In a kitchen, eating Kentucky Fried Chicken.
In front of a computer, playing minesweeper.
In a car, eating Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Standing outside of a Noodles and Company.
In bed, asleep.
Eating a bagel in a cubicle.
TRL (Twitter inteRviews Lindsay Lerman) with elle nash
hello, today i am interviewing lindsay lerman and we ask her questions from twitter. lindsay lerman’s novel, I’m From Nowhere, is out from Clash Books.
entropy called it one of the best books of 2019. lerman is an editor at Black Telephone Magazine. her first academic translation is forthcoming. she has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. lerman’s philosophical work is published in academic anthologies, and her workshop with Lit Reactor, Exploring Hybrid Lit, starts september 15.
TRL (totally rad lit??): Lindsay Lerman from elle nash on Vimeo.
thank you for watching TRL (tarantulas redesigning language), and buy lindsay’s book
xo
elle
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September 14th, 2020 / 5:10 pm
September 14th, 2020 / 5:10 pm
Someone has touched me; I need to lie down
“Someone just now has touched me! A human hand
has touched me! — I am ill and I need to lie down.”
…
“We know that only through observation or by
the sense of touch are we able to recognize and identify
the handiwork of our brothers, in this way
distinguishing it from prodigies of natural force.”
…
“I know that the toad which lives in prison
is moist to our touch, and flabby
because it does not ever give the steady warmth of love,
but is thus from hidden desire. I no longer deny
cruelties are sweet; there are vines whose tendrils
split cathedral walls.”
…
“I am ill. Someone has touched me;
I need to lie down.
I would scatter dots on a sheet of paper, or practice
the art of geomancy,
if that would be enough.”
…
“In a window across the street the curtains
have moved.
A withered hand appears,
and the features of an old woman
near the glass. She allows the curtains to fall;
I awake to the beneficent touch
of my mother’s hand.
Is this a portent of things to come?”
…
“I must set down, before it is too late, the pink murex
my daughter this morning brought to me, naming
for my benefit each part. I scarcely listened;
not that this shell might be less lovely
than she presumes—but that her touch and voice,
the confident gestures of an infant hand,
proved almost more than I could endure.
Have we not lived deep-buried in the pages of
children’s books, in a world of high moral fable
and fantastic adventure, in times to make our blood
run cold? Is it not incumbent upon each of us
to keep safe from the holocaust all that matters?”
…
“We feel there is within each one of us
something which will not ever die. Our experience
and every dream conspires to counter revelation,
making us hold this fondly, as leaves touch
to their only tree, our one presumptuous hope.”
From Notes from a Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel (1962) by Evan S. Connell
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September 11th, 2020 / 9:45 am
September 11th, 2020 / 9:45 am
River Furnace’s Fashion Issue is absolutely everything.
Fashion has always been a point of contingency for me. Fashion is made to a standard size or specification than it is to order. It’s like an ancient text that seems to offer an inventiveness for Black people and Black folk’s pleasure where the rest of the world vehemently rejects it. However, the marketing, fashion and entertainment industry aims to exploit these inventive Black spaces. It obfuscates just as much as it brings to light.
~ Juju
Fashion is more than expression. Fashion is denial, refusal and incoherence where they are not allowed — and through this defiance, self fulfillment. Fashion, like art, is the product of imagination, of energy and soul put to purpose for a goal that is under no obligation to be explained. That vacates still life to give birth to more. This, too, is fashion.
~ Warpath Slave
Fashion occurs at the intersection of body and world, an opportunity to (non)conform. Online, it is an invitation for commentary, which you can ignore. But if you’re ditching the lesbian sport shorts to go out in a dress, prepare to absorb their stares, or have a hand on your mace for when the men follow. Remember, t/girls, our accessories are also part of our fashion.
~ Neptune
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September 9th, 2020 / 1:30 pm
September 9th, 2020 / 1:30 pm
The Story of My Cats as Told by My Cats
Our father is worried that if he lets us tell our story it will come out sounding like The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein.
He’s worried if he lets us tell our story it will read as cute and sappy and that the people of the internet will ridicule him for it.
But our father needs to get over himself and you, you ridiculous people, so do you.
We were born under a house next to a Food Lion grocery store in Hertford County, North Carolina.
This is what we are told, we don’t remember this.
We have different colored hair, one is gray and one is black.
We had a brother but he died in the cage with us after we were captured by a man in a truck and driven to a fenced-in facility where there were other people who looked like us, all in cages.
We were given ‘D’ names when we were brought to the facility.
Diesel, Delta, and Dax.
Dax is our brother who died.
We don’t remember our birth parents.
The person in the cage above us was old and alone and no one wanted to adopt her.
The facility smelled bad and there were holes in the floor taped over with duct tape.
Our adoptive parents visited us a couple of times before they chose to take us home.
And they changed our names from Delta and Diesel to Tammy Wynette and Possum because our mother likes country music.
We changed their names from adoptive mother and adoptive father to mother and father.
Our mother has blonde hair and blue eyes.
Our father has brown hair and hazel eyes.
He didn’t want to adopt us.
Our mother wanted us and so she made the decision.
But at first it was only going to be for a few weeks.
Our father picked us up and took us home because our mother was at her insurance-selling job she hated so much.
Our father worked part time at a pharmacy.
He always finds a way to work part time.
He brought us home and played with us and sat us on his belly.
We had dead fleas in our hair and feces on our faces and we were very small.
Our mother came home from work and played with us too.
She didn’t want to leave us alone.
One day she noticed we were sneezing and wheezing when we were breathing.
Our father wasn’t worried about it but our mother was worried and took us to the vet.
We had respiratory infections and were prescribed clavamox which was a pink fluid that they injected down our throats.
Our father said it smelled like bubble gum.
After a few weeks our mother spoke to our father about keeping us longer.
She wanted to completely adopt us.
He was hesitant.
They went to California—where our father grew up—for Thanksgiving, but they didn’t take us with them.
Instead, they drove us down the street to our mother’s mother’s house.
Our grandmother was larger than our mother and our mother was worried she’d give us too much food.
So before she flew away in an airplane, our mother told her mother not to overfeed us because she didn’t want us to get large too.
Our grandmother told our mother to relax and that she would follow all of our mother’s instructions.
Our parents had a big fight when they were in California and when they came home we could tell something was wrong.
They came from different backgrounds, our father grew up near a Whole Foods and our mother didn’t.
So they were mad at each other but then they were mad at our grandmother because when they came to pick us up our bellies were swollen and we couldn’t run or jump the way we like to.
This was because our grandmother fed us as much as we wanted.
She kept our bowls full when she left the house and she liked to give us treats.
Our mother was disappointed in our grandmother.
They took us home and it took a week or two but they resolved whatever problem they’d had with each other in California and our bellies grew smaller and we could jump onto the bed again and onto the kitchen counter.
But then our father didn’t love us.
That’s what he said to our mother one night when they lay in bed.
And that’s the correct usage of ‘lay.’
We know how difficult it can be to get that right, the “lay vs. lie” thing.
But our father cares about things like that, he pays attention to things that don’t matter.
Anyway, as we were saying, one night our father whispered that he didn’t think he loved us or cared about us.
It was after a day when we’d both stepped in our own mess in the litter box and tracked it around the house.
He hated the smell and we did too but we weren’t sure how to not step in our mess yet.
And whenever we stepped in our mess our father immediately undressed and grabbed us by the scruffs of our necks and got in the shower with us and washed our paws with warm water and a soap that smelled like coconuts and he held our butts up to the shower faucet.
So it was after one of those days.
And another problem was he’d read online about a parasite that lives in cat feces called toxoplasma gondii.
Toxoplasma gondii can make a person angry and suicidal and at the time our father was angry and suicidal and so he blamed it on our feces and, in turn, on us.
Every time he slammed a kitchen cabinet shut he thought it was because of a parasite in his brain and every time he felt like life was too much he thought it was because of a parasite in his brain.
And he didn’t love us or care about us.
Okay.
READ MORE >The Jolly Corner
Some months ago, I was rereading Colm Toibin’s great first novel, The South, when I realized something about the way a voice is made—or maybe I would say forged. I’ve heard Colm talk in interviews about the silences in his family—the hush that fell over his home in (I believe) Enniscorthy, Ireland after his father died when he he was young. He talks about the way the unsaid reigned over his home, the way that much of what was important lay well on the nether side of speech. And you can hear that in the rhythm of his prose, even when he isn’t writing about Enniscorthy and the spaces in which he was raised. You can hear that hush, that sense of the unsaid as an “unmoved mover,” as the lost pater familias in command of the family. You can hear those empty hallways and that ghostly tonality.
I think also of Henry James’s story “The Jolly Corner,” which has been on my mind these many months when many of us have been (lucky enough to be!) barricaded in our homes. In this story—like The Turn of the Screw, haunted not so much by a ghost but by the possibility that it is in the end a ghost story—the main character returns to the New York City of his youth, after being gone for thirty-three years, to look at his family’s (all of whom are dead) two old properties, one of which is being renovated. His childhood home is located on “the jolly corner,” and I suppose it’s James’s thesis that it is only at our own jolly corners that we can struggle with grief and regret, disenchantment and the treachery of memory. (NB: I cribbed some of this synopsis from Wikipedia.) Like James himself, he finds the city materialistic and vulgar. Let me quote from Colm’s introduction to the New York Review of Books’s The New York Stories of Henry James:
In “The Jolly Corner,” written after his American sojourn of 1905, James found a new doubled self to dramatize, the man who had left New York and lived in England, and his double, still haunting him, who had never left, who still wandered in those same rooms which would fill James’s autobiography and had filled his novel “Washington Square.” … [Brydon, the main character] has kept his old house downtown empty all the years [he has been gone], having it cleaned and cared for every day. He now goes there to be haunted by a figure moving in its dark rooms, the figure who has never left them, just as James himself in part of his mind has never left them.
My thinking is that we are often, as we write, moving through these dark rooms, these jolly corners that we have long haunted. We are confronted by our doubles and must struggle with them—and not only in content, but in form, in voice. In my experience, the way that my family talked to each other, the kinds of conversations we had, the things that were spoken of and those that were not—the particular hushes, the specific silences and also excesses of saying—all of this informs my voice when I am writing authentically. I am haunted by the language of youth and home. Of course, in “The Jolly Corner,” the protagonist ends up physically fighting his double—for dominance over the jolly corner, for sovereignty over his own memories. For other still more difficult reasons, I’m sure. So when I write, what is the struggle? If, like James’s protagonist, I am fighting a shadow-self, what are we struggling over? What kind of terrain is at stake?
Collages on Shabbos
This is a series where I post collages people sent me just in time for Shabbos.
These collages are by Roz Leahy.
Roz is a hot, gay, trans woman. They try really hard to make interesting things and they’re on Twitter @allthingstruly.
If you want to send me a collage to post on a Shabbos to come, you can do so at collages::a:t::undying.club.
Michael on Movies: Meet the Blacks
Surprisingly, very good (for something I thought would be very NOT good). There is so much behind-the-scenes stuff happening, it’s actually incredible, when you stop to think about it. So many people dismissed this movie when it first came out as just another spoof movie but, wait up! And look at this shit:
- Snoop Dogg appears in the first five seconds;
- You have Paul Mooney as Klansman #1;
- RZA does the music;
- Mike Tyson suddenly materialises as a character named James Clown (with full makeup and wig);
- Michael Blackson is Mr. Wooky (and it’s never really explained who the character is actually supposed to be or its purpose, in the world of Meet the Blacks);
- George Lopez is the president of the United States;
- And Charlie Murphy literally plays his heart out as a drug dealer fresh out of jail!
I could go on and on, here. Essentially, what I love most about this film is the zany world-building that takes place, which, in and of itself, already requires so much effort that it totally did not need to be in a film of this calibre, but here we are! Everyone and everything sort of follows the same internal logic (and if you can accept that, from the very beginning, you are going to looooove this film). That’s pretty much a guarantee.
I would describe it as a spoof of spoof films. So in the realm of spoof films, you have the OG: Airplane, and then Amazon Women On The Moon and The Kentucky Fried Movie (cause, why not?). Scary Movie comes along in the early 2000s to change the game, but before all that even, there’s Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, Friday (which is less spoof and more, original comedy, but still worth mentioning), and then, Meet the Blacks. (I purposefully omitted the truly horrible examples, like Date Movie and Epic Movie because they don’t even exist, as far as I am concerned). It’s a very unique brand of lowbrow humour, here, and you have to go in knowing that. You think it’s catered toward a certain type of movie-going audience, but that’s just thinking inside of the box. Meet the Blacks actually tries so hard to be offensive (to everyone) that in the end, all of it is so silly and ridiculous, you’re going to laugh at half a dozen jokes (at least) even if you don’t think they’re funny, because it’s so absurd. It’ a nice exercise in finding out who you truly are. (Another good film for this is Edmond, 2005). I laughed at some jokes that on paper, I would have never laughed at. And there’s something to be said about Mike Epps’ delivery (and even though he is not a great actor, I appreciate his stage presence).
Overall, the spoofed-out parts are done brilliantly. There’s several bits where scary music is playing and you can hear the spooky echo of children laughing off in the distance (you know the sound effect) and then there’s the obligatory jump-scare–something a lot of shitty (recent) scary films do. Meet the Blacks wouldn’t be as good if we didn’t have so many terrible modern horror film tropes to harp on. And what’s brilliant is the writers absolutely know this (like full-on mad genius level) and take advantage of all of the inconsistencies that exist in what are essentially releases that are remakes of remakes, marketed as serious films.
I feel that Meet the Blacks is trying to say something–provide a message in the same way Get Out claims it was trying to provide a message. I am not sure I know what the message is, but I feel Meet the Blacks is way more sincere and open about what it is trying to say. There is an odd ambiance to the sound design too! In a few of the scenes, you will hear wind in the background, as the characters are talking and just existing, and this wind is something that was clearly added in post-production. It has no business being there, because it doesn’t add anything to any of the scenes, other than announce its presence. It’s actually pretty David Lynch, and it’s a bit strange, to see/hear in a film like this. It’s these small sort of if-you-aren’t-paying-attention-and-you’re-totally-dismissing-this-film-by-doing-another-sort-of-activity-like-folding-your-laundry… you’re not going to notice. And maybe that’s the point? Like a cool little unnecessary Easter Egg? (Aren’t all Easter eggs unnecessary?)
If you pretend this movie was made by someone you know and they made it over the course of an entire weekend and they didn’t have a lot of money to begin with, but for some reason felt they had a wholly unique vision and the only way to fulfill that vision was to make this film and now that the film is done, they really want you to watch it–this is that film. Meet the Blacks has some of the best use of wacky sound effects I have heard in a long while. Just as a quick aside, and to further cement my disdain (yet again) for many modern films… I would watch this over any of the Bourne films, again and again and again. Meet the Blacks breaks down all of the walls (whatever that means)–something I feel we need more than ever, especially right now, in our current socio-political-COVID-whatever environment/moment. This is a film that wants you to remember that it’s okay to sometimes laugh at something because it’s 100% stupid and doesn’t entirely make sense. ‘Cause life’s just life, y’know? Who gives a damn if you’re not making as much money as you think you should be making? Or that your dream publisher seems to just not want to ever publish you. Or that bad things keep happening in the world and that’s just never going to end. Stop living in the future and come back to the present. Enjoy the now and just slow down for a little bit, yeah? Breathe in. Cool. It’s Meet the Blacks. A high three out of five, from me.
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September 4th, 2020 / 10:31 am
September 4th, 2020 / 10:31 am
Mrs. Dalloway v. Ulysses
I recently reread Mrs. Dalloway and Ulysses. I read them when I was young, now I’m at the beginnings of becoming old.
Both books take place during one day, Mrs. Dalloway June 13, 1923, and Ulysses June 16, 1904.
Mrs. Dalloway feels like a day to me. I felt like I escaped into 1923, that I was really there, hanging out with Clarissa, Elizabeth, Peter and Septimus. Even though the characters are upper class, in another country, 100 years ago, far removed from my personal life experience; it still seems like Woolf captures many of the universals of life, throwing parties, shopping, having children, having a partner for a long time, having a person who you once loved, imperialism, having wars and PTSD veterans, being a wife of a PTSD veteran, sexuality and friendship. Basic experiences, we all have, regardless of social class or time.
I recently read The Waves and Orlando, sometimes when I am reading Woolf, I feel like I am having a mystical experience.
I am fascinated by the structure and arrangement of Ulysses. I get very zenned out when reading Ulysses, like I am in a dreamland, away from my life. It shows me personally that it is possible to supply information in multiple ways and the audience still gets a picture of what is happening.
I don’t feel like I am living a day in Dublin though, and I don’t feel like it contains many universals, it is just two guys walking around chatting with other guys all day. There is this scene that I guess is a nightmare hallucination, that stretches from 429 to 609, that is like, why?
I believe Joyce was a very rigorous, competent and hardworking fellow, however I don’t think he was very deep and had never taken the time for true self-examination, so trying to use two or three people, as symbols for what it means to be human, comes off, a little funny.
The sad thing, I get from both books, is that life in the early 20th century United Kingdom offered no spiritual path and mental health treatment (The treatment Septimus gets seems bad). These characters were eaten by their agonies. I am really happy we have invented self-care and have medications for mental issues.
I am glad I reread both books, in 15 years I’ll read them again.
If I Detransition I’d Still Be Fucking All Your Dads: from the Vimeo account of Joss Barton
I discovered Joss’s writing from Clutch Fleishmann and Torrey Peters talking about her work on essay daily. Lines like “She need mother’s milk! She need semen and salt and sick nations on her tongue!!” (from “Lord Be a Femme“) had me immediately. Reading them I was like, “Wow, I also need semen on my tongue. She really gets me.”
Joss’s writing is funny, dark and drips with the cadence of ball culture. She manages to be absolutely trans, absolutely the recipient of a voice that feels handed down across generations that fought to be heard. There’s a bite, a tenderness, a dense lyrical complexity. I find myself revisiting her work often, even years later.
At this point, six and a half years since I came out, most trans coming-of-age/coming-out stories kind of blur together for me. But Joss’s Untitled: Transgender Amphibian Femme Songs stands out: vulnerable and, as I have come to expect from Joss, totally horny on main. She talks about wanting to tell her dad, “If I had been given a choice, I would have asked to be born in another dimension, where sissies conquer planets and enslave nations of men hung like Sampson.” I can’t argue with that.
You can read Joss Barton’s most recent story at heartspark.