We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Paragraph Taylor. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Paragraph below.
Hi Paragraph, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.
I overcame imposter syndrome when I realized it, and all trouble or doubt, comes not from within us, yet from dark energies that wish to thwart our progress, evolution, and creation. I, like many, used to think it came from our experience, trauma, logic, brains, or justifiable authority. However, all negative issues are illusory. Imposter syndrome, like any discouragement, comes from the illusion that we aren’t enough. We are all whole as One, and we gain the most motion from stillness. Any deterrence from that is a mere step away from wholeness, into the mirage that we are incomplete without outside forces or materials. When we realize we are whole and have everything we need to manifest the lives we want, imposter syndrome and any other form of hindrance or doubt can be shooed off like a fly. It doesn’t stop, and in fact with greater success comes a more convincing illusion that we don’t belong where we have built ourselves up to be. We simply separate it from ourselves as an outside force, realizing the soul is still and whole, and that separation evaporates the doubt, immediately and incessantly.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I facilitate the sharing of pain to heal. Two vocations, in truest of Gemini (Sun/Mercury) and Libra (most other celestial bodies) fashions, enable me to do so: musical artistry and mortuary science.
I play guitar, record & program most other instruments, and sing for a visual kei indankstrial (think gritty like Ministry or Skinny Puppy yet bourgeois eating oysters & wearing linens) duo called ManifestiV alongside my husband (I’m her wife, legally) Lillith Taylor, who also sings, plays (and built) her own custom electronic vibraphone, produces, manages, and creates multitudes of visual art, from album covers to animated music videos, for ManifestiV as well. We married and formed ManifestiV (the band pre-dates the marriage by six months) over eleven years ago in Vallejo California, having toured across the United States, many years through Burning Man, Europe (Germany & Ireland) and Asia (Thailand) for well over 200 performances.
We met attending mortuary school in 2011 in Dallas, Texas. Lillith directed home funerals in California shortly thereafter, while I earned my Texas Funeral Director & Embalmer licenses in 2013. During those apprenticeships, I realized the common thread of music making & performances and memorials, funeral services & celebrations of life. They’re where humans share pain to heal. We are each other’s diffusers, and nothing works better than a catered environment (be it a chapel or concert venue) to do so within. I worked all ends of the funeral profession: family-owned funeral homes where every step receives care by everyone, appropriately licensed of course; corporate firms servicing up to a dozen area funeral homes with superfluous volume while maintaining explicit attention to detail and care; state university hospitals preparing cadavers for anatomical study for medical students, processing (or dissecting) and performing removals for the county medical examiner that showed me exactly how quickly it can all end for any of us. I left that position shortly before Pandemic 1 to farm at our homestead in East Texas before returning for one last tenure before uprooting.
Early 2025, I left that final Texan mortuary position to spend four months in Asia (two in Thailand, two in Japan) writing the next ManifestiV record “Universe 25” with Lillith while positioning to reciprocate my funeral licensure from the Lone Star State to the Golden State. Mid-year, we began in Texas to track everything we wrote in Asia while I dove headfirst into California Mortuary Law to pass my embalmer examination to reciprocate. I now have the immense honor of embalming in the largest Chinatown in the United States in the heart of San Francisco. Lillith & I continue working on the ManifestiV double album “Universe 25” while completing our move back out to the Pacific Coast.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Three qualities that have shaped the life I want boil down to how to act with others & within myself. Firstly, exhibit kindness at all costs. If an entity blatantly rejects or fails to deserve it, divert that kindness elsewhere. Don’t pour it into an empty hole. Furthermore, practice persistence & patience. Never take failure as a sign to quit, yet rather as one to continue with increased fervor. Any failure leaves room for something even more grand in the future, which I have self-proven unconditionally. Greater the patience, greater the payoff. The Future explains the Past in its Present. Finally, exercise non-reaction. If I feel anything taking me out of my stillness, away from my wholeness, or off my path, I do not react to it to try to fix or realign it. I merely change course & try something else as opposed to forcing something that doesn’t seem to be working. Stay still, whole, safe, and well, and life will be more fun for you than anyone can imagine.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
Amanda Palmer’s “The Art Of Asking”, recommended to me by my artist aunt Lacey Crawford, aligned with the mantra Lillith & I hold near & dear: MAKE THEM TELL YOU NO. If you need help, ask. There’s nothing dehumanizing about needing assistance, or accepting it. Amanda built her career on that, and ironically enough, right before that became published, I met her at Girls Rock Dallas in late 2013 right before moving to Vallejo to join Lillith. By then, at Level 31 (because ‘age’ implies wear & tear, and ‘level’ implies achievement & growth) I’d written a record I didn’t want to make solo, yet I knew was my strongest material yet. (That record became “Einer Sie Gern” the ManifestiV debut, alongside Lillith.) I had done many records before, and many folks told me to hang it up & grow up, out of my twenties. That 2013 night in Dallas, I asked Amanda over a clove cigar, reminiscing back to our commonly gothic roots, “is it too late at this level to start completely over making music?” She exclaimed sternly that it’s NEVER too late to chase your dreams, and to go for it hard, and that we will have great success it touring, recording, and most of all, healing others with our experiences we poured into song. Amanda Palmer manifested the trajectory of success ManifestiV continues upon. We work on our seventh release, our first double album, “Universe 25”, and at press time aim to have it out summer 2026.
Contact Info:
- Website: ManifestiV.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/ParagraphTaylor
- Facebook: facebook.com/ParagraphTaylor
- Twitter: x.com/ParagraphTaylor
- Youtube: youtube.com/@paragraphtaylor
- Other: linktr.ee/ParagraphTaylor
Image Credits
Simon Pruitt, Jose Guzman, ¶ Taylor, Emmar Grant, Sey Visual
