Hi Friends!

End of summer vibes loom and I haven’t even had a proper summer read yet.

My relationship with reading feels messy. Because I read all day. And write. So when it comes time to do something relaxing or fun or cozy, reading doesn’t make the top of the list very often anymore.

And when it does, I want something that will hold me in its spell. Something enveloping that taunts me with sentences devious and enticing. Sentences that won’t let me put down the book.

I’d been holding my breath in anticipation of the final book in the Legacy of Orïsha trilogy. It’s cover is as mesmerizing as the earlier books. What’s inside is not. The book feels flat and forced, like Adeyemi knew she had to write it, but her heart and mind had already moved on. It’s a quick read and I will likely finish it, but the magic has evaporated. The metaphors are strained. The characters have lost their essence. I keep hoping it will pick up or turn or something. I don’t want the trilogy to end this way.

I’ve started Hamnet a dozen times. I haven’t gotten very far. I’m done feeling bad about that. I’m listening to Peter Ackroyd’s Shakespeare instead. Which seems to be where she got all her info.

Listening is a thing I can do. In some cases, I start listening and immediately realize a book has to be read, like The Director. But with intimate books, read by the author, like Mother Mary Comes to Me or All Fours, I feel the intense power of the author telling me their own story. Such a generous gift.

Listening is reading.

Listening to The Golden Road by my Empire pod crush William Dalrymple, made me want the paper and the sentences to linger over, even though I’d learned so much of the book already just from the podcast. Gratefully, the book made its way to me from afar. I await a savory moment to reread.

I might be predisposed to its topic, since my fifth and sixth grade teacher had us do research projects every semester, each of us choosing a subject to become expert in. One year we did China and Japan. The next we did India and Africa. Almost last to choose, my China topic was topography. Not enchanting, but I can tell you about rice growing and the Yangtze. My India topic was religion—all of them. We also did artists and composers. Eleven-year-old me chose Salvador Dali and per our teacher’s instructions, I became him. Another messsy subscriber was Beethoven. I forever remember all of us as the artists and composers we presented in our one-hour talks. And I remember those artists and composers as looking like us.

So what are you reading and loving? What books are you falling into? I would love to know! Please share in the comments!

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Thank you for reading messsy. 💙🧡💙 messsy takes work and time and care. Thank you to paid subscribers who make this possible. And to sharers, likers and commenters. Knicks in 5.

The cruelty isn’t new. The mass cruelty isn’t new. It’s a different phase of the cruelty, but that’s not the whole of it.

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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched Heroes. I’ve read the pilot more than once. I’ve watched the pilot episode mmmm 10 times? More?

Remains one of the best pilot episodes ever. Specifically, the reveal of who Claire is and what she can do remains an astounding scene and a first-class setup for a series.

And Nashville? One of the best nighttime soapy dramas ever. Connie Briton as Rayna James is a force. Met by an equal force: Hayden Panettiere’s Juliette Barnes.

Panettiere had big talent and a big voice in a small body. I was drawn to that tiny but fierce energy. It’s no secret she struggled for years, but it felt like things were going to turnaround, like she was reemerging, owning her power. I am so sad that is not how the story unfolded.

Acknowledging that their life situations, challenges, and positionality were not the same, I can’t help thinking about Professor Jason Arday along with child-actor-turned-grown-woman Hayden Panettiere.They both achieved success at young ages for their fields. And both faced unnecessary scrutiny. Their lives dissected by others in a pile on of next level bullying. The pressure immense. Unkind. Relentless.

I’ve watched interviews with Jason Arday in the last few days. He spoke with care about love. He centered love over and over when he spoke. I cannot imagine him doing harm at all and certainly not with words.

What a deep loss.

I’m grateful that the Dead have a song for every moment. I put on Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad—one of the many traditional songs they played and made their own. There are versions by Woody Guthrie and another of Jerry’s influences, Elizabeth Cotten. It remembered for me that we keep going, even when it stings, carrying hurt until we don’t.

Every day now, the earth is rising up to tell us no. Setting boundaries for us with heat, with water, with wind. We think the earth can’t talk. We think the earth cannot react or respond. We think there is a status quo and we will return to it.

It is all change. All temporary. All interaction.

And if, collectively, we were doing life right, caring for our environment and the people in it, I don’t think we’d be losing wonderful, creative, open people at a time in their lives when they should be thriving.

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Thank you for reading messsy. 💙🧡💙 messsy takes work and time and care. Thank you to paid subscribers who make this possible. And to sharers, likers and commenters. Knicks in 5.

I didn’t read the articles

about you I didn’t

enough I thought

enough

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We’ve turned the corner toward the final throes of 2026. Maybe it didn’t feel like throes for you. I hope it didn’t. But if you’re me, you’re like WTAF happened and can I salvage any of this year?

How about a movie recommendation for a comedy that can hold its own against one of the all time greats—Dodgeball? Yes, there is a new movie that does for pickleball what Dodgeball did for Dodgeball. That’s a lot of balls.

The Dink stars Jake Johnson (if you haven’t seen Minx, you still have time in 2026 to binge this smart, funny show with standout period costume and production design) and Mary Steenburgen. And Ed Harris. Plus Andy Roddick and John McEnroe and Aaron Chen who is a very funny actor who is also in one of my fave quirky shows, Fisk (please watch this show I love it so much). Plus two people who were actually in Dodgeball!

The jokes in this movie have jokes. It made me laugh and as a tennis-lover and wannabe pickleball hater, it had my number. Recommend for lightening the mood.

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I’m having a moment with a beloved book series. It’s not my moment, really, it’s the author’s.

Children of Blood and Bone, the spectacular first book in Tomi Adeyemi's trilogy is set to be released as a film in early 2027.

When the adaptation was announced, I got goosebumps. Okay, for realz I wanted to adapt these books, but I knew these were not my stories to tell. Gina Prince-Blythewood seemed like the perfect director. Viola Davis was not who I had in my head Angela Bassett when I read the first book or when I read the Adjoa Andoh second book, but I could make that shift.

Suddenly The Woman King made sense. A dry run for the trilogy.

Casting for the movies seemed… okay… everyone seemed too old… and my imagined Zélies,12 Amaris, Tzains and Inans were given other faces and bodies. But there would be a movie!

Then a long silence… and then a shattering of that silence.

Tomi Adeyemi shared some vague-Tok insider beef. Then took it down. Then sorta doubled-down. You can read about it and watch the trailer here. She has said she is pained by the adaptation… process. She hasn’t said the adaptation itself is the problem. Not directly, anyway.

Adeyemi has co-screenwriting credit. This is pretty huge for an author, even a phenom author. It means she was included in the how and why and what of the blueprints for the movies. Somewhere along the way, though, the churning of the movie-making mill created conflict, as it does. Plus there seem to have been some interpersonal issues or casting issues. It’s all a bit murky.

My love for these books is paramount. My excitement for these movies is unparalleled. Was. Was unparalleled. Adeyemi’s public distancing from the films is chilling. Either she’s right, and the integrity of the Legacy of Orïsha trilogy is broken. Or she’s wrong and bringing down a world of hate on herself and endangering the IP.

Adeyemi’s writing built a resplendent visual and aural world in my mind for Children of Blood and Bone. One that soared and twinkled and was filled with magic. Magic you could see and feel in the air. Magic you could touch. An elevated world. A hyperreal world.

I watched the trailer. Zélie’s home village on the water looks perfect. To my mind’s eye, it’s the only thing that looks like the book. There is so much dust in every location. It diffuses the shots, its demanding earthiness dampening the feeling of vitality and magic that pervades even the landscapes in the books.

The actors feel like they are dressing up in accents and costumes. I miss the intense, fierce pride of the people in this world.

The camera does not see Zélie. Not really. It feels perpetually in the wrong place with the wrong lens3, making regal characters—and all the characters in this world have an elevated presence—small.

I am scared.

I didn’t want to believe Adeyemi, because I so want these movies to be excellent. Because authors entering the machine that is the film adaptation process often have these kinds of feelings and experiences and the movies turn out alright.

I trusted Prince-Blythewood to bring this material the treatment it deserves.

Trailers are not films. First trailers are really not films. They are often missing VFX and they may contain shots that never even make it into the movie.4 First trailers are proof of life. Teasers. They tell fans, yes, we finished this movie. Yes, you can see it. Yes, it’s coming.

Despite the adage, you can judge the Orïsha trilogy by its covers. They are shimmering strong beauty.

Perhaps best not to judge the movie by its first trailer.

These books are a revolution. A setting right. A beautiful reimagining of a possible past or future. I remain hopeful that the movie carries the spirit of Zélie, her magic, her family and her world.

Would love to know your thoughts if you are a fan of the books and have watched the trailer.

This post was ready to go when I read about the attack in Berlin. Heartbreaking.

I remember how adorable I thought it was that Berlin had a Christopher Street Day parade. In NYC, we mostly just called it the Parade. Everywhere else, it was Pride. But in Berlin, accuracy reigns and credit where it’s due, so—Christopher Street Day.

I feel the weight of our failures when a marginalized community is violently attacked by someone from another marginalized community. Our failure to care, to listen, to create space, to hold, to include.

Berlin is a cultural, ethnic and social crossroads. That gets messy sometimes. Or it used to get messy. Now it gets violent. Like everywhere else.

Today’s post is not unrelated to all of this. Queer spaces, dance spaces, community gathering spaces in Berlin have been closing with increasing frequency and rapidity, with less and less time for response and community action. Today’s post is just one of these stories.

Just a quick PSA that becoming a paid subscriber means you get all the messsy as soon as it’s available! You get some perks! And you are supporting human-generated creation, which takes human time and energy and focus and care. 🩵

If my Berlin life could be summed up in two bars (pretty sure it can), they would be Du Beast and Das Gift. These two bars and all that exists between them hold thousands of tiny Berlin stories.

We will not be talking about Du Beast today.

We are talking about Das Gift. I have avocado toast because of Das Gift. My first and best roommate in Berlin worked there. She taught me how to smash the avocado, add olive oil and salt. Mix. Like they did at Das Gift. She’d work overnights, sometimes getting back at 7:30am. Das Gift often closed after 5am. She would come home, make dinner, and go to sleep. When enough people are gone and the rest stop ordering, then you close a bar in Berlin.

She worked with another friend of mine. Poet. Artist. Raconteur. Maker of perfect dumplings and fried pickles. Host of Eurovision parties. Polymath. When 4 Blocks shot at Das Gift, they were in a scene behind the bar. Then they were asked if they minded getting wet. So they became the victim of the hoods coming into the bar and made 200€. Because they were in this episode, I watched 4 Blocks.1 One of the best shows I have ever seen. Every time they do that drone shot over Neukölln, I get a sense of home in my belly.

It was after one Sunday night poetry event at Das Gift, we ambled out at 2 or 3 or 4, strolled Donaukiez past the bridal shops toward Rathaus Neukölln, waking up sleeping families in our loud and punchdrunk state then up to yet another enigmatic and brilliant poet-friend’s flat. We went out on the roof. It was overgrown with moss. You could see the clock tower. We weren’t supposed to be there. It was that as dark as it gets in summer when we got there and the moss was not green but black then slowly slowly we could see each other’s faces. We were probably drinking sekt or beers, though I don’t know where we got them. Did we go to a späti? Maybe. We talked of poets, each other, art, something about bats and when the sun came up all the way, it seemed like it was time to go. Which doesn’t mean any of us went home.

Das Gift was a Scottish bar. Originally owned by one of the guys who is in Mogwai. It felt like any bar, but I think you could get haggis there. It didn’t feel like a pub. Outside felt and looked like any German Eckkneipe.2 I suppose I write this to uncurl the document of Das Gift. Before it is gone.

Das Gift closes this week. This is due to being unable to negotiate a continuing lease. This is due to the new kind of neighbors who want to go to bars, but don’t want bars under their windows. It’s due to the landlords who sense a corner bar could become an upscale restaurant that will last 2 or 3 years, instead of 20 or 30, allowing them to raise the rent frequently and with impunity.

About five years ago, Das Gift was bought by a group of people, one of whom I know. It was hard times for a bar in Berlin. They kept it open. But as tens of thousands have found, as I found, gentrification stops for no one.

Gentrification eliminates the nice things the neighborhood is known for and the reason people move there. Das Gift is one of the last places still open that were my favorite places to go. A place that welcomed poets and artists, made space for us. A place you could walk in alone and be fine. Or you could walk in and find friends there. If you could get in. It was often packed.

Du Beast thrives. But again, we are not going to talk about Du Beast today.

Hom is gone. CBK is gone. Topics is gone, but was already gone, chased out by an antifa cafe that began a crusade to get the community bookstore booted for hosting an event with an author who expressed non-antifa views. Topics, a place you could always find a conversation that meandered across all boundaries, a place where I went to an event about Yiddish and its history, a place run by at least one owner who is Israeli and Jewish, was accused of antisemitism. They just wanted to create dialogue, hold the author accountable.

Topics was replaced by an upscale cafe. I didn’t want to like them, but they had excellent cake. This isn’t a post about gone places. No, it is. Gone places, gone times, gone people. Most of the usses who where there are elsewhere. Our Berlin cosseted in an hourglass, a grain trickles for each lost place, each person who has moved on.

Das Gift means “the poison” in German. A joke. A truth. A double-entendre. A place we drank and talk and arted away capitalism, cut down by capitalism.

As soon as they notice you, the nice thing you made, they extract it. As if they were parched in the desert and sucking the juice from the aloe leaf they happened upon like a gift. They are not parched. They didn’t come upon the aloe plant. We planted it. Tended it. Honored it. We did not suck the life out of it. We breathed life into it. And that life spread outward cultivating a Kiez.3 More plants sprung up. More people came. More light. More love. This light and love they see as money. We see as healing and community.

This gentrification they see as earned profit. They didn’t earn it. We earned it. We shared it. We didn’t properly protect it from extraction. I don’t know how we do that. Unless the gift is the stories, the memories, the us, the ways we disperse seed across new universes. All forms of protection. They see profits. We see gifts.

Das Gift is the poison.

I don’t miss Das Gift like I miss Du Beast (which we are not talking about). And sometimes I think that’s unfair. It was a place for experimentation with words and sound and visual art. It was the beginning of more than one memorable night. Like all bars, it was probably different things to different people. Maybe people came for the Scottish vibe or the poetry or music or just to hang out with friends or meet new ones or hookup but probly not cause there’s apps for that.

But like 2€ wine at K-Fetisch for a birthday after seeing Killer of Sheep or that night at Poropati when things kicked off in a nasty way or Trude Ruth and Goldammer that had Monday night ping pong where we’d chat and gossip in line waiting for a turn to try to smash the ball, Das Gift was not just about getting drunk or drinking. It was about connecting through art and conversation. And it will be missed.

I’m still feeling all the feels from the Protecting Your Creativity workshop yesterday! I’m so grateful to those in the room and those watching the recording. It felt affirming and supportive. There will be more! If you want to be the first to know when the next one will be, drop me a comment or message me!

Also full of feels over having a printed proof of one of my books in my hands! It’s imperfect. The inside looks great. The cover is “washed out,” which is what the internet calls what Amazon1 does to the book covers you upload.

How it’s going:

How it started:

The other two collections are still in process. Having undertaken a huge task in not only putting out a new book in March 2018, but also new editions of the previous two books, it’s been hard-going to have them out of print since 2019. Many issues with logistics, specs, UIs, and tech that is not supported by humans at any stage.

Alas! We are on the way to having books available and I couldn’t be more thrilled! 💚💜🩵

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Not a football fan (aka soccer). My experience of matches up to this World Cup is… nothing happens… nothing happens… nothing happens… I go to the toilet… GOAL! Come back. Nothing happens… nothing happens…the end.

Okay, so Jude Bellingham happened in this World Cup and I have no complaints. And it seemed like a World Cup for the ages, what with the possibly greatest player of all time doing his last dance and other political and human angles. I watched more than several matches surprising myself and others.

Somehow I missed the bronze match. Gutted. I thought it was on Sunday?! I watched a highlight reel— fantastic!

I love baseball. It’s why I’m happily in community with Molly Knight’s The Long Game here on Substack. Baseball is slow. It’s a reason why I love it. But things actually happen in the slowness… unlike football (one last time: aka soccer).

We can all acknowledge that I know not all that much about football. In watching several matches, I figured this out (screenshot from our Long Game chat):

Their game reminded me of some tennis greats. Particularly Federer. He’d play a clean couple of games at the beginning of the first set. Clean. But not dynamic. He’d be watching his opponent. Strengths. Weaknesses. Angles. Footwork. Serve. He’d give the other player the court and see what he did with it. Then he’d go in for the kill.

I wondered how I could see this game plan, but the coaches losing to Argentina hadn’t. How England’s coach, having experienced almost the whole run of the team, hadn’t seen the late-scoring surges and defended against them.

But Spain saw. And Argentina were unprepared for an opponent who had their number.

Why? Hubris was mentioned in the chat. But why did Argnetina just not show up for this match? Because that’s what it looked like. Why the thuggery? Why the complete disregard for sportsmanship?

Earlier in the World Cup, I witnessed a moment I loved. A player from one team on the ground. No other players from his team nearby. A player from the other team gave him a hand up. Sportsmanship.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen this gesture across teams in professional sports. Decades, at least.2

As a captain, Messi did not show up for this match. Certainly not the Messi of the previous matches. I didn’t seem him call the shots, organize the field, work the playing time.

When I say this, I am saying Knicks in 5. I am saying Jalen Brunson showed up every minute of every game. Wearing the captain’s role like his jersey. Knowing that the team modeled him. 0-0. Every night. Argentina could have used more of Brunson’s mindset.

Seventy-five minutes came and went. The play got rougher, but not better. Argentina behaved appallingly. This article from Adam Crafton says all the things. And I’m grateful for it amidst the sentimental pieces about Messi and Argentina. Argentina not facing Spain during the trophy ceremony? The definition of unsportsmanlike behavior.

Yes, I saw Messi on the ground after the match. Defeated. Deflated. And I ask of the team captain, the greatest player, could you not have held on for 60 more seconds and been the one to congratulate the winners? Could you not have gone over to Lamine Yamal—the baby now a star player—and congratulated him? Could you not have done what countless sports teams have done before breaking down—showed some grace to the winners?

It’s a sad way to leave the tournament. To leave international play. To cap a career. Showing up can be hard work. Especially when you set expectations high.3 On the daunting world stage. But stats don’t make champions. Stats don’t make legends. Stats make winners. Champions and legends are made of the other stuff. Behavior, finding another level of play when it’s all on the line, playing through injury4, showing up for their teammates, treating opposing players with integrity, respect and dignity. Grace under pressure. Grace. Grace.

It’s just what is.

Sometimes I’d find myself hanging out with her in her kitchen or maybe she’d drive me somewhere without Deb, and I’d be telling her about a boy or a teacher or something that was stuck in my craw and she’d take an emphatic drag of her cigarette and say,

Beth, it’s just what is.

And somehow I got it. We got it. Our friend group picked up her sayings and used them on each other when we needed an answer to something that didn’t have an answer.

It’s just what is.

All of us, and if you’re reading this, then you’re part of that all of us, have been resisting what is for a long time. Fighting the status quo. Trying to make change—or just live—by knocking down the harmful structures that have been actively hurting us or the people we love or strangers we don’t want to see harmed.

We have all been pushing that boulder up a bigger rock for a very long time on repeat, almost getting flattened by it each time it gets away from us and rolls back down that hill.

This time, though, at the bottom, we are looking up at the big hill, and it is not there.

While we were rolling down that one last time, the pinnacle collapsed onto itself. The mountain we thought we had to climb to make change, has crumbled. Now, there is a pile of dirt, trees, rocks and pebbles. A heap. Daylight shines through and as we sit crumpled at what used to be the base of a massive inhibitive structure. There is no longer anything worth climbing. Nothing to get to the top of.

The status quo we have fought for so long is doing itself in. It does not need our help with this. It is desiccated and lifeless. It is gasping for air, grasping for it. Its desperate thrashing has been blocking our light, but its empty vessel can only flail for so long on the power of false beliefs.

Resistance is futile.

Is a sentence I never thought I’d embrace. The Borg used to chill my spine when they showed up in TNG with their brand of existential slavery. Now, I sometimes entertain the idea of the Borg as a kind of hive mind optimizing collaboration and removing hierarchies.

I have been resisting all my life. Resisting the forces that were going to steal our individualism, like I was taught in schools. Resisting the forces that were stealing our rights, like I learned at university. Resisting the powers that kept us unequal, separated, bickering and stratified as I learned in life.

All this resistance empowered me with resilience. And like everyone else I know engaged in this life-long struggle, the t-shirt we got on the way out that says, ‘I went to the revolution and all I got was resilience,’ wasn’t what we were going for at all. Resilience is a useful consolation prize, but it’s just a consolation prize.

Resistance is futile because resistance is built on a past model. A structure in the act of self-destruction. Resistance takes a massive amount of life energy and time. Whyever the structure is crumbling—because of our massive ongoing resistance, because of the weight of its own assumptions, because of lack of attention to infrastructure, because evil exists and can’t win—it is bombing itself into oblivion.

Yes, it is going to take some of us down with it. Yes, it is going to unmake nice things along the way. Yes, it is going to intentionally harm as much beauty as it can in its death throes.

But it is in its death throes.

And no, not all of us will still be around to see the seedlings of what’s next.

It’s just what is.

Resistance is futile. Resistance was a response. A counter-attack. It was not generative. It was destructive. Every resistance that leads to revolution has won some gains for humanity. And eventually become a new harmful structure. And none of these structures made anything better for the non-human life on this planet.

We are in a moment, a very tiny (in terms of human history) window of resilience, where we get to vision a whole new thing. Where we stop driving the gas-powered vehicle in reverse over all the things we hated and … what? Put it in park, get out of the car, look around, see other people, embrace them? Sing? Wonder? Be in conversation? Create?

What does it feel like to stop pushing that boulder up the hill? Just for a minute even? To stop wanting to? To stop caring about getting to the top?

What does it feel like to contain your own energy and meet others who contain their own energy?

What does it feel like not to have an enemy? An opponent? Not to be one?

What does it feel like to look around and see opportunities for repair? Places where you can assist? Places you can receive assistance?

I don’t know. Probably you don’t either.

Across our world, they are doing themselves in without our help. We get to put our help elsewhere. We get to choose where it goes. There will be so much damage. So much is in place already and it is steamrolling people and places and things. And we can’t halt that or dial it back. We know because we have tried and tried and tried and they have only escalated beyond all reason.

Our engagement or disengagement with their particular madness has no effect anymore. They are a boulder rolling down a hill and not only are they going straight to the bottom, but they are going to roll right into a significantly larger rock and shatter into a million bits.

We will be over in the valley having a picnic and talking sustainable farming and clean water sources and herbal remedies and doulas and care.

Resistance has been sapping our building energy since forever. And that has built them up and up and up and allowed them to politicize and militarize and weaponize everything. Forcing us to increase our resistance.

No wonder we are so tired. No wonder our nervous systems are on constant high alert. No wonder our immune systems are fighting our own bodies.

Resistance is futile not because it wasn’t good work or because it’s all better, but because that course of action has reached a natural conclusion. We can better place our imaginations, intellects and hearts elsewhere. And we might could start practicing what that looks like. What it feels like. How to be inclusive beyond just humans.

If the status quo is crumbling, resistance to it must disintegrate as well. We cannot keep fighting that which no longer exists. I mean we could, but then we’d become the thing we are fighting to destroy. And we know where that leads.

The inclination is to fight. The inclination is to go for incremental change. The inclination is to defend and protect our little pieces of protoplasm and our little patches of hillside. To keep pushing the boulder up the inclination.

The opportunity is elsewhere.

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Thank you for reading messsy. 💙🧡💙 messsy takes work and time and care. Thank you to paid subscribers who make this possible. And to sharers, likers and commenters. Knicks in 5.

Hi Friends!

Distraction. Chores. Interruption. Should. Judgment. Doubt. Fears. Rage.

Interceptors of our creative space and time.

• How do we protect our creative practices?

• How do we create space where there is no space?

• What if we could protect ourselves and our art by mindfully approaching our practice with ritual and sacred space?

Let’s explore space and ritual around our creative work.

We’ll be on Zoom. If you’re in the room, you’ll receive support and be able to share your explorations and ask questions. The recording will be available, as well, but it’s better live. Promise.

Tiered pricing—choose what feels right for you right now.

Reserve Your Spot

This workshop is FREE for paid messsy subscribers, so this is a good time to subscribe!

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💚Thanks to community support, there is one free place available for the workshop tomorrow! 💚 If money is holding you back from taking the workshop, but you really want to be in the room, then this is for you!

Leave a comment or message me directly. It will go to the first person who responds!

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Thank you for reading messsy. 💙🧡💙 messsy takes work and time and care. Thank you to paid subscribers who make this possible. And to sharers, likers and commenters. Knicks in 5.

Quick reminder that the Protect Your Creativity workshop is coming up this Sunday!

The workshop FREE for paid messsy subscribers, which makes it a great time to subscribe, you know, if you’ve been sitting on the fence…

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A month or so ago, I posted about a wonderful night at Lyrix Organix. I name-checked Arji Manuelpillai, which led to us actually chatting (okay, not IRL chatting, but still) for the first time in a while.

Arji sends out a newsletter highlighting some of the brilliant work he does as a poet, artist, teaching poet/artist. Sometimes I forget to read them and the inbox has its way with me. I’m so glad I read this one through. It’s powerful. And Arji’s voice brings clarity and care to a conversation we are just not having enough. I’m so grateful for this work.

With permission, Arji’s entire piece is posted here. Yes, it is about the UK. But couldn’t it be about any region or country right now? I think so.

The Case for Creative Health

Arji Manuelpillai

For over twenty years I have worked in participation arts. If you do not know what participation arts is, let me enlighten you. Participation art is art where audiences participate in the making of it. A bit like community arts, which is often described as art made with communities. Then there is facilitation. Then there is being an education artist or an artist in schools. Truthfully, this job has been all of those things and more.

It has led me to making work in all kinds of places. Hospitals. Refugee camps. Schools. Community halls. Temples. Prisons. (Explore and book my workshops here.)

And honestly, I do not often know whether what I am doing is participatory, educational, community focused or health focused. It has never mattered that much to me. Or at least it did not until now.

Because over the next few years we are going to see a shift. I have been sitting in rooms with Arts Council executives and NHS figures and one phrase keeps coming up again and again.

Creative Health.

“Artists have always known creativity can transform people...We have watched joy arrive in rooms that had forgotten what joy sounded like.”

Creative health refers to using creativity and the arts as tools for improving health and wellbeing.

For many artists, this is not new.

Twelve years ago I was running workshops with adults from global majority backgrounds living with long term mental health challenges. They were some of the most powerful workshops I have ever been part of. The kind of project that changes everyone involved. Then the funding ran out and it ended.

Six years ago I was in a hospital making podcasts with young people on dialysis through Breathe Arts Health Research. Again, an incredible project. Again, the funding disappeared and the work stopped.

This year I have been working in a dementia care home with older people, talking about the seasons and memory and the lives they once lived. The project expanded to friends and family. It became a healing space. A place for connection. A place for people to remember themselves.

That project ends soon too.

Because the money ran out.

Are you spotting the pattern?

Creative health existed long before the term did. Artists have always known creativity can transform people. We have seen it happen in real time. We have watched isolated people reconnect. We have watched confidence return. We have watched joy arrive in rooms that had forgotten what joy sounded like.

The difference now is that suddenly institutions are paying attention.

So now I find myself at bigger tables. Tables with NHS executives and policymakers and some of the biggest organisations in the country. And as I sit there I find myself sticking my elbows out, trying to make more room for artists.

Because if artists are finally being invited into these spaces, we need to ask bigger questions.

Not just how art can support healthcare.

But how we stop healthcare from swallowing the art whole.

“The difference now is that suddenly institutions are paying attention.”

Last year I worked with the Southbank Centre on their Catalyst pilot. We partnered with researchers from King’s College alongside Raw Material and Breathe Arts Health Research to confront one brutal fact:

Young people waiting for CAMHS support can wait years.

Years.

Let me break that down.

Your daughter is struggling. She comes to you for help. You take her to the GP. You explain everything. You wait for support.

And then you are told the waiting list could be a year long.

A year.

In that time there are barely any check-ins. Barely a phone call. In that time your daughter could become more unwell. She could harm herself. She could disappear into herself completely.

Anything can happen in a year.

Our team believed artistic intervention could make a difference. We wanted to create something for young people while they sat on those waiting lists. Not as a replacement for therapy, but as a meaningful intervention. Something that could improve wellbeing, connection and confidence before crisis deepened.

And honestly, we believed some young people might not even need to remain on those waiting lists with the right creative support around them.

So we began piloting the work.

And as we did, science entered the room.

Researchers needed evidence. Measurements. Controlled variables. Outcomes.

Which is fascinating because art often lives in opposition to that.

Science tries to control risk. Art often asks us to embrace it.

Scientists plan. Artists respond.

And moving through that process I realised something important. Artists need to advocate fiercely for the value of what we do. Because if we allow creativity to become boxed in by systems, then we will simply reproduce the same systems we were trying to change in the first place.
(You can book a workshop which supports mental health here.)

Months later I found myself in Parliament alongside researchers, health workers and young people involved in the project.

Three MPs were in the room. Everyone seemed supportive. Almost too supportive. It felt like everybody agreed with us.

Then, thirty minutes before the end, a Baroness arrived after a vote in the Commons. She asked for a quick summary of the discussion and then said something that changed the atmosphere completely.

She said this work mattered deeply to her and to Keir Starmer, but she questioned whether the research was strong enough yet to justify systemic change.

The room froze.

A King’s researcher immediately pushed back and explained that the evidence already existed and further research was underway.

Then Sunita, one of the people in the room, said something I have not stopped thinking about since

“There are documents all over the internet proving this works. We all know it works. What are we going to say to the young people waiting right now? How are we going to explain that we failed them?

You could feel the heat rise in the room.

Then an MP from Rugby said something brilliant. I am paraphrasing, but it was essentially this:

“I think everybody here agrees. The Baroness agrees. The MPs probably agree. The public would probably agree too. But what I am learning about this place is that even when everybody agrees, it can still take years for anything to actually change.”

And suddenly it hit me.

The NHS. Arts Council England. Parliament.

They are all full of good people trying to create change inside systems held together by bureaucracy.

“We wanted to create something for young people while they sat on those waiting lists... Something that could improve wellbeing, connection and confidence before crisis deepened.”

I am grateful to be in these rooms. I am inspired by the people fighting for change. But I am also deeply disillusioned by how slowly these systems move while young people struggle in real time.

Because artists already know this work matters.

We know creativity can reduce isolation.

We know it can rebuild confidence.

We know it can support mental health.

We know it can save money.

We know it can change lives.

But if we want to be heard inside these systems then we cannot whisper about it anymore.

As we move into this new era of Creative Health, artists need to protect the very thing that makes our work powerful. We cannot allow ourselves to become decorative add-ons to broken systems. We are not there to tick wellbeing boxes. We are there to disrupt, connect, challenge and reimagine.

So take up space.

Use your elbows.

Use your shoulders.

Make room for artists at the table and when there is no room left, build new tables entirely.

If you’d like to explore Arji’s poetry, learn about his work with the Southbank Centre, or book him for a workshop with your students, you can do all that - and more - here.

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Recently listening to my bestie, the Empire Pod, Anita and William brought up one of India’s major fine artists in an episode pod about George Orwell—of all people!

Before they even said her name, I was sure it was Amrita Sher-Gil. I was correct.

In what felt like some significant synchronicity, an article in the NY Times about brilliant filmmaker Mira Nair aka Zohran Mamdani’s mom, mentioned up top that her next movie was about an Indian painter… and I got chills… it had to be Sher-Gil.

Again, it was.

Sure enough, Amrita Sher-Gil is having a cultural moment outside of her home country, almost a century after her death. Definitely not a moment too soon.

I’m familiar with Sher-Gil and her work because wonderful writer Nicole Lavay introduced us to her life and work on Zesty way back in 2016. More synchronity: After attempting to reach Nicole in time for Women’s History Month and failing, I heard back from her recently, receiving consent to repost her article on messsy!

So, let’s build on this Sher-Gil momentum and get excited for a new film from Mira Nair together!

Posts from the Zesty archives are always free. The text is the original, proofread, possibly with light edits, and links updated. Not changing the past, just learning from it a little.

It’s a perfect time to become a paid messsy subscriber! The upcoming Protecting Your Creativity workshop is FREE for paid subscibers to messsy!

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Women You Should Know: Amrita Sher-Gil

by Nicole Lavay

I’ve always loved art history, but never so fiercely as when I was a teenager. I grew up in a conservative suburban community where my pink hair and black clothes made me an oddball. My love for the arts and women didn’t help me fit in either, but it was okay, because I’d discovered something more interesting than the life around me: the lives of 19th and 20th century artists.

I took Advanced Placement Art History, where I excelled. The tales of Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Warhol all excited me so much. These were people who moved to big cities, had large circles of artistic friends, went on adventures to foreign lands and then used their experiences to create something new and change the world.

My text book contained hundreds of pages on art from Europe, mostly by white male artists. Women artists didn’t appear in groups of more than two per chapter until modernism, and I found their biographies and the representation of their art lacking. The definitive canon of art history I was shown in high school neglected the female artists I’d later come to love.

The lives of real women artists were never presented to me as interesting or exciting. Luckily, I went to a college where I received the education I needed to understand that women artists are creative, capable, smart and just as bold as I’ve always wanted to be. I was given the tools to discover artists I could relate to. The biography of Amrita Sher-Gil caught hold of my mind, and lately, as I try and navigate the path to forging my own creative life, I find myself inspired by hers.

Born in 1913 to an Indian father and a Hungarian Jewish mother, she spent her unique childhood between Europe and India, completing her artistic training in Paris. She painted self-portraits of herself, nude, which was just as scandalous in the 1930’s as putting nude selfies up on the internet is today. Sher-Gil chose to paint portraits of herself and her sister honestly without ‘oriental’ details, as other Indian artists catering to the European gentry did. I love thinking about Sher-Gil, so radical at age 17, giving no fucks, and confronting racism and sexism in the arts by depicting herself as an ‘average’ subject, rather than as an oriental fantasy from a far away land. The independent young artist found a place for herself in bohemian Paris. She caused quite a stir through her artistic feats, and in her personal life, as she was known to wear her sari and conduct affairs with both men and women.

Sher-Gil won national competitions, and her incredible skill was promising, but her mixed-race heritage set her apart from her contemporaries during the dusk of European colonialism. Never one to choose conventionality, the artist said ‘good-bye’ to the capitol of the art world and began her career in India, where she painted with the celebrated revolutionaries of the Bengal School of Art.

Her return to India brought an immediate shift in her artistic style, and her subject matter, too. She spent 1937 touring rural southern India, finding inspiration in the daily lives of local women. She began painting village scenes, group portraiture, and images of average Indians, especially those living in poverty.

Her new work was a reflection of the changing Indian political landscape, as the colonized people demanded independence from the British. Her paintings explored Indian identity on a national level. Sher-Gil didn’t orientalize or romanticize the lives of villagers living in poverty. She painted the lives of women, without sexualizing or romanticizing her subjects. These women, who break away from European beauty standards are not on display or eroticized for the gaze of the viewer. They are strong, sturdy, grounded, almost defiant.

Unfortunately, only four years after her return to India Sher-Gil died at age 28, after slipping into a coma from a hemorrhage suspected to be the result of a botched abortion. Her untimely death came just days before the opening of her first major solo exhibition in Lahore.

Amrita Sher-Gil was a masterful painter whose amazing technical skill wowed critics. Her legacy lies not only in her skill, but in her revolutionary choice to paint the average Indian during the fight for independence and represent women at the beginning of the women’s rights movement. Adventurous, bold, and self-determined, Sher-Gil is so awesome it makes me incredibly sad that she’s virtually unknown by Western audiences.

Sher-Gil fearlessly asserted her identity again and again throughout her life, defying convention and breaking barriers, both in her personal life and career. She lived an artistically rich life full of adventure; looking at her art reminds me to live life without creative limitations.

Nicole Lavay is a queer femme arts administrator, lesbian archivist, and cultural worker located in the Bay Area.

Thank you for reading messsy. 💙🧡💙 messsy takes work and time and care. Thank you to paid subscribers who make this possible. And to sharers, likers and commenters. Knicks in 5.

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I’m running the creativity workshop again, because I believe in it!

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200. Bicentennial. We collected the shiny new quarters like they had special powers. We checked the back of the change we received from buying gum or a candy bar and were gleeful when we got one that had the colonial-looking drummer on the back. Tall ships were coming into South Street Seaport for weeks. What exactly were tall ships? It was explained to me so many times and didn’t parse, but what I knew was they were old timey. Like the ship on the Cutty Sark bottle.

Red, white and blue everywhere. From Memorial Day to the 4th, the energy was festive and bright. America was a promise kept. America was a democratic nation of equals. America was a land of opportunity for everyone.

I believed in America the way I believed in Tinkerbell. The way I believed in Dorothy’s shoes.

None of that was real, though.

I believed in fiction growing up because it was all I had. But like America,1 it was not to be believed. It was to be questioned, queried, applied. America was an idea. Just like Tinkerbell and the ruby slippers. An idea that came from the minds of a group of men instead of one man, but still an idea. An idea that did not include women, people of color, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, openly queer people, disabled people and so many more.

I believed in the Declaration of Independence. It felt radical in the best possible ways. I loved it. 2

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.3

The Declaration could be read as a charter for an intentional community. An intentional community of dissenters. A reaction against. Adolescent pushback. Codification of rebellion.

It took into account grievances of white, male, landowning former Britishers. And by landowner what can we really mean? What about their families—children, women—did they have any rights or claims? What about the rights of the people already living there? The plants, the soil, the oceans and lakes?

The dream wasn’t to be free and unfettered; it was greed without accountability. It was about more, about expansion, about not being stymied or challenged—as long as you were one of them.

And their God wouldn’t help you if you weren’t.

Reactive? Revisionist? Hindsight? Maybe.

Sometimes when I wake in the morning I put the McFadden & Whitehead song Ain’t No Stoppin Us Now on repeat to motivate me. It’s a declaration. The next line after the title is, “We’re on the move.”

The endless frontier. The Louisiana purchase. Violent attempts at eradicating native populations. Gold rush, oil rush, industrial boom, tech boom, manifest destiny… it all has ain’t no stopping us energy. The energy of oppressed people creating their own chances to thrive.

I believe the founders believed they were long oppressed. But long compared to what? Oppressed compared to whom?

Perhaps due to the absence of any functional fathers, I revered the founding fathers—and mothers—as if they were the stars on the OG flag. Well-read, decently traveled, well-reasoned thinkers. Most of them were. They had some excellent ideas and they were up for a social experiment—as long as there was no risk to them, to their wealth, their persons, their livelihoods and their lifestyles.

They presented like pinnacles of humanity. They held holy the practice of going furthur, like so many Americans since, to see what humans could become and achieve. Only they forgot about costs. They forgot about damage. They forgot about harm. Or they knew, but weren’t much bothered.

The atrocious gap between their ideas, their words, and their actions and behavior is the underlying source code of our country. Everything we see reflected around us is an emanation of this.

This is not a bug, America. It’s a feature.

If we are to believe in any America or any idea of America, or give ourselves a chance to thrive, we’re going to have to debug the code. Like the stealthiest hackers, we will have to get into the root code and delete the lines containing the cover story. Enter the commands that create equity.

I’ve always believed the founding fathers thought future generations would be better humans than they were. In fact, I believed that was the point of the experiment. They believed in the possibility we wouldn’t just coast, but would fix their short-sighted or expedient or necessary mistakes. That’d we’d live up to the ideals in practice someday.

Like the way I believe the Supreme Court sometimes rules against a case, not because they don’t believe the principles that are on trial, but because the case itself isn’t strong enough to set or overturn precedent. That in the subtext of their opinions they are saying, this case didn’t measure up because of these specific points, so the implication becomes bring us a case that will and you will get a different opinion.

Setting the bar higher.

Know better. Do better.

Maybe I’m being too kind or naive. I was raised thinking propaganda is what the other side uses. It takes a long time to decolonize the mind. Maybe we believed the hype too long and stopped putting in the work. No, definitely we did.

Generations of us have put in the work of innovation, of wealth accrual, of the building of boxes inside of boxes next to more boxes, some of the boxes rolling or flying or floating. Some stationary. Of mechanizing and automating what goes on inside these boxes. We have put in this work.

But as a nation, we slept on the need to update the ideas and ideals we live underneath. Like a blanket they cover us all. Sort of. Some of us are on the edges with our toes sticking out freezing. Some of us are in the center, stifling and unable to change position. Some of us are comfortable. And some of us had their great great grandmother’s weave them a blanket all their own. Separate. Not equal.

Some of us do the work daily of building the content of our character. Some of us use these people as examples of exceptional Americans while doing just what they please.

Oh, yes, we are a melting pot, alright. We are full of difference. And divide. And it is getting hotter up in here. Getting hotter everywhere.

250. Sorta fizzles on the tongue. Ashy flavor. Hollow ring. Cracked bell.

Happy summer! Happy long days and sunshine and too hot!

It feels like it’s been a while. There were deadlines and unexpected last-minute hoops to jump through. There are contributor posts that are 98.5% finished, but still waiting on that one last piece. There are more than a few partially completed posts, which I will complete and post! Or decide nah. And write something else.

Save the date: July 19th. 11am PT. I’ll be offering the creativity workshop again, energizing creative practice and process. Yay! It’s FREE for paid subscribers, making this a lovely time to become a paying supporter of messsy!

Incoming body positivity, sex positivity plus some profanity and smut and a whole lot of sorry-not-sorry. Engage at your own comfort level.

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Everybody Bang Your Box

I admit it. I forgot about Robyn Byrd. Which just made me all the happier when I saw her name because there’s a new documentary about her!

Maybe you didn’t live in New York City. Maybe you didn’t watch public access Channel J. Maybe you don’t even remember what it was like to not have 500 channels. Or streaming.

The Robyn Byrd Show was innocuous and sex positive, with Robyn always looking like she’d just come from the beach or well, tanning booth. Her guests were adult film stars and dancers at clubs around town, usually the bigger ones in Times Square, like Show World. (A guy I was dating took me there once.1 It reminded me of Paris, Texas.2) Pre-Giuliani Times Square was yes, sleazy, and yet not as sleazy as Disneyfication and big box stores—or, as we’d come to learn, Giuliani himself.

When I lived in Chelsea, I had a few guys on rotation in my hood3. Don’t judge. One lived just around the corner from Billy’s Topless and Alan’s Alley—the former a topless bar and the latter, I know what you’re thinking but no, our local sublime video store.

If I went over to his and the timing was right, we’d watch Channel J before or after. The timing had to be right, though, because you know, not on demand. Broadcast. At a specific time. And only at that time.

We’d joke about Byrd’s crocheted bikini. Did she have more than one? Did it ever get washed? Did she ever wear anything else? But we loved her. She treated the dancers like A-list celebs. She loved them and they loved her. She’d help them promote their gigs and they’d sit and chat like it was the Mike Douglas show or something. Square, bland, homey, normalizing body positivity, sex positivity, and play.

Mostly, Byrd was adorable. Unlike Al Goldstein of Screw magazine fame who had a show called Midnight Blue. He’d be ranting while chomping on that cigar with his gold chain. We laughed at him—not with him. We laughed at Ron Jeremy, too, but we didn’t know then what we all know now.

Sandra Bernhard had a run of Without You I’m Nothing in the East Village which blew my writer’s mind. My friends laughed and were entertained; I was unbraiding all the threads she wrangled and the way she could circle back on an idea or a trope 25 minutes later and boom—hilarious catharsis. After her, the theater had Stomp! for about a million years. I loved Stomp! but it was relentlessly there every time I turned the corner heading home, and along with Blue Man claiming Astor Place, the East Village began to feel like a clogged cultural artery.

Bernhard showed up frequently on the Robyn Byrd Show, the way she showed up everywhere. Like she belonged there. In the 2000s, I got invited to a Target Grand Opening in West Hollywood and she was the Emcee. Not kidding. Not a bit. Yes, that is Sandra Bernhard on the mic telling you not to miss out on the bedding specials.

Porn has changed so much and so little. The Only Fans work of Margo’s Got Money Troubles carries the same benevolent spirit as Robyn Byrd. It’s body positive, sex positive play. It’s friendly, nerdy, not judgy and non-exploitative.

I can’t wait to see this documentary. I have so many questions.

True or False Confessions?

Are you waiting for Confessions II? I… am? I don’t know. Sometimes a new Madonna release is exciting and sometimes it’s… scary? Like will she trip in those heels onstage that she’s tottering on? Like what did she do to her face this time? Like is she in there, trapped in that costume and body and face at Coachella next to Sabrina Carpenter?

Don’t get me wrong. Madonna is Everything. She is All. She is Diva. She is… pop culture Robyn Byrd? I mean, she can’t really sing, can really dance, was besties with Sandra Bernhard, does what she wants to do unapologetically, promotes sex positivity (but is she really sex positive and kink positive or is it all performative?), and well, she’s more ambitious and has more edge than Byrd, but she is the OG girlboss.

Confessions II comes out today and I’m hoping that like Erotica or Ray of Light, it’s the Madonna we didn’t know we needed. Maybe that’s a lot to ask from a never-aging diva, but we need something, don’t we? Yes, we have new Olivia Rodrigo and she made Daisy Chain Fields and while the bad is amping up daily, so is the joyful. But more joy is more joy and we require more joy.

Glynnis MacNicol wrote an insightful rumination on Madonna in the New York Times (a shock given the total lack of rumination or insight in most NYT opinion pieces).

For those of us who grew up with her, and the generations who have come of age since, Madonna introduced, flaunted and shattered culture’s deepest taboos, particularly around sexual agency for women, religion and identity. Even single motherhood. She was foundational to my understanding of how to be an unrepentant woman in the world. She turned all that shameless thirst into empowerment.

Those last two sentences are magic. MacNicol unpacks all our assumptions, needs and hopes for Madonna and learns a few things about herself and her Madonna-fan peers. She wonders about Madonna’s version of aging and if it’s the one we need.

I know Madonna’s not gonna to leave the club. Not if she can help it. The flattering low-level lighting , the heaving sound system, the waves of bodies, the dancing and being queen of it all is always going to be too much for her to say goodbye. I think I’m making peace with that. MacNicol’s writing helped me see it clearly.

If I’m looking for role models on aging powerfully as yourself, I’m looking at Patti Smith, Yoko Ono, Françoise Vergès, Isabella Rosselini, V. Kali. Maybe I don’t need Madonna to be that.

Can we expect someone who rose from, co-fashioned/coopted and codified a certain diverse, queer/queer-adjacent youth club culture to give up the youth part?

Madonna didn’t go get a Ph.D. in sociology to unpack the Manhattan she moved through so fluidly. She didn’t found a vegan collective or women-led goat farm. Madonna keeps Madonnaing. And I think we want her to. I think she’s a boss-bitch part of us that will middle-finger all that’s bullshitting us in this world, while bullshitting us and herself and dancing until the club doors open, the light streams in, we head to brunch at the NoHo Star or Spring Street or Time Cafe, shop for a new fit as we walk home to sleep all day and start again when the sun goes down.

Sometimes it’s that Madonna I’m desperately seeking. The one who understands the power of fuck you money. The one who comes to the club alone and leaves alone because the club is about dancing and music and friends and sweat and the why of all those dance classes and if you want to go be that person who goes to a club or bar to hook up yeah, go be that somewhere else. We. here. to. dance. it. out.

Madonna. Robyn Byrd. The radical acts of being body and sex positive when sex could kill you. The radical act of dancing through virulent, decimating times. For ourselves. For each other. For the ones already gone and the ones fading fast or slow.

The radical act of being the joy. When joy is what’s left.

A HUGE weight lifted off me Saturday night. A weight I didn’t even know I was carrying!

The ancestors are thrilled. They couldn’t be here to celebrate, but they sent a message. 💙🧡💙🧡

I screamed. I cried. I laughed. I did all three at once. Sunday I woke up smiling and smiled everywhere all day like a happy Buddha.

I’m scrolling more than I have ever scrolled because each post is funny, warm, exciting, sweet, amazing, brilliant and real. Celebrity posts, regular folks’ posts, posts from friends I didn’t even know cared about basketball.

The images of NYC erupting in joy. It’s been a hard century for NYC so far and this feels like a turnaround moment.

JLo screaming at the television. Alicia Keys singing in her Knicks jacket. Patrick Ewing’s joy. So much Spike.

connecting through joy >>>>>> connecting through rage

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The Knicks won. Because of who they are as a team, as individuals, as athletes and as professionals. At the opening jump in Game 4, I heard the ref say, “Let’s go to work!” And it is work. The mindset is work. The strategy is work. The fitness is work. The teamwork is work.

The Knicks won instead of losing at the clutch moment. At the clutch moment, they had a captain who kicked in—Knicked in—and went into a higher gear. Every time. When Brunson locks in, wow, I’ve never seen anything like it.

The Knicks won when other Knicks teams would have lost. When the bad calls and the no-calls would’ve sent another version of the Knicks spiraling into anger or deflation, when the play got ugly, this Knicks team just kept playing to win.

0-0.

Brunson said this in so many interviews when asked how do you handle being up 2-0 or how do you handle being up 3-1 or how will you approach the next game?

0-0.

Every game a new game. Every possession a new possession.

It’s Monday. New Moon energy. 0-0.

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New moon! New workshop.

If you’ve experienced anxiety, blocks, procrastination, disabling fear, or other challenges to your creative projects, I think this workshop will help.

Opening Sacred Space for Creative Practice

a 90-minute workshop on Zoom.

Sunday, June 14th. New moon.

11am PT

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The best pieces always come through you. Maybe you are extra open. Maybe you are tapped into something new. Or maybe they’ve been working on themselves in the subconscious and are just ready to emerge.

In 2006, I wrote a piece called Miss Trust. It burst through me and onto the page. It has been leaping off pages ever since. I promised I’d retire the poem when it became irrelevant. It hasn’t. If anything, it’s more urgent now than ever.

So I started practicing it, thinking I might take it out for a spin. Or post the audio I knew I had somewhere from a session with producer and engineer Jay Enticknap. Searching for that, I stumbled onto this video, hiding in a hard drive. It was a happy discovery. Watching it, I felt like, yeah, okay, I did that. And even the little baubles were handled like a pro.

Syncronicity. This performance is from 2010 at Lyrix Organix’ benefit for Médecins sans Frontières.

It’s the 17th anniversary of brilliant arts organization and brainchild of stellar human Dan Tsu Lyrix Organix. It’s humbling to know that as a poetic vagabond, I was there at the start of something that has become exponentially awesome every year since.

I remember this night so vividly. Not my own performance. What I remember was the vibe, the night, the room. The sizzle of the crowd. The rapt silences. The dazzling performances. The artists and friends all happy to be together, happy to share, to bear witness and to have fun!

As you can see in the slideshow behind me in the video, I was blessed to perform that night alongside the relatable hip hop duo the Leano featuring Arji Manuelpillai—one of the sweetest people ever and an accomplished poet and arts educator, and a musical set from the incomparable Michael Kiwanuka, who held the space and the people in it with care and sound and heart. It was first time ever seeing or hearing him play and I was transformed by his grace. I still am whenever I listen to his music.

Dan has a way of bringing people and artists together to create a more beautiful now. As a curator and organizer, this is what I strive for and hope I’ve accomplished at least some of the time.

So here’s Miss Trust from that super special night at Lyrix Organix.

I wanted to share the text as well.

And I’ve done something here I’ve always wanted to do with my spoken word pieces: I’ve annotated it. I was told it might be pretentious to annotate a poem. But recently, some poets I love have been unpacking their poems in this way.

It feels like an effort toward greater accessibility. If we only talk to the people who have our same cultural references, then we aren’t expanding our reach and we aren’t using our tools to build understanding across lines of difference.

I purposely layer my spoken word pieces so there’s always something new to discover, but not everyone sees or hears a piece three or four or five times. Also, 20 years have passed and some of these references are way less accessible than they were then.

MISS TRUST

Mistrust is busy

breeding fear

looking over her shoulder into the mirror

she’s taking the cash from the score

to buy a piece that’s fully loaded

as she leans down to snort

the line she’s been walking

you can tell

she’s dangerous

she’s got angel dust traces on the strands of her long black hair

when you look at her she’s not even there

she’s never cared

she can run like flo jo2

and she’s all kindsa nasty

janet3 doesn’t even know

she’ll hurt you just to see if you’re paying attention

she thrives on mutual misapprehension

she eats addiction and insecurity

if she wasn’t bulimic, she’d be fatter than ginny sacrimoni4

but yeah, that’s her throwing up in the toilet

she can’t keep anything down; she’s all upchuck

she’s the goddamned patron saint of the down on their luck

teaching the dispossessed disenfranchised and desperate

fifty ways to do anything for a buck

sometimes she’s got nothing better to do

than listen in on your conversations

take some of the words and twist

in a way that’ll stick you

or give you a nice little nervous twitch

she lets you see the things you wish you didn’t know

she can take the smallest seed of doubt and just let it grow

she’ll make you see what isn’t even real

then she’ll have you second-guessing what she just showed you

she’s bold she’s cold she never seems to get old

damn that bitch just needs to be told

she’s not welcome

but she’s on every guest list

slides past every velvet rope

works for every agency

and she’s on every governments’ payroll

loyalty is her plaything

she uses her stilettos to drive wedges

between the bedsheets and the garden hedges

she’s got people standing on ledges

just looking at the view

she spends her days separating the me’s from the

she always flies solo – she’s got to

cause who would ride shotgun

for someone who spends their nights

shooting out the lights in every emotional corridor

finding footholds in the homes of the rich and the poor

and we can’t seem to get enough of her

she’s invaded our hearts under cover of darkness

camping out to see the streams of endless red dawns5

all she spawns is fear in all its deathly forms

I don’t like her

but she friended me right in my space

and now I can’t delete her

she’s always up in my facebook

leaving me comments written in disappearing ink

she’s got me clicking on links that lead to misery

it’s gotten so I can’t trust what I tweet

she put the carver6 in her top 87

just another disciple on her plate

cracking open every human interaction

to her machinations with no anesthetic

and damn if she ain’t generic

as ubiquitous as pavement

maybe that’s what makes her so dangerous

it’s hard to notice something creeping in

when it’s omnipresent

I resent it

keep taking her out with the trash

she keeps sneaking in the back door

like t2 she might just materialize up through the floor8

I wanna strangle that bitch

but she’s too slippery

throw her in a ditch

but afraid she might drag me in with her

looking for a pail of water to toss to watch her wither

she’s got wicked witch9 written all over

but there’s no antidote that easy to this misquoter

I loathe her

wanna get rid of her once and for all

this kinda doubt has no place in my world

I’m a write her an eviction notice

get her thrown out the bar

shred her clothes to ribbons

have some joker steal her car

maybe it’s a kamikaze mission

all aggression and no defenses left

but maybe the only way to fight this terrorist

is with some good old fashioned hood terrorism

and she’s got nothing to lose

she’s got us tangled up in each other’s blues10

so wrecked we can’t recognize what we’re choosing

she’s a pusher who’s got us all using

Miss Trust

that bitch has got a monopoly

there’s gottta be some way to break her

but she’s always so damn busy

E. Amato

4.14.06

Nostalgia warning! We are going back to the 1990s here. I think only my favorite sports teams bring this out in me!

Quick PSA—new workshop!!!!

Opening Sacred Space for Creative Practice

a 90-minute workshop on Zoom.

Sunday, June 14th. New moon.

11am PT

Tiered pricing, so you can choose what feels right for you right now.

Reserve Your Spot

This workshop is FREE for paid messsy subscribers! So it’s a perfect time to become a paid messsy subscriber if you’ve been thinking about it!

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When the Knicks were in the playoffs in 1994, I was sitting in a basement apartment in Soho (NYC), watching Game 5 against the Rockets, when NBC broke in: O.J. Simpson was in an SUV leading police on a low speed chase in Los Angeles.

The TV I was watching on wasn’t mine. It belonged to my friend Beth’s friend Ginny, a Brit in NY. When she found out I didn’t have a TV, she told me she had an extra one in storage and would bring it. Nothing would dissuade Ginny and Beth that I did not want a television. I didn’t. I was out all the time and writing the rest. If I’d wanted a television, I would’ve had one. I mean I definitely would’ve bought a pair of to-die-for shoes before a television.

When you don’t have a television, people give you one. Or at least, they did until streaming. I don’t know why, but I do know it’s happened to me at least three times. If you don’t have food or shelter or a car, people don’t run to provide that. But not having a TV really disarmed people. It visibly upset them. It was like a personal attack on their being. Or like you had an iron deficiency so obvious you should be in the hospital, but you’re walking around like everything’s fine and they would be negligent if they didn’t get you to a hospital right away.

They could not fathom that it was a choice.

So one day Ginny showed up with the television and it sat in a corner (where I hid it under some fabric cause the empty dark screen unnerved me) of the janky basement apartment I sort of shared with a jazz musician who we’ll call Bianca so you can’t Google her.

Bianca moved out when she got engaged to her boyfriend-manager after having an affair with him while she was engaged to a guitarist-singer-songwriter who could not do anything more for her career than he already had. Her manager was also a personal trainer to celebs and Bianca dug that. Before the guitarist, she was with a drummer who introduced her to a lot of musicians from which she got a lot of gigs and met the guitarist ex-fiancé. From what I saw while we were friends, she identified the guy who’d be most useful to her, got romantically involved, exploited all his contacts and as she was cusping, identified the next target. When I called her on it, she admitted it, so.

Bianca used the front of the apartment as her studio and shared that with a few chill musicians who stored their equipment there and sometimes came after gigs to drop off their stuff and then needed to use the tiny bathroom that was like 5 feet from my bed. Did I mention it was a railroad flat with sort of no doors? Yeah.

I loved it. I was out a lot, but when I was in, sometimes a bunch of killer jazz musicians would be practicing in the front while I was in the back writing. Sometimes I’d cook dinner and feed whoever was there in a kitchen that had a table that could fit 6 or 7 people which was kind of amazing in Manhattan. The place was a couple of blocks from Gourmet Garage and I loved going and getting the fresh ingredients and basil from the backyard which was a concrete space with some light at the top. There’s a whole thing about the super and her girlfriend and a lot of dogs and a mosquitoes hive, and a flood from upstairs, but for now let’s stay with this part.

In Manhattan of 1994, unless you had cable, you could get about 2 1/2 channels. Interference from the density of structures made it almost impossible to get all the broadcast channels. And depending on how high up you were, what other buildings were around you, and what they were made from, your reception was your own unique version of spotty which you attended to with some rabbit ears and faith. You might find yourself holding the rabbit ears in place while trying to watch the thing on the TV. Good times.

On this night, I had gotten a picture that was about 78% resolution and 22% static. I was watching the Knicks. In the NBA finals. And while Hakeem Olajuwan was the hotness, I was rooting for his downfall along with his team, the Houston Rockets.

I was just getting into the game when NBC news broke in with a Special Report. Which is supposed to be about an earthquake or a volcano or World War III or the sky is falling.

But it was a low speed chase. And as it was a low speed chase, it went on and on and I am watching daylight in LA, a white Ford Bronco, helicopters and road. I had already left LA because of cars, roads, helicopters and more and I did not want to see this. I wanted the Knicks in the NBA Finals.

Because this is 1994, they are still playing and there is nowhere else to watch unless you are at the game. I am, of course, screaming at the television and waiting for anything to happen with this low speed chase that can send us back to the NBA Finals. I feel like this moment was pivotal in determining what was and wasn’t news. But that, too, feels like another story, well-handled and researched in this Sportico article.

Eventually, the powers that be at NBC figured out how to do a split screen and I could watch the snowy Knicks - Rockets game / interminable low speed chase. The Knicks won that night, but it felt like the low speed chase somehow took their mojo and they lost the finals to the Rockets.

Unbelievable tidbit in both the Sportico article and this Sports Illustrated piece from 2024: The reason Cowlings was driving so slow was because O.J. wanted to hear the end of the Knicks - Spurs game on the radio before turning himself in.

In 1999, I was back in Cali, split between the Bay and LA and splitting with my now ex bf. I thought I hadn’t watched the Knicks - Spurs finals, but then names of players and coaches started coming back to me and I read a Wiki or whatever, now I remember everything. Apparently, traumatized by another Knicks loss, I blocked the 1999 championships out of my mind completely. Which is probably for the best.

But now, 27 years later (a Knicks’ Saturn return?), we are here again. A rematch made on the other side of Y2K, AOL, and The Matrix. I’m listening to Fiona Apple’s When the Pawn… remembering what a revolution she was. I am loving this piece by Spike Lee and the IG posts on the last time the Knicks were in the finals…

I am thrilled the Knicks won Game 1. They showed up strong, purposeful, and as a team. They are modeling so much we’ve learned in these 27 years:

• You can’t do it alone.

• You don’t have to do it alone.

• Build and care for relationships.

• Create openings for your teammates.

• Share responsibility.

• Team, legacy, lineage >>>>> ego

Watching Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges who’ve played and won together since Villanova, having Rick Brunson on the coaching staff, it’s giving a new kind of story. About family and chosen family. About interdependence. About community. I think this is a story we need right now.

Wemby is holy wow and I’m sorry that I have to root against a player so exceptional (and so reminiscent of Hakeem Olajuwan in so many ways), but I am.

This 12-game winning streak (as I write this) is phenomenal. The drive and focus of this team is astounding. I want them to win. I want them to sweep. I want them to break all the records.

And they’ve already done so much. They have made me and so many Knicks fans so happy to believe in a team without believing that they will somehow let us down. They have honored legacy and brought so many former players courtside to share in these victories. They have shown us—Jalen Brunson particularly—how to dig deep, lock in and create a route to victory. It’s not grit. The Knicks have always had grit. And heart. This Knicks team has belief. In themselves, their teammates, their coaching staff and maybe even the front office. Oh, and their fans. 💙🧡💙🧡💙

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April was so busy on messsy and now May is almost over, we’re approaching the longest day of the year (!) and the midpoint of 2026 (!!!) and messsy has been sorta quiet. Not for lack of ideas or motivation, but definitely due to a lack of moments to bring those through to completion.

Despite sunny days and joyful moments and cultural uplift and 💙🧡THE KNICKS ARE GOING TO THE NBA FINALS!!!!!!!!🧡💙,1 we are living in one of the messiest times in history. And it’s hard. It’s hard to maintain balance. It’s hard to know what to do. It’s hard to locate right action and very hard to use energy in ways that prove effective.

Empires build. They rise. They peak. Then, almost out of nowhere, crumble. It doesn’t matter whether the empire is a sports team, a tech dynasty, an industrial giant or a global political one, the cycle repeats and repeats.

Unfortunately, global empires often take the world order with them, which seems like bad news for us. A lot that we love and have come to place our trust in as a continuum could shift, change or disappear. Those ever-present bad actors could grab hold of cherished realities and twist them into something untenable and harsh. The can’t-go-backness of it all unfurls, warns, cautions, castigates, but does not stop for our hesitation and uncertainty.

Checking in with the news means exposure to so much brutality every day. I want to say that when our tools evolve more quickly than our psyches, brutality enters the frame. And I want to say that we have all the tools we need to care for ourselves, each other and our psyches, if people would just stop blowing shit up and tearing each other down.

Each day I wake up and realize anew that I’m not in charge here. So I guess we’re gonna have to find a way to shift this tilting rock. Together. Soon.

New workshop: Opening Sacred Space for Creative Practice

Watching the NBA playoffs, I notice that when a team is on a run,2 they make space where there is no space. Hounded by defense, separated from teammates, somehow, they find the opening. That’s what gets them the baskets. That’s what wins games.

Not all of us get to play in the NBA. Or live and breathe our art all day every day. There are kids and pets, disabilities of all kinds, careers, day jobs, side hustles, chores.

So how do we create space where there is no space?

How do we protect our creative practices?

Often, we don’t even call them practices. We bemoan the shoulds and demote the work until after the chores and the daily dos, leaving it until we are drained, unclear and unfocused. And then pushing it off to tomorrow.

In this version of our world, in this timeline, under this pressure, joy is crucial. Creativity is necessary.

And it can be so hard to sit down, to lock in, to hold it dear. I’m seeing this over and over with creators who have the idea, the inspo, the desire, the vision and… they aren’t doing the thing.

As art becomes content and making art becomes more harried and less fun, there is pressure to produce, to generate with sources outside ourselves, and to be fast, no matter the cost.

There are costs:

• Loss of deep focus

• Anxiety

• Fear of exposure

• Increased impostor syndrome

• Superficial creation

What if we could protect ourselves and our art by mindfully approaching our practice with ritual and sacred space?

Let’s explore this together in this 90-minute workshop!

Opening Sacred Space for Creative Practice

a 90-minute workshop on Zoom.

Sunday, June 14th. New moon.

11am PT

Tiered pricing, so you can choose what feels right for you right now.

Reserve Your Spot

This workshop is FREE for paid messsy subscribers! So it’s a perfect time to become a paid messsy subscriber if you’ve been thinking about it!

To reserve your spot as a paid subscriber click below!

Paid messsy subscribers

I’m super excited to share these practices with you and see what space and ritual we can open up around our creative projects!

If you have questions, post them in the comments.

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Sun streams through the window. A light breeze floats in and out. Sonny Rollins’s sax punctuates the air.

In the wake of Rollins’ passing, folks were posting “Listen to Sonny Rollins today.” And that’s never a bad idea. But choosing which album seemed daunting.

Until the thumbnail for this album made my heart warm up. I remember this CD in my collection, scratched case and all. I remember how I listened and listened and loved its cadences, its swing, its soulful meanders. How listening to Sonny Rollins told me that even on the road less traveled, there are non-roads that are unknown or abandoned and that we, as artists, can go there—should go there—to find the juicy stuff of revelatory connection.

As the last living person in the photograph A Great Day in Harlem, Rollins crossing over means the thread of that day of that legacy must stretch further and longer. It does not mean it will break.

Rollins’ legacy is collossal: 60+ albums. Guggenheim fellow. Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Polar Music Prize. National Medal of Arts. Kennedy Center Honoree.

I think what I loved most about Rollins was his authenticity. Jazz encouraged hipsters and coolness. It gave points for posturing and performative behaviors. Rollins played music, but he never played himself.

Was Rollins a Knicks fan? I don’t know. But he was a lifelong New Yorker. I’m hoping he passed knowing the Knicks had made the finals.