Lily Lady Presents
Honey’s
Brooklyn, NYC
3/12/2024
In writing this review, I’m struggling up front with where to put my focus. A six-person bill is quite a lot for a reading —usually, four readers is the max my attention can tolerate, though it is often also the case that the readers are unified in theme, approach, and scene.
This event, curated by artist/writer/filmmaker/the other usual etceteras Lily Lady, covered a wide spread of approaches and genres. To put it all as shortly as possible before I make my decision about who and what to discuss, we the audience were treated to autofiction, diary entries, curatorial notes, a critical essay, and Peter Vack … There was a lot going on.
Firstly, I reckon, I should speak of the venue. Though the readers and tone of the event were what I would expect from the scene in lower Manhattan, the choice of venue couldn’t have been more Brooklyn. A meadery located in the gentrified industrial wastes surrounding the Jefferson Street L‑Stop. There’s a long running inside joke I share with an old friend of mine concerning the inevitable occurrence of “hipster bullshit” whenever we find out that the event we’re attending happens to be near the Jefferson Street L; this past evening, in so far as the venue’s concerned, was no exception. Honey’s is a nice enough place: small, expensive-ish, hip with a softened brutalism. It’s fine.
Now the show: I welcome a variety show. Though there are specific risks that come with this sort of billing that are absent in a homogenous line-up. For instance, in a performance that is strictly, reader to reader, a poetry reading or prose reading, the weakest performers can easily be elided into the gestalt of the show itself, given the general base similarity in format. Standouts will always stand out. But, in this variety setting, weak links break the chain of attention and trust all the more drastically and, though they may fade from memory (as the in the instance here of the reading curatorial notes from a film festival, which I had completely forgotten about until consulting my own notes on the show just now before writing), they leave in their wake a obvious hole in one’s memory. Or, alternatively, a poor performance is all that can be remembered. Again, standouts will always stand out. So, in this vein, I will focus now on two readers, whose performances I remember, for better or worse.
Firstly, Serena Rubin, first up on the bill and best by far. Serene read a well-crafted piece of a sort of work that I — publicly, privately, online, and offline — find myself quite often being viciously critical against. Call it autofiction, since that’s what the publishers are calling it, but it’s generally not for me. That aside, Rubin’s writing was crisp and clear, with a firm finger on the pulse of her narrative. Not a sentence wasted, and quite a few jokes landed. The best of which was: “I didn’t realize how much Amina hated me until she took ayahuasca.” A pithy turn in a her heretofore tender portrait of a relationship wherein a rediscovered respect for faith was the grounding. Rubin declared this platonic love “more a testament to girl-friendships than to God himself” before the shift of psychedelic psychosis brings the whole thing to its knees.
It was a story of our time, run through with contemporary politics and set in an increasingly standard confessional, autobiographical mode. Well-hewn and patiently delivered.
The other standout was, as to be expected by anyone who knew what they were getting into, Peter Vack. I apologize to the uninitiated if this sends you down some sordid internet rabbit hole and, further, will here caution against it.
I’ll also keep this short also as to give as little extra attention to this downtown enfant terrible as possible. Vack read a poem, the sort that grows, titled and subtitled and retitled and resubtitled, for every reading — a piece that amounted solely to internet jokes and micro-celebrity cultural references. . In-the-know goobledygook like: “I participated in the Anti-Woke Film Festival and need to be held accountable/ I participated in the Woke Film Festival and need to be congratulated/ I attend Elena Vales Salon 001 and need to become Julia Fox’s husband/ I co-starred with Blue Hunt and now I neeed AA/ [..]/ I looksmaxxed and need to go to the hospital/ I cast Charlie Sheen in a movie and now he can’t stop saying the N‑word…“
The joke wore off quick, and he kept reading.
By the end he was crying, injecting a feeble attempt at something true in all the previous nothing. It was funny for a second, if you catch the references, but hollow and grating if you were fortunate enough to maintain ignorance of the milieu he stands to represent.
All in all, a bottle of Modelo at Honey’s is six dollars, and they’ve got plenty of mead if that’s your thing. I saw the bartender burning something for one of the cocktails, which is always a treat I suppose.
