United States
Based in NYC, I was the Editorial Director of the popular Gen Z sex-ed blog Killer and a Sweet Thang for two years. My freelance work has been published in several indie mags, and in 2020, I wrote a gonzo column about the doomed relationship between media, art and commerce for UK rags BRICKS Magazine and Polyester.
My essays have also been commissioned by fashion labels like Alexander McQueen.
"I don't think I'm cut out to be an influencer," the influencer said, mask off on a park bench in pre-Phase II Lower East Side. To be fair, it wasn't an occupation she'd chosen. Precariously-it's always precariously-bestowed Tumblr fame, this It-Girl parlayed"it"into Instagram popularity back when the app was still relatively harmless.
In Times Square, people enjoy what our parents used to but we would never call an Indian Summer. A millennial pink billboard is telling everyone to vote. Then, in small letters underneath, paid for by Brazzers. "It's not art that's depressing me," I promise a date who has the kind of optimism only a subsidized rent can buy, "it's capitalism."
Everyone was drinking and waiting for someone to look at them. The kids who had real jobs did their best to dress like artists, and the artists were bitching - mostly about the bullshit required to toe the line at once-cool brands for 40K a year.
In Soho, an editor takes a meeting with a 19-year-old. The teen pays for his coffee and leads him to a table before whipping out a notebook - not composition, something slicker from BLICK - to pitch potential collabs with the myriad of companies she represents.
It is said that decadence led to the fall of the Roman Empire, that imperialist powers are at their most extreme before their decline. I'll leave comparsions to historians, but suffice it to say that gay men in New York are getting syphilis again.
"All the kids on the Disney channel must've been railing uppers between takes," is a crass party line I like to throw out when the conversation lulls. "Imagine having to deliver those corny lines at that self-conscious age? Anyone would need a chemical helper." No one disagrees.
"I can't wait to work, to have a job, to have responsibility," a ten year-old in adult-face tells the audience. "I'm most fulfilled when I'm contributing." She blinks her fake lashes. Her father, who created the super conference she's speaking at, is watching offstage. She beckons the arena to repea
In the mountains, you can watch storm clouds from miles away, glowing like a threat for hours before any rain makes landfall. It's easy to see metaphors in this desert, the big skies and vast quiet presumably ripe with inspiration for artist types.
Fatalism is very in. A series of systematic setbacks which, today at least, require that I take a nap after answering two emails. I guess we have become so familiar with victim rhetoric that we're comfortable repurposing it to suit our whims. It's tempting to think everything is out of our control.