016. Birthday Cake Flavored Reliquary
Hello friends,
My birthday has come and gone. Aquarius season is at the end of its days and with it comes the usual slurry of last-minute deadlines, mental and bodily chaos, and the mundane flavor of settling into daily routines. To liven up these dreary, waterlogged days, I present to you an (overdue) collection of 21 things in honor of my 21st transit around our immediate cosmos.
TOUCH
Last week, I was lucky enough to see Patti Smith read, chat, and perform at my school. She read excerpts from Just Kids and her newest book, Devotions. She talked about the time she spent living together with Robert Mapplethorpe, lip syncing to Fleet Foxes, her distaste of computers, and her pilgrimage to the middle of nowhere in England to visit Simone Veil's grave. When she began to sing acapella in her low, steady voice, we listened in raptured silence. Our attention was utterly captivated, as though we were in the presence of a saint. Afterwards, I was lucky enough to get my journal signed by her (I almost always forget to bring a book to sign when I go to readings so I've gotten in the habit of marking my journal instead) and shook her hand, the only gesture of gratitude I could think of to convey my admiration for her work. She's absolutely brilliant.
My darling friend Emma, who I met quite literally on the first day of college as we were both moving into our dorms, recently published her first collection of poetry through Lost Alphabet Press. Emma (formerly known as canker.sore before she deleted her account at the start of January) had been writing and sharing her poems, usually on the notes app on her phone, for quite some time. I'm so proud and excited to finally hold this book, Yellowing, in my hand. I've always loved her unflinching honesty, the beautiful threads of language she gracefully weaves through her narratives of mythos and longing. You can buy it here.
LOOK
Another artist whose work I've been thinking of with quite a sense of fondness is Paul Theck's Technological Reliquaries series. Theck's work is profoundly unsettling. When I think of science fiction artists, his name immediately springs to mind. Theck's literal pounds of flesh (thankfully not real) are presented to us behind glass like laboratory specimens, the materialization of controlled chaos. One of my personal favorites from this series is this untitled, fluorescently contaminated leg (pictured above). It's safe to say his work is not for the easily squeamish so proceed with curiosity and caution.
An artist whose work has engrossed me as of late is that of Edward Gorey. Gorey's gothic illustrations are wonderfully strange, oftentimes with a darkly humorous sensibility inked in. I'm honestly quite sad I didn't see more of his work growing up (he would frequently write and illustrate children's books over the course of his almost 50-year career). It's quite amazing to see how his style has influenced other horror/children's illustrators over the years (I'm looking at you, Tim Burton). Now Gorey's illustrations have become delightful companions of mine. A personal favorite of mine has been these recently discovered drawings Gorey did on the back of envelopes and on letters. You can find his work across the Internet or (my personal recommendation) your local library.
I've been thinking about Judy Chicago's Atmospheres lately. Chicago has described these performative pieces as "feminizing" the landscape and "softening it" through colored smoke. Considering that most land art at the time was quite destructive to its surrounding environment (not to mention dominated by hypermasculine ideals), Chicago's atmospheric paintings are like a delicate, ephemeral breath of freshness. To this day, Chicago continues to experiment with smoke and color in open spaces, although fireworks are now more of her specialty. The Artsy podcast recently ran an episode about Chicago's pioneering career and her establishment of the first feminist art program in America at Fresno State College in 1970. You can listen to it here. And see more of these gorgeous images from this series here.
The work of Kiki Smith was recently reintroduced to me when a friend visited the Met and mentioned her sculpture, Lilith. She's usually placed on the staircase, her eyes glaring back at you. Where she is about to strike or is caught remains unclear. I love the kind magic she imbues in both her sculptures and drawings. I love how she locates the female body as a dance between the animal and human, manufacturing her own mythologies through different material mediums. Her pieces have lingered in my mind like stories told in the dead of night. Please seek out her work and grasp at revelations. You can check out some of her (large) body of work here.
LISTEN
My darling friend Jade (Nightjars) recently released a single, "Natural History". Influenced by archaeology of all things ("half a language dying in the dirt"), this song is about tectonic longing, scraps of a love coming together. "Natural History" has been stuck in my head like the stain of fruit punch candy you can't quite get off your tongue. I'm so proud of them and you should go check out their entire discography. Sway to this darling tune here and subscribe to their wonderful newsletter here.
In my own writing practice, I really struggle with writing poems with a naturalistic, conversational tone, and I have a habit of envying poets who can successfully structure their pieces that way. Recently, I've started reading Gabby Journal, whose specialty is posting 'talky' poems. Their seventh issue recently came out full of lovely gems. But what I love the most about this journal is that they not only present the poems on the visual page, but include an audio recording of the poet reading their own work. It's been a lot of fun listening to these poems and being introduced to new writers. If you're looking for some sweet, sweet poetry to kiss your ears, check them out here.
And then there's Death, Sex, & Money from WNYC. This was not a podcast I had planned on listening to, yet once I got into it, its hard not to listen to each new episode as soon as it comes out. The premise of this show quite simple. It's about difficult choices, questions, uncomfortable experiences that we don't talk about in our day-to-day life. Episodes have included the life of a first responder in the midst of the opioid crisis, another about the high rate of suicide among veterinarians, discomforts about moving up and down America's class system, and surrogate motherhood. I feel like every time I listen to an episode, no matter how outside of my topical comfort zone it might be, there's always a lesson to learn, some insight to take away. You can (should) check it out here.
LICK
Over break, I finally got the chance to see I, Tonya. Ever since I was little, I was always enthralled by the figure skating competitions at the Olympics, going as far as to take lessons at the local ice rink (but don’t assume too much about my skill level, I appeared in one Christmas show and have since parted ways with my skates and velour costumes). Like most, I went into this film knowing a little bit about the whole Tonya/Nancy situation, but this movie does a great job of diving deep into the story, presenting the people behind the media headlines and the controversy. Everyone did such a fantastic job of bringing these characters to life (I say characters because most of the ridiculous interview footage interspersed throughout the film was lifted verbatim from interviews years after the incident). It's a wild, at times funny, film and I'd highly recommend if you're looking for something to snap you out of the lulls of everyday life.
One of my favorite Twitter accounts as of late has been Discarding Images. This account frequently posts odd illustrations from medieval manuscripts. These images are such an interesting look at the development of artistic styles, the ways in which artists attempted to manifest divine presence, human bodies, and all kinds of bizarre beasts and critters. This account always brightens up my day and feeds my silly love of medieval art like nothing else. You can check it out here.
I'm not sure how I came to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Instagram account for their Arms and Armor department, but I'm grateful now for its presence on my newsfeed. They do a great job of not only showcasing some of the beautiful visual details in these works but, in the caption, explain some of the history behind the arms themselves from the original patronage and ownership to information about the stylistic techniques depending on the work's function, where it was made, etc. Every once and a while, they'll also post photos of restoration and installation work (which is an art form in and of itself). For something that's pleasing to both the mind and eye, check out the account here.
I'm always interested in new ways of engaging with art through digital tools (if you couldn't tell already). One recommendation, courtesy of my Renaissance art professor, is the website, Closer to Van Eyck. This website allows you to get up close and personal with the Ghent Altarpiece from pretty much every angle imaginable (including x-radiography and reflectography to show all of the details underneath the painting's surface). I've found myself spending an ungodly amount of time clicking through this site on more than one occasion, and I encourage you to do the same. The sheer artistry down to the tiniest details is not something you should miss out on. You can check out the website here.
Lastly, I want to include Jabberwocky, a 1971 animated short film by Jan Svankmajer that my friend Emma sent to me. This film is one of the weirdest things I've watched in a long time. With a child-like narration of the Lewis Carroll poem acting as the voiceover, the film choppily cuts to different clips from towers to a stop-motion cabinet scurrying across a forest. There's something quite hallucinatory about this movie. The humanoid dolls and objects are almost nightmarish in their lifelike quality, as though child's play has gone horribly wrong. And yet its quite beautiful at the same time, lovely and dreamy as apples falling to the earth split open with worms inside. It's a film I can't quite make up my mind about, and perhaps that is why I've come to enjoy it as much as I do. You can watch the complete film here.
CLICK
To begin with a poem by Eleanor Ross Taylor, appropriately titled "To Future Eleanors". I've fallen in love with her gorgeous language, her tinkering with divinity as though some animal is crossing through the years to reach me. Reading this poem feels like chewing into softened gold. "Cut off from Scripture / find sense suspect / and worship / incoherence-- / distrust the laces / and adore the tangled thread?" You can read it here.
This past January, one of my favorite poets, Kaveh Akbar curated the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day newsletter. After I finally got around to subscribing, I began to wake up each morning with a fresh new poem to enjoy (periodically accompanied by commentary from the writers themselves). Since then, it's become part of my daily routine to read the poem and I'm hoping to see more of these collaborations between poets and the Academy of American Poets. Two particular favorites have been "Urning" by Layli Long Soldier and "The Corpse Flower" by Vanessa Angelica Villarreal. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.
A rather unexpected essay I'll include here is Karl Schoonover's piece, "Ectoplasms, Evanescence, and Photography" in Art Journal. In this piece, Schoonover looks at the phenomenon of spirit photography, specifically those of female mediums caught in the throes of spirit communication, vomiting or even lactating a mysterious gooey substance. Perhaps what is most fascinating is the very material nature of this otherworldly discharge from their agonized bodies, the ways in which the limits of the photographic medium were (controversially) pushed in attempts to record the supernatural from the camera's earliest origins in the 19th and 20th century. The camera became both a conduit for capturing phantoms and an extension of humanity's mechanical sight and imagination as it was incorporated into our mainstream. Honestly one of the most bizarre pieces of writing I've read in a long time, give it a look if you're interested in Victorian-style horror or, at the very least, cheesy ghost hunting shows on the Discovery Channel.
I'm usually not a big fan of short stories, but I got a kick out of reading Benjamin Nugent's "God", about a frat boy's obsession, a poem about a failed sexual encounter, and a girl nicknamed God. With amazing lines like: "I had seen his genitals, in the locker room after lacrosse, and they reminded me of a Volvo sedan in that they were unspectacular but shaped so as to imply solidity and soundness", it's hard to get sucked in. This story is a hyperrealistic study of a masculine culture I will never understand, but its absurd prose has definitely made my week. You can read part of the story here and listen to Jesse Eisenberg narrate the story on the Paris Review podcast here.
I recently reread Anne Sexton's "To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Triumph". I love returning to this poem from time to time because of the way in which she reworks the Icarus myth, her careful negotiation with the violent divine and her biting wit. Unfortunately, the best version I could find is one with a couple of typos in it but please give this poem a read and consider checking out more of her work if you aren't familiar with it (if you couldn't tell already, Anne Sexton is very near and dear to my heart). You can check it out here.
I always love engaging with poets who experiment with visual form to get at greater narratives in their work, manipulating the words on the page as tangible materials to draw in the emotional charge. One such poet has been CL Young. More specifically her poems in Gramma from Language Object. In these poems, language begins to corrode, deteriorate, the body and the mind lapsing their communication, a sense of alienation through what is unspoken. In certain poems, Young translates the machinations of her mind into something legible for the viewer (quite literally from keyboard smashing to readable words). Not only are her images striking, but her use of repetition punctuates the agony of poems like a sharpened knife. It is as though she is meditating on something with such intensity that it begins to melt in her hands. In one poem she writes, "One begins to read for pleasure at around the same time / The body begins to develop into a sexual being / A violation / Altering the interior". She's a fairly new poet to me, and I can't wait to see what else she has in store. You can read her selected poems here.
Lastly, a poem of utter radiance has been Franny Choi's "Perihelion: A History of Touch". As each poem is marked by a specific moon found in the Farmer's Almanac, Choi crafts these micro-worlds with exquisite vision. Delicious lines such as "I buried myself all over the garden, but the pieces only sprouted into new riddles: squid leg, spaghetti squash, a jerking thumb". Each 'moon' has a violent sensorial ecology, as though you are feeling something everywhere and all at once. The slashes of color, her animated sound, and her precise form has made this poem one of my favorites. You can read it here. // The past couple of weeks have been one of lethargy. As though getting older meant as though your cranial cavities were suddenly a stockpile for weighty iron. I read a story the other day about a new, mutant species of all-female crayfish who can reproduce through cloning. While a quick yay! for the crayfish, the self-sufficiency I've prided myself on possessing has felt like a burden. Not quite biting off more than I can chew, but rather that I know I can handle this workload, it just feels very tiring at this moment. Not to be cynical but perhaps that's all adulthood means, knowing you can do it but being tired out by your responsibilities nonetheless.
That being said, I've had to remind myself that I'm not alone (birthdays always have a way of stirring up those sentiments). Or that at least this load is not something I have to take on entirely by myself. It's important to share love and support with others around you, to raise up your friends when they are down and vice-versa. So share the birthday cake, or a bite of sandwich, or whatever objects you carry on your person. Let tender warmth fill up the spaces in between.
See you very soon,
Ellie