Cruel Compendium #68 ⌛
Quitting Spotify, selling out, and poetry for all
Before we begin:
✨ My newest for Tribeza: 8 events to honor and celebrate Black History Month in Austin.
✨ Last week I shared the three most valuable things in my life right now. Two are completely F-R-E-E, and one costs just $20/month.
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This past month I spent my Sundays in digital collective with the cohort of Giselle Buchanan’s Written Into Being workshop. (The next group begins March 3.) I felt called to be a part of this “mixed media creative writing journey” and finally went for it, and I was surprised and then delighted to find that we were mainly writing and sharing poetry.
I’ve never read or written much poetry, though I’ve explored it a bit more over the past couple of years — which is probably why I found myself free to give into “beginner’s brain.” This kind of writing isn’t something I’m an expert in. I don’t have to pretend I’m good at it, and I have no expectations or pressure that I will write something worthwhile. So I allowed my pen to hit the page and I reveled in what I found there. And my cup was filled by others sharing their heartbreaking, florid, stunning poems with a group of strangers, so many vulnerable voices in chorus from around the globe.
To celebrate this creative self-investment and artistic exploration, I’ll share one of the poems I wrote with you. Just as we are all artists, we are all poets — if we wish to be.
No time
What if I could not grasp the concept of time
Was never introduced to it in the first place
Nowhere to be
Nothing to do
A life fully my own
Dedicated to my whims and fancies
Upon waking
My body makes the decisions
And my mind simply follows
What shall I see today?
Do I need my sister’s laughter?
Mother’s warmth?
A man’s touch?
A friend’s embrace?
Or do I need
Silence
A meeting with the trees
A conference with the swans
Who never speak
Perhaps my feet need to run
Hips need to sway
Lungs expand in crisp mountain air
I would enjoy what my eyes could see
Until I’d had
Enough
(For now)
A life led by intuition
Rather then clocks
With no more time
How might I spend it?
What I’m Reading
Everyone’s a sellout now by Rebecca Jennings
On the soul-killing, cringe-inducing necessity of social media and self-promotion to succeed as an artist.
has a great companion piece to this that helped me accept how I must move past my fear of being “annoying” to promote and support my own art. See also: the death of the artist and the birth of the creative entrepreneur.The possibilities of the shortest month by
Here’s Kleon’s printout for a 28-day challenge to “practice and suck less.” Embrace February!
So I finally quit Spotify by
This month I cancelled my Spotify premium membership and deleted it off my phone. My main reason was this: Spotify has been paying artists £0.003 per stream. A third of 1p per play. Which means I’d have to have a song streamed 366,000 times in order to make minimum wage. It ain’t a good start.
And in 2024, Spotify will stop paying out songs which get less than 1000 streams in a year. Which means for me, as an artist in the early stages of my career, I am going to get paid nothing. I could get over 1000 streams on all my songs in total, but still get paid nothing. I could get 999 streams on a song one year and 999 streams on it the next year… and still get paid nothing.
Lunar New Year traditions evolve in the Asian diaspora by Suzanne Nuyen
I’m looking forward to celebrating Tết and the Year of the Dragon (my birth year) with my friends this weekend!
5 little ways to be a better friend when you’re so, so tired by Jenna Ryu
Including one of my favorite friendship tips: always send the text to let them know you’re thinking of them.
3rd book of 2024: Erasure by Percival Everett
I rushed to read this after seeing American Fiction. I swept through it in three days. It's easy to read, funny, and offers a lot of insight into several characters even though a solid quarter of the book is dedicated to a novel within a novel. It's highly literary as well, with lots of imaginary side conversations between artists, authors, and historical figures—so lit nerds might enjoy that playfulness. As great satire does, the book shines a light on the ridiculousness and very real prejudices of our everyday reality. Plus, it touches on some different themes the movie didn't hit. I definitely want to read more of Everett's work now.
I’m listening to:
DEI advocate Marie Beecham’s podcast, Know Better Do Better. Her episodes tackle ways you can instill antiracist language and behavior in your everyday life, and her Instagram videos break it down for you in 60 seconds. This episode talks about shifting commonly used language around slavery: use the term enslaved people rather than slaves, and enslavers rather than owners.
News to Know
Today in Tabs covers the end of The Messenger, perhaps the most vile treatment of media staffers I’ve ever seen in the 15+ years I’ve been watching layoffs and closures go down. More on this at the New York Post.
In Trump’s bitter, yearslong brawl with Roberta Kaplan (E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer), he keeps losing
France approves bill to protect abortion in the Constitution
War in Gaza is making childbirth a nightmare. See also: “Delivered into hell.”
Right-wing Israeli ministers join thousands at event calling for the resettlement of Gaza
Actions for Palestine:
Purchase eSims so Palestinians can communicate with each other and the outside world. This is a way to directly benefit people in Gaza.
Use ceasefire-now.com as an easy tool to email your Congressional reps.
Download the 5 Calls app to easily dial your representatives and demand a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Sixty-six members of Congress have now called for a ceasefire — these calls are working.
Use Jewish Voice for Peace’s (JVP) action items to email and call President Biden and your Congressional reps.
Join JVP’s daily Power Half-Hour for Gaza (2pm CT Mon-Fri) to hear updates on the movement and take action.
Questionable Self-Care Advice
Support System
Vision Board
Obsessions
📴 If anyone trying Flip Phone February?
❓ My friend Tawny is starting an advice column called Asking for a Friend! Submit your question and she just might answer it on her YouTube channel, @unlearnthebs!
📚 Sign up for 28 Days of Black History from Anti-Racism Daily.
🌖 Check out Moonlight, a new Tarot app where you can practice Tarot virtually with friends or book a Tarot session.
📝 Fireflies AI notetaker
🧑🧒 Photographer Conor Nickerson photoshopped himself into photos of his childhood self. Comforting.
🐱🚀 Hi-YAH!
📓 Try Skillshare free for 30 days + 40% off (this is my referral code)
📖 What you clicked on most in the last Compendium: Are you in the top 1% of readers?
Dusty moment
If I fits…I sits.
Mood
Your Dusty girl is beautiful. :).
And she reminds me so much of our lady cat Brit (who we lost last March).
You can't just drop deathoverdinner like that, like it's some random niche-y link that doesn't matter. This is an awesome way to be mature about real things. I love that for us! Thanks for sharing a no-context link that got my attention because if there's food I'm interested.