Esoteric Eden, Issue 5
Where I attempt (not) to make sense of the year ahead.
Dear Reader,
When I discovered this confusing and violent New Year’s card in the Met Museum Open Access collection, I was compelled to use it as a jumping off point for my end of the year newsletter. It’s from a collection of 1890s New Year’s cards released by the Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company.
Why is this bored woman making soup out of children that represent the previous years? Is this some sort of metaphor or pun about taking “stock” of the past to create nourishment for the future? Based on other cards in this series, which are often just as confusing and have a theme of violence against children, I’m not sure if it’s worth analyzing at all. And we’d be better off spending that time enjoying the bizarre and dark imagery. In another, there seems to be a spider-sun eating a child while the bee-boy of the new year narrowly escapes—it’s almost sublime. Sometimes things don’t have to make sense.
Through my browsing of the Met Open Access collection, I learned pretty quickly that tobacco companies were once a major producer of cultural artifacts in the United States. They produced promotional postcards, trading cards, playing cards, medallions, calendars, and other collectibles. Searching The Met collection for Kinney Brothers will yield over five thousand articles alone, and a general search for tobacco/cigarette company artifacts will give you tens of thousands.
While this collection is from a dubious source, and much of it of dubious cultural value, there are treasures here. And because of the public domain, they are now treasures that belong to all of us. I love to browse collections like this and dream of what collages, zines, video games, animations, or other projects someone could create out of them. Creating something new and beautiful out of leftovers of the past. Like making… soup? Out of… children? No, not quite.
And in this time of dreaming and reflecting, I’m taking stock of what to leave behind and what to focus on in 2024. The past two years have been a strange and somewhat floundering time for my creative practice, and as the year closes I am reorienting myself to focus on my writing. I’m encouraged by the fact that two collaborations I’ve been working on for years are coming to a close.
The first is the TRANSMUTED audio book, narrated by Arden Hughes. I’m really proud of how this all-trans production turned out. Arden’s performance is dynamic and brings out the emotional core of the story so well. Her love of the book electrifies her reading, and I can’t imagine another narrator for telling Isa’s story. Sadia Bies created an incredible new cover illustration that you can see below, and Alex Kingsley made the final audio sparkle with their editing skills.
The audio book is set to release on all platforms on January 12th! But since you are a subscriber I’ll let you in on a little secret: because Amazon does whatever it wants, they’ve released it a month early and you can get it on the Amazon product page or Audible now.
The second collaboration is a horror novella that I’m writing with my friend Mariah Darling who’s a writer, activist, actress, and multi-talented creator. I can’t say much about this yet, but we’ve finished a major milestone in the project and the end is close approaching. We’re very excited with how this story is turning out, and can’t wait to share it with the world.
So, I’m feeling optimistic and energized about my writing in 2024, with many more projects I’m excited to work on. And I’ll need that. Due to serious health issues with a close family member, not to mention my own struggles with health, I know it will be a particularly difficult year.
But I’m not one to pass on free New Years optimism, so I’ll take it and put it where it make sense. In place I have some small amount of control over. It’s tempting at this time to paint the previous year with a broad narrative brush and dream of a perfect year ahead. But these stories rarely help us, and they rarely hold up.
Take treasures when you find them, where ever you find them. Make narratives when it serves you. Release narratives when they don’t. Be okay with not making sense of life at all. Sometimes it’s too vast and complicated for our little brains and little words to make do with. Enjoy making New Year’s soup and watching the bee-boy escape the child-eating spider-sun.
Sincerely,
Eve
P.S. I don’t think I’ve had a chance to mention this here, but there is another bit of cool TRANSMUTED news: the book is getting a Spanish translation through Dimensiones Occultas, date TBA. For real!!
