Welcome to The Voices Unchained

The first thing you have to know about this website is that I kind of don’t like it. I’ve had the idea taking up space in my head for too long, going back and forth and back and forth about the simplest things, and even whether it should exist at all. Who do I think I am, and what the heck do my thoughts add to any discussion? Who needs, or even wants, to hear this? Am I really going to put an honest effort towards this? Am I going to put too much into this and gain basically nothing? What's the name going to be (this could change over time too)? Do I even enjoy writing? Is this the best way to get my energy and thoughts out? These are the factors surrounding this website, the reason why every detail is simultaneously painstakingly thought about yet hastily selected.

Regardless, the website exists as a constantly changing representation of my thoughts and a creative outlet. I want to use this as a place to express myself regarding the variety of things I’m passionate about or interested in in that moment, but also using it to hopefully provoke and foster further thought and discussion about it, and (selfishly) be able to put out on the internet what I would want to read when I search something up (although this is of course not that near to the expectations I would have for it). It’s for me and my friends, and hopefully the rest of y’all come along. This includes engaging with music, film, books, art, pop culture, writing “personal essays” about socio-political issues around the world, especially concerning American, Punjabi, and Sikh issues, general creative narratives, and the intersections of all this. This small introduction is hopefully interesting enough to garner interest, but it feels different from anything else on the site right now.

This all started out when one of my favorite RnB singers Brent Faiyaz released Wasteland last summer, an album I had high expectations for but kept flip flopping about my opinions on it initially (I think it has its flaws and could have been stronger, but I still really like it and think its highs are amazing). I wanted to talk through my thoughts and, with the rest of my summer fairly open, I decided to try out a video essay, first writing a sort of review, recording it, then editing it in with some interesting visuals (I recorded it last year, but I doubt anyone is going to see it, at least that version of it). When I was trying to figure out where I would put the writing and/or the video, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to post it on a website I had control over along with other sites. That way I could control what is connected with what, how it looks, and how it evolves over time. Plus, in the most ideal future, the website could become a hub within itself. I then wrote a little more, leaving some pieces with a proper draft, others unfinished, and others still sitting in my Notes app as ideas. Over a year after sitting on all this I decided to just go for it, hopefully in the process getting better, growing, and finding parts of my identity while presenting what I wish was already out there. In that vein, The Voices Unchained may become a medium not just for personal creative output but a host for originality. Originality is vague and sometimes circumstantial, but in this situation all The Voices Unchained centers around is “create what you wish existed” by building upon what is already there in other ways. In other words, unchaining voices to… voice unchaining… damn. I was tryna have my “oh look they said the title of the movie in the movie” moment. Looks like this is going to be harder than it looks.