June Update! (Patreon)

HELLO, ALL! SUCH VERY EXCITING NEWS I HAVE TO SHARE WITH YOU TODAY!

You've all been so, so patient with me as I chip away at, slog through, crumple up, re-write, re-write again, cry a bit, stop crying, get excited again, crumple everything up again, and finally settle on something that feels RIGHT for the first edition of "WRITING THE CIRCUS".

WHADDAYA THINK?!
(not that I can't focus my iPhone, the COVER, people! :-P )

Friends, this past month has been a slog.

While I've kept this relatively out of the 'public eye' in my various online spaces (IG, FB), I underwent top surgery on April 28th in Toronto. I am now a joyfully boobless wonder. It's amazing. Recovery from surgery, however, is less than amazing.

I wrote a lot about my experiences leading up to that day, and in the days immediately following. I'm still deciding what to do with that writing – but if that kind of personal account that isn't circus related is of interest to you, please let me know and I'll find a way to help it make its way out into the world.

In the midst of that, I also spent a lot of time dealing with the emotional fallout of receiving my very first (hooray(?)) death threat online, and a transphobic one at that. It deeply disturbed me, even though for the first few days afterwards I pretended it didn't. I had to find a way to process what had happened in a productive way. Find a way to take all the energy from that hate and alchemize it into something good.

I did a Virtual Gender Café on Instagram where I spoke as rapidly and clearly as I could for an hour about a laundry list of questions that friends who were too shy to ask about Gender Stuff submitted anonymously. It's up forever and ever on my IGTV (easy to find on my IG profile) if you didn't catch it and that sounds interesting to you. I also felt completely burnt out after, and decided to take a social media break.

Then George Floyd hit the news cycle.

I spent a lot of time using my superpowers of writing and communication to help fence-sitters get on the right side of history, and/or figuratively box the ears of bigots in comment threads. I've watched parts of my circus community utterly fail to understand their place and privilege in relation to systemic racism, and then double down on inaction (more on that in a later post) and begun to formulate writing plans on this front, too.

And I kept writing 'Writing the Circus'.
This (perhaps unnecessary) personal catch-up is something I wanted to lay on the table today so that I can tell you folks that I appreciate so much the flexibility of timelines and updates that you all make possible by supporting me on this platform. Creativity is a nebulous and unruly beast; even when life is going perfectly, it rarely wants to cooperate.

Thank you all for hanging tight and trusting that good things were coming.

BACK TO THE GOODS, THOUGH:
For my new patrons (HI! Thanks for joining us!), 'Writing the Circus' is one of the 2 major goals of this Patreon. I wanted to start an essay-based zine that dealt with the intersections between circus and all the other topics I like to nerd out about (identity, disability studies, normalcy, memory, trauma, and and and ...). There's some great scholarship out there on Circus Studies, but if you're not the type to blow $80 on a 'course reader' with some very dry (albeit interesting) writing in it, there's not ... that much ... out there.

So I wanted to fix that!

AND WE'RE APPROACHING THE FINISH LINE OF ISSUE #1.
The printer has been fired up
(THANK YOU AGAIN, MYSTERIOUS BENEFACTOR WHO WISHES NOT TO BE NAMED).

The printer has been unjammed after I successfully jammed it upon printing the 2nd page ever to come out of it.

The essay has been polished and workshopped and read to some other very clever minds and has several hearty stamps of approval.

I feel GOOD and EXCITED about sending this out into the world!

It is one of my greatest hopes for this project that I might inspire other circus artists (or lovers of circus!) to begin thinking about their practice or their creations in more critical ways. Are you someone who likes to think or write about their day to day lives, their circus practice, the circus they consume, the circus they like to see? I'm so curious as to what this first issue of Writing the Circus might stir up in your generous hearts.  I'll circle back to this in updates to come, but if any of my writing causes sparks to fly in your brain or think about things in a new way, please don't hesitate to bend my ear about it! 

Here's a not out-of-focus one: 

Art (and circus, in particular) has the ability to be an agent of powerful, deeply meaningful inquiry and change.
'Writing the Circus' is one of my contributions to that.

This issue is composed of 2 parts: there's a 'case study' (a short story!), and a corresponding essay (which the 'case study' helps us to understand in a more digestible, concrete way).

The first copies of Issue #1 of Writing the Circus will be going out in early July to my $20 and up patrons, as well as my $10 tier patrons who have been with me from the start in 2019 (thanks guys!).

The digital version of this issue of Writing the Circus will go up here on Patreon for all my $5 tier lovelies ONE WEEK AFTER I mail out the hard copies of the zine
(is it a zine? is it more of a chapbook? my writing is having an identity crisis).

I'm going to figure out how to set up a discount code for folks on the $5/digital tier as well, if you're wanting to buy yourself (or your friends) a hard copy to hold and cherish forever and ever.

And if any of your friends staunchly, stubbornly refuse to come over to the dark side (Patreon), you can reassure them that eventually I'll put these suckers up on my website (www.strangewonderfulcreature.com) for purchase at full price (NB: it's always, always gonna be cheaper for you amazing people).

SO – 

Thank you for believing in my Little Project That Could – it's about to spread its wings and fly!

There will be more updates coming your way in the following week as I put together the 'flat' (I just learned that's what the master-copy of a zine is called!), finish any small details, and begin copying them.



SEE YOU SOON!
xoxox

Ess