Dear Reader,

We went to one of the protests yesterday, and it was such a good reminder that Taking action is good for the spirit. Alone, atomized, watching the news and unable to act, I can feel so demoralized. Out there on the streets, two-year-old strapped to my back, partner holding a sign that said “Families for Freedom from Fear,” surrounded by people who love this land just as much as we do, I felt the possibility of a path forward. It involves joining hands. As I overheard someone say, “This is just the beginning.”

In this week’s Lightplay I can’t help myself but talk a bit about the politics of protest. I have a theory, you see, that our pro-democracy actions can and must invoke the great American archetypes like John Henry and Rosie the Riveter. They can help us weave a positive vision for the U.S. (See this week’s first Mote.)

But first I’m delighted to share an appreciation of two little zines. Together, they cost me just $6. They’ve repaid that, in joy, a dozen times over. In my essay about these zines I share not just the details of the books themselves but also the store where I bought them, the press that printed them, and circumstances in which I read them. I’m calling this type of review a “Whole Book Review”—in reviewing the whole book, I try to also capture some of the ways the book extends beyond just the physical object.

Last year, I actually spent a couple months dreaming about making “Whole Book Reviews” on video. Then I realized that I actually like writing, and I already have an audience here! So you can expect more of these sorts of book reviews in future editions.

For now, thanks for reading—enjoy these goofy zines—and see you out at a protest sometime soon!

– Jasper

Actual Size and The Urge to Regurge

Here’s something books can do: distill an idea, bottle it up, and hand it to you in a neat, potent package, behind an enticing label. Today let’s consider two books, Sanaa Khan’s Actual Size and The Urge to Regurge. They’re each like those nips of Fireball they sell down at the liquor store: tiny, spicy, full of spirit, and best gulped down all at once. And one of them might also make you feel a bit ill afterward.

Actual Size is 4” x 2.5” and composed entirely of pencil drawings at 1:1 scale of small objects, like a pencil sharpener, a banana slug, an inkpot, a Pink Pearl eraser, and a push pin.

The Urge to Regurge is even smaller—3.5” x 2”—and composed entirely of stipple-shaded pen drawings of hard-to-digest foods, each accompanied by a euphemism for vomiting. Beneath the mozzarella sticks is the word BARF; beneath the Slurpee, VOM; beneath the shrimp cocktail, SPEW.

Why do these books fill me with so much joy? I mean, yes, the art is great, the sequencing excellent, and the thoughtful risograph printing makes the prints look better than they would if they’d come out of an injet printer or a photocopier. But there’s more. I think they key is the deceptive simplicity of each book’s premise. This leaves space for the reader’s mind to wander.

Reading Actual Size, at one moment I find myself looking more closely at the fake pear on my desk, at the Bic lighter in my pocket. Then the next I think about what it means to map something, 1:1, onto paper. I think of the extremely brief story by Jorge Luis Borges, “On Exactitude in Science,” in which an empire grows so invested in making precise maps that eventually “the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.” 1:1 is a weird scale. It’s more common in sculpture than in painting, let alone bookmaking. It begs certain questions.

The Urge to Regurge is more playful. Or maybe the right word is scatalogical. I definitely would have thought this book was funny when I was an eight-year-old, and when I read it now, I feel eight again, laughing at the silliness of our euphemisms (BLOW CHUNKS; YAK), laughing harder at the sense memories of how certain foods have felt in my stomach (twinkies, candy corn, chow mein from a takeout box), and laughing hardest about the juxtaposition of the two. The book is an invitation to sit for a minute with the side you that is silly and immature and gross.

Books have contexts, and those contexts shape our response to them, so I think I should share how I came to own these two little zines. I found them each in San Francisco, in the wonderful zine shop / curated ephemera joint Needles & Pens. When we visit friends in the Bay—a too-rare occurrence these busy days!—I always love to go into this shop on Valencia Street. They always have the most wonderful selection of zines and random art books and also fancy candles and socks and earrings, etc. It’s always a trick and a pleasure to figure out what zine(s) you’re going to take to the register. Are you cool enough to own them? Or, perhaps, could you become someone cool enough to own them? (You can.)

I believe I bought The Urge to Regurge in late 2018 and Actual Size in early 2019. I was living in rural Northern California, working as a writing tutor and a Poet in the Schools, and spending a lot of my time on coursework for a low-residency MFA in Creative Writing. Writing was becoming more serious for me, both as my career and as my primary focus as an artist. I was probably getting to be a little up-tight, a little self-serious about everything. Then I found these books, and they made me smile, chill out a little, and remember how fun books can be. I kept The Urge to Regurge on my bedside table for months. Later, I on and off carried Actual Size around in my pocket for a little mid-day treat. I really love these books

Writing this essay, for the first time I visited the website for the publisher, Tiny Splendor Press. How sweet to learn some context about the milieu from which they emerge. It turns out the press is a collaboration between Max Stadnik and Sanaa Khan (out of Berkeley) and Cynthia T Navarro (out of Los Angeles). They have a big catalog, which mostly seems to be sold out of their online store, but which includes a bunch of other intriguing zines by Khan. (For instance: Gags. World of Warts. A-Z of Uncommon Phobias. Sunday Smiles. The Old Grudge. The Many Ways of the Potato.) They also hire out as a printer, and they run workshops in both Berkeley and LA. I sent them an email asking to get on their mailing list, and hopefully someday soon I can take one of their riso-printing workshops here in LA. I’ll report back if I do.

In the meantime, I’ll put these goofy little zines back in my tiny books collection—and I’ll keep treasuring them.

Yesterday there were “Hands Off!” protests all across the country. We needed them, and we need more like them. We need to start building momentum and assert our right to protest. As they say, use it or lose it.

The project of taking action against fascists has me thinking about the Battle of Britain, and the country-spanning magical (or magickal) resistance effort organized in the U.K. by Dion Fortune. This essay by Sable Aradia about the “Magical Battle of Britain” speaks so clearly to our present moment and its perils that I have to say I was shocked to find it was first posted in 2015.

One of my favorite insights is that Fortune “invoked the ancient spirits pledged to Britain’s protection, including King Arthur, Merlin, St. Michael and St. George.” And Aradia considers whether American magic-workers, resisting fascism on our own shores, might invoke this land’s protector deities:

I think this could be not just a strong piece of magic but also a successful protest tactic: to reclaim these American archetypal spirits and tie them to positive values of freedom, community, and justice. The “Tea Party” fifteen years ago invoked just one archetypal figure, the tri-corner-hat-wearing colonist, and they have had an impact that reverberates to this day. (Of course propped up by billionaire cash infusions.) Here’s my expanded list of figures to dress up as, put on protest signs, and invoke in your workings:

• Lady Liberty

• Paul Bunyan

• John Henry

• Rosie the Riveter

• Johnny Appleseed

• John Brown

• The Cowboy

To be effective, they shouldn’t be historical personages, but instead archetypes. (John Brown sneaks in because his one public act led directly to martyrdom.) As a white person I don’t think it’s my place to nominate Coyote or Guanyin or the Chupacabra, but I could see them fitting in, too. The big point here is: America at its best used to stand for something, even if it never lived up to it. We shouldn’t give up on that dream.

And: can’t you just see a photograph of ICE agents arresting Lady Liberty splashed across every newspaper and social media feed in the land?

The latest edition of Sarah McColl’s Lost Art is an audio essay about folk singer Connie Converse. It explores the life, stifled ambitions, and legacy of this singer from the ’50s who never broke through and eventually disappeared into the thin blue air. (The leading theory is that she drove her car into a lake.) Throughout the essay, Sarah interweaves Converse’s story with her own life. It’s a beautiful piece of writing—and even more beautiful read aloud in Sarah’s voice, with graceful editing and snippets of song.

In the intro, Sarah reveals that this is the essay that started the whole Lost Art project—Lost Art is a longrunning newsletter project that explores the “creative lives & works of (mostly) dead women.” By releasing an audio edition of the essay, Sarah revives and improves on the original.

We’re big fans of this project in my household, and I love that Sarah’s now pivoting to audio essays. It’s a delightful way to consume a lyric essay about a singer-songwriter. If you have half an hour to spare, there are a million worse ways to spend it.

As the NBA season winds towards the playoffs, my team, the Golden State Warriors, is currently looking like, as they say, “a problem.” (Friday night they overcame the best player in the world, Nikola Jokic; it was lovely.) This is good news, because a few months ago they looked dead in the water, and for a month or so I even gave up on watching them.

Their season turned when they traded for the wily small forward Jimmy Butler, and I want to just quickly give my appreciation to Butler here by calling back to the time a few season back when he showed up to NBA Media Day—when players take the pictures that will be used in TV graphics all season long—in full goth. Can you believe this guy plays for our team? It’s just awesome.

This chart, from The Economist via Adam Tooze’s Chartbook, has me considering veganism all over again:

I got properly got by this James Hoffman coffee video—”The Secrets of My Daily Coffee Routine.” It came out this Tuesday, and I definitely recommend it.

Why not make a protest sign, even if you don’t know when you’ll have the chance to use it? It’s fun thinking up a slogan, cutting up the cardboard, inking in the letters. It’s a way to do something, rather than glumly looking at your phone. And it has a way of sharpening your own political message—figuring out what you most care about.