Suze is Hunting Muses, 3

Hi. My name is Suze Kay, and I’m a proud moderator of Voices in Minor, a community of Vocal authors who desire to uplift, inspire, and support one another. Every Wednesday, PViM will publish a weekly round-up of whatever lures my muses closer to my writing nook.

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Ok, readers. It took less time than I thought (only three weeks?), but it's happened: I sat down to write this installment of my series and found myself dry. This is not to say my muse was dry -- she was fed, fat, and happy. She took very little. My poem "Time and Space" was inspired by a sunset. All it took to write the short story "Cleaning Up" was the word door (thanks again, Randy Baker!).

I also spent the week fine-tuning a new recipe: a moist, nut-free carrot cake with lemon-cream cheese frosting, crystallized ginger, chopped dried dates, and candied carrot garnish. Most of my focus went there, rather than courting my muse. Though I read, little spoke to me. Though I listened to music, it was absently. When I look back on the week, carrot cake is all I see.

Here's a picture, so you can see too.

So this week, rather than attempting to crank out something false, we're going to wander down a different path. I will talk about three monuments in my mind palace -- media that changed me so deeply upon first exposure that I cannot help but perennially return. And then, because I'm shameless, we'll close out with an update on an (unfortunately) ongoing obsession.

Music

Have you ever heard of the band Made In Heights? I'll forgive you if you haven't. Their music is nearly impossible to find these days -- it's been removed from Spotify, out of production and unavailable for purchase. The band consisted of vocalist Kelsey Bulkin, whose ethereal vocals and evocative lyrics gave the music soul, and her one-time close friend, producer Sabzi, whose creative soundscapes and pulsing beats made the music compulsively replayable.

I started listening in college, shortly after some major life shifts rocked me. I started with Slow Burn, and became quickly obsessed with the song Murakami. But it was Drexler, embedded link above, which I replayed on a cycle. The song spoke to me deeply -- it was peaceful, but frothing with power. It made me think about what it meant to be a woman, swathed in silk but terrified to sweat. It made me think about what it meant to be a writer, descending into the depths of self and love and truth to find pearls of poetry that span the distance.

I'm lucky that I purchased their discography when I discovered it. As a fervent Spotify convert, it's now the only reason I open my Apple Music app. An argument over the division of streaming proceeds seems to have split the friends, shuttered the band, and triggered a kind of perverted Solomonian Judgement -- they couldn't split the baby, so they removed it from the world, and now everyone loses.

It's a shame, but it's also lore that piques my interest even more. Why is it that creative partnerships are so fraught? Does money ruin, better, or change art? I continue to listen to Kelsey Bulkin and Sabzi separately, but it doesn't captivate me in the same way. There was something magic about their partnership, and I wonder if its explosive creative synergy was unsustainable.

Book

Feel free to join in on shaming me: I judged a book by its cover. The only victim is me, for I deprived myself of the pure magic that Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels contain for a handful of years. People kept telling me to read "My Brilliant Friend," and I kept saying "MMMMM, no thanks, froofy cover, pass." I think I only ended up buying a used copy to impress a boy who didn't care if I lived or died (of course, what else could be a higher motivator?).

Reading this book made me a stronger woman. It made me a better friend. It made me a more passionate person. The series follows Lila and Elena from childhood on, as they scrap in their impoverished Neapolitan neighborhood, become wives and mothers, fail and accomplish various goals, and ebb and flow with one another. They are best friends. They are enemies. They are whole, breathing creatures who hurt and love and push and pull.

I've had close, soul-consuming friendships that consumed me. I've felt the humbling disappointment of never being enough -- for a job, a man, a family. I've struggled with jealousy and discovered empathy. Ferrante takes the maelstrom of womanhood and clarifies it. She speaks truth into feelings I could hardly understand while they ruled me. And also, she doesn't exist.

Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym. Akin to Robert Galbraiths's unmasking as J.K. Rowling, a number of dedicated individuals ran a linguistic analysis to find the author's identity. The result shocked the literary world and identified Ferrante as Domenico Starnone. A man. Why was this shocking? Well, "My Brilliant Friend" is, at its core, about gendered existence in a dynamic sociopolitical landscape. Lila and Elena are limited by their gender as much as they revel in it. They fear womanhood as much as they crave it. It's a profoundly feminist creation, and though I think everyone can enjoy the series, I felt that there was something so true about the complex, feminine experience that it details.

Now, another investigator has determined that Ferrante is actually translator Anita Raja, Starnone's wife. That comforted many readers who felt betrayed. For me, the reversal reminded me of something deeper: it doesn't matter whose pen wrote it. If I can still read the love poems of Pablo Neruda, rapist, and admire the sexy portraits of Pablo Picasso, chauvinist pig, then I can appreciate literature that feels true without needing to trust the author.

Poem

You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together

to make a creature that will do what I say

or love me back.

I’m not really sure why I do it, but in this version you are not

feeding yourself to a bad man

against a black sky prickled with small lights.

I read Richard Siken's "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out" for the first time in the summer after my Sophomore year of college. I was in a basement in Germany. I'd been away from the States for two months. I was struggling to mentally recover from an assault. It was 2AM, and I read it, and I cried until the sun rose. It cracked me open. It still does.

It's about creation and destruction. It's about love and pain. It's cinematic and sweeping, intimate and filled with miniscule detail. What is there to say but that? Read it. Let it hurt you and heal you.

Update

Ok, I thought I was totally done with my little game of Where in the World is Kate Middleton? from Installment Two of this series, but it was not done with me. Mostly, because the 'Proof of Life' photo issued by Kensington Palace whipped the dying embers of controversy back into a raging wildfire.

In short: the official Kensington Palace instagram account released this photo of Princess Kate and her children, which they claimed was taken last week by Prince William. Within the day, three reputable news photo sources issued a kill notice for the photograph -- meaning they retracted it, citing fears of its validity based on signs of manipulation. Kensington Palace then released a shockingly brief tweet signed "C," presumably for Catherine, apologizing that her lack of photoshop skills had caused such a ruckus.

If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, there are some excellent articles detailing the various photoshop errors, videos exploring believable theories of what happened to the photo, and hilarious memes aplenty.

But if you'll just bear with me a second longer, the resurgence of interest has me thinking more deeply about why we collectively care. I'm not a particularly royals-obsessed person, but I've realized I still have bought into the myth-building of the Royal Family. The concept of a "Princess" has always been a fantastical one, filled with dragons and fairy godmothers and handsome Princes.

Even as I outgrew fairytales, I continued to be surrounded by outlandish stories of modern royals. Princess Charlene of Monaco has struggled through her marriage in the public eye. I goggled with the rest of my high school dorm at the pomp and circumstance of Prince William's wedding, with mystical traditions and utter luxury. (We even woke up ridiculously early for it.) Princess Diana was frozen at her most beautiful and tragic and beloved, resurrected every five years or so for another round of public grief. And who could ignore Megan Markle's larger-than-life (and hotly debated) escape from "The Firm"?

These tabloid stories are perhaps grittier and sadder, but they're still nearly incomprehensible to me, in my daily life. They're still a narrative that surrounds me in every corner of the web, in every grocery store checkout corner. I've been primed to see the narrative, to believe the fantastical, to read the next chapter. I can hardly blame myself for refreshing the page.

(I will, however, try my best not to beat you over the head with it anymore.)

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Thank you as always, reader, for tuning in for this week's mad ramblings. Hopefully next week I'll have something more current for you to feast on. I've got some interesting concepts bubbling in my mind... instruments of fortune telling, rituals and routines, the link between physical activity and mental balance, and more (!) is churning. I'll need something in those fields to sink my teeth into. Do you have any recommendations? Drop them below, and I'll see you next week <3