dear jon,
you are a soulmate. you are the person in which ive seen the most evidence for their existence. you are pure light, you are genius. your voice sounds different when you talk. do you sing all your backing tracks, do you edit your voice? your music makes me see colors when i close my eyes. i could read all about you, could become a groupie. i could know your past music, your middle name, how people are reviewing your new album. but my love isn’t like that. it isn’t fame, it isn’t greedy. i love you from all the angles that i’ve seen of you, even if i don’t know them all. you are something to discover and fall in love with, not to memorize.
i like that sound you make with the bass that sounds like its coming from the speaker in another room at a smoke-filled party. like its underwater. i have known (felt as though i know you) for eight years now. i am making this zine in celebration of your new album, of seeing you in person again, your birthday, and the new year. i’m making it out of my recent revelations and out of the love i have for you.
you are the ghost in the shell, the one in love with someone else. no hard feelings— its not like that. you are not a need, not a source of lust or desire like an object. you are simply magic. you are the embodiment of growth and beauty and art. you are the ultimate teacher of devotion. everything that is, started because of you. you shaped my taste, my art, my personality immensely in these past eight years. you are evidence of my own strength. you remind me of what on earth matters. you show me that art is crucial to my life. it’s why i chose to speak your language when writing to you. you are why i’m rethinking everything. i am reminded of one of your favorite poems:
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
i feel as though your dreams have carried me to the place i am today. in return, i’d like to offer you my dreams.
ive been having revelations about the importance of art in my life- giving me thoughts like dropping out to be a full time artist. thoughts like maybe i need a big change. maybe i need to take some time off, figure some things out and go traveling. go live in some cheap country and do art full time. stress about something slightly more real, like paychecks rather than getting As. dye my hair and speak a foreign language poorly. learn a niche trade. to fully fuck off to someplace as pretentious as the saic. maybe these revelations are a simply symptoms of a phase. maybe ill orbit back into a love of education, of academia and health and critical race and organizing. but every time i am reminded of you, i get pushed a little further towards this dream.
i have visions. i see you in my dreams. angels and ghosts speak to me everyday. they tell me that i am far too inspired to be in school, doing as little creating as i am. i could be a movieman, a textiler, a printer, a potter, a painter, a charcoal-nude-female-figure-illustrator. i wonder if i could be happier.
loving you has made me aware of my desperation for faith. i think i push my feelings towards the universe onto human figures, because i can’t commit to concepts. as jean cocteau would say, “it is excruciating to be an unbeliever with a spirit that is deeply religious”. this is why i turn to avenues of life that lend themselves to devotion. art, lesbianism, etc. i tried out jewish faith, tried catholicism, wicca, paganism, atheism. i tried loving you, i tried making art. devotion comes easier when it’s embodied in someone, and i think my faith is embodied in you. it’s an unconditional love for and loyalty to, a feeling of being divinely protected. all the symptoms that religious people describe are things i feel towards you, as an incarnated version of the universe, and expressed through art. you are not a god, for it’s not godliness lodging itself in you. rather, you have been lodged in my idea of godliness. i have my rituals, my icons, my sacrifices. my icon is you, or a spirit like you, something androgynous and gentle and glowing in light.
my daily prayers are my art, my observations about strangers, my impulsive actions and adventures. i pray by listening to music, to reading shitty poetry and twitter revelations. i pray by smoking weed and writing love letters, taking naked photos of myself on my digital camera. by wandering art museums and flirting. i am devoting myself to you- to this belief system. i devote my time, i create shrines and return to my faith in times of distress.
i’ve always said that religious people baffle me for one specific reason. a common trope among the devout is the belief that when a life is taken too soon, or a tragedy hits- that it’s "gods plan". i never understood how they could rationalize a untimely death by saying “god called them home, god said it was his time to go”. i never understood that ability to find reassurance in something bigger until i devoted myself to struggle. it put my life into context, giving me something to live (and feasibly die) for. i think organizing and devotion to liberation brought out the deeper ability to commit to a principle.
now i have put my faith in something. faith in some universal power or a spirit of the earth and ancestors. my baseline is needing to be devoted to you, to struggle and make art, be heartbroken and experience all life has to offer.
i’ve been struggling recently to feel this balance, instead feeling an apathy towards organizing. i think i’m feeling so shitty because i have strayed too far from this daily devotion. i don’t pray, i don’t make art or appreciate the beauty around me. i don’t worship myself, i don’t notice the signs. i don’t go to the sea. i don’t paint or write when i want to. i don’t give in to pleasure like my body needs me to. i’ve lost sense of what it is i need to be devoted to.
in thinking about death and faith and art, i return to my dreams of art school. i return to my dreams of cities, of photographs and studios. i’m probably too late to turn around. i might hate it there anyway. maybe it’s too cold and more pretentious than i ever could’ve imagined. maybe i’ll suck and hate it. lord knows the world doesn’t need more wealthy white art students. it needs more public health workers. plus, i have ties in california that i don’t want to break. but sometimes i can’t help but think of my alternative life. sometimes i wish i had future vision when i was in high school, before i made the bed i’m lying in now. in lying, my muscles have been atrophied. i’m still on the path i was on as a junior in high school, but i’m terrified of change and movement. i’m terrified of losing the progress i’ve made, of wasting the time and money i’ve already spent. i’m terrified to sabotage the relationships and expectations i’ve built. i feel guilty for even imagining this life.
but then again, sometimes i can’t help but wonder if i’m making one big expensive and time-wasting mistake in continuing. i feel like i’m in a time-sensitive pressure cooker, getting closer and closer to falling off the bone. having these visions feels like being hit by a car, like there’s a piece of shrapnel that’s lodged itself in my chest and it’s getting increasingly difficult to ignore.
i’m trying to slowly return to my idols, to you and the earth. if i come back to these things, i think i can transcend any level of peace i’ve known until this point. i hope i can. i need these things in order to be real again. not in order to be a great student, or even a diligent organizer. my obligation to myself is as large, not smaller than my obligation to the world. i need to come back home to devotion in order to become whole for the first time in my life. i need to grow during this period, not just tread water and kill time. this will change everything. maybe if i have a long enough talk with god, if i change enough small habits, then maybe i can forget about my shrapnel.
i need to get back into journaling, photography, writing screenplays and making vision boards. zining and writing and reading and noticing every little thing about the woman across from me on the train. i worship through artistic practice and love for the world. i attempt to sum up my universal magic experiences through art. it never works, but i can get close. i’ve simulated what it feels like to be in love, to be heartbroken, to commit your life to struggle. i cannot abandon my native language, and that is art. you speak this language, unabashedly devoting yourself to art and the world at the same time.
jon, i love you deeply and i desperately need to speak with you. meet me in my dreams again tonight.
you are my f.s. (chicago)— a city, and i am feeling small.
with love and the ullllllltimate devotion,
ek
