🍵Momo Vert peach green tea by Lupicia—1/4 full—warm.
This is another tea gone cold: illustrations, comics, prose and the occasional motley miscellanea by dangerlam. And at the time of writing—the world’s newest newsletter!
Hello,
Writing to you from indoors, on the cusp of tomorrow (night owl). It’s that quiet time of night where words compete to be the lucky last ones in—not too early so they get edited out, nor too late lest they end up incoherent. Perhaps by now all the excitement has been contained, but: I’m very excited to be writing to you.
One is the number of this moment. It’s a first-rate numeral—a unit, a pronoun, an entity, an identity. It’s the number of times you live (if yolo). Who you’re supposed to find (the one). How many remaining chips you promise to eat (…1?). And, for now, the minimum distance we must stand apart*, in solidarity.
One is also the titular number of this letter (small dance). And so it is with rainbow eyes and anticipation-heart that I get to my point: welcome and thank you so much for being on the receiving end of dispatch #001 of another tea gone cold**. It’s taken a minute (+ an additional few million moments) to manifest. Now I’d drink a non-alcoholic beverage to that!
* I know, you know: 1m according to the WHO, and 1.5m advised by the Australian government.
** Extra hat tips if you were one of the first to subscribe half a decade ago***. [baby rabbits drop out of said tipped-hat and frolic about your feet in gratitude formations]
*** You can unsubscribe here.
Earlier in the year, a new studio neighbour and I shared earnest chats over a pre-pandemic cuppa. It was a 3-hour dialectic traversal over topical landscapes spanning differences, commonalities, podcast recommendations, massive meta-systemic issues that could only be settled with a sigh…and art making. For the latter, I was gifted with a mantra:
“Keep it loose.”
For him, the best and most honest approach to drawing always came back to keeping it loose. It was a moment of shining light and poetry for me, and I wholeheartedly concurred (whilst secretly unclenching my default death-grip right fist under the table).
But drawings are more forgiving when it comes to arriving to new eyes out-of-context. They exist closer to “they are what they are”. Words, on the other hand, are imbued with agency, stance, and are prone to being flattened. And misinterpreted, with seemingly more tangible repercussions.
Writing for publishing, for ‘the public’, is hard—I eek at my already eked-out drafts. There is much to learn. It’s one of those lifelong crafts of infinite possibilities and asymptotic goalposts. So I’ve been thinking that—for perfectionist and hypercritical demeanours such as mine—a kinder approach to writing could be to ‘keep it loose’. To arrive at a similar place of looseness as in drawing. What would the writing equivalent be? The same thing: honest lines.
I recall this fact: that words are my first love and have always come easy on paper: through letter writing, note-taking, list-making, journalling. Ordinary thoughts, the weather, enquiries of the general sort, stream of consciousnesses, and if you’re especially on a roll: something witty or poignant. There’s never nothing to say.
In regards to the pandemic-themed reality of our collective present moment, my own thoughts and syntheses have yet to surpass the 2-cent threshold (self-assessed)*. What is there to say that hasn’t already been said?
There’s never nothing to say / nothing comes from nothing / nothing is still something.
And perhaps, just: be still.
* If you aren’t already acquainted, see these recent pieces here and here by Dr Jason Fox, Arch-wizard of Ambiguity (most fantastic).
Speaking of Jason, here’s a thing we do—randomly interrupt the other person who is engaged in seemingly interesting reading material with the spot-question:
“Choice quote?”
It’s a request to have a quote read aloud to you, and is selected from the current spread or via a lucky-flick stopping at ‘say when’. The more out of context it is from the present moment, the more glee to be had.
Sharing with you a choice quote from p.40 of my current notebook, which is an excerpt I underlined from Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Letter from a Young Worker:
“It is a monstrous act of violence to begin something. I cannot begin. I’m simply jumping over what ought to be the beginning.”
This isn’t my favourite quote, but it has me thinking of sentences so compelling that you’re drawn to take note. And I often wonder if the words came naturally to the author on the spur of an inspired moment, versus being painfully eked out after repeated deconstructions and reconstructions.
When was the last time you penned a sentence so pleasing it deserved multiple private re-reads*? Whether it was poetic, courageously assertive, technically genius, an award-winning pun or just plain good—if you share it with me it would be a delight to read.
* In that inner-winner-voice ;–P
Or—choice quote? I might share a few in the next letter.
Keep it loose,
kim
addendum—
1.
Ten noteworthy bright things of late:
The ding of a distant tram.
Mum’s mnemonic for pandemic times: ‘TEAM—Together Everyone Achieves More!’.
The honest happiness of dogs.
The woody waxy smell of coloured pencils.
Watching a loved one move to the rhythm of your heartbeat (head/hand/cat on chest).
Carving: through cake, through bread, through butter.
Rousing from sleep to the sound of rainfall.
How grateful root-bound plants look after being repotted at last.
Heaving a full box of fresh produce onto the kitchen bench.
Plants growing inside of windows, pressing towards the light.
2.
Throwback to this #hourlycomicday2020 scene at 7am, which is still happening on repeat and on time:
3.
In response to the hysteria surrounding coronavirus, Mike & Muriel of Studio Mimu launched the More of Something Good (M.S.G) project. M.S.G is ‘the No. 1 online illustrated food directory’ of your favourite artist’s favourite food. Pre-movement restrictions it was my perfect excuse to research (/engorge) on Nhu Lan Bakery’s Banh Mi Xiu Mai as well as Kuu Cafe’s Greentea Ganache Cake.
“I’m no cake connoisseur but I know what life-changing feels like. This cake doesn’t skimp on the matcha content, it goes above and beyond. The flavour gets you in a deep place. Deep-green-deep. It’s a dreamy dessert dance in your mouth between two delightfully moist layers of heaven: the succulent sponge, and the creamy ganache. Not for sharing.”
The mere glance of this cake makes my insulin spike. Peruse the full M.S.G menu.
4.
I made this Pantless Joy tee to save you from having to explain why you’re not wearing pants. Printed on organic carbon-offset cotton, and comes in your favourite marshmallow colours: white and misty pink. Preorder here (ends in ~2 days: April 8th).
5.
In parallel universes not too dissimilar to ours, another tea gone cold is dispatched to different versions of you under alternative names such as these:
wundermemo — The Boo, The Boo — Courtesy Tab — The Art of Draft — Shape of Flowers — The Rabbit — The Sentient Murmur — The Crispy Chip — Telling Time — The Doily Mail — The Utterly — Simple Note — The Blank Page — The Second Thought — Hello
The crossroads of destiny occurred at pp.38-39 of my notebook spread below. I can assure you with 100% unbiased opinion that although this particular universe is not technically unparalleled, it is by far the most supreme trajectory of the whole multiverse in terms of congruency of name selected for this particular newsletter, by this version of dangerlam, to this version of you.
(-: Let’s feel good about that :-)