Hi! Sorry for last week’s absence—long story short, things kind of exploded last Tuesday night and I am finally settling back into normalcy. I also am one meeting away from finishing my first year of grad school, so. That’s crazy.
Anyway! This week’s short but sweet, with some art from Quill Na, a friend of mine who happens to make absolutely stunning art at a rate I cannot believe. Also, a short prompt response from my workshop a few weeks back! Let’s go.
freshly dirtied sidewalk
March 14, 2024
Intaglio Print
Quill Na (he/they) is a multimedia artist based in Davis, California. He loves to claw at clay, stomp on copper etching plates, and smear canvases with red. His work studies the body as a home, celebration of the self, movement, incorporating audience, expression work, joy, despair, and violence. Everything he creates is a mirror—whether he stands before it or you do. You can find some of his work on instagram at quilltree.
GET TO HEAVEN RIGHT NOW WITH THIS ONE EASY TRICK
Tomas fidgets, looping his thumbs around each other over and over again. His mother elbows his side, says, “You have to pay attention.” He doesn’t want to pay attention.
Teresa on stage feels bile in her throat crawling, creeping. She is not supposed to be here. She light a candle when it is demanded of her, and sighs. Her friend, two yards away from her, says her name; she doesn’t respond.
Gray stage manages freelance; they have no idea what this gig is. Their friend messaged them, isn’t this that group of freaks LOL, and they said, maybe but i feel like we of all people shouldn’t be calling people freaks, and their friend said, make sure they’re not putting subliminals over your headset laughing emoji. So they adjust their headset.
Ellie believes because she has little else to believe in. That maybe there is a better world than this is the only thing that’s kept her alive this long. She thinks of Leon, who left her because she believed too much, and wishes he was here. He deserves a better world too.
Henry’s balding scalp burns as he bows down to the light before him. The oil of his head conducts candle-flame until he is ablaze. He is the first to catch. He feels divine. Someone in the audience stands up and cheers.
Rapture comes from raptura–seizing. The theater shakes and convulses just as you’d expect.
On the evening news, the anchor doesn’t mention anything about God; just a terrible tragedy in our beautiful neighborhood.
A SONG FOR YOUR WEEK
I’m torn between the best pop culture moment of the week and the new Jhariah album, so let’s go with both because they are both driving me kind of insane:
euphoria is, perhaps, an opus of haterdom. A rallying cry to talk shit about dudes we can’t stand, especially if those dudes are named Aubrey and they are from Toronto. I’m admittedly a big Kendrick fan already, but, like, c’mon. He is kind of the funniest man alive for this.
Jhariah is so hard to describe without mentioning TikTok because, well, that’s how most people, myself included, have found them. But they’re such a unique and interesting artist that it feels reductive to throw them under the (somewhat derisive) “TikTok artist” label. Their new album TRUST CEREMONY is so much fun. They wear their influences (MCR and various Vocaloid artists especially come to mind) on their sleeve but are still so transformative and manage to surprise every time they release.