it neat it anymore. My how it’s grown! It lost its form long time ago.  We’re just trying to keep it contained.  It’s of every strand and knots of every color… but it’s you. If we’re all honest… it’s us. I know. It’s not neat.  It’s not clean.  It’s quite messy and uncomfortable and often not celebrated, but… it’s us. We are more than perfectly photo-cropped lives flawlessly edited for envy.  I’m not saying we all need to just be piles of disaster in every direction, but we could be on our way to somewhere beautiful if we started from somewhere real.

You sure would look lovely trying on that bravery. You just might blaze without the weight of faining as you slip into that honesty.  You might shine the kind refraction someone needs.  You might wake a distant, sleeping heart.

 

—LM Jones

 

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Enjoy her raw, stripped down performance here…