Levain A La Mode, Likely CIA

Quiet Patronage #4: Levain a la mode, a week of creative writing, Ornamentalism piece done, the whole world ahead.

Quiet Patrons, welcome back to my permanent new format that is formally a newsletter. Another email from Alyssa Gaines.

Usually my weekly schedule is as follows:

1. longer-form essay on art history, politics, and pop culture

2. a couple related quick curations

3. a poem I’m working on with my notes on form.

Because the #1 of two weeks ago ended up taking me two weeks, I have been a little off-cycle. But I really do wish to return to my cycle, and to be realistic about what it looks like. So, this week I’m trying something sort of new.

This newsletter is the same, though late because the Pacers lost; however, this week I will not promise any long-form scholarship as I am really interested in celebrating my Ornamentalism piece with a couple quick guides and otherwise focusing my surplus time and efforts on my creative writing practice.

I am challenging myself to do some creative writing exercises and to publish two creative posts this week as opposed to one scholarly and one creative. I also will have some curated guides out this week around my lovely Ornamentalism piece and ofc my short weekly newsletter in this email now!

The usual structure of Quiet Patronage is as follows: a TLDR list poem rundown of recommendations from my week, miscellaneous musings, a poem, some notes on craft, and a visual art piece I want to share.

Then, I forecast the energy of the week to come and what to expect from me before reiterating my overflowing gratitude for all of you who have chosen to join me in this experiment in content and curation and community.

Bless!

Alyssa

Cosa Fai?

Much better week creatively. I tried very hard to be a better attendant to my life and did read, write, explore, listen, and feel. The only issue is my memory is bad and I jot things down in physical notebooks, book margins, my notes app, my Google Docs, and in open tabs across my search engines so let’s see what I remember about all the things I loved and learned from this week.

First, I published a short story on paid:

Then,

1. New job; The Pout-Pout Fish and all his adventures

2. The word aspersive which describes the slanderous or defamatory with Latin roots in the adjective asper, meaning rough, unrefined, harsh, uneven, or even sharp in the way of something that has been newly minted.

3. The Free Black Women’s Library in Brooklyn New York and the copy of The 1619 Project I received from them.

4. The period rooms of the Brooklyn Museum

5. House of Joy dim sum in the illustrious, delightful, and joyful Chinatown and honorable mention to ayat, the Palestinian restaurant I almost went to instead

6. Levain a la mode.

7. The Phoenician Scheme

8. Mary Gaitskill reading Nabokov on The New Yorker Fiction Podcast

9. “Full Moon,” by Brandy

10. Flea free books because I went to the market when they were closing and all the old books were going to get trashed

honorable mention: middle-class chain pizza! Yum! Yum yum yum.

Jazz by Toni Morrison:

When I look over strips of green grass lining the river, at church steeples and into the cream-and-copper halls of apartment buildings, I’m strong. Alone, yes, but top-notch and indestructible-like the City in 1926 when all the wars are over and there will never be another one. The people down there in the shadow are happy about that.

…

They are busy and thinking of ways to be busier because such a space of nothing pressing to do would knock them down. No fields of cowslips would rush into that opening, no mornings free of flies when the light is shy. No. Not at all. They fill their mind and hands with soap and repair and dicey confrontations because what is waiting for them, in a suddenly idle moment, is the seep of rage.

Also, me working through this sonnet which I already hate and will be working through some more!

On Politics and Expatriation

This week I want to talk about traveling and art and politics and coming and going. I want to make myself write and document all the things I do as a writer, a vocation which seems perhaps to onlookers as if I am doing little to nothing at all (until of course I reach the fateful short-lived peak of proving momentarily through a finished product that I really was working all along).

It is a peculiar thing, that when you’re working you can look like you’re not. I’m working lugging books around the office with my AirPods in or scribbling in my notebook on the train or laughing at movies or trying to find the right words in conversation or while I’m getting distracted or feeling pure bliss at dim sum.

I’m working! To prove it, I want to write stories and poems and share reading lists and curated guides to buttress my recent post (23 minute read btw… not a serious woman)…

I want to keep lists of things I am reading and things that make me happy and characters and their names. So that is what I will be doing! No further notes. I want to slow things down, really use this space like a studio for my creative practice though I get shy about sharing real-time updates or really good pieces. Perhaps that’s what paid is for. Maybe.

It has been absurdly hot in New York, though not humid, and I am feeling soft and vulnerable everywhere I go. Sweating, hair frizzing, clothes sticking, heels chafing in my loafers.

Everyone is always catching me at the worst of moments and it’s a really intimate thing. I am loving Levain a la mode.

Here is a bonus list poem on the subject:

“Things that are probably CIA”

1. Levain a la mode

2. Viral Dubai chocolate

3. Sexy Red (Sexxy Red? Sexyy Red? Sexy Redd?)

4. Being good at Substack

5. The BET Awards being really good this year

6. This:

I am loving dim sum and spending time with loved ones and reading everything and listening to everything and writing and experiencing my life, and so I will not promise any scholarship in fact I will tell you now: NO SCHOLARSHIP, but I will promise activity #watchthisspace and creative activity which is probably far more interesting than my self-gratifying 25 minute reads.

I am probably not Substacking properly. NBD. Soon I will renegotiate my posting schedule. Soon. Ssooooon.

Chloe Wise, FunAndHandsome35, 2015.

Talk ssoooooon!!!

Lyssie