Dead Letters
On movable type and not waiting to make art.
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I am sitting in a pink room thinking about how deep a name runs. Correction: the room is white, the sky at dusk outside the windows is pink, violently so, like it knows what we have done in the world.
I have been collecting little baggies of movable lead type in thrift stores. Orphaned and considered worthless, they are cheap. I am confessing to a dream of printing a whole book by letterpress one day—everyone says it will take too long, be too slow, the skills are useless and antiquated in this age of hi-tech—and so I’ve begun another long slow process in a life of long, slow processes. I like how the type feels in my hand, each letter long and thin, heavy, like the column of it can pierce through any flimsy old word with its meaning and heft. Like it might stand for something other than itself. Holding a handful of leaden letters, I think: we had all this, and we blinked?
I’ve just come back from the east coast where I visited family in upstate New York’s Northcountry. Most label it ‘North Country,’ two words, but this is not how it’s said, nor how it’s thought. It's where I grew up, although I no longer belong there. I used my lead type for the first time to print the cover of a zine—really, an essay—that I printed at my friend Hope Amico’s home and surreptitiously left copies in co-ops and grocery stores, doctor’s offices and local history museums. My childhood friend drove me around town in a snowstorm so I could deposit some in Little Free Libraries and dilute just slightly their overwhelmingly Christian and asinine contents. I briefly kept a free library in front of our home in Portland a few years ago. I grew depressed by how quickly it became stuffed with Bibles and tracts from Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The wobbly, slightly misprinted title was made by pressing the type into a kneaded eraser, painting its face with ink, and pressing down. Of course, this is an unrepeatable process, so I only did it once and made digital copies. But even this printing without a press felt good. Maybe eventually it’ll live somewhere on my website, but for now it’s analog-only.
As much as I love it, there’s something stuffy about letterpress that’s too neat and tidy. And also something hollow and twee about the posters and bespoke wedding invitations done by most contemporary shops. They use such fine big letters to say so little, on such thick paper. I don’t mind my wobbly lines and splotches of ink. It gets the point across on multiple levels: the words are there, and I can’t be bothered to wait until my skills or my tools are complete to say what I need to say. I need to say it now, and find the balance between art and material that allows me to do so.
On Friday, February 6, I’ll be in conversation with Megan Milks at Always Here Bookstore at 6:30pm in Portland in support of Megan’s new book, Mega Milk (masks required, as they always are at Always Here!) No, that’s not a typo. It’s the best book of essays I’ve read in a long time, and it covers milk as cipher for race purity, gender anxiety, heteronormative American families, cow-animal relationships, trans breastfeeding, and so much more. And if you can’t make it, I’ll be recording and transcribing our conversation to publish on smoke and mold, like we did with Jzl’s interview. I hope to do more of this.
(FYI: I hold the best Q&As. It is maybe the one thing I am most confident about doing, shining the spotlight on someone else, engaging deeply with their work and encouraging them to think and speak freely about a range of interesting topics. Lucky me! Lucky you!)
Speaking of which, smoke and mold is currently looking for more volunteer readers, as well as a Managing Editor. I’m so proud of everything smoke and mold has done, and the people who make it run, and the next (and last) 5 years of our existence hold a lot of exciting possibilities. But I need to step back from the day-to-day running of the journal. I have too many other plates in the air with my own work and aforementioned printing experiments and residency planning that things are liable to fall through the cracks. And smoke and mold deserves better than that. I’ll still be involved, especially in editor orientation, but I’m writing this here in the hopes that it will force me to give up a little bit of control. smoke and mold is run on consensus, yes, but there is still a lot of behind the scenes lever-pulling that I end up doing. If you wanna pull some levers and get some experience in running a journal with fun people, or you know someone who does, please pass the posting along to them. (Our next issue out in March is trans eco horror, so there literally could not be a more fun time to join us.)
Having officially stepped away from Instagram at the beginning of the year, I haven’t had a chance to trumpet the issue of Salon Zine that I am guest editing, and which is now open for submissions. The theme is ENTROPY, and you have until April 1 to send in your work for me to read. I hope you will! Some questions from the call (scroll to bottom) which I wrote:
Why does entropy strike fear into the hearts of some and inspire others? What is the relationship between art and literature and entropy under advanced capitalism? What entropic strategies support survival and creation? What might an entropic form look like, sound like, or feel like? How might increased entropy reshape our interpersonal relationships, including our relationships to the non-human?
Finally, my husband, has been writing some absolute bangers of protest songs as Gregory James McKillop (they have several performance personas, naturally.) They’ll be releasing an EP soon, but their main focus has been on performing live and organizing and getting their MSW, so my job is to make sure you know about it. Great songs like the below to listen to on your way to your next protest/sit-in/ICE watch and more!
I hate saying “stay safe.” Stay angry and take care of yourselves. <3
I have your zines in my car looking for places to put them. Your list gave me some ideas. What about libraries...not little outdoor ones that, as you said, get stuffed with bibles, etc.