Hi all,
I’m at the floor-to-ceiling sage green cafe down the street from my house, drinking a cold brew and lemonade, feeling sleepy and over-sugared. July is normally aimless for me, but so far, I feel lucky to have experienced some real joy and some real sentimentality. I will say! Alex is away this weekend and it’s been so long since I’ve had days to myself. (I am scared of the dark!!!) It’s a good chance to remember what I like to do when left to my own devices. But I do miss him. Quite a bit!!!! Now for the headlines:
My music video for “Violet Lozenge”, directed by my best friend Sam Cush, came out a week ago! It’s about friendship and speculative futures. My favorite drag queens performed and did the makeup for it and I got my first piece of hate mail over it! (Don’t worry I am doing okay and here to slay another day.) You can read my sappy Instagram post about me and Sam growing up together and watching John Waters movies here. It all led to this!!!!!! (And perhaps…. something more?) But I will say, Sam and I have been friends since they helped me take a picture of ice cream with my film camera at the carnival in high school. We did the school jukebox show (best way I can think to describe it) together for two years, and spent a lot of time together in Annapolis and Baltimore refining our tastes and finding clothes and watching movies that gave language to our aesthetic world. In some ways you could say this music video was ten years in the making!!!!!
I’ve started a new job as the Events Manager at Morris Arboretum. (I mentioned the place last month but didn’t formally tell you all!) It’s extremely pretty no shade.
I went on vacation to Lake Tahoe with my family, and I got a lot of good time especially with my big brother and soon to be sister in law :) We saw a mama bear and baby bear and stopped to CRY and take pictures from the safety of our car. We stayed for a week and there was mahi mahi and perfect steak-cut fries (my favorite of the potato varietals), a clothing optional beach (I did not participate this time!!!), a booze cruise to Emerald Bay, swimming in our hiking clothes, among other absurdly beautiful excursions.
The Noisy is hitting Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Cincinnati next weekend with Baltimore pals Mothpuppy! Comment your recommendations! Comment the other cities you want us to tour through!! When I’m planning in the future I’ll keep you in mind :) Poster designed by Sylvi !!
Did I include my Alternative interview with Josie last time? Too much happens in a month lol I can’t keep up with myself. We walked around New York City together on a chilly, windy day and I answered Josie’s incredibly kind and thoughtful questions about my album The Secret Ingredient is More Meat. A dream!!
Maybe because of Brat summer, or maybe because of that big gender feeling that makes you go searching for outside references, and certainly because Sam recommended Julia Fox’s audio book that she reads herself, Down the Drain, I’ve fallen into a nightlife diva wormhole. I am collecting pictures of Amanda Lepore, Julia Fox, SOPHIE, local drag queens, gay rock stars, and writing about them. It is feeding my curiosity (and maybe my urgency!) about how I can be more expansive in my relationship with gender, instead of aspiring towards finding some center point between masculinity and femininity. I wrote a visual poem that is in a show at 5853 this weekend, and there’s some lines tinkering with these thoughts, no sentiments I haven’t shared before but I like the language: “& I don’t want to be a man, just loud & strange, & I don’t want to be a girl, just fairy tale” and “when he called an owl into the trees behind the house with just his hands & his throat, the kind of secrets boys learn from their fathers, while I make shadow puppets & open marigolds of my hands to hold yours, even my balled up fists are hollow.” I am proud of these lines! And how they express my big feelings! Last thing I’ll say, I went to Seam Queen (Philly local nightlife fashion competition held at the one the only Franklin Bradley’s) and I saw this outfit and I just needed you to see it too. The model in the dress is my hero Diva Baby, and the other one is the designer, latex artist Thomas Lauria (yes this is latex.)
I read 300 pages of Miranda July’s All Fours in one day. Only she can be so whimsical, so exacting in her language, so willing to look bleak despair in the face, in order to come back from it.
The Noisy played a show at Milkboy last week, opening for Knoxville friends Connor Kelly & the Time Warp. Mol White, Philly photographer, took some truly amazing pics.
I’m practicing being bored!! I think July is a good month for this. Because I’m working part-time (I’m interviewing for additional PT work, or debating holding out until the fall to adjunct again) I get a lot of time to just sit, which I don’t think I’ve had since… 2021? I’m learning about myself that I need uninterrupted hours to make any progress on music (versus with poetry I can sneak in a few lines or even a poem in 10 minutes) and I also need time to just dream and brainstorm after so much action. On a recent episode of Las Culturistas, Bowen proposed that every songwriter ia portal or a mirror. I feel like More Meat was a mirror, but how I’m beginning to write in these next stages of next LP feels much more like a portal. More mood and less narrative, more grand and less confessional.
ALEX’S SISTER AND SOON TO BE BROTHER IN LAW ASKED ME TO BE THEIR WEDDING OFFICIANT!!!! I was truly knocked the fuck away. It is an immense honor, maybe one of the biggest of my life! And it means I will be officiating two weddings in October, the other one being my teaching mentor’s in Tennessee (and bringing the number of weddings I have officiated to 4!) They wrote me a two page letter about what my being in the family means to them and I just feel so wildly loved and honored to be participating in their wedding in this way!!
I have been seeing so many pals!!!!! June was really special and I feel like I am in a moment of my life where I really want to be here and not anywhere else. I used to always apply to residencies, fellowships, things that would take me elsewhere. And I just am so grateful to be in this exact place.
It’s hot as hell in Philly, and probably where you are too. I’m reminding myself to start carrying more cash around, and to donate money to local mutual aid and harm reduction groups, because of the new Johnson Supreme Court Ruling that makes being unhoused literally illegal. I wanted to share that SOL Collective is helping raise money here in Philly to prevent dehydration and overheating, and for that you can Venmo @CARPrapidresponse and include a fire emoji. Also, I’m seeing more calls to keep sending eSims to Gaza, so I wanted to share instructions for that here, run by journalist Mirna el Helbawi.
A sonnet by an old friend, Sam Rush, for the road. It’s about getting older and grief about the world we live in.
I hope you are getting to put your feet in a body of water near you, to eat your favorite summer fruit, and to get a really good hug from someone dear to you.
<3 Sara Mae