EDITOR IN CHIEF MORGAN MARTINEZ
MANAGING EDITOR RIVKA YEKER
ASSOCIATE EDITOR ROSIE ACCOLA
ISSUE WRITERS JANE SERENSKA TAYLOR YATES RIVKA YEKER LORA MATHIS
ADDITIONAL STAFF A KLASS, ANNA BRUNER, ANNIE ZIDEK, AMANDA WATERS, APRIL ACEVEDO, CHARLENE HAPARIMWI, CODY CORRALL, EILEEN MARSHALL, EM HARVEY, EMORY ADIR, GABRIELLE DIEKHOFF GENEVIEVE KANE, IVANA RIHTER JESS MAYHEW, JOE LONGO, KEISA REYNOLDS, KEVIN ALLEN, ROBI FOLI, ROWAN MISCH
SPECIAL THANKS MAGGIE brennan, THE BLACK AESTHETIC COLLECTIVE, ED NTIRI, PHOEBE BRIDGERS, AMANDA PITTS, DEAD OCEANS, MICHELLE ZAUNER, ELOY LUGO, JULIA LEIBY
HOOLIGAN MAG ISSUE #20
MaggieBrennan BY JANE SERENSKA
“Internet addiction disorder, more commonly called problematic Internet use (PIU), refers to excessive Internet use that interferes with daily life,” Try to call to mind someone you know who may suffer from Problematic Internet Use. How would they define “daily life”? What if their daily life is on the internet? Their job, their friends, their culture? In this case, what is the internet interfering with? When we stopped treating “internet” as a proper noun it became a part of daily life. And, haven’t we already learned that everyone is problematic? Either everyone is addicted to the internet or no one’s internet use is perceived as a problem. Maggie Brennan, Brooklyn-based cartoonist and animator, has integrated the internet into her daily life while maintaining the ability to observe it. Her work reveals the inherent flaw in separating rituals, relationships, and self-image from whatever medium in which they are experienced: No matter how we represent ourselves — cropped in a 1:1 ratio or for a fleeting 24-hour story — our experience can never fully be separated from our bodies and their longing for connection. The internet is not without critique; but neither is any other replacement or adornment for these essentials. As a multidisciplinary artist with a vested interest in internet culture (much of her work has been published online), Maggie spoke with Hooligan about mental health, resistance, and creativity. Read the interview below.
What are you working on right now? Right now, I’m working on a bunch of different things. I just started an animation MFA program, so I’m trying to balance school work, freelance work, and personal work. In the realm of comics, I’m working on a story about two teenage girls who meet at their parents’ robotics company on a “Take Your Child To Work Day” and, you know, mild chaos ensues. I’m also working on an animated short about an older woman who falls prey to an online romance scam. These both sound extremely dark, but they have some humor in them! Some themes I really appreciate in your work include female friendship and technology's impact on relationships and self-image ("Your Summer BodBot"). How would you say these ideas are surfacing in your new projects? Hmm, without giving too much away: This friendship is definitely working off the teen movie trope of Beautiful Popular Girl befriends Social Weirdo. I’m interested in the phase some teens go through where their desire to be admired often manifests in artificiality and toxic relationships (I guess some adults do this as well). I think technology and social media play a huge part in this since follower counts are an actually quantifiable measure of “popularity,” as opposed to pre-internet days when it was all about perception and imaginary mythos. "Panic Attack" really resonated with me in the struggle to balance internal conflicts while resisting injustices affecting so many people right now. How do you balance your values as an artist with stable mental health? Do you see your practice as self-care? It’d be nice if drawing/writing felt *more* like self-care, but there’s always a level of stress and frustration since it is work at the end of the day. I would say the one soothing aspect of it is that I get into a kind of flow state where the world can melt away for a bit. I think it’s incredibly important to find the one thing that can just suck you in and help you forget about time and space for a second. Without having mental downtime, it would be impossible to emotionally and practically approach tackling any of the world’s woes. All that said, I feel like I should practice what I preach a bit more!
Why is illustration your main medium? What happens in the space between your creativity and the form it ends up taking? I think I wound up sticking with comics for a long time because there’s some removal from your actual person in the storytelling, compared to music. I mostly sing, and the voice is so tethered to your physical presence -- it makes me a bit anxious to have that level of intimacy with the listener. With comics, unless they’re autobiographical, you kind of forget about the person drawing them. That’s why I’m learning animation. I really want to make more music and play shows, but I’d love to have an animation going while I’m hiding in the shadows, ha. Definitely gets back to what you said about finding a world where you can escape into your work. Who are you comfortable being in that world with you? How do you envision your audience? Hmm, I don’t necessarily envision a specific audience. I do think a lot about how people parse the things I write or draw, though. I kind of agonize over being misinterpreted. So, in that respect, I feel most comfortable with an audience that gets the tone I’m going for, whether it’s serious or satirical. Who are some of your inspirations? To keep it to just illustrators and animators or else this list would go on forever: Seiichi Hayashi, the Hernandez brothers, Sally Cruikshank, Shintani Kaoru, Phoebe Gloeckner, Eiichi Yamamoto, my friends! I also was recently introduced to this children’s book, Yellow Yellow, that, like, instantly changed my life. It’s written by Frank Asch and illustrated by Mark Alan Stamaty. It’s out of print and nowhere on eBay, but I plan to dedicate some time every day scouring the web to find it. What advice would you give to a young illustrator who's just starting out? Draw the way you want to draw. Use social media how you want to use it. It’s easy to feel pressured to mimic things more popular people are doing, to make and do things that would garner a larger audience. In the end, having a unique style and perspective is more important.
Stay updated with Maggie’s work at @millieminou on Instagram.
‘To be
by / taylor yates photos by / ed ntiri
‘to be ‘to be With an organic ambition to critique and ex-pose the underground beauty of black cine-ma, The Black Aesthetic Collective succeeds at creating a space for the analysis of contemporary and classic black film. When I began to research the project, I read the Black Aesthetic’s book, a documentation of criticisms and artistic reactions to the films and interviews. Somehow, it all felt familiar, I could feel it physically. This was something so special, and so private, so mysterious, and so powerful that I could feel the power of it’s discovery through the words of the authors and the passion of the collective’s contents. I set up an appointment to speak with three members of the collective over Skype: Leila Weefur (the grounded Leo), Ryanaustin Dennis (the tumultuous Cancer), and Zoe Samudzi (the Scorpio waiting patiently for someone to come for her so she can gladly remind them that she is not the one). Together, we talked about the event, their processes, and what it took to create the screening and the pieces in response to the films. When the call connected, there was light surrounding them, 8pm in Chicago, 5pm in Oakland. I was welcomed by big smiles and friendly hellos. We started off by speaking about our astrological signs. Zoe, elated that I was a Scorpio welcomed me as her sister saying, “That’s what’s up! That’s what’s up! That’s what’s up!” Leila, is the one that keeps everyone grounded in their ideas, and Ryan is the sweet visionary that curates the emotional vision of the project.
​ op Left / Jamal Batts, Christian Johnson, Leila Weefur T Middle / Ryanaustin Dennis, Yetunde Olagbaju (Black Mail Collective) Front Left / Malika Imhotep, Zoe Samudzi, Soleil Summer (Black Mail Collective)
To get us started, directly from the artists, I'd like to give you the floor and sort of let you openly speak about the collec -tive..A first date synopsis of how y'all birthed this project, in your own words.
RA: I recently moved here to Oakland. I was born in Oakland, and I came back after I’d gotten fired from an AD tech job. I think that the Black Aesthetic started out of a desire to to find community, and find black creative culture. [I wanted] to make a home for people, make a home for myself. I tried to find people that I connect with and practice with, and I found that. Through those first eight weeks and into that second season, we are in a community. This collective is seven people, collaborating with other collectives. The first publication was a lot of work, but the pleasure of being able to see everyone together in that moment was so immense and being able to bring that together. It was such a big moment to be apart of that black cultural movement that was happening on the West Coast. Could you talk about the process of putting together the pieces you included in the book, rounding up all the work? I also noticed themes of accessibility, sexuality, black femme independence, escapism, maybe some black introversion.. Could ya'll shed some light on some of the integral themes that holds the message of this project together?
L: Drylongso is a very special film to me. It was filmed right here in Oakland, and I’m from Oakland, born and raised, which is a rarity around here. I’ve been here to see the black community dissolve. But, I think revisiting this film during the first season of the black aesthetic, I was looking for a black community. I had just graduated from college from doing my MFA program and there were no black people, and that’s in Oakland. How can I find other black creatives that are interested in film, is that really a niche? So I came to the first season and Drylongso was the first one I came to, and Colleen Smith was in the Oakland community during a time where blackness was just ever-present and that’s what inspired me to create the piece.
Is there any advice you could give to fellow artists? Any ad-vice for artists who are trying to form their own collectives?
Z: It’s important to have balancing forces. You need to have people that are different from you and create a balance. You also have to take your ego out of it. L: Yeah, but it’s also vital to hash out and debate over ideas for the health of the collective as well. Get over any grievances of any issues that we have and just move through it. If you let those kinks remain there, then it’s stagnant. R: I’m still learning how to be a team member, and how to give and take. Z: Also with the collective the thing that’s important to remember, is that the art that you make for the collective isn’t yours. It belongs to the collective, and the collective effort and the community that you’re trying to produce and make a space for. I think it can get really easy for artists to get incredibly possessive over the things that they create because they’re trying to make money, or they wanna get this award or whatever. It becomes easy, in art spaces that are ego-driven, for your work to be an extension of yourself and a part of your ego. As a scorpio, it’s hard for me to part from that! But also, I prefer to work in groups when it comes to creative things; as opposed to academia where everyone is wrong except me!
After laughing and talking about blackness and art and wine, I could feel the love from hundreds of miles away. I thought to myself, that this is what the project’s purpose is, accessibility and community. Accessibility is the underlying force that drives this project. Uncovering the intimate and complex nature of blackness with a dialogue, and having said dialogue actually reach the audience it was intended for. You can read more about the project and keep up with its inevitable expansion by visiting https://www.theblkaesthetic.com
a conversation with
phoebe b
bridgers
by rivka yeker photos by morgan martinez
I met Phoebe Bridgers when she was touring with Julien Baker as they both passed through Madison, Wisconsin a year and a half ago. We stayed in touch, and I kept up with each song she released, increasingly blown away by her effortless and graceful talent. Changing the scenery only slightly, Morgan and I decided to take the trip from Chicago to Milwaukee to see Phoebe open for Conor Oberst, her life-long inspiration, and more recently, a friend. The two had been touring all year together and it was obvious. There was an effortless chemistry between them, which allowed for pleasant and heart-melting duets on stage and complete comfort when we were all just hanging out. When I saw Phoebe play for the first time, it was a strange moment of clarity. Morgan and I sat in a crowded Madison venue on the side and had Julien prep us for how good Phoebe’s set was about to be. She was right - and I have this distinct memory of my eyes beginning to water during one of her oldest songs, “Georgia.” When a person can fill up a whole room like that with light and sound and nothing else, you know there is magic in their music. We got breakfast food at a diner after the show that night, and while her presence remained ethereal on stage, she quickly became one of the easiest people to be around. We were laughing and getting along as if we had known each other for years. Reuniting with her again felt just as natural. All of us were dressed head-to-toe in black, looking like a three-piece punk band. We started the day getting disappointing brunch. She had told us about tour and shared some gossip about the indie folk world that I suddenly felt adjacent to. In just a few short weeks, her highly anticipated record Stranger in the Alps would come out via Dead Oceans, a label that also features our cover artist Japanese Breakfast, amongst other indie favorites like Julianna Barwick, Mitski, and Destroyer. Shortly after brunch, we sat down in the green room of the Pabst Theatre, where Harry, Phoebe’s best friend and 2nd half of her band, along with Conor and his crew were hanging out. It was quiet and everyone was friendly.
Most of the members in The Felice Brothers, Conor’s accompanying band, were reading or just lounging on the nice couches, in a very nice green room, in an extremely nice theatre.
Stranger in the Alps is Phoebe’s first full-length, meaning everything else she’s put out has been either an EP or singles. Yet, her growing popularity comes at no surprise because each of her songs sounds like an entire lifetime. They are snippets of stories from various points in her life, moments that she was able to write about and grow from. It is a classic singer-songwriter concoction but there is something special about Phoebe’s music, and there’s no doubt that it has to do with an underlying commitment in staying true to her most authentic self, something I’ve noticed in her fearlessness, confidence in her responses, and overall aura. When I asked her about her music being rooted in lyricism and storytelling, she immediately brought up her song “Killer” off her first EP of the same name. The song is about a period in her life where she had obsessive compulsive tendencies which resulted in her digging in deep into her skull when something disturbing came up. She was having intrusive thoughts about serial killers, and found herself googling everything there was to know about gruesome murders and violence, which left her horrified with both herself and her newfound information. “Coming into Milwaukee reminded me of this period in my life that I thought wouldn’t end,” Phoebe said, as she recalled Milwaukee resident Jeffrey Dahmer being the serial killer that started her obsession, “It is interesting to look back on a song like ‘Killer’ and think, ‘yeah, I’m past that now. That happened and I grew from it.’” There is an understanding that once art is released, it is to be interpreted in whichever way the person consuming the art decides. Phoebe laughed, “Sometimes I think people give me too much credit,” as she referred to how someone interpreted “Killer” in an extravagant and allegorical way when in reality, it was a fairly literal response to a specific period in her life.
“Taking the “feminine” out of your personality [because you are expected to] takes the power out of it.”
I asked Phoebe what she had been listening to lately and where her taste stems from. Her foundation is rooted in bands like Television and classic singer-songwriters like Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell. Although recently, she said she’s been, “Jamming to Snail Mail and the new Jay Som record,” going in depth about how music right now is exploring elements of genre-bending particularly with artists like Mitski, another favorite of Phoebe’s. The wave of talented women & non-men musicians changing the game in how music is listened to and experienced has been something that, I think, everyone (particularly other women & nonmen) has been excited about. Phoebe admits a lot of her background is still dominated by men. She says specifically Mark Kozelek of Sun Kil Moon and Red House Painters is someone she confesses she loves, yet recognizes isn’t the nicest, friendliest, or least misogynistic guy. She understands and sees his flaws, the same way she no longer respects John Lennon, but can still listen to The Beatles. Some people are able to separate the art from the artist and for Phoebe, it’s almost a necessity. She said, “I would not allow myself to like anything if I didn’t. I do draw lines, though. You have to draw lines.” Sometimes those lines can be blurry and it can get tricky to decide who you actively support and who you let into your ears. Phoebe knows this, though. She said, “I’m conscious of it now so I try to consume as much art made by women, POC, and trans people as much as possible because unlike theirs, music by white men is handed to me.” This is something that a lot of young artists are aware of, especially if they started out in DIY scenes, like Phoebe. Phoebe, who was in a punk-influenced band in high school, noted that the DIY scene now is changing, and so are media outlets like Teen Vogue. Slowly but surely, important and what was once considered “radical” ideas are making their way into mainstream media (which is the Hooligan agenda!). While Morgan took Phoebe’s photos against an orange-ish wall, complementing the golden hour that decided to grace us, I abruptly asked Phoebe, “What’s it like being on tour with essentially only men? Do you feel like you ever have to defeminize yourself to feel accepted?” Phoebe’s immediate response: “Oh, yeah. Absolutely.”
Keep up with Phoebe / www.phoebefuckingbridgers.com
This makes one wonder about the typical tropes for indie-folk singer-songwriters. There is an overlapping theme of confessional storytelling, of emotional ties to romance and childhood and nostalgia. These themes never go away, regardless of gender, yet when I google “Indie-folk”, the first ten bands are all men (aside from The Lumineers, which has one woman). This is not to say that these bands don’t deserve great recognition because I think they do, it is just fascinating that even with all the women affiliated with indie-folk, it is still a man’s game. So, when Phoebe and I have this conversation, it is rooted in a place of knowing what it’s like to play a game that has been a part of her life since she became involved in music. For Phoebe, she’s had producers that wore their entitlement like a badge and found ways to manipulate her agency. Luckily, Phoebe never let men dictate what she wanted and didn’t want to do with her art. Phoebe said earnestly, with no remorse in her voice, “Taking the “feminine” out of your personality [because you are expected to] takes the power out of it.” I think my jaw dropped or I took a few steps back to let that sink in so I could understand the gravity of her words. It is this perspective on femininity that allows her to explore what it means to be a vulnerable and fairly feminine musician, yet a person who defies feminine standards. Still, it doesn’t necessarily mean she feels good about it. “Sometimes I’ll want to wear dresses because I like dresses!” She said, but we both know even something as simple as a dress can change how a woman is perceived in spaces where nobody else is wearing a dress. In modern societal standards, to be femme is to be taken less seriously and nobody wants to be taken as a joke, especially in music. Interestingly enough, in her music video “Motion Sickness”, Phoebe is dressed in a suit singing karaoke. I asked her about the androgynous look and if she had any intention with the gender play. She said, “Honestly, I just wanted to look as nerdy as possible,” laughing, “I wanted to show someone in a suit going all out for karaoke, really into it, y’know?” I laughed. There something pure about the image in itself, which I recognize now that that was Phoebe’s message after all. Nothing about gender or binaries, but a sense of innocence — a sincere response to what it means to have, “emotional motion sickness.” It was jarring to realize how much (and how little) time had passed since we all met for the first time, to think that a year and a half ago felt like a past life, to see Phoebe in a place now where she is releasing something that has meant so much to her for so long. It was a day of reflecting, one of nostalgia and recollection of where we all once were and where we are now. The same way Phoebe’s songs tell us about moments from what seems like another life, we were able to come together as what seemed like new people. It felt like a song being formed, one on friendship and growth, all intertwined with laughter and memory. What I’ve noticed from knowing Phoebe as both an artist and a friend is that regardless of how the politics of music and the people within it affect her, she refuses to let it become her defining feature. Phoebe Bridgers is a musician who tells stories through her music. She is someone who consistently makes music for the sake of transforming somber moments of her life into something someone can hold onto. Her work is special because it is the sound of someone’s genuine response to existing. There’s something in her songs that anyone can connect with, even if these are her specific stories, even if we don’t all interpret them the same way.
is a Japanese Breakfast front-person Michelle Zauner on finding methods for cutting through the fogginess of grief, creating joy, and reconnecting to oneself following loss.
written by lora mathis photos by julia leiby
I was not grieving when I began writing this article. But then, as it tends to, grief swept in at a time that was neither expected nor convenient. Suddenly my combing through of the two Japanese Breakfast albums and conversation with front person Michelle Zauner carried new weight. On a flight to Seattle, en route to visit someone close to me in the hospital, I listened to our recorded interview and found pieces of my loss-colored self in Zauner’s responses. The first album under the Japanese Breakfast eponymous, Psychopomp, digs through the fresh mud of loss. Lyrics like, “The dog’s confused / She just paces around all day / She’s sniffing at your empty room,” dive into the immediate feelings of someone close now being gone. These raw emotions are cloaked in layers of sound — the soaring of guitar, the sweep of synth, and over it all, Zauner’s emotive vocals. Together, these elements build a place of remembrance and processing. This space of honoring and sorting through is furthered in 2017’s Soft Sounds From Another Planet. While Psychopomp was a fresh dealing of loss, Soft Sounds sifts through life following loss and the ways that grief continues. In our interview Zauner explained, “‘Psychopomp’ is so rooted in confusion and raw feeling. It was very much my subjective view of the world. This new album is more about taking a step back and looking at my life, and other people’s lives, and recognizing that I’m not alone in experiencing this.” Grief is a non-linear, mysterious, oftentimes alienating process which can leave one searching for meaning and methods of understanding. Said Zauner, “… When something very serious happens in your life that is difficult to explain the purpose of, you’re torn between these two camps. [There’s] an older generation that preaches this idea they’re in a better place and that there is some kind of heaven, and this other place which is completely nihilistic and cold. When my mom passed away, I was searching for something like that for myself, to help me through that experience.”
Mystery, otherworldliness, mysticism, and the unknown were tools that helped Zauner through this difficult time, and these elements are present on both albums. Psychopomp contains imagery of dreams and Jungian psychology, while Soft Sounds has the subtle theme of space and sci-fi coursing through it. The first song written for the album, “Machinist,” is about a woman in love with a robot, who then applies for the Mars One project when she realizes it’s a futile affection. The song was originally created for a media company (and eventually not used by them) before Psychopomp was about to be released. It was incorporated into the band’s performances from the early stages and brought into recording when the band began working on their second album. Said Zauner in our interview, “That’s how that album came to be. I tried to draw from the themes I had started a really long time ago; it inspired a very subtle concept that I’m happy with.” The mysterious elements of dreams and space point to the hazy, out-of-touch state that grief can leave you in. It can cause you to feel disconnected from the world around you and yourself. On trying to reconnect to herself following loss Zauner said, “It was kind of like coming down from space and [trying] not disassociate through my reality so much.” Grief interrupts. It disconnect and disrupts. It can change you irreversibly. As I listened to our interview, with California passing outside the small plane window beside me, I thought of a line I had scribbled in my journal a week after hearing the news about my loved one being seriously injured. “How can I be the same again? I have been wiped so raw that I have been made new.” Zauner demonstrated this sentiment perfectly saying, “There’s a lyric on [Soft Sounds], ‘It feels like my life is folded up in half.’ I think of my mother’s death as a marking point of who I was before and who I was after. If I look at pictures, I think to myself, ‘Oh, that was before my mom died.’ My whole life is folded in half around this moment. This album was about trying to reconnect to who I was before this terrible thing happened.”
“Create these challenges for yourself that are very small, that help you survive.�
Grief can stop your life and make you incapable of interacting in the ways you previously could. Well-meaning, kind people often do not know how to deal with it unless they too have undergone loss or a tragic event. I thought of the looks of pity I got from friends following the delivery of this news. The wanting to offer comforting advice but not knowing exactly what to say. Zauner told me, “I felt really uncomfortable talking about it with my close friends because none of them had lost parents before and didn’t know how to talk about it. They wanted so badly to be there for me that it kind of made me uncomfortable … I felt like it was easier on all of us if I didn’t talk about it. They didn’t have specific questions about it, they would just say, ‘If you need to talk …’ and then I felt this pressure to talk about it even though I didn’t know what to say.” So, what do you do when grief interrupts your life? When it makes it hard to interact with others? When you fear connecting to it because you sense its ability to overtake you? When you have to stay strong for others, for yourself? Where do you go next? You sift through. You process in small doses. You give yourself projects to pour yourself into. In Zauner’s words, you, “Create these challenges for yourself that are very small, that help you survive.” I thought of my simple to-do lists littering my desk at home. “Take a shower. Eat. Write a poem. Scan new comic. Call Nikki.” I too had instilled movement in my day to ensure that I did not fall into the looming fog which threatened to take over in any moments of stillness. Said Zauner, “I threw myself into work and tried to push forward day-to-day … I’ve become obsessed with working and making things and sharing them. It was a very healthy way of dealing with my situation. A lot of [Soft Sounds From Another Planet] definitely explores that feeling of making it through, and putting your head down in a way.” You find outlets and tools you can use to process. To be able to process in intentional ways and not overwhelm yourself. The song “The Body Is A Blade” goes in this: “Try your best to feel and receive / The body is a blade that cuts a path from day to day.” Amidst our discussion of healing outlets, Zauner and I talked about the performance of grief and constantly being placed back inside a traumatic experience in live shows and interviews. She told me that she finds healing in sharing with strangers beyond her albums and that, “When you’re doing these interviews with strangers, more than anyone else, they ask you these really poignant questions about this experience you had and your work. That felt therapeutic to me in some ways. It’s exhausting because you get asked a lot of the same questions, and you feel different ways about it on different days. Sometimes, doing interviews about it is enlightening because you start talking about it and figuring out how you really feel because so many people are poignantly asking you how you feel about it.” I brought up Phil Elverum’s “A Crow Looked At Me” to her, mentioning how both her and Elverum have gifted the public deeply personal experiences with someone close to them.
She said, “His writing is a lot more barren. It’s all there. I think if I had said certain things, it would be harder for me. Having a band, and having so much going on sonically, it’s easier to get wrapped up in the music that you aren’t thinking about these hard-hitting details. There are moments in the songs that are really moving to me and emotional, but it must be different for Phil Elverum because the songs are speech-oriented… I have a really hard time writing that way and not hiding behind anything and re-telling the story because it’s just a lot more painful that way… The process of putting it onto a record, producing it, arranging it, brings it to a different place.” Hearing her discuss her albums in comparison to Elverum’s reminded me that healing does not look the same for everyone. It is multi-faceted, shifting, and does not follow a rigid path. When talking about different forms of healing Zauner admitted, “I didn’t see a therapist for very long, and I just didn’t like it… It always seem like people push therapy as this ‘be all’ cure, and I think it can be for some people, but for other people it’s okay to look at other ways of healing. It was a very scary path for me to take when I decided not to go to therapy. A lot of people were very concerned for me, but I started taking Korean lessons, I started making an album, I wrote an essay. I was meditating on placing that time and money on something else that I thought would be more fulfilling… You’re not a bad person if you consider trying something else because it’s not working for you.” So, when grief looms and threatens to take over, you try out different outlets until you find ones that work for you, that make you want to keep going. You do what you can to not fall headfirst into the looming fog. Zauner shared how depression interrupted her life as a teenage and left her fearful of how she would process a traumatic loss in the future. She explained, “I was so afraid that when a bad thing happened to me-and for the longest time I thought losing your mother was the worst thing that could happen to anyone- that I was going to fall into another depression like that, where I was completely unable to work or get out of bed.” I found myself recognizing my own behavior and fears in this answer. How my life had been interrupted by debilitating depression in the past, how this made me afraid to connect to my emotions because I was afraid of the emotions again shutting down my life. She continued, “I knew that it would be very disappointing to do that to my family. I had just turned 25 and it was a really big time in my life to figure out what I wanted to do, and to be an adult, and take responsibility. I felt like I didn’t have the option to fall into depression.” Self-protective strategies can be powerful methods of taking care of yourself through difficult times. Sometimes, this can look like emotionally turning off. Or disconnecting. Or retreating, like a turtle hiding in its shell, into your own world of safety. While these urges to take care of ourselves are beautiful things, the difficulty lies in reconnecting to your emotions once it feels safe to do so. Zauner told me, “I had checked out emotionally and was trying to relearn how to feel.”
Keep up with Japanese Breakfast at @jbrekkie on Twitter and Instagram.
Partially in an attempt to reconnect to a time of hyper-emotionality the albums pull up past instances of frustration, nostalgia, and heartbreak. They untangle past painful, highly emotional experiences as a way of remembering how to feel. Said Zauner, “I just remember being a teenager, and even though it was a really difficult time in my life, and I was so depressed, I missed feeling so much. A lot of the songs are about past relationships, when I used to feel so much. These petty arguments with lovers used to mean so much, and now, looking back I wonder, ‘How did this ever bother me? How did this ever hurt me? I miss the days where [relationship issues] were a big deal and I was not just contemplating death all the time.” While the intention of pulling up these experiences is to reconnect to past emotions, they also act as testaments to Zauner’s resiliency. These albums do not paint Zauner as helpless. Yes, they deal with suffering. Yes, they are sorting through loss. But, not as something which destroyed her, but as something which happened and is being worked through. The albums twist like a conversation one has with oneself in the mirror, and while the bend into hard feelings of grief, of nostalgia, of pain, of heartbreak, they come out in places of clarity and empowerment. “I like songs to have a narrative arc, like short stories. ‘Road Head’ is a good example of that arc. Feeling like you were taken advantage of, or that you’ve lost something or embarrassed yourself, and then at the end it’s like you’re driving away with your middle finger in the air. Like, that person kept me down in a lot of ways and now I’m leaving… ’Till Death’ is another song like that. There’s a long list of terrible things that happen in your life coupled with the thought, “isn’t it nice that this person is there, standing by through all this shit?” These bending conversations that Zauner has with herself end in a strengthening of her resiliency and clarity. There are many layers here; many doors to open and find information behind. Zauner lays her grief out, but not to present it as something which destroyed her life. Zauner said, “What I wanted to convey with [Soft Sounds] was not, ‘Here is this individual, unfair thing that happened to you,’ but, ‘Here is this thing that happens in life and how do we move forward from it in a productive way? How do I try really hard at staying a good person who doesn’t get so negative and lives as this person who is so upset with the world for the rest of her life?” Amongst all of the loss, joy is continually celebrated and created on Soft Sounds. There is gratitude given to Zauner’s husband, who she married two weeks before her mom passed away. There is thankfulness given to the small worlds those who have undergone trauma build with each other. Said Zauner, “One thing that was interesting to me when I went through that experience was how the world just opens up to you. All of a sudden these people who have never really talked about the death in their lives are sharing this in a very natural way and connecting with you. It’s really eye-opening to see. Even going on tour, so many kids come up to me and share their experiences with loss, cancer, and illness. I’m not happy that it happens, but I’m glad we can share it together, and it’s not something we have to feel alone in.” What Zauner gifts us is not just her experiences with grief, but all of the ways she has worked through pain, in many different forms. These albums are not only dealing with what has been lost, but with what remains. The joy, the anger, the waves of pain, the found places of connection. All of this exists in this project. As all of this exists in the multi-layered, twisting, dense, nature of grief.
SPILLED INK SPILLED INK SPILLED INK SPILLED INK SPILLED INK SPILLED INK SPILLED INK SPILLED INK
The Grief Box by Kirsten Gould I shattered the stages until I knew I would never live without grief, a boulder in my pocket. The anger never lasts long enough. I know I own all that has happened, But I want to shout my horrors into the night. I want you to hear them, though, I know they will rip holes at the sides of you. I know you, too, have had too much to carry. I know you count yourself out of too many joys. That your insides are cavernous. Are darkling. This is me reaching. This is me carrying, too.
Skeleton Coast by Sasha Geffen These are the last good days.
We swim
through coagulating honey, shedding our hair into the deep. Lightning fissures the sky all night. The sky, once open, will never be open again. Algae climbs the lightning and coats the sky, fills the sky’s mouth with fur, chokes the sky into a silent hum we can feel in our bones but not our ears. Our hair burns green through the viscous sea. That’s what we get for drinking radium, drinking red bull, drinking four loko (original formula), drinking until our esophagus spilled over, until bright spears threaded our guts.
we’re all hole, sores on the skim of plant
life, photosynthesizing lightning in gasps. Ants are both solids and liquids, and also extinct. It’s just you and me and all the death we’ve ever seen, smoke and the absence of rain, parasites clustered on the sea, waveless and bleeding. Once we glowed like headlights snaring moths into our dive. No more.
Lose it till it’s lost. I love you. It’s lost.
Now
Waking in April by Christian Lyon My friends together singing I know you get lost sometimes, man hoarse, muddied on the banks of the Illinois River: conducting a Norse burial at dusk. They’re burning David’s cracked guitar, its browning and fizzing wood laminate a remembrance candle pressed to the river’s lips, or, that’s what they hoped we’d all be doing— I’m at home, sifting through tax exemption forms in the living room, tending to this or that and thinking about putting coffee on, and thinking how I’ll explain to them it’s late and I am too myself tonight, and thinking of the poet Bob Hicok. “Absence makes the heart: That’s it. Absence makes the heart.” I replay the days when teenagers scuffed through the suburban slush to heave pregnant liters of RC Cola and Mentos over the streetlights of Patterson Elementary’s parking lot, and remember that I missed many of those days, too. As heavy today as then, my absence is present, it’s in the room, on the couch with me while my passionate friends clear out, concluding their romp, their strumming of the smoldering guitar with a pine branch cropped from the river’s edge. Still, the laughter— absent today, we’ve plucked each other out from darkness before. Like a folk song, with heart that squares the world’s rhythms— you can be missing all through March and still make yourself yourself by the end of April.
Untitled by Kelsey Hello i like swimming and gatorade and mesh and sweat and sex i like looking through field guide books to see flowers i haven’t met yet i like when people show me series of pictures individually and narrate each one i like the smell of this shampoo that i never asked to use and maybe no one will find out i like remembering the girl who brought a kitten to gymnastics class and pretended it was an accident i like running my hands under hot water long after the soap has washed off i like mixing different bags of chips i’ve already opened into a party dish called ‘chip salad’ i like the idea of taking daily vitamins but lack the discipline to follow through on that routine i like that nail polish that changes from hot pink to dark pink when i go outside i like the fabric section of the craft store but what would i realistically use flame-printed fleece for? i’ve heard tauruses are materialistic and i am somatic and visceral and vulgar and tacky i think abstraction is violence and adjectives make things small so maybe it’s true
Borderlines by Jordan Bolay Parcels of land neatly gift-wrapped pieces of place. Countless hectares named and bundled twined with gravel to keep them from spilling out into each other. The borderline between prairie and frozen prairie peeping through blushing clouds wrapping the landscape in a wider sheet covering the crop until you get close enough to read the road signs.
“Mop up� by Ariel Baldwin this vessel is only made to pleasure others It is filled a pour over feels inevitable
Virgo; a storm by Keyana Sabbakhan the Virgo in me rearranges my room at least once a month. it tells me to organize, distract. I can control where my bed goes and my books full of stories. I can make a place for these things, when I feel like I cannot make a place for my body. sometimes, I don’t feel at home in my body. the Virgo in me is homesick, wanting to box up all its things and move into someone else, maybe they will feel better than I do. less turbulent and certainly more put together - this bed, it squeaks from cradling my storms each night and the books are dust-covered and unread because I’ve been too busy worrying about everything, too busy becoming a hurricane, a tornado, a tsunami. I cannot even decide which one I am. I am every storm, yet none of them. I am repressed rage and stifled sobs. I am a drought, a dehydrated desert dweller thirsting for the typhoon in my belly. sometimes, I don’t feel at home in my body. the Virgo in me lets the storm rip the roof off. it’s time to rearrange.
Spilled Milk by Natalie Alicia do you remember when you used to fall asleep with the tv on? your eyes got so dark and so heavy, I promised you I’d help you with them your oversized heart and tendency to fall apart had me gripping the edge of my seat I’ve thought about you fondly, speak to me softly “lately I’ve been feeling lost” forgive me no matter where you go, saying “I know I’m a phase you’ll outgrow” you’re not the first to say that to me your birthday cake, standing before you, larger than life reminding you that you will always be here, nothing happens for a reason, and everyone goes home alone
“Next Thursday” An overheard conversation at Le Colombe Aug 24th 2017 10:08 am Wicker Park Chicago Illinois by Matt Allen “When do you leave?” “Next Thursday”, they replied Sad, but happy A smiled cracked across what appeared to be a male’s face Who had no style - like it was style Which I liked, their enthusiasm As he trotted back to his table for two With their coffee a’brewed But what they both knew Was a somber feeling That next Thursday Would be a seat for one And not two
Voicemails by Lis Venus there’s certain voicemails i’ll never delete the thought of you still loving me helps me sleep now, all i want is no one not even you darling you did this on purpose didn’t you
Capacity by Terra Rene i want to sit in a field with my memories without shaking in the closeness of living them. to merge with my past exploitation, sitting quietly by the spring, drinking of the water without yielding to them. we will always be companions. i keep looking at them, dissecting them, and in this study adding weight to them. there are too many labors I’ll never reap, that have given me grace without sustenance, that have piled into mountains i no longer have the will or the energy to climb — not all at once. i want to lay in the grass with my traumas, rub calendula in them like medicine, so i may learn how to hold and embrace without bearing them. the bondage between a body and remembering is immediate, intergenerational, and passes through the barriers that we build to continue. though my walls of protection are crumbling, this body is not the end of me.
Hot Knives by Landon Kuhlmann I am in the North, trying to remove myself from my poetry. A knife for cleaning fish, gleaming in reflected sunlight, splitting the binding of every book, of every thought that floats like the dynamited fish blow up into a grand theme. I could pretend that these are handmade, these books I tear apart. In fact they were grown in some New York high-rise, the reeds divulged in an industrial suburb. I paste photos of my face onto the backs of all the books I hate the most. I saw Stephen King picking his nails doing the same thing. I am still in the North, colder now continuing to act upon an urge. I read about the objects in your Victorian room, the way the portrait artist walked in to stare upon the model, as demure as she is maudlin, insisting on the color of her cheeks. He chooses the objects that will be strewn about the portrait, the stairs that will not be foreground, painting the person, not the self. I am in the North painting myself out of the last supper, instead I am a table leg or pointed finger, skyward, no longer human, no longer myself. With enough hot knives and the practiced accuracy of a surgeon, I am removing myself from my poetry, trading clichĂŠs with Robert Frost, asking him about the weather, knowing fully the truth of his white woods: his own footprints remain until the snow comes again.
Goldfinch by Alyssa Gould there are waves that crash far from home marking their places in trenches and moats that surround a castle built of enamel rotted from your teeth as they splinter to lay track for the growth of threadbare feathers spun brilliant gold in an alchemical act you can’t make eye contact with on your best days when they fall, you remember what it is that makes the sound and those cracks begin to seep something thick from your jawline you can’t look at what’s left behind what they paint with it when your soul slips recklessly through gaping mouth
1. by Ariana Miller The years I spent scratching at the frosted glass begging for a glimpse inside your world a place I could never plainly see your mind was a closed door your heart a lost key eye pressed to the crack of light I never got a good look at you you never let me.
SENTIENCE DREAM OF THE PRIME NUMBER SERIES by Dan Smart At the end of the universe, there sits a huge mountain— quiescent, impassible, made of pure time; it cannot be climbed. But luckily, you, though savagely beautiful, are not corporeal. You are no agent; you certainly know nothing of the terrestrial, and your goals are not so provincial. You (alone, perhaps) are perfectly imperturbable; you are the limitless truth— manifesting itself as a brilliantly silvery rippling butterfly.
And you travel to infinity to visit its high, inconceivable peaks spectacularly regularly, simply to polish and sharpen the tips of your wings on them.
i don't know who i am by Evan Fusco it’s hard to be queer, when hair spurts out your face so goddamn quickly that you can’t be bothered to shave often enough to keep it off your face. it’s even harder when your identity won’t stand still adopting the gait and manner of speaking from any one who dare get close to you. every time the marlboro man crawls across my heaving chest, i feel the anxiety of masculinity and femininity coursing through my veins at a rate the nicotine can’t even calm down to rangle. i try to exist outside of my identity on occasions, but it just confused how i exist. i’m now so close to losing touch, it’s kind of like a windstorm, except it’s fast enough to produce a vacuum. all self is sucked out of me. all me, no self. you lose time, no fun at all; bedtime varies based on intake, no fun at all; four hour tv clips, i forgot to take a piss, no fun at all; i’m being short i think, couldn’t tell or i couldn’t help, no fun at all; i still do not know who i am, definitely not an fun or any self. imagine if you talked to your mother with that tone. you know you shouldn’t, but for the love of god she’s suffocating you, but still you don’t want to.
it all hurts a lot though. jump out of this phone conversation, on to the moving train, barreling down towards the west. now you’re gone, but you’ve fallen off in the midwest, far enough. now no one back home will know i do not know who the hell i am. now i’m here lost in whiskey bathhouses, smokey living rooms, cocaine wonderlands, late nights snack food buffets, three thirty racks of pbr towers, all connecting the one constant, i forgot how to love. i’m such a glorified asshole, that i am too afraid of other people’s opinions to be anything but too nice. i’ve ceased worrying about whether i’m good, other people will tell me that. i figure it’s because i can’t love myself that i can’t find myself. it’s hard to know who you are, when who others see is distorted by the myriad of ways you present yourself. i don’t know i guess it’s just hard to be queer. it’s hard to have no sense of self. it’s hard to know what good means anymore. it’s hard to know who i am.
Valentine's Day by Nick Rossi You stay curled undercover while I’m all blinking eyes and waking limbs tingling in the chill of the morning light and you don’t even stir as I pull on a pair of sweatpants and tuck the cuffs into sneakers so I don’t have to sit on the edge of the bed to put socks on and disturb your cherubic sleep. I brew a pot of coffee and pour half out for myself to drink as I complete my routine of Saturday tasks tedious and time-consuming before you wake up and ask if I want to shower first but instead of doing laundry I’m looking out the back door of my apartment thinking about the time we ran around the pond laughing loudly until my mom picked us up and the time we sat on the tennis court and you cried because I said I didn’t think I loved you anymore because I didn’t think I loved myself anymore and the time we sat in the woods next to the church off Route 30 and called it our “secret spot” even though we could see and hear the passing traffic and the night we held each other and wept after you made the phone call and found out it was true
but mostly I’m thinking about all the time we’ve spent together just being together when I hear you call my name and I peek around the corner to look down the hall as you lean your head back over the foot of the bed so that your hair touches the carpet below and I’m excited to tell you that I left the second half of the pot for you.