At some point in our lives, our parents will fail us. I don't think my parents failed in especially huge or or unique ways, but I also couldn't call my childhood a success except that I am still here and still loving. Into the gaps left by our communities and families, some of us learn to stuff art to help with raising us. There are albums and poems and stories that fostered me when it looked like I had been left to fend for myself. These are now roots as deep and firm as anything else that raised me. In some ways, they are more real because they shaped my inner life and even as I drop off talking to my family to a few times a month, I carry that inner life at all times about to spill over and no living person can take credit for it. 

For example, Bradbury didn't send me his stories to keep my mind safe. He wrote them for his own curiosity. But Bradbury's work found me and saved a part of me that would have surely been lost if not for that meeting. U2 and Thrice didn't compose music for me. Joss Whedon didn't direct for me (and I'm not even sure I'd like him in real life). Emily Dickinson and Zora Neale Hurston wrote in their own time and places and died before my parents were born. None of these artists will ever know my name or the demons that they saved me from, but they saved me none the less. They raised me in the moments when I was left to raise myself. 

And I do mean "raise" in a literal if abstract sense. There are artists who you enjoy and there are works that raise you up. They did more than just educate me. They validated my experiences and my creativity. Bradbury was a shield against the assault of "reality" which was really just a small piece of a whole. Without him, I surely would have suffocated some vital piece of myself. The Beatles were much the same. And ever since then, I have been seeking out shields and props to keep my inner life from getting beaten down and trodden upon. This world is only too ready to do that. 

I've added to their number over the years. Paulo Coelho, Anne Lamott, Nayirrah Waheed, Joy Harjo, Bell Hooks, Asimov, Neil Gaiman, capoeira, Jose Bonino, Oscar Romero, Gregory Porter, Janelle Monae, Laura Mvula and so many others. I don't know who I would be without them. And that's humbling to think about.