The Gargantuan Orange and Its Lessons
Where do you escape to when you feel stifled?
My mother would do her grocery shopping, after cleaning, at Albertsons. They were always open and always desolate but it had more to do with the time of night than that store’s particular popularity. I remember the waxy newspaper coupon pages that were left at the front of the shop. They always left your fingers dusted in ink as if it were compressed powder on the pages rather than dried liquid. They were an invitation with their slightly grayed out images of beef, soda cans and oranges that were larger than their images of washing liquid, as if they were the only store in the valley that had colossal fruit. Mutated exclusively for those that needed cashiers to tap on their registers the 4 number code that turned them affordable. First sign of wizardry. That’s when I realized, if you listened, those long tubular lights would speak to you with their faint hum. A whispering screech that amplified as you got closer to the dairy aisle. It was always undecipherable gibberish but something, nonetheless. There is meaning in everything.
I loved the kid sized shopping carts they had. Something that seems to exist only in my memory to the point I’m concerned of their existence altogether. A potential Mandala effect brewing in the amygdala. I remember my mom would let me trail around behind her with one as if I was doing the shopping for the both of us. Falling prey to playing adult. Occasionally I was bold enough to put things in the cart and hope they weren’t rejected by the time we reached the cashier. She’d try to transform the state of things like turning water into wine by convincing me Fig Newtons were candy bars or Flintstone gummy vitamins were a treat I had to be good for. I found that moving. The ability to change the importance of something by viewing it in a new light. Anything can become precious if given the opportunity to become so.
All these little run-down places became meccas in my memory. The Albertsons at 1 am or the taco truck on the corner of State Street, in the Sears parking lot, that was always open and always busy with it’s $1 tacos. Three de asada and three al pastor with a pineapple Jarritos to accompany it. We’d sit and eat it in the van and drive home with the smell of cilantro and lime on the surface of the leather. These spaces never seem to outlast memory. Albertsons closed years later and was replaced by a Walmart that did the same thing but with uniforms a brighter shade of blue and the Sears, with its subsequent parking lot, was torn down and remains in rubble waiting for a developer to come swoop it off its state of destitution.
These places remain with vibrancy in the back of my mind where I’ll go sightseeing in the middle of a zoom call or on an especially busy Overground ride. I’ll close my eyelids and allow my shoulders to shift their position from alert to relaxed as if sinking further within myself. Sometimes it takes these precious spaces, the kinds you pop back to with a short dive into the recesses of memory, to allow yourself peace. The intersection of memory and expression seems to be the only place we are allowed to stretch to the limits of ourselves. A rebellious act in direct opposition to the thin boundary that constitutes social acceptability. The Id overtakes the well educated Ego.
Being is often a messy endeavor. Unintentionally I can hurt you or others around me in the process of understanding myself. I can make an attempt not to by first divulging these fraying edges within myself. In the confines of my safe spaces, the hallways of mind and memory, there is no room left for accidental manipulation. No room for misunderstanding. Those memories or impermanent time-places find the knots within us and ease them out with hopeful and gentle direction. The discovery of peace and, in turn, of oneself is often found in the nuances of these memories. They’re silent and easily missed in the flurried rush of daytime. Life amounting to nothing more than a set of instructions and its convoluted steps. Slow all the way down. Visualize clearly these moments, moments that give way to movement and in that movement you can enact your great escape.
Where do you escape to when you feel stifled?
My mother would do her grocery shopping, after cleaning, at Albertsons. They were always open and always desolate but it had more to do with the time of night than that store’s particular popularity. I remember the waxy newspaper coupon pages that were left at the front of the shop. They always left your fingers dusted in ink as if it were compressed powder on the pages rather than dried liquid. They were an invitation with their slightly grayed out images of beef, soda cans and oranges that were larger than their images of washing liquid, as if they were the only store in the valley that had colossal fruit. Mutated exclusively for those that needed cashiers to tap on their registers the 4 number code that turned them affordable. First sign of wizardry. That’s when I realized, if you listened, those long tubular lights would speak to you with their faint hum. A whispering screech that amplified as you got closer to the dairy aisle. It was always undecipherable gibberish but something, nonetheless. There is meaning in everything.
I loved the kid sized shopping carts they had. Something that seems to exist only in my memory to the point I’m concerned of their existence altogether. A potential Mandala effect brewing in the amygdala. I remember my mom would let me trail around behind her with one as if I was doing the shopping for the both of us. Falling prey to playing adult. Occasionally I was bold enough to put things in the cart and hope they weren’t rejected by the time we reached the cashier. She’d try to transform the state of things like turning water into wine by convincing me Fig Newtons were candy bars or Flintstone gummy vitamins were a treat I had to be good for. I found that moving. The ability to change the importance of something by viewing it in a new light. Anything can become precious if given the opportunity to become so.
All these little run-down places became meccas in my memory. The Albertsons at 1 am or the taco truck on the corner of State Street, in the Sears parking lot, that was always open and always busy with it’s $1 tacos. Three de asada and three al pastor with a pineapple Jarritos to accompany it. We’d sit and eat it in the van and drive home with the smell of cilantro and lime on the surface of the leather. These spaces never seem to outlast memory. Albertsons closed years later and was replaced by a Walmart that did the same thing but with uniforms a brighter shade of blue and the Sears, with its subsequent parking lot, was torn down and remains in rubble waiting for a developer to come swoop it off its state of destitution.
These places remain with vibrancy in the back of my mind where I’ll go sightseeing in the middle of a zoom call or on an especially busy Overground ride. I’ll close my eyelids and allow my shoulders to shift their position from alert to relaxed as if sinking further within myself. Sometimes it takes these precious spaces, the kinds you pop back to with a short dive into the recesses of memory, to allow yourself peace. The intersection of memory and expression seems to be the only place we are allowed to stretch to the limits of ourselves. A rebellious act in direct opposition to the thin boundary that constitutes social acceptability. The Id overtakes the well educated Ego.
Being is often a messy endeavor. Unintentionally I can hurt you or others around me in the process of understanding myself. I can make an attempt not to by first divulging these fraying edges within myself. In the confines of my safe spaces, the hallways of mind and memory, there is no room left for accidental manipulation. No room for misunderstanding. Those memories or impermanent time-places find the knots within us and ease them out with hopeful and gentle direction. The discovery of peace and, in turn, of oneself is often found in the nuances of these memories. They’re silent and easily missed in the flurried rush of daytime. Life amounting to nothing more than a set of instructions and its convoluted steps. Slow all the way down. Visualize clearly these moments, moments that give way to movement and in that movement you can enact your great escape.
Being Dead’s ‘EELS’ Pulls Up and Takes You 6ft Under
Being Dead’s newest album ‘EELS’ is a Vimeo-age trackshot, engrossed in the secret lives of characters the band create.
This collection from the seemingly unclassifiable trio Being Dead, known individually as Falcon Bitch, Gumball and Ricky Moto is set to release September 27th on Bayonet Records. Serving us up a severe case of sarcasm, ‘EELS’ pulls the listener in with their playful storytelling. With each dip of the toe into a new tempo, tradition or makeshift fever dream, Being Dead reclassify narrative.
In ‘Van Goes’ the band play an interesting sample from an internet video, surely extracted from deep in the recesses of our host brain: youtube.dot.com. “I’m not gonna be traumatised cos you wanna be dumb!” the voice says. Before the listener gets too settled into the world they’ve introduced, Being Dead switch the environment with an interlude reminiscent of the B52’s. From there the album descends into the kind of madness that can only be brought on by middle-American boredom.
“I’ve got no more time to waste”, they exclaim later in the song, the underlying implication being why not have a bit of fun? ‘EELS’ asks us to get off our dreaded doom scroll and imagine. Hawaiian shirts and Lana Del Rey printed tees pull up to the BBQ in the romantic interlude of ‘Blanket of my Bone’, which mystifies melody into fragments culled from some of Indie’s greatest subgenres and their related internet-cultures.
The band reaffirm their internet obsession, and my own for that matter, with the brilliantly placed shock-noise of any and ALL reality TV shows in their song, ‘Rock n’ Roll Hurts’. Being Dead act like a sonic Vimeo of the mind, delivering character profiles and coordinates within each song and across the entirety of ‘EELS’.
In standout track, ‘Problems’, a baroque organ peeks from behind a waterfall of synths, simulating distance and disassociation. This serves to accentuate their lyrics, which summon the listener’s overwhelming urge for escapism. The fantasy collides with our own reality. A flute closes that thought out like hitting x on the fiftieth tab, only for another to take its place.
‘Dragons II’ lulls our cursors back into frame with a sincere tune that melts into the gentle pastures of their next song, and one of my favourites, ‘Nightvision’. Featuring a tender vocal, Being Dead localize ‘EELS’, making a nod to their home-state, Texas, and its proximity to the border in the beat break punctuating on ‘Nightvision’, reminiscent of rancheras’ own trumpet stutter. ‘Goodnight’ drags the listener under, ‘Ballerina’ uplifts, the listener oscillates through the scaffolding of stories, recollection induced by slow guitar, dragging drumbeats and witty lyricism.
This album is mystical. It is tethered to the reality of the listeners’ present while remaining rooted in the secret lives of the characters that the band create. Being Dead summon spirits, go on kids, visit the deceased.
Being Dead’s newest album ‘EELS’ is a Vimeo-age trackshot, engrossed in the secret lives of characters the band create.
This collection from the seemingly unclassifiable trio Being Dead, known individually as Falcon Bitch, Gumball and Ricky Moto is set to release September 27th on Bayonet Records. Serving us up a severe case of sarcasm, ‘EELS’ pulls the listener in with their playful storytelling. With each dip of the toe into a new tempo, tradition or makeshift fever dream, Being Dead reclassify narrative.
In ‘Van Goes’ the band play an interesting sample from an internet video, surely extracted from deep in the recesses of our host brain: youtube.dot.com. “I’m not gonna be traumatised cos you wanna be dumb!” the voice says. Before the listener gets too settled into the world they’ve introduced, Being Dead switch the environment with an interlude reminiscent of the B52’s. From there the album descends into the kind of madness that can only be brought on by middle-American boredom.
“I’ve got no more time to waste”, they exclaim later in the song, the underlying implication being why not have a bit of fun? ‘EELS’ asks us to get off our dreaded doom scroll and imagine. Hawaiian shirts and Lana Del Rey printed tees pull up to the BBQ in the romantic interlude of ‘Blanket of my Bone’, which mystifies melody into fragments culled from some of Indie’s greatest subgenres and their related internet-cultures.
The band reaffirm their internet obsession, and my own for that matter, with the brilliantly placed shock-noise of any and ALL reality TV shows in their song, ‘Rock n’ Roll Hurts’. Being Dead act like a sonic Vimeo of the mind, delivering character profiles and coordinates within each song and across the entirety of ‘EELS’.
In standout track, ‘Problems’, a baroque organ peeks from behind a waterfall of synths, simulating distance and disassociation. This serves to accentuate their lyrics, which summon the listener’s overwhelming urge for escapism. The fantasy collides with our own reality. A flute closes that thought out like hitting x on the fiftieth tab, only for another to take its place.
‘Dragons II’ lulls our cursors back into frame with a sincere tune that melts into the gentle pastures of their next song, and one of my favourites, ‘Nightvision’. Featuring a tender vocal, Being Dead localize ‘EELS’, making a nod to their home-state, Texas, and its proximity to the border in the beat break punctuating on ‘Nightvision’, reminiscent of rancheras’ own trumpet stutter. ‘Goodnight’ drags the listener under, ‘Ballerina’ uplifts, the listener oscillates through the scaffolding of stories, recollection induced by slow guitar, dragging drumbeats and witty lyricism.
This album is mystical. It is tethered to the reality of the listeners’ present while remaining rooted in the secret lives of the characters that the band create. Being Dead summon spirits, go on kids, visit the deceased.
The Worms In My Belly Are Talking Again
Today a dormant awareness has been triggered. I remember first attempts at reading The Medium is The Message by Marshall McLuhan in the basement breakroom of a Wells Fargo in central Salt Lake City. My boyfriend at the time worked there and I was visiting him. I got him the job a few months back, as I was sick and tired of seeing his lack of ambition. The circulation of shitty fast-food jobs and one-off construction gigs bored me half-way to death. Having worked there myself for about a year, I applied on his behalf, coached him through an interview and he got it. Thinking back, I shake my metaphorical head at the shit we do for the men we’re blinded by. Love is the greatest belladonna.
At the time in late 2015, Wells Fargo was pushing unethical quotas on the sale of supplementary products; credit cards, loans, savings accounts, CDs etc. We were forced to cross-sell 8 products a day to people who did not need them for the sole benefit of stakeholders. Given that I was the only Spanish speaker in my branch, I was to do this to my own community. My stomach was a perpetual pit. The location I worked at was on the edge of town, near the airport. I saw truckers with tired eyes coming and going off the freeway exists, wanderlust folk exchanging dollars for the currency of their future, and small business owners struggling with the baren terrain and infertile customer pool. My own feelings on the ideas surrounding money, greed and the delirium it engenders caused a rift between what I spent my time doing and what I saw as purpose. I found myself in a slump, a wave of depression hit me every time I sat with someone at my desk. Fingerprints sticking to the keys, if I typed for too long, I’d feel my prints sear off from contact. I would see people from my community come with questions about missing chunks -- large fees that were taken out of their bank accounts, decimating their already low salaries. I was repeatedly told to resolve it with credit card offers. It felt like prescribing Percocet for a minor bruise. Wells Fargo aimed to turn these ‘small’ fees into a continual stream of income for their business. They could care less about charging someone thirty-six dollars on an overdraft fee for a fifty-cent overage. I felt consumed by an illness of the soul.
I found the book at the used bookstore on Main Street, the one that no longer exists, during one of my regular visits. I went to see my boyfriend for lunch. It must have been a Saturday, I was annoyed that despite not working that day, I found myself in the hellhole that was plaguing my mind and body. I remember struggling with the book, at first, unable to fully decipher sentences that were unrecognizable to me. The concept of parochialism and deception confusing my young brain, still detaching itself from the cultish rhetoric of Mormonism. Something imperceptible persisted underneath despite the confusion.
Today, reading Victor Burgin’s book Returning to Benjamin, about philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin, in my apartment in London, I come across a reference to The Medium is The Message. Mentioning it under the contexts of hyper-capitalism which is so intertwined with our own use of technology. Technology that didn’t exist when McLuhan wrote the text and wasn’t as prevalent when I contended with its contents in the basement of a Wells Fargo. Three weeks later, after the above today, which is no longer my now, I finally started to re-read my copy of The Medium is The Message. My mind finally able to connect the threads between its sentences, acclimated to the concepts contained within its pages. I quit my job at Wells Fargo later that summer, the summer of the book. For some strange reason, unknowable even to myself, I took this copy with me across the US and overseas. It sat in my apartment in central Tucson, collected dust in the warehouse on Skid Row, journeyed cross-country with me to Washington Heights and now, despite nearly a decade, it sits on my overfilling shelves in Mile End. I suppose some epiphanies are reserved for the future their importance recognizable in the moment only in the form of a split-second flash of intuition.
Today a dormant awareness has been triggered. I remember first attempts at reading The Medium is The Message by Marshall McLuhan in the basement breakroom of a Wells Fargo in central Salt Lake City. My boyfriend at the time worked there and I was visiting him. I got him the job a few months back, as I was sick and tired of seeing his lack of ambition. The circulation of shitty fast-food jobs and one-off construction gigs bored me half-way to death. Having worked there myself for about a year, I applied on his behalf, coached him through an interview and he got it. Thinking back, I shake my metaphorical head at the shit we do for the men we’re blinded by. Love is the greatest belladonna.
At the time in late 2015, Wells Fargo was pushing unethical quotas on the sale of supplementary products; credit cards, loans, savings accounts, CDs etc. We were forced to cross-sell 8 products a day to people who did not need them for the sole benefit of stakeholders. Given that I was the only Spanish speaker in my branch, I was to do this to my own community. My stomach was a perpetual pit. The location I worked at was on the edge of town, near the airport. I saw truckers with tired eyes coming and going off the freeway exists, wanderlust folk exchanging dollars for the currency of their future, and small business owners struggling with the baren terrain and infertile customer pool. My own feelings on the ideas surrounding money, greed and the delirium it engenders caused a rift between what I spent my time doing and what I saw as purpose. I found myself in a slump, a wave of depression hit me every time I sat with someone at my desk. Fingerprints sticking to the keys, if I typed for too long, I’d feel my prints sear off from contact. I would see people from my community come with questions about missing chunks -- large fees that were taken out of their bank accounts, decimating their already low salaries. I was repeatedly told to resolve it with credit card offers. It felt like prescribing Percocet for a minor bruise. Wells Fargo aimed to turn these ‘small’ fees into a continual stream of income for their business. They could care less about charging someone thirty-six dollars on an overdraft fee for a fifty-cent overage. I felt consumed by an illness of the soul.
I found the book at the used bookstore on Main Street, the one that no longer exists, during one of my regular visits. I went to see my boyfriend for lunch. It must have been a Saturday, I was annoyed that despite not working that day, I found myself in the hellhole that was plaguing my mind and body. I remember struggling with the book, at first, unable to fully decipher sentences that were unrecognizable to me. The concept of parochialism and deception confusing my young brain, still detaching itself from the cultish rhetoric of Mormonism. Something imperceptible persisted underneath despite the confusion.
Today, reading Victor Burgin’s book Returning to Benjamin, about philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin, in my apartment in London, I come across a reference to The Medium is The Message. Mentioning it under the contexts of hyper-capitalism which is so intertwined with our own use of technology. Technology that didn’t exist when McLuhan wrote the text and wasn’t as prevalent when I contended with its contents in the basement of a Wells Fargo. Three weeks later, after the above today, which is no longer my now, I finally started to re-read my copy of The Medium is The Message. My mind finally able to connect the threads between its sentences, acclimated to the concepts contained within its pages. I quit my job at Wells Fargo later that summer, the summer of the book. For some strange reason, unknowable even to myself, I took this copy with me across the US and overseas. It sat in my apartment in central Tucson, collected dust in the warehouse on Skid Row, journeyed cross-country with me to Washington Heights and now, despite nearly a decade, it sits on my overfilling shelves in Mile End. I suppose some epiphanies are reserved for the future their importance recognizable in the moment only in the form of a split-second flash of intuition.
The Worms Podcast: Worms Reader with Elida Silvey, Kita Ward and CA Conrad
I feel incredibly honored to have shared my insides with Worms Magazine alongside some of my favorite artists, Kita Ward and the incredible CA Conrad.
I often worry that by writing memoire people will believe that I’m self important. I ache to witness the interiority of others, only able to catch glances in their body language and in the hollow of their words. I write in “I” precisely because I am no one. I’m just like the mailman working his shift in the hot sunshine, the elderly woman flipping pepperoni off her palms at the pizzeria, the teenage boy confused by the linguistics of arithmetics. The only interior I have is my own. So I share it, painfully so, like I’ve done with Summer Moraess here, as a way to remind people that those of us who are completely unremarkable matter just the same.
Listen to the episode here.
THE HYSTERICAL
GEARSWITCH
At which point does text stop belonging to those that made it? What constitutes a copy? A reproduction, or a new body of work? Should we be frightened by the prospect of repetition, reflection, refraction? Can an artist borrow, or is it always stealing? Should it matter?
To close out our sessions at the Fieldnotes Evening School earlier this year, our cohort created a publication that tackles these ideas. By cutting, collaging, mixing and exploring the tangibility of (mis)translations we created a publication that belongs to no one and everyone. We urge you to destroy, to replicate, to explore, to touch and breed your own work from the remnants.
Read the publication here.
At which point does text stop belonging to those that made it? What constitutes a copy? A reproduction, or a new body of work? Should we be frightened by the prospect of repetition, reflection, refraction? Can an artist borrow, or is it always stealing? Should it matter?
To close out our sessions at the Fieldnotes Evening School earlier this year, our cohort created a publication that tackles these ideas. By cutting, collaging, mixing and exploring the tangibility of (mis)translations we created a publication that belongs to no one and everyone. We urge you to destroy, to replicate, to explore, to touch and breed your own work from the remnants.
Read the publication here.
Published as part of Fieldnotes Evening School
01. 2024
01. 2024
Imagined Self
Making a decision on self is unprompted. There are some things that you know with your mind and some things you know with your over mind. It starts as a tingle, creeping into the body from the connective tissues down at the atomic level moving outward, to the endlessness that lives as particles long after you leave this place. A state of being. As if for once my body was able to sense the air around it vibrating in the early morning sunshine, a truth resurfaces amongst the fiction. Find your horse hair brushes to excavate. It rained the night before, a man in a house facing the park watches intently the droplets coming on across a field. A woman’s hand, or the idea of her hand closes in, like binocular-eyed spy men In brass suits, in their rooms on skyscrapers which is really only a figment to represent kingdoms with walls held close to the centre back when lance-ing someone was a common epitaph. There in their obsidian spaces with contact sheets full of one option of the truth, or another — they’ll lear and loom. Circle the potential for destruction with a felt tip pen. When did they begin to call them markers?
The girl watches her tv which is to say a computer because her family screen sits in front of a couch, far too exposed and exposing. She’d play the Oregon trail giving pixelated ‘pardner’ to people that were nothing more, nothing less than a reconstruction of a reconstruction. Passed down to bargain shelves in Todo a Dollar that really sold items for 7 dollares, more or less — the dollar having lost its particular sheen by then. A woman washes the green of grass stains out of her trousers. A man calls his manhood to attention, on camera, on the big screen, in Times Square. A pale blue glistens. You zoom in with your phone camera to the top left window of a building with embossed letters. An arch creates intuition, creates the opportunity for possibility. A question bubbles like the water in a kettle, steam bouncing off the surface of the lid to create an aching pop. You crack your back by twisting against the seat, one way and then the next. Life is turned into railroad tracks that choo and chug between the Alamo of selfhood and the white picket fence of expectation. You aren’t quite sure which one of the two best suits.
The fisherman shove their fists into ice buckets, in search of something, a dash of mist sprinkles. Salt, or the crushed bleach equivalent you buy on offer in Lidl. The ideas dawn on you, slowly at first like a tickle in the spine after watching round after round of asmr videos in your bedroom to de-stress. Try to sleep it off, the comments suggest. Then quick like a lightning bolt striking the top of your frazzled head, hair up on its ends and aha! there it is — an idea becomes something tangible. A tornado in Moore, Oklahoma tears through the available plots. There in that moment thin air becomes oh so painfully real. By now the subjectivity of the sentence alarms you. You are swooning to the context of beginning, middle and end. You are swooning at verb and adjective and sometimes, with a little bit of help, at the all present Noun. All packaged there in an instant in the hallways of your brain, they react and collide. Two particles smashed against one another at great speed creates an atomic bomb. Everything inside you explodes and is invariably different than before. You imagine tracing their route backward, a form of ancestry, but get lost in all the imagery.
Everything in your mind is remembered in disjointed sound and moving photos—stop motion clicking into vibrating sequences. You acclimate to their torrential downpour and attempt to form a tether in text. Isn’t that just…? Isn’t that just a poem? The rules alight from their judge box, powdered wigs intact, thick mahogany gavel in hand, rosy cheeks a mere circle of tradition and expectation — ensnaring the sentence. Admonishing it for wriggling so far away from their grasp. You pull it back, like a scarf to your neck. Ashley Tisdale used to wear sparkly ones and you’d beg your mom to get you one but you’d end up making it up in your mind when all there was, was Walmart fleece. This scarf is all yours, unbranded. Wear it proudly on the tip of your tongue. The desert’s playful negative space welcomes you in. You burn the picket fence as kindling.
Making a decision on self is unprompted. There are some things that you know with your mind and some things you know with your over mind. It starts as a tingle, creeping into the body from the connective tissues down at the atomic level moving outward, to the endlessness that lives as particles long after you leave this place. A state of being. As if for once my body was able to sense the air around it vibrating in the early morning sunshine, a truth resurfaces amongst the fiction. Find your horse hair brushes to excavate. It rained the night before, a man in a house facing the park watches intently the droplets coming on across a field. A woman’s hand, or the idea of her hand closes in, like binocular-eyed spy men In brass suits, in their rooms on skyscrapers which is really only a figment to represent kingdoms with walls held close to the centre back when lance-ing someone was a common epitaph. There in their obsidian spaces with contact sheets full of one option of the truth, or another — they’ll lear and loom. Circle the potential for destruction with a felt tip pen. When did they begin to call them markers?
The girl watches her tv which is to say a computer because her family screen sits in front of a couch, far too exposed and exposing. She’d play the Oregon trail giving pixelated ‘pardner’ to people that were nothing more, nothing less than a reconstruction of a reconstruction. Passed down to bargain shelves in Todo a Dollar that really sold items for 7 dollares, more or less — the dollar having lost its particular sheen by then. A woman washes the green of grass stains out of her trousers. A man calls his manhood to attention, on camera, on the big screen, in Times Square. A pale blue glistens. You zoom in with your phone camera to the top left window of a building with embossed letters. An arch creates intuition, creates the opportunity for possibility. A question bubbles like the water in a kettle, steam bouncing off the surface of the lid to create an aching pop. You crack your back by twisting against the seat, one way and then the next. Life is turned into railroad tracks that choo and chug between the Alamo of selfhood and the white picket fence of expectation. You aren’t quite sure which one of the two best suits.
The fisherman shove their fists into ice buckets, in search of something, a dash of mist sprinkles. Salt, or the crushed bleach equivalent you buy on offer in Lidl. The ideas dawn on you, slowly at first like a tickle in the spine after watching round after round of asmr videos in your bedroom to de-stress. Try to sleep it off, the comments suggest. Then quick like a lightning bolt striking the top of your frazzled head, hair up on its ends and aha! there it is — an idea becomes something tangible. A tornado in Moore, Oklahoma tears through the available plots. There in that moment thin air becomes oh so painfully real. By now the subjectivity of the sentence alarms you. You are swooning to the context of beginning, middle and end. You are swooning at verb and adjective and sometimes, with a little bit of help, at the all present Noun. All packaged there in an instant in the hallways of your brain, they react and collide. Two particles smashed against one another at great speed creates an atomic bomb. Everything inside you explodes and is invariably different than before. You imagine tracing their route backward, a form of ancestry, but get lost in all the imagery.
Everything in your mind is remembered in disjointed sound and moving photos—stop motion clicking into vibrating sequences. You acclimate to their torrential downpour and attempt to form a tether in text. Isn’t that just…? Isn’t that just a poem? The rules alight from their judge box, powdered wigs intact, thick mahogany gavel in hand, rosy cheeks a mere circle of tradition and expectation — ensnaring the sentence. Admonishing it for wriggling so far away from their grasp. You pull it back, like a scarf to your neck. Ashley Tisdale used to wear sparkly ones and you’d beg your mom to get you one but you’d end up making it up in your mind when all there was, was Walmart fleece. This scarf is all yours, unbranded. Wear it proudly on the tip of your tongue. The desert’s playful negative space welcomes you in. You burn the picket fence as kindling.
Join me August 9th, 6pm at Staffordshire St for Exteriors — a regular event where text, image and sounds collide. Part open mic, part visual showcase we encourage the weird, the off-beat, the experimental and those in between to share parts of themselves. We aim to platform poetry, photography, visual art and performance art that sits at the fringes.
We’ll have amazing photography from @m_e_d_b_, @millycope, @nicksilvey and paintings by @jackhilton_art. The open mic will be first come, first serve so come early if you want a spot.
We pass hundred of people on the streets of London only catching glimpses of interiority. This is a space to delve deeper into those strangers minds until they feel less exterior.
Inspired by Lou Stoppard‘s book Exteriors published by Mack. Exteriors features writing from Annie Ernaux’s book, of the same name, alongside photography from some of the best photographers of the 21st century. My aim with this night is to build on my passion as poet and photographer to showcase the work of a range of artists on a regular basis and give people the chance to read within a gallery space.
I’ll also be running a memory based, zine workshop at Staffordshire St on the same day at 3pm.
Tickets for Memory Zine Workshop
General Admission £10
Concession £5
Tickets for Exteriors
Pay What You Can
Suggested Donation £3
Canine tooth
a mess of limbs
the act of moving for joy
or in spite of fear.
Collision.
Consuming Space
Come
verb (English);
to move or travel towards, or into a place thought of as near or familiar to the speaker; to occur; happen; take place; to orgasm.
Come
verb (Spanish); derived from comer
to eat; put (food) into the mouth and chew and swallow it; to absorb; ingest; consume. Can be used as an intransitive verb, which is to say an action that does not affect a person or object apart from the subject itself.
***
The parting comes in blinking sets, arriving at the point in which is and isn’t, now; before a moment becomes the past and right after it is no longer the future. It comes to consume, comer - en espanol - to ingest, to swallow whole and compartmentalize into parts with mastication. The slow gulp of present is taken in. The move towards or into a place, coming and going; it occurs, it happens, it suspects no other thing than that which is happening. This is happening, now, today so help me god. Come me, consume me, I ask in mother tongue angled slightly to avoid confusion. Your lack of bilingualism creates a barrier that the body fixes meticulously – an eyebrow raises pointed. Consume space itself by inching forward – come towards me. Now? Now I say with eyelids lidded, half-way between the now and the tension of a possible future bubbling fervent between my legs. Two split sides join in a kiss, which is to say the arrival of two points into a singular vertex, vibrating with want it creates perspective space. The devouring of two subjects into one single action, a ravaging tongue maps this expanse in response - nouns becoming a singular verb. The coming arrives suddenly, comiendonos con alivio parcial - a partial relief imprinting time with an after so active it beads down your forehead onto my own.
Come
verb (English);
to move or travel towards, or into a place thought of as near or familiar to the speaker; to occur; happen; take place; to orgasm.
Come
verb (Spanish); derived from comer
to eat; put (food) into the mouth and chew and swallow it; to absorb; ingest; consume. Can be used as an intransitive verb, which is to say an action that does not affect a person or object apart from the subject itself.
***
The parting comes in blinking sets, arriving at the point in which is and isn’t, now; before a moment becomes the past and right after it is no longer the future. It comes to consume, comer - en espanol - to ingest, to swallow whole and compartmentalize into parts with mastication. The slow gulp of present is taken in. The move towards or into a place, coming and going; it occurs, it happens, it suspects no other thing than that which is happening. This is happening, now, today so help me god. Come me, consume me, I ask in mother tongue angled slightly to avoid confusion. Your lack of bilingualism creates a barrier that the body fixes meticulously – an eyebrow raises pointed. Consume space itself by inching forward – come towards me. Now? Now I say with eyelids lidded, half-way between the now and the tension of a possible future bubbling fervent between my legs. Two split sides join in a kiss, which is to say the arrival of two points into a singular vertex, vibrating with want it creates perspective space. The devouring of two subjects into one single action, a ravaging tongue maps this expanse in response - nouns becoming a singular verb. The coming arrives suddenly, comiendonos con alivio parcial - a partial relief imprinting time with an after so active it beads down your forehead onto my own.
Written during Fieldnote’s Evening School
02. 2024
02. 2024
All the things pigeon is
not.
Pigeon isnot
pretty,not
really. Pigeon isnot
the life of the party, she hides behind trash bins and makes her home in rafters about Bethnal Green’s bridges. Pigeon isnot
fickle, she clambers about the same route long since abandoned by public consciousness. Pigeon doesnot
hold a grudge even if her tissues bare reminders. Pigeon isnot
dove even if she plays her in movies. Pigeon isn’t paid much for her troubles, rather spat at and scurried along. Pigeon isnot
lonely, with her gaggle of girlfriends and the wrinkled welsh man that brings her breadcrumbs by the church bell. Pigeon isnot
just a bird.Misshapen Object of Real
There is a big hairy pimple on a man’s face
he stares into the mirror with a fish
eye kinda sight, peering closely, so
close
to the big bugger of a face that made
him, makes him hate.
The Egyptian cotton towel
around his waist, tight
around a complacent groin, swings
alongside his anxious weight, the swooning
of a bathtub full of circles, cut off
from completion
little bits of sock fluff balled up and
drenched, swimming
hopelessly in the vast expanse of porcelain
sea --
-- steam rises up into
the soggy, sodden tiles into
a cracked window, mould growing
speckled on the corners like the crumbs left
over a croissant kiss.
A kid
but not really a kid, just a hopeful
little no body like me
rides his bike
outside the street passing different shades
of yellow lamps or
lights or those things that you put
on ceilings but you bought them
in Ikea so they’re not really chandeliers
are they, that.
He smokes a spliff by the crum
-pled little tree whose
stump’s seen better days, sat
hollowing out above the flicker of a flame
listening to the songs of passing people he
kinda knows but not really
a woman yells an uncomfortable word into her
phone, shrill
and shriek and too soon for comfort
tries to convince them to hold her
close like an amulet, like a trinket
no one can see her regret it
the moment it stumbles
out of her
I do I guess
tries to frame it under the guise of a cool
type of cool girl that doesn’t exist
couldn’t exist but she tries anyways and laughs behind her expensive
perm.
Bubble gum stretches with a mushed up baby
face, if you stare
real close, holding secrets once lining
canines, a
dogtooth that wasn’t really
there. Stuck onto the bottom of my shoe
I scrape it and wave
my arm towards big red rectangle that blinks
a few times
confused before it stops and
lets us on board
I smash my sides going
all the way up to top deck because, still
to this day, there’s a level of kitsch to it.
Stare onto
tv screen that isn’t
a tv but a window, but a mirror the little
of light that bangs pictures into your
brain with an itty
bitty hammer like a
Flintstones day on the job
the people around me all stare wide
open too like the little bubble gum figure I
sacrificed on my way
they try to string a sentence together
made up of moments or memories or what
would be memories if these moments actually
happened
but they could have
and that’s really all there is to it
isn’t there.
Written during The Poetry School Spring Sessions 2024
eight-course
1,2,3,4,5,6 7,8
1
blades of grass made man
made material
excitement wave with three-click kick
a tongue-licks long-face
a patchwork ball rolls chivalrous
2
arachnid
rubious lip
take the edges
with the tips, by the playful bite of
almost, not quite
strawberry
3
if you could bake it, it
wouldn’t smell as sweet
4
wide-open bloom
is mellow yellow, woven
carefully on wood-loom trough
the thought truncates
in sunlight’s battered eyelash
5
stuck onto
devastation of
chalk-chipped porcelain alter
bathroom sink
error receptacle
6
the errant mind wanders
lonesome
bursting cortisol beetles
in search of gold scaramouch
til morning hollar brings
some rhythm
back into it
7
peephole dawn
goddamn
the big bright open
is a fifty foot fall
no one can make it
land joyous
8
You try anyways
because life is dot, is line is
moronic morse code
message
for
one.
Skydaddy brings the orchestra along for the ride in newest EP ‘Pilot’.
“Skydaddy, moniker of Rachid Fakhre, is a departure from his previous outfit Spang Sisters following what he recalls as “a heavy case of ego death and creative disillusionment” during Green Man 2022. As such ‘Pilot,’ and Skydaddy as a whole, provide the perfect recipe for his rebirth. This is both metaphorically represented in the chambers and pockets of sound, built through live instruments with their womb-like entombment and literally, in the reworking of the track ‘Tear Gas’ by Tyler Cryde (of Black Country, New Road fame). Exploring ideas of belonging, home and the wayward emotions that exist as a result of these concepts, Pilot begs the listener for multiple ruminations to savour every nook and cranny.
‘Pilot’ welcomes the listener along Skydaddy’s journey of self (re)discovery, providing them with a freshly printed passport to enter his world of carefully composed and honest songs. Through Lennon-like crooning to the eerie whimsy of conflicted lyrics put to an echo-chamber of pumping strings, he allows the listener to discover their own reflection in the spaces between each layer.” ...
Bill Ryder-Jones looks back to leap forward on new album ‘Iechyd Da.’
“Released by Domino Records Co, Bill Ryder-Jones’ newest album, ‘Iechyd Da,’ stretches languidly over marshlands of carefully considered reflections to tend to his emotional turmoil and heartbreak. The aptly named album, meaning good health in Welsh, acts like a mantra for the rollercoaster ride Ryder-Jones takes us on. The listener is delicately introduced to deep-seated confessions and hopeful yearning through a mix of expert lyricism and incredible production.
Much like James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses,’ which is read quietly on the instrumental track ‘…and the sea…’, this album acts like a modern epic utilising tempo changes, a sample of Gal Costa’s 1969 track ‘Baby’ and a children’s choir to build a reflective and responsive body of work. On ‘This Can’t Go On,’ Ryder-Jones allows the listener to accompany him on a late-night stroll where he wrestles with his innermost demons and his hopes for a future that feel out of reach. His incredibly relatable lyrics suggest he seeks help from his father who, one could assume, advises him: “You’ve got to get outside, go get some sun. You’ve got to get yourself together because this can’t go on”. The instrumentation on the track creates an expansiveness that is deeply felt and acts in contrast to the downcast lyricism, providing a light at the end of this emotional tunnel.” ...
bar italia masterfully balance their trio of voices on ‘The Twits.’
“bar italia have hit the ground running after signing with Matador Records in March of 2023, their latest release of The Twits, coming a mere 6 months after the release of previous album ‘Tracey Denim.’ The band, made up of London natives Jazmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton, plus Rome transplant Nina Cristante, have produced an album that collects character profiles for an emotive blend of songs. Summoning their eclectic collection of inspirations, they brew a maddening concoction of high-impact guitar tones and rippling, depersonalised voices.
‘The Twits’ acts like a silken ribbon thread through metal rivets, their holy trinity of voices pinning down the listener into a whirlwind of character confessions. Cristante’s delicate tone is reminiscent of ‘60s continental darlings such as Jane Birkin, contrasted against Fenton’s conversational baritone providing mid-range mania, and Fehmi’s low, rumbling growl. The soundscape they develop on ‘The Twits’ serves like a series of snapshots from a booming party, replete with love triangles, disappointed lovers and exes. All of this is balanced on the bubbling anxiety that creeps up from underneath done-up faces, suggesting this work is a glance into the inner turmoil of the album’s participants....”
Theo Bleak fills our well of sadness with graceful fluidity on new EP ‘Pain.’
“Katie Lynch dons the moniker Theo Bleak once more on new her new EP ‘Pain’, allowing her to puppeteer her intimate emotions with confidence and candour. Utilizing everything from the impression of strings to the layering of tones, Theo Bleak creates a painfully intimate sound bath from which she delivers her spellbinding wisdom. On ‘Pain,’ she explores the fluid spaces of her mental health, particularly the difficulties experienced within the dips and dives of complex relationships, and everyday girldom. The bubbling up of sadness in her work brings with it a level of honesty that makes her work feel like nothing shy of the truth....”
Girl Dinner: Femininity at the Cusp of Consumption
“For as long as I can remember women have had food pressed against their lips, at the cusp of consumption, but never entirely welcomed in without some form of guilt. Some of my favorite memories of my mother and grandmothers were in the kitchen, laughing over a stove, taste-testing plantains as they sizzled in the kitchenette, or passing quesillo over a water bath to get the custard just right. Yet, they’d always be the last to the dinner table, waiting to plate everyone else before ever taking a seat, and they’d always be the ones with the smallest plates.
I remember my mother drinking flaxseed water as her dinner for weeks straight because she was trying to shed those few extra pounds that no one noticed but her. I distinctly remember doing the same in my freshman year of high school when puberty hit me from all angles and I couldn’t contend with the fact that I didn’t look like I did a few months before...”
heka delights delicately with the incantory ‘Monkey’
“Francesca Brierley, otherwise known as heka, is an elegant addition to the growing selection of lowercase musicians, as demonstrated most recently on new single, ‘Monkey’. Produced and distributed by Practise Music, this single’s use of multi-layered, looped sounds internalises the sensation of passing time. It brings to the imagination a sense longing associated with the recognition that some people are best left within the chrysalis of memory. Flashing gently forwards and back, her compounding vocals and heartbreak guitar tone create a narrative, almost physical impact. A corporeal quality to ‘Monkey’ is built upon this, with gently rumbling sounds passing from organ to organ as they make their way deeper into the listener’s system. “ ...
Line Break
I sit at the base of tub
to stare
pending somewhere between
existing and hiding, air
thick with contemplation
doused in it
as if globules of the stuff hung
heavy above my head.
Droplets whisk the straggly hairs on my belly
like typhoon to northern hemisphere
these hairs that shouldn’t be there
or so I’m told. Instinctively
I place my hand over
as if to erase them.
A triangle hunches over herself
pulling crooked knees towards face
lurching forward
in an attempt to shrink
as red streaks cover the surface
a landslide glides down
route of spinal cord
like skiers on snowed in slopes
wearing differing shades of neon.
steam builds up momentum
like a crescendo
to crystallize over mirrors in a hazy
blue fog
I can’t see my face
but I think I like it that way
as if the entire world was sheltered away
in a place where sentences don’t begin with
capital letters
and periods exist as so much more
than a pause.
My Compost Heap for Worms Mag
I got the opportunity to share some of the writing I’ve recently done as a result of Compost Library’s Write Whats Right sessions from earlier this summer.
A million thanks to everyone at Worms. <3
“...I’m really interested in the connection between language (visual and auditory) and memory or dream formation. Spanish is my first language, but I find English to be the one that I am most expressive in. So I try to think critically about the language that is associated with whatever I’m using as the basis for a poem. Some of my work is an intersection of the two languages; with Spanish being peppered into a piece if it deals with themes of family, identity, or childhood, or with English following Spanish grammatical rules for a more melodic structure. These interests also spill onto some of the writing workshops I’ve run, as I often use surrealist and sense associative techniques to guide people into connecting words with their own memories.
A lot of my poetry is born out of my attempt to understand the world around me and the way I fit into it. It also acts as a form of release, allowing me to process hardship by highlighting the beauty that remains in spite of it. I’m fascinated by language’s ability to act as a projection screen, drawing pictures in your mind’s eye that represent someone else’s real, relatable but often intangible feelings. Writing, poetry in particular, feels like an incredibly intimate and honest way to connect with other people. I hope you enjoy my work and feel welcomed into my gooey, gushy, girlie mind.” ...
Electronic or Otherwise Known, Experimental
The band plays sonics
sound spaces stretched ____
dwindled
then all of a sudden
aggressive
smell of bleach
pours into the room
I lift my feet, afraid i’d stain
my maroon shoes
marble color around the floor
bleed out from it
one, sip two
The song dopplers around the room
howling at the no-known moon
carcinogenic hue, not that
swiss cheese blue blue
not blue
blast me baby, blast me
with the twist and turn of a synthesizer knob
a portal opens
another mind thought closes
tight like the mouth of an angry man
so tight you can barely see it
sink your teeth into its texture
so circular your head bobs about
bouy in all the sound
like a warning
not blue, yellow
like summer marigolds
wafting noise, an ocean of ones and zeros
one, sip zer_______0
you find meaning in its truncations
finite bliss
candels light the room in a glow
inch-worm made inch work
strained eyes
not used to the shadow play
the sound of laughter breaks the silence
outside
we are grounded
but only for a little while
up sounds, speeds up, up-up and away
ready for take off
transendental
only in so much as
it straps you in
does the astronaut merry go round
pulls flesh so tight
against your bones
you metamorphose
into a creature
a, alien
you learn to assilimate
when landing
brim with same-one-ness
til it shines so chemical
oil slicked pavement
only then can you move on up
leave this plan
par__________________ticipate
the placard says your name in tungsten
wiggles about against the lighting
the sound encompasses
everything
you, the wholeness of nothing.
09. 2023
︎
Star Potential: Subverting Stardom with a Playful Wink to Fashion
Humongous patterned bows, bedazzled boxing glam-covered shins, and hyper-femme silk figures litter Bristol's suburbia in Dean Davies’ newest zine, Star Potential. Star Potential is a collaborative project between image-maker and lecturer Dean Davies and 19 of his students — alumni of UWE, Bristol’s BA (Hons) Fashion Communication programme. Spanning a three-year period, the project sees Davies offer one-on-one support to his students in order to help them develop their own stylistic voices. By effectively expelling their ideas from the realm of the mind onto that of print, Davies and his students shed light on the joys of collaboration, challenged formal education with their real-world connection and opened up the conversation on cultivating style outside of the vice-like grip of luxury brands. ...
︎
Gut Feeling: Memories from Peckham and Beyond
It started with a flash of numbers as co-organizers Ella Monnerat and Bella Aleksandrova of Gut Feeling asked a room full of participants to introduce themselves with their favorite bus routes, names and pronouns. 8, 99, 244, echoed throughout Staffordshire St’s gallery walls forming the steady rhythm with which conversations about memory and their relation to South-East London were produced.
Gut Feeling, co-created by Monnerat and Aleksandrova, runs workshops within some of the keystone galleries across London — Whitechapel Gallery and Staffordshire St, to name a couple — as well as a regular writing feedback group out of MayDay Rooms in Central London. Their latest workshop was the first of many events hosted as part of Staffordshire St’s Festival of Community, a yearly festival in the heart of South-East London that was created to celebrate the diversity of its community,...
BOZO’s been forgotten about
Big Bozo the clown’s been forgotten about
down the Strip
points at pedestrians with his gallery-room
gloves
winks at the crowd
mini morsel of stardom
My momma used to take me
back in the day
back in the sepia
childhood
let me play the merry-go-round
collect tokens for pink plushies in the
shape of
lonely monsters.
My eyes wander uP & DOwn
come find you, rose-tinted gaze
blocked out PLEASURE, pLEASure, pleasurE
leisure wear
camera at the hip
with those big balOOn eyeballs
god, even the busted up
pigeons would stop
to stare up at you.
Big Bozo the clown’s been forgotten about
down the Strip
points at pedestrians with his gallery-room
gloves
winks at the crowd
mini morsel of stardom
My momma used to take me
back in the day
back in the sepia
childhood
let me play the merry-go-round
collect tokens for pink plushies in the
shape of
lonely monsters.
My eyes wander uP & DOwn
come find you, rose-tinted gaze
blocked out PLEASURE, pLEASure, pleasurE
leisure wear
camera at the hip
with those big balOOn eyeballs
god, even the busted up
pigeons would stop
to stare up at you.
08. 2023
︎
︎
REVIEW: ‘Shortcomings’
Shortcomings depicts a spectrum of identity conflicts in Park’s quest to add to the conversation of representation by providing us with a close-up of a life that more closely resembles reality, outside of the idealized glow of Versace shirts and Mercedes-Benz. ...
“Now”: Toto Pena On the Spiral of Memory and Self-Acceptance
Channeling his humanity into an oscillating rhythm, Toto Peña wrangles with the wicked spiral of memory, regret and emotion in his soulful new single “Now”.[...] Shot and directed by River Stephenson with super 8 footage by Kelsey Sharpe, “Now”’s music video utilizes the stunning landscapes and earthworks off the freeway exits of Salt Lake City in contrast with Sharpe’s footage of New York City to collage a visual representation of those underlying emotions. The Spiral Jetty, a basalt and salt crystal earthwork by American sculptor Robert Smithson (1970), and the Williamsburg Bridge are such fixtures. Curious to know where these emotions came from and where they’re headed, I sat down with Peña over the luster of a transatlantic Zoom call to discuss this collage of imagery and to pin-point the meaning buried within glistening guitar tones and paddling drums. ...
Tuesday
I imagined your hearty laugh
in the buzzing of washing machines
the clinking of zippers giving way
to illusions
making something appear out of nothing.
Performances by
@natysgg
@lewiemagarshack
@brodie_rake
@em._bennett
@artbyradish
& Nothings by Elida Silvey
23.06.23
7pm
“Following the journey between two lovers, NOTHINGS plays with the connective tissues of sea and sky to illustrate a love undeterred by seemingly endless space. Forming vignettes of longing and lust, Elida Silvey delicately bridges the gap between her and her partner. Honest, vulnerable and visually intimate her poetry explores the lucidity of falling in love with someone you shouldn't have.”
@natysgg
@lewiemagarshack
@brodie_rake
@em._bennett
@artbyradish
& Nothings by Elida Silvey
23.06.23
7pm
“Following the journey between two lovers, NOTHINGS plays with the connective tissues of sea and sky to illustrate a love undeterred by seemingly endless space. Forming vignettes of longing and lust, Elida Silvey delicately bridges the gap between her and her partner. Honest, vulnerable and visually intimate her poetry explores the lucidity of falling in love with someone you shouldn't have.”
Blue
The sky is dark blue and im waiting for 87
the taxi stops with its big bright tangerine lights
tambourine-ing
saying look at me
I’m bound for somewhere
I clear my throAt
I’ve had three really strong mojitos
at the bar on the border of Essex street
made me think of east village in nyc
I watched klarna taxis and yellow green ambulances
clear the street where
Waterloo buses were meant to stop.
I saw blue men with their emotions
tied to their necks
like necklaces glided in gold
but it was meant to be a secret
and McDonald’s packaging discarded on the street
an effigy of brilliance.
Lonely echos filled the spaces between
shattered out phone booths and that
pub on the corner
that fills itself with teapots and minced mint
mojitos more mint water than rum
I called my man
to try and make sense of the structure
the lines on the street were hieroglyphics
dragging on
in red and green colors
he knew the code of
E V E R Y T H I N G
and I tried endlessly to pick at the pieces
form a whole sentence from the broken bits.
These pieces make a drowned out picture
but Im drawn to it
that horizon like a big blue nothing
as if following it would make
anything make sense
as if it was made of
some rare kinda brujería
the worms in my belly
that live by the century stick their tongues out
they poke at the gossip
.This lull feels
replete
a pregnant basin full of water
nothing feels as blue as i do
now. the world is
a mashup of faces.
the collection of a collaborative concept
that is strewn across sea
and land like
some folk story told to those that dont get it
someday we’ll all be forgotten, anyways. i
blink trying to add the in between spaces
moonlight mathematics
i know
im nothing in all of this.
the sky blinks too, bruised
blueberry eyelids
to try and mitigate
and im reminded Im just another
lonely specimen.
I tell someone behind me
to fuck off
with my mountain top shoulders
as if the sentence could
structure the being
I’m dragging on
like a long hand
made long form prose poem
boxed at the bottom of someone’s closet
cigarettes cocked brilliantly but no one actually wants me
It’s a hosted charity
The man at Tottenham Court Road plays
the rain man song
the one
they sing in five bars
with the drawling line on the guitar
he’s quite good but I don’t tell him that
scurry along
I am drunk and the alcohol in my bladder is oppressive
I dive between corners as if that would fix things only to wait
we, others, all waiting
for the color to show,
big red streak, burst bright into a cluster
I have to piss and I probably will
on the corner
of that gas station
where the grass grows tall
and no one can see me
bend down on the street
to try and make it go away
the evening stings just as much
seamstress
with her fine point needle and thread
sunlight reminds me I should be home
and home is where he is and
somehow I’m drunk but he isn’t
it’s incredible
and expect
the unexpected, but it never comes
He’s not like the others
The sun still shines the next morning
The women on the train
have embroidered flowers on their shoulders
as if to puff up but somehow their
sounds sink deeper
Inside
to communicate
that lull
all of us trying to formulate an equation
as if the blue of the sky was a cipher
waiting in their tombs of blue black
blue blue blue
so goddamn blue
waiting for someone to know them
The train screeches on
trying to tell me something
but I don’t know her enough
it’s
just screaming to me
tell me what she tells you
I try to write out a Rosetta Stone of screeching
a key
as if that would help me
but I’m just as lost
I don’t know where to go from here.
The blue.
The screech.
The crow that perches and preaches
as of giving a sermon
would give anything
alife worth living
for it to make sense
I stretch to find the sky diluted by dollars
pounds in this gloom glycol country
the weight of it carried on our shoulders
The ring ding ding of money-man’s converts
trying to tell each other of the blue-man’s hill --
that lull created by others
where arch is charged for by two.
The sky is blue and so am I.
No man’s land is lonely.
The sky is dark blue and im waiting for 87
the taxi stops with its big bright tangerine lights
tambourine-ing
saying look at me
I’m bound for somewhere
I clear my throAt
I’ve had three really strong mojitos
at the bar on the border of Essex street
made me think of east village in nyc
I watched klarna taxis and yellow green ambulances
clear the street where
Waterloo buses were meant to stop.
I saw blue men with their emotions
tied to their necks
like necklaces glided in gold
but it was meant to be a secret
and McDonald’s packaging discarded on the street
an effigy of brilliance.
Lonely echos filled the spaces between
shattered out phone booths and that
pub on the corner
that fills itself with teapots and minced mint
mojitos more mint water than rum
I called my man
to try and make sense of the structure
the lines on the street were hieroglyphics
dragging on
in red and green colors
he knew the code of
E V E R Y T H I N G
and I tried endlessly to pick at the pieces
form a whole sentence from the broken bits.
These pieces make a drowned out picture
but Im drawn to it
that horizon like a big blue nothing
as if following it would make
anything make sense
as if it was made of
some rare kinda brujería
the worms in my belly
that live by the century stick their tongues out
they poke at the gossip
.This lull feels
replete
a pregnant basin full of water
nothing feels as blue as i do
now. the world is
a mashup of faces.
the collection of a collaborative concept
that is strewn across sea
and land like
some folk story told to those that dont get it
someday we’ll all be forgotten, anyways. i
blink trying to add the in between spaces
moonlight mathematics
i know
im nothing in all of this.
the sky blinks too, bruised
blueberry eyelids
to try and mitigate
and im reminded Im just another
lonely specimen.
I tell someone behind me
to fuck off
with my mountain top shoulders
as if the sentence could
structure the being
I’m dragging on
like a long hand
made long form prose poem
boxed at the bottom of someone’s closet
cigarettes cocked brilliantly but no one actually wants me
It’s a hosted charity
The man at Tottenham Court Road plays
the rain man song
the one
they sing in five bars
with the drawling line on the guitar
he’s quite good but I don’t tell him that
scurry along
I am drunk and the alcohol in my bladder is oppressive
I dive between corners as if that would fix things only to wait
we, others, all waiting
for the color to show,
big red streak, burst bright into a cluster
I have to piss and I probably will
on the corner
of that gas station
where the grass grows tall
and no one can see me
bend down on the street
to try and make it go away
the evening stings just as much
seamstress
with her fine point needle and thread
sunlight reminds me I should be home
and home is where he is and
somehow I’m drunk but he isn’t
it’s incredible
and expect
the unexpected, but it never comes
He’s not like the others
The sun still shines the next morning
The women on the train
have embroidered flowers on their shoulders
as if to puff up but somehow their
sounds sink deeper
Inside
to communicate
that lull
all of us trying to formulate an equation
as if the blue of the sky was a cipher
waiting in their tombs of blue black
blue blue blue
so goddamn blue
waiting for someone to know them
The train screeches on
trying to tell me something
but I don’t know her enough
it’s
just screaming to me
tell me what she tells you
I try to write out a Rosetta Stone of screeching
a key
as if that would help me
but I’m just as lost
I don’t know where to go from here.
The blue.
The screech.
The crow that perches and preaches
as of giving a sermon
would give anything
alife worth living
for it to make sense
I stretch to find the sky diluted by dollars
pounds in this gloom glycol country
the weight of it carried on our shoulders
The ring ding ding of money-man’s converts
trying to tell each other of the blue-man’s hill --
that lull created by others
where arch is charged for by two.
The sky is blue and so am I.
No man’s land is lonely.
06. 2023
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The Body is an Archive: Elspeth Walker on Consent, Alternative Archives and Art as Catharsis
Dotted across and propped on podiums of different sizes, orange tangerine, lemon yellow and lime green jellies entice onlookers through the glass encased gallery space in Central London, inviting them to come in and touch. Inside these jellies are curiously encapsulated objects — a Casio watch, crumpled sugar-soaked newsprint, a stretched thin hair tie, to a CD split down the middle, among others — all playing with the concept of an alternative archive.
“The Body is an Archive” is a research project by British artist Elspeth Walker that explores the interweaving themes of bodily archives, the limitations of consent and art as the catalyst for catharsis. Her work pokes fun at the art world’s idea of a traditional archive, with its white gloved hands and carefully temperate rooms. Instead, she creates her own unconventional archive, filled with messy, gloopy, and tongue-in-cheek representations of her own bodily memories.
From March 23rd to the 28th, 2023, “The Body is an Archive” was showcased at Liquid Gold Studios in London as a five-day exhibition and exists as one part of a broader project exploring alternative archives. I made my way down to her studio, now stripped of its colorful jellies, to have a conversation with the artist and explore these themes further...
Space
‘My body is soft’, I tell you
want to show you
but there’s no space__
too much
space.
Carmen: The Movement of a Collective Body
Most films about the Mexican-United States border feel to me like films for Americans — Films about Sicario shootouts, trucks full of drugs passing the border in an elaborate plan to make millions or border patrolmen as lone rangers in the scarcity of the desert. Carmen, on the other hand, feels different...
Serpentine
My serpent tongue, lengua
partida
languidly lines it’s truths
in the spaces between
my cheek & gums neatly in a row, como un chicle
medio masticado
to avoid confusion.
a collection of dominos
listos para caer
pending
tick-tack of drooping
porcelain
pero los míos
son hechos de plástico
stand against mi mandíbula
like accessories.
finite, they make me choose
which ones to drop
como si completa no fuera
todas mis partes
but some
they, los que me sostienen
con sus reglas
subdue
my pronged movement
y los dejo.
Published as part of Latinx Collective
Tangled Tongues
05. 2023
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Tangled Tongues
05. 2023
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Cholombiano: Cultural Appreciation and The Rise of Outsider Cumbia
It all started with cumbia. A folkloric rhythmic genre of music born out of Colombia whose modernization at the start of the 1940s caused it to spread like wildfire across the rest of Latin America. More specifically, for me, it started with the low-tempo, raw-voice cumbia coming out of Monterrey, Mexico, initially called rebajadas. I remember the first time I heard a rebajada — I was about 11 or 12 years old at my cousin’s quinceañera. I was captivated by its rhythm and swing...
Published by Sunstroke Magazine
05. 2023
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Read full piece here
Transatlanticism
One Atlantic sea
20,000 species of fish there, each one
with its eggs
see-through like linens in
summer’s sunlight.
Thousands per
with vegetation clinging like tarps
against stone, or those lost at sea.
It’s difficult
to comprehend its size
the weight of it
is carried, as if nestled
in the memories I have of you
each one
heavier than the next.
One Atlantic sea
20,000 species of fish there, each one
with its eggs
see-through like linens in
summer’s sunlight.
Thousands per
with vegetation clinging like tarps
against stone, or those lost at sea.
It’s difficult
to comprehend its size
the weight of it
is carried, as if nestled
in the memories I have of you
each one
heavier than the next.
︎
EVENT - 16/05/2023
Come join me at Here After Vintage for a poetry writing workshop using a carefully crafted mix of techniques to release emotional tensions and flex our creative muscles.
The cut-up technique was popularized by the Dadists at the turn of the century and has been widely used since. You can find artists using its popular collect and mash-up methodologies from Surrealist legend Andre Breton, Radiohead’s own Thom Yorke to pop-icon David Bowie. In this workshop we’ll be diving into the subconscious by using Automatism ideals, reactively collecting words and imagery, in order to interpret our emotions and create expressive poetry to help relax, refresh and re-new our head spaces. No writing experience needed.
Here After Vintage’s After Hours workshop program is focused on presenting a series of mindful and sustainable workshops, hosted in their retail space at the heart of Brick Lane.
May 16, 2023 7:30 - 9:00pm
Here After Vintage
151 Brick Ln, London
E1 6SA
Come join me at Here After Vintage for a poetry writing workshop using a carefully crafted mix of techniques to release emotional tensions and flex our creative muscles.
The cut-up technique was popularized by the Dadists at the turn of the century and has been widely used since. You can find artists using its popular collect and mash-up methodologies from Surrealist legend Andre Breton, Radiohead’s own Thom Yorke to pop-icon David Bowie. In this workshop we’ll be diving into the subconscious by using Automatism ideals, reactively collecting words and imagery, in order to interpret our emotions and create expressive poetry to help relax, refresh and re-new our head spaces. No writing experience needed.
Here After Vintage’s After Hours workshop program is focused on presenting a series of mindful and sustainable workshops, hosted in their retail space at the heart of Brick Lane.
May 16, 2023 7:30 - 9:00pm
Here After Vintage
151 Brick Ln, London
E1 6SA
untitled_1
This, OUR most animal joy;
the bruised blueberry wind
LANGUID, tepid
swoops jasmine BLOSSOMS up
and out, into
the cold-SUMMONs air.
Catch a whiff of summer
hidden in the petticoats of spring
catch the STEAM, rising
rampant FROM cup
from its EGGSHELL styrofoam
ring
wrapping round
our fingertips like engagements.
Reluctantly we
recall rainstorms in the imagined
dinosaur SHAPE of scantily clouds
WE BREATHE a sigh of relief
finding sunshine peaking THROUGH the
hollow of its NUDITY.
I tell you about the dinosaurs in
MY HOME town
with their knitted sweaters
and fake plastic teeth
YOUR laugh echos against
restless trees
as we plod, plotting our own humanity
on a grid made of elderberry bushes
market stalls with SEDUCTIVE
cream-filled pastries
with fillings
stuck to the roof of our mouths
TONGUE takes a swing
to clear
and continue on the conversation.
This, OUR most animal joy;
the bruised blueberry wind
LANGUID, tepid
swoops jasmine BLOSSOMS up
and out, into
the cold-SUMMONs air.
Catch a whiff of summer
hidden in the petticoats of spring
catch the STEAM, rising
rampant FROM cup
from its EGGSHELL styrofoam
ring
wrapping round
our fingertips like engagements.
Reluctantly we
recall rainstorms in the imagined
dinosaur SHAPE of scantily clouds
WE BREATHE a sigh of relief
finding sunshine peaking THROUGH the
hollow of its NUDITY.
I tell you about the dinosaurs in
MY HOME town
with their knitted sweaters
and fake plastic teeth
YOUR laugh echos against
restless trees
as we plod, plotting our own humanity
on a grid made of elderberry bushes
market stalls with SEDUCTIVE
cream-filled pastries
with fillings
stuck to the roof of our mouths
TONGUE takes a swing
to clear
and continue on the conversation.
Twix
Additives
false sugar cubes made in sterile
white, lab-rooms
hosting synthesized chemical compounds
a union, without
the champagne bubbly_
the crinkle takes a second to
exhale
wrapper pulled taunt between thumbs
crosswalk for the eyes
I too, exhale
reminding myself of the inadequacy of
substitutions
{of endless space}.
I seek warmth in your absence
alchemizing shower steam into
boiling magma
detaining, my desire for eruption
as if to attempt to correct the emptiness
left by my own Vesuvius.
A simulation, sustained
between sips of something cold
trailing stream of fire in its consumption.
This overflow
forms basins on my surface
tip-toeing raw, onto
the reddened edge of nose-tip
laying hidden
like coldwar spy lost in all his gadgetry
in the weave of heavy knit comforters
each one indescribably incorrect.
In the puff of feather filled coats combating the
loosened skies
or held by endless circle-loop, in the
melodies
that remind me of falling
for you.
Even in the tenacious stick, of
caramel-chocolate, cornsyrup
stricken bar
where I cannot escape
the reality that
nothing makes an acceptable replacement
for you.
Additives
false sugar cubes made in sterile
white, lab-rooms
hosting synthesized chemical compounds
a union, without
the champagne bubbly_
the crinkle takes a second to
exhale
wrapper pulled taunt between thumbs
crosswalk for the eyes
I too, exhale
reminding myself of the inadequacy of
substitutions
{of endless space}.
I seek warmth in your absence
alchemizing shower steam into
boiling magma
detaining, my desire for eruption
as if to attempt to correct the emptiness
left by my own Vesuvius.
A simulation, sustained
between sips of something cold
trailing stream of fire in its consumption.
This overflow
forms basins on my surface
tip-toeing raw, onto
the reddened edge of nose-tip
laying hidden
like coldwar spy lost in all his gadgetry
in the weave of heavy knit comforters
each one indescribably incorrect.
In the puff of feather filled coats combating the
loosened skies
or held by endless circle-loop, in the
melodies
that remind me of falling
for you.
Even in the tenacious stick, of
caramel-chocolate, cornsyrup
stricken bar
where I cannot escape
the reality that
nothing makes an acceptable replacement
for you.
Published in Nothings
03. 2023
03. 2023