Saint Valentine
February dispatch
Hello little crocuses,
There’s a thaw coming and boy let me tell you I am ready to stop bundling up. The last month has been particularly brutal in the Sara Mae department, and beyond the Sara Mae department. I’m tired of feeling tired and reciting my list of bad things going on. So I want to share some good things !!
We started actually recording pieces for our sophomore LP, Good Night Hot Clown. I’ve been writing and writing and thinking about writing and thinking some more for what feels like so long. And suddenly, as we begin this process in earnest, I feel so daunted by the uncertainty. I’m so lucky for the guys in the band who hold it down when I’m unsure. I’m putting together a dossier of comp songs for Hot Clown, because I’m remembering from the first album process too, how so much of figuring out next steps is having points of comparison from other songs so that we can build a shared understanding as a band. Daniel said I should make a playlist of songs with “drums that make you think.” which I thought was so funny. There’s an impulse in my poetry brain to make up arbitrary nonsense rules, for instance, I don’t know my way around a drum kit very well, and I was enjoying the possibility of giving direction like “this song is wearing many hats” as in the hi hat, maybe a lot of cymbals in general, etc. But I also deeply want to be competent as we navigate this process, to be a good teammate and at times bandleader. So the dossier is forthcoming. It reminds me of what I love so much about my Surrealist girlies, Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington. I was reading some of the fictional letters Remedios wrote, and she said, “…having accidentally spilled a fair amount of tomato sauce on my trousers, I found the stain so extremely meaningful and affecting that I quickly cut the piece of fabric out and framed it.” When I write in poetry or in my novel, I can lean into that strangeness, into those nonsense rules of the world I’m building. But then you collaborate with other people, and you have to find a new shared language. Explain the tomato sauce, as it were. Daniel suggested (for my dossier / reference playlists) I look for music that doesn’t feel close to mine so I’m not tempted to just say “I’m trying to write this exact song.” For instance I’ve of course been listening to a lot of Bad Bunny recently, so it’s been fun to try and study the percussion in those songs, the production choices, and really articulate what I think is happening. I watched his Tiny Desk twice in one day and you should too :)
I wrote the first draft of narrative pieces for the live show for Hot Clown, which I’m excited about, which would be interspersed between songs. I’m trying to release pressure to be funny, and just to write and see what comes. I’m considering having a director for the show? So I can work through these questions out loud with another person.
Hotness studies update: I don’t know what’s happening but suddenly I’m getting hit on a lot more. I don’t want to measure hotness that way, but I also wonder if it’s just genuinely a result of me feeling more comfortable in myself / synchronicity with the universe as I’m studying hotness. I’m glad / I’m laughing at myself that it’s so simple but I did get a new haircut and it did cure a lot of dysphoria for me lol. Two people thought I was a boy last Friday, and simultaneously, the haircut feels really pretty and fey and soft. Yes I did just show the stylist this picture of Aaron Maine and say I want that, thanks! Mr. Porches himself.
I was also thinking about when I’ve felt confident or excited recently, not in a nervous laugh kind of way but in a confident, grounded way. A confidence that lives in a different part of the body. When I really believe in something I’m working on—like getting good feedback on my novel (will expound shortly) and feeling like it’s the truest expression of me really knowing myself as an artist and following my impulses. A day of hard work at the plant nursery and learning more about growing. I’ve been missing going salsa dancing. My friend Victoria taught me when we studied abroad, and I’ve been stuck inside for one reason or another for the last 6 weeks, so me and Alex made a point to put in our schedules we’re going dancing soon. I got a couple good recs from a trusted source!! Here are photos of me when I’ve felt cute in the last month / a couple from trying on wedding dresses at the vintage dress event so I could have the experience.
I’m so grateful to the readers who submitted responses to the hotness survey. I noticed an element of surprise was mentioned a lot! I also noticed being witnessed, maybe even watched, like going out to be seen, feels hot. It makes me think of putting together a funny outfit just to go sit at a coffee shop, how I used to need that to start writing. I’m planning to keep returning to these responses as I draft more of the score. Here is the survey if you’d like to fill it out and haven’t yet.
My friends in the band the Mops put together a compilation for Groundhog Day, and I used it as a challenge to write a song in a short amount of time. Alex sang with me :) Here is the link to Gobbler’s Knob vol. 2. I’ve been practicing my little photoshop too, so here’s a collage I made to go with it:
I have an upcoming show playing for Daniel Sohn! I’m learning riffs on guitar while doing squats to get myself to practice moving while playing lol.
I have found that the best I feel playing my instruments is when I’m learning songs for other people’s projects. There is a sense of accountability and a different kind of excitement. I learn so much in the classes I take, but I also think it works best for me when there’s a healthy balance of the gravity that the skills are going somewhere. It keeps me focused! And in the same way I have to start any poetry writing session by reading other people’s work, I learn from how another musician talks about their approach, their riffs, their choices from chord to chord. I love Daniel’s songs so much, and I genuinely love playing them. This is the first time he’s playing his own music in Philly in forever. Also it’s a fundraiser for Palestine!!! Hope to see you there!!
I’m also so so thrilled because I have an upcoming poetry reading with my friend Asa! I met Asa at my first big deal writing workshop with Tin House (now the McCormack Writing Center) when we were both in Paisley Rekdal’s workshop. Asa has been an angel, a relentless champion of my work when I most doubted myself or felt furthest away from my poetry. Her work is funny and strange and attentive and so so so moving and surprising. I’ll include one below, from Only Poems, and her website here. Most importantly, here’s a link to register for the event!
Finally, if you’re in Baltimore, or attending AWP, I’ve got a reading on Saturday of the conference right before I hit the road!! Would love to see you there.
I just finished my two week online winter workshops (for fiction!!!) with the McCormack Writing Center (formerly known as Tin House.) Highlights include: K-Ming Chang’s lecture on writing about and beside animals leading me to research the New England Lobster Convention of 1903. She asked, what does it mean to deconstruct or reexamine the natural vs. unnatural? I loved the faculty Q&A where I got to ask for basically a pep talk, how do you shift when you’re discouraged about the industry aspect of our writerly lives, and someone responded, always keep an artistic practice for yourself. In Maisy Cards’s lecture, thinking of haunting as structural for building a short story into a novel, her invitation to ask of each character, will you face your ghost story or become one? Between Nafissa Thompson-Spires and Lydia Kim, establishing what’s funny: incongruity, magnification, benign violations, telling a story backwards from the ending. Giovannai Rosa’s generative writing session approaching writing as a cinematographer might. Lydi Conklin’s workshop on craft strategies for the novel, one of which was expounded on in this Sewanee Review essay “Crybabies” about making your reader cry. In noam keim’s lecture on Fragments & Silences, the difference between guilt and grief. Derrick Austin’s lecture on ekphrasis where he said that art is not ancillary to or a simulacra of life but a part of our daily lives. Alex Marzano-Leznevich’s invitation, what if the problem preventing you from writing the book is the driving force of the book itself? In Cass Donish’s anti-elegy lecture, what is the opposite of consolation?
I got my novel excerpt workshopped on the last day and I’ve never felt more encouraged!! I left with so many ideas to write into, so many book recommendations, and so many affirming observations of what is already on the page. They said my characters are vibrant and alive, and they want to read more! I’ll even brag and say one person said I write like Anne Carson. Literally the biggest compliment you could give me. Shoutout Lydi, angel workshop leader, and my classmates cheesing!
During the workshop period, I’ve started reading A Little Life finally and Hot Girls with Balls and am finishing Lydi’s book. I’ve been picking up on synchronicities of Jack Spicer being mentioned in my life a lot, so it’s time to read more of him!
I’m thinking about completely reframing my book-length poem about spit around one specific painting. Lydi had the suggestion that when you’re stuck on a craft element, to write a lecture about it. I want to write more craft essays towards figuring out this poetry book: on the caesura, the book-length poem, on ekphrasis, on the surrealist movement. I came across this newsletter post this month that felt like it arrived just in time. Trying to write in a way that helps me face the present moment instead of thinking of art as an escape from the present moment.
As ICE arrests and violence continue I wanted to share this resource from Vamos Juntos on how to document ICE arrests, because I’ve noticed differing opinions online about what is useful and what just creates panic:
Zenaida and I did my astrological chart recently to check when my Saturn return is and it turns out I’m in it right now, which almost made me laugh. It’s been a tough time. If you’ve got any cleansing rituals, I’m feeling like I need a restart. God gives you what you can handle etc and I’d say the dial is about past what I feel I can handle!!!
But sharing out this newsletter felt helpful :) I’m thinking of doing a writer or artist brunch / salon soon at my house in Philly by the way! If that feels of interest to you, please poke me!
Okay, that’s PLENTY to chew on! Sending love! We’re so close to the end of winter!!
Sara Mae