Howdy

Janu 31, 2022

Lake City, Seattle

Howdy,

It’s Joe! Thank you for catching up with the 2022 OS & Liminal Lab Autonomous Mechanics Radical Field Practice Cohort, which I’m very excited to join! Writing virtual correspondence has always been an important part of my art practice, so I decided to bring the joyful attitude, levity, and attention I typically reserve for a friendly email sent from the middle of the ocean (my emails were typically long-winded, intense bursts sent from the Engine Control Room while I was on the evening 8x12 watch as 2nd Assistant Engineer on a research vessel, prefaced by my exact latitude and longitude) to my documentation here — think of these notes as little messages in a bottle that a warm, lapping surf washed up at your feet in the sand. Since this is the first of a series of Field Notes that will document my work this year, I wanted to give a bit of information about myself and what I plan to explore in my work. As a poet and multimedia artist who primarily documents artwork on Instagram (@roflcoptermcgee, @joe_notepad) and TikTok (@joenasta), I am excited to use these Notes in a way that inspires new work and shares my latest projects with clarity.

This year I plan on engaging directly with the ways I translate my physical urges, emotions, body memories, and communication longings into meaning (which has been a concept I have been engaging with my whole life, but have only just now created these words to explain). Where does “language” originate in the body — as words in the mind, or as a recordable physical experience? What mental and corporeal processes are used in the translation of my personal languages to communicable language? What new ways of relating to the world will result from my experiments?

In case you don’t know me and are reading this, which is actually terrifying:

Joe Nasta (ze/zir) is a queer writer and mariner who splits zir time between Seattle, Guadalajara, and the Ocean. Joe is one half of the art and poetry collective Eat Yr Manhood with Cass Garison. Zir work has been published in The Rumpus, Entropy, PRISM International, Peach Mag, and others. Ze curated Stone Pacific Zine.

I make art. I play with poetic and visual form and love the way words look when I shape them across the page. I draw pictures in pastel, make multimedia paintings, and write words over my images as poetry comics. I write hybrid essays that border on confessional poetry and nonfiction. My poems are unabashedly honest, lyrical, and inventive. I am a mariner who has worked on the ocean. I am a New Yorker who lives in Seattle. I can’t sit still or stay in one place and I work with my hands. I am a survivor of abuse. I am a half-orphan, a twin, a disowned child. I am queer: grey asexual and agender. I’m not defined by any of these things. I’m defined by all of them, and by the ways they’ve impacted my physical body.

As a poet, I’m grateful for the communities that have built me as a person and a writer, especially Corporeal Writing in Portland and the open mic and slam scene in Seattle. Because of the ways these communities have brought me inspiration and strength, my goal is to build more community for others to make them feel as safe as I have been privileged to feel. I love the power of poetry and art to unite people and love how the simple act of reading words aloud can make us all feel a little less alone.

When I write an entry in this Note in a Bottle series, I hope to demonstrate the ways I personally am able to move from the urge to communicate into the fully formed act of speaking to you. I plan on sharing these messages every other Monday. I also aim to share how the movements, physical objects, visual art, video pieces, or digital performances that resulted from my desire to tell you about something were produced. While some of my experiments may fail or I may fall back onto the more comfortable tool of written language to elaborate on how the pieces I created were intended to express, the main goal of this series is to send meaning into the world in a non-traditional way and see if the meaning will be intact upon landing. Overall, I wholeheartedly want to tell you something with love and hone my ability to share the message with care in whatever form that takes.

Woof,

Joe Nasta

:P

P.S.

Here’s a poem from my first book, which can be read on Issuu for free!

The Chrysanthemums

for Rizzy

I languish in rituals of being

alone in public: I smile at the corner

of a busy restaurant, I nod silently

in the direction of a waitress, I stick=

my tongue out slightly at no one.

Today I thought about the word

floriography and secrets hidden

in petals right under a nose. I twist

the stems of my fingers in ways

only I know. One flight of steps

in Pioneer Square asks, “Why are you

afraid?” while another pleads, “Be

the reason why.”

originally published as a Field Notes Entry for Liminal Lab and The Operating System