#1

welcome to The Zone

When I used to write a blog (takes drag of cigarette…dips head back…exhales slowly) I didn’t always see what I did as writing or photography because the internet was so new and everything online seemed to me like a less serious, too-novel version of art-making that came before.

I think I was wrong—I wrote and took photos, even every day for some stretches—but I also think not seeing these hobbies as Writing or Photography is part of why I was able to do them. It took some pressure off.

I’ve been wanting to do a newsletter for a while but suspected I was procrastinating long-term projects that I really needed to prioritize. Now they’re in latter stages and I think it could even help me to re-find an online space that isn’t as brain-eroding as Instagram (blah blah you can make it fun I know I don’t care) or another social platform that could just malfunction one day/be retitled “X.” I can feel that I’m clinging to some ideas and enthusiasms in these other projects just bc I don’t have somewhere else to PUT them. And I bet it would shake something loose to not feel like everything has to be meditated on and revised for months/years, or else edited at a magazine (Writing), to be ready for public consumpsh.

Some ground rules -

1. SHABBY outfit photos

2. RANDOM “musings”

3. UGLY layouts

4. ZERO consistency

5. NO year end lists or logical adherence to timely cultural events

6. NO influencing - in fact do the opposite of everything I say

7. This is nOT a job

8. unless I start doing paid subscriptions at some point

Here’s what I wore today. You know when you just throw things on because they’re comfy and you’ll be home all day and then you’re like oh these weird clothes I wouldn’t normally put together are actually making me happy! Then I added the necklace and pearl earrings.

Swim top by Cleonie from AP Shop that I wear as a shirt too. Necklace is by Piehole and was sent to me by the Portland shop Frances May. Skirt: Sandy Liang for Target. Pearl earrings: dollar store. Look of contempt: recent Supreme Court ruling that smiling while taking a picture of yourself alone in a room DOES make you look like a serial killer :(

I will end with a TV still from Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, the amazing 2003 documentary about the band hiring a band therapist to help them record their next album. It takes three years. It’s amazing. Back before every celeb was popping out a documentary about their mental health every 5 minutes (no shade just indicative of a larger problem in our culture maybe which is that you aren’t considered worthy of compassion unless you’re clinically ill xo), these manly men bared at least some of their souls and, if the 2013 follow-up is to be believed, fans were PISSED. The doc disrupted the band’s image, it ruined the mystique. People didn’t wanna see James holding a baby while screaming “I’M A CAR” into a mic (didn’t retain any of the lyrical content sorry), or be faced with the pathos of Lars trying to please his dad who looks like he’s about to make you solve a riddle before you can cross some bridge.

I just tried to find a pic of him for visual reference and discovered a website where it seems fans have been trying to cast a Metallica biopic like it’s fantasy football:

Paul’s team working for that 10%

Anyway, having no prior knowledge of the band I was totally invested. Strongly recommend for: wisdom for finishing a long project, delightful group dynamics, Robert Trujillo’s reaction when he gets into the band, the fact that there’s a record producer named “Bob Rock.”

Oh so the still. Therapist Phil hangs up all these signs around the studio which makes at least one of the guys really mad. They tear them down. But I paused and took a pic cuz I was like, honestly true.

It’s nice to remember you don’t need to enter a catatonic state or feel Ready to make anything; that doing it changes how you feel.

<3

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