HEY ! THANKS FOR PICKING UP THIS ISSUE OF FRUITING BODIES ! FB REMAINS A TWICE YEARLY EXERCISE IN COLLECTING / COLLAGING SKETCHBOOK MATERIAL, IT'S JUST THAT THIS TIME IT ALL HAPPENED TO FLOW TOGETHER RELATIVELY NEATLY.
NOW ! WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, THIS ISSUE'S TOP 10 ! IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER ! 1. THE HEARING TRUMPET BY LEONORA CARRINGTON : Haven't you ever wanted to just hang out inside of a Leonora Carrington painting ? Maybe just check out the vibe ? This is as close as you'll get and I mean that in the best way ! One of my new favorite works of fiction ! UPDATE NOVEMBER 2021 : This was recently reissued by NYRB and has the first pull quote from Bjork I've ever seen : "The Hearing Trumpet is so inspiring! Free-flowing, spiky imagination. I love its freedom, its humour and how it invents its own laws." We at Fruiting Bodies also highly endorse this quote from Luis Bunuel : "Reading The Hearing Trumpet liberates us from the miserable reality of our days." 2. VEGAN KITCHEN ESSENTIALS by Nick and Chelsea ! Essential reading for all from my good buds ! Click HERE to read !!! 3. MISO GARLIC : Just stuff some cloves in the miso, let it rip all by itself, enjoy in two weeks time ! 4. AN EXPANSION ON NOISE DOODLING : Turn it into a random battle of the bands ! Set up the instruments, call folks up using a lottery system and let them figure it all out via fun and spontaneity ! EDITORS NOTE NOVEMBER 2021 : This was my 26th birthday party :) 5. While biking home along the river, a huge group of men in fatigues watched me pass and yelled "BIKE!" over and over again at different times, like popcorn popping or a bunch of really leaky faucets. It was very surprising and sort of amazing but I am not really recommending doing that, I just wanted to remind you that the world is a place of constant surprise and amazement. My latest way of describing it is "Everyday Is A Wilderness." EDITORS NOTE NOVEMBER 2021 : YES, somehow this actually really happened and I feel mystified about it to this day! Also, Nick Norman and Lauren Poor made official "Everyday Is A Wilderness" shirts shortly after this, though they sort of got lost to time ! 6. The Deep Freeze Mice ! Diners Split w/ Walter Etc. ! Great early spring pop tunes. 7. Revisiting "WHEEL IN THE ROSES" BY REMA REMA alot lately. I really love when bands have a song where they sing their band name, and I love it even more when they follow up with a good solid "Ha Ha Ha!" 8. MAT BRINKMAN REISSUES on Hollow Press (via Floating World) : WOW ! Some of the best weirdo comics, long hidden, back in print !!! Such good news. They are fancy "museum" editions, so sort of pricy, but worth every penny ! 9. THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES : Dreamy, mind boggling movie from 1969 !! Maybe not a movie, maybe more like a perfect surrealist poem. If you get the criterion release you can watch a little featurette that explains what everything means, which is never necessary but does enhance. For those who are concerned : totally not vegan :( 10. Rewatching HACKERS was so inspiring. I think you should watch it and think : How Can I Incorporate The Lessons I've Learned Into My Everyday Life ? SECRETS LOUNGE This was my first comic EVER ! It was, in many ways, a life changer. It was vastly different from everything I'd done before but I was also living a vastly different life than I had before, so that makes sense ! After many years of living in fear I was finally telling people I was trans and the only thing that kept me going through that was having this comic to obsessively draw. It felt SO incredible to be able to put MY name on the cover, especially since I'd been "forgetting" to put my deadname on zines and tapes for years. LOL, how convenient ! Here's a drawing in the process of being munched into oblivion through photocopier tricks : I had no clue what I was going to make but this just started pouring out of me. It was all seemingly very random. I have a sweet memory of being at 1026 while Leif and Isaac Lin were installing a show and excitedly telling Leif "I figured out how my comic is going to end !! Some weirdo's gonna offer her a cookie !!!" Years later I was reading the 90's queer comic "Hothead Paisan" and was blown away by the character Daphne, who is *probably* a trans girl and laughs all the time at everything ! Not only did I understand this so deeply, but it totally explained to me why I drew a comic of someone running around and laughing while weird / scary stuff constantly happened to her. WOAH ! I don't really endorse this comic, BTW. It's trying really hard to be on top of stuff but is in many ways totally embarassing and not OK. And the author Diane Dimassa has gone on record saying classic TERF stuff and never apologized for it ! Would totally recommend reading Dykes to Watch Out For instead of this, but if you feel like slogging through some very cringey comics for the few brief cool moments of Hothead, try it out ! I was a member of a studio in Philly called Space 1026 at the time, and drew a lot of this comic in the historical 1026 Arch St. location. An incredible building filled with trash and treasure and vaults and ladders and most importantly, a very special creative energy that lept into me as I started working there. I spent ALOT of time in this gigantic building totally alone, drawing. It was a dreamy time. Here's what my desk looked like in "the front room" : Will Laren had two risographs that we moved into the new "office" at the studio and I started learning how to print by making the print version of this comic. It was soo0o0o0o0o FUN ! Here's a look at that printing setup : When it was all done printing, Nora and I made this video to "promote" it :) Tyrike Brown took one look at the drawings for this and said "oh yeah, like why is this world happening to me right ?" I think about this phrase all the time and it made SO MUCH sense for this zine ! Here are some of my fave poems from Tyrike around that time:
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