THE PANDEMIC SPEAKS IN DELAYS
Hello! The newsletter has finally arrived! I know your inbox was panting with anticipation.
By way of delayed introduction, I’m going to start with a mantra: It is not important that this newsletter (whomever she shall become!) is good. Sorry - it’s not!
I know - it’s like woah, what kind of entitled dingbat bothers people with work that isn’t peer-reviewed? Ugh, millennials - careening violently toward middle age, yet still believing everyone cares about their every sloppy little feeling!
I’m not saying it will be terrible. I’m saying it’s necessary to be fine with - or at least tolerant of - that possibility. Otherwise I won’t send it. After all, I love a cave. A hobbit hole. A shady little corner. It’s so cozy in there!
DANCE LIKE EVERYONE IS WATCHING AND THAT IS FINE
This is a crucial function of making things, at least for where I am in my creative process right now — letting myself improvise, get messy, collage, stitch, fool around. Having often flirted with and then too-hastily retreated from public expression, this means doin’ it in front of people. This is less a kink, more a way of willing my work into the world.
How I render a thing (see what I did there?) is not more important than creating and sharing it. So much about this era remains terrifying and unknown. The horror of the virus is its invisible (and interminable) stealth. By comparison, this is nothing: A spit in the wind! A piss in the ocean! A Beyoncé song in the shower (I’ve lost the analogy)! At least these things have form, even if they end up in a drain.
A NICE THING ABOUT JOKES IS LETTING OFF STEAM
A couple weeks back, I published a piece in Slackjaw: How To Dress For Your Body Type: Toaster, TV Antenna, or Brita Filter. I was inspired by fashion-fluff articles that compare women’s bodies to fruit and tell us how to hide our hideous, unsightly flesh.
For example, I am a “pear,” so I should wear bedazzled shirts to give the illusion that my tits are as tremendous as my canyon-wide hips. I should also drape my lower half in black to camouflage and grieve the fact that I have a body. That sort of thing. (I will not link to this cursed clickbait.)
I also did the illustrations. Here is a sample illustration:
It’s a Brita Filter lookin’ flirty. Here’s another:
It’s a toaster lookin’ like a snack. Here’s the final one:
It’s a TV antennae lookin’ *literally* electric. So hot. Feisty with actual power.
I’ll share more visual and video fun in the coming weeks and months as I cook up work with my creative duo, BunkrCollective.
TOO MANY NEW STORIES? TRY SOME OLD ONES.
I considered recommending articles in this first newsletter, but there are simply too many takes. What with Delta, Delta Plus, Lambda, Magna cum laude and Lorem Ipsum in the news and in our lives, we could all use a break from the gut-punching content machine.
If this era were a cake, it would be layered with grief, fear, and information overload. The cake is supported by pure survival instinct, which often droops in exhaustion, causing the cake to tip. The cherry on top is malaise, which ain’t cute. Is this metaphor making sense? I can’t eat sugar because it gives me migraines, so eating my way out of my feelings isn’t a prime option. Hence: art.
The other night, I managed to Clockwork-Orange one sleepy, drooping eye open to finish a tight short story by Chekhov called “A Little Joke.” It’s about a man who only declares his love for his girlfriend, Nadya, when they’re racing a sled down a hill at top speed. Our narrator (the boyfriend) tells us with near-sociopathic giddiness about how clearly sad and pathetic Nadya is as she strains to discern if she’s heard him proclaim his love, or if she’s simply misheard or projected a voice into the sound of the wind whipping by. At least, that’s what he tell us she’s experiencing — Nadya doesn’t say so.
Nadya’s apparent solution to the conundrum is to keep going sledding, despite the fact that our unreliable narrator says she’s terrified of the whole ordeal. She even goes without him once to test her perception — the reader knows this because our jackass narrator is standing from afar, this time saying nothing just to torture her. Another time, he hides in the twilight as she comes out of her house into a spring wind.
“I love you, Nadya!” he says again into the gust, and watches as she reaches out for the wind with noticeable longing. He and his magnified ego assume she’s tortured by her love for him, by the confusing lack of him. Chekhov, however, pulls off a deft move: he makes the narrator a lonely, small, ridiculous buffoon, and Nadya noble, expansive, and loved. Few people are ready to be embraced by the wind.
ENDING A FREE ASSOCIATION, FREELY
Either you read this far and you’re still with me, or you made a different choice. Well, the latter group isn’t reading this. You are, you lucky son of a gun!
Onward <3,
Sara
P.S. Feel free to leave a comment, a thought, or a question (I love a discussion! Meanies will get tossed). You can also share this post with someone who might like it:
Thanks for doin’ it in front of people, yo.
Congrats! Love it!