we're so totally back
what i've been up to + DATEBOOK June 30–July 6
Welcome back to Datebook, the weekly guide to literary events in New York, London, and LA. All events listed in local time.
If you have an event you’d like me to include in DATEBOOK, email me.
It’s as though my body knew (well, come now, there must be some better word than ‘knowing’ to describe the body’s brainless premonitions, but what it is, I can’t think) that it must hold itself together right up to the very last minute. Through five flights in fifteen days, it kept itself running smoothly, held its complaints back to lodge at the appropriate time.
It was only on awaking Friday morning, nearly four hours later than I had been so far in June, in Mikey’s loaned loft (a place bedecked in primary colors and shrieking of joy, by the way; a place in which one can hardly fathom the possibility of being sick) that the scratch in my throat first set in. By yesterday, waking up in my recently remodeled childhood bedroom — the place that had functioned as my first laboratory, my first studio — I was well and truly under the weather.
Here, in the Mountain West, the weather is typical for June. It’s hot and dry during the day, dropping by dusk into that range that makes for exquisite, magical summer nights. And it’s on fire, of course. The air quality threatens to worsen this week. A barb of worry catches in the back of my neck that the fires will foil the plans I have to go backpacking next week, a farewell (for now) before I dive back in fully to my life in New York. I’ve mostly been sprawling in the garden beneath the red bud tree that my parents planted when I was born, reading my new copy of Girl’s Girl. I never read hardcovers with their dust jackets on and the pea green of the coverboard has become marked by fingers lately employed in the eating of a BLT.
The weather in Paris last weekend was (and this week, I see, remains) extraordinary. I Euromaxxed hard for the weekend that kicked off the canicule that has washed over my feeds in the following week in splashes of gorgeous tanned bodies flinging themselves into the Canal Saint Martin and swapping tips and tricks with each other on how to stay cool in their chambres-de-bonnes. It was those same gorgeous bodies that I shared a tight little terrasse with, danced alongside in the streets, our skin sheened with sweat, the air filled with the competing sets of the tens of thousands of DJs and musicians who filled the streets of Paris last Sunday for Fête de la Musique. It was a weekend that proved something I’ve always felt: that heat brings people to their surfaces; makes them more animal and still more human.
Summer turns everyone beautiful.
It had been ten years since I’d been in Paris. I stayed in my friend’s spare flat (which actually isn’t at all what you might think it is, and how lucky am I to have friends in all these different cities with homes I can stay in) just down the block from Ofr., the iconic Parisian magazine and bookshop that celebrated its thirtieth anniversary this spring. I bought a hat.
I couldn’t buy another book because of the Euro edition of Transcription (Ben Lerner) I’d been given in Copenhagen, the copy of Closer (Dennis Cooper) I’d bought from Prinz Eisenherz and Angles Morts, a new art book by Neda Aydin I’d retrieved from a gallery opening in Berlin, A Dill Pickle (Katherine Mansfield) from Words’ Worth in Munich.
I love a bookstore in another city. I love to see which books get pride of place on the featured tables. Abroad, I love to see all the different covers of editions I can’t get here in the States. And I love to celebrate an independent bookstore’s longevity. The audacity it takes to maintain a business with the slimmest of margins over decades. How can I not applaud?
And I’ll admit, there’s a sacred feeling to lifting those newly acquired books from my suitcase in the unpacking and sliding them into their proper slot on my bookshelves, running my finger along the spines and looking at how the shelf’s new arrangement harmonizes, wondering what the books that have been there think of their new neighbors. In the moderate cool of my room, my sick brain, unable to parse more complex thoughts, is soothed by the looking.
Well now, after the requisite weekend of layabout recovery, we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming for the rest of the summer. DATEBOOK is back today, and I have a mind brimming with things to write to you about and people to talk to. Who knows, at the end of the summer, I may even throw a party.
I love you, I kiss you,
Scremes xx
Tuesday, June 30 (TONIGHT!)
7 pm // LDN: Deleted Scenes presents: Launch of Tolka Issue 11, feat. Darran Anderson, Georgie Evans, J.S. Loveard, and Lola Olufemi. Hosted by Paul Johnathan. | Beasy Bar (58 Greek St). Free.
6:30 pm // NYC: Launch of Scrap Book by Nick Martino, with readings by Gauri Awasthi and Dr. Darius Phelps. | P&T Knitwear. Tickets are $10 or purchase of book.
7 pm // NYC: Mutt Readings presents: the launch of Duane Reade by India Rose Timpani. | Lovely Day Basement (196 Elizabeth St). Free. Books for sale. Cash bar.
7 pm // NYC: Launch of Deep House by Jeremy Atherton Lin, in conversation with Henry Hicks IV. | The Strand Rare Book Room (828 Bway). Tickets from $13 ($25 with copy of the book).
Wednesday, July 1
7 pm // BKLN: Launch of Learning by Courtney Bush, feat. additional readings by Juliet Gelfman-Randazzo, Anna Gurton-Wachter, Laura Henriksen, and Payton NYC. | Unnameable Books (615 Vanderbilt). Free. Books for sale.
Thursday, July 2
6 pm // BKLN: Comics at Trains, feat. Cameron Arthur, Violet Cheverez, Tajo McBurnie, Natalie Raskin, Holden Szczyka, and Matthew Thurber. | DM itstrains on IG for address. Free. Comics for sale.
7 pm // QNS: Poetry is Famous, feat. Jac Bernhard, Lucia Kan-Sperling, Chris Jesu Lee, Samuel Rutter, and Chris Rypkema. Hosted by Ben Fama and Naomi Falk. | Topos Too. Free.
Sunday, July 5
7 pm // BKLN: Weird Fucks, feat. Darcey Steinke, Kelly Karivalis, Riley Mac, Nik Slackman, Ava Hennen, and Sammy Loren. Hosted by Danielle Chelosky and Nick Dove. | Seventh Heaven (4 Irving). Free.
