Worms Digest

Arcadia Molinas 

Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos

I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump lately, starting a lot of books and not finishing any, although I’m opening myself up to different ways of reading - gathering, extracting what I need and being ok to float away and move on to other reads. That being said, I finished this by Melissa Febos this morning at my local café. I came across this book through Delia Rainey’s reviews and felt incredibly drawn to it for its discussions on the ethical implications of writing from personal experience, drawing from other people. Particularly in the chapter concerned with writing about other people, "A Big Shitty Party", where I had previously considered only the approach from the writer's perspective - one's own experiences are theirs to talk about - I was forced to confront the reality that stories are "a process and product of radical reduction" and the consequences of this. Particularly: "When a writer chooses to publish their version, that facet becomes the one visible beyond the scope of the people involved." Big words.

I am finishing an essay called 'Writing like a Lover' and this book was central to its development. "Sex, like any experience, is a lens through which we learn to see ourselves - sometimes a warped version, sometimes a truer one."

PALM TREES AND POWER LINES

I was very moved by this film. In it, 17 year old Lea meets 34 year old Tom during her boring, doughnut eating, cigarette bum smoking summer holidays and they start a relationship. Tom displays classic predatory behaviour (“you’re mine,” “no one will love you like I do”) but through Lea’s eyes, the red flags are bright green. What from the audience’s point of view, the point of view of experience, of maturity, is an obvious case of grooming and manipulation, is from Lea’s point of view, a profound connection with another human, who validates her for her beauty and experiences. The film does a brilliant job of showcasing the experience filtered through Lea’s lens as the watcher helplessly watches her get entrapped in the eyes of a dangerous, predatory man. 

Throughout the film, Lea repeatedly expresses her consent, consenting to be kissed, to be driven home, to take his phone number, but the matter at the heart of this film is consent and what Melissa Febos calls ‘empty consent’ - consent that is given despite repulsion, aversion, or in this case, the full picture. It’s a very intense watch and as Tom’s true intentions are revealed, Lea is minimised and helpless to the power lines that dominate her relationship with Tom.

The director of the film was profiled in the New Yorker and talked about the real experience in her life that inspired the film:

Dack stayed friends with the man for years, but writing about her experience prompted her to cut off contact. “It started to feel like maybe it wasn’t as O.K. as I thought, and maybe there was a way in which I had been manipulated,” she said. “I wasn’t groomed the way my protagonist is, but I wanted to explore what could have happened if this man’s intentions had been different. I used the protagonist as a proxy for my younger self. I was this very vulnerable teen-age girl.” She plucked off a piece of doughnut and ate it, then tucked the rest away in a waxed-paper bag.

When I was 17, I was wild, reckless and repeatedly put myself in danger for the simple reason of not knowing any better. I found the movie so moving for this very reason, I often think about how vulnerable I was as a teenager and a lot of the stupid decisions I made at that age, in which I was lucky sometimes and sometimes not as much. I felt this film depicted a very essential experience of being a teenage girl. 

I was very saddened to read a review on letterboxd that called it a “another men-are-trash depiction” which proved to me just how out of touch people are with real experiences. Other reviews compared it to Red Rocket by Sean Baker, which I haven’t seen but I love his films so I’ll try and give it a watch soon. I’m sorry if you’re living and you’re 17. 

pierce eldridge

Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me was super heartbreaking. I first of all just want to rant about the fact that the media is gross and what they have done to her—even if it was a dance between them both—is deplorable. This isn’t the first documentary this year we’ve seen where they make out a gorgeous ex-Playboy star to look like trash, and within the documentary they even have conversations with the paparazzi who seem to justify their behaviour by saying ‘she was hungry for our lens’. Ew, so sick of them making these incredible, loyal, hard working women look like trash. Beyond this, it’s a super difficult film to watch. I felt really bad for her, and for her son, longing for the love she never had in her youth. I read in bell hooks’ Communion: The Female Search For Love that women refuse to develop beyond being—or are pressured to remain—girls because that is the most loveable they will ever be to their fathers. Then, the patriarchal thumb of being ‘useful’ sets them on a path of having kids, being the main caretaker, and becoming ‘unfuckable’ and ‘unloveable’ women, stuck in horrible relationships with men who treat them poorly; all self worth, at this point, deteriorates. I feel like Anna just wanted the love of her father so desperately, and when she finally found him, she realised that even this man, idolised at a distance, would hurt her. I’m not particularly fond of the deception she played toward the end of her life, with the media that is, but I recognise there was so much tattering at the edges at that point. She lost her son, like… fuck. Her whole career was smashed apart, gosh… anyway. The whole heart has broken watching this and honestly we need to be protecting these women, these intelligent, fantastic, powerful women. Gosh, I love you Anna so much. I love you, I hate what they did to you, I love you.

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing is surely one of my absolute favourite reads of the year. I’m obsessed with the portrait she has been able to paint of some incredible queer icons, meandering around their life in solitude, longing (maybe in the same way as Anna) to be felt, to be known, to be understood beyond their childhood pains. I’m particularly fond of the part where she discusses Andy Warhol’s bulbous red nose. When I read that I was in Clissold Park and tbh—idk what came over me—I started to cry because I have this strange complex of thinking—I mean, I fully know—that I have a lil-red-rudolph nose too. She gave me this alternative perspective of Andy that felt super refreshing too, knowing he wasn’t really a genius of ‘being’ with people but a genius at ensuring he wasn’t alone in his work or life. Which, to me anyway, says a lot about his practice. I wasn’t so fond of the Hopper chapter, I mean I like Hopper a lot, I got to see the exhibition at the Whitney when I was in NYC last year and was mesmerised, but back then felt the lack of cultural representation happening around him at the time in his secluded bubbled painted dreamscapes. Like, how many aristocratic people can we see one after the other? To know that he ridiculed his wife into not painting was majorly gross too and it just made me hate the work. No shade—so much shade—but when Josephine (Jo) Hopper donated all their life's work to the Whitney, where the archivists disposed of a majority of hers, is so telling of how the institution memorialised men and purposely tries to forget women. She was doing everything in her power to help make him successful and then is kinda just forgotten beside him. I think the exhibition had a room with their work hanging together, and it was the most interesting part because some of her journals were showcased, and the juicy words of their tumultuous relationship were laid bare; particularly when she recounts Edward saying that painters can’t be invested in other painter’s works. She certainly was a devoted and loyal champion of his. I watched the documentary, Hopper: An American Love Story and was glad Jo had her piece in there, remembered as the backbone to his work. Also, some say it’s super clever of him to have, in his last painting that came off the easel, painted Two Comedians taking their final bow but I think it’s gross. It felt like a satire way of him poking fun, although it’s remembered as him giving her a moment to shine. Psst. Idk. The BEST chapter in this book though is In Loving Him—offt, and I so do—about David Wojnarowicz. I’m in love with everything about David, particularly the part where he sits down for Interview Magazine to discuss with Nan Gouldin how he wants most for his work to be operative for the people feeling alienation. That made me well up big time. I’m sure many of you here are familiar with his Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration and I can’t recommend it more. Once, I was at Freedom Bookstore with all the Worms here, our little outing date together, and practically gushed so hard the whole of Whitechapel heard my sincere cries of passion. David embodies everything I hope to be, he strips the heart bare of its burdens by revealing its scars with total, uninhibited, vulnerability. I love him. I’m going to be reading this chapter about him forever. I suggest people watch Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F**ker, it’s such a great documentary about his life. Also, I haven’t read anything yet about Peter Hujar but I know that book is circulating my ‘up next’ list big time. V-excited to feel more of David through Peter, as the relationship between them seemed so tender.

Stranger by the Lake is a film that I had kinda put off watching for a while, idk why. I think because I thought it was going to be some old—it’s only a 2013 release—garbage gay (v-fucking gay) love story, but I was wrong. It’s got this really interesting pace that kinda set my body at ease. I think I also feel that way because being naked, by a body of water, with other bodies is actually a really ‘homely’ feeling for me having spent a lot of time as a kid along the coastline of Yugambeh (Gold Coast, Australia). In my teen years, the beach was such a cruising place for closeted queer men, and I revelled in the excitement of that. I used to drive my car down to a nudist beach on the border of Queensland and New South Wales, strip off, and lay out as other men plotted about in the buff. This is where I learnt to appreciate all types of bodies and also where I learnt that a facet of queerness is reaching toward the desire—if only for a moment—of total, un-surveilled, freedom. I didn’t ‘cruise’ per-say, I was always too shy, but I appreciated feeling like I was in ‘safe’ quarters. If anything happened to anyone there, they’d be a rallying of bodies to protect one another. It’s really beautiful. Anyway, Stranger by the Lake gave me those vibes in the beginning of the film. Later, things get a little twisted and dark and, as the film ends in this space, we’re left with this horrible feeling of queerness being cataclysmic; that if we get too close to love, to yearning, to wanting another person, that we should protect them in lying or kill for our own safety; for control. Life beyond the lake is never shown, you’re kinda left guessing what the people are like beyond this space, and tbh I probably would have done what Franck did cause the guy, Michel, with the moustache is so hot. But I would have spilled the beans and been like, ‘yo, why did you kill the other guy you were with here?’ and like, ‘please don’t kill me, I just wanna have a good time and kiss and be queer,’ and then something like, ‘baby, I know you did it and I love you but like you’re fucked and you gotta fess up so like, meet me here tomorrow and then you can go on your way, and I’ll tell the detective, cause baby you don’t even wanna have me around for dinner or come to my house, what’s up with that (?), so anyway, love you byyyyyye.’ I’m probably breaking apart the seriousness with which the film has left me in cause it’s disturbing and deeply upsetting to see a space—as mentioned above—so safe, defiled by a homosexual killer. Grrr, maybe I did just need this to be a pretty faggy thing. Oh, Oliva Laing also talks about the quality of the moonlight water from the piers in NYC, and I just wanted to say, I truly love that moonlight is so queer. We also—thank you very much—have David Wojnarowicz to thank for that, for dangling his feet off the edge and writing/talking into his tape recorder about the texture of water. I think what he speaks of can be found in this film. The most beautiful shot, to me personally, is Franck hiding in the tall grass. Mmm.

THIS GEMINI SEASON I’ve become obsessed with being a free agent within a complex system, and I will thus be known—from this point onwards, yes you may call me this, deriving from chaos theory—a strange (sissy) attractor. I’ve updated my bio on Instagram, the definition below is how you can now come to comprehend me, and of course, you are most certainly welcome. Okay, love you:

Clem MacLeod

I’m octopus reading atm; I’ve got my tentacles in many different places and Lucy Lippard’s I See/You Mean is where some of my ganglia are landing. The book is an experimental novel about mirrors, maps, relationships, the ocean, elusive success, and possible happiness. According to Goodreads. So far it’s transported me to a beach with a group of friends which seem to have quite confusing relationships. I’ve only just started it but the way Lucy writes is really interesting in form and content. As a writer and curator, her book definitely reflects this. I’ve only just started reading it, but so far she introduces every chapter/idea with a description from a photograph. Including the lighting, colour and format of it. I’ve always been really interested in the projects that Lucy has been involved with or initiated, and I’ve read a lot of her criticism. It’s interesting to see how she writes fiction, and how her experience in the art and criticism world has shaped it. I found a PDF of her book ‘Six Years: The dematerialization to the art object from 1966 to 1972’ and have been dipping into that too, as well as ‘Get the Message: A Decade of Social Art for Change.’ I think her curatorial practice is incred and this book has made me very excited for our upcoming Worms issue on ‘Artists that Write, and Writers that Art.’ Next up: One of Issy Wood’s books. I’ll also be taking myself on an artist date to her exhibition sometime this week. 

The second is ‘The Healing’ by Gayl Jones which was recommended to me by Diamond Stingily. It took me a minute to get into this. It’s written in a southern (American) dialect and can feel like a bit of a wigout at times. There’s a lot of repetition and strange associations weaved into the narrative. The story follows a healer as she travels to show her powers to what sounds like a group of sceptics. I generally really love stories that have anything to do with self-improvement, revelations or healing and this is a pretty abstract take on these things, but still a really good read. I’m not sure where it’s going, but will be keeping everyone posted. I don’t really know what to make of this yet, so don’t have heaps more to say tbh

Last week I re-watched the documentary ‘Beyond the Visible’ about and fully fell back in love with her. There’s an exhibition on of her work (alongside that of Piet Mondrian) at the Tate, and I’ve been meaning to go to it, but I was talking to a friend about her and he had never heard of her, so we watched the documentary and now we’re both having our Hilma moment. I have her book ‘Notes and Methods’ which is a reprint of some of her working notebooks whilst she was making work, and I’ve been dipping in and out of that. She was completely rejected as an artist when she was alive (a reflection of the time) and the most shocking part of the documentary is when they compare work by male artists (Andy Warhol, Piet Mondrian, Josef Albers and more) who made art directly influenced by her and received huge acclaim for their work, despite it being years after hers was put into the world and completely ignored. I’m particularly interested in her work with the spiritual and the works that she made as a spiritual medium. Her atom series is fckn sublime too. We are all just empty matter, everything is! 

On Sunday I went to an event organised by Pynk Prysm called ‘Mindful Pictures’ which was basically 3 short films followed by a ‘creativity workshop.’ I wasn’t feeling great that day and it was really grounding to go to the cinema and share experiences of mental health/creativity struggles with a group of like minded people. If you’re based in London and are up for going to one of their events, I highly recommend it. All of these practices and workshops are also very aligned with the work that Pierce and I are doing with Compost. We’re basically doing a collective healing of our writing censors and giving space for everyone to fill their creative cups. NA MA SLAY