The Street where you live

It always starts as a flicker—an idea that shows up unannounced, usually when I’m not trying to make anything at all. A shadow on a wall, a scrap of conversation overheard on the train, a color that refuses to sit quietly. Street art begins for me long before the image ever hits the surface. It begins in that restless moment when my mind leans forward and whispers, What if?

The street says, no-permission needed, No—come as you are. Bring your contradictions, your broken crayons, your untrained hands, your loud, inconvenient memories and feelings. Bring the things you want to hide. I’ll hold them.

Most days, like most people, I walk without a plan. That’s the trick: you have to let the city surprise you. A blank wall, a forgotten alley, the back of a rusted electrical box—these things call out like old friends. They say, Say something here. something unpolished. It never sits still. Sometimes it looks like a face cracking open. Sometimes it’s a bright color insisting on being seen in a season when everything feels gray. Sometimes it’s a line of situational poetry that manifests before I can second-guess it.

I want to leave evidence that mischief was here, thinking and feeling and playing for attention. I want someone rushing to work or staggering home at midnight to look up and, for a second, stop. Maybe they’ll laugh. Maybe they’ll feel a feeling. Maybe they’ll delight in this made strange little thing on this forgotten little wall. Maybe they won’t think of it again as it just grazes across their synapses. Art that isn’t a transaction; it’s a trace.

There are over a billion websites out there, sure. But there’s only that one cracked sidewalk, that one listing fence by an empty lot that you walk past and feel the urge to stop—just for a breath, just for a heartbeat — then the idea that flickered into being on an ordinary day will have found a home.