[A Possession] 

What happens when what her body knows becomes too much for her mind to repress?
– S. Trimble, A Demon Girl’s Guide to Life¹

They say write what you know, but what if I don’t want to know? We don’t choose the experiences that have been thrown upon us. I want these experiences and the knowledge they gave me out of my body, out of my mind. Can writing be an exorcism? And don’t be mistaken—it is violent to write down what I know, to name my experiences out loud. Through writing, my words become the vomit that expels from my body, sitting on the page for all to see. 

In a culture of silence and compliance, it is dangerous to take inventory, to name things, to describe how power works and moves in our relationships…both the public and (especially) the private. This expulsion makes the hideous visible, and I must face the remnants of the possession like a person once possessed. After the exorcism, what is left? Others can look away at any point, metabolizing the spectacle as a metaphor that can be bent to their will. But once the words are laid bare, once the demonic bile has been compelled out of my body, I still have to look at it. I still have to acknowledge the words as proof of what I know. 

And maybe I don’t want to. Not yet. 

So instead I write about something else I know, or something I want to know—that I’m writing towards knowing. Something that possesses me fully and always: art. 

I know instantly when a painting, a photograph, or a film possesses me. The possession arrives immediately upon seeing. The artwork at hand stirs something inside me, fully in bloom and ready to burst. Its ideas, its aesthetics, its form, its concepts—it grabs hold and won’t let go. Like a demon, these ruminations being gripped in my mind must be cast out, or risk being consumed by them. And for me, whether it be from the mouth or from the pen, the only way out has always been through words. 

This occurrence happened back in 2021 while visiting Kelly Kristen Jones’ solo show We forgot the moon while holding up the sun at 062 Gallery in Chicago. Jones’ black-and-white photographs were dark—both aesthetically and thematically—captured neoclassical architectural elements such as lawn ornaments and tall white columns on a house facade, details meant to signal power by positing that a Eurocentric architectural style is “superior.” These architectural elements often show up on banks, state houses, former plantations; they are meant to intrinsically and subliminally connect white Eurocentric aesthetics with money and power. Through the artist’s hand, these elements were covered, rendering them almost invisible, as if they were never there, bringing attention to these elements by removing them entirely from our view. 

When viewing these pieces, what was omitted became impossible to ignore, a deafening silence. By rendering these architectural elements “invisible,” they actually became more noticeable. The summer I encountered Jones’ exhibition, Americans were fiercely debating public monuments memorializing histories of white supremacy, such as the Christopher Columbus statue in Chicago’s Grant Park, which was removed after police assaulted protesters during demonstrations near the monument. Mainstream discourse at this time was criticizing these monuments and acknowledging their overt racism, but at the same time overlooking other, perhaps more insidious, markers honoring these histories, such as a bronze plaque in someone’s backyard commemorating a racist historical figure. 

Prompted by Jones’ work, I became frustrated, angry. Why weren’t the folks who owned that property questioning these architectural details? Why do they still exist, even? Why are they desired? When I see something worth discussing, taking action for or against, and criticizing how its meaning might be hidden or obstructed, I realize how much we as a culture do the same thing to most modes of power. We sub- or consciously obstruct things in our mind we don’t want to deal with. Someone has to do something, someone has to say something, and that is exactly what Jones was attempting to do with these photographs. 

To reveal power, to name it or show it, is to fight it, because power works best when rendered invisible. I couldn’t get over this notion, and couldn’t stop thinking about this body of work. What is hidden must be revealed, what is silenced must be spoken. As I viewed Jones’ work, this went through my mind over and over as the images repeated in my head. My heart sped up, my brain went into overdrive, and I became restless and manic. I must, I must, I must. I must get these thoughts onto paper, I must get it out of me. And so I wrote.

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[An Exorcism]

for the bad girl—speech is heretical by default
it burbles in my witch-mouth
– Jamie Hood, How to Be a Good Girl² 

It always hurts to keep something inside. When I was younger, I was corporeally punished whenever I talked back. The demon inside me—or, the voice in my head that raised me telling me to speak up—was coming out and it required a firm hand to keep it at bay. But keeping my thoughts and feelings inside, not speaking out against wrongdoing, felt like physical pain. 

One day, I didn’t speak out when I normally would. I held my tongue when asked what was wrong with me, and I was still met with that same hard hand. I learned two valuable lessons that day: 1) that the pain of not letting the demon out hurt worse than the punishment; and 2) that the punishment had nothing to do with my words, my demon. It had nothing to do with what I said or how I said it. 

At the heart of it, like most exorcism narratives, it is really about power.

Exorcism narratives typically center a young girl—and if not young, then she must be innocent (i.e. sexually pure, white, middle or upper class). She is innocent and therefore valuable until she is possessed (by either a demon, an evil spirit, or the devil himself), and therefore must be saved by someone (a priest, a demonologist, etc.) who is, inevitably, a man. The role of innocent-until-possessed girl and righteous savior-of-a-man can be seen in most exorcism films, such as The Possession (2012), The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), and of course, the one that started it all, The Exorcist (1973). There are plenty of exceptions to this rule, such as Deliverance (2024), whose main character’s son is possessed, but even in this case it is clear that the reason for the son’s possession is due to his mother’s “moral failures” making him susceptible to evil—but those are much fewer and farther between. The mainstream and stereotypical version of possession remains gendered: man and girl, the savior and the one needing saved.

In the typical possession/exorcism plot line, the possessed is tied up, in chains, locked away “for her own good” to keep her from hurting herself and others. Sometimes she is even gagged. She is not in control of her actions. She has no agency until the exorcist comes to her rescue. And what of her symptoms? She behaves poorly: too sexual, too violent, too loud. She often expels: vomit, piss, spit, swear words, or words that scathe the person hearing them. She tries to expel what possesses her, to express herself and cast out what is inside. 

In S. Trimble’s essay “A Demon’s Girl’s Guide to Life,” they describe watching Regan, the 12-year-old girl who is possessed in The Exorcist: “I saw a revolting girl revolting against the little-girl box in which she was stuck—and I saw an army of men working to put her back in.”³ Exorcism is really about control. It is inherently violent, leaving the girl thrashing and begging for the man to stop as his hand is upon her. It is meant to bring the once innocent girl back to her so-called natural state of obedience and silence. “Where before she knew too much, now she knows nothing,” claims Trimble when describing Regan.⁴ What once possessed her is gone forever.

What if the demon who possessed her was cast out on her own terms? What if the girl took what was inside her and made sense of it? Put it on a page? Perhaps what was once raging inside her eventually takes shape and form and becomes words, sentences, fully realized thoughts. This is a possession narrative I can get behind, an act of exorcism I can relate to. 

Rage used to possess me. This anger festered inside me and colored my words when they slipped out of me, out of control when I was compelled to cast that demon out. As a child, I always refused to keep my mouth shut when my dad was in one of his ‘moods’. When he yelled at my sister, it was me who yelled back. When I was slapped for “talking back,” I kept going. I needed to make my opinions known, I had to tell him what I thought of his words and actions. In a household where there was no protector, in a home I could not leave, I had to defend myself, my family. I had to assert my agency the only way I knew how: through my voice. I could be no passive witness—and rage was my response. 

My punishment wasn’t always a response to direct conflict. Instead, I was often punished for expressing myself: laughing loudly with my siblings, making jokes at the table, lining my eyes with thick black makeup, dying my hair different colors, wearing plenty of studs and spikes—anything that showed agency, individualism, or any iota of rebellion was worthy of punishment. If it deviated from a well-mannered, submissive, chaste, conventional girl (i.e. innocent), then that behavior was wrong, bad; it must be snuffed out and expelled. The funny thing is, it was always the actual verbal expression of my thoughts and opinions that got me in the most trouble, yet it was through this verbal expression that I gained the most strength. It was the only way to get the demon out of me. 

My entry point to the concept of possession and exorcisms comes from the Bible, (one of) the original narratives of this trope. In Mark 9:14-32, Jesus releases a boy from possession. The boy’s father was unable to help his son, saying, “I believe, Lord, help my unbelief”. The word “unbelief” here is key. The father did not have the power to “exorcize” his son because he did not believe he could. To this point, power is there because we believe it is. The reverse is also true: power is not there if we don’t believe it is. This is crucial to my understanding of the power of my own voice. If I didn’t believe in it—if I was punished for using it—then perhaps I would not use it. But despite the punishment that was meant to reinforce my powerlessness, I still believed in the power of my words, and used them. 

The words I write exorcize me, allow me to reflect, process, and expel the demon inside me. They do all this and more because I believe they can. My words have power—for me and perhaps for you—because I believe it to be so. 

This is what led me to art and writing. When I put pen to paper, whatever came out, whether it was a poem or a drawing, it was just mine. It could be both public and private. It was finally out of me, out of my body and out in public, but I didn’t have to show anyone if I didn’t want to. And even if someone found it, poetry and art can be wrought with symbolism, which makes them excellent vehicles for indirectly conveying meaning that challenged systems of power. Abstraction and metaphor became safety devices. It was privately mine, and publicly available. It was a secret, and it became a safe way to express myself. 

In the end, I exorcised myself. I expelled my own demons—and I’m not referring to the screamo music, an emo wardrobe, or a rebellious attitude. Creative expression is the act of exorcism, not the demon itself. The demon is the rage built up inside me through control, abuse of power, and the methods meant to silence me. This is the demon I must cast out, this is what is exorcised through writing.

I believe this is the function of writing about and in response to art, or rather, the motivation. To create something is to remain in the world through means other than death. By impressing a worldview or experience upon the viewer or reader, you create such an impression that the work does not leave that person’s body and mind so quickly. Writing about and in response to art is not only a way for me to exorcise what has taken over my brainspace and possessed me (meaning, the art I can’t stop thinking about), but also a way to get it out of my body so that others may witness the thing as I did, to bear witness to something I experienced. And as hard as it is to read my own writing, words make it real, allowing me to confront the thing once more.

Now, as I move through the world, beauty is what is within me instead of rage. When I see a piece of art that sticks with me, I am possessed by it. I think about it constantly, the thoughts simmering and bubbling up until I am bursting and frothing at the mouth. The words must come out! And so I write. In doing so, I move what is possessing me forward, through, and out. The demon becomes tamed, radiant, and burning bright. I respond to art. My words become a conversation with the artist, a mirror held up to the art, thoughts that fall out of my mouth as my eyes are held by what possesses me. 

Instead of vomiting while crawling backwards on the ceiling, screaming from what is inside me, I cast it out in streams of what I hope is reflective and critical prose that responds directly to the artwork. When your words have somewhere to go, when they are supported and encouraged, they no longer sound like the backwards Latin of a demon. Instead, they are the antidote; they are the act that allows you to exorcise yourself.

I first realized the power of my words during the times that I was silenced. Why use such force, such violence to silence them, if my words were not so powerful? Every word had to mean something because it cost so much to say them. If something compels you to respond, open your mouth and say it, or put your pen to paper.

I cast out my own demon to rid myself of the possession, the hold the artwork has on me. When in doubt, I remind myself that it was not so long ago that I was punished for my words. I was made to keep silent, my path to expressing myself having nowhere to go. Speaking for the sake of speaking your mind, writing for the sake of writing your thoughts, has power. What possesses you must be expelled, cast out by your own hand. 

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Works Cited

1. Trimble, S. (2023). A Demon Girl’s Guide to Life. In J. Vallese (Ed.), It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror (p. 18). The Feminist Press at CUNY. ↩︎
2. Hood, Jamie. (2020). How to be a Good Girl (p. 21). Vintage. ↩︎
3. Trimble, S. (2023). A Demon Girl’s Guide to Life. In J. Vallese (Ed.), It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror (p. 11). The Feminist Press at CUNY. ↩︎
4. Ibid, p. 18. ↩︎

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