Nina Simone.

I don’t remember when I first heard her voice. I just remember that when I did, I cracked.

Nina Simone didn’t sing songs. She summoned them. Her voice didn’t come from her throat - it came from somewhere subterranean, from the same place grief and fury and longing come from. When I heard "Lilac Wine," I didn’t feel comforted. I felt known.

She gave emotion permission to be unpretty. She sang like someone who wasn’t asking you to like her. She sang like someone who already knew the truth and was watching to see if you could keep up.

Nina Simone is not a vibe. She’s a force field. Her piano playing alone could break your heart. Her silences were as powerful as her phrasing. She could end a line and leave you suspended for a lifetime in the breath between chords.

But beyond the music, it was her uncompromising presence that moved me. She didn’t soften her power to make others feel more comfortable. She didn’t tuck her rage behind metaphor. She weaponized precision.

I saw her 1969 Montreux set at the Philosophical Research Society, and I haven’t been the same since. Watching her live - decades later, through grainy footage - was like attending a spiritual transmission. You could feel the room bracing itself for her honesty. You could feel the silence she allowed. You could feel her, unflinching and fully arrived.

She reminds me that softness isn’t always the goal. That sometimes the most loving thing you can do is name it. All of it. Even the parts they wish you wouldn’t.

She gave me permission to stop performing palatability.
To stop sanding down my edges.
To show up like a storm if that’s what the truth required.

Nina Simone is on my wall because she changed the molecular structure of every room she entered.
And because I want to do the same.