Zine-making as Alchemy
sure you can see my zine
The recent uptick in interest for physical material as hobby (records, tapes, zines, prints) is something I often reach to when I’m otherwise swallowed by the despair of the times. Here in Brooklyn, the so-called Luddite Teens keep my feet on the ground, if only conceptually.
That being said, I think creating physical art is something of a spiritual necessity and life boat. I especially find this kind of work moving if it’s something that has as few barriers to entry as a zine. God. The zine tag on tumblr alone really pulls me from the depths sometimes.
This zine suite I’ve been making for the better part of the last year is a small piece of my soul, in that the poetry and collages therein are both reworkings of the painful archives of my life, and also in that this practice has been one I return to again and again when I need to find something small and delicate enough to wrap my hands around in a world that otherwise seems so immeasurably engulfing. I could go into all of what these zines are to me (my history with addiction and grief and embarrassing teenage poetry, my mid-tour realization that I need to exorcize these demons before they kill me, my ceremonial magick and alchemy practices, my relentless insistence on the importance of form), but I think that’s for a later point down the road. For now, I hope you enjoy the world of these few pages of “Utopia del Dolore I: Fermentatio,” and the world I have been hammering away at.
