Statement: I write to see myself in another language. I think in Punjabi, I write in English. For me writing is about looking into my experiences, seeing the truth, and not letting words die before they reach the page. Writing is the utmost importance because it is where our breathing exists --uncensored and honest. If we do not uncensor our breath as Cixous suggests then we are false. I write to uncensor myself, and I write to avoid becoming a false woman. The recent pandemic has not changed my reasons or beliefs about why writing matters. Instead, it has become proof of why writing has always mattered. Writing more than ever needs to be about uncensoring the human experience, the body. This is the time to expose ourselves. This is time to stop our inner machine, to turn it off, and to slow down. Writing is powerful in this regard as it brings us to the many truths that have remained hidden. This is the new normal for the machines. But this isolated place of uncertainty, curiosity, and wonder is where the writer has lived before the pandemic.
Boyd, Clark
Bio: Clark Boyd currently lives in the Netherlands. His work has appeared in High Shelf Press, The Esthetic Apostle, Ghost Stories for Starless Nights, The Were-Traveler, Slackjaw, and Points in Case. In a previous incarnation, he spent 20 years reporting, writing, editing, and producing international news stories for the BBC World Service and US public radio. He's currently at work on a book about windmills. Or cheese. Maybe both.
Statement:
Magical thinking permeates our lives, now more than ever.
Hard work pays off. Everything happens for a reason. Better days are always ahead. I’m a very stable genius. We’re flattening the curve. The country is open for business.
Cloud cuckoo land.
A deadly, global pandemic should dispel such willful ignorance. It should strip the cheap chocolate right off those cute little bon-bons, and expose them for what they really are—steaming turds encased in oleaginous pudding skins. Instead, we’re fed things like “the elderly would gladly die to save the economy” and “everything will soon get back to normal.”
Truly bat-shit levels of insanity.
Call me a pessimist or a crank, but I feel the need to shake people—
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