night mode

"To read Caelan Ernest's iconic debut 𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦, is to enter the pool at Le Bain’s ON TOP with Arca & Sophie playing b2b on the decks in shadows of the fog machine. On the screen, on the dancefloor, Ernest imagines the delightful consequences of a trans terror in public when 'all the forms our bodies might be capable of taking' manifest into all possible selves. Each line cuts through the perspective-pleasure axis between screen and horizon, gesture and code. Ernest ascribes body parts to phones and technology, transforms those parts—machine, flesh—entirely for queer pleasure. The process of relation may be transformative, but the poetic relative with selves past, present, & future is utterly trans/formative. 𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦 is Ernest's hyperpop, hyperpoetic, trans cyborg manifesto on love & of course–lust." — Andrea Abi-Karam

The Pasolini Book

May 1, 2010                                                     

it was just after all soul’s day, november 2nd, 1975. i was 6. the man i would become was murdered outside of rome, images of his crushed body broadcast worldwide, and no one in my house noticed or could have cared. my family lived in a suburb separated from others by wide belts of undeveloped land. it was organized by section and each section was designated a letter that every street name began with; we lived in the g-section on glen flora drive. the alphabetical logic was meant to give the families living there a sense of natural order and local cohesion. it felt like a gated community, but there was no need for a gate. trespassers were always immediately detected and observed. the gate existed in my subconscious and though i never got close enough, i knew an electric current ran through it. in 1982, my mother chaperoned our class boat ride on lake michigan, and, seeing me among my peers, registered to what extent my clothes distinguished me from them. i went to a catholic grade school where we all had to wear navy slacks and yellow, white or green polo shirts, so the problem was really one of style; my black suede shoes and the tattered holes in my shirts where i removed the designer’s insignias with scissors. she drew me aside at the prow of the boat to ask me, “why won’t you wear chinos and loafers like the other girls?” i took my eyes off of her, furiously, and focused past the breakwater, clenched my teeth and said, “i’m not like other girls.” i want very much to remember what happened next. did i have a hard time sleeping that night? i didn’t know the implications of the 5 words i pronounced to my mother – a message veiled to myself but plain to her. as i found out much later, she cried herself to sleep that night, her fear of what i was had been confirmed. i noted that she intensified her surveillance of me, and her guardianship, as i was both a threat and in need of protection.

i became aware of my own mortality when the man i would become, pier paolo pasolini, was found murdered on the beach in the port town of ostia.

– Stacy Szymaszek