This Week's Reading List: Lynch, Life Advice, Tarot & Hillary Clinton

There's so much out there to read, we know. So we rounded up a few of the best things we've read, just for you. And, like us, they're all weird or neurotic or dark. Happy Monday, darling.

Ask Polly: Am I Too Smart for My Own Good? - The Cut, New York Magazine
"You are not a crazy genius or an irredeemable asshole or a misfit who's damned for all time. You are just a person."

David Lynch's Elusive Language - The New Yorker
“No matter how weird something is, no matter how strange the world is that you’re making a film about, it’s got to be a certain way. Once you see how that is, it can’t be another way or it’s not that place anymore. It breaks the mood or the feeling.”  

Guillermo del Toro’s Guide to Gothic Romance - Rookie
"Guillermo has curated a syllabus of the Gothic and Gothic romance novels, short stories, and engravings that influenced the making of the film [Crimson Peak]."

Not Looking To Predict “Outcomes” In Tarot? Try These Ideas Instead - Autostraddle
"So what do you do if you’re a non-predictive kinda tarot reader? How do you reconcile your feelings that tarot can’t foretell future events with the fact that the very last card in your reading is purporting to do exactly that?"

Deadly Maidens - Death & The Maiden
"This experimental short really opened up my ideas towards imagery and
nonlinear narratives. A mirror faced, hooded Grim Reaper-like figure haunts the waking dreams of a young woman."

We Were (Sobbing? No, Not Yet): On Jennifer L. Knox’s Days of Shame & Failure - Weird Sister
"While many of Knox’s speakers are misfits of some sort, Knox herself has appeared more and more in poems, an autobiographical impulse that is not so much confessional as it is a means to ground us amongst the more absurd situations Knox’s speakers get into, such as the corporate lawyer in “Between Menus” who talks to bees or the old volunteer clown who sodomizes a Siberian tiger in “I Cast the Shadow of a Sword over Sky & Sea.”

The Black Girl Dangerous Podcast 10.15.15: Why We Don’t Trust Hillary - Black Girl Dangerous
"She will sort of start off like she’s talking to Black people but then it will just veer right off. You know like, we’ve left her mind and she’s talking to white people and it’s just the weirdest thing. I mean, not weird, because white, whites. But it’s still fascinating to watch." 

Amazing Feminist Zine Roundup

BY ELIZABETH KING

Summer is here, and for many of us that means one very important thing: THE BEACH. The beach is where we relax, rollick, get sun-burnt, and enjoy light reads. I’ve perused my fair share of tabloids over past summer months, but these days, I have a new quick-read obsession: zines. All the zines! Well, all the girl power zines. The zine world is still alive and very well, even though it’s been a couple decades (we’re getting so old…) since the Riot Grrrl movement blew the lid off of the DIY feminist art movement.

Over the last several months, I have scoured the internet (and by internet I mean Etsy) for the best in what’s new with feminist zines, and I am happy to be able to report back some killer recommendations. Instead of reaching for Us Weekly or god forbid Cosmo for our summer reading, we can support feminist artists and writers while simultaneously being entertained and even learning a thing or two.

So, for your feminist reading pleasure, I present to you my top five zine recommendations of the moment:

Interactive Intro To Self-Care

This is perhaps my all-time favorite zine. Brought to us by the wonderful Janelle Silver, this adorable little creation is packed full of amazing ideas, activities, recipes, and other goodies all centered on ways to love yourself. What could be better? The uplifting and super-cute illustrations accompany serious insights about why it’s important to care for ourselves. I have never seen such a fun and honest way to approach self-care. The best parts: stickers you can color yourself and tea recipes for different moods. Check out this and other works from Janelle at www.janelle-silver.com, because you are worth it!

Empower Yoself Before You Wreck Yoself: Native American Feminist Musings

I love this zine because it exclusively discusses the experience of young Navajo women. The Native perspective is rarely heard in mainstream feminist discourse, and this zine is a great way for all of us to educate ourselves about this particularly margianalized intersection. Co-writers Melanie Fey and Amber McCrarty created this zine in order to make a space for Navajo women to contribute to the feminist dialogue and feel at home in various counter-cultures. Based on the awesome content of their zine, I would definitely say they are succeeding. In particular you will want to check out the letter that Melanie wrote to her Governor about the use of Native mascots in public schools. If you are a Native woman who wants to contribute to this zine, you can get in touch with the creators at NAfeministmusings@gmail.com.

OMG Lesbians!

This is a great comic for when you want to crack up while also giving a little side-eye to stereotypes about lesbians. OMG Lesbians! is Greek artist Smar’s exploration of the ridiculous ogling and leering that lesbians are frequently subjected to when they express any affection in public (the comic includes a lot of honking and whistling). She also humorously confronts some stereotypes that come from within the lesbian community, as well as the nutty myths that persist about gay women. My favorite quip is from a page about lesbian myths. Myth: lesbianism is contagious. Lesbian’s response: Sadly, no… You can see more from Smar at SmarMakesComics.tumblr.com. You won’t regret it.

Black Women Matter

The importance of this zine can’t be understated. Created by the artist and writer’s collective Underground Sketchbook, Black Women Matter uses portraits, quotes and thoughtful biographies to honor and remember Black women who have been killed by law enforcement. The zine is heartbreaking in that it details tragedies many of us have never heard of before, but it is also very empowering to take the opportunity to commemorate these women. This zine is critical reading for anyone involved with, interested in, or following the Black Lives Matter Movement. I would encourage everyone to explore more of the social justice-based art created by Underground Sketchbook at undergroundsketchbook.tumblr.com.

Anxiety Comics

As someone who struggles with anxiety, this comic really resonated with me. Artist Stacey Bru portrays her anxiety in a way that so many of us experience it: as an annoying little creature that incessantly nags us with insecurity, self-doubt, and angst. Stacey also shows readers that it’s possible to deal with anxiety in healthy ways (see: Intro to Self-Care!) so that it does not control our lives. This is a really cathartic zine to read if you experience anxiety, and a great learning opportunity if you have any sort of relationship with an anxious person. You can see what else Stacey is up to on Twitter at @staceybru.

So there it is! I am always fiending for more zines, so if you have a cool idea for a comic, informational series, or DIY art book, go ahead and make one! Chances are I will end up being one of your customers.

Poems by Collin Kelley

NINETEEN

Up for anything, pliable

nothing out of bounds

dress you up, dress you down

undress you in public

Far from home, no witnesses

this is space exploration

boundary breaking

daddy’s long arm can’t reach you here

Sidewalk swagger dissolves

to breathless whisper, begging

for release, for tongues

your mouth a light socket.

BRUNCH

This is just brunch, not sex. Not like two nights ago when nothing but a sheen of sweat separated us. We're being good boys, divided by this canyon of a table, but I can't keep my eyes off your lips that so readily met mine, explored at will. Silverware and a barricade of condiments restrain us, so even reaching to touch your hand feels like transgression. As we eat the all-day breakfast, the promise of neverending eggs, I wonder if we’ll ever meet again. We fucked too soon, my old Achilles heel tripping me up, but you insist it was a mutual lack of control. How to erase and rewind, take back the night we went too far, so that this date is full of anticipation, palpable electricity, barely touched food, our parting kiss prelude, not postscript. 

NOSTALGIA

I always loved you best at a distance

voice a faint radio signal

an image lost in television snow

The idea of you

perfect and acquiescing

sculpted, blonde and grinning

Then you momentarily resurface

tangible, flabby and older

one wrong word and then another

Now you live in another time zone

always behind me

stay in the west.

__________________________________________________________________

Collin Kelley is the author of the American Library Association-honored poetry collection Render (2013, Sibling Rivalry Press) and Better To Travel, which will be reissued by Poetry Atlanta Press in 2015. Sibling Rivalry Press is also the publisher of his Venus Trilogy of novels Conquering Venus, Remain In Light and the forthcoming Leaving Paris. For more information, visit www.collinkelley.com.

Digital Death: On Essena O'Neill And Life As A Lie

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

It's so easy to turn to social media for validation. We've learned to measure our life in likes and follows, hoping to fill the black hole caused by, ironically, choosing to digitally project rather than connect with actual, real-life human beings. I know I do, sometimes. And it makes me feel cheap. I go to bed numb, wondering why I even posted that, and if the shamers are somehow right, if the #selfie is actually the mark of Satan, and if I've given in, like a weakling, absorbing the millisecond of approval gained from bored click-click-clickers who don't know a thing about me. 

The Internet is a scary place.

An Instagram star can quit social media (and getting paid $2000 to post a picture of a dress) and then cry into a video about how she's found the light - only to be told she's fucking histrionic and doing it for attention. 

“This is what I like to call a perfectly contrived candid shot. Nothing is candid about this. While yes going for a morning jog and ocean swim before school was fun, I felt the strong desire to pose with my thighs just apart #thighgap boobs pushed up #vsdoublepaddingtop and face away because obviously my body is my most likeable asset. Like this photo for my efforts to convince you that I’m really really hot #celebrityconstruct”

— Essena ONeil

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Regardless, seeing this Insta-star-turned crusader-for-truth is important.

What we see: two glasses of red wine on a table, maybe there's a little white votive there. And you read: dinner with friends xo (glass emoji). 

What you don't hear is that the two of you sat trying to figure out why your libido is basically gone, why your grief is taking too fucking long already, how you're struggling to pay your health insurance, how you don't know if you're living in the right city or if you're just crazy, ungrateful or spoiled. 

The fact is that sometimes social media can help us understand each other, connect, inspire each other and to dialogue - shout, reverberate and demand - about the injustice and wounds of this world. 

Me. What do you see? What don't you know?

But the #SwipeGeneration is both the root and the cause of its own sadness. It's not naive to say we've learned how to amplify our own dissociation and discontent. Life is hard, thought, right? It was hard before iPhones and emojis and trending discussions. It was probably harder. But right now, for anyone with a smart phone, life consists of something deeper than ennui, disappointment and disillusionment. That something, undefinable.

But the quiet pain gets worse, because the broadcast of falseness and glamour is constant; it's the friend by your side, constantly by your side, looking gorgeous and perfect and skinny and smart and on vacation and with other friends who are probably prettier and richer and more interesting than little old you. And they went to Ibiza. And they wear things by designers you've never heard of. 

You, who are trying to just make it through a day at work, through 3 hour commutes, through the phone call with your sick mother. You, who posts a selfie at the end of it all in your new green glittering dress because for a moment you feel really alive, and what the hell, you look good, and sometimes it's all just for a memory - a moment, and not a lie.

But no one knows the difference.

And when we are caught in the web of sparkly stories, we start to wonder if life itself in an illusion, thus causing that sadness to fester not only because we don't have Instagram-worthy lives or bodies, but because - what the fuck? - we can't even determine if we're in a real world anymore. We might even know it's not the truth, but isn't that worse? It's like saying, "hello robot!" to your neighbor, and then stepping back to think for second: "wait, where is your flesh?" It never dawned on you. It never meant much. But you miss it. The fragrance of livelihood. 

In photos - that girl, and that guy, and that family - where are your cracks? Are you sad about your cracks? Why don't you show them? Are you ok? 

I don't have an answer. But this conversation is necessary and, likely, the first of many for the next few years. 

Because since the advent of digital community, we're only now slipping into the post-novelty era, when we look down at the blood on our hands and think, "it was fun while it lasted, but what or who did I kill?"

Never did I think this would be shared so globally. I have so much I want to say and talk about. Thank you to all these media outlets for helping start this discussion. I am so so so grateful. I'm crying because I needed to hear this when I was younger, heck anyone who spends hours and hours on a screen wishing they could have a 'perfect' life, this is for you. There is nothing cool about spending all your time taking edited pictures of yourself to prove to the world 'you are enough'. Don't let numbers define you. Don't let anyone tell you you're not enough without excessive makeup, latest trends, 100+ likes on a photo, 'a bikini body', thigh gap, long blonde hair. I was born into the flesh I have, there is nothing inspirational about that. I am just so grateful to think of how many young men and women might see this movement and stop limiting themselves to artificial ideas of happiness online. When you stop comparing and viewing yourself against others, you start to see your own spark and individuality. Everyone has love, kindness, creativity, passion and purpose. Don't let anyone sell you something different.

Hair Jewelry, Post Mortem Photographs and iPhones - A Lineage Of Haunting & Desire

BY LIZ VON KLEMPERER

To love someone is to want to give them your body.  To love someone is to want to be given their body.

No one illustrates this point more grotesquely and tenderly than The Victorians, who bundled the hair of their lovers and wove it into jewelry.  Men, for example, often braided their lovers’ hair to secure watches to their wrists.  Women adorned themselves with coiled wisps in glass lockets.  These would be worn on low hanging chains, allowing them to rest right over the heart.  Hair jewelry, as it is commonly called, was a display of affection and devotion to both living and deceased lovers.  Mourners incorporated these strands of the dead into black material such as jet, or more inexpensively, vulcanite (a hardened rubber) and bog oak.

This practice offers a variant spin on our current conception of the phrase “to have” someone.  The Victorians claimed ownership over the bodies of their beloveds by transforming them into ornament.  Not only was this ownership asserted very visually and concretely to others, it also symbolized a triumph over the inevitable: estrangement, death.  Everyone knows that hair is dead from the moment it becomes visible on the scalp, but even so, The Victorians so delicately curated these lustrous and dead clumps to symbolize vivacity, sexuality, and the eternal.

Soon after the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, however, hair jewelry became less trendy.  People could now carry flattened, shrunken images of their loved ones.  By the mid 1840’s, the middle of The Victorian era, the daguerreotype was made relatively accessible and affordable to the public.  

The slow shudder speed, however, forced subjects to sit still for uncomfortably long periods of time.  Thus, the daguerreotype was initially used to memorialize the dead, who had no qualms sitting without blinking for over a minute.  Photographers concocted methods of propping up corpses or shrouding them in blankets to make it appear that they were leaning on a sofa or merely resting.  Mothers could carry the black and white image of their deceased children with healthy rouge superimposed on their cheeks.  In this way we got closer to our ultimate desire to possess the people we love, to own them in a constant, albeit fabricated, state, to lessen the sting of death and departure.  Desire shape-shifted into a new era.

A century goes by.  Our preoccupations morph but never evolve.  Tonight, I fall asleep cradling my phone, which contains thousands of images of my former lovers.  Now they are ghosts, swirling under a blackened glass frame.  Sometimes the ghosts talk to me.  Not to me, exactly, but at me.  Your ex lover is 5 miles away from you now, my machine chirps.  There she is now, for 6 seconds only, an apparition, a puff of smoke.  Tonight, I am fed this video: she is smiling garishly against the flash before tilting her device upwards to capture the sea of revelers behind her.  The scene ends abruptly as someone utters her name, and I am in the dark again.  I know that my machine gains nutrients from the outlet it is plugged into, and that comforts me.

We’ve worked for centuries to keep the dead alive, and now they are, almost.  The frame updates.  Mechanisms work silently inside, allowing us to see those who have departed us laugh, drink, and stare with an agonizing adoration at a face that is not our own.

In the continuing lineage of desire, we have become the designers and facilitators of our own haunting.  And everyone knows the secret to a good haunting is to make the mind play tricks on itself.  Now instead of the illusion of eternal life, we have fabricated the illusion of eternal closeness. Death is not solely the passing of the body but also a severance of ties.  We are haunted by the living dead, by the people who have vanished from our daily lives but not from our consciousness.  In my desire to possess my beloved, I know where she drank coffee this morning. I have read the article she skimmed on her lunch break.

I try to put away this vehicle of my own haunting.  I try not to carry it to bed.  Still, it feels as though I am relishing the image of a corpse as I go to refresh my newsfeed on some park bench during my lunch break.  It is noon, and I am drowsy, hungry, and seeking the comfort of a screen that contains all my bright and illuminated dead behind it.

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Liz Von Klemperer is the author of the unpublished novel "Human Eclipse."  She also writes for Art Report, and has work forthcoming in Autostraddle.  When she's not writing or tweeting at @lvonklemp, she coordinates events at The Powerhouse Arena in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

6 Incredible Pieces of Art We Saw at Mana Contemporary’s Open House

BY DALLAS ATHENT

On Sunday, October 18th Mana Contemporary hosted one of their quarterly open houses. The Jersey City art establishment boasts studios, galleries and performance spaces in a former tobacco factory. While we didn't get to see everything during this event, we chose some of our favorite things that were on display. 

Painting by Arnulf Rainer, exhibit presented by Ayn Foundation

Rainer's versions of the cross are lined up in a vast, open space. Each one has its own truth and reality. In this painting, we see the innocence of a teddy bear plastered in aggressive smears of red. The teddy bear--a symbol of American childhood and innocence is questioned and re-examined along with religious imagery. 

Aluminum Sculpture by Seung Mo Park

This artists' work uses metals to distort landscapes and reality. What you see above is not digital art or a painting, but actually layers of wire mesh with different sized holes cut out in front of a light fixture. The effect is ethereal— softening the harshness of the metal and using its spindly texture to create a new reality. 

Tick Talk by Ziv Yonatan and Lily Rattok

These artists transformed Mana's early 20th century boiler room into an avant- garde, explorative installation. One of the films projected showed details of a spider web, belonging to a spider who actually lives in the boiler room. This small creature's life, displayed in such a vast space was re-purposed and examined in a same parallel universe, causing us to re-examine our own world and what is truly paramount. 

Series by Maria Pavlovska

Maria Pavlovska's work is no stranger to drama. In her latest series, hung at her studio, she represents both disorder and science through wild gestures, overlapped by geometric lines. Behind both of these juxtaposing views, we see her method, and the process the goes into making work that describes the polar opposites of life. 

Painting by Antonio Murado

Chemicals and water are used to dilute paint and provide it with its own, organic, natural order. Murado pours the paint over the canvas, and the results are stunning. By treating the paint as its own matter, as something of the earth, the artist finds that it mimics life naturally. 

Performance by Jon Tsoi

Jon Tsoi gets in his zone in front of a eager watchers for this performance piece. We sit in anticipation, waiting to see what this blindfolded man will do with blank canvasses and a knife. But before he does anything, Tsoi takes deep breaths, centering himself in the space. The crowd is forced to enter a calming state with him, before he meets the canvasses to a knife, destroying the object that's meant for creating. In the destruction, he creates something new. 

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Photographs by Dallas Athent.

Tuesday Playlist Of Gloomy Vintage Spook Songs

Is is too depressing to even think of it being only Tuesday? Fear not, beauty. These vintage spooky, gloomy, dark Tuesday songs are here for you; bring your magic back.

Uploaded by CjamPhotography on 2013-05-17.

Mullholland Drive - 16 reasons why i love you. The song is Sixteen Reasons by Connie Stevens. MP3 available at amazon.com for .99, under Connie Stevens

Peggy Lee -- Is That All There Is? 1969

PEGGY LEE "Why Don't You Do Right?" (1950) [Best Quality] ペギー・リー 「Why Don't You Do Right」 【高画質 HD 1080p】 "Why do not do you right?" 1950 Peggy Lee & David Barber Quartet from "Snader Telescriptions". 2011 South Bay Music, Peggy Lee Associates, copyright LLC.

Score for The Twilight Zone season one episode "The Lonely." Music composed by Bernard Herrmann and conducted by Joel McNeely. NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED.

Glenn Miller Orchestra - A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square From the album The Blitz Years - Classic Big Band Sounds Volume 2 Available on iTunes at http://smarturl.it/iTunesBlitzBigBand2

There's no playlist for the Vertigo soundtrack... I aim to change that.

Clara Rockmore's Lost Theremin Album

King Oliver And His Orchestra Louis Metcalf (tp) J.C. Higginbotham (tb) Teddy Hill (ts) Charlie Holmes (as,cl) Luis Russell (p) King Oliver (ldr) Wiliam "Bass" Moore (b) Paul Barbarin (dm) Written-By - Barbarin New York, February 1, 1929 - Matrix - 48333-I

"Blue Velvet" is a 1950 popular song, written by Bernie Wayne and Lee Morris. It has been recorded by several artists, most notably Tony Bennett and Bobby Vinton, and has inspired a film of the same name.