Picking up from yesterday’s Part I (the work), here we have Part II (the art).
Also, Currant! The first baby lives
Currant is the side hustle that changed my life that I never talk about. I was a serious nobody that serious people in food and media took seriously. Cleaned up my inbox recently and stumbled back on the sweet notes people sent:
Maybe one day I'll write about starting a low key intense food media publication/community. For now, much love to my team Sarah Cooke, Clare Lagomarsino, and Renee Hunt.
Publishing highlights:
We finally launched Sarah's beautiful and urgent concept - our rich rich climate change x jam series, for which I got to play editor, photographer, and producer.
Mailchimp/Intuit interviewed me on my advice for creative entrepreneurs. (Thank you Kristen Siharath!)
My profile of James Beard Award-winning writer Mayukh Sen made it to Harvard's Niemen Journalism Lab's reading list.
My profile of chef Lucas Sin passively drives a ton of SEO traffic, thanks to the public's curiosity on "is lucas sin married" and "lucas sin age."
We sent out community member Moose's cake diaries - oral surgeon in the UK reporting live on his vegan wedding cake baking adventures. I miss these.
Currant's technically on hiatus but it is so alive. It's making money for my totally unrelated current company! Friends came from the discord to my living room, wild! The things that happen when a side project is given time to ferment!
M.M. Carrigan, EIC at Taco Bell Quarterly: If you want an inspirational after age 40 story, I’m your guy. I’ll be 45 when my first book comes out. I would tell my younger self this: No one can see you trying. No one can see you die at this. No one can see you right now, and that’s the point. Just keep doing it, especially when it feels like you’re doing nothing. Put yourself out there, even if there is no great way to do it and you don’t know how, and you don’t know what it’s about, what it’s supposed to look like, or even who you are in this process.
How will you know how much to give away when you have to give away everything? What will you save of yourself? What will you save for the book? What book? What if there is no book coming to save you? Run towards it anyway. Bang it out anyway. Blog. Submit. Send. Bleed it out on social media if you have to. Let it out. It’s not art, it’s only a pressure valve.
Throw out the work and stop thinking start feeling you sad art girl!
more words, vicky?! yes buckle up we're at the best section
Turns out grief is a more effective instigator than ambition.
In 2022, a woman called Taylor released an album called Midnights. Poetry with music. I'd never really noticed poetry in the past, but after 2022, I needed a form where each word was a bullet. Full sentences weren't working for me.
Thanks to Kristen for introducing me to your film friends as, "This is my friend Vicky, she's a poet and writer." I finally introduced myself as such when browsing a shop on Atlantic Avenue. The shopkeeper came up to me while I flipped through a poetry book, I mentioned I wrote too, she asked what kind, I realized I didn't have an answer. Oops. don't just throw on the shirt, wear the whole fit silly!
I took a workshop and spoke at Brooklyn Poets. Thanks Grace & Finney for showing up for me, for the most terrifying performance I have ever given. You don't realize until you're on stage that you've just signed up to be a theater kid and NOW, GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD BEFORE THE KIDS THROW TOMATOES. (An aside: Poem speaking does make business speaking easier - less vulnerability required.)
My teacher Cindy Tran's prelude: As an instructor, I hope to see every poem ask a question. Vicky Gu’s poems are full of questions calling to the Quiet–they are not rhetorical yet they know they will not be answered. And it is in this quietness that Vicky’s images call to me: raw pork knuckles, heaven in smoke, the emergency door in a nightmare.I hope her poems will call to you, too. Please welcome Vicky Gu.
It's hard to be critical of your own art and harder to hear others do it, but it's all so helpful.
Of course you can't edit forever you still need to hit go so I self-published BLOOMER, my first poetry collection. 9 poems accompanied by pics shot by Minnow, and some simple keys/synth tracks I produced.
"I'm aware that it's a minority sport, [Zadie Smith] says of fiction. I could write 15 books, and I wouldn't be able to capture the mood of one Kendrick album."
In 2023 I started hanging around my neighborhood used vinyl and guitar shops like a teenage loiterer. At least I am also an adult hyperlocal enthusiast so it was only a matter of time before I got an electric guitar and baby amp.
I'm slowly working on a new collection, featuring the upcoming hit singles how to be a moody woman and dear god where is the operating manual? Will it become a zine? Words-pics-sound-thing? vicky it's called a tiktok
I took a screenprinting class through Gowanus Print Lab. Enter undercover hypebeast era, printing a collection of LonelyNY shirts. Sold 90% of my stock in first few weeks. SEO doesn't matter when you have a brand and a community (well, that and a very limited stock of 18 shirts). Thanks to Anna & Jessie for the consult.
Skin Contact Studio, Skin Contact Press, Skin Contact Sounds... we could go places.
Ok maybe we need to slow down the art
Making art may double as processing, but it's not the fulfillment of broken promises. It does not dispel the inertia of grief on its own. You still need to live freely, think less, dance more.
Australian editor Lisa Murray interviewing Chinese writer Yu Hua: I am struck throughout the meal how content Yu seems. Far from the frustrated writer, railing against repression that I expected, he is holding court in his favourite restaurant, boasting about his wife, Chen Hong, who is a poet, and his talented 22-year-old son, Yu Haiguo, who is a director and scriptwriter.When he talks about the difficulties of being an artist in China it is in an unemotional, pragmatic way.
In 2024...
This volume of activity - gestures to the above words - is totally unsustainable. Life is already too much on its own. There were a couple times I broke my body last year. I’m still paying for it. In 2024 no more. In 2024, more:
Unlearning the value impulse when it comes to my art, thanks Charis for this reminder
Drinking wine on my living room floor with friends
Making art with friends
Doodling with nonverbal expression, esp image and sound
Accepting there's beauty I'm not meant to keep
Planning a retreat for high functioning cozy loving neurospicy girlies?
Giving and volunteering in my local community
Giving thanks
Hanif Abdurraqib on the Midnight Marauders album cover: "At a time when the two coasts were engaged in harmless but escalating sniping [on the best hip hop], A Tribe Called Quest was giving thanks, endlessly."
Believe in my work? Join us for $5/mon or $50/yr
I spend a lot of time in solitude. (This the work necessitates.) I don't have a creative tribe. (Which today's fragmented world has made tricky anyways.)
My paid supporters help me feel less alone. I think y'all support because you believe in my work, and the future of it. Because of y'all, this has become my favorite corner of the internet. Thanks to Julia and Rona and my aunt for being early steady beacons of support.
As for perks - you get a deeper cuts on my process. What's the inner life of an artist who works corporate? Free subs get emails every other month; paid subs get notes on a monthlyish basis. Also an annual holidayish card - send me your address if you'd like one!
Of course, the work has costs. Web hosting, creative software and equipment, workshops. This stuff is easily thousands per year. You help me pay for everything from overhead costs to continued education investments.
Final note - if financial support isn't for you, you can also follow me on LinkedIn or Instagram at @granola.cool for erratic updates.
Let me know how I can support you this year.
Endless thanks,
V
I loved both parts and am so excited for gorgeous Friday catchup at Frank's and YOU. SO. SOON.