Ephemera Newsletter Iss July.3

(Creativity and Motivation Weekly)

Welcome to the Ephemera Newsletter, Amics! (Catalan for “friends”).

We’re still very proud of and grateful for our first major Substack milestone. Humbled as well. There are some big names surrounding us on the top literary newsletter lists, many of whom and which have years of mainstream press and support prior to their launch. Thank you to all readers for your interest and constancy.

Over and over, a big thank you to our paid subscribers!

Check out last week’s letter if you missed it. And here are some reminders:

• Call For Subscriptions and Submissions: If you are a paid subscriber to Ephemera, you can submit to poetry @ Ephemera for free as a membership perk! 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. Now accepting submissions for the August issue.

In Brief…this week’s features:

• Thoughts on Music from Floating Points, and the album Promises.

• Thoughts on art from Khari Turner, a painter who thinks deeply and uses ocean water with his oils.

• July’s poet Heidi Kasa and her poem “The Bullet Never Quite Stops”

• Our weekly lists:

  • 3 magazines with open calls

  • 3 awards/prizes

  • 3 recent job listings for editors and writers.

• More ephemera: check out an Interesante article on the need for and import of conversation; Book recs, bonus content, and our mini-essays to start!

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Merci. Danke. Kiitos. 고마워 Go-ma-wo. Cảm ơn. Xiè xiè.

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Ephemera

Dear Readers,

We need to treat conversation as a contributing influence. The practice of an art requires the development of many skill sets and we’ve been noticing, despite the ubiquity of social media, the ease with which we can access people, conversation seems to be on the decline, particularly the skill of interacting with people different than who we’re used to. Don’t let yourself become siloed. Art fails when it can only inspire one ideological subset and no other. Because we are thinkers, because we brood, because we must examine self in order and in effort to create, we—writers and creatives—must take on the responsibility of modeling exquisite conversation. But, eck! At the same time we write this call to action, we nearly collapse in on ourselves with dread. Sure, we could be great, but others? Leave our desks? Risk being bored? Also, again, people? Time? I’ll stay right here and read from my impossible stack of books, thanks very much. I’d rather tinker another four hours…sigh. Push against these inclinations if you have them. Maybe start small, with peers, colleagues, and associates. Coffee. Lunch. Branch out from there. Skills are built by habit. Habits enable us to bridge the uncomfortable. Break your isolation routinely and strategically. Importantly, find folks who are equally polite, who also disagree with you, who are new or strange to you and your circles. Conversion is not the goal. Learning. Novelty. Challenge. We might consider these spices. The whole process promises to come in handy for when we return to our nooks, rife with new character and passion.

Thesis meets antithesis and we get… Tension, conflict, dynamism! But yes, the missing ingredient is synthesis, which is what it means to create. We’re always interacting and in conversation with, not only ourselves, but, inclusively, the inanimate materials that permit our art, whether pulp and ink, canvas and oil, keyboard and whatever elements light up this screen (I think that means we need more science friends). If we’re eschewing types of people, we’re unlearning useful characters, we’re relegating whole swaths of the population to caricature, which, unless we mean to create allegory or satire, might tend to fail. But sophisticated satire relies on complex understanding of those being satirized. Be an artist out in life. Listen and probe and look to learn in conversation. Take note. Err on the side of humanizing. Return to the page and draft new, more lifelike work. Dialogue with your myriad selves. We only see the good in this project, profit in mastering conversation, whether with others or the many faces of us. Always be in discussion.

Agraïment!
(Gratitude)

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~We’re so happy you’re here!~

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Poetry by Heidi Kasa

The Bullet Never Quite Stops