My name is Sara. The Midwest sneezed me westward and now I live in Portland.
I am the only constant member of The Dykings.
I like: non-fiction, poetry, indie rock (whatever that means), quotes by artists I admire about their creative process and their work, talking about my own creative process, public art, talking about what it means to make art as a non-straight non-male artist, trying to make great things.
Ladies, imagine being a Vice writer. Just walking around everywhere with your entitlement and ennui and midlength penis all gently bouncing in step; wearing a male tank top or a waxed mustache or some shit. Imagine having an ironic, retro-sexist dudebro-voice and getting together with a couple of other white guys and some cocaine and making your not-at-all-different voices all sync up as tautly as your nihilistic senses of humor, then snuggling all up together (no homo!) in a big Bushwick loft of partially employed trust-fund kids while something noninformative is happening on the Internet. What a life. I guess there’s the whole “everyone in the world thinks I’m an asshole” thing to deal with, too, but let’s not split hairs here: Vice writers got it pretty fucking made.
“Reading or listening to poems is such a different experience from the rest of our lives, and the more we are colonized by our devices and the “information” and “experiences” that they supposedly deliver (when in fact it is we who are like virgins in some ritual sacrifice being delivered) the more people will respond to a true experience of un-monetized attention. If you just look at the faces of people at a reading where true poetry is happening, you see a kind of relaxed wistful dreamy attention, not necessarily towards the poem, but towards possibility, that is quite moving. Nowhere else in our lives do we have this opportunity, and I truly feel sorry for people who are deprived of the pleasure of occasionally coming into contact with real poetry.”
For some reason I am incredibly nervous to post my own music on my own tumblr, but. I’ve been busy recently in my little studio and I’m really proud of how this song has developed. According to my bestie, this song “sounds like the white noise of a hot summer day, but musically.” I hope you like it.
By that I mean you have to win whatever it is that matters to you by your own strength and in your own way.
Like it or not, you are alone in a forest, just like all those fairy tales that begin with a hero who’s usually stupid but somehow brave, or who might be clever, but weak as a straw, and away he goes (don’t worry about the gender), cheered on by nobody, via the castles and the bears, and the old witch and the enchanted stream, and by and by (we hope) he’ll find the treasure.”
”
—
Jeanette Winterson (The Powerbook)
I mean, we also need other people. We need them constantly. But one of the many things I love about Winterson is that she is so good at articulating both sides of this tension, between being alone, both involuntarily and by something that’s less like choice and more like need, and being the kind of person who will willingly claw your own skin off for the people you love. She is passionate about both, about being alone and being with people. Being loved and being able to survive without love.
“Being honest in writing […] Stephen [Elliot] has a great way of explaining it. It involves a genuine willingness to grapple with ones own uncertainties, flaws, strengths, fears, wishes. When a writer is honest he/she does not know exactly where the story will land.”
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Cheryl Strayed
But don’t read this interview until you’ve read Wild! (Which you should read. It’s great.)
