Old Pal Recommends

Literature and Art We Love

Karolinn  

Kelly Schirmann’s The New World: art during wartime: rumination and recollection: a self in its days and its dreams dreams dreams.
Corporeal Writing’s Portals deck: not prompts but sprouting seeds, little threads to pull from your yarns.
Maisie Cowell’s riso comic The Bad Thing: hilarious, sad, excellent.

Alexa

I was delighted to read Lilli Carre’s Heads or Tails on a cold, grey afternoon when the grief of the day had me particularly exhausted. Carre’s gorgeous and charming graphic short fiction explores themes of disorientation, alternative realities and “extreme ambivalence” in this darkly funny collection. A perfect comfort food for the perpetually uncomfortable.

Ryan

Music: Fela Kuti & Afrika 70 (especially "Sorrow Tears & Blood" and "Coffin for Head of State"); William Onyeabor (especially the album "Anything You Sow"); the Numero Group compilation "Driftless Dreamers in Cuca Country."

Writing: I have been diving back into Roberto Bolaño's novels lately, especially Amulet & 2666. Christian Wiman's book The Art of Faith, The Faith of Art is something I didn't know I would like, but I have found rather inspiring. Michele Glazer's newest collection of poetry, fretwork, is among the finest poetry I've ever read. Lastly I came across Sueyeun Juliette Lee's book of poetry Aerial Concave Without Cloud and have found it to renew my desire to investigate or seek or look in order to write. I highly recommend the book.

Film: we recently watched House (1977), a psychedelic Japanese horror/comedy film and it was a wild ride. check it out.

Life: keep using the postal service please! and I recently made applesauce from scratch because I had an oral surgery and it was delightful. sweet-tart & exactly what I needed. I recommend using a combo of Gala, Granny Smith & Pink Lady apples. throw in some cinnamon and maple syrup too! (homer simpson drooling)

Alex

Scavengers Reign on Max is one of the most enjoyable animated scifi shows I have seen in a long time. The series delivers interesting and intriguing alien designs, environments, and scenarios of character survival. In a way it reminds me of a stoic Star Trek or Lost in Space, or a slightly more lighthearted Southern Reach trilogy, mixed with the surreal oddity and puzzles of Æon Flux, but it also develops its own unique form of survival space opera. Each episode reveals more of the character’s pasts and develops their motivations further, but the show relies on its wild imagination of ecology and beautiful, almost Mœbius-like, art with contemplative direction to first pull you in. Keeping myself untethered from social media, I’ve been spending any free moments reading Wikipedia instead. Recent browsing has taken me to the tulpa and simulacrum. The Handmaiden (2016) is a movie that recently stuck with me; it's a complicated, erotic, and humor filled drama with excellent storytelling and directing. Have you heard of podcasts? I have been listening to more of those too. And a lot of electronic music.

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