Anthology 6 Preview: Repose

To find tranquility.

Just because the world stops doesn’t mean we suddenly feel calm, still. A place of repose—whether it be a deep breath taken during chaos, a week away from all but creative work, a walk along the Wissahickon, or finding our footing behind a camera—it can happen in an instant and still be a lifelong pilgrimage. A worldwide one.

Repose is peaceful but not passive. We must seek it. But it is also a gift: when someone loves us even though “everything is not on deck,” when we are separated from home and family and still shown kindness, our deepest humanities acknowledged. In these pages Andrea and Tiffany, Yusha and Lowell, Bella and Mallika offer up moments to enter like oases—"the ripest, most golden scene[s]... right on the backs of your eyelids."

SUSTENANCE AND REPOSE

Andrea Walls

Writers Room and The Study at University City have partnered to create a new writer-in-residence program that provides emerging and established writers dedicated time and space to nurture their creativity and advance their work. Poet and artist Andrea Walls was the inaugural The Study x WR resident in December 2019.

Q: How would you describe your residency experience at The Study?

A: This atmosphere is what a writer lives for, right? A room with books, comfortable chairs, a room with a window seat that you can kind of look out on the city. There’s really nothing more luxurious at this moment in the culture than a restful week — even a day is an amazing thing. But to have a week where you can really sink into it because it really takes a day or two for all of the noise to kind of settle down. All of the to-do lists you’re always trying to stay on top of it, to just let that voice fall away.

Q: Why should more writers and/or artists seek these opportunities and be given these opportunities, or have these opportunities available to them?

A: I don’t think most people even know how pushed to the limits they are. It’s just this mindset, like, “You gotta keep it going.” And I think being under that much pressure all the time is not necessarily the greatest friend to the writing process.

Culturally, we all need a little bit more repose. … We need some thoughtful approaches to language and visual storytelling. I think we need to hear more from people who are not purely reacting and have had the luxury of time to consider what it is the moment calls for. Research is a very deep thing. You can’t just skim through it, if you’re using text to [support] your thinking and your arguments. You really need to engage with it. It’s difficult to do just sitting like scrolling through a screen.

You need to be at a clean desk with all your books open. We need that from our deep thinkers and cultural preservationists and artistic narrators. We need more from them, so we need to give them the sustenance, the hospitality, the kindness.

"Railroaded," Andrea Walls, 2018

UNTITLED

Tiffany Ellis

I love you even when you’re not looking your best.

Even when everything is not on deck for you.

The yellow on you shines as the sun hit you from the left.

The blue in you hides away but still beautiful as ever.

Your walls are a little worn out, but I still love everything about you.

John McDonald

THE GREEN

Bella Randazzo

Good golly, the green makes the brain cry out some type of way. Loosens the chemicals, gets ‘em vindictive, fills up the sternum like a swollen bruise, wisens the nervous system and puts a youthful face to the name “Old Money.” A stock enters the market like the cat she is, hikes up her fishnets, points a finger at—who else?—you, forgets your name before she’s heard it, and paints you the ripest, most golden scene of wealth, right on the backs of your eyelids. What else are you to do but cry tears of pure, unhinged, joy? Stop, drop, and roll when you get just a whiff of smoke, pop the umbrella from your waistband when you get just a taste of rain, sing “Deck the Halls” when you see a traffic light go from red to green. Make it. Behaviors like you can only imagine, or that you can’t, to get dancing on that sweet, disgusting floor. Quit, quit, quit until you’re hired. Jesus, the graphs. A woman’s curves mean less than they did beforehand. Now, focus. Such a landscape is a terrain unwieldy, unpredictable, but manageable, like roadkill. Sympathize. Grill it, blacken it, savor the smell of a peak and find comfort in rotting flesh. You were alive once, too. Make it.

Mallika Kodavatiganti

UNTITLED

Yusha Johnson

The photography life this year (since graduation) has been amazing.

I started working with this construction company that pays me well.

I started to save up money to experience life my own way.

I started going to all different types of parties. I met photographers and music artists. And I decided to catch all or most of my party experiences through the lens of a camera.

I love the way that parties always have colored lights.

I love to catch people and let people catch me at our purest moments. No one pays attention to photos being taken at these events. Everyone is just dancing and having a good time. For that night, everyone is being themselves.

Lowell Nottage

UNTITLED

Lowell Nottage

My favorite gem in Philly... the Wissahickon (the section in Chestnut Hill) and the actual gems I find there. The place is magical. The woods are beautiful, you make friends with everything, from the animals, the trees, and the stones. There was once a tree that was hollowed at the base that I loved. I would give it hugs, take pictures with it, or hang out in its branches. It was huge, but a little over a year ago it fell. RIP big hollow tree. There’s no stump left for it to grow back, its roots were ripped out and it’s now all cut up. But when it was standing you could look out at it, walk down the path to the left of it down to the cement bridge, bust a right to an old dried up crack, overgrown with plants now. In the creek you can find old dirty rocks, but if you smash them open you can find beautiful hunks of bright pink moonstone and huge flakes of biotite.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON AT A PRISON

Mallika Kodavatiganti

I noticed the architecture a lot. At the beginning of the tour, the narrator talked about penitence, and this was the goal of the prison. It was based on religious principles, so the prison was built with high arches and skylights like a church. Inmates were only allowed a bible. Being in isolation drove them to madness—Dickens theorized it was only a matter of time. There was distance between everything in their lives by that point. They were physically and emotionally separated from the world they knew.

Being on an audio tour, I felt isolated from the people around me. I couldn’t hear if someone was nearby, and I got lost in listening. I physically lost my group at many points. This was my first time being with them—I didn’t even know some their names, so there was some distance from that perspective too. It wasn’t bad, it was just there. By the end of the trip, that gap closed, at least a little bit. Victoria was vehemently explaining why safehouses weren’t a good idea, drawing on personal experiences of loved ones who passed away from overdose. Norman was telling me about his family, how his grandson is getting to do things that he couldn’t. He told me about how if he had known better, he would’ve been a surgical orderly. Jarett, Lowell, Yusha all exchanged kind smiles and friendly waves with me. Progresswas definitely made that afternoon.

Mallika Kodavatiganti

Supported by Canon USA, the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and TD Charitable Foundation.

Header image: "Sought: Sanctuary Between Church & Estate," Andrea Walls, 2018.