Gina Abelkop

Only 24 hours left in Birds of Lace’s 2016 fundraising campaign! You can pre-order chapbooks by Myriam Gurba, Lily Hoang, Jacqueline Kari, and Sade Murphy (click the links to read excerpts!), and a novella by Meghan Lamb; you can also get sweet shit like a signed copy of Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton, signed copies of E! Entertainment and ABRA (with Amaranth Borsuk) from Kate Durbin, a cute as hell “MY FEMINISM IS TRANSPARENT” backpack & heart logo tee + zine from Tinkypuss, queer porn from Heartless Productions DIY and more! Check it all out here. 

If you give a shit you try and make sure your community– the people who you understand to share your ethics and vision for justice & pleasure & choices for all, amongst others things– gets what they need. Having a space created for you to work with your soul family, aka a space by and for you and people like you, is vital. Topside Press is making that happen for trans women writers in the form of a workshop, to which you can donate in any amount here. $5s and $20s add up!

From Topside Press:

“Nearly every story you’ve ever read about a trans woman was written by a cis person.

This summer, twenty-six trans women writers will gather in New York City, the publishing and literary capital of North America, with two world-class instructors, to study, and to hone our craft.

Please donate today to help us realize this unique creative opportunity. Your donations go directly to paying for tuition, travel, and accommodation costs for participants who otherwise could not afford to attend.”

(I think my memory is correct that Naomi Jackson was also on this panel- I saw her read separately that same day at the festival– but there is a chance that I’m misremembering as the DBF website from 2015 says that is not so; however, I do quote Naomi below, so I’m trusting my fuzzy nearly-year-old memory.)

In no particular order:

The Sleeping World by Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes (September)

“Casasrojas, Spain, 1977. Military rule is over. Bootleg punk music oozes out of illegal basement bars and fascists fight anarchists for political control. Students perform protest art in the city center, rioting against the old government, the undecided new order, against the university, against themselves. At the center is Mosca, an intelligent, disillusioned university student, whose younger brother is among “the disappeared,” kidnapped by fascist police, missing for two years, and presumed dead. Spurred by the turmoil around them, Mosca and her friends carry their rebellion too far and a violent act sends them spiraling out of their provincial hometown. But the further they go, the more Mosca believes her brother is alive and the more she is willing to do anything to find him.”

The Reactive by Masande Ntshanga (June)

Read an excerpt here

“Heralded in the author’s native South Africa as “the hottest novel of the year,” The Reactive is a clear-eyed and compassionate depiction of a young HIV+ man grappling with the sudden death of his younger brother, for which he feels unduly responsible.

Lindanathi and his friends—Cecelia and Ruan—make their living working low-paying jobs and selling anti-retroviral drugs (during the period in South Africa before ARVs became broadly distributed). In between, they huff glue, drift in and out of parties, and traverse the streets of Cape Town, where they observe the grave material disparities of their country. A mysterious masked man appears seeking to buy their surplus of ARVs, an offer that would present the three with the opportunity to escape their environs, while at the same time forcing Lindanathi to confront his path, and finally, his past.”

Worlds of Ink and Shadow by Lena Coakley (January)

“Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne. The Brontë siblings find escape from their constrained lives via their rich imaginations. The glittering world of Verdopolis and the romantic and melancholy world of Gondal literally come to life under their pens, offering the sort of romance and intrigue missing from their isolated parsonage home. But at what price? As Branwell begins to slip into madness and the sisters feel their real lives slipping away, they must weigh the cost of their powerful imaginations, even as the characters they have created—the brooding Rogue and dashing Duke of Zamorna—refuse to let them go.”

The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar (March)

“Four women, soldier, scholar, poet, and socialite, are caught up on different sides of a violent rebellion. As war erupts and their families are torn apart, they fear they may disappear into the unwritten pages of history. Using the sword and the pen, the body and the voice, they struggle not just to survive, but to make history.”

Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh (October)

I have several different folders for my internet bookmarks; among them include “books,” “teaching,” “recipes,” and “submissions.” The one that probably gets the most action, though, is my “shopping” folder, in which I bookmark things I would like to purchase. Mostly these are things I will never actually purchase, either because they’re too expensive or I just can’t justify the cost because I’ve already spent most of my money on bills, food, and books. Here are some of the more glamorous items from said shopping list, in no particular order:

CB I Hate Perfume’s “Wild Pansy” absolute perfume (to better situate my FB alter ego)

NARS eyeshadow duo in “Mad Mad World” (an attempt to match the green eyeshadow worn by the protagonist in Natasha Khan’s directorial debut, I Do)

Pamela Love opal gravitation earring (opals opals opals)

Rose Leaf sugar scrub from Garden Apothecary (I’ve used their vanilla mint sugar scrub and loved it, but I love roses better)

Feminist Playing Cards  (duh)

Jessica Hische’s “Minot” typeface (I may actually purchase this for next year’s Birds of Lace titles)

Sephora Rose Clay mask (love roses, love a clay mask)

Haunted Hearts Initiation LP (dreamy jams from Dum Dum Girls’ x Crocodiles)

Jean Patou’s Joy perfume (my mom wears this and it smells incredible)

Jeffree Star Velour Lipstick in Masochist (I bought this in Dollparts and love the texture– also vegan/cruelty-free!– hope to acquire more shades in the future but at $18/pop they aren’t cheap)

I definitely can’t remember all the readings I went to in ’15, so if I went to your reading and you’re not on this list please don’t be offended. These ones jump out in my brain and were all total feelings-church magic. Full disclosure, I organized or co-organized several of these readings; what can I say, I have good taste. In no particular order:

1. Reginald McKnight at Avid Bookshop in Athens, GA

2. Dorothy Allison in ATL

3. Natalie Eilbert, Magdalena Zurawski, and Adam Gardner at Avid Bookshop

4. Jericho Brown in at The Globe in Athens, GA

5. Naomi Jackson at Avid Bookshop

6. Mongrel Poetics panel at &Now feat. Lucas de Lima, Lara Glenum, Eunsong Kim, Jennifer Tamayo, and Bhanu Kapil

7. Post-&Now Salon at Sam Cohen’s house feat. Kenji Liu, Vickie Vertiz, Leon Baham, Sam Cohen, Megan Milks, Nikki Darling, Sofia Samatar, Raquel Gutiérrez, Becca Klaver, and Janice Lee

8. Cloudfangs Out (&Now offsite) feat. Lucas de Lima, Douglas Kearney, Ronaldo V. Wilson, Kate Durbin, Lara Glenum, & Aaron Kunin

9. LeAnne Howe, Sade Murphy, and Sara Renee Marshall at Avid Bookshop

10. Ginger Ko & Lindsay Tigue at UGA’s Spotlight on the Arts

In 2015 I learned that much like my junior high self, I still very much enjoy doodling during class. The key difference is that I am ACTUALLY listening and absorbing information as I doodle, since I am ACTUALLY interested in the classes I’m taking, thank goddess. As pointed out by the esteemed and brilliant Lynda Barry, doodling can be a great way to concentrate your faculties on listening/hearing. In honor of my return to doodling (and school), here are some of my favorites from Fall 2015; shoutout to my rad professors and classmates for providing generally fascinating information for me to imbibe as I drew.

As in junior high (and, let’s be honest, all of my life) hearts remain a visual preoccupation

This one was done the week that Divers came out, also echoing my middle school music-related doodling, though at that time it would’ve been Tori Amos lyrics

Oceanic fire and scars, as it goes

Flowers, hearts, tears #classic

Scars and hearts; you can take the human away from the goth club but…

Ambient shapes with mandatory heart

These “shapes” lead me to think I was grading essays at this point in the semester

Pertaining to one of my papers, very clear and concise “notes”

Dainty hearts

Shockingly, more hearts

In no particular order:

1. See Joanna Newsom on her Divers tour on the 18th, the day my last paper is due

2. Watch Tangerine

3. Read Intervenir/Intervene by Dolores Dorantes and Rodrigo Flores Sánchez

4. Drink several Negroni slushies

5. Read Leaving Orbit by Margaret Lazarus Dean

6. hang out with my BFF and her baby, who is 1.5 years old now and I still haven’t met him (to be fair they live in Wisconsin and I live in Georgia)

7. Read Enter Whining by Fran Drescher

8. Read Oxen Rage by Juan Gelman/trans. Lisa Rose Bradford

9. Plan Birds of Lace’s 2016 Kickstarter campaign

10. write 0 papers

I don’t care about Christmas, or Hannukah for that matter (my family is Jewish), but I do love giving presents. Hunting for treats for my beloveds is one of the great pleasure of shopping, perhaps even more so than buying for myself (capitalism in the name of looove!). Making gifts is also the jam, like making a xeroxed “anthology” of stories/poems/essays you love, or creating cheerful/horrifying collages for your art-loving pals. But if you’re buying gifts for loved ones who love to read, here are some suggestions from me to you:

–chapbooks from Guillotine: these small, gorgeous chapbooks have letterpressed covers and wonderfully divergent innards. The newest from Guillotine, a split chapbook with stories by Sofia Samatar and Kat Howard, made me have really weird dreams. BFF and Honorary Men were also released this year, and I’ve read and loved them as well. You can’t go wrong with any of these titles, or, if you’re a big spender, ALL of them– that’d make a glamorous and compelling package.

–Johnny Would You Love Me If… by Brontez Purnell: Yes I would! I haven’t read this brand new book from Purnell yet, but The Cruising Diaries is fantastically funny and addictive and I’ll bet this one is too. The book description begins, “Purnell offers part case study and part (fictional) Scene Report on the incidentals and consequences of hipster life from the viewpoint of a young man in crisis. He’s a slut. He’s a nerd. He’s a working class hero. He’s an American waiter, often bored at work.” So there you go.

–Bone Bouquet publishes all your favorite female poets so why aren’t you a subscriber already? Or, if you are already, why haven’t you bought your friends subscriptions?

–Sister Spit has opened their online store for the month of December to raise funds for their 2016 tour. Among the rad things you can acquire: a perfume based on Jewelle Gomez’s lesbian vampire novel The Gilda Stories and a chapbook by Myriam Gurba.

–This gorgeous letterpressed poster, featuring Audre Lorde, is only $10, and 100% of the proceeds go to the wonderful/direly needed Audre Lorde Project.

–Is John Waters’ Christmas tour coming through your town? Obviously you must take a loved one and make all their filth dreams come true.

–Sleepybowie on Etsy does these great, nutso celebrity portraits; I commissioned one for my girlfriend for her birthday once and it was a hit (Bruce Springsteen with the body of a maltese, if you must know). You can do the same– just send them a message with the person you’d like painted and the animal/object you’d like their head attached to. Author portraits, anyone?

–My local indie bookshop, Avid, has a fun/exciting book subscription program where you prepay for 3 months/6 months/whatever, give them some info on your recipient, and they then send one book a month that’s been hand-picked for that person. Rad! Will, who’s in charge of the book subscriptions, has superb taste and is an author himself (of the excellent YA novel Anything Could Happen). Give them a call and they can hook you up (you don’t need to be from Athens!).

–CB I Hate Perfume’s In the Library is one of my favorite scents: the delicious, soft smell of old books and a hint of vanilla. There’s also A Room with a View (inspired by the Forster novel), Black March (inspired by a Stevie Smith poem), and November (inspired by a Tove Jansson novel).

–One of my favorite people/poets, Christine Shan Shan Hou, has prints of her wild and fantastic collages available at her Etsy shop, including the collage she made for the cover of Joanna Ruocco’s novel Dan.

–Finally, in a blatant act of tooting my own horn, I have to recommend the Birds of Lace broadside folio, featuring letterpressed broadsides of poems by LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Cathy Park Hong, Niina Pollari, and Christine Shan Shan Hou. They’ll fix that depressingly empty office cubicle/empty wall up right quick!

1. Joanna Newsom: “Goose Eggs” (from Divers)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTOREKA4DiA

2. Lana Del Rey: “Terrence Loves You” (from Honeymoon)

3. Grimes: “California” (from Art Angels)

4. FKA Twigs: “In Time” (from M3LL155X)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKKRfltntgA

5. Marina and the Diamonds: “I’m a Ruin” (from FROOT)

6. Blood Orange: “Sandra’s Smile”

7. Nicole Dollanganger: “Christian Woman” (Type O Negative cover)

8. Buffy Saint Marie: “Farm in the Middle of Nowhere” (from Power in the Blood)

9. Bjork: “Lionsong” (from Vulnicura)

10. Rihanna: “Bitch Better Have My Money”

I don’t believe in throwing money at a political issue and calling it a day, but I do know how badly the organizations who do the goddesses’ work need funds to continue that work. That said, if you are able to donate a few bucks anywhere today, here are some of my favorite life-saving organizations that could use your support:

–The Magnolia Fund: This grassroots org provide practical support, funds, and travel for those seeking abortions in the southeastern United States

–Chicago Books to Women in Prison: Chicago Books to Women in Prison is a volunteer collective that distributes paperback books free of charge to people incarcerated in women’s prisons nationwide. We are dedicated to offering women behind bars the opportunity for self-empowerment, education, and entertainment that reading provides.

–Liberation Lib: Liberation Library provides books to youth in prison to encourage imagination, self-determination and connection to the outside worlds of their choosing. We believe access to books is a right, not a privilege. We believe books and relationships empower young people to change the criminal justice system.

–Noemi Press: In 2016-17 Noemi will publish Vanessa Villarreal, Jessica Anne Chiang, Claire Marie Stancek, Jose Antonio Ramos Sucre, Yanara Friedland, Muriel Leung, Arielle Greenberg, Carolina Ebeid, the Blunt Research Group, Roberto Tejada, Liz Waldner, Colleen Hollister, Steven Karl, Sarah Vap, Jennifer Tamayo, and John Pluecker.

–Belladonna*: The Belladonna* mission is to promote the work of women writers who are adventurous, experimental, politically involved, multi-form, multicultural, multi-gendered, impossible to define, delicious to talk about, unpredictable and dangerous with language.

Less than a week (four days to be exact) until Divers is released and tensions are high. Two-minute clips of each song from the record briefly surfaced (and then disappeared) last week; I listened to them twice and then put them away, sating my impatience but unwilling to spend much time with only a portion of the far surperior whole. Meanwhile, more interviews keep popping up online as Oct. 23rd approaches; The Guardian, Stereogum, and Rolling Stone both feature pretty great ones.

The P.T. Anderson-directed music video for the title track, “Divers,” is playing at independent movie theaters around the country through the 22nd; I’ve seen it twice already at my local indie movie theater Ciné and plan on at least one more viewing; truly gorgeous and spooky, the video features Newsom immersed in the surrealist pastoral artwork of Kim Keever, whose art is featured on the cover of the record.

Life keeps fumbling blissfully towards death, as Newsom sang on Ys, and as such here are some reviews of the record for those who like to read before they listen: Pitchfork, The New Yorker, The Times, NME, Chicago Tribune, The L.A. Times, NPR, (by the great critic Ann Powers, who co-wrote Tori Amos’ Piece by Piece), The Line of Best Fit, and Loud and Quiet.

Bonus: a bingo sheet for the often  lazy/sexist music journalism created by Joseph Harmer just for reviews of Divers.

Still from the video for the title track “Divers,” (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

Joanna Newsom just announced the first round of her U.S. tour dates! Rejoice, rejoice, all of us who can make it to one of these shows. If you’ve ever seen Newsom live (I’ve seen her seven times and would follow her like a Deadhead if I could) you know it is transformative, magical (not like witches or fairies but like Emily Dickinson or the best dreams), heart aching, and joyful. Feelings-church to the max. In addition to these tour dates, there will be theatrical-only screenings of the video for the album’s title track, “Divers.” Paul Thomas Anderson, who directed the video for “Sapokanikan,” directs this one as well, with art/landscapes by Kim Keever, whose art is featured on the cover of the record. Dates for those screenings below as well; information gleaned from Brooklyn Vegan.

U.S. tour dates:

12-06 Boston, MA – Orpheum Theatre *
12-07 Brooklyn, NY – Kings Theatre *
12-09 Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer *
12-10 Washington, DC – Lincoln Theatre *
12-12 Munhall, PA – Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall *
12-13 Buffalo, NY – Asbury Hall – Babeville *
12-14 Toronto, Ontario – Queen Elizabeth Theatre *
12-15 Royal Oak, MI – Royal Oak Music Theatre *
12-16 Chicago, IL – Chicago Theatre *
12-17 St. Paul, MN – The Fitzgerald Theater *
12-18 Madison, WI – Orpheum Theatre *

*=Ryan Francesconi & Alela Diane opening

“Divers” video screenings:

OCTOBER 16-22
New York, NY @ IFC Center
Yonkers, NY@ Alamo Drafthouse Yonkers
Huntington, NY@ Cinema Arts Centre
Los Angeles, CA @ The Cinefamily
Los Angeles, CA @ Ahrya Fine Arts
Pasadena, CA @ Laemmie Playouse 7
San Jose, CA @ Camera Cinemas
San Francisco, CA @ Castro Theatre
San Luis Obispo, CA @ Palm Theatre
Grass Valley, CA @ Sutton Cinema
Grass Valley, CA @ Sierra Cinemas
Grass Valley, CA @ Del Oro Theatre
Nevada City, CA @ Magic Theatrea
Tucson, AZ @ Loft Cinema
Denver, CO @ Alamo Drafthouse Littleton
Boulder, CO @ International Film Series, UC Boulder
Miami, FL @ O-Cinema
Boston, MA @ Coolidge Corner
Seattle, WA @ SIFF – Egyptian Theater
Bellingham, WA @ Pickford Film Center[INFO]
Portland, OR @ Cinema 21
Eugene, OR @ Bijou Cinemas
Pittsburgh, PA @ Regency Square Theater
Ashburn, VA @ Alamo Drafthouse One Loudon
Winchester, VA @ Alamo Drafthouse Winchester
Austin, TX@ Alamo Drafthouse Ritz
Austin, TX @ Alamo Drafthouse Lakeline
Austin, TX @ Alamo Drafthouse Village
Austin, TX @ Alamo Drafthouse Slaughter Lane
Austin, TX @ Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar
Dallas, TX @ Texas Theatre
Dallas, TX @ Alamo Drafthouse Richardson
Houston, TX @ Alamo Drafthouse Mason Park
Houston, TX @ Alamo Drafthouse Vintage Park
Laredo, TX @ Alamo Drafthouse Laredo
Lubbock, TX @ Alamo Drafthouse Lubbock
New Braunfels, TX @ Alamo Drafthouse Marketplace
San Antonio, TX@ Alamo Drafthouse Westlakes
San Antonio, TX @ Alamo Drafthouse Park North
San Antonio, TX @ Alamo Drafthouse Stone Oak
Kansas City, MO @ Alamo Drafthouse Mainstreet
Ann Arbor, MI @ Michigan Theater
Kalamazoo, MI @Alamo Drafthouse Kalamazoo
Columbia, SC @Nickelodeon Theatre
Nashville, TN @ Belcourt Theatre
Salt Lake City, UT @Salt Lake Film Society[INFO]
Tulsa, OK @ Circle Cinema
Scottsbluff, NE @ Midwest Theater
Raleigh, NC @ Colony Theater
Winston-Salem, NC @ a/perture Cinema
Columbus, OH @ Gateway Film Center
Chicago, IL @ Music Box Theatre
Champaign, IL @ Art Theatre Co-Op
Paducah, KY @ Maiden Alley Cinema
Arhus, Denmark @ Øst For Paradis
London, UK @ Rio Cinema
Munich, Germany @ Monopol

OCTOBER 27
London, UK @ Clapham Picturehouse
London, UK @ East Dulwich Picturehouse and Cafe
London, UK @Greenwich Picturehouse
London, UK @ Hackney Picturehouse
London, UK @ Picturehouse Central
London, UK @ Ritzy Brixton
London, UK @ Stratford East Picturehouse
Bath, UK @ The Little Theatre Cinema
Bradford, UK @ Picturehouse at National Media Museum
Brighton, UK @ Duke’s at Komedia
Edinburgh, UK @ Cameo
Exeter, UK @ Exeter Picturehouse
Henley, UK @ Regal Picturehouse
Norwich, UK @ Cinema City
Liverpool, UK @ Picturehouse at FACT
Oxford, UK @ Phoenix Picturehouse
Southampton, UK @ Harbour Lights Picturehouse
Stratford-upon-Avon, UK @ Stratford-Upon-Avon Picturehouse
York, UK @ City Screen

meme credit: Mary Samsonite

People are counting down the days ’til Divers. By people I mean the diehard, swooning fans. Here are some reviews, interviews, art, and various other medias that might sate you ’til 10/23. I’d like to give a shoutout to the JN community I’m a member of on FB, which provided many of these links:

–Newsom interviewed the NY Times

–Sophie Blackhall-Cain is making a Joanna-related illustration every day until the new album release over at her Instagram

–Newsom is interviewed in the new issue of Uncut Magazine (the first interview for the new album cycle!)

–JN is touring Europe beginning in October

–You can (and should) pre-order Divers from Drag City

–A few JN Tumblrs: Only Newsom, Fuck Yeah Joanna Newsom

It’s just about fall (if you’re in the south, this is a GODSEND, at least in terms of weather). If you’re in school or teach, the shit is just starting to hit the fan. The empire is crumbling. What will soundtrack this special moment in your/our life(s)? Here’s an annotated playlist to address all your dystopian needs! Click here to listen to the mix.

1. “Sapokanikan” by Joanna Newsom: A song about temporality, love, the end of the empire, staying despite the constant-crumble, looking for the blurry remains of the past on top the ever-shifting present, and living in spite of and because of all this. Thanks, Joanna. Did I mention that it sounds like a belle epoque ragtime waltz?
2. “Terrence Loves You” by Lana Del Rey: Possibly the saddest LDR song yet, and if you listen to the woman you know this is a big time statement. Stuck between wanting to listen to it endlessly because it’s so beautiful– those melodies and sad saxes!– and wanting to shut it off because it makes you want to get majorly fetal with tears.
3. “I’ve Got a Right to Sing the Blues” by Sam Cooke: Cooke covering Billie Holiday means that this entire record is a dream. I picked this song so I wouldn’t be bumming you out too hard at the top of the mix. It’s a song about feeling blue but also demands your right to sing/feel the blues, with big horns and Cooke’s simultaneously joyful/melancholy phrasings.
4. “Ha Howa Ha Howa” by Sexwitch: Natasha Khan’s new side project is covering Middle Eastern traditional songs in a psychedelic howling haze. This bass line grooves really hard and Khan lets loose with her voice in a way she’s never done with Bat for Lashes. A song to do mushrooms to; hypnotic chanting musculature.
5. “Cheyenne” by Jason Derulo: Did I ever think I would be madly in love with any Derulo songs? Um, no. Not that past songs were bad, just a little “eh.” But the two singles he’s released from his new record are KILLER; all ’80s new wave plus R&B vocal lines and big, driving energy. This song is a little goth, like how Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” is goth.
6. “The Hills” by The Weeknd: Another goth pop song. Dark, weird, and drunk on its own scuzz. Maybe the weirdest radio hit I’ve heard in awhile. Slow, sinister, cruel, sad, and enigmatic.
7. “Coke White Starlight” by Mykki Blanco: This sounds like early/mid- ’90s NIN gone excellently wild: queer hip hop/electronica gone ballistic. The beats will get in your bloodstream quick so come prepared to receive it.
8. “Gingerbread Coffin” by Rasputina: A sweet doll burial narrative full of soft-tinkering, Melora Creager’s signature wavering melodies, and those wistful, strong cellos lines. This song has always felt like autumn to me; I see the colors of changing leaves in it.
9. “Strange Fruit” by Siouxsie & the Banshees: This cover of the iconic lynching-protest song burns like a dead star under the waves of Siouxsie Sioux’s gorgeous, huge, weeping/sweeping vocals. The instrumentation– mostly strings, until a foray into sad, slow New Orleans-style brass band appears mid-way through– foregrounds the fact that this song is a dirge; an eternal funeral-song for America’s eternal-racisms.
10. “Dolly” by Blatz: Blatz’s punk chaos feels apt right after “Strange Fruit,” if only because America is the dolly you constantly “don’t wanna play with anymore,” at least not in its current/past form. What do we do when there’s no shelf to put it away on? (That shelf burned down long ago).
11. “Close Your Eyes (and Count to Fuck)” by Run the Jewels feat. Zach de la Rocha: I first heard Run the Jewels in a car ride from Athens, GA to Tuscaloosa, AL with Sade Murphy. We were going to do a reading and had a four hour drive there one day, four hours back the next. While our drive was soundtracked by many artists important to me– Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj– my memory of RTJ on that car ride remains fiery. These songs sounded like the soundtrack to an ecstasy of rage, the energy you need to keep burning through days simultaneously filled with sorrow and joy.
12. “Munchies for Your Love” by Bootsy Collins: Cuz we all gotta eat and there’s no better jam for it than a Bootsy jam.
13. “La La Means I Love You” by The Delfonics: William Hart’s vocals are both classic and too weird to be so. The Delfonics’ hits are perfect top 40s gems: catchy as hell, beautifully arranged, creating their own insular kind of nostalgia that makes me pine for some time that has never existed.
14. “Occident” by Joanna Newsom: Anyone who knows me knows that I am a sick Newsom fangirl, hence the bookending of this playlist with her tunes. Her new record, Divers, comes out 10/23, and you can expect me to be adequately insufferable in its wake for six months at the LEAST. (The first song on this mix is from the forthcoming album). This song, from her 2010 record Have One On Me, was a grower– not one that initially grabbed me and held me close. But these lyrics, once you fasten to them, are undeniable: “To leave your home and your family/for some distortion of property/well, darling I can’t go, but you may stay/here with me.” And so, as we are here on earth for the time being, thank you for staying a moment in these songs, with me.

People seem to spend more time talking about things looking phallic than things looking vaginal. You don’t need to guess why, but I’m lately pleased with how often my eye has been catching on everyday objects/sights that are flower-paintings-level of pussy representation. This photo is something I must’ve initially seen on Tumblr:

I spent a lot of 2002 and 2003 deep in Christina Aguilera’s Stripped. I was capital-F Feeling It in a deep and worshipful way. It was her attitude that brought me into that particular church: a bratty, angry-as-fuck lashing out done as only a pop star, young and rich, can do it. She posed nude on the cover of Rolling Stone (strategically holding a guitar that she couldn’t play; Xtina says who fuckin’ cares dude?), wore chaps and bikinis as daywear, and fluctuated in body size while the public watched (and criticized). It was all a big, artless movie musical with real people and their mysterious intentions jumbled up inside of it. The music was good though, and sometimes great, marked skillfully by Linda Perry’s big-dyke stamp of a style. “Beautiful” was, you know, gay, because it was about suffering and loneliness and enduring in the face of all that. The way pop music turns endlessly complex life experiences into a quick, showy display of capitalist fireworks never ceases to make me feel both appreciative and horrified, mostly at my easy complicity in consuming what the business men and CEOs of the pop music industry want me and you to consume (that is, emotional triggers that cost money). At the end of the day I still love Christina. I want her to be happy, whatever it is that she’s doing. I love her armpit vagina. I guess it’s supposed to be humiliating but I can’t help thinking of it as just fucking cool, like, whatever man, she did it on purpose/she doesn’t care. She’s good with it, smiling in her high femme drag.

I’ve long found the artist Rachel Feinstein and her artwork compelling, but what I was really dying to see, for a long time– what I felt was the defining summary of her spirit/self, politics,  art, and aesthetic– was a tattoo, located in her armpit and therefore absent in most photos: “I have a tattoo of my vagina in my armpit, that I did when I was going to Columbia University…there’s ants that are coming out of it and killing a dragonfly, and I did it when I was eighteen.” I love so much that it’s her vagina, not just some mystery cunt, a representation of her specific experience of cuntiness. When I found video footage in which I could see the glorious inked cunt I actually took screenshots of it because it made me so happy.

It’s easy for me to be enticed by Feinstein’s white-girlness: an ethereal redhead with a funny face (a funny face this is particularly beautiful, to me), big eyes, big romantic sculptures that reference the classics while being sharply toned with a very contemporary terror and sense of infinite mortality. I see what I’m drawn to and have to acknowledge what has charmed me and why. I can’t stop thinking that I am both a unique abstraction of a person and a perfectly-drawn example of racist, misogynist, heteroaffirmative late-capitalism packaged in Jewish white girl particular.

Feinstein on being a young artist:

“I ended up getting really obsessed with merkins and I made my own and thought that I was going to be able to sell them. And I applied to Yale for the MFA department wearing a see-through plastic skirt and a tiny little pair of underwear that had a big fake black pubic merkin underneath coming out of the underwear, that you could see…and I didn’t get into Yale.” And then in a different interview, on the same part of her life: “[The professor] accused me of being a third-wave feminist. He said I was a woman who forces her sexuality on men. He thought I was doing this for theoretical reasons, that I was trying to affront him with my girlhood. He tried to get me to defend myself. Needless to say, I didn’t go to Yale.”

And all that while, this tiny cunt hiding in her armpit, devouring or birthing little insects. What goes in one hole can come out the same hole, or disappear completely. What goes in your holes, and what comes out? Who or what do you consume, what sustains or feeds you, and what do you splooge out through the other side?

Sometimes a song doesn’t stick right away, or even a whole album. You’re there to get into it because I’m/you’re a Fangirl and that requires patience and sustained interest, at the very least. Tonight I was on a walk in the freezing cold with my pug, who wore two sweaters, and listening to it on headphones I suddenly got Charli XCX’s “Body of My Own”– GOT IT in capital letters: the sped-up ‘80s English ska beat, the shouty punch of the melody, the lyrics “’Cause I can make it feel just like I’m hangin’ on/Yeah I can do it better when I’m all alone,” which by the way I initially thought went “Sometimes sex just feels like you are all alone/Yeah I can do it better when I’m all alone.” That same chorus sounds like a bratty girl version of Oingo Boingo’s most urgent songs, my favorite ones, all dork-circus with a blend of styles ranging from the American songbook to Broadway to cabaret to new wave rave-up.

When Marina & the Diamonds toured her Electra Heart album I showed up after Charli XCX had already opened because I hadn’t really cared for or about her. I only recently fell wildly in love with Charli’s first album, Nuclear Seasons, while working an office job I hated where Spotify was my main source of Good Life Feelings and emotional engagement. I had eight hours a day to listen to music I’d never taken the time to give a fair shake; it was during this exploration that I also fell hard for Dum Dum Girls. I’d somehow forgotten to note how much I loved “Coming Down” when that song came out & it’d play on the satellite radio station while I stood around gossiping with the other shopgirls at my then-job; Too True is this shiny pop glut run through a punk/late ‘80s goth rock machine with strong, throaty vocals spread on top thickly. At this same job I’d listen to Sam Cooke for eight hours straight, the Harlem Club Live album’s version of “Bring it On Home to Me” over and over, the demo for “You Send Me” that is just Sam singing so sweetly with a light, heartbreaking acoustic guitar: perfect.

I saw Inherent Vice at noon today, the first showing of the film in my fair city of Athens. While I enjoy PT Anderson films, and would go so far as to say that I loved There Will Be Blood, I was there with such a quickness not out of some affinity for the filmmaker or lead actor or even book (which I’d just finished) but for Joanna Newsom, who plays a character named Sortilege who also acts as a narrator for the film and appears in about three scenes. Everything goes out the fucking window when Joanna is involved: it cannot be anything to me before it is a Thing with Joanna Newsom.” This all because her music sits right in the center of my body and has since I first heard it, though it’s set up house there more firmly as the years go by and the songs keep coming. If you’re a lucky person this happens with lots of art and there are thousands of good, strong homes inside you that you get to share with all kind of interesting strangers on this planet, makers of art and the fellow imbibers, too. It’s one of the best parts of being alive, next to dogs.