Winter Newsletter 2024, & Melify Wrapped

In late spring I came across a field recording from 1938. “Kathleen Mauverneen” was not the only song available in the Library of Congress under the tag “Irish Americans”. No. There were a great deal more. The passion spread, the wave crested, and I held on to these bits of audio for dear life.

They were relics. I felt they were about to slip through the cracks. Like when you’re cleaning out the basement of a dead person, and right before you throw the box into the dumpster, you realize it is full of gold.

The songs reminded me of my Grandfather Pete and my Grandma Pat. I think of them a lot at Christmas. They are both passed on now, but I feel them as being quite present in my life. I make offers of food to the gods, saints, and to my ancestors. Someone really likes fig newtons. I put out a small plate of Rosemary Garlic potatoes, the kind I learned to make by the memory of the smell, and the mental image of Pete arced over the stove with the glass kitchen window gathering condensation.

It’s good to be a Curran. No one can wrest these memories from me. There was once when I interviewed my grandpa Pete. This was toward the end of his life. I don’t know where the recording is anymore. I do know that I would like to hear his voice again. Sometimes I hear my Grandpa Pete in my dad’s voice. Sometimes I hear my dad’s voice in my brother’s voice, and therefore I hear grandpa Pete two generations removed. Sometimes I hear something Grandpa Pete-like in my dad’s cousin Kevin’s voice. Kevin lives here in the city.

Last night at the Greek restaurant Kevin told stories from parochial school, conjuring the first and last names of third-grade classmates, describing the shenanigans of dodging gazes of nuns. I listened to Kevin and thought, this man speaks incredible literature. As he wove the memories into story, I felt the nearness of my Grandfather, and of the writer uncle I never met, Colin, who died in this city in the 1980s. I felt the nearness of God, or a heavy old swelling I know as spiritual material.

I remember when I asked Grandpa Pete during that interview if his dad, Frank from Donegal, ever spoke Irish in the home.

“No,” said Pete. Next question.

I remember that one word answer. I still hear Pete saying No, sitting on a woven brown and white midcentury couch in a 1930’s living room with a 1970s TV tucked away in a cabinet, the low fall sun drawing on his features, him looking both young and ancient at once, illuminated by light filtered through those leaded glass windows. This whole home, which he called “grandiose”, as if it wasn’t actually his, was the product of a 20th century which gave us many material implements, but brought us further and further from the root of a language which I believe still animates the way Currans think and talk.

In Irish there is no word for no. No is an English thing. No is definite. No divides. No is a complete sentence. The “No” that came from Pete’s mouth that day felt like a jail cell slamming shut. It was a hostile “no". It was a whatever you’re talking about granddaughter you’d better cut it out right now kind of “no”. It was a “no” so heady and laced with thought a guillotine could slice it clear from the neck.

The Library of Congress field recordings of Irish Americans took over my life. They were stand-ins for the recordings of my grandfather’s voice that no longer existed. Or for his parents, for the voices of my great-grandmother and great-grandfather who I never met.

As historical objects, the recordings cast light on that moment in time when the Irish assimilated into Americanness. The are recordings from the cusp of two worlds. I transcribed the songs and I learned them by heart. I played them on my instruments and sang them with others. I brought them out on stage. I went on tour with them in October. I wrote and printed a spiral bound zine called “Happy Within: An Irish American Songbook”, contains the lyrics of lore of songs I found. I did this so others might find their way back to the liminal land where the Irish became American and music did too.

Songbook Zine

The practice of learning and performing these songs made me a better artist. I am more aligned with a spiritual and ancestral source. I feel softer when I perform. I don’t need to work as hard. The music and the history is attractive. I think my rough exterior is nearly hammered into place after a year of living this way.

I learned a lot about scuffed and scared edges when I wrote about the font, Papyrus. Papyrus is the font people use when they want something to look old or indigenous, organic and eastern, folkloric and non-threatening. The year was full of visitations from Irish [American] men. They popped up in the weirdest places. Are Irish American males, or Irish men living in America, or Irish men living in Ireland but filtered through an American media lens, experiencing life in human form the way papyrus experiences life as a typeface?

Papyrus and Irish Men Zine

My life feels very simple today. I work entirely for myself, all in service of the Irish American Song Project. That’s what call what I am doing with the field recordings and the songwriting process and the performing. It’s helped along by your community support. This November I fundraised for my project and was warmly received back on my home island, Bainbridge.

You can support The Irish American Song Project with a year-end tax deductible donation through my fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas!

CONTRIBUTE

In 2025 I am planning four month-long tours. February’s is in the South Eastern United States! Please let me know if you live there and would like a performance, or would like to collaborate. This tour is all about merriment, and having warm experiences together as the earth takes its first steps toward spring. I am printing one more zine to complete the 2024 four pack. This next one is about my experience coming into relationship with the Irish Goddess and Saint, Brigid. It should be available on her saint day, February 1st.

Brigid Zine Pre-Order

I also love helping people express themselves. I offer “brandscaping” services to those who need help with websites and organic social media approaches. I offer writing guidance for folks working on books or essays. I offer guitar and banjo lessons too! 2024 showed me how to share with you the many gifts I came into the world with.

For you, I offer the gift of

****Melify Wrapped****

CLICK! MELIFY WRAPPED! CLICK!

This document describes in detail the musical moments of 2024 that stick with me and play in my head, over and over again. I am utterly rich. The people populating my world help me express at all costs. You inspire the shit out of me. Let’s keep going. I not only have a feeling this year is for me and you, I know it to be true.

-Love Melanie Beth Curran

P.S.

Want to revisit last year’s Winter Solstice PDF supplement? Check out:

Mel’s Guide to NYC

P.P.S.

All pics are from this glorious fall, touring and being with folks I enjoy and admire.

Papyrus and Irish Men

Long had I wanted to write something about masculinity. Its contours intrigue me and attract me, repel me and inspire me, and so this zine was crafted to shine a light on a large group of people, but a group that remains shrouded in a cloak of Americanness, of whiteness, of unspoken linkages to an older and mutual ancestral land. I noted patterns and I noted similarities.

In doing this, I found a narrative mirror in the 1983 typeface, Papyrus, in the ways it is also old looking but related to no place. Like “Irishness” Papyrus is in an invocation, deployed at strategic moments to lull the audience into a comforting but benign and apolitical nostalgia.

This zine is personal, for it documents the time when I began to look for a suitor, accomplice, comrade, partner of a romantic sort. Irish American men emerged in droves, and my intent is not to exploit them in these pages, but to revere and humanize them, for the Irish American male has long endured Papyrus-ification, condemned to echo of some ancient power source but de-strengthened in the current context, the digital age, the realm of intelligence artificial.

The zine is illustrated and hand-written by the author, who attempts to "draw papyrus" for page headings.

28 pages

80lb paper

110lb cover

Perfect Binding

Published January 2025

Melanie Beth Curran Oct 2024 Tour Dates

Kickstarter Launched: Unearthed Songs From Irish America

In September of 2024 Melanie Beth Curran launched a Kickstarter campaign to create an album of forgotten Irish American songs. Curran seeks to make an album fit for all immigrants. The songs speak to common struggles of all colonized and displaced people today. Amidst a rise in anti-migrant rhetoric in both America and Ireland, Curran’s project provides a bastion of clarity, connecting the broader Irish American immigrant experience to the shared struggles of today’s refugees.

In 2024, Curran unearthed a bevy of Irish American field recordings from The Library of Congress and other archives. These songs packed a punch. They illuminated how Irish Americans coped with loss, longing, and the process of finding home in a new world. Though rife with historic and cultural significance, the songs were gathering digital dust. She sought to change this. In August, she performed the songs at Jalopy Theatre and School of Folk Music in Brooklyn. She wrote and published a zine documenting the lyrics and stories behind the songs.

Here are a selection of the source materials Curran is working with and is inspired by:

Kathleen Mouverneen, Yankee Brown, Don't Judge a Man by The Clothes That He Wears - Beaver Island, Michigan (Library of Congress)

Interviews of Kevin Shannon - Butte, Montana (Library of Congress)

Bonny Irish Boy, Hills of Glenswilly, I am Thinking Ever Thinking - Ireland 

Jerry Go and Oil that Car - Canton, New York (Minnesota Folk Song Collection)

Goodbye Mike, Goodbye Pat (Leaving Tipperary); Barney McShane - America, Tin Pan Alley 

Songs from The New Song Book for Butte Mining Camp

Songs from present day New York City Irish, such as Chris Byrne's "Love in The Room”

Irish Americans on Beaver Island, Michigan during Alan Lomax’ field recording trip there in 1938.

“I am a devotee of Saint Brigid, who, in her beauty and grace, taught all people how to love and take care of the landless, of the people who have less, of the ones who come behind and need a hand up. She taught us to be great people of hospitality. I bring these songs into the 21st century so that others may find compassion in their hearts. The Irish American consciousness can be one of love and support across lines of race, creed, and politics. I am working for Saint Brigid and I will not stop singing until all people and all lands are free.” - Melanie Beth Curran

Curran’s Kickstarter campaign supports the realization of an album and a subsequent tour. Curran aims to connect through live performances in Irish American enclaves, in Ireland, and in spaces where the displaced are currently housed. Inspiration for this project comes from the late folklorist and musician Mick Moloney. His work bringing life to historic Irish American music is a blueprint for Curran’s efforts.

“Unearthed Songs of Irish America” is available to support on Kickstarter at this link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/glenswilly/unearthed-songs-from-irish-america. The Kickstarter is live from September 5 - 27, with an all-or-nothing fundraising goal of $17,500. Rewards for backers include private concerts, vinyl albums, digital downloads, t-shirts, stickers, hats and more. The anticipated release date for the album is Saint Brigid’s Feast Day, Feb 1, 2025

An Evening of Irish American Songs with Melanie Beth Curran

Thank you everyone who came out on August 2nd for our first show of the Irish American songs from my songbook zine! It was a blast. You are the best fans and enthusiasts a gal could ask for. Thanks especially to Eli Hetko on Bozouki and Mandolin, and Jaden Gladstone on Fiddle. Thanks a lot to Jalopy Theatre in Brooklyn and all the folks who work there and make it happen! Thanks to Nicolette Gold for the beautiful photo for the flyer.

Irish American Zines - Subscription: 1 Year, 4 Zines + Bonus Calendar

For the sacred price of $120, you will get a year-long subscription to Melanie Beth Curran's zines. I release a new zine EVERY season, near the solstice or equinox. At the year's end, you will receive your limited edition Wall Calendar (theme will most likely be potatoes).

Zines are about unsung elements of Irish American life.

Each zine is meticulously hand-crafted and researched. They are art pieces, collectable items, worth their salt, extraordinarily rugged, delicious, etc.

The zines of 2024 include:

SPRING - "Do Me Justice: The Mary Wallopers, Arena and a History of Tin Pan Alley's Racist Sheet Music". Examines Irish American and Black American caricature in music and the lasting effects of this printed material.

SUMMER - "American Irish Songs" - Songbook collection culled from Melanie's life, from Library of Congress Field Recordings, and wherever else I can find songs that embody the American Irish music practice.

AUTUMN - "Bad Boys of Irish America: What They Wear, What They Do, And Why They Art Hot". This zine examines the mystique of Irish American rogue dudes, in media, film, tv, real life, etc. This will be somewhat of a manual of how to act like them (why or why not).

WINTER - "How Brigid Made The Fire: Unverified Personal Gnosis of How Brigid Came to Run My Life". Melanie writes the account of how Brigid, ancient goddess/force/catholic saint/mysterious being from Ireland came to run her life as an American in Brooklyn, New York.

Zine 2: Happy Within: An Irish American Songbook

"Happy Within - An Irish American Songbook"

Collection of Lyrics and Commentary on 38 Irish American Songs.

Each song is hand-plucked from the waves of time. You'll find serenades from sources like: Alan Lomax's 1938 field recordings, vaudeville stages, medieval manuscripts, Butte Montana miners and railroad workers, the West coast of Ireland, Thin Lizzy, Hell's Kitchen, and more! You'll even see a few soon-to-be-classics written by Melanie Beth Curran herself. A surefire party for the lads, lassies and laxxes all.

The title “Happy Within” comes from the lyrics which sparked this songbook’s creation. In 1938, Alan Lomax recorded a guy named John W. Green on Beaver Island in Michigan. Discovering the field recording of Mr. Green singing “Kathleen Mauvorneen” sent Curran on a quest.

“Happy Within” contains lyrics and commentary for 38 songs, plus pictures and ramblings.

104 pages, full color

6.69 X 9.61 inches, spiral bound

110lb cover

70lb text

Contains:

Highway Patrolman - Bruce Springsteen

The Patriot Game - Dominic Behan

Low Places - Garth Brooks

I Am Thinking Ever Thinking - Traditional / Singing of Delores Keane

Fannin Street - Kathleen Brennan and Tom Waits

Óró sé do bheatha abhaile - Traditional / Singing of Sinéad O’Connor

Barney McShane - Andrew B. Sterling / Singing of Kevin Shannon

New York Girls - Traditional Sea Shanty / Singing of Finbar Furey

Take it and Run - The Dropkick Murphys

Kathleen Mavourneen - John W. Green, Collected by Alan Lomax, Beaver Island, MI 1938

May Morning Dew - Traditional, learned in West Clare and from singing of Delores Keane

Hell’s Kitchen - The Westies, Michael McDermott

The Boys of Barr Na Stráide - Sigerson Clifford, Singing of Arcady

Caoineadh Na Tri Mhuire (The Lament of the Three Marys) - Traditional, Singing of John Heaney

The Irish Rover - Traditional Sea Shanty, Cork or Letrim origins

By The Hush, Me Boys - American Civil War Traditional Ballad, singing of OJ Abbott

My Bonny Irish Boy - Traditional, Singing of Birdie Rainey and Margo O’Donnell

The Galway Girl - Steve Earle

Fairytale of New York - The Pogues

Donegal Danny - by Phil Coulter, Singing of Margo O’Donnell

Don’t Judge a Man by The Clothes That He Wears - Andrew Gallagher, Collected by Alan Lomax, Beaver Island, MI 1938

One Starry Night - Traveller song, heard in County Clare

Paradise by The Dashboard Light - Meatloaf

Yankee Brown - Daniel Bonner, Collected by Alan Lomax, Beaver Island, MI 1938

She Moves Through The Fair - Traditional, Singing of Sinéad O’Connor

Rop tú mo Baile / Sale / Be Thou My Vision - Dallān Forgail

Shenandoah - Traditional, from singing of Paul Clayton

The Wearing of The Green - Dion Boucicault and Others

The Dark Eyed Gypsy - Traditional, singing of Joe Holmes, from Fire Draw Near Anthology

School Days Over - by Ewan MacColl, singing of Luke Kelly

The Boys Are Back in Town - Thin Lizzy

Dublin Blues - Guy Clark

Glenswilly - Melanie Beth Curran

Landed Gentry / Rivers Just Babble - Melanie Beth Curran

I Don’t Regret a Thing - (Laoghaire Ní Sidhe) - Melanie Beth Curran

From the epilogue:

"In these songs were people burning with passion and anger. Even if they weren’t saying it outright, the anger was implied and undergirding even the most beautiful songs.

For three days I woke with the lyrics to “Hell’s Kitchen” by The Westies playing in my brain. The song was a good omen. Here was another songwriter languishing in New York City making the mistake of caring about the past and the making vulnerable choice to craft a song for it. Not sure if the writer even lived it. Was his father really some kind of Hell's Kitchen Irish Mobster? Did the places between ninth and tenth really reek of sex and sin or was he making that up? “You weren’t born a kitchen girl”, he sings. Does he know Kitchen Girl is a beloved American Appalachian Fiddle Tune? He’s just talking about a woman who wasn’t born in those streets above 42nd. He’s talking about me.

I go there one day and after a multi hour cultural assessment I discover that Hell’s Kitchen does still have a lot of Patricks and a thousand other types too. I keep seeing myself there in my precious apartment, in a silk robe, drinking iced cola, refrigerator filled to the gills with explosives. I’m good at making bombs in this fantasy. I’m a natural. I hit all my targets. I’m fearless. I’m brave. Zine is the back half of magazine. It’s pronounced “Zeen”. A Magazine gets its name from actually military magazines, places where the armaments were stored in an organized fashion. The original printed magazines did this too, but with words. Each section of the magazine was its own thing that could do harm and rip things up and explode.

This zine is a collection of Irish American Songs. These songs contain all the rage and passion I didn’t set loose on the elites this year.

I gnaw on the window sill and dig my nails into the carpet. The songs make a break for the exit but I ask them please to sit down and appear in these pages for you. I’ve done all I can to describe their fury but know that there are many yet unsung."

Zine 1: Do Me Justice: The Mary Wallopers, Arena, and Vaudeville Clairsentience

Welcome to New York City, where the Ghost of Tin Pan Alley still lurks.

This is an NYC tale about an EVIL force that threatens performers along the Mohican Road (The Bowery / Broadway). As the demon makes the author ill, she finds a balm- A SALVATION - in the performances of Fall 2023. One by The Mary Wallopers, one by a dance group doing a musical dance show called Arena. Both groups BATTLE the old cold thing.

The author illuminates histories of Black and Irish stereotypes in American Sheet Music.

8.5in x 11in, staple bound, printed on 80lb un-coated paper with a 100lb glossy cover.

Zine is full color baby, 44 pages

Excerpt:

"Do me justice, treat me fair
And I won’t be discontented
And I won’t be laughed at anywhere
But fairly represented

Andrew sings the refrain. It’s just so strange. I’ve been creeped out since I got off the subway. That cold and icy feeling crawls up my calves now. Irving Plaza is located right around the corner, literally a stone’s throw, from the former location of Tony Pastor’s Vaudeville Theater on 14th street. The cold climbs up my thighs and to my stomach. It envelopes me like a crooked hand. In the Tin Pan Alley songs, Paddy will do anything for whisky. Barney McShane will not speak to a suitor when she offers him tea, but liquor? Absolutely. It’s all comic until you’re wailing on your children and suffering liver failure. In Vaudeville skits, Irish males were often depicted as relatively harmless drunks and fighters. Vaudeville Irish females though, well, that’s a whole other story for another day. It was not pretty. Not at all.

The Minstrel Machine wound its fingers around the vaudeville stages of Union Square and scratched up Broadway’s back. Tin Pan Alley on 28th street published sheet music versions of Vaudeville’s famous songs. Tin Pan Alley then wrote songs for vaudeville stars to perform in places like Tony Pastor’s. The songs were on a feedback loop. Film began.

Early film reels played during continuous vaudeville shows, in place of actual, physical acts. These reels were simply the physical vaudeville acts made into film. They were about two minutes long. Many reels were filmed at a rooftop studio around the corner from Tony Pastor’s on Union Square. So Stage Irishness, this thing about which Andrew sings right now, this thing which he himself spars with as an Irishman on stage, especially in America, was cemented into song, into sheet, into celluloid, right here. 14th Street, Union Square, 133 years ago.

Now the cold thing is on my shoulders. It nuzzles my neck like a cat. My body sizzles and zaps with a ricocheting prickliness.

Dear wee little Francis, this is the one he called the train robber. This is the tarantula of music, crushing spirits with its dark and heaving limbs, making monsters of men, gripping pens and twisting tongues to make cash, milking people for their quirks and habits, slurping the gum water out of spittoons and pissing lemon juice over fields of green, just waiting in the wings to take its final snarling bite. It creeps up my skull, my eyes clamp against the tears, so many bodies around me blurry now, I am certain I will fall ill in the coming days. Grey milk and castor oil baron gatorade. I will stave off that thing which burnt down Japan Lithium Auto, I will repel the destructive force of this creature, which whooshing made its way across Arena’s facade, for I have shaken this man’s hand.

It happened at Bartley Dunnes. I approached Andrew at his laptop. I approached with the gingerness of journalists. I approached with calm confidence, moving into position, right on cue, and shook his hand.

“Hi. I’m Melanie and I’m here writing about Mary Wallopersism. Please, can you tell me, what is your goal?”

“To save Irish culture without becoming a false prophet.”

That was his only utterance. I could tell by the way he gripped my hand that something else manned his spirit. His body was lost under the influence of pints, but his words exacted crisping clarity.

For this is the way truth turns to language. This is the way the honest feeling forms in sound. First, it hears the call of the other, the one who presents the void. Then it parts the lips and pushes forth into waves of dependable substance."

My Irish Bridget Stereotype Article is up on JSTOR Daily

From Saint to Stereotype: A Story of Brigid

Caricatures of Irish immigrants–especially Irish women–have softened, but persist in characters whose Irishness is expressed in subtle cues.

Check it out!

A cartoon illustration of Bridget in Puck, 1883

Zine 1: "Do Me Justice"

Welcome to New York City, where the Ghost of Tin Pan Alley still lurks.

This is an NYC tale about an EVIL force that threatens performers along the Mohican Road (The Bowery / Broadway). As the demon makes the author ill, she finds a balm- A SALVATION - in the performances of Fall 2023. One by The Mary Wallopers, one by a dance group doing a musical dance show called Arena. Both groups BATTLE the old cold thing.

The author illuminates histories of Black and Irish stereotypes in American Sheet Music.

8.5in x 11in, staple bound, printed on 80lb un-coated paper with a 100lb glossy cover.

Zine is full color baby, 44 pages

Trust me, you will love it.

This in an elite zine.

Limited Edition First Run of 51 Prints.

Original Working Title: The Mary Wallopers & Arena & Vaudeville Clairsentience in NYC

Preview of Zine 1: The Mary Wallopers and Arena and Vaudeville Clairsentience

HYPOTHESIS:

The mind which understands basic things about American Vaudeville geography in New York City will have a haunting, meaning-filled, and evocative experience watching performances, in the present, there. Vaudeville awareness leads to nuanced takes.

PRE-ORDER ZINE 1: The Mary Wallopers and Arena and Vaudeville Clairsentience

Pre-Order My Zine!

ZINE 1: The Mary Wallopers & Arena & Vaudeville Clairsentience in NYC

This zine will blow your mind, feel good to touch, and rest wonderfully in your hands.

It concerns Irish American and Black American performance in NYC, specifically two shows I saw in fall of 2023.

Show One: The Mary Wallopers and Sam Shackelton at Irving Plaza.

Show Two: “Arena”, by Artist Derek Fordjour, Choreographer Sidra Bell, and Composer Hannah Mayree performed at Petzel Gallery.

Seemed like the Vaudeville was alive in well, but in a way that felt very surprising and releasing. The possibilities for a collective de-colonial explosion seem high. Are the forgotten vaudeville thoroughfares - The Bowery, 14th St./Union Square and Tin Pan Alley - actually still running shit?

FIND OUT!

Working Melanie Magic Into The Architectural World - Fall Newsletter, 2023

Telling you is like confession or something. The architecture dream is so deep-seated and quiet in me. I've hinted to it some over the years I've known you. I care about buildings and history. Maybe that's why I always snuck into abandoned ones as a kid. Who am I kidding. I still sneak into them. I care about what went on here before. I care about the conversations that were had and the songs that were sung and how those words may still be echoing about in the present.

Just the other day I got in trouble for trespassing at Chatham Towers, trying to get a good glimpse of the piece of earth that used to be "The Old Brewery". They just put Gangs of New York on HBO, so this nerd has been lurking around the old Five Points looking for ghosts in the walls and sidewalks. ANYWAY.

My purpose came clear during my last sixth months of meditation. Sometimes the directions roared through my deep breathing like a freight train. (If you like freight trains, I recommend this awesome train hopping memoir, Sunset Route by Carrot Quinn.) The messages I received out in the world only served to solidify my new path. I've tried to ignore them.

"That doesn't make sense, I'm but a folk singer!"

But the voice comes from a deep well within me. It's too loud. It doesn't care that I've just become the other half of a new band called The Jersey Sures (available for all gigs!). When I get so quiet I can hear only silence, the message I get is to work my unique brand of Melanie magic into the architectural world.

It's more than preservation I'm interested in. It's creating an entire framework for architecture, building, and construction - one that takes into account cultural context and the specific character of place. One that bites back at white supremacy and capitalism and throw away culture (other great books on these subjects are Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong and Abolish Silicon Valley by Wendy Liu). I'm so into this.

Over summer I went through entrepreneurial training as part of New York State's Self Employment Assistance Program. I got a letter in the mail one day telling me I'd qualified for this program. Sometimes I don't know what to do next. The letter made it clear. I enrolled. By following the SEAP's guidelines all summer and working with mentors and coaches at SCORE and The Women's Business Outreach center, I've started a business called Wall Nectar.

At Wall Nectar, I get to combine the things I love to do and am good at doing into one service. I get to work toward my dream of experimenting and creating a culturally sustainable architecture model. My first experiments with this were, like so many of us, on The Sims. Thank you, The Sims.

So here's what Wall Nectar does:

We create interior murals by conducting living history research and putting on a public musical performance on site. Clients may be restaurants, historical buildings, entire neighborhoods, theatre companies, organizations, shops, public or civic buildings- I am not sure. I am currently searching for my first clients. This entire process- from research to performance to painting- is called a Wall Channeling. Wall Channeling is the signature service of Wall Nectar.

The closest thing I've ever done to a Wall Channeling before is People's Beach Day. So if you liked People's Beach Day, you're going to LOVE Wall Channelings. It's taken me some time to feel confident spelling the word Channeling. And yes, I still have my job at Montclair State teaching College Writing. You can tell, because my writing is PERFECT. It is NOT full of RANDOMLY capitalized WORDS, for example.

So here I am world. I am Melanie Beth Curran, surrealistic Founder and CEO of Wall Nectar in Brooklyn, New York. Wall Nectar was baked here in the apartment where I live, and at the BOC in the Bronx, and in the offices and zoom rooms of architects and experts who guide me.

So please, if you or someone you know has a building, has a special place, has a budget to cover art and performance that celebrates regional identity and history, get in touch with me. Also just here if you want to talk about your feelings.

Thank you for supporting me and my work throughout the years,

-Melanie

Riding the subway with pincurls, because I still religiously adhere to 1940s beauty routines. Thank you to Katie Lomax for the Cloisters photo up top. Please go the The Met Cloisters one day if you haven't (not a real convent).

Lyrics to "The Belle of Avenue A" by The Fugs

I couldn’t find the lyrics to this song anywhere online and I thought they were hilarious. So I did my best to figure them out as an act of public service. I guess this song is from 1969 and I can literally smell it. The vivid descriptors and hyper specific references to era-specific objects truly entranced me. I loved how I never knew for sure when the refrain will come around again.

“The Belle of Avenue A” Song Lyrics by The Fugs

This is a song about a man from Junction City, Kansas

A truck driver for the Red Ball Express

who decides he has to go the Lower East Side to get some Hippie Nookie.

It's called "The Belle of Avenue A"

He was just a lonely truck driving man driving all night long

but did he know how soon his tears would fall for the Belle of Avenue A?

He drove through the tunnel in his big Mack truck

driving hard from Kansas

He told all his buddies at the Junction City Truckstop

he was gonna get some hippie nooookie

but did he know how soon his tears would fall for the Belle of Avenue A?

He saw her standing in a midnight-blue lace gown

He saw her standing in a midnight-blue lace gown

He could see her pretty naked nipples under the mesh

and she had a button, "Love is God", pinned to her sleeve

and he started talking to her in hieroglyphic hitchhikes (??)

and he told her she was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen

waving a wand of incense

burnin on Avenue A

Well his heart was beatin like a bumpy butterfly

his stomach was an empty fire

but did he know how soon his tears would fall for the Belle of Avenue A?

Hey they walked together talkin, and she reached out to hold his hand

and he trembled with joy as she scratched his lifeline

with her silver Tibetan fingerstall

and she asked him to come up to her house

and he leaped up her steps like they was on fire

and she had an Indian hemp plant blooming on the windowsill

an electric toothbrush by the bed

and on the stroboscope was a tiny push up bra

made from the eyelids of an elephant.

He was just a lonely truck driving man

driving all night long

but did he know how soon his tears would fall for the Belle of Avenue A?

They kissed! And passed between their mouths a silver-tounged marble

and he went out of control.

Fell to his knees

and she touched his zipper

and recited a sex charm from The Book of The Dead

and she caressed him with her feet

and somehow she got his Levi's off with her toes

and then she wriggled out of her lace

covering herself with Reddi-wip in a spiraling flourish

and she stood there and she had a white pebble in her navel

and she said to the lonely truck driver:

"Love me and pray to my body

Love me and pray to my body"

and the lonely truck driver to her in reply did say:

"I don't want no other love

I'll be true to you

you're the prettiest gal I've ever seen

my Belle of Avenue A"

She lay back into the zebra-skin rope harness

and pulled her truck driver lover

down into her entwining arms

and she wrapped herself around with hundred of bright ribbons

and she beamed in on him with a tube torque

and he painted pretty prairie flowers on her stomach

with a suma (i) brush

and later on they lay in a bathtub of Mazola oil

and final he grew exhausted and fell asleep

in her lovin' arms

while she stared onward into the night

drinking from her Aramaic chalice

and thrilling herself with an onyx-handled tapir snout

He told all his buddies at the Junction City Truckstop

he was gonna get some hippie nooookie

but did he know how soon his tears would fall for the Belle of Avenue A?

When he woke up he told her he loved her

and that he wanted to live with her forever and ever

and she looked at him

and she held his hand

and she dealt out the tarot cards

and she studied I-Ching for many minutes

and she asked him what his sign was

and finally, looking deep into his eyes she held his hand and said:

"It's not in the cards

all things say 'Adios'

and the purple flower

s and the green flower

s melt in the void."

Well he reeled in his dick and he headed for the door

filled with an awful love-

sheee - she can suck on a purple donut buddy I'm gonna head for home-

but the misty tears fell down his face.

He drove through the turnpike and he headed South

driving hard for Kansas

But the misty tears fell down his face for the belle of Avenue A

Yes the misty tears fell down his face for the belle of Avenue A.

He never thought the tears would ever stop for his

midnight

lace dress

incense

goddess

The Belle of Avenue A.

I am an Irish-American Dead Head Closeted Red Sox Fan with a Buried Boston Accent

I have a spiritual teacher named Nikki Walton. She releases a meditation each morning.

"Say the word I," she asked listeners. "Now say "I" without actually saying "I". Stay feeling the "I" that doesn't pronounce itself."

She says that this is the feeling of god, or the universe, or the goddess, or the creator, inside of a person. It is the radiant feeling of saying "I" when we don't.

I chanced upon the core of my being in Boston earlier in June. My material surroundings so resembled my essence that I thought to write upon the subject here. A series of miracles ensued and I was hard-pressed not to believe that a creative intelligence was masterminding the spectacle of life on earth.

The last memory I have of being part of Boston was not wanting to leave it. I loved being young Melanie there. I lived in Peabody, Massachusetts, with my mother, father, brother, and something else. The something else doesn't have a name, but I associated with a few things: The Boston Common, a certain quality of adult personalities, swan boats on a pond, Make Way For Ducklings, Dunkin Donuts, and the way I pronounced words.

It was the dawn of kindergarten when we moved to Bainbridge Island. I was nearly put into speech class when the teachers figured out that it wasn't a speech impediment I had, but a Boston area accent. The Pacific Northwest of the United States, where we'd moved, is where newscasters with regional inflections turn to seek out an accent-less way of annunciating words for public broadcast.

My way of pronouncing language went away, but something remained. I remember driving away from the house on Jennifer Lane, Peabody, Mass, watching the neighborhood recede from out the back windshield of a Ford Explorer. I saw the neighbors waving us goodbye. I felt an aching in my soul. I loved this place. The love is still with me.

Would I have transformed into such a fantastic hippie had I grown up in Massachusetts? By high school on Bainbridge Island, I favored being stoned and listening to the Grateful Dead over going to class. I would skip to hide and listen to their music alone in dark recesses. Their back catalog is imprinted in my consciousness. Maybe I was trying to manufacture something big enough to replace that old childhood longing, something to soothe the ache of early experiences of impermanence.

It was 2004 or 2007. Could have been both or either. I took the portable radio into the street at night. I set up a chair and looked at the stars, listening to the Red Sox baseball team win The World Series. I loved the Red Sox. I had fond feelings for Fenway Park. I told no one. I loved the Green Monster the way northwestern children love Sasquatch. My love for all of this was secret. It is weird to tell about it now. I held my love cards close to the chest then because I didn't want anything to come between me and these waves of sound expressing Bostonian victory.

Being an American is being suspended between a longing for what one doesn't have yet, and a longing for what one is leaving behind. That's my experience.

My family in Seattle, especially my paternal grandfather and his siblings, stressed a great sense of "being from" in tandem with our family name. Curran. We're Irish. We are from County Donegal, from a small place outside Letterkenny called Glenswilly. And that is that.

Any other ancestries in my life were obscured by this story. It was a tale told and re-told. There was a highway of green leading us back to Ireland. When I asked my father why we went to Mass each Sunday, why I was enrolled in CCD, why - I was told it was for tradition. He wanted us to grow up with that unbroken thread back to Ireland, with a structure for worshiping god.

An identity was formed. I am an Irish-American Dead Head Closeted Red Sox Fan with a Buried Boston Accent.

About a fortnight ago, I traveled to Boston from my home in New York City. Through a series of encounters and intuitive actions, I'd fallen in with a cohort of Irish Studies scholars and was invited to give a presentation at a symposium put on by Boston University and University College Dublin. The symposium was called "New Modalities of Irishness: Race, Identity and Inequality."

I settled into my lodgings and wandered about Back Bay. I met a stream of strangers who offered me questions and commentary.

"Is that a gun?" (It was a fiddle.)

"How much you pay?" (For rent in New York City)

"Are you Catholic?" (By default, I said, by design.)

and,

"God Bless You, You're a Peabody Girl" (pronounced like I used to, guhl.)

When a woman uttered these last words to me, a comfort from my earliest memories engulfed me like honey. My lodgings were, in fact, abutting Fenway Park. An elevator was Red Sox themed. The symposium was a decadence of ideas. We explored notions of an Irishness which can be switched on and off, can be signaled, can be invoked, can be deployed to achieve certain social aims.

I returned from that event with a sweet sense of belonging. It was as though my ancestors were right there with me, partying, especially my Grandpa Pete. It was as though they had gotten together on the other side and woven this sequence of events into being. For once, I'd been open enough to follow their signs and let go of my own will. Things got weirder as the night progressed.

I considered an early retirement to my chambers, but opted for a final spin around the block instead. 'Twas then I met with strange company (see, there, I just deployed a written Irishness). So many dreads on white people. So many drug rugs. It was like a - wait a minute -

A quick google confirmed my suspicions. The Grateful Dead were playing Fenway Park this night.

I stole away, down to the outskirts of the stadium. I, ticketless, perched on a picnic table within earshot of the music as it spilled over what I like to imagine was the Green Monster itself. I felt the presence of my monstah, and I relaxed. There were two young deadhead ladies before me. One was stretching herself like a cat, perched on safety orange plastic road barricade, while the other sister spun. The spinner dancers are a long running Grateful Deadian subgroup. As I watched them, I swore they carried the spirit, the very spirit I had sought while hiding in my family's house, tripping out, listening to this very song.

One More Saturday Night poured out of Fenway Park and into this little side strip of Shakedown Street. The dancing lady sung along in flying harmony to the music, quite like Donna used to do in the old concert recordings.

I've never been to a Grateful Dead show, (I know they are called The Dead and Company now, but like an old neighborhood kid calls the East Village the Lower East Side, I will die on this hill) and I likely never will. This is the band's last and final tour. I have no real means of getting to any of the remaining shows.

But. But I swear that the thing I was seeking in all those stoned high school moments listening to the recordings actually incorporated into me that Saturday Night as I watched the young ladies sing and dance and stretch. As I listened to a song that has been played over and over and over again to audiences who were hungry too, I felt a formless things land, as I sat on that picnic table, stone cold sober.

To soak up sound in the city where I became verbal. To bask in the afterglow of deadhead decades at my favorite baseball stadium - my regrets to the Seattle Kingdom. To have a day spent meditating on what remains of an ancestral Irish homeland in me while eating lobster rolls. I have been an unruly lady and I have been a calm lady. On that night I was not myself, but rather, I was myself experiencing the "I" - unspoken aloud but uttered with all fibers of my flesh.

The gods conspired to show me the core of me, all around me, unfolding like a play dedicated in memory of my deepest childhood and American longings, to be part of something, and to know that something as the water in which I swim.

Deranged April Fools Day Pranks to Play on Your Family and Friends

Friday. March 31st. 5pm. After accidentally eating a few bites of hazelnut, disguised as a harmless crumble crust on a strawberry cheesecake from Clementine Bakery, I accepted my fate. I was now going to have a mild to moderate allergic reaction. I hopped on the B52 bus and got off next to Prospect Drugs, my dear and beloved neighborhood pharmacy. I bought some medicine, sat my butt down in a chair and resolved to wait there until the benadryl kicked in. I figured this was smart. People are around if my throat starts to close up. The people that were around were actually just one person, a teenager working behind the counter named Ailyn. Pronounced. Eileen. 

We got to talking. I said I was looking for April Fools Day Pranks to play on you, dear reader. 

This following list was a team effort. Ailyn came up with a lot of these prank ideas. If you are Ailyn’s friend or family member, watch out, you are going to get pranked today.

Ailyn informed me that the key to any good prank is Gaslighting. Ailyn then elaborated on the trifold principles central to this practice: “Gaslight, Girlboss, Gatekeep.” It is in that spirit that I offer to you our list:

FOOLPROOF APRIL FOOLS DAY PRANKS

Psyche Out

Inform everyone beforehand to expect a prank from you today. Then do not deliver. 

Alien Baby

Go on google images and find a photograph of a scary little creature. Send a letter or email to your friends and family saying something like this, “Hi guys, you know I’ve been off of social media lately. I want to announce the reason! I’ve been nurturing a little bun in the oven and wanted to keep it a secret. This week I gave birth to this little guy, [insert image of a turtle with a mouse face/creepy skeleton/classic green alien]. I don’t know where it came from, but it is my bundle of love. Thank you so much for your support. Please send me money.” Or something like that. 

Caged

Send out an email like this:

“Omg i cant believe it I was able to reach out from my cage and grab ahold of this computer. SOS i need help please please listen to me. I am in a cage in the basement of Luigi’s Pizza. I am about to drown in tomato sauce, please, they are slowly pumping tomato sauce into the basement and I am locked in cage down here. I can barely use the keys on this computer to type, they are slowly being consumed by the growing amount of sauce i am up to my ankles in sauce please send help i can’t believe i got a wifi signal down here the wifi name is SAUCE BOSS and I just guessed the password and got lucky its a miracle the password was not today alfredo not today i can’t believe it please come save me I am down here and it is not looking good it’s Luigi’s Pizzzzzzxzziadhlshd;asgba;oduhasidfj on nnnn as shalihfg aowashingtonnnnn avbeeeeenueeeeeaiusaliueeeee eeee in clinnnntoon hillllllll”

Ransom

“Friends and Family of Melanie Curran. We have your girl. We can disclose the location of her if you send us money, blah blah blah, she’s gonna die, give us a million dollars.”

Mafia

“Hi Guys, It’s your girl Melanie. I am writing today with some super exciting news! In May I am moving to the gorgeous Todt Hill neighborhood on Staten Island to join forces with the Gambino family. I think what they do is super important and I just can’t believe I have been given this opportunity to grow my brand with them. I am inspired by their super deep family values. As you know, legacy is extremely important to who I am and how I project myself on social media. The Gambinos embody this lifestyle at a level I find truly manifested and futureforming. I believe that by working in an exclusive brand deal with them, I can inspire other women to be their best selves and live abundantly. I am super excited to join this incredible international organization.”

Elopement

Send out an email telling everyone I have eloped-

“Hey everyone! This winter something amazing happened. I met the man of my dreams. He is heir to the Bon Jovi family fortune and we are soooooooo happy together. We have already been betrothed, but I thought I would let you know so you can send us presents. Our registry is linked below:

(then give link to one of those real wedding websites like “Zola” or the “Knot”. FIll it out with superimposed images of me and some guy who looks like he could be related to Bon Jovi, and then link to registry that is filled with the following item ONLY:

Eggs

Easter egg dying stuff

NYC statue of liberty key chains

Knives)

Bad Gift

This is one Aylin actually did to her cousin. Gave her a present for her birthday that was just a cup of sugar. Nice one. 

So. I was going to prank you this April Fools Day. As of this morning, I was still planning on sending one of these hoaxes out to you. I thought long and hard about my options. What would make Aylin proud? Then, it dawned on me.

I have lived many lifetimes. I have had many escapades. I have often reinvented myself. If I told you I was engaged to Robert Dinero’s cousin’s cousin and was moving to a towel factory and devoting my life to giving orphans the opportunity to ride on the yachts of billionaires, I think you would have just believed me. The best prank is no prank, from where I am sitting. I’ve put you all through enough. So. Please feel free to use any of these templates on your people today. Let me know how it goes! 

Writing New Jersey Cultures - Course Syllabus, Spring 2023

This semester I am teaching my dream course. I’ve it called Writing New Jersey Cultures.

Course Description

New Jersey real, New Jersey imagined. New Jersey is thrown around in speech and popular culture, though it is seldom understood. The effort of our class is to write New Jersey as we understand it. To do this, you will conduct ethnographic research on a New Jersey Culture of your choice - most likely one that you are personally a part of. Through vast amounts of in-class work doing writing, and through the drafting, revision and research processes, you will produce original research projects. Your final drafts will be shining examples of undergraduate fieldwork. The skills you glean here will be transferable to the rest of your college experience, as well as to your careers as writers, thinkers and citizens.

Just as New Jersey is indeterminate, is undefinable, is a place of possibility and marshes and hauntings and sprawl and language and music, so too will our course be a shifting realm of potentialities. Be prepared to write by hand, try out automatic writing, explore multi-modality, and experiment ethnographically.

Welcome to Writing New Jersey Cultures*.

Full PDF of Syllabus

View on Academia.edu

Camilo Jose Vergara

*Inspired by Writing American Cultures, a course by Nancy Koppelman, Chico Herbison and Sam Schrager at The Evergreen State College, 2012.

Readings

Our class will use the free, open source textbook called:

Engaging Communities: Writing Ethnographic Research by Suzanne Blum Malley and Ames Hawkins.

Find it here:

http://www.engagingcommunities.org/

I will assign readings to inspire and inform our work together. I will provide PDFs of any text assigned, via Canvas. Readings may include:

New Jersey Dreaming: Capital, Culture, and the Class of ’58 by Sherry B. Otner Lifeblood of The Parish: Men and Catholic Devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn by Alyssa Maldonado Estrada

The Body and the City Project: Young Black Women Making Space, Community, and Love in Newark, New Jersey by Aimee Cox

Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science by Carolina Alonso Bejarano, Lucia López Juárez, Mirian A. Mijangos García, and Daniel M. Goldstein

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen
The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones by Amiri Baraka

I Drum, I Sing, I Dance: An Ethnography of a West African Drum and Dance Ensemble by Marissa Silverman

Dr. Smartphones: An Ethnography of Mobile Phone Repair Shops by Nicolas Nova and Anaïs Bloch

Coming of Age in New Jersey: College and American Culture by Michael Moffatt The Destabilization of Italian-American Identity on Jersey Shore by Sara Troyani

The American Diner Waitress: An Autoethnographic Study of The Icon by Heidi Liane Hasbrouck

Gentrification Down The Shore by Mary Gatta and Molly Vollman Makris Class Action Park directed by Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott

To View and Picture Herself Inside of an Infinitude of Apartments: True Confessions of a StreetEasy Scroller

I try not to take it personally when StreetEasy.com asks me to verify my humanity. Apparently the way I use the website, compulsively opening tabs, scrolling through them, closing them and looking at another cluster of ads, alerts the website’s system that I am a bot. After the fourth or fifth time going through the CAPTCHA, checking pictures of crosswalks, I give up and shut the laptop. I mean, that’s pretty sad. When I’m in my street easy flow, the computer thinks I am a computer too.

But that’s kind of the point. Every ounce of life has been Air BnB’d. In my mind I have come to call what I am talking about “the real-estate-i-fication of everything.” This includes other people. People talk about other people like real estate. Good investment, bad investment. Safe, toxic. A diamond in the rough or a fixer-upper. Don’t date someone for their potential, they say. They don’t say that about housing though.

My passion for the ads started early, before the internet. It started with paper real estate magazines on the 35 minutes of ferry boat ride across the Puget Sound in Washington State. I was fascinated by houses. I liked seeing pictures of the insides of them, I liked the different styles. I was a Sims fanatic. The houses provided inspiration for my builds on the computer game. That was one reason.

The other was that I was acutely aware of what my parents had paid for their house in the 90s when they purchased it. I was obsessed about how we could get a better deal if we were willing to move. On the weekends I’d ask my mom to drive me, to please drive me, to open houses, advertised by signs in the ditches with arrows pointing down quiet lanes. I loved walking through the spaces of others in those weird little shoe coverlets.

From the perspective of a child, this obsession makes sense. A lot of space is just taken up by buildings I wasn’t allowed to go into. That’s sort of weird to a kid. So much of everything is private. I don’t think a kid understands private property. I wonder what a New York City kid understands. New York City is all of this privatization on steroids.

I’m going to tell you where I go for my goods. The real goods. Easiest way into it is with the StreetEasy ads. You gotta wait a week to get the Listings Project Newsletter (wholesome colonialism?), but boy is it juicy. I even plunder Craigslist, looking for wacky deals that aren’t scams. When I get real deep, I’ll go to the more obscure listings- like the New York City affordable housing lottery page; or the Zillow listings for the last inexpensive, income-capped, apartments in the city: the HDFC co-ops.

Why do I spend so much time doing this? It feels like important investigative work. But really, the practice is rife with longing for a life that is not my own, right now, today, breathing-in.

from author’s private Pinterest board “Fantasy NYC Apartment”

Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada notes that, in the 2000s, New York City was going through a major re-branding project that doubtless informs my experience of the city as a person who didn’t grow up here. She writes:

“The urban imaginary changed when Michael Bloomberg was elected mayor of New York. In his three terms from 2002 to 2013, Bloomberg effectively led a campaign to rebrand New York as a “magnet for people with dreams.”… Increasingly under Mayor Bloomberg, New York was represented as a “place of arrival,” “a place one comes to, rather than a place where one is born and raised.”” (204-5)

I feel most calm in my heart when I think that maybe, just maybe, the apartment where I live right now is my home. I rest assured knowing I am not planning on leaving. It feels like a sort of sacrilege to write that down. The resting state of an American is never you are where you’re meant to be, right now, and that’s enough. The assumption that makes the whole thing run is this: there is more out there, there is better out there, click here, discover it, keep scrolling.

When I indulge in the ads it is in a state of suspension from reality. Tension floods my body, particularly my jaw. When I decide to look at the ads, it’s with a pleasure similar to that of a child about to consume all her Halloween candy in one sitting. I know it’s going to hurt ultimately, but it will be so sweet going down.

The worst part about it is how if I did move into the dreamiest apartment I could find on the internet, I would still be left with the obsession to scroll. I doubt there is a reality where I won’t ever not be just looking. I have an imagined lives in my head. I hold a vision of myself in almost every neighborhood in this city. I’ve got my building picked out in Brighton Beach and Inwood. I know where I’d live in Sunnyside and the Financial District. Choosing between the West and East Villages would be a challenge, but it’s one I think I could overcome with a place I saw on that sunny strip of 8th Street north of Washington Square.

I know the buildings too well. It’s weird. And I like my actual apartment. I can’t imagine a better place for me actually to live. There are no answers in this piece of writing, just a true account of a person grappling with the strange phenomenon of being able to view and picture herself inside of an infinitude of apartments. Escapist at its core, I don’t think this compulsion will be going away any time soon. But, maybe it will. Everything is fleeting. Like the ads say, this won’t last long.

Works Cited

Maldonado-Estrada, Alyssa. Lifeblood of the Parish: Men and Catholic Devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. New York University Press, 2020.

Psychological Advantages of 1940s Beauty Tutorials on The Day-To-Day Life of A 31-Year-Old Female in 2023

It has come to our attention, here at The Great Laboratory for The Freedom of Female Expression, that by implementing beauty and care rituals from the 1940s, the control group, Melanie Curran (F, 31), exhibits increased relaxation, self-esteem, and personal fulfillment. Why?

Our records show that on a freezing evening in Brooklyn, near the Winter Solstice of 2022, she encountered a vintage health and beauty tutorial. This was accessed via the ephemeral TV public expression sphere floating in time and space entitled YOUTUBE DOT COM.

Were she not already predisposed to vintage films, music, and literature, it is doubtful that her algorithm would have brought her to this video. But it did happened. As did something more remarkable. Her behaviors toward herself changed. In short, she picked up on what this video was throwing down.

She adopted the following behaviors:

• Taking a relaxing bath each night before bed.

• Washing her face with soap and cold water, avoiding expensive and frivolous creams and lotions.

• Purchasing a big plastic jar of a cold cream type product which has been around since her great grandmother’s time, Jergens Face Cream, and using it as directed.

• Gently brushing her hair at a vanity before bed and upon awakening.

• Setting her hair in pin curls, or a wet set, at an average of once a week.

• Maintaining the set throughout the following days with love, attention, and pomade.

• Leaving her apartment fully done-up and delighting those around her.

• Practicing good posture and verbal enunciation.

• Pairing down her personal wardrobe to suit her fashion predilections, and maybe a Kibbe style for Soft Dramatic.

• Sleeping 8-9 hours a night.

What occurred next was not surprising, but is not a typical response in the average youngish-millennial internet user with smart phone. Melanie Curran slunk to the fringes of social media, deleting them from her life, pleased to download a singular social media app, Instagram, in order to, say, write somebody she could not otherwise contact. She would then instantly, delete it.

It stands to reason, our scientists believe, that by devoting so much time to her own care and maintenance, it became at once impossible to tend to social media, to keep scrolling, and risk losing those precious hours she could be using to, say, brush out her locks or bask in the tub.

Cindy Sherman

The irony of course, is that social media’s usage is driven by the willing participation and almost religious devotion of women who hate themselves.

Would they not hate themselves if they were no longer using the social media applications? That’s quite possible. The Control, Miss Melanie, reported feelings of peace and serenity knowing she did not have to engage in that rigamarole digital mall cum popularity contest which demands everything and gives us very little.

“It makes people’s lives into speculative real estate,” she was quoted as muttering to herself whilst applying vintage face cream. “As the real land has already been conquered and viciously divided by a process of brutal colonial rule, the great tech bros have clearly decided that the next “Western Frontier” is the human being herself. Nay, her dreams. Her desires. Her insecurities. It’s terrifying.”

She slept well at night and was able to give love and camaraderie to her friends, family and neighbors. This included two instances of delivering homemade soup to loved ones. It included multiple more instances of just not being an asshole on the subway or at the grocery store.

“It is remarkable,” she muttered to herself again, this time in the tub, “how distance from social media, along with a strong 1940s beauty routine, makes me feel beautiful. From the inside out. It is a beauty feeling I get from within. If more people felt this way, it would spell disaster for the beauty industry. Because what if I can just love myself and give myself care and drink plenty of water and that’s really all I ever needed? Then the beauty industry and all those connected to it would suffer, crumble, and recede.”

What we here at the laboratory have come to understand is that the calm relief Curran felt once freed from the obligation of clicking and scrolling and liking and thinking and self-reflecting and self-disclosing on the internet, is actually a result of losing a job.

The job? Being on the internet. In Hyperemployment, or the Exhausting work of the Technology User, Ian Bogost outlines, in 2013 no less, how simply having to manage an email inbox and a social media presence is a pretty crazy amount of extra work. Even then, Bogost was exhausted and disgruntled. But how would you feel now sir? Now that every single click and eye movement and scroll and tap and word you type are commodities making other people money??????????? Our scientists would like to know.

Melanie Curran felt released from the pressure of having to be both consumer and product. She leaves us with this note:

It was this time last year. I took a job working as a background actor on the TV show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. That was the first time I got insight in to just how much time and attention went into beauty in the past. See, it was this huge scene in the airport. They had to do hair and makeup and wardrobe for hundreds of extras. It was like a small army was forged from hairspray and girdles. So I was put through this process- of being made into a woman from 1963. I loved the way I looked. I noticed things the hair and makeup people did to me reminded me of my Grandma Pat. May she rest in Peace. Pat had a higher standard for herself. Her mom, Doris, an even higher standard. I thought- dang, if I had one to two to three extra hours a day to spend caring for my appearance, I might be able to recreate this kind of look myself. But where would I get those three extra hours? That’s when I realized- from my phone. I’d get them back from my phone. If I really wanted to look at glam and feel as calm as looking that glam makes me feel, I’d have to say goodbye to social media. I took me another year to really do it, but here I am. And I’m not doing it for anyone else. This is simply my preference. Instead of committing hours in adoration of what happens on screen, I adore myself. The self-confidence and peace is worth it. Here is the beauty tutorial which inspired me so:

Vintage 1940’s Beauty Routine for Women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJFYytLKMug

Works Cited:

Bogost, Ian. “Hyperemployment, or the Exhausting Work of the Technology User.” The Atlantic. Nov. 8, 2013. www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/hyperemployment-or-the-exhausting-work-of-the-technology-user/281149/

Verbs!

This look is dedicated to verbs.

I didn’t give verbs much consideration before. They were a part of speech, like any other. This all changed on a sunny autumnal day in the New York New Jersey area. I felt inspired to bring my writing students on an adventure around campus. I entreated them to “find words in the wild”. With pen and paper we traipsed around Montclair State University collecting language.

The most fascinating part of this exercise was what happened when I asked them to collect verbs. Have you ever looked at the world in this way? Observed the processes about you? The things doing things on their way from birth to decay? Or is there a constant flow of energy, that takes the shape of nouns from time to time? What are verbs? What is verbing?

I loved the experience of gathering verbs from the ground, from people, from buildings humming with life. So much is in motion, even in a quiet place. I am fascinated by the way we chop up the material world into smaller parts. The English language is a shoddy representative of what is really going on. That is especially true in The United States of America, where indigenous languages exist to better fit the place they are from. They have been silenced. They are in resurgence.

Indigenous People’s Day is tomorrow. I am grateful for that. In my verbal quest the other day, I remembered my beginning study of Twulshootseed language. I remembered how that language centers around verbs, processes. It’s so much more fun! English declares things dead. Which is so weird. Because everything is verbing.

I was researching Birkin Bags. They are these exclusive handbags that you can’t even buy if you walk into the Hermès Store, the luxury brand which sells them. No. You must get on some kind of waitlist, then fork over $20,000 to $200,000 dollars. What makes these bags special are rare leathers used in their manufacturing. But Birkins are on their way to the grave. They can’t even last that long. Not really. Everything’s decaying. That’s the lesson of fall.

I’ll never forget living in Bulgaria. The cars under communism were called LADAs. When I lived in that country in 2009-2010, these little old cars were ubiquitous. I remember seeing one in a field. My host told me that the LADAs were made of an organic material that sheep love to munch. The sheep were eating the cars. I watched them.

I loved that. There is no permanence. Permanence is a lie. It is a state we like to believe in. It is an essential fantasy that aids in the selling of products. Hermès declares that, unlike other bags, the Birkin will never lose its value. It’s one of those most rare of objects: it gains value as it ages.

Says who? Who decides that the ten-year-old painter is a prodigy? That the apartment worth $1500 a month in May is worth $3500 in September? We do our damndest to put prices and time constraints on process. An apartment is just air doing apartment things. Is just earth doing apartment things. God bless affordable housing. God bless cheap rent. This world of prices is out of control, and we all know it.

I walked down the street the evening after my verb class. There is nothing prettier than my neighborhood at dusk in early October. I saw the lights coming through the windows of an ornate historic apartment building, and I saw the blueing sky, and the mid-century government housing with its windows aglow, and the tree tops shimmering their final green leaves, and I saw this whole scene with new eyes. For I saw verbs before I saw things.

The world vibrated, hummed, shifted, expressed itself in activity. What a pleasant surprise. To catch a glimpse of subtle changes. To focus not so much on the what but the how. I spend more time doing nothing these days. Staring into space. It is work to retain autonomy over my attention. Attention itself has been chopped up and commodified. That most precious of processes, that most sacred of verbs, to be, how can I reclaim you? How can I hold you close?

If you are reading this, please take some time today to stare at the world, just as it is. Nothing to claim, nothing to do, just watch time going on. I’ve feel I’ve stumbled on a pot of gold. To be able to bear witness to the secret flows of time and space, but for an instant, that is a pleasure being extracted from us people every single day.

Pay attention to the verbs. What is happening around you right now? Put attention there. It’s a luscious experience. Happy fall.