Ephemera Newsletter Iss July.1
(Creativity and Motivation Weekly)
Welcome to the Ephemera Newsletter free edition, Frënn! (Luxembourghish for “friends”)
Thank you to all who submitted to poetry in May for our July issues and especially to our finalist, Jennifer Gauthier who will be the poet for the month of July! You can review her poems altogether once they publish as well as her artist statement and bio on this dedicated post on our Substack page. We thank you for checking out Jennifer’s Gauthier work.
On to our standard content matters: Won’t you please check out last month’s free issue if you missed it.
And here are some reminders:
Monthly Invite to Submit: Submissions are in for the August issues. We look forward to reading! We are open for September now. July 31 is the deadline. If you are a paid subscriber to Ephemera, you can submit to poetry @ Ephemera for free as a membership perk! (We email you a secret link at the end of your second consecutive paid month and every month thereafter for as long as you are a paid subscriber). Free subscribers and anyone else can submit, too, with the reading fee and can submit up to 10 poems. Paying the reading fee will grant you 1-month paid access to Ephemera’s full letter. Learn more or:
In Brief…this week’s features:
Thoughts on British video artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen’s installation at DIA Beacon, Bass (2024)—light and sound immersion in the creepy DIA Beacon basement.
Listening to Vampire Weekend’s upbeat, zippy-skittery track, “Run.”
July’s poet, Jennifer Gauthier first of four poems, “Portrait of me as a fox in the dunes.”
Our weekly lists:
3 magazines with open calls
3 awards/prizes
3 recent job listings for editors and writers.
More ephemera: check out our Interesante Section, where we present an article or site or interesting bit of info—sometimes a study, sometimes a video, sometimes an interactive site, sometimes an experiment.
In this issue, we look into the benefits of running on brain health…and maybe creativity.
Book Recs, bonus content, and our mini-essays to start!
Last Month’s Free Issue.
Ephemera’s Good Contrivance Residency
We’ve teamed up with Good Contrivance Farm for a 3rd time! We’re sponsoring up to two (2) writers each for a 1-week stay and a travel stipend to the Good Contrivance Farm Residency in Maryland.
1 and up to 2 applicants will be chosen after submissions close
1-week on the farm per person (valued at ~$900)
$200 stipend
Total Value: $1100
$30 application fee (for early applicants before July 31) $40 thereafter
or
Merci. Danke. Kiitos. 고마워 Go-ma-wo. Cảm ơn. Xiè xiè.
Ephemera
Dear Readers,
July has been tough. We’ve been running and running. Every moment we had to sit and write has gone terribly awry. Whatever it is or was we hope it’s passed. Normally, when we feel this need to move, when sedentary activities, even our creative work, feel stifling, the act of sitting alone suddenly becoming a type of prison. In the past we’ve advocated for this month—and August too—as adventure periods. Times where we ought to move about. See our people. Meet new folks. Have directed experiences and even random spontaneous jaunts all the while taking notes and following up with our thoughts and insights one way or another. Maybe we jumped the gun by doing much of this in May and June. It was a little soon, but opportunity was there when it was there. July is so compellingly itinerant. So, here we find ourselves twenty days in to the month with no first issue, though it’s been churning and churning beneath the surface. We’ve taken notes and written drafts for the content of 3-4 issues; but nothing finished! Nothing realized so it occurred that maybe we should run…
While forefronted now, the idea of running didn’t occur to us as a thing to do back in May and June—it was just an impulse, a prime directive, an easily actionable want. We hope everyone will take a week or a series of weekends or an even longer period to connect with the civilized world and with the natural world consecutively and in tandem. Running, we trained out way up the Hudson River to Beacon, NY one morning, a Sunday. Beacon is expensive these days, the museum included. You can offset the price in advance by applying on line for discounts or a waiver if need be. We went through the museum, backwards from the route we usually like to take, and concluded the visit by descending the stairs to the basement where DIA has been hitting home runs with their installations. Not knowing what to expect—surprises can yield more authentic experiences—we entered the huge basement latticed with stone pillars bathed in blood red lighting from 60 installed panels on the ceiling spanning the whole room between 78 concrete columns—maybe 200 feet long and maybe half that wide—and an eerie silence from the guests while a couple or maybe up to four speakers played humming bass sounds, a type of music. It was deeply moving.
“My primary interest is in how you tell stories, how you engage the audience, how you bring them in. It’s like having two people in a bar telling you the same story. One person bores you to tears. The other one has you on the edge of your seat. I would like to be the one that has you on the edge of your seat.”
—Steve McQeen, in alainelkanninterviews.com
Running…after a few steps into the room (see below for photos and more analysis) it occurred to us that, despite the trepidation with which other folks stood or crept, we should run; really, it was an impulse. So we took off. From beam to beam. One length. One width. Sprint stop sprint. Everything was in shadows and shadowless (by design). The music contributed to a feeling of claustrophobia and something impending—not doom or death, but an expectation that might be unfathomable. We ran some more. And then, the color changed. The impulse faded. We stayed longer and interacted in new ways. Then, we left. Broke into the daylight. It’s been a few weeks now, and we recommend the exhibition and the museum enthusiastically. The whole experience. Run there if you can. Run while there. Run away and let your mind run wild.
Dankbarkeet!
(Gratitude)
Poetry by Jennifer Gauthier
Portrait of me as a fox in the dunes Mid-stride black-stockinged legs outstretched The setting sun’s rays gild my russet flank A breeze riffles the tansy leaves as waves crash behind me Heart-racing I raise my snout to catch a whiff of something carried on the sea air There – a sand crab or discarded fish head for supper If I can reach the beach unseen.
Music: Vampire Weekend
It struck us that we happened to have been running these past couple of weeks, the running for health fast-pacedness as well as the around variety as well as from—from our duties, from duty to duty, from being alone with ourselves, from work that feels taxing, from our writing (embarrassingly), from every day things. To and toward what, we cannot say. The idea is two-fold: to be moving and to flee from stickiness. See above, but July does this to us—it’s gotta be itinerant blood (will we ever feel settled, in that case?).
Which brings us to this week’s music selection, Vampire Weekend’s fun, itinerant, boppy and yet not-as-short-as-you-might-think under-the-radar track “Run.” Quite literally, when the itchy urge to load up the caravan and drive strikes us, this is one of the songs that either comes to mind in the way of contemporary people applying soundtracks to their life or even as the moving catalyst itself—“It struck me that the two of us could run…” and then our blood is vivified, legs straining to strain, heart preemptively aflutter and we’re looking up destinations 5 to 10 hours away trying to remember if the tank is filled, which, in a linked way to giving a mouse a cookie, has us filling luggage, which then, remembering remote work is supposed to be sexy, inclines us to think further afield: two days in the car? a week to Montana? do we know anyone who’s driven to Mexico—real people, dear, not the wacky Canadians you met one time in Europe when you were 20-somethings gallivanting around before finals during study abroad who claimed to be renting a van to drive from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and do we want to come with—and, by George, we have passports, let’s find the cheapest flight to…
You see? This is July. This is this song.
About these darlings of the aughts, there’s so much written it doesn’t seem terribly useful to go into their band history and such (maybe that’s more running on our part).
“It struck me that the two of us could run”
—Vampire Weekend
Besides, doesn’t this song rile you up? It feels like a great time to be listening, to be filling our heads with absurd notions of moving. The catchy guitar at the beginning coloring circles in our head, a sort of trance-inducing opening, that gets you unraveled for the Islandy (but not quite) percussion, just light enough not to be bludgeoning, it lets you feel what you want, which, if you’re romantic in any way, has you immediately up for something. But quickly your attention to the lovely little voice telling you the morning hurts and we live to work. The genius in this song lies therein…followed by the quick narrative trick of making the song reporting of a conversation. Now we’re with a partner who says, “There’s no where else to go.” A challenge—a challenge met. Now we’re hooked. After the mesmerizing line quoted above, accompanied by a welling up of the music as the chords move higher, we’re delivered this epiphanic triumphant realization heralded by the sudden appearance of horns. Deliverance. We’re there.
Listen a bit louder than you’d expect to want or to have to. The horn moment should get you. We could swear we’ve been bopping around because of this silly track. It’s young people talking about shirking duty and having, come to think of it, the means to do it, at least for a while, due to their lack of responsibility and someone’s “fund.” What’s to notice is the use of the epiphanic. The progression in several turns from slow to ecstatic and back again. We can move our readers in these ways. We can write magically like song lyrics. We can get at our readers susceptible and yet suppressed urges with tone and tempo and sound. And we can make them feel deeply, even if the means by which we do it are light, pop in a way, kitsch, or what have you, and they’ll love it and us, particularly if accompanying that ease are interesting, well-groomed techniques. Mastery of the art allows for flexing in erudite and silly contexts, the merging of the two, if you will. If you can, run.
VW’s homepage
Writers Submit: 3 Magazines
The online magazine has published some very well known and new poets, alongside some respected photographers and artists. They are looking for poetry. Submissions are free. DEADLINE AUGUST 1
The online magazine features some great writing for having just a few issues. They are reading in all genres for their 4th edition and they also publish translations. Content appears on their interesting and stylized website. DEADLINE AUGUST 23
An annual print and online magazine from Santa Fe Community College, located in New Mexico. The magazine publishes new and established writers and is seeking fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. DEADLINE NOVEMBER 14
Weekly Artist: Steve McQueen
Run to DIA Beacon. McQueen’s work is moving. It moves and you move with it. But it moves you to feeling almost immediately. That’s a type of brilliance. And it does so without you having to know anything about it. As mentioned, we were agnostic entering the basement installation space; we hadn’t read anything. If you read above, you’ll see, sort of, or raw reaction to the encountering the light sequence during its red phase producing in us an anxiety manifest as impulse to run. As it turns out, and we’re putting this at the top of the section because it contains a type of spoiler—if you want a clean experience, then don’t read about it further—the installation comes from McQueen thinking about the Middle Passage, African slaves across the ocean, also a mediation on being in limbo (apropos). The music consists of myriad bass instruments played by a quintet of soloists with no script as far as we know yet recorded live in the basement across 189 minutes, which seems to play on loop while the light cycles through several main colors and multiple hues within each color gradient over 45 minutes or more (we left before it returned to the deep red). As we came to know, the bass sounds actually crescendo and grow louder and maybe even spookier during the red sequence.
And now some about McQueen, who was nominated for best director for his film 12 Years A Slave, and who won the award for Best Picture for that same feature. After a childhood raised in London’s West End by two Caribbean immigrant parents—one that saw him sort of relegated by his school to doing manual labor—McQueen studied painting at London's Chelsea College of Art and Design. He then went on for a film degree at Goldsmiths College where he became interested in shorts and in video installation. He had a break out film at Cannes in 2008 with a feature length about the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike. Before then, he’d created nearly a dozen short artistic and concept films. His career in film is expansive in terms of subject matter. His biography makes for an interesting read, but we tend not to see too much in the way of installation art, despite his art school bona fides and installations at the Tate. Perhaps he’s coming into his own in a sense as he ages—he has another installation opening at DIA Chelsea later this summer.
Hearing him speak tends to fill in his story better than what we’ve been able to read. Below, take a listen to McQueen’s interview with PBS. It’s a well-crafted piece and includes footage from the installation and McQueen’s previous work interspliced by footage with the artist discussing his thinking on identity, the installation, and how individuals might come to interact with the experience he’s created. His thinking is interesting and his ideas and philosophy are impressive. It’s worth the time.
“And you are a storyteller?
Yes, I’m undeniably a storyteller. My primary interest is in how you tell stories, how you engage the audience, how you bring them in. It’s like having two people in a bar telling you the same story. One person bores you to tears. The other one has you on the edge of your seat. I would like to be the one that has you on the edge of your seat.”
―Steve McQueen in alainelkanninterviews.com
We’re still obsessing over our experience in the DIA Beacon basement washed with the light and sound as imagined by McQueen. We didn’t know at the time, but the music playing was composed by a quintet of Afro-diasporic musicians playing acoustic and electric instruments, including a traditional ngoni, which is a lute or banjo-like instrument from West Africa. As McQueen discusses in the interview below, some of the inspiration for the installation comes from the Middle Passage. The idea might be the humming and beats of being captive below deck accompanied by small amounts of changeling light. Isolation. Being in limbo. And the room, unadorned beyond the lights and sound, does convey a sense of between space through the penumbral lighting and adjoining with the preexisting structure of the building. It’s interactive. While the inspiration for the work is important to know on one level, McQueen understands and invites interpretation by the individual. That’s what happens with installations. They cede their meaning to the mind of whomever is present to make of it a meaning unto themselves.
We ran for the red. We walked for the pink transitioning to blue whereby we set in the center, then the corner. Green or orange, we spoke with a staffer to gain insight into how people were interacting with the space. No one had tried fast movement or dancing—which we also tried. These types of ephemeral art experiences deserve a longer life than what’s practicable. The best of them allow a distinctly unique lane of access for the individual into their own mind—feelings and memories and beyond.
Listening to McQueen speak, it becomes apparent that it really is our job as creatives to consider the experience beyond simply our ambition or impulse to create something as true to our authentic self and formulation as we can. Particularly writing. We’re taking note of light, how the slow or quick transitioning of it can truly affect us beyond mood, though mood is a strong starting point—sometimes the only point. Sound too. Sound in our word choice and meter. Perhaps quoted sounds as well—music or described ambient noise. We can treat a poem or a story or chapter like an installation and build a unique and focused experience that lets our readers wander around in it and with themselves. We can prime them to allow their imaginations to run wild with our input, and that’s a success. Particularly because there’s many types of running—red lighted escapes or jaunty ocean-lit getaways. We should run with whatever it is that compels us.
Interesante: Running and Brain Health
From: ctvnews.ca
— (5 min read/10 min study)
Exercising as you age can help maintain memory and fight cognitive decline, according to a new study.
Maybe we’re being cute, but we collect these articles that pertain, in one way or another, to writing and creativity, and felt like now was a good time for this one given today’s leit motif of sorts. Running is good for the mind, cognitively in the sense of staving off damage and deterioration, and, we might add, for thinking and thought generation. This article delves into a recent study that supports the exercise and what we’ve sort of thought all along watching all those power runners do marathons and races on the weekends while over-achieving during the week. —Review the site.
Prizes/Awards/Stipends Winter ‘24
Radcliffe Institute Fellowship grants $78,000 & residency at Harvard for applicants with work in the interest areas of law & education, climate, & legacies of slavery. 50 fellowships a year. $78k + residency. Free. DEADLINE SEPTEMBER 12
The Sewanee Review Contests awards $1,000 and publication each for short Fiction, Poetry, & NF. A fantastic judge for each category & a magazine w/ a great reputation. All entrants receive a subscription. $1k + Pub. $30 Fee. DEADLINE JULY 31
Narrative Magazine Spring Story Contest awards $2,500, $1,000, $500 respectively to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places and publication for a short story or narrative nf. Ten runners up receive $100. $2.5k + runners up + Pub. $27 Fee. DEADLINE JULY 31
EPHEMERA’S RESIDENCY:
Good Contrivance Farm
We’ve teamed up with Good Contrivance Farm for a 3rd time! We’re sponsoring up to two (2) writers each for a 1-week stay and a travel stipend to the Good Contrivance Farm Residency in Maryland.
1 and up to 2 applicants will be chosen after submissions close
1-week on the farm per person (valued at ~$900)
$200 stipend
Total Value: $1100
$30 application fee (for early applicants before July 31) $40 thereafter
or
Bookstore: Guides, Gifts & Classics
Please consider supporting our letter and literature by buying books. It helps us and others! Bookstore via Bookshop.
Rereading Maggie Nelson’s Bluets:
On Writers and their retreats:
»»»Remember last week’s letter has urgent deadlines!«««
Thank you for subscribing to Ephemera. We appreciate your support very much! It means a lot to have you as a reader and paid subscriber. We look forward to growing the letter and bringing you new content and conversation along side our staples. At present, we’re considering creating a book volume containing a large part of our content, including artwork and essays. We’re also considering other projects, such as a monthly podcast, mini-videos, and a Q&A with our editors. Let us know if you have any ideas on how we can improve.
~~~Äddi~~~
(Goodbye)
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**Select Job Postings**
JourneyOrthopaedics: Website Content Ed. PT. 1 Yrs exp. $200/week. Remote.
USNewsWorldReport: Editor Home Services. FT. 3 Yrs exp. $70k. Hybrid. DC.
ParisReview: Sr. Ed. FT. BA/MA+ 6 yrs exp. $70k-$100k. NYC.
Ephemera Programs
Poetry at Ephemera:
Testimony from our previous Residency Selectee:
“From the moment I arrived at Good Contrivance Farm for my writing retreat, I was captivated by its tranquil beauty and knew I was at the right place at the right time. The farm is tucked away in a quiet picturesque rural area, north of Baltimore, and has serene orchards, majestic trees, and lovely Victorian farm buildings. I often found myself walking around the farm in quiet contemplation taking in the beautiful landscape. During these walks, friendly dogs and a gentle cat became my ‘writing companions.’ Exploring nearby nature preserves and local shops further enriched my experience. As you can imagine, these combined experiences made it easy to write and write I most certainly did. In fact, it was one of the most productive writing weeks I've had in quite some time as I was able to shut off the usual perfectionist voice in my mind and just let the words flow. Part of this was because of the living quarters. The cozy Hen House Cottage itself was a haven, boasting a diverse library, bluetooth sound system, inspirational notes from former visiting artists, and most importantly, a comfy bed—each detail contributed to a memorable stay and reminded me that simple pleasures often yield the greatest joy and creativity. Overall, I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to grow and create in a place so steeped in history and natural splendor. Good Contrivance Farm truly lives up to its name and is quite a special place for artists. I plan on returning and spreading the word. I hope that all artists have a chance to create in such an inclusive, safe, and charming space.”
—Monique Harris