AM Music: A Blackout Reduction of James Joyce’s Chamber Music Poetry Book

Inspired by writer & creative Austin Kleon’s “Newspaper Blackout” poetry book, I decided to take James Joyce’s Chamber Music, a book he originally published in 1907, & make a blackout “reduction” version of it.

I simply adore the poems in this book, & it was quite fun to go through the book & black out sections of the poems to find (& therefore, create) new poems inside them. I liken this creative process to, in a somewhat orderly fashion, shuffling cut-out words from a specific book inside a hat & seeing what poems you find in them. I have approached all the poems from the standpoint of creating art from them.

Admittedly, it was difficult at times to decide what should stay & what should go, as there are so many good bits in these poems.Note: As this book was created digitally & without taking a Sharpie to paper & being locked into the inherent spacing in the text, I have also added punctuation where desired so the created poems read properly.

In some places, I have left entire lines intact if I particularly liked it (the collaborative effort, metaphorically reaching back into time, with Joyce being stronger here). With other poems, I have redacted all but a few words, making these poems mostly-mine. Either way, a thousand people could go through this book & all find different poems that meant something to them.

These are my creative & derivative contributions to a new, semi-collaborative work of art. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Publication Date: July 24, 2019
Genre: Poetry

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

TENDERNESS ON MAIN – NEW POETRY BOOK

Tenderness on Main is a collection of 43 poems about deep, tender love in all its forms: love between two people, love between the Universe & a person, & love between a person & themselves.

out of the gloom, first //

it was all very tender, the way you
took such great care to unearth the most colorful flower you could find
from the bottom of the pile at the garbage dump &
hold it out to me saying,
“treasures are found everywhere” & I said
“I know, I always find them too” & you
smiled at me & I knew what you meant &
it wasn’t in a garbage dump that we found each other but
neither of us were on top of the world either but
inch by inch we pulled ourselves from the bottom of the pile &
declared that we were worthy & ready &
I reached out my hand to you & you wrapped your fingers in mine &
we carried the flower out of the dump between us &
it always lasted in full-bloom

Publication Date: August 1, 2019
Genre: Poetry

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

 

Strawberry Moon – NEW EXPERIMENTAL NOVEL

Strawberry Moon is an avant-garde, experimental novel followup to Ashlee Craft’s previous book, “Feel the Hidden Flowers”, complete with letters Nina wrote, song lyrics, & other literary pieces as she goes through a box of her old things & observes how much she has changed since she has recovered from her depression.

Publication Date: July 27, 2019
Genre: Fiction – Experimental Novel

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

THE WARM WET PINK OF YOUR TONGUE (DRAWING)

First drawing in a new art series on sexuality that I’ve just started working on, now that I’m *finally* becoming a lot more comfortable with myself in a LOT of ways, including sexuality & realizing it’s not something to be ashamed of or embarrassed by, because growing up, I wasn’t shamed for it so much, but I was for a long time super awkward about it.

My parents saw sexuality for a long time, until not too long ago, as being something embarrassing, & me, being obsessed with being “the good child”, came to see it as embarrassing as well. I’ve wanted to start an art series like this for a while, & becoming comfortable with my gender has really helped my comfort level in so many ways.

I’ve been a lot more comfortable accepting that I’m bisexual AF & acknowledging at least to myself folks that I find attractive, & that I frequently experience sexual attraction but only in certain circumstances experience what *might* be romantic attraction but is strong regardless & that there’s nothing wrong with this, & that even though I’ve never been in a relationship I still consider myself to be polyamorous, & I’m working on not being embarrassed so much by any of this anymore ♥

My Pronouns & Gender Terms: A Cheat Sheet

One of my friends shared this on their Facebook a while back with their answers & not only did I find it really interesting to see what they had to say, but I also TOTALLY was excited about sharing my own answers! Also, this was a lot of fun to fill out.

KEY:
 – okay
 – not okay
– ask permission/situational

she/her 
he/him 
they/them (they/them are technically the pronouns I use, but as I feel like a non-binary boy & identify as non-binary trans/demiboy/transmasculine, he/him pronouns or using he/they pronouns for me is fine! Really, anything as good as long as it’s not she/her pronouns! But if someone asks me my pronouns, as this point I’m gonna say “they/them” as those are still my very favorite ones)
it/its
other/neopronouns✅ (again, they/them is preferred but these are fine too!)

mx.
mr.
ms
miss 
mrs. 

Sir
Ma’am
Mx.
Other neo-honorifics (Zir, Misc, Ind)

dude, my guy, buddy, ect 
bro, boy, lad, man, sir, king, etc
pal, anything gender neutral really
boss, captain, etc
enby, non-binary person, human 
sis, queen, girl, lady 
slut/bitch
pretty, beautiful, stunning etc
cute, sweet, adorable, gorgeous, good looking
handsome, rugged, dashing

I MAKE MY OWN LUCKY PENNIES (DRAWING)

Imbue everything with silver linings!

This is one of the first things I’ve posted from a new series of drawings/doodles I’ve been working on! I have a SHIT TON of ideas for doodles, & for a long time I was like “I have to make everything I draw perfect because Perfectionism is Life & everything I draw has to be a big, dramatic deal”.

But I found some origami paper that I bought like three years ago lol & thought “I SHOULD DRAW & MAKE COLLAGES WITH THIS, IT’S SO FUCKING COLORFUL” so hence, several new art series were born!!! A lot of them in this particular series are going to be little phrases or thoughts or ideas that I want to do doodles of.

So, a brief list of new art series I’ve been excited about working on lately:

  1. This series, with origami paper & little phrases or ideas + doodles
  2. A similar series almost exactly like this one, but focusing on mental health-related stuff & not all of it is origami paper, I think memes can be a form of art so including mental health memes & collages I’ve made (& I have a new Instagram account where you can find my mental health memes & art, @acmentalhealth!
  3. Another series of doodles, some on origami paper & some not, but queer/sexuality/romantic orientation/gender identity-themed. I’ve been nervous about making stuff about my sexuality etc as well as my mental health for a long time but now I’m comfortable sharing things like that so I am looking forward to it!
  4. A series of canvases involving mental health themes, like quotes on simple but cool backgrounds that I’ve painted, which I’m *fingers crossed* hoping to display somewhere IRL in the Tampa area this summer (so if you know any places that would like to do an exhibit of small, cheap (all under $50) original mental health canvases, lemme know on social media!
  5. COLLAGES IN GENERAL. I actually have several series of collages, some of which overlap with other categories here like mental health, but I fucking love collages, especially ones involving stickers.

I’m very excited about all these art things!! Also, gonna be working on a lot more doodle zines this year, because FUCK PERFECTIONISM, I just wanna make prolific projects~