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One of my favorite playwrights of all time (just behind my dear friend Polly Stenham, who first introduced me to her work) - her book of complete plays (Blasted, Phaedra’s Love, Cleansed, Crave, 4.48 Psychosis, and Skin) is everything I love about music, films, really anything. There’s something about reading plays that allows my brain to process and experience the work differently - it’s a crazy thrill to read her,, especially Blasted. It’s intense to the bone stuff. She also made a short film for Skin in 1997 just before hanging herself in 1999.
Mar 17, 2022
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đźŽI read Clare Barron’s play Dance Nation and it touched something in me that was so personal and deep in there that I then read every other play of hers currently available, and they ALL did that for me. Without exception. I don’t know if it’s because she’s interested in the same things I am, or if it’s as simple as “she’s a beautiful writer”, but whatever it is, it feels like I told her all my secrets except they’re secrets I didn’t even know I had. That’s the best way I can describe her work- especially the monologues- they make me feel like I didn’t know that feeling or that impulse or experience was something I felt but it is. Absolutely thrilling to read. And perform! Not that I have gotten the privilege of being in one of her plays. I am unfortunately just talking about reading them out loud alone in my apartment, performing every character, recording the whole thing in photo booth, and then never watching it and deleting it 4 months later.
Aug 12, 2021
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👵This is my favorite writer. She grew up in Brighton Beach going to socialist preschool and then when she was older, as a mother, she wrote stories on receipts and scraps of paper, keeping them in her apron and then taping them together. She cared a lot about politics and life in the city, and she was always funny. The way she reads aloud is amazing, and there is a good recording of one of her classic stories here. You will notice it is me who uploaded it, two years ago. I had to learn how to “rip” audio.
Apr 4, 2024
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As we embark on this new era of American apocalypse, I have found it helpful to look back at how artists have navigated the bowels of hell before. I find enduring inspiration in Diamanda Galás, especially her album Plague Mass (1991), a live recording of her performance at Cathedral of St. John the Divine, a howl of anguish and rage at the indifference and hypocrisy of the church in the face of AIDS. Galás lost her brother, the experimental playwright Philip-Dimitri Galás, to AIDS in 1986, and was herself a member of ACT-UP. In Plague Mass, while covered in blood, screeching, ululating, and speaking in tongues, Galás becomes a conduit for the voices of the dead, who in their suffering at the hands of their moralist torturers, remain defiant - “Give me sodomy, or give me death!”
Jul 10, 2025
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🩸Now that you've deleted your patreon, rented a loft, had a couple kids, and stopped posting online - the next best thing you can do is to try skipping dinner sometimes. This is not a pro ano post by any means, I've just found that skipping dinner actually gives you a super focused and a little radicalized spin on the normal stuff. Maybe it's because most people stuff their faces and go to sleep, but for me skipping dinner when I can - makes me feel way more alive and present. Yes, I know that's fucked up for some people and maybe even unhealthy - but I am not a trained medical practionioner, I just find feeling hungry in all ways, always yields a more interesting result.
Mar 17, 2022
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💵This isn’t to say earning money is bad. It’s very good. I’ve built a career around earning in a lot of different ways. But for me, the ever present capital layer buried in how we package and put ourselves out online, well - kind of ruined why I enjoyed doing it in the first place. I never wanted a full time job, I never wanted to be owned by anyone. Something about having a patreon (it was small, but large enough that I felt, well, owned) was getting in the way of me enjoying the act of making shit. It’s beautiful that online stuff can generate life sustaining income. I just think, we should be making stuff more freely, or just - without the impulse to constantly package and sell ourselves to an audience. It’s gross, and it’s bad for the art. Demonetize yourself once n' a while, play games, and be wrong and upset people more. There's nothing to lose when there's nothing to lose!
Mar 17, 2022
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🧨Having an online audience of any kind or a patreon is a huge responsibility, but I highly recommend making your way towards the goal of eventually having or making children. I’m a dada to a 2.5 year old little boy, named Dashiell (Dash) - with our little girl Meadow set to arrive in August. This is by far the hardest group project I’ve ever been a part of - I won’t mention the endless list of things we all see when millennials talk about how tired they are, or how their boobs hurt (mine don’t, but if you have boobs they will hurt bad) - but when he takes my hand and pulls me in the direction he wants to go, or makes fun of something stupid I did in front of him (he has a way of saying “ohhh, daaaaddaaa” which just levels me ) - I swear I’ve never felt a bigger or more true love in my entire life. Everything fades, everything dies, except the love of a child. Unless you really fuck with them, be good to your kids and love them a lot. I swear there’s nothing better than this, absolutely nothing. There’s nothing better than love, I swear.
Mar 17, 2022