FYI: you’ll notice an audio file attached to this post. it’s me reading this post! i’m trying out this whole recorded reading thing on substack. not a podcast person but i get how people enjoy listening over reading these days. the audio quality isn’t great, so i’m undecided whether i’ll try this again. skip to 3:00 in the audio file for the poems!
making shitty art rules!
i am finding this out by making something shitty at least once a day and saying out loud that it is shitty! i want to think this is my kind of apple-a-day, doctor-away situation, but let me hold off on making that call for now.
most interesting to me about seeing and claiming the s**t in my art is how quickly people want to refute its shittiness. do y’all not remember how much shitty art is out there? let’s not forget maurizo cattelan’s 2019 ‘sculptural installment’ at art basel, titled “comedian”. or, like, every national anthem. (not so much for the music as for the dangerous socially reproductive function of most national anthems.) or take taylor swift’s “willow,” which may contain the greatest number of mixed metaphors crammed into 4 minutes i’ve ever heard. and for that reason alone, i refuse to link you to that song.
so, why not lift up the s**t in our art for what it is? just because art is shitty doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyed by the audience, artist, or both. reveling in shitty art is fun and what i’ve been calling “no stakes,” rather than low stakes.
and yeah, i’ll say it: i’m sensitive about the work i do because i have learned to be protective of it. i mean, damn, my students used to pick apart my essay prompts. is pointing out the shittiness of my writing proactively protective and defensive? honestly, it doesn’t feel that way. i’m excited to share this shitty art with you and i deeply appreciate however you engage with it. <3
since i broke up with some harmful aspects of grad school, art has become the centrifuge for shaking up my days. there is a DJ controller purchased in november i finally unboxed and teach myself on nearly every day. i twist wire around the fabric beads you saw in my last post. a writing workshop keeps me accountable for sharing my shitty art with people i barely know. i dance, i cook, and i sing – all of this is art.
after drafting this post, i figured some readers would like to know what i mean when i say that my art is shitty. the s**t in my art is s**t for two reasons: 1.) it has not been tucked away in the corners of my heart, waiting for the impossible moment when the art has been perfected, whatever that means, and 2.) it is my practice of sniffing out the egoistic perfectionism in all my creative processes and just sharing the damn things to share them.
included in this post: poems! a collage! (well, a picture of a collage.) you can listen to the poems as a recording, too (as you’re probably figuring out right now.) see how proud i am of my shitty art?
let me know what you think. more art is in the works. expect it soon.
Cigar Cutter
tobacco fiberscleaved by a small guillotine murderous plastic
Horror Theater
Neither of us should’ve gotten homebut we did.You drove while I nurseda wet wound:
A watery poulticecanopying this follicular forest.
Chewing up the grimedrawn forth by condensationwe left behind.Our fresh sediment filling tears in the wood–
Phantasmagoric scratchingsworming further into wood.
Slick lips slickingback bitter glasses,backlit–flickering glassescaught in licks of oily flame.
Licking a fingerto trace a superficial scratch.Then pressing into it, the scratchleft on my unshaven faceby your unshaven face.Wetting it,I get closer to death.
After Horror Theater
After a full day of ferrying,accepting payments for passageswhich may or may not be safe,how does the ferrymanget himself home?
Must he chop into the Styxwith an oar fashioned from a scythe coated in patinaand dulled from cries of the once-bronzed?
Against the currentdoes he break a sweat, hacking away at the inflamed river?
On this passage homedo they spit at him, splash himas though he were a Narcissus fixating not on the river but the oar to substantiate his humanity?
Do they circle his ferryand cast back their smelted criesto soak him in sebumand backwash?
Is this how he gets home,the residue of the daygumming up his descent into his own slice of the afterworld?
image: a shitty collage on a painted blue and pink canvas filled with multimedia (embroidered fabric, dried flowers, postcards, stickers, glitter tape, and a tiny disco ball.
