Ephemera Newsletter Iss Dec.3+4
(Creativity and Motivation Weekly)
Welcome to the Ephemera Newsletter, Uo (Samoan for “friends”)
Another and final thank you to all who submitted for our December issues and especially to our finalist, Rachel Beachy! You can review her poems altogether once they publish as well as artist statement and bio on this dedicated post on our Substack page. Thanks, thanks, thanks!
And here are some reminders:
Ephemera December is sponsored by: Volume 0
From Volume 0’s website:
“We like stories offbeat and fun in a slightly naughty way. So expect bad behavior, adult themes and a bit of menace. You might not like all of these stories. But we certainly don’t think you’ll be bored.”
We respect entrepreneurial spirit in arts & letters and bid you take a look at this new magazine in print comprised entirely of fiction. They’re publishing edgy work packaged in shorter formats. We’ve read several stories from their latest issue and were intrigued! Check out Volume 0 from Book of the Month!
In Brief…this week’s features:
Thoughts on Reggie Burrows Hodges faceless peoples in action
Listening to Broken Social Scene and their great low-key hit, “Sweetest Kill”
September’s poet, Rachel Beachy’s final two poems, “The Most Human Color” and “These Years, These Days”
Our weekly lists:
3 magazines with open calls
3 awards/prizes
3 recent job listings for editors and writers.
Interesante: An article about drawing out maps for ideas and clear thinking.
Book Recs, bonus content, and our mini-essays to start!
Last Week’s Issue.
Merci. Danke. Kiitos. 고마워 Go-ma-wo. Cảm ơn. Xiè xiè.
Ephemera
Dear Readers,
The earth wobbles top-like around our closest star in, perhaps, curved space-time yet another revolution. Intrepid, our little blue marble doomed to engulfment some mature number of years in the future. We bid you enjoy the celebration and transition! We also bid you, considering many of us will be seeking parties of various sorts, to be around peers and friends, to consider their artist politics, strategies, and ideals. What about understanding artist friends, people in your locale, one or two of them, finding out what how they speak of themselves and their aims as well as evaluating what you find compelling about their work? What about someone regional? Then apply the same formula to a nationally or internationally known artist or writer. Ode to letter-writing! But first and foremost, think on relationships. Think on working alongside someone, at least on occasion if not regularly. It’s difficult. For sure. Writers may behave like pack animals at conferences, but we’re cats outside of constructed events. We’re difficult to bring into a shared pattern of behavior where cooperation and nearness are concerned, much less collaboration. But there are some decided intrigues if not also benefits from working alongside, adjacent to, or with other creatives. Maybe not for a whole shared project in the way of musicians—we can’t ever really aspire to the level of cooperation manifest in bands—but we can integrate with regard to abstraction, and intent, and plain old camaraderie; writing amongst people in a social setting, a la coffee shops, gets us close to where we want to occasionally be.
“Understanding someone artistically is one of the most powerful things that you can be involved in.”
—Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene in Pitchfork
In the new year, we’re going to be seeking out collaboration and proximity. Maybe we’ll invite someone or a few folks to share our office. Maybe we’ll schedule some writing time at the coffee shop to be working nearby—a shoulder to slap when we’ve done something fantastic or an ear to gripe to when we’ve hit a block. In solidarity, we will reciprocate our limbs and appendages for use by our fellow creatives. We might begin the sessions talking about artistic aims and ambitions, and conclude with a summary of where we went, a discussion on how we got to flow. We want to brain storm. We want to probe and know. We don’t want to pillage particular insights. We want to share general philosophies. In that sense, perhaps ideal work-partners are doing things in different genre verticals, don’t have the same style or aesthetic ambitions. Writing is tricky like that. Too much symbiosis in project and style can lead to in-exquisite borrowing, which leads to resentment and worse, potentially. But we do want to try and know our friends and peers. For their sake. For our development. For the betterment of community. Become powerful unto each other!
Faafetai
(Gratitude)
Poetry by Rachel Beachy
The Most Human Color How easy it is to lose track of each other in this life and yet we only just met and when I so much as walk across the room away from her she cries like I might never come back I’m telling you her face turns blue.
Music: Broken Social Scene
The band’s name sort of makes us introspect…but that’s not what we’re here to look at this final issue of December. Broken Social Scene comes out of Toronto, Canada, and has involved various musicians over the years, with folks included for recording but sometimes not on tours as it goes by scheduling. Originating members, Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, formed the concept in 1999 and have been involved with all of the five subsequent records., two of which have won Juno awards for alternative album of the year in Canada. BSS is one of those larger bands whose members and participants over time included a dozen or more different musicians—it’s almost a biblical-sized family tree when you read the bands history, including several who’s who musicians from the same scene. Their band name is apropos in that sense.
“Sweetest Kill” has been a long time favorite of ours, making our playlists and car ride selections on many occasion, and we’re sort of wondering why that is beyond the simple answer of “we like it.” Time and tempo, for one, offer us a contemplative pace over which the alt-rock-folksy vocals croon perfectly if also oddly and eerily. For a lament, the drums and bass are interestingly more prominent than one might expect. And maybe here we’re getting into some of what makes this track intriguing as well as poignant. BSS is great at defamiliarizing the rock-pop-alt constructs with unique elements that sound familiar at the same time they operate to deliver intrigue, novelty, a unique sound or perspective. Yet, the song is rather simple.
“We’re trying to create that hug of thunder. That sound. That embrace amongst the chaos. Touch is as fucking connected as you can get. You’re supposed to fucking talk to someone and put your hand on their shoulder and look into their eyes. If you’re staring at a screen, how do you have that? Where does that moment come into play? At the end of the day, you want to embrace people. A hug is a serious embracement.”
—Kevin Drew in Pitchfork
Oddity mixed well with some classic genre packaging can really work, particularly when the voice is the main selling point. We should take note of how to pull off these sorts of “tricks” let’s call them for the time being. They are techniques or strategies that any can and perhaps ought to learn. While this track is a lament of sorts, we should take the larger context of the album title, which centers all of the tracks within it as types of apology. Sorry sorry. The album is called Forgiveness Rock Record. Apologies and forgiveness are linked and tend to be complicated in relation to each other. “Sweetest Kill” delivers on the aforementioned relations. which leads us to point out form bending to serve function for us writers. Coupled with forgiveness and apology is the hug. We enjoy the quote from band co-founder Kevin Drew above. The act is easy — arms out, pull close, wait a beat, release — but hugs can be complex on either end. Maybe we’re trying to encourage complexity, trying to promote literary embracement.
Writers Submit: 3 Magazines
Poets Reading the News is a magazine focused on poets' responses to major and minor news headlines with a focus on cultural equity and headlines. They are based in San Francisco and publish work from around the world. DEADLINE ROLLING
The digital and print annual magazine is reading poetry and prose for the upcoming edition about “Design & Devotion.” The journal is published by Vassar College in New York and has been published since 2016. DEADLINE JANUARY 17
Little Patuxent Review is a journal of literature publishing all genres with an arts component. Based in Columbia, Maryland, the magazine is named after one of three tributaries and publishes both new and established writers. DEADLINE MARCH 1
Weekly Artist: Reggie Burrows Hodges
Born in Compton and now residing in Maine, Reggie Burrows Hodges was a bassist first, a musician. He only just began exhibiting around 2017, which speaks to his ingenuity and artistic vision. We love folks who crossover in the arts; the dual lives, so to speak, offer consumers of art ideas and techniques formed by minds excelling in multidisciplinary thinking. Before turning to painting, Hodges studied theatre and film, and took jobs in NYC in media and television while also co-owning a recording studio. He wrote music, played bass, and sang for his reggae band Trumystic. This is our personal take, but you might be able to read “music” into his paintings; perhaps in the way that he creates a general memory with specific feeling, leaving out particularity in his subjects as well as significant environmental detail in favor of emotions, or memory, or a song-like understanding of the past. Of course, music can be particular, but it very often sways to the side of the arch in order to draw in the listener.
We like this idea of “translating the essence” of things. Writers must master this process of navigating the particular to the essence of things and back again from the general to the specific, so it’s useful for us to view art and music that does this; we need intuitive understanding as well as that of the academic sort. Hodges’ memories, the paintings he often bases on experiences of his youth, the places and people and actions contained therein and thereby, compel us in many similar ways to impressionist works of the greats. Upon first look, we are drawn in by Hodges’ color application. Interestingly, he begins by painting his raw canvas black. After, his images and scenes emerge from that unity of darkness.
“My practice has been inspired by the study of moments and translating the essence of them through colour, figuration, abstraction, and various techniques of mark making.”
—Reggie Burrows Hodges in phillips.com
Conspicuous is the lack of defining features for his subjects, black folk. When reading about Hodges’ work, it’s an easy reach to wonder if the facelessness is a commentary on the lives of black people in American culture…and it likely is. But it’s more complex than that. The color tells us these are often joyous, fully-lived moments. These people are often in action or acting tenderly or, we imagine, are sitting in quiet repose with a contemplative look, which is to say we don’t seem to read politics in the people. The politics is that they feel real, feel as though they are lived experiences, and their facelessness might actually be an entry point for anyone to identify with them, see the world as they see it, see Hodges’ memories through their lack of eyes but fully through their presence. Much like a lot of good work, we enjoy the contraindications. We enjoy feeling connected, transported through these subjects into their midst, first and foremost, before we think much of anything else.
Poetry by Rachel Beachy
These Years, These Days
How will I explain these years of my life?
The years gone by in days like this –
following her around the park
keeping mulch out of her mouth
and when she gets tired
carrying her back to the car
or else to sit on a bench
where she rests her head on my shoulder
and points out all the birds
and planes
How will I explain?
Only to say that
years from now
I will be walking in this park
and just the sight of this bench
will make me ache.
Interesante: Concept Maps
From: jarango.com
— (5 min read / 8 study)
Concept maps are handy when understanding complex, dynamic ideas, systems, and situations. They give you ways to communicate models. Your first map will likely be wrong, but it will concretize your models so other people can correct them. You then make another map, and then another, and gradually get closer to the truth.
A short article with diagrams and instructions on how to draw concept maps. We found this interesting and applicable to writers, particularly those endeavoring into something complex, although even simple forms and or stories can benefit from concept maps. We can draw these to help ourselves understand what we mean, what we aim to say. We can draw these to help with characterization and motivation. We can draw to test logic or instruct ourselves on our own reasoning. Definitely if you are an outliner and sketch-maker, this will be helpful. —Read the Full Piece
Prizes/Awards/Stipends Winter
Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature awards $1,000 to a full-length book in any genre that deals with the subject of music. The award memorializes the publisher’s late brother. $1k + Pub. + 53 Copies. $25 fee. DEADLINE JANUARY 31
Joe Gouveia Poetry Contest awards $1,000 and publication to a single poem online. The award is in its 11th year and hosted by Cape Cod radio station WOMR in honor of their poet laureate. $1k + Pub. $15 fee. DEADLINE JANUARY 15
The Screw Turn Flash Prize Awards $1,000 and publication online and in print in The Ghost Story magazine. Work should be about supernatural themes or elements. Runners-up also receive payment. $1k + Pub. $15 Fee. DEADLINE JANUARY 31
Bookstore: Guides, Gifts & Classics
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This Week — We like Miscellany and Ephemera. Enter, The Most Interesting Book in the World:
Last Week: James by Percival Everett:
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~~~Tofa~~~
(Goodbye)
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