010. Conflagrated Reliquary
Hello friends,
The first week of December has been a chaotic one (hence why you're receiving this on a Thursday). My family came to visit me over the weekend which was a strange mix of excitement to see them and the stressful awareness of the work I'd need to finish as soon as they left. As we walked around Midtown, we tried to make our way across Rockefeller Center (my grandparents had never been there before and wanted to see the tree they knew only from T.V.) only to get caught in the congested throng of other tourists trying to scrunch themselves within the glowing frames of the Sax Fifth Avenue storefront displays and squeezing their arms upward to get a brief video of the department store's light show. I don't say this to be cynical, but rather because that sense of my brain being stuffed into an inadequately sized Tupperware container hasn't gone away, it still lingers even as I turn in final assignments. Oftentimes we think of "conflagration" as destructive through its sheer power of clearing out, carving into objects, bodies, and spaces. But there's also an element of clotting, I think, the piling up of leftover ash and debris, the way smoke rises and presses itself into the highest corners of a room, the stuffing of text and images into your mind and memory, that odd warm throbbing of your eyes from looking at your screen for too long pressing up to the boundaries of your corneas, the anxious chewing of your cuticle until bleeding. For this week's letter, a four-alarm fire and its residual aftermath. //
TOUCH
Last week, I got the chance to see Carl Dreyer's 1928 film, The Passion of Joan of Arc, at Film Forum. Watching this movie was a religious experience unto itself, I found myself unable to look away (and when I slipped away to pee in the film's final act I felt immensely guilty). I recently spoke with a friend about the nuances of silent film, especially the acting of Jeanne Falconetti as Joan herself (a theatrical actress by trade, this was her second and final film role). Silent film is a type of filmmaking that is almost completely dependent on the actors' bodies to tell the emotional story. Over the course of a single scene, Falconetti's physicality crosses a forest of different emotions from wide-eyed divine rapture to searing emotional pain to a numb, firm expression (even as tears rolled down her face). According to this dear friend, the director carved holes into the floor to capture her face from these extreme, diagonal angles, heightening the emotional tension that permeates this nearly 2-hour long beauty. I could say so much more about the other actors, the sets, the cinematography, the music, but I'll leave it at this so you can go see it for yourself.
I recently read Cathy Park Hong's Dance Dance Revolution for my science fiction poetry class. This book is perhaps one of the strangest, and utterly original books I've read this year. If you've just read the above poem and are very confused, don't worry I'll explain. This book centers around this Las Vegas-style futuristic city called the Desert. We are introduced to the Guide, a doubly-displaced South Korean rebel involved in the 1980 Kwangju uprising and later an American refugee. The language the Guide uses, the very language which constructs Hong's poems, is a kind of complex futuristic patois of various English dialects. Focusing on the issues of migration, displacement, global capitalism, and political violence, Hong's language is not only fun to interact with as a reader but highlights the very socioeconomic issues plaguing our increasingly destabilized world. (PS: I have a bootleg PDF copy so if you want to read it but don't want to spend money on a book, just reply this letter and I can send it along)
Another intriguing in-class read was Christian Bok's Crystallography. A geologist by trade, Bok renders his love of crystal formations, gems, cave systems, and minerals through these unusual linguistic constructions informed by his knowledge of various scientific chemical processes. These crystalline poems form a visual feast across the page, one that is both transparent in its linguistic biology and deeply entangled in complex layers of mineralized history (like the translucent face of the diamond implying a false sense of fragility). I have found his work valuable when thinking about "materializing language", considering poetry not just as a literary medium of abstraction but as tangible language-objects existing on the page, subject to external erosion. As I made my way through this book, I was stuck with a sense of fleeting temporality, as though these precise crystalline bodies could be subjected to, at any moment, radical destabilization weathering away the smallest units of our language.
LOOK
Rachel Newling is an artist from Australia. She's got a hefty body of work, but her speciality is printmaking. I've recently been enjoying her linocuts, mostly centred around elements of the natural world including flowers and animals. My particular favourite piece is "Weightless" from her Landscape, Trees & Water series. I love the suspended form, the pristine blue spines of the water. If you're a fan of engravings or print-making, I'd recommend browsing through her work.
My friend recently sent me this wild PDF copy of Abercrombie & Fitch's Back-to-School catalog written by none other than Slavoj Zizek. Nothing screams "Finals season!" quite like a bright floral Beetle, softcore porn, and psychoanalytic philosophical ramblings. I could go on but I don't think I could do this bizarre magazine spread justice.
If anyone would like to Venmo me money for a plane ticket to Paris to go see the "Room of Endangered and Extinct Species" at the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution, I would not refuse the gesture. The museum was built in 1889 as a zoological museum comprised of all kinds of taxidermy creatures from around the world, however many of the original specimens were destroyed when it fell into disrepair in the mid 20th century. Since then, the Galerie has reopened and now focuses on biodiversity, evolution, and humanity's impact on the environment. Visitors have described this particular hall as a "haunting experience". The temperature is kept cooler in this room to keep the specimens (it goes without saying that they're virtually irreplaceable) and there's a clock custom-made for Marie Antoinette and later confiscated in the French Revolution in one corner of the room. This is a not-so-graceful segue into the work of environmental artist and biologist Brandon Ballengee. Many of his pieces grapple with humanity's capacity for destruction, ecological disruptions, and mass extinction. I've enjoyed his series, The Frameworks of Absence, which visibly dissects now-extinct animals from scientific illustrations, leaving a tangible void on the viewer's eye. I've been thinking about this museum space and these visual pieces in a kind of dialogue with each other over how we should cope with man-made extinction, the ways we will teach the history of and visually represent these lost creatures to future generations. I've been thinking a lot about mass extinction and taxidermy, the way in which we've developed a science for preserving and recuperating dead things. Is that artificial re-construction of an unrepeatable life sufficient proof of our ugly environmental histories? Or should we discard these works and confront the man-made void across ecosystems, to experience the physical void with our perceptive organs? These are questions that I still don't have the answers too, but, for now, it lingers at the root-corners of my mind. Check out more of Ballengee's work here (including the Great Auck above, which is also on display in Paris) and more images of the Extinct Species Hall here.
LISTEN
Given the apocalyptic visions of the wildfires raging in California at the moment, I thought I would revisit The Center for Investigative Reporting's podcast, Reveal, and their brilliant reporting on "America's ring of fire". The episode, originally aired in 2016 then updated back in June, looks at the history of wildfires in America, why they appear to be growing bigger, the costs of fighting them, and why they appear to be inflicting more damage across the country. Back in July, The New York Times published a story on incarcerated women in California who fight forest fires for as little as $1 an hour (a good supplement if you're going to give this episode a listen), underscoring the many governmental issues surrounding firefighting funding and prevention.
Sawbones. Surprisingly not the name of a crime thriller audio drama, and just so happens to the be podcast I finally got caught up on this week. If you get easily squeamish, this is not for you. Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin explore all kinds of medical oddities, strange diseases, and study the stupid ways humanity has tried to treat ailments across centuries. A great mix of biology and history, this podcast always has a way of disgusting me and making me laugh when I'm at work. A recent favorite of mine is their episode on Pica (an eating disorder in which a person eats nonnutritive substances like clay, ice, or flakes of dried paint—yum!)
Perhaps the most tender-sounding tune about love and BDSM is TV Girl's "Safeword". Not unlike a good spanking, this song exists within that sweet spot of biting lyrics and a soft, silky melody.
Academically-induced stress saw my return to Empress Of's 2015 album, Me . This album is one of the most uplifting pieces of pop I've consumed over the past 2 years. Equal parts motivating and stress-relieving, this album has gotten me through essays and allowed me to take a study break in order to dance around my room. Her melodies are bouncing, infectious, and her lyrics empowering ("When I'm lying next to you / I'm making love to myself"). If you're looking for some music to liven up your end-of-the-semester blues, I'd highly recommend checking her out.
LICK
When I'm feeling down, I can count on Kate Bush to cheer me up. Her music video for "Wuthering Heights" (the red dress version!) is truly iconic. I love Bush's fierce individuality, her creativity, and the way she's continued to stand out from other musicians. Hard to believe that Bush released this famous song when she was only 20. Something like a character of a Gothic romance, Bush dances her way across an open field. This look has been recreated by hundreds of people. If you haven't seen it or only seen the white dress version, go check it out.
I've been following Bailey (zah on Instagram) for a few months now. They do some of the most amazing makeup out of any of the beauty/makeup accounts I follow, truly transforming makeup into an artistic form. I'm always blown away by their creativity and their skillful style that edges on cartoon-like science fiction and surrealist horror. They also make music, and I'd go check them out if you're interested in avant-garde makeup and fashion.
1 second of every episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia". I'll just leave it at that.
CLICK
As a friendly reminder that we must continue to hold literary editors and magazine staff accountable for their racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic actions, I'll begin this section with a letter Rita Dove wrote to the editor of Poetry magazine in 2005. Dove not only critiques Garrison Keiller's poetry anthology of Good Poems (what does that even mean?) but the magazine's reviews and their failure to confront Keiller's noticeable lack of poets of color in this collection (best line: "What a waste of energy, emotion, enterprise! No wonder Ralph Ellison's invisible man gave up and went underground"). This letter demonstrates that, despite the wide range of voices and stories gaining visibility and recognition in the literary world, there is still work to be done on the editorial side in making the literary world more inclusive, elevating historically marginalized literary voices across all types of publishing, and changing our conception of American poetry beyond the endless praise of cis straight white male writers.
When scientists tried to tag bowhead whales with tracking devices in 2014, they found that these whales would dislodge the devices when they rubbed their bodies against rocks. Now, scientists have confirmed that bowhead whales are truly the masters of self-care because they exfoliate their bodies to remove molted skin. While this might seem obvious to us now, this bowhead whale behavior has been a source of mystery and speculation for hundreds of years. If you want to know more about whale exfoliation, check out this illuminating article from The New York Times here.
Last week, a photographer discovered an underwater pipe that was spewing blood off Vancouver Island (what a weird couple of weeks its been for science news). This is one of those articles that I saw, laughed at, then realized that this is not a parody. The video footage is so gruesome that it almost looks fake (unfortunately its very real). Apparently, this effluent pipe is connected to a salmon farm processing plant and scientists tested the blood only to discover that the viscera contains a type of intestinal worm usually only found in farmed salmon. The virus doesn't affect humans, but this diseased blood could pose a threat to the surrounding wild fish populations. Read more about this story here if you want to learn more about fish farming and ecological damage.
I'll close out this section with a poem, Ada Limon's "Overpass". Limon describes exploring the highway near her house as a child, finding all kinds of awfully beautiful trinkets and roadkill detritus. You can find this poem on The New Yorker with the added bonus of Limon herself reading her piece. // Before I end this letter, I wanted to let you know that for the next few weeks, I'm going to try to send out letters on Sunday but I'm finishing my classes now (with finals just around the corner) and I can't guarantee consistency. I just wanted to apologize ahead of time if you don't see anything from me over the next two weeks.
It's getting colder now. I'm thinking about the heat I generate within my own body or the absence when I miscalculate and choose the wrong coat in the morning), perpetual dualities, the scraps of things or ideas we collect and dress ourselves with. Especially for all of you about to begin the chaotic hellscape that is finals season, it's important to find a balance in the way we operate in the world, to think of ourselves (this is going to get corny, I'm sorry) not just as wildfires made of destructive, seemingly useless or failing in our combustible forces of body and mind but as the ash and soot left behind, the kind that seeps into the soil and brings new carpeting to what's been rendered barren. If you feel like you're hitting a wall or you don't know where you're going or doing with your self right now, this just means that you're on the edge of something important and you're just about to reach it.
Love and a comforting hand squeeze,
Ellie