Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome to Your Art Is A Spell, the podcast that ignites inspiring and transformative conversations about art as a magical practice. I'm your host, Edgar Fabián Frías—a multi-passionate artist, witch, therapist, and proud mutant shape-shifter. My art spells have reached audiences through social media, billboards, and skyscrapers and have even been placed on the surface of the moon! Join us as we explore how reclaiming your unique artistic voice and embracing bold creativity can transform your life and the world around you. Subscribe to the podcast and sign up for our newsletter at www.yourartisaspell.com to stay connected!
If you're exhausted, afraid, angry,
or struggling to imagine a future,
I need you to hear this. Your exhaustion
or emotions are not proof that you're weak.
They're not proof that you're lazy or that you've
failed to manifest abundance, protect your energy,
maintain a positive mindset, or become resilient
enough to survive what is happening around you.
It may be evidence that something has been feeding
on you. Your labor, your money, your attention,
your fear, your creativity, your ability to
imagine a future beyond survival. But this will
not be 20 minutes of me listing everything that is
wrong with the world and leaving you alone inside
the wreckage. This is a protection spell. Not
a spell for pretending that the world is safe.
Not a spell for bypassing real danger. Not a
spell that tells people living through racism,
poverty, displacement, ecological destruction, or
political violence that they simply need to raise
their vibration. This is a spell for separating
what belongs to you from what has been imposed
upon you. It is a spell for calling your attention
back from every machine that profits from your
fear. For calling your imagination back from every
institution that taught you to ask for permission,
for remembering that you are still here and that
your survival, your art, your care, and your
refusal contain power. Welcome or welcome back to
Your Art is a Spell. This is a place for artists,
multi-passionates, outsiders, mutants, dreamers,
workingclass creatives, children of immigrants,
and anyone trying to make a life inside
systems that were never designed to hold
the fullness of who we are. Lately, I have
been thinking a lot about the word protection.
Protection is everywhere in spiritual places.
It is often one of the first things talked about
when discussing spiritual practices. We're
taught to cleanse our energy, cut the cord,
to block that person, to light the candle, buy
a crystal, create a shield around yourself. Some
of these practices can be really meaningful.
Ritual can help us mark a decision. remember
an intention and embody something we already know
but have been afraid to fully claim. But I keep
wondering what happens when protection becomes
another private responsibility. What happens
when we are taught to protect ourselves from the
emotional effects of a violent system but not
to name the system? What happens when protection
becomes just one more thing you have to purchase?
one more task we have to perform or one more way
that we can blame ourselves when reality still
hurts. Because sometimes the energy draining
you is not just one toxic person. Sometimes
it's your rent. Sometimes it is the gas pump, the
grocery receipt, the climate alert on your phone,
the unpaid opportunity that promises great
exposure. Again, the institution that loves your
identity in the artist statement but does not want
to materially support your life. Or sometimes it's
the constant demand to make yourself visible
online while platforms convert your attention,
your vulnerability and your creativity into
profit. Sometimes the thing draining you is
not bad energy. Sometimes it is extraction. I
want to ground this in material reality because
I refuse to talk about power as though it exists
only in our minds. In a recent national survey,
95% of American adults said the country is
facing an affordability crisis. Regardless of
their political affiliation, more than half of the
people surveyed said that they struggle to afford
basic necessities like food and gas. At the moment
of me recording this podcast, gasoline is over
$6 a gallon, the highest it's ever been around
this time of year. Food prices are 3% higher than
they were a year ago. So when you stand in the
grocery store doing math in your head, putting
something back, choosing the cheaper version,
wondering how everything became so expensive, that
is not an individual failure of your financial
discipline. When you calculate whether an art
opening, an audition, a class, a studio visit, or
community event is worth the gas it will take to
get there. That is not evidence that you're not
committed enough to your art. People are making
impossible calculations every day. And while
people are being told to economize and optimize,
work harder, monetize their hobbies, and build a
personal brand, corporations profit from current
production. Corporate profits from current
production have reached approximately 4.83
83 trillion in the second quarter of 2026. This is
happening as people are struggling. This does not
mean that every price increase has one simple
cause. Wars, disrupted supply chains, energy
markets, public policy, extreme weather, labor
costs, and corporate pricing power can all affect
what we pay. Precision matters. We cannot turn
complexity into a slogan. But complexity does not
erase power or greed or extraction. It does not
erase the fact that some people have the power to
pass on the cost downward while protecting their
margins and others must choose what to put back at
the register. It does not erase the reality that
some institutions remained profitable because the
people beneath them absorbed the exhaustion, the
instability, the pollution or the risk. This is a spell that we've been living under. If you cannot
thrive under impossible conditions, something must
be wrong with you. You're not productive enough,
not disciplined enough. You haven't optimized well
enough. You're not magnetic enough, not strategic
enough, not grateful enough, not talented enough,
not good enough at turning every private
experience into marketable content. That
is a powerful spell because it takes a structural
wound and gives it a personal diagnosis. It makes
you look in the mirror when you really should be
looking at the architecture around you. And I want
to be careful here. This is not an argument to say
that we have no agency. It is not an invitation
to collapse into helplessness or to hand over
every decision to some abstract villain called
the system. Agency matters. Boundaries matter.
Choices matter. Rest matters. Art matters. How
we speak to ourselves matters, but agency becomes
much more useful when we can accurately locate the
problem. If your exhaustion is partially being
produced by overwork, low wages, rising costs,
discrimination, ecological instability, unpaid
caregiving without support, and institutions
that demand free labor. You cannot solve all of
that by purchasing a better planner. You cannot
gratitude journal your way out of paying your
rent. You cannot meditate fossil fuel emissions
out of the atmosphere. And you cannot protect your
peace by pretending that other people's suffering
has nothing to do with you. The purpose of naming
this system is not to erase personal power. It is
to stop wasting that power fighting yourself. And
when I say the system, I do not mean a secret room
where one all powerful groups control everything.
I mean visible arrangements of power. I mean
workplaces that require more while paying less.
Landlords and housing markets that turn shelter
into an investment vehicle. fossil fuel industries
that can privatize profit while communities absorb
pollution and climate damage. Platforms that are
designed to hold our attention because attention
is sold on the open market. Institutions that
depend on unpaid and underpaid labor while
presenting scarcity as proof of excellence. And
of course, as we've talked about on this podcast,
a culture that romanticizes the suffering of
artists because artists who suffer are easier
to exploit. An artist who believes deprivation
makes them pure may tolerate conditions that
would be unacceptable in any other profession.
An artist desperate for legitimacy may donate
their labor or their art to institutions that are
much wealthier than they are. An artist trained
to see every rejection as proof of personal
inadequacy may never question how access,
wealth, race, disability, geography, and social
networks shape who gets seen. And this extraction
is not distributed equally. People of color in the
United States experience above average exposure to
fine particulate pollution from source categories
responsible for 75% of overall exposure. Those
disparities persist across income levels, regions,
and urban and rural environments. This is what we
know as environmental racism. This is why climate
catastrophe cannot be reduced to a universal
story in which humanity is equally responsible
and equally harmed. Specific industries make
decisions, specific policies permit harm, specific
neighborhoods are treated as sacrifices. Black,
brown, indigenous, immigrant, poor, disabled,
and workingclass communities have repeatedly
been required to bear the front, to bear the
costs that make wealth and convenience possible
for others. And of course, these communities are
not just sites of suffering. They're also sites
of knowledge, imagination, organizing, innovation,
resistance, protection, and survival. The point is
not to turn people into symbols of pain. The point
is to tell the truth about who has been forced to
pay and to also remember who has also always
created ways to survive, resist, and care for
one another. And many of us are also living with
climate fear. During the first 6 months of 2026,
the US has experienced 12 weather and climate
related disasters that have cost $1 billion in
damage each. Together, those events caused at
least $31.9 billion worth of damage and $183
deaths. Those numbers are not abstractions.
They are homes, bodies, animals, memories,
medications lost in the flood, work missed
because the air is unsafe. Entire communities
rebuilding while the next emergency is already
forming. If you feel grief and fear about this,
you are not being too sensitive. If you feel
anger, you are not being negative. If you
sometimes struggle to plan 5 years ahead because
the future feels unstable, you are not broken. But
fear can become a second extraction. The emergency
is real. And then an attention economy learns to
feed us the emergency every hour of every day.
The alert repeats. The commentary repeats. Her
bodies remain on call for disasters occurring
everywhere at once. Doom scrolling can feel like
vigilance. It can feel like caring. It can feel
morally wrong to look away. But being continuously
exposed to suffering is not the same as being in
relationship with the people who are suffering.
Knowing every terrible thing immediately is
not the same as developing the capacity to
respond. There is a difference between staying
informed and surrendering your imagination,
your being to catastrophe. Your attention is
finite. Your attention is sacred. Your care is
precious. protection asks what information
helps me act and what information keeps me
immobilized. So I want to offer another
definition of protection. Protection is
not building a spiritual wall that's so high that
nothing in the world can touch you. Protection is
discernment about what gets access to you. What
gets access to your time, your body, your labor,
your money, your nervous system, your art,
your imagination, your hope. Protection may
mean turning off all notifications after you have
received the information that you need. It may
mean refusing an unpaid opportunity that asks
you to finance an institution with your labor.
It may mean making something that will never
become content. It may mean telling someone you do
not get unlimited access to me because you are in
crisis. It may mean learning who owns the company,
who funds the institution, and where the
money goes and whose labor remains invisible.
It may mean joining a union, an artist collective,
a neighborhood group, a community defense effort,
or a mutual aid network. It may mean allowing
pleasure into your life. Not because pleasure
fixes oppression, but because a system organized
around exhaustion should not be granted total
ownership of your inner world. There are five
movements in this protection spell. Name, return,
retrieve, redirect, and join. First, name.
Name what is exactly happening without turning
it into an indictment of your character. I am
overwhelmed because I'm caring too much. Or, I'm
afraid because these conditions are frightening.
I'm grieving because something really matters to
me. I'm struggling financially because necessities
are expensive and my resources are limited. Naming
is not wallowing. Naming brinks the enchantment
of shame. Second, return. Return what was never
yours to carry. Return the shame of not producing
normally during abnormal conditions. Return the
demand to turn every wound into a beautiful
concept. Return the idea that rest must be
earned through collapse. Return the fantasy that
you should be able to solve systematic problems
through personal perfection. This does not mean
abandoning responsibility. It means becoming
precise about which responsibilities are actually
yours. Third, retrieve. Call your attention back.
Bring it back. Call it back from the app that you
opened accidentally or automatically. Call it back
from the stranger whose approval you have been
trying to earn. Call it back from the institution
that rejected you. Call it back from comparison.
Call it back from imagined arguments. Call it
back from the demand to know everything terrible
happening everywhere at once. Your attention is a
part of your life force. Where you place it shapes
what you can build. Fourth, redirect. Reclaimed
energy needs to go somewhere. Put it into one
page, one image, one meal, one phone call,
one application, one boundary, one hour of
rest, one hour of organizing, one act of care,
one act of refusal. Power does not always return
as a dramatic feeling. Power sometimes returns
as a small decision you're finally willing to
make. Fifth, join. Because no personal protection
practice can substitute for collective power.
Mutual aid is not charity performed by a savior
for a passive recipient. It is reciprocal survival
infrastructure. People exchanging food, knowledge,
transportation, child care, legal information,
money, protection, skills, and care because their
well-being is connected. Your next act of power
may be finding the people with whom your care
can become coordinated. Not because community is
always easy or safe. Not because every group is
worthy of trust, but because isolation is one
of those conditions that allows extraction to
continue. You do not have to save the world alone.
You were never supposed to. If you're driving,
working, or doing something that requires your
attention, simply listen. You can return to this
later if it feels safe or accessible. Place both
your feet on the floor or notice whatever part
of your body is being supported right now.
Take an ordinary object that's already near
you. Nothing has to be purchased. It might be a
key, a pen, a ring, a fabric, a tool, a stone,
or maybe something made by a loved one. Let this
object represent what remains yours. Take a few
breaths here. Notice one place where your body
needs support. You do not need to manufacture
a particular feeling. Simply notice that
something is holding some part of you right now.
Now either silently or on a piece
of paper, complete these sentences.
What is mine is maybe your love, your grief, your
values, your anger, your desire, your creative
voice, your right to decide what is not mine is
maybe manufactured shame, impossible productivity,
an institution's rejection, the belief that worth
depends on usefulness. What I return today is
Urgency, comparison, overexposure, unpaid access,
the responsibility to be available to everyone.
What comes back to me is attention, imagination,
pleasure, refusal, memory, discernment,
solidarity. If these words feel true, repeat them
with me. Change anything that does not belong to
you. I release the lie that my exhaustion is a
personal failure. I return the shame that was
used to make me obedient. I call my attention
back from every machine that profits from
my fear. I call my imagination back from every
institution that taught me to ask for permission.
I do not deny what is happening. I refuse to
let catastrophe occupy every room inside me.
What was extracted from me will not determine who
I become. My art is evidence that I am still here.
My care is not weakness. My refusal is sacred. My
attention belongs to me. My imagination belongs
to me. My life is connected to other lives. My
power returns through what I make, what I protect,
what I refuse, and who I stand alongside. Now,
choose one material act that will seal this spell.
Turn off one source of fear for 24 hours. Make
one small thing that you will not monetize or
post. Say no to one demand that depends upon
your selfabandonment. Contact one person you
trust. Share a resource. Find a local group.
Put $5 into a mutual aid request if you have
it. Or offer time, transportation, food, a skill,
amplification, or care if money is not available.
A spell becomes powerful when it changes
a relationship, a behavior, a boundary,
or a material condition. I cannot promise you that
everything is going to be okay. I can remind you
that despair is not the whole truth. You can
be tired and still possess power. You can be
afraid and still act. You can grieve and still
create. You can protect your attention without
abandoning the world. You can recognize the
scale of the crisis without surrendering the
scale of your imagination. And you do not have
to become invulnerable to become dangerous to
the systems that depend upon your obedience. You
need relationships, discernment, memory, practice,
art, rest, strategy, refusal, and people who will
stand beside you. They taught us to think that
power only lives above us in money, corporations,
governments, galleries, institutions, platforms,
and names we're supposed to fear. But power also
lives between us. It lives in every world we make
before anyone gives us permission. Protect that.
Practice that. Pass it on. If this episode has
resonated with you today, leave a comment with one
thing that you're calling back to yourself. Write,
"I call back." And finish the sentence. Read
someone else's response. And if it moves you,
leave them a word or witness. Not advice, not a
solution, just a reminder that they were heard.
Subscribe to this channel or to this podcast
if you want more messages like these about art,
magic, and empowerment during this time of
great change and catastrophe. Never forget
that your art is a spell and it will change your
life and the world around us. As a reminder,
we have a private membershiponly Patreon where
I share updates and you can communicate with
me directly. If you are a fan of this podcast, I
highly encourage you to become a paid member. It's
only $5 a month and your support helps us continue
to create these episodes. I want to thank the paid
members and the free members of my Patreon. You
can find out more by going to patreon.com/yyouart
is a spell. Also, if you'd like to be added to
my newsletter, you can go to mutant-magic.com
to sign up. My newsletter is free and it also
includes a paid membership site for those who are
looking for more direct support on your artist
multi-passionate or multi-disiplinary journey.
Please share this episode with a loved one.
Leave us a review. Doing any of these things
helps us expand this message and reach more and
more loved ones. Many blessings on your journey.