Sex, Love, and Other Magic by Emotional Alchemy

Sex, Love, and Other Magic

By Emotional Alchemy

by Emotional Alchemy

Sex , Love, and Other Magic 3

Contributors

In Order of Appearance

Please note: Photography and art within this magazine have been sourced from either free-to-use stock image resources or submitted for use by Emotional Alchemy contributors. Work within the magazine has been rightfully used and has been credited to the original owner. All written work has been submitted by Emotional Alchemy contributors and has been edited for the magazine with approval.

Art and Photography Zhang Kaiyv from Unsplash Photography provided for page 1 and page 2 Ethan Barry - @gaptoothb ethanbarry.com Photography Provided For pages 8-9 page 10, page 12-13, pages 16-17, page 19, page 20, pages 24-25, page 29, page 30, and pages 32-33 Artwork provided for page 5 and page 13 Jana Sabeth - @janasabeth janasabeth.com | from Unsplash Photography provided for page 35 Ava Sol - @avasol144 avasol.live | from Unsplash Photography provided for page 38, pages 42-43, and pages 72-73 Tani Olorunyomi- @tani.olorunyomi from Unsplash Photography provided for page 45 Damara Woodring @trueseedhealingsart Photography provided for pages 46-47, pages 49-50, pages 52-53 Sunny Ng @sunnysmng from Unsplash Photography provided for page 55 Oladimeji Odunsi @oladimeg from Unsplash Photography provided for page 56

Kevin Condon @weirdhours Submitted by Jack Simons with permission Photography provided for page 61 Patrick Zavorskas @patrick.zavorskas Photography provided for page 62, page 65, and page 68 Echo Wang @wanderingechos from Unsplash Photography provided for page 75 Elvin Ruiz from Unsplash Photography provided for pages 80-81 Zac Wolff @zac.wolff from Unsplash Photography provided for page 87 Autumn Goodman @auttgood from Unsplash Photography provided for page 89 Amanda Souza @ducherwolf from Unsplash Photography provided for page 90

Writers Patrick Zavorskas @patrick.zavorskas Downs @whothefuckisdowns Kristiana Reed @kristianamst Hannah Burrows @dysouristos Jackie Bluu @jackie_bluu Phoebe Nerem @falderalfire Dychotomous @dychotomous Lyn Patterson @poetryntings August Bailey @keatsbutalive

Table of Contents EROS "Between The Lines: Interview with Ethan Barry" by Patrick Zavorskas ⋅ pg. 12 "to be read in a whisper" by Downs ⋅ pg. 34 "November in Perpetuity" by Kristiana Reed ⋅ pg. 36 "Magdalene" by Hannah Burrows ⋅ pg. 39 PHILAUTIA "Camara Talks with Damara Woodring" by Patrick Zavorskas ⋅ pg. 46 "Human" by Jackie Bluu ⋅ pg. 57 "self-love as knives and cranberries" by Phoebe Nerem ⋅ pg. 58 "Malbec and Conversation: Interview with Jack Simons" by Patrick Zavorskas ⋅ pg. 61 AGAPE "Behind the Handle: Honorary Alchemists" ⋅ pg. 76 "Sparkling Cider and Cheese" by Dychtomous ⋅ pg. 82 "The House of Oshun" by Lyn Patterson ⋅ pg. 86 "I'll Tell You A Secret" by August Bailey ⋅ pg. 88 "1832" by Hannah Burrows ⋅ pg. 91

Eros - : /er-ˌäs/ noun

1. Greek god of erotic love 2. Impulses to protect and preserve the body and the mind 3. Erotic love and desire 4. Sensual impulses

Between the Lines

Interview by: Interview with: Patrick Zavorskas Ethan Barry

All photography was submitted by Ethan Barry for Emotional Alchemy

Tattoo artist by day. Artist and photographer by night. Best friend on the weekends.

Works his butt off but never has a dull moment. Dabbles in writing but says it's too personal to share. Lives for nostalgia. Seeks refuge within film. Wildly passionate and perhaps a bit too ambitious due to his Aries sun and his Leo rising. Realizes that he can be a lot at times - it's his Scorpio moon, don't take it personally. Overall, quite a remarkable human being.

There was a point in my life where I became so uncomfortable with intimacy and sex. ____________________________

The truth of the matter is, it happened at a time when I was finally becoming aware of my body and sexuality, at a time where seemingly, my life split in two. Before I came out as gay. After I came out as gay. Before I was sexually assaulted. After I was sexually assaulted. I was told my body was sacred. Because of that, I never experienced the implications of what it meant to be sexually active, to act upon attraction. I grew up sheltered, I grew up Catholic, and I grew up believing that abstinence was key. I was preached to never fall in love with boys, for falling in love with other men was sinful. And I didn’t want to sin. I wanted to be the perfect little boy my parents wanted me to be. I kept my head down. I was polite. I got good grades. But I knew, when the time came, I would have my freedom. The thing about freedom is, when you come from such a naive background, you are never sure how to act safely upon it. Some people take their freedom and use it as a tool to create their success, but there are people, like me, who often take it for granted. They seek the thrills they have been waiting for their entire lives. They seek an opportunity to be “bad" for one brief, exciting moment. They try to fill a void, and whether it stems from a sense of loneliness, a missing out on what life has to offer for a stereotypical teenager, or their insecurities, they often do not fully grasp the complexities that await them. So when I, at eighteen, embarked on a journey of my sexuality, I was drastically unaware of what was ahead. I had stumbled into ecstasy, a frenzy of enduring flesh. Seeking a connection, I entered the sea of lust that awaited me on Grindr. And when I met a boy I was attracted to for the first time, I thought I had met my match. I wanted someone to talk to, someone I could ask what it was like to be a fullfledged gay male. I wanted someone that could help me understand more of myself. But I was simply a thing to him; my first kiss, my first time, and my virginity taken from a boy whose name I wasn’t sure of and who didn’t realize I was saying “no” when he kept shoving my head down on his dick. I feel foolish convincing myself to go back, trying to make some clarity out of the situation, trying to understand whether or not this boy felt anything for me…

What happened to me was soon buried deep inside of me, slowly waiting to be seen again that year. I let it linger inside of me when I tried seeking validation from other men, trying to figure out what real love meant to me, and I would remain so helplessly empty. I would let it seep out into the darkness that devoured me under my covers when the burden felt too much. I didn’t know how to handle it. And I kept thinking maybe the next time would be different. Maybe I just hadn't found the right guy for me. Maybe I was just being dramatic. So I kept looking. I kept searching for some form of validation, some form of a human being who understood me, who just wanted me purely for myself and not my body, who would love me in a way that other people loved other people so unselfishly. And as I searched, I fell deeper into a realization that this love wouldn’t come in the form of a man from an app that was so beaten into a tool purely for sex. I was uncomfortable with intimacy and sex because I was nervous about someone using me for my body again. For quite some time, I hid away any feelings that I had. I repressed any emotional connection I made with someone as I feared they would grow weary of the emotional baggage I carried in the shadows. I grew distant and cold to boys who probably liked me at some point, but I couldn’t handle letting someone touch me again, to get a hold of my body without my control. I felt empty. I felt empty because a boy made me feel like I was nothing. Because I was becoming nothing. I went about my life thinking there was no real possible way for a man to love another man. Alone with my experiences, I gave up on pretending that intimacy and sex could be anything that I had lived through. One by one, I grew weary of trying to find out otherwise. However, this story isn’t necessarily only about me. There are other people involved in this narrative, who without possibly knowing, helped me in ways I couldn’t imagine. Who provided me with such clarity that they have helped me understand my self-worth, showing me that love in my community - that love, even for me - can exist. This person that I speak of is Ethan Barry.

Ethan Barry is the kind of boy you would dream about. You might even find yourself saying that he is the perfect package: funny and utterly adorable yet so charming you would want to bring him home to your parents and have them engage in conversation to show off how brilliant he can be. With every word that he structures into thought, you cannot help but find yourself leaning in or tilting your head, waiting to hear what comes next, simply just smiling from the thoughts that come from his mind. You might be thinking now, even after all of this, how can one be that perfect? Perfection doesn’t nearly exist. There has to be some flaw in this person; it is just human nature. But perhaps, if you got to know him, you would understand that he is pretty close. As it is, however, the Ethan Barry I just described to you doesn’t always exist. The fact of the matter is, Ethan Barry is more than the person behind the camera. He is more than just a boy many of us (myself included) had a silly crush on a year or two ago. He is more than you could ever believe. There are times that he may seem so true to himself, presenting confidence and originality with absolute sureness, only seconds later, to then possibly be a little shy or self-conscious after doubting what he said. Though, he acquired a wealth of knowledge and is an open book ready to share. I am interviewing Ethan Barry because I want to connect on some level and learn more about what he creates and the world in which he inhabits. But more so, this interview is a euphemism for learning further about how someone’s work directly influenced me and my sexuality. Ethan’s work, at times erotic, but at times intimate and domestic, completely changed how I viewed what love and intimacy could be like among the queer community. The work and photography that he created turned out to be rather important in my healing, helping me redefine my self-worth and reestablish a love for my body after the trauma it had faced. His work was a part of making me feel like a human worthy of love. In having conversations with Ethan, you realize that he is indeed the approachable guy we all hope he would be. He is a little shy at times but always quick with a joke and a laugh to draw you back in. He will chat with you about the many artists that have influenced his life, tell you a story or two about his Mormon upbringing, and just when you think you’ve had your fill, he will spark a conversation on representation within the queer community. He is the kind of boy you would spend hours talking to if you could, wishing to dive a little deeper with every passing hour. You will learn that he may have made a mistake or two in his past, but he is always quick to learn from his errors and provide some answers to the issue. With every mistake or criticism he may face with his art and photography, he still cares so deeply for what he creates and puts out on display. He shares with his community and his viewers such a vividly personal insight into his life; every relationship and connection open for your interpretation. He is waiting for you to step inside his sensual world and put yourself into his place, feeling every passionate exchange that was created or every heartbreak that lies around the corner. He is open with the viewer because he is creating an escape that allows you to feel the love in all its glory. His work is there for you to experience the incredible, enduring, and sometimes messy creation that love and intimacy are. He is allowing yourself and your love to be seen. So vulnerably raw.

Ethan Barry appeared on my screen with leopard print hair that I forgot to compliment. He wore a gray fitted tee, simple and informal, matching his easygoing and pleasant personality. As the camera focused a little more, he adjusted his position and his sleeves, which began to show off the tattoos on his arms; traces of flower petals peeking out of the sewn cotton hem. It was early in the afternoon for me, but the morning was slowly beginning for him in Vancouver. The sun was heavily shining in the background of his natural lit room. The sun’s rays illuminated his face, providing extra warmth to the atmosphere he dwelled in. I was pale in comparison; manufactured light dimly brightened my room as my laptop tried to focus out the background. I was anxious and mousy, having changed twice before as if I was setting off onto a first date. I wondered if this is what other people felt like when meeting him. From what I knew about Ethan Barry before our interview was that he was a multidisciplinary tattoo artist working at HomeBody Tattoo in Canada, creating heavily queer-focused work and images. His work was something that I had shown a friend or two, but they seemed to brush off with slight disinterest as if they didn’t entirely get or comprehend the intricacies behind his drawings or photography. However, whenever his work appeared in my feed, I found myself quite amazed and intrigued by what was presented in front of me. There was something about it - the double-take of fully realizing the image shown. Ethan was someone whose life and photography had always stuck with me in some way I didn’t yet wholly actualize at first glance. As we introduced ourselves, the first thing I noticed about Ethan was his tendency to always make eye contact. He will smile at you, nod at what you are saying, actively listen to what you have to say. Taking everything in, you can feel his energy radiating through. “I am always open to having more conversations with people,” he says eagerly. “I am always open to seeing where a conversation goes.” With him in the lead, he will invite you into the numerous dialogues he has had with other artists about representation and marginalization within the queer community, applying his concern for his work and its place:“I am glad people aren’t cutting me slack when it comes to my work. When people are feeling that they aren’t being seen within my work, it is important. They should be allowed to go through those things and express their concerns.” He will share different artists' work on his page for you to follow, working diligently to create a more diverse look to what he is doing. He is continuously looking to expand his image resources to ensure there is representation seen across his platform. Furthermore, he experiments with how he can add more color to his line work, hoping to invite a more worldly perspective for his viewers.

“There is a whole dialogue around line work and diversity within the tattooing community. Since there is no color, there is no way to depict race necessarily. This makes it tough because everyone can bring in their own lens to what they are seeing. If you are trained to think that everything you are seeing is white, that is what you as the individual are seeing rather than what the artist may be seeing. And that is obviously not the intent. I am just depicting a body. I am only making work to celebrate bodies and intimacy and sex.”

To some, Ethan Barry’s work walks across a thin line between vulgarity and taste. At times, you may find yourself stumbling across one of his photos in your feed or explorer page, seeing a beautifully natural-lit portrait of a man in a linen buttondown, posing on a wooden archway in his home. Drawing you in with its simplistic yet inviting composition, you cannot help but wonder what else lies within his profile. Upon further investigation, you come across one of his illustrations, only to then realize you are looking at a photo of two men possibly having sex or giving each other a blowjob. It is subtle, perhaps in its way, a bit insidious or exhortative, but something that intricately shows the everyday nature and wonders behind love and sex. At times, if Ethan Barry and his work are offensive, it is only because one may be misinterpreting the work that is in front of them, or it may just show how sometimes art and popular successes can be offensive at times. Ethan Barry, like David Hockney and Wolfgang Tillmans (to name other artists inspiring the work that he produces ), “offends” because he is showing that there is a following of people out there who do not want to scroll through Instagram photos of their friends or celebrity crushes, but rather see themselves, their love, their kinks, their innermost wants and desires depicted within an artistic pursuit to capture the intimate world of queer men. While I never explored the world of kinks or was open with my sexual identity, Ethan was someone I have been following on Instagram for quite some time now. I was always interested in the art he was creating but was too shy to engage with the community he had created or think about how it related to my own life. I would stay up at night, scrolling through his feed, imagining what his life was like beyond his photos because the world outside of the image that was captured was something I never was able to produce on my own. I wondered what it would be like to get one of his drawings tattooed on me, picking out the placement, the exact image I would want etched into my skin. A symbol and mark of a sexual reawakening, my skin and trauma healing as one, scabbing over to reveal a newly colored outlook. How could one such as myself not want that? Throughout the years, Ethan Barry has continuously experimented with how he presented his work to his public - myself included. While his main account on Instagram (@gaptoothb) features more of his multidisciplinary artwork, he created a second account in 2018 titled “Intimacy Practices.” Originally closed to the public, this account was a private oasis to more of the subconscious world of his art, forcing the selected viewers to visualize his work with intent. “It was so personal to me. Something that, at first, I wasn't always comfortable with people seeing.” The artwork involved (perhaps inspired by that of Nan Goldin’s “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency”) captured intimate moments of love and loss, often curated in a set of three common themes.

Within each photo, you experience Ethan’s world through the lens of sex, food, escatsy, and domesticism. His subjects, which includes himself at times, are revealed at dance clubs, tangled in bedsheets, or situated in their homes. Paired with the fading or flickering of neon signs, delicate chandeliers, and smudged makeup, each photo is a memory that triggers an invocation of nostalgia and the fragileness of life. “They are all practices in intimacy. They look at the shared experiences we can all have and allow the viewer to create a space to project their own experiences onto them. I was really inspired by the original concepts behind Tumblr - the idea of sharing images and projecting our own identities and memories onto them. When I was taking photos for myself, I was trying to produce similar things for people to look at in ways that were normalizing certain ideas around erotica and different sexual practices. I was being open about my intimacy and really trying to give people the space to read into those things and do the same for themselves.” His work, in its own way, is what you make of it. I believe it separates itself from pornography because it is so personal to those involved. With Ethan, he is showing you his life experiences, foregoing the need to fabricate an idealized version of intimacy and sex. You get the entirety of lust, love, and heartbreak - the good, the bad, and the sometimes ugly. No matter who you are, whether you are a queer male or a cisgender heterosexual woman, there is some image you can place yourself into, feeling every emotion that is captured or drawn in front of you. There is little in Ethan’s life that he hasn’t somewhat shared or depicted in his artwork or photography. There are lessons on getting your heart broken in his text-based work. There are trials and executions to examine how to love your body from the portraiture work that he has done. If it weren’t for his experiences, there wouldn’t be the drive to create the work that he does. I learned that Ethan Barry was born in a large Mormon family. At a young age, he was taught that his body was a temple: “You shouldn’t ever mark it or change it.” He, however, was always fascinated by tattoos, the art, and memories behind the ink, being tempted by the culture surrounding them. “I was about eight or nine when my older brother got his first tattoo as he was no longer Mormon. With that, it just made everything so much more real. Someone I know, someone in my family, was able to get something that to me, at that time, was so out of my world.”

“I never really had an entryway into the tattoo world other than that one experience with my brother. The tattoo world at this time was still very much that “hypermasculine” stereotype that most people still think of it as now. I didn’t feel safe going into any of those places being the cissy queer I am. But eventually, when I was in university for my visual arts degree, I started thinking more about the tattooing community. I started thinking more about the tattoos I wanted for myself, and I began navigating certain spaces I thought were a potential fit for me. In the end, I had some not great experiences with some of the tattoo shops I began seeking out. Most were mean or condescending, especially if they were super hyper-masculine dudes who were like, ‘'No, I don’t want to do that. Fuck off.’

I soon knew I had to take a different approach, and I began to seek out places where I felt more comfortable. It just turned out that most of these places were primarily women-owned businesses and tattoo spaces. That was kind of how I began getting introduced to the tattoo world.” Shortly after, while he was finishing up his degree, Ethan started taking those experiences and creating his work of illustrations he would eventually begin to design for tattoos. He began venturing into producing work that differed heavily from the work he was creating under his conceptual art degree, having more freedom to produce content that you wouldn’t normally see but what “people could identify with and enjoy.” It wasn’t until two friends of his provided a space for him to start tattooing did he slowly commence entering into the tattoo artist world.

“To me, getting my first tattoo and entering the world wasn’t a form of rebellion. It was rather a tool for me to reflect on some portion of my personality or some experience that I had gone through. If anything, my tattoos are more healing than rebellious. They allowed me to attach a part of my identity to my skin.” The visual work that Ethan creates, as we know, is a further extension of his identity, a way to show people a path of who he is and the things or people that he cares about. And it's been that way from the beginning, but with its one learning curve.

“There was a lot of learning involved when I first started, especially learning in terms of having to communicate to others what I was doing and the consent around it and what people were comfortable with. I have come to realize that there is a lot of negotiation in terms of what people are comfortable with you photographing, what they are comfortable with you doing in general. I had some positive experiences, and I had some negative experiences at the beginning. Usually, it evolved around people providing consent to what we were doing in the beginning, but then at the end, they would say, ‘No, I don’t like those’ or ‘No, I don’t want you to use those photos.’ To me, it can be heartbreaking at times, especially for an artist who is in love with an image, and who doesn’t want to overstep that boundary with someone. So I am extremely careful with who I photograph and what I am photographing with them. I am extremely explicit with them about what they are comfortable with me taking photos of. There is just an entire dialogue around it. And so, from the beginning, there was a lot of learning in trying to figure out how to communicate clearly with people the intent behind what we were creating and what I wanted to do as an artist and photographer.

I had to learn how to communicate with people who may just want to have sex and are using this photography as an “in” for trying to have that experience. I just want someone to say they want to have sex with me and not get in the way of my artistic practice. You know,” he pauses for a moment. “It is so personal to me in so many ways. It is about more than just having sex.” The people involved in Ethan’s art and photography, including Ethan himself, have all agreed that the experiences of being photographed have helped navigate their own experiences with body dysmorphia and representation. Many of the people involved are everyday people: friends of Ethan’s, acquaintances met through a cup of coffee, followers who made time for the journey. These people, who generally are male-identifying queers, are aware that there are very heightened aesthetics of people’s bodies within the community - the mindfulness of how we present ourselves and how we look is an added stress in wanting to be accepted. In his more portraiture work, Ethan wanted to provide them the space to be captured in their best light, using a way that came very natural and authentic. “I wanted to provide a space where I was capturing these people and allowing them to explore the positives, as well as their insecurities and celebrate them as one whole, being their most authentic self. For Ethan himself, his more erotic-focused and intimate work has produced a space where he grew more connected to the relationship he had with his own body. Back in May of 2019, Ethan was running errands when he flipped his bike over in the middle of traffic, breaking his collarbone in two places. Having to go through three different surgeries, his outlook on his physical abilities and his emotional capabilities had drastically changed.

“I went through a period of time where I wasn’t able to do what I normally could. I was being forced to see the physical changes that were happening to my own body. It took quite a lot of time to not be ashamed of what my body looked like after that experience, especially the new capabilities my body could handle. It was a hard shift, and it was difficult to get used to. But when I was finally able to get back into the photography that I was originally doing, it brought on a new appreciation for my body, and all of those intimate acts and such. I was seeing first-hand through the images how my body was healing, the new limitations it had and what it could do. It was all compounded because of how heavily my own experiences are rooted within my photography.” With this said, Ethan started posting more of his deeper intimate work on his Instagram account. Mixing his film with illustrations and photos of his client’s healed tattoos and drawings for his flash provided his page more views and recognition than it ever had. It did come with a setback or two: the questioning of the bodies he was showing, the lack of diversity delivered in the photosets, and the conversations that needed to be had in addressing how to move forward. But this has been something that, since then, he has continuously addressed and worked on.

“Again, when it comes to diversity and representation within my work, this is something that I am actively working on. And one of the things I find the hardest, especially within photography, is where I am located. Vancouver doesn’t have the largest queer population, so I am limited to who is here in the city. I am also kind of limited in terms of who is ready and who is open to having themselves documented that way. I could post on Instagram and say that I want to take nice portraits, and I’ll get a line of people who want that any day of the week, but it is hard in terms of getting that representation in my erotic or more intimate work because, again, not everyone is open or comfortable with that. The thing is, though, trying to show diversity in those areas and those ways is where I feel the root is in what I want to create. Moving forward, I am trying to do a lot more work where I am documenting couples or sexual partners. I don’t necessarily have to be involved sexually because that puts a restriction on it. I don’t necessarily want to be using my body in a way that is inauthentic to how I am feeling or even how the other person is feeling just to provide diversity. It is kind of one of those things where I don’t want to tokenize anyone, or I don’t want to go through these intimate acts just to create diversity. So I am trying to allow that to happen more organically, more authentically, or naturally. And that can be hard because of the nature of the work, so I try to communicate that I am looking for it as much as possible. I am always working on being more inclusive, and it is something that I am learning to do every day. However, at the same time, some people are making what I am not and who are in the wide spectrum of queerness. Sometimes it isn’t always necessary for me to be making everything, but rather, I can engage with these people and allow them to engage with my followers and share their work through my platform.” At the end of the day, all Ethan wants to do is showcase work that celebrates our bodies and reduces the stigma behind sex and intimacy. Everything that he is doing, every line drawn, every film captured, he is doing so with careful consideration and attention. If you move past the initial concepts of the composition, you can see straight into the capabilities of him as an artist. Some people do not understand him, who do not get the context behind who he is or how he lives his life, but Ethan realizes that he needs to be a lot more thoughtful about the work he creates and shares. He ultimately understands that there is still so much privilege with being a cisgender queer male, and with the time that we are in now, it is essential for him as an artist to fulfill a role in producing work that is diverse and inclusive. And all he wants to do, even since the beginning, is help, allowing people, such as myself, to see themselves and their queerness represented as naturally and authentically possible.

To me, Ethan Barry’s photography and work capture love in a way that, after my sexual assault, I didn’t imagine was ever possible. I came out of the abuse thinking that my body was worthless and undeserving of romantic and tangible love, and I further damaged these notions by getting involved with men who saw me as nothing more than an object of their desire. I convinced myself that I was undeserving of gentler kinds of affections. For that, I had denied myself to enjoy pleasures of true intimacy. I learned to hate myself, hate my body, and truly hate the notion of having pure intimacy and attraction with another human being. I hated the weakness I held within me, not being able to control my body once again. It was a long journey heading toward a place of trying to be comfortable with not only my body, but intimacy and sex again. For a boy who went through years of being guilty for his homosexuality to then feeling so dirty and ashamed of the abuse he went through, Ethan’s work was hope to me that love and intimacy (sex more importantly) didn’t have to be a damaging or uncomfortable experience. When I discovered Ethan’s work, it felt as if he created a world for me to escape into and place myself among the images taken. I could understand the heartbreak that he expressed through his images. I could feel the warmth of the intimacy shown on film. I could make it my own incredible thing. And for that, I have learned to be more open in expressing my fears and triggers with those who I decide to bring into my life. Sex now, especially when it comes to sharing the moment with someone I love, is such a breathtakingly innate human thing in every sense of the word. At times, it makes my heart race in ways I could never imagine. That passion being something I wouldn't change for the world. And don’t you see? There is a lot of beauty in that.

"to be read in a whisper" by Downs

new city again & the people waiting, shivering for the afternoon train to pass above the street are birds on a wire. has that metaphor been made yet? i will make soup tonight & it will smell sad from every room in this little apartment. & there are crosswalks i won’t cross before i die. every time i walk to the corner store, another love poem falls out of my pocket & is lost forever. i love this, i love this, i love that. neighborhoods & city blocks & bridges. the way evening draws blue shades over the kitchen so slowly until sudden night. yes, i can make love. i’ve been around the block, see. let me tell you about those lovers whose highways & supermarkets i have memorized. i am living here now & soon i will move on. yes, i can make love. simmer it on the stove until it’s reduced to the size of a suitcase & then move again. there are so many countries & they are lining up to kiss me goodnight. streets like skin. park benches like silk sheets. if you saw the way i tried cities on only to drop them empty to the floor of my bedroom again & again, you would stop asking me to love a thing with a body. yes, i can make love. perhaps not the way you want. to love a body, i must love my body. to wear a city forever, i must be content with the way it catches & clings to these curves i can’t escape. here: soup on the stove. simmer it down. in an hour or two, there will be nothing left & i will be off. onto the next city. onto the next lover. on & on & on & on until the pot’s gone cold & the streetlights come on.

"November in Perpetuity" by Kristiana Reed I saw the stripes on your jacket first: vertical silver slithers, small and constricted like veins. Black shirt, unbuttoned at the top– skin– honey, syrup, anything viscous beneath the amber light. And I wanted you then. I wanted to wear you; adorn my cold bones with the taste of sweat and love. Hot and heavy. Electricity. It was in the way you walked: in the chivalry and how softly you ordered us both gin. Eyes, which taught me the color blue. The real color blue. Not the sky, not the sea, not my favorite dress, but you. And I wanted you then. I wanted to become you; slip my skin inside of yours and hear my words lilt and leave from your glistening mouth.

We sat outside despite the November chill. Listened to the water feature trickle endless behind us. I studied your hands– peach fists of something new– and the rings on your fingers. Gunmetal. And I fell in love with you. You kissed me in the car park. You kissed me in the car. You kissed me outside and told me to leave before we went too far. You taught me the letters of worship, spelled it upon my lips. You taught me the sound of worship too. Guttural; a wolf’s howl, nestled deep in the back of your throat. And you’ve been on your knees ever since, baying, invited each night, at the silhouette my moon skin casts across the sheets.

"Magdalene"

by Hannah Burrows

She washes her own feet, performs her sighs and soap suds and they flock to her, faceless faces watching her wreathed in white chiffon translucence the purest slut they eat it up and the money comes in— she feels more than beautiful, she feels like sin and she buys flowers for every room, swatches virgin’s blue to stain her walls, paints herself purple and dances, each breast covered with calla lilies, screen name gloria herald of sunlight; she looks nothing like shame. high heels impaling a rotten apple on her way to buy french lace, she moistens her lip with dew, she peeks over the rosemary to take you home and show you, yes, you the forbidden taste of holiness.

Philautia - : /fɪˈlɔː.ti.ə/ noun

1. Self-Love 2. Self-Acceptance 3. To take account one's own happiness

Damara Woodring

Camera Talks with:

RADIATING WITH EQUAL PARTS MYSTICISM AND BEAUTY,

DAMARA WOODRING IS A PHOTOGRAPHER AND ARTIST LIKE NO OTHER. WITH A MULTITUDE OF TALENT THAT ENCOMPASSES MORE THAN JUST PHOTOGRAPHY, DAMARA MIXES HER HERITAGE AND BACKGROUND WITH HER INTERESTS IN HOLISTIC HEALING TO BRING A COLLECTION OF PHOTOS THAT AREN’T JUST REFLECTIVE OF HER ROOTS, BUT BRING A CONVERSATION OF REPRESENTATION WITHIN THE ART WORLD. REFLECTING ON VARIOUS VIEWPOINTS THROUGHOUT HER WORK THAT DIVES INTO BODY POSITIVITY, DAMARA SHOWCASES EXACTLY WHAT IT MEANS TO TRULY LOVE YOURSELF AND YOUR WORTH.

PZ : First off: how are you doing? How have you been handling everything with the pandemic? DW: I am wonderful! I think I've been handling things pretty well. I am naturally an introvert, so isolation isn't something new to me. I believe everything happens for a reason, so I roll with the energy.

PZ: Do you mind introducing yourself and describing a little bit about what you do? DW: My name, of course, is Damara. I am a healer! I heal through the modalities of art in many forms, like dance, music, photography, as well as holistic wellness. I'm pretty much the lil old woman that lives in the woods, minus the old. Just add lots of sparkles!

PZ : What first got you into photography? Was this always a hobby of yours? DW: I have always loved photography. It has been in my life from a young age. I've always been a nostalgic soul. I've always loved beautiful things, but life is not always beautiful. Photography has given me the gift of sight because not all things are as they seem. I can turn the ugly into the hallowed with just a click, and that thrills and heals me. My uncle Mike, who has passed on, first introduced me to photography. Film photography! I remember getting in trouble for sneaking his camera and snapping shots! He bought me those disposable cameras and always gave me pointers. His best advice: "Take pictures of the shit you want. Nobody can tell you what your art means to you."

PZ: You describe yourself as a “self-love artist.” I was wondering, what does self-love mean to you? DW: To me, self-love means acceptance. It means fighting for myself, standing up for myself, holding myself accountable. It means learning from my past. It means accepting abundance. It means saying hell yes to the things I love and hell no to the things I don’t. It means being unapologetically me. I didn’t use to love myself very much, but now I see myself in a completely different way! To love myself is to love this world because there are reflections of me in every part of it. PZ: How do you think the pandemic has affected the way we approach self-love and self-care? DW: I think for a lot of people, it has caused them to slow down. This world is always in a rush. We are always burning ourselves out, always worried about materials and drama. Now there is repose. There is reflection. There is realization. This causes people who would ordinarily distract themselves to look inward. That can be challenging and a bit overwhelming, but I think it is needed. It gives us a moment to ask ourselves: "What is really important in my life?"

PZ: "Body" is a series you are currently working on that focuses on how to appreciate our body and find gratitude for who we are. What was the inspiration behind creating this series? DW: I'll give you the short version. It is my experience that we carry memories, traumas, and triumphs in our blood, our bones, our whole body. We don't give much thought to how intricate, precise, and powerful it truly is. It houses our spirit, and as a woman, I carry thousands of tiny souls in my womb. It is also a tribute to our ancestors. Our stories are their stories. Our pains are their pains. And our accomplishments are their accomplishments. We are breaking generational curses by telling our stories, and our bodies are full of them!

PZ: In the series, you incorporate paint and other materials into the shoot. How does paint impact the meaning behind the photo? DW: I leave that up to the viewer! Each beautiful soul has a different reason for choosing the colors they did. My point of using colors is a way to help both the viewer and participants see how their vibrations and frequencies play out in a tangible form. Like, have you ever asked yourself why we even see the world in color? Each color has a vibration that affects different parts of the mind and body. We choose colors that reflect how we feel in everyday life, like choosing a red shirt for an interview instead of a gray one. We are always intuitively choosing things based on our energy.

PZ : What is the overall message you would like viewers of the series to understand from your photos? DW: It's not up to me how people perceive my art. I feel like it speaks for itself. I could explain it in a million ways, and others would still see something completely different. The bigger is just that, though. What message do you receive? What thoughts, emotions, memories, insecurities, etc. come to your minds when you gaze upon the works?

PZ: In some of your other portrait work, one can discover themes of spirituality and divinity. How has your culture and heritage influenced you as a photographer? DW: I feel a lot of my art is divinely-inspired. I'm always talking to my ancestors, asking them what they want to share with me, and wanting to learn more about them. It is difficult, as a lot of my tangible history is lost and destroyed and covered up. But over the years, I have learned more about my indigenous heritage, being from north-south America, as well as the West Indies. It has played a crucial role in my identity. My ancestors help me share what is really in the blood because what is in the blood can't be erased. My people feel lost and broken and deceived all the time. But my ancestors say, “Hold on, honey. We got this!”

PZ: How does this representation affect your overall work? DW: It is in every fiber of my work and my life. My life is synonymous with my work. I look back on things I have created recently and old, and always find some new perspective and way of seeing. It makes me feel more connected to myself.

PZ: Why do you think it is essential to celebrate your identity and background within your photography and art? DW: It's important to see YOURSELF in the world. I remember being a little girl, afraid and angry at life. All I learned was how my people were slaves or savages, the short end of the stick, etc., but that's not all there is to it. I grew up not feeling beautiful, being brown-skinned and kinky-haired. I grew up knowing the bare minimum about my heritage, having no rites of passage or ceremonial connections, no ancient traditions (or so I thought, but that's a story for another day). So now, I make my own through art. In doing so, things I thought were lost or stolen are revealed. So when my son looks in the world, he sees himself and loves himself. So my family, known and unknown, sees themselves and loves themselves. So the viewer sees themselves and loves themselves.

PZ: Do you think it’s important for people to reconnect with their roots and culture? DW: YES! I believe we are always deeply connected, but our awareness or context could use some nurturing. We are always intuitively doing what our ancestors have done. We've only shifted to fit the time and energy. I think it is important to listen to yourself. Follow your heart's call. Trust that instinct telling you to take that trip, take that class, explore that forest! You will find your ancestors in every step you take. Even more so, you will find more of YOU!

PZ: What we love about your work is how it leaves the viewer feeling empowered, which is truly a beautiful and incredible thing. If you don't mind sharing, how has your work helped you feel empowered? DW: Thank you! That means a lot to me! It has shown me so many things about myself regarding body positivity, sovereignty over my mind and body, self-confidence, and self-control. Each process for each shoot is different. Sometimes I'll have an idea and plan a whole shoot. I'll buy fabrics, props, etc. and it will flop. I'll end up doing something else entirely. Life is a lot like that. It helps me to go with the flow, to be less judgmental. It also teaches me attention to detail. I say it has helped me to feel empowered by causing me to see ME!

PZ: Lastly, do you have anything you would like to promote? Any new projects you would like to spill some details on? DW: Certainly! Body: Vol. 1. is the art series mentioned earlier. It is officially out now! All that info can be found on my social media account. On the music tip, you can find my partner Ether and I on Instagram (@itstruemusic).

"Human"

by Jackie Bluu Frozen still are our thoughts when we become trapped in the realization that we are nothing but clay molded into different colorful shapes, wet with unholy water and a hint of spice of our choosing. A little bit of cayenne for sassiness A splash of sugar for slight softness or empathy A prick of salt for the right amount of temperament. We are alien to nothingness yet we feel with so much uncertainty that we fear for the unknown. Just a debris of oxymorons— Perfectly imperfect in the most mysterious ways.

"self-love as knives and cranberries" by Phoebe Nerem

“Take a body, dump it, drive.” — Richard Siken, “Birds Hover the Trampled Field” Pink gore stuck between my teeth, licked off with a rhinestone-studded tongue— I’m the lion sitting pretty on a tender throne of bones. I killed my past selves in an abattoir; I gutted them like fish and inhaled the blood-soaked air, machete in hand, thirsty for the next. I grabbed their chins like a sweet prince and said, Come here, darling. I’d never hurt you. This is for us. They whispered in my ear, just before their bodies hit the floor, I know what you’re doing here. I’m sure they did. Maybe I’ll say a few words in their memory. Maybe I’ll defend myself. Dear me, I offered you friendship bracelets and promise rings as a truce. I slowed my running feet, sacrificed my perfect gait, and I even looked back to see if you were following, but you hid from me every time. Dear me, I tried to reconcile our differences, but you had a child’s mind, disturbed. Dear me, You’re lucky I stopped running. Hello, gorgeous. Hello, ghost. Tell me what it’s like to die. Did you see God in his high heaven? Now I see him in every reflection.

It’s the God, it’s the Universe, it’s the Source, call it what you want. The Creator. The Conductor. That thing you pray to when the sun goes down. It’s all a give and take. I give him my hands and he takes them from my body. He gives me fruits and I take them from the bog. Cranberry juice up to my hips, I sink and sink until everything is painted in choleric reds and tastes like a punch to the face. A tough-love kind of punch, but love nonetheless. I already navigated the anatomy of fear and loathing by myself, so now it’s my turn to dip my fingers in love’s abundance, syrupy and cloying. It gets stuck to the roof of my mouth. I don’t ever want love’s stickiness to leave my lips.

The necessity of uncertainty, the necessity of surrender. Surrender keeps you sane. It’s more important than happiness. Happiness is a splinter. Surrender is the tweezers. Now we move to the ballroom of energy, which is Earth, which is an itch you can’t scratch. Lights, camera, and— Give me despair. Give me intrigue. Give me rebirth. The spotlight is on you. You being the sun, the moon, the stars. You being the dance between predator and prey, the effervescent cycle. You and I are one. Life and I are one. My past selves didn’t know this. They held life in contempt, as an other, and it’s the idea of otherness that led them to the door of life’s slaughterhouse. But life and I are not separate. There is no other. I’m saying this as a word of caution. Tread lightly on misery’s hot coals. Same goes for happiness. Your incessant monologuing of me and the other will never serve you the way you’d like it to. Will you choose the fleeting splinters of the banal, or would you like to live deliciously? I still see my past selves sometimes, lingering, longing. They flicker at me through the windows of train cars. I flicker back.

Malbec and Conversation Interview with Jack Simons

"Balcony beached in Brooklyn bar / Psycho sorting assorted stars / Where’s the comfort in company / This concoction is all I need I love. Malbec and ginger ale / Tallest of all the tales / Smoothest of the seven seas." Malbec and Gingerale by Jack Simons

Photos from Patrick Zavorskas

To say that I didn’t know Jack Simons before this interview would be an utter lie... The truth is, I have known Jack for quite some time now - we met on the eve of my 23rd birthday in April 2019. About two months after leaving an abusive job and an even more abusive ex-boyfriend, I found myself ready to explore the dating pool once more - downloading Tinder yet again. At first, I wanted nothing more than some harmless flirtation, a pick-up line exchanged here and there, maybe a seemingly goofy yet sexy conversation where things would begin to ignite. I had no idea what I was exactly looking for, but somehow, I paved a way in looking for him. And soon enough, I found myself falling for an utterly charming, witty, and deeply-sensitive boy that I still care for to this day and happy to have as a friend. I will be honest in saying that interviewing one of my ex-boyfriends is something that I never imagined myself doing. But Jack is someone whose story and philosophical approach to life and identity is an entity that needs to be shared with others. He goes about his life with an open heart. He is there for you when you need someone to listen to when you are having a bad day and need to vent. He is there for you with the perfect band recommendation, Youtube video, article, podcast - what have you - to cheer you up. But he is there first and foremost to provide the essential advice you didn’t know you needed until you hear it. He cares so considerably for the people he brings into his life and his world. His kindness is the quintessential forefront of his personality, the living example of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” However, life has presented itself with many challenges for him. At times, he has questioned his placement in the world, his sense of belonging to not only the people around him but also to himself. There are moments that he seems unsure of his body, his reflection in the mirror. Though he has his vices (as many of us do) to sometimes solve his issues, he continues to go about the world headstrong and courageous, presenting himself with new opportunities when chances come forward. With an ambition to not only fully understand himself better, he turns to music as a coping mechanism and communication tool to tell himself and his listener. He paves a way to show you exactly what he feels and thinks in that moment - his songwriting takes on a fully realized and self-actualized sense of honesty and openness. And for anyone who has the pleasure of listening, you’ll understand exactly what I mean.

It was May of last year when I first became exposed to the world of Jack Simons. I was heading on a bus to the city late in the afternoon. I was unusually selfconscious, seemingly too uncool for the atmosphere I was about to go into. We were meeting for a date that was like no other, moving along from train to train to the Brooklyn music venue in which he and his band were about to play. Not knowing exactly where we were headed, I imagined the types of people that I would meet. Was I even cool enough to be a part of this scene? Do I look too hipster to join their gang? Will this boy I am dating even like me anymore if his friends think I am too dorky? I was eager to find out as I walked the streets with him, wearing my fake leather leggings and a band tee. Jack seemed perfected, self-realized, and so sure of himself when we finally arrived at the Knitting Factory, meeting up with the most stereotypical hipster Brooklyn men I had ever seen. Smoking from a vape, pen between his fingers like an old Hollywood movie star, a man in a white tank and slacks that probably had never been washed (that is how your preserve the quality of a vintage design) caught up with Jack as if they were childhood friends, though I am pretty sure Jack only met him once. But that is the funny thing about Jack: once you meet him, you get pulled into how easy it is to connect with him, imagining yourself knowing him for years. As we grew closer to the start of his show, I noticed that Jack seemingly got nervous, pacey even. He twiddled his thumbs, anxiously rubbing his fingers to soothe himself. Occasionally, he would come over to me and seek comfort, only to then disappear for a bit to sneak a few sips of a beer to calm his nerves and liven himself up again. Eventually, his bandmates and best friends finally appeared, and I was introduced. Honestly, I had nothing to worry about because they swept Jack away and left me alone with my devices. When their set finally started, Jack emerged from the darkness with his bass around his body. With painted lips, heavy eyeliner, and psychedelic-dark eyeshadow, he stepped forth in full-form wearing a floral short-length dress, no pants, and his converse shoes. He was a rock star, glowing with a confidence I had not seen previously on small coffee dates and walks around Manhattan. To me, you could tell he was the happiest he had ever been playing on that stage. Whether he will admit it or not, that is the place he deserves to be.

He is seemingly and utterly himself.

“Since I've tried to find the self / I've erupted into cells / Need to find a frame to wrap my brain around” “February 92” from Crescent Cradles, Jack Simons, Released 2018 Once you have entered into Jack’s world, slowly gaining his trust, you realize that he is an open book - one of which, however, is filled with seemingly doubtful insecurities. We would be out for coffee when he would murmur something here or there, slipping little memoirs of self-consciousness into the conversation. He will bring up his issues with anxiety over dinner, and when you find yourself in the most intimate of spaces with him, he will pour out a soliloquy of his past trauma wrapped up in philosophical forethought and backing.

There is beautiful open transparency developed, but you realize this is his way of connecting to people beyond conventional means. And if you find yourself to be extremely lucky as I have, he will introduce you to his favorite musicians and songs - maybe even make you a playlist - to make everything come full circle.

Through getting to know him, I have learned that Jack has struggled primarily with the root of his own identity and how to accurately “label” both his gender and sexuality. It could be the root cause of his upbringing. Being raised in the small town of Hadley, Massachusetts, he had told me about microaggressions he had faced in his school for being Jewish; the town seemingly at first being far less progressive than it is today. It could be due to the fact that he was not aware of the kind of representation he was looking for, but perhaps he felt the need to conform to those around him in order to fit in and feel secure, to feel safe. But maybe I am just projecting here…

“At first, I felt as if the songs I was creating were needing to get born out of me, as pretentious as that may sound,” he laughs. “The music is always best for me when it is a summation of how I feel about things. Usually, I, for the longest time, had gone with the words, or they would arrive with the vocal melodies, and I would just sort of sand them down into a lyrical body on top of the chord changes and instrumentation and all that. But I found that I was never quite sure exactly what the meaning behind the song was or what it was about until I listened back to it. And even then, there were a few I had no idea of; it just produces a very intuitive feeling in me. In more recent years, however, it started to become more like when I finish a song, that both musically and lyrically, I can kind of easily find where I was getting at, you know? I could tie this back to my life and tie this to another part. And it would almost be this subliminal thing that I couldn’t have done if I instead went to someone and tried to communicate to them what I was thinking. For the longest time, I have tried so hard to kind of analyze everything that I was feeling, yet I was trying so hard to move past that. So music in itself has been a place that has been so helpful for me because it has allowed me to explore my sense of identity. It has been a place to heal.” Jack has gone through quite the hardships, some of which he had discussed with me previously in our relationship. There had been times he told me that he lived through a debilitating depression, going through major ups and downs. Quite young, he experienced the death of a childhood friend that still seems to have a lasting impression on him. Even more so, he has struggled to find comfort within his body, contemplating his gender at times, thinking about transitioning or presenting himself as female. All of this, at least to me, boiled up into further issues surrounding his identity and sexuality - the searching for labels to attach to himself being thought of more than ever. In his albums “Malbec and Gingerale” and “Crescent Cradles,” you are brought into a process of grieving and redemption. Around the time of both of the albums’ initial writing and conception, Jack was in a rather ugly state. Within darkened circumstances, he was placed on antidepressants that left him manic and relying on alcohol to cope or to make him feel right. Underneath it all was an existential calling out for help.

He would question again who he was, what his belief system was made of. He would wake up every morning and feel completely different than the day before, utterly engrossed in new values and thoughts. Jack was forcing them out into these stripped-down, transparent, and almost melancholic songs for those to hear; until he was bare in front of them. Bare in front of himself, exposing what he wanted to say. “Sometimes I think I've got a big Tarzan mind / And so I let my beard grow and flow freely / And though I'm comfy in my maleness I find / A need to tend to Jane in my brain at the same time.” “Need Some Walking” from Crescent Cradles, Jack Simons, Released 2018 Within these lyrics, everything surfaced. With a deepened subconscious flow onto paper, he revealed to himself all he needed to know, all he needed to possibly heal from the thoughts that cause such issues in his life. You can get a sense of his inclination to capture the notion of fluidity within gender, surpassing the idea that he needs to fully conform to one socially constructed idea of what a male or person must be. It is showing that, while stripping his identity bare in front of you, there is not a need to label himself to one idea. In the end, they are just thoughts in your head or lyrics written down on a page. They are what you make of it.

“When I started getting into Buddhism and diving deeper into my own identity, it made sense to me that identity, at its core, is just thoughts. There will always be things that are built into you, such as your sexuality or your unique behavioral mechanism. I guess things that, you know, are built into the equation of being who you are. But most of your identity is just a set of ideas. We are all trained to sort of cling to those ideas. I feel like it isn’t a problem when someone’s sense of identity is stable or consistent. But for me, it just got to a point where I was freaking out because my sense of identity is just so fragmented and encompasses too many things to make anything out of it. There are so many things that I am afraid of; there are even so many things that I love. But in the end, they all sort of contradict each other. Buddhism, and let me be honest, I wouldn’t necessarily say that I am a Buddhist or anything, but just those ideas, those central ideas of what can make you who you are, really resonated with me and the things that I deeply believed. One of those things being that identity is just a network of thoughts in your head. So, in the end, isn’t that even more reason to play around with it and have fun with who we are? I don’t want to be this inconsistent caricature of what a person needs to be, and that was what I set out originally to do with my music.”

“Way down in Jersey City / I saw the boy so pretty / had to quit camp in the background / It’s my life and I want it to be free…” “In Jersey City” Unreleased Song, Jack Simons, Written 2019 Through all of his experiences and all of the challenges that life has thrown his way, Jack manages to see his way through it, headstrong and determined. He is ready to adapt, ready to take on an analytical approach to solving whatever problem comes his way. While he still has his fair share of ups-anddowns, he will be ready to turn it into art, writing away any feeling he has into a new song or lyric on a page. His melancholy advances into a new chord progression; his sorrow discovers a new inspiration to add into his world.

And with every new person, new feeling, or new philosophy that enters into his life, he is ready to accept them into his identity, exploring a whole new set of ideas without changing who he is on the inside. He is simply looking to learn about a new part of himself yet to be revealed.

“If there is one thing that my music has really helped me with in the form of a therapeutic device, it is identity exploration. There are so many people that have influenced my work; it would almost bring out this little burst of songwriting where this person would be sprinkled throughout the piece, but there would still be a little bit of me in there. It allowed me to take the focus off of myself and explore someone's art and work. At first, especially in the past, I was very literal about it, though. I was really interested and perhaps even invested in the works of Frank Zappa, who is still one of my biggest influences. I was listening to a lot of his instrumental work and even his album “We’re Only in It for the Money." He was making this music that was very deliberate in what he was saying. He would be in control of not wanting to display something that was emotionally vulnerable or even accessible when it came to lyrical content. He was being so direct or so relevant. I was making music that was inspired by that or in place of his records. Yet, here I was singing about my emotions. I was thinking, “He wouldn’t do that!” and I would be so critical of myself… But now I can be influenced by so many different people or just anything, and it is all related. We are all human, and there is such a unity between who we are on the surface, despite all of our differences. So now I can just let that all go and have fun exploring it. None of it mattered. I like what I like, and I love what I love. It is so much more freeing that way - and I am living for it.” _________________________________________________________________ When I first met Jack, we were both two people unaware of what was waiting for them around the corner - both a little lost and unsure of ourselves. However, as the months went on, and we challenged the very core of who we both were, we slowly moved to a point in which everything seemingly fell into place. For him, he seemed self-actualized, refamiliarized with the central idea of who he was. It may have been lost one point due to a few glasses of Malbec and Ginger Ale or even escaped a little bit through some anti-depressants, but he no longer needed the stage or a song to be who he was. In the end, he had learned what it took for him to be who he wanted to be. And as I said before, he is seemingly and utterly himself. And he is brilliant.

Agape - : /ä-gä'-pa/ noun

1. Affection or Benevolence 2. Universal or Empathetic Love 3. Unconditional Love 4. Love for the community | The idea of being connected through a singular community of people

Honorary

Alchemists behind the handle

It is hard these days to define yourself based on your Instagram handle - so we are letting you do the talking! Between the poet-creative-freelanceeditor to the photographer-artistcinematographer, here are a few of our favorite people behind their handles.

Jasmine Romani-Romero - @primcessart

Jasmine Romani-Romero is a queer Peruvian-American collagist from South Florida working in Jersey City under the pseudonym Primcess. After spending several years as an amateur illustrator, music photographer, and videographer in Miami, she embraced the medium of collage in 2017. Inspired by music and magic, she seeks to create whimsical works that explore the occult, beauty, and transformation while borrowing from various mythologies, including that of her indigenous heritage.

My name is Gregory Foster and I am an artist, writer, and avid tea drinker. I currently live in Montreal. Over the years, I have come to consider myself somewhat of a polymath. When I was younger, I often wished I had a singular interest to which I could be entirely devoted. I wanted to be as passionate about painting as Pollack or as lost in writing as Virginia Woolf. However, I always found myself being pulled in various directions by my ever-growing menagerie of interests. In the past, I would have judged myself harshly as someone who couldn't stick to one thing. But now, I've given up on that self-deprecating thinking and moved into the open consideration of a more grounded person. I think part of it comes from age, and I'm becoming less concerned with what others think of me and my artistic process. These days I'm most inspired by the darker aspects of myself and working with the shadow. I was so concerned with making inoffensive, sellable, and acceptable art for so long I stifled my creativity and made far too much tedious yet colorful, spiritual, but empty work. Everything came through the filter of "what will people think of this" and not from an authentic place. I want to be more honest about my trauma and pain and my joy and happiness, but not in an insincere way. I would rather make ugly, dark, and disturbing art than something socially acceptable and digestible for the masses. While I have always known logically that this is how an artist should create, I don't think I had integrated the truth emotionally until recently. Often the simplest of ideas or quotations hold the most potent truths, but I believe while they may ring true to us, they aren't always imbued within our psyches until they have had time to germinate.

Gregory Foster - @gregoryfoster

The Holy Male - @theholymale

August Bailey - @ keatsbutalive August Bailey is a queer poet from rural Alberta, Canada, who specializes in telling stories of queer history. On their Instagram page (@keatsbutalive), they share work that touches on loss, yearning, religion and trying to find beautiful things in a life that has yet to be defined. They have previously been published by the Poetry Institute of Canada and won the Martin Godfrey award for short stories in 2018. They are currently in their senior year of high school and have plans to attend university in the UK for a degree in English Literature and Classics. For the last three years, they have been working on (in semi-secret) a novel about the AIDs crisis in 1980’s America entitled The Angel of San Francisco. They are currently in the process of revising this novel and expect to have a readable draft at the end of next year, which they hope to publish traditionally in the future. The novel focuses on the lives of fictional people in a real crisis and how they handle it becoming their reality over the years, coming back to a permanently changed community. The novel asks how our communities can get through hard times and how we remember the people we lose in the process. August is passionate about teaching other young queer people their history because there is such limited opportunity for them to learn it and so few documented examples. They believe in writing hopeful yet accurate depictions of queer love and domestic life to give other people in their situation (growing up in a small conservative town) hope that there is a way out. In their free time, they enjoy reading speculative fiction, petting random cats on the street, and writing poems to Taylor Swifts albums.

Sparkling Cider and Cheese

by Dychotomous

To the love of my life, When I first met you, you were wearing slacks; an expensive watch dangled from your wrist, your hair pushed back. Now you’re wearing dresses, with thigh-high boots and long golden tresses. It doesn't matter, for it was your soul I fell in love with. I sensed that you were trapped when we first spoke over sparkling cider and cheese at the garden party of an acquaintance whose name I forget. The man who had everything was missing the one and most important piece that would make him whole: himself. I wanted to be the one that brought you peace, the one that completed you, and the one that set you free. Never did I think that setting you free would mean having to let go of the man I love. You were an agonized spirit, scorching in the fire of a truth you were struggling to embrace. It was a truth you’d known your entire life and one you’d been running away from because if you did accept it, you would be compelled to put to trial all your relationships and ask the one hard question that none of us dares to seek the answer to: are you enough? And I identified with that. I was looking for a love to fix, an external validation so that I could look at myself in the mirror and feel worthwhile because I was too afraid to introspect and bring to life all the demons I had been hiding away since I was five. So I tried to fix you, but you, my love, never needed any fixing. You have always been perfect, wild, earnest, and beautiful.

All you needed was belief, and so I believed in you, hoping that you would transform into the man that deep down, I always knew you were. You transformed, alright, but into something so much more than I could fathom. I will never forget the day you revealed yourself to me. It was a sunny afternoon in your airy penthouse, the day that would change both our lives forever. I was perplexed at first, questioning every moment we had shared, every kiss that had come to pass between us. Was none of it real? After perplexity came rage; I felt alone and abandoned. Your self-discovery had thrown into jeopardy the only real relationship in my life. At that moment, it did not occur to me that the degree of loneliness and misunderstanding you have dealt with your entire life eclipsed my momentary crisis a thousand times over. But when you came out in your pearl-white dress, with a coat of red lipstick rolled over your lush lips, with a natural finesse that would lead one to think that you had been doing this for all your years, all my confusion and rage melted. And when the sun lit your golden locks ablaze, I knew that the person I had fallen in love with was finally complete. I looked into your brown eyes from under your thick lashes, and I realized that my vision of your essence had always been right; all that needed amendment was my vocabulary. During our time together, I believed I was giving you the strength you needed to resolve your truth and be yourself. I didn’t realize, my love, that all the while, you were the one empowering me to confront my insecurities, to believe I was worthy of my acceptance.

I thought that you were dependent on me for love, but your transition showed me that you’ve always loved your true self (in fact, you loved her so much that you hid her away so that she could never be rejected). And therefore, what I saw in your eyes was merely a reflection of my dependence on you. What I responded to as a call for help from you, was in reality, a call for help from myself. I’ve learned a lot from you, my sweet, to be unapologetic and unabashed in my reality, to hold my head high in the face of hate, but I am most grateful to you for encouraging me to seek no one’s approval but my own, not even yours. We’ve come a long way, you and I, from being she and him to them, and regardless of your prefix, I will always love you - not for the kisses we shared, but for the intimacy, and not for the roles we played, but for the commitment. We are far from flawless, but we continue to grow from imperfection to imperfection, and for the first time in my life, I am okay with that.

As long as we have conversations, love, and of course, sparkling cider and cheese. Forever, Your love

You can find more work from Dychotomous on their Instagram, @dychotomous

"From the House of Oshun" by Lyn Patterson

our names are carved into a mahogany tree in the El Yunque rainforest near the sacred river where the coqui sing their sweet lullabies these cradle songs & tall tales which we will pass down to our children who will return one day to the wild to gaze in awe upon our young love’s shrine they will share both joy and sorrow as they stand before our initials at one time an impulsive daydream sculpted into the rings of a majestic tree in the years to come the embodiment of our eternal love & immortality

"I'll Tell You a Secret" by August Bailey

I loved The sun in midday, how it warms so sweetly on weathered skin. How it almost feels like home. How it burns, but we cannot stop taking it in. His face burned into my eyelids; it is beautiful and sickening to watch it disappear. I loved Bluebirds in the morning singing with him. Bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover. How morale was something he carried in his pocket beside the love letters. How he loved everyone, all the time. When it was pouring onto us. When we were losing. I loved The lightning bugs rising from the grass like stars from the earth back to the sky. The delicate humming of their wings. A dance with no choreography. Dancing with him. The way he hummed in the morning, quiet, low, and the same. I loved The stones at the bank of the lake, smooth. Smooth in his hand as he flung them, counting the skips in our time off. Smooth in his hand as he pressed one onto my ring finger, called it legal. Called us married. I loved The wildflowers that climbed up to him as we sat in the meadow, the great valley beneath us. Their bright blues, how they turned to him for light. How I couldn’t judge them because I did the same. How he smiled. How it was crooked. I loved Everything. Everything in the world and heaven and hell and the life in the closest solar system and myself. I loved everything because I loved him.

"1832"

by Hannah Burrows

for Anne i. I have learned to encode the utterance of my heart, to speak in tongues and closed drapes, the snap shut of the pews gate ii. I have learned to listen to hate as if underwater iii. I was salted down; crushed secrecy and love for the ink pressed into each downstroke like her head on soft pillows

ears blocked with a vision that falters

iv. reminder: love her like a silent scream like a ship in a storm

by which I mean as loudly as you dare

you must find your way back to her

by which I mean hold on at all costs

by which I mean damn the gods of sea and sky it would feel so sweet to come home to this

reminder: make of onyx an unconventional promise

by which you mean I refuse to swear off love until it floods me.