Part of me wants to apologize. This newsletter comes in fits and starts, never quite becoming the ultimate connector that I thought it would be back when I started publishing during the pandemic (five years ago!), or when I was for sure going to write on and on and on about Industry Muscle. But as COVID-19 (and its implications) still linger, and the 2025 Venice Biennale closes on the 23rd of November, I wonder: what is this newsletter, after all? What are these words I’m pushing out inconsistently? Why? To what end? Does it matter?
In truth, I’m not sorry. We’re all that dog in that “this is fine” meme, mug of coffee (god knows we need coffee) getting cold despite flames licking up from all sides, a deranged smile plastered on the dog’s face thanks to disassociation and survival instinct. Everything’s so fine, the dog is wearing a hat indoors, though the thick blanket of smoke threatens to whisk it away. And this is the perspective from within the imperial core. Nobody else in the world is fine—except billionaires, maybe, but that’s a topic for another issue.
So the questions—queeries—still stand like charred trunks of trees post-wildfire: what is this newsletter, and why does it exist?
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Over the weekend, I attended a Zoom workshop that lasted three-and-a-half hours called Discipline is Pleasure, offered by artist Yumi Sakugawa. I am still in awe that I was able to focus my attention for that long on a virtual meeting. When I signed up for the workshop, I had to pay. Great, I thought, I’m supporting an artist—but how the hell am I supposed to get my money’s worth out of this workshop? What kind of mental exercises would build the endurance I needed?
The day of, I almost chickened out. It was a Sunday and I already had a list of things to do, organized by the hour. (Yes, I try hard.) The workshop was not on my schedule. There would be a recording that I could watch later. I could use my free time in so many other ways…
I’m so glad I logged on. There’s something comforting about people from all over the world gathered together in a virtual space, lined up neatly in our little Zoom frames, faces turned toward the light of our screens. I was safe at home, yet utterly surrounded by likeminded strangers. We had at least one thing in common: we’d shown up from all different time zones and life situations to learn how to practice discipline, create structure, and commit to our creative work.
The thing that stuck with me the most was Yumi’s concept of containers of time. One of my biggest fears (shared by many others, it turns out) is not having enough time to do something creative, as well as the opposite fear of falling so deep into my creative work that I won’t have time to do anything else. Such black-and-white thinking, amrite? Yumi proposed thinking about time not as linear blocks, like how hours are represented on Google Calendar, but as containers with width and depth. How wide the container of time is in the x- and y-axes defines the size of the opening for ideas to flow in, and how deep in the z-axis defines the depth of attention. These differently-shaped vessels—bowls, plates, beakers, trays, thimbles, martini glasses—of time become the boundaries that receive what comes in, and holds and mixes them together.
Time, then, becomes a portal that creates space for heightened attention or consciousness, and concentrated energy and intention. Time seems to move differently in these spaces, as if the concept of the container physically disrupts the linear flow of time so that it must drip down the edge, pool in the center, and fill up before it can climb back out and become linear again.
I experienced the container of time that was Discipline is Pleasure like slipping into a deep, dark pool, my feet never touching the bottom surface, the waters of collective rage / grief / passion welling up in waves, lifting me toward an awakening that popped me out of the container as it closed. The call ended and I was suddenly back in my home office. But the feeling of not being alone and the capacity to radically reframe something as fundamental as time stayed with me. The experience remains near, like a seed that floats up to the surface of water, bobbing in and out of sight, reappearing when I look for it.
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Maybe the “this is fine” dog lives to tell the tale of their neighbors running toward the burning house, banging on the door, yelling, “No, this is NOT fine!” over and over until the force of their bodies and voices break the door open, and the dog is carried by many hands to the street where countless others have been pulled from their burning structures, looking around in complete bewilderment like Neo when he first wakes up in the Matrix—drowning in what is supposed to keep him “alive” before violently tumbling down a chute in a nightmarish rebirth—because it is jarring and shocking and difficult to break free from the frameworks that have kept us down, frameworks that are so alienated from the realities of life yet so invisibly embedded and extricably intertwined with our everyday lives.
If we are all that dog, then we all need to learn how to live again—this time, without the constantly burning fires, without needing to pretend everything is “fine,” without the systems that run on fear and prop up cisheteropatriarchy. And we must do it together, as neighbors, as kin, because in the end, we are all we have. No one is coming to save us but ourselves.
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My conclusion, this time around, is that Queeries is a long-form, textual version of community, written in words that get sent directly to your inbox, but ever evolving—just as I am, just as you are. It’s been a call-and-response through surveys; it’s been an aggregator of events, happenings, and resources. It can be many things at once, and over time. It may take the shape of the container in which I hold it.
Sometimes, words are the only things holding me together. And in times like now, maybe my words can provide respite.
I find myself itching to call Queeries anything but a newsletter. What I’m sharing is not news. There are other, more factual, nuanced, credible sources for news, or for analyses of current events. What I’m sharing are, in my mind, connections—emotional entanglements, impulse thoughts, little things I’ve carried with me and turned over in my mind so many times the thoughts become polished stones. I’m opening a container of my time and offering you a look.
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Thank you for reading this, and pondering some queeries with me. It would not exist without you.
I hope these words inspire in some way, shape, or form.
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Until next time,
A.L.
