WRITING

Lilikoi XXXXX Vignette Collection

Film Vignette: Barbarian and The Female Experience

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This piece starts as a horror film review, in which I explain why being born a woman made the film Barbarian unbearable; It evolves into going through some of the horrors every living girl is taught that they need to prepare for, and how those horrors connect all women. I was inspired to write about the female experience by Antonia Crane’s “Dispatch from the California Stripper Strike,” in which she not only recounts the harassment and mistreatment of strippers, but forces the reader to think about the female form and what this line of work means for a woman. This piece was received extremely positively and was understood to be a wonderful twist on a horror review, like something that could be included in a woman’s magazine. This vignette was written for all women, and any men who would like to understand them, and my only hope is that it can offer some sort of relatability. This vignette was a bit of a struggle to write because the topics addressed are extremely personal, and it was also difficult to have to relieve the scene I wrote about again, but I believe it was worth it for the impact it provides.

Music Vignette: My Favorite Band and Why it Shouldn’t Be

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In this story I go through my thought process upon learning that a loved song is about a real life sexual assault case, that the singer was the antagonizer of; I explain the necessity of being able to separate art from artist and that some music deserves to be loved in spite of who created it. This piece was inspired by “The Pretenders” by Chuck Klosterman– I enjoyed his blog-eque style, and I thought that incorporating a more casual style to this piece would better suit the experience of listening to music. This is one of the less personal vignettes out of the set and it was found to be very relatable to some, and disturbing to others. I think that this piece can be relatable to people, but I also like to think of it as a tutorial on the proper way to receive music that may be related to less than perfect people. This vignette was the most research-heavy one of this set, and I had a lot of fun reading articles about Judas Priest, Marilyn Manson, Mindless Self Indulgence, and Jimmy Urine, though I got a bit too caught up in research and almost forgot to make the essay personal. 

Art Experience Vignette: It’s Art, Dumbass

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This vignette is a retelling of my visit to Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart art installation and about how one employee understood that I appreciated art, and my disappointment that no one else could. I was inspired by Wells Tower’s “The Old Man at Burning Man” to write about an art experience rather than an art piece or a performance, but my relationship to this essay is to use it for spite rather than direct inspiration: I do not like the way he received his art experience, and I wanted to explore my own in a direct contradiction to his. My reviewer noted that the piece was about the art experience rather than the art itself and found it to be an interesting and clever way to write about an art exhibit. This piece feels like a cautionary tale– I am worried that the world is forgetting to appreciate art and this piece speaks of my own pride that I still know how, and my disappointment in those who can’t. This piece was a struggle to write because I wasn’t sure how much of the art experience to include, because to me the piece is much more about the people that I met in the exhibit than the exhibition itself.

Open Vignette: I Prayed to Goya

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With this last piece I explore some of my religious beliefs and how art and religion are interchangeable to me; I prayed to my favorite artist instead of God out of desperation to be able to create art. Wells Tower’s “The Old Man at Burning Man” inspired me (once again) to write about my feelings about spirituality and art (once again) out of spite– I don’t think he understands the spiritual power that all art holds, and I wanted to write what he couldn’t. A quote that he includes in his essay is “‘One minute we’re dwelling on anal hygiene and sexual fetishes, and then there’s this temple and this air of quiet spirituality. Where does religion come into all this?’” and what I believe he doesn’t realize is that even that quote is religious. The person who reviewed this piece did not feel comfortable providing me with a constructive comment and felt that it was not their place to leave a review, which in and of itself I think speaks for the type of essay that is is. This essay is the most personal of the entire set and I think that even though it’s more of an insight to my own beliefs, it can be relatable to almost everyone on earth– after all, religion causes wars. To write this essay I had to let my hands guide me, it was not the sort of piece I could control the language or style of– it controlled itself.

Barbarian and The Female Experience

There are few movies that I find too difficult to sit through– American Psycho (2000) is my movie of comfort, Blair Witch Project (1999) is an artistic masterpiece, and Human Centipede (2009) I found to be a comedy. So you can imagine my struggle when prompted ‘What is the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?’ Trauma (2017), a movie that I watched due to it being described to me as “the most fucked up movie ever”, was one I found too disgusting to bear; I did not find the content hair raising nor did the urge to stand up and run overcome me: simply, I did not like the movie. This film may have been the most fucked up, but not the scariest. For a movie to qualify as the scariest, I need to feel pure, guttural fear for my own safety. And so, the film that accomplished this the best, after watching the entire first half hour yelling at the protagonist from the hallway, is Barbarian.

Barbarian, released September 9, 2022 and written and directed by Zach Cregger, is a film about a girl, Tess,  who stays in an Airbnb that has sex tunnels in the basement inhabited by an eight foot tall emaciated, repulsive, temptress of a woman (At least, I like her) known as The Mother. From the clips I've seen online of her, she seems to be very charming and I would like to be her friend. However, I never made it to her first appearance in the film. I quit about 2 minutes before her presence was even implied. For my terror, Cregger’s mastery of cinematography must be accredited- as well as the female experience.

I will now describe the scene that forced me out of my seat and into my bedroom, where I watched the remaining half from the doorway:

Tess steps out of her car to return to her Airbnb set in a neighborhood whose houses have all been sent to hell long ago, covered from head to toe in scorch marks and graffiti. The audience can see (Tess has yet to) a figure slowly emerging from the distance. As she strolls to the front door, the figure reveals itself as a tattered man sprinting toward our Tess. Growing in volume, he shouts at her Hey! Hey, little girl! She fumbles for her keys, breathing loud enough for the audience to feel in their chests. Tess opens the door as the man steps foot on the porch and she slams the door as his hands reach out to touch her.

I regret to inform you that I had to rewatch the aforementioned scene for the sake of this piece. The scene lasts about 45 seconds; I could have sworn it was 3 minutes longer. Partly, my terror formed from the director’s creative choices: to obscure the figure but have him centered in the screen added a feeling of curiosity and suspense otherwise impossible. Even in the middle of the day, the director was able to make this scene feel as dangerous as walking around in the middle of the night. As an artist, Creggor is a genius.

As a female, I am desperate to ask Creggor how he knew my deepest fear, nay, every woman’s deepest fear, that has been placed inside her soul since the beginning of time. I am lucky to be able to say I have never been sexually harassed, kidnapped, or murdered by a man. But since the day I was born, I have been taught that I need to be prepared for when (not if) a man follows me home to kidnap me, then rape me, and then murder me. I feel comfortable enough to confirm that part of my homosexuality is due to my fear of males. Women being attracted to men, who, according to paranoid mothers everywhere, are all rapists by birthright, appears to work against our female rulebook.

My father laughed at me from the couch (it was his idea to watch the movie) and he did not understand why such a scene was so horrific to me. I told him to turn off the TV soon after this scene occurred and he had to watch the remainder in his bedroom with the door closed. For the next 2 hours I heard an occasional muffled “Holy shit” or “Holy fuck”, surely at the sight of my beloved, The Mother. He has never been forced by his mommy to pack a pocket knife in his purse ‘just in case.’

According to my research, only the first half of the film is told from Tess’s perspective. Don’t worry about the second half, I have no idea what happens in it. As a female, watching a film that is told from another woman’s perspective is like magic. I feel no stronger empathy than when a woman is on the screen. Tess’s hands tremble, her breath hitched, her hair flying in front of her face as she gives herself whiplash from looking over her shoulder to see if the man was still intent on chasing her. I felt as though I was there. I imagined myself in that situation, dropping my keys, heart beating in my ears, blood drained from my skull.

All women are connected, I think. Mothers to daughters, sisters to sisters, receptionist to stewardice. Pulling your bag closer to yourself when someone sits next to you on the bus; teaching yourself to be able to feel the world around you via energy alone so that you would just know if someone was following you; putting a tank top on underneath your t-shirt even though your chest is size 34A just so no one notices that you have nipples and decides that that’s a good enough reason to reach out and touch them. These are crucial aspects of growing up in a woman’s body, and even though an inch of glass, portrayed in 4k on Netflix, I know this woman and I know that she has experienced these things too.

The scene taken at face value is nothing special, just a scrape on the knee that you have to walk off. But laying in my bed later that night, I pulled my teddy bear close to my heart, trying desperately to think about anything but that scene and erase the words “Hey little girl” from my memory, and tried to calm my pulse enough to drift to slumberland– I tried to ignore the voice of a man I had convinced myself I was hearing, screaming my name and commanding me to allow the violation of my female form.

My Favorite Band and Why it Shouldn’t Be

The first time I heard “Envy” by Mindless Self Indulgence, I swore there were lyrics: clearly enunciated lyrics about jealousy and forgiveness, and comments beneath the youtube video confirmed this via their philosophical discussions about said lyrics. The second time I heard the track, during my realization that Pink had become my favorite album by the band, I sung along to the words that I thought I had heard. I struggled to find my place in the lyrics, tripping over my words. Convinced that the volume level (low, by suggestion of the cell phone, to preserve my delicate ears) was interfering with my ability to understand the only language that I am fluent in, I desperately pressed the volume-up button. The ‘lyrics’ flooded into my ears.

gnileef eb tsum uoy tahW / tsom eht uoy yvne I ,hO

Backwards like Judas Priest first did. With trembling hands I sprint to a nearby search engine and mutter ‘is envy by msi backwards?’ with moist breath. I can’t say that I was bombarded with articles about the musical choices of the band Mindless Self Indulgence, who has a following of a measly 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify, compared to bands like Nirvana and Gorillaz who each have over 27 million listeners. I click on an upload entitled ENVY [ REVERSED LYRICS ] - MINDLESS SELF INDULGENCE on Youtube.

With the reversed video beating in my ears, I was assured of my fluency in the English language. But with newfound knowledge came newfound troubles. Mindless Self Indulgence is a band where listeners are forced to separate the art from the artist. Often, I find myself saying ‘I love MSI’s music’ rather than ‘I love MSI.’ The frontman, stage-name Jimmy Urine, is a pedophile. Jimmy Urine has used ‘shock tactics’ to try to distract the public from his discrepancies: one of the band’s songs, titled “Panty Shot,” is from the perspective of a man who wants to have sex with 5 year old girls but praises himself for holding himself back, and when the band first formed they put out an ad for a drummer that didn’t mind drumming for a group of pedophiles. In hindsight, it should have been obvious. It took 24 years for his pedophilia to be confirmed.

In the comments of the video, user Brad Pity ponders what Jimmy Urine must have been thinking about while writing this song, stating that the lyrics sound like they must be from the perspective of a child abuser. The user’s first comment dates six years before Urine was sued for the sexual assault of then 15 year old Lisa. Brad Pity updated the comment thread seven months ago, and claims that they are certain that Jimmy must have been writing about his own guilt from the abuse of the girl. I agree with Pity.

And yet, despite my knowledge that Jimmy Urine is a god-awful person, the song remains on. I switch it back to the original version, with backwards lyrics, now deprived of my previous blissful ignorance, and yet I cannot bring myself to hate the song or the band. He begs us, his listeners, to feign ignorance, and we happily obey.

All my children / Please forgive me / Please forgive me

Many people I’ve spoken to about music lack the necessary skill known as separating art from artist. When you listen to real music, you’re going to happen upon singers and bassists and ghost writers that you wouldn’t dare say are your idols. I can’t mention any of my favorite bands to someone without them interrupting with wasn’t he, like, a horrible person? They don’t understand the trouble I’ve gone through to convince myself that the music I listen to is not produced by anyone, and that it simply manifested on its own, and that the voice belongs to no one’s throat, and the keys on the keyboard were pressed by no fingers.

No band encourages you more to separate art from artist that Mindless Self Indulgence; it even says so in the name. Mindless; to act without concern for the consequences, Self Indulgence; to do exactly what one wants; unrestrained gratification of one's own appetites. To listen to music is to indulge your deepest inner desires. If a pedophile created something that I cannot stop myself from loving, I must separate art from artist and engage in some mindless self-indulgence.

It’s Art, Dumbass

The summer of 2022, I visited Las Vegas with my mother and a dear friend of mine: Marin. He and I became friends out of desperation. We met in middle school, and we saw through each other, through the disguises we wore to seem normal to the outside world. Before I escaped that world and found solace in art and people who put my own madness to shame, Marin was my only hope. 

At some point during our trip, before letting us explore the city on our own, my mother imposed this chore upon us: Get in trouble. Get thrown out by security guards, smoke a cigarette, have sex with strangers, do something– just please be teenagers for once. I am sorry to say that we disappointed her greatly. Marin and I are the kind of people who have our entire lives planned out, and our priorities laid out neatly in front of us. No tantalizing six foot tall burlesque dancer was going to jeopardize our chance at having the perfect life– led to believe that having a clean slate in every regard would set us up for success, we had a very boring evening.

That being said, our dedication to our crafts did not completely ruin our trip. Perhaps on the street, everyone else is king, but put Marin and I in any exhibit, museum, performance, or show and we tower over everyone else. And that’s exactly what happened.

Meow Wolf is a company that erects extremely elaborate and interactive art exhibits all around the United States, and the one in Las Vegas is called Omega Mart. We knew it was some sort of funny grocery store, with weird products and merchandise and maybe something else. I had seen pictures online and was a bit sad that I thought everything had already been spoiled for me. Lucky I, that was not the case.

Upon arrival, it was immediately obvious that we understood the world we were about to walk into better than the other visitors. Marin, leather clad and unbearably tall, decked out in jewels and lace; myself, in all black save the neon green mullet upon my head and matching belt hanging from my hips. It is obvious to anyone looking that we are art students, and that to us this is just another school field trip.

We entered the pseudo grocery store and it was as I expected– strange products, strange merchandise, but disappointingly: no strange people. While admiring the deli counter full of brains and human flesh (plastic; a tease to a cannibal such as myself), my mother grabbed mine and Marin’s arms and pulled us to the other side of the store.

Behind a curtain of vines, through the janitor’s closet, was a glowing room full of mushrooms and bioluminescent sprouts. I took a seat on a giant mushroom with my pal, admiring the scenery, but not five seconds later, our pause was interrupted by a highly animated man dressed like a janitor (this must be his closet). He complimented our outfits, and noted my hair. Three points to us, we’re definitely winning at this art thing. He seemed desperate to give us a tour, so we let him, making sure to laugh at all his strange quips. 

Led by our enthusiastic guide, who noticeably didn’t seem very interested in helping anyone else, we skipped the entire first section of the store, and whatever else was in the rest of the forest, and were brought up to the top floor via employee-only elevator. We stepped into a crowded hall, lined with doors and people waiting to get inside them. He bid us adieu while we began the next part of our journey.

It is by this point that I take a moment to watch the people joining us on our adventure. You’d think they were a part of the performance, exhibiting every sign of a pre-apocalyptic world: instead of hands they have cell phones and instead of eyes they have cameras and instead of voices and laughter they have dings and clicks and beeps and boops. It seemed Marin and I were the only ones who didn’t get the memo that we were supposed to be on our phones for the entire experience.

We joined a quickly moving line to enter an unmarked door. The bouncer of this door is a very square man with sunglasses, thin wire frames with black oval lenses, who looks like he is desperately trying to stay in character and not smile. He nodded at us as we walked past and entered the room.

We were the last ones to enter the room, besides the bouncer. He left the door open behind him, allowing the sound of life to flood the experience. Marin and I barely got a chance to admire the scene before a ruckus emerged. 

One of the men in the rest of our group decided to ask the bouncer a question: Is it supposed to do something? 

The bouncer told him that it’s art. 

The man, unsatisfied, asked again: Yeah, but, like, what does it do? 

The bouncer again told him that it’s art. 

The man laughed and sarcastically replied with an ignorant Okay.

The bouncer hesitated for no longer than a second before informing him that his time in the room was up. And that, not only should he leave, everyone else he came in with should leave too. But the bouncer nodded at Marin and I, and he was not looking at us as he said this. He shut the door behind the group, and some of them looked back at the two of us, confused as to how we earned our keep. They clearly didn’t notice my mullet.

The bouncer ushered us to the center of the room, and we watched the clouds roll past on the walls. Only from the center of the room can one hear the voice of a woman whispering to you in a language unknown to anyone who hears it. Pillars with her face stare at us, but more prominent than any piece of this art is the bouncer. As still as the pillars, he stood and admired us, to make sure we understood, to make sure we could see that it’s art. We stand with our backs against each other and circle our spot on the ground, and I pray that I’ll be able to engrave this moment into my mind forever because a picture would have erased the magic and ruined the art.

I Prayed to Goya

I didn’t grow up religious. I thought I believed in God, but almost all children believe in a higher power. When you turn 12, you realize that God doesn’t exist because how on Earth could this be in God’s ineffable plan? Sometimes people who endure trauma turn to The Lord for a sign that they matter and that they are not alone in this world. I may or may not have experienced something akin to “trauma” I guess, but I know what my purpose is, and that’s where my problem lies. When I was 17 I needed a God. A God who knew me, a God whom I knew, a God that I could trust, a God that I could love. A God doesn’t have to be a creator, nor a destroyer– a God can be nothing more than a deity; as long as they are worshiped, they are a God. A God can be dead. A God can be an artist.

Fransisco Goya is my favorite artist. According to my printmaking master, the end of his life was spent in exile and the chemicals he used for his art mediums drove him to madness. The pieces found painted directly onto the walls of his home known as the “Black Paintings” do little to debunk this legend. The most famous of the “Black Paintings” series is Saturn Devouring His Son, in which Saturn, the Roman God of time, has bitten the head off of his own son in order to keep him from taking Saturn’s rightful throne (I have my own rendition of this piece plastered on my wall, right above my pillow). 

I think that Goya knows who I am. I am someone that has always believed in Ghosts; where the hell are our souls supposed to go? Goya’s soul exists forever, always out of sight. His Ghost exists somewhere in the air, and in my waking life I breathe him in with the wish that his genius becomes mine. It would be safe to say every single one of my printmaking pieces is inspired by, thus dedicated to, him. I don’t think many 18 year old girls dedicate their art to 1790’s Spanish painter and printmaker Fransisco Goya, so I think it almost impossible that he wouldn’t have noticed his 21st century devotee.

When I was 16, I was in love with a girl who fed my creativity like nothing else in this world. When she lost her mind and I lost her, I grieved her for a year. No one told me that grieving your muse means that art has to be dead too. For a year and a half, I couldn’t make art. Of course, I did anyway, but it was empty. Nothing I made mattered and I believed I would never be able to create ever again. As an artist, this is the most terrifying thing the world could have done to me. 

How could this have been in God’s ineffable plan? If God had done this to me, then that is no God I want to believe in. I had to believe in my own God. How can I be an artist if I cannot create art? How can I be a storyteller if I have no stories to tell? One night I couldn’t stop asking myself these questions, and the voice in my head couldn’t stop answering them with “you can’t,” and “you can’t.” 

The way I cry is weird: I’m embarrassed of it and I think that’s my most masculine quality. I cry quietly and desperately, and sometimes it’s even painful– to heave so deeply crushes my chest. I don’t like to be hugged, I don’t like to be comforted, I don’t want anyone to know that I can be weak enough to cry. So when I thought that my one life’s purpose may be pointless, I turned off the light, my face twisted and throat tight, and crawled into my cold bed. I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling. My eyes became wet but the tears did not fall (I did not let them).

Words started to come out of my mouth. Barely a whisper, my voice broken glass, I spoke aloud to no one in particular.

Please. Please. Please, just let me make art. I just want to make art, please let me make art. All I want to do is draw. Why can’t I? Why can’t I just draw? Please, please, please.

And I clasped my hands together and squeezed my eyes shut, but the liquid rolled down the sides of my face and ruined my pillow anyway.

Please Go–

I hesitated to elaborate further, and opened my eyes before I could finish. I sucked in a shaking breath, my lungs threatening to give out. I pawed at my eyes, fingers still woven together. This was a prayer directly to him, and he needed to know I meant it, after all: creating your own deity is serious business.

Dear Goya, please help me make art again.

Why do you write?

I believe that writing and reading are critical parts of the human experience. Humans have been telling stories since the beginning of time and I believe that everyone always has beautiful stories to tell and that to not read and write them is a crime against humanity. At my most narcissistic, I believe that I have ideas and thoughts that no one else on this planet may ever come across again if I do not play my role as a storyteller.  There are many mediums I work with to tell stories: illustrations, comics, animations, sculptures, spoken word and the occasional L.A.R.P.ing– but flash fiction, poetry, and short stories are some of the easiest to share with people and expand the story to its greatest potential. I also think that writing can improve my ability to tell stories in every other medium. When it comes to writing, there is a sort of organization to it. Even if I am not following the rules or predetermined plotlines that the greats have established, there always has to be a beginning, a middle, and an end– even if you don’t think so. I can map out the plot on paper, I can make a spreadsheet, I can make bullet points and lists and do endless research; these aspects do not carry over into most of my other storytelling mediums. Writing is special in that it has so much tradition and routine and heritage to it. There are many limitations of writing, and there are many limitations of illustration as well. I think that in order to be able to encapsulate the full breadth of a story, a storyteller must understand how to tell a story in every way that he can.

Who is your reader?

I often imagine my reader as someone very similar to myself. I write for people like me, who think like me and have the same sense of humor as me, people that I might like to be friends with. I try not to censor myself and tone down my writing so that it would be more acceptable for a larger audience– I would rather write something incredibly niche that only one or two people might enjoy, and then I would like to meet those people and be dear friends with them. I crave recognition and praise, but it would mean nothing to me coming from someone that I did not also admire. I really only write for people who feel unrecognized by society, and those who get called weird every time they open their mouths. I do not want anyone who could be regarded as normal to read my writing– it is not for them. I write about rather dark topics: murder, fear, perversion and paraphilias. And because I am sick and twisted, I find these topics really very humorous and that carries over into my writing. I write for people who feel the same way. I write for people who can bear to think about humanity's greatest faults and realize that there is nothing better to do than to laugh about it. I wouldn’t consider myself a comedy writer, but I can’t imagine a story about death without a line about how diabolically kooky and downright weird the killer must be. I don’t think that any story deserves complete seriousness. Every story deserves a reader who can step back and laugh at the strangeness of it all.

What is your role?

I believe that I am a born and raised entertainer, and that is my only purpose in life. No matter where I am or who I’m with, to entertain is my greatest goal. I don’t think I will ever be satisfied– even in death, I must entertain. If I am murdered and my body dumped in the woods, they’ll read about me in the papers and laugh at my headshot, and the dogs will have a fun time playing fetch with my bare bones.