Cross Pollination

The email inbox for Awkward Magazine tends, for the most part, to stay relatively static. I get the odd email from industrious artist friends like Carl Gent and Ian Pons Jewell about their exciting new projects and exhibitions, as well the occasional bona fide submission for the zine, but for the most part the communicative landscape remains fairly barren. I have to admit that I rather like it this way, for instance I'm yet to receive one electronic prank call telling me that my bank account has been awarded 7 Million Pounds, a transaction that simply requires an email reply containing the actual details of said account, plus full name, home address and birthdate for completion. The relative inactivity of the account also means that all and any correspondences are met with full care and attention, which makes events like today's all the more joyful.

I received an email this morning containing one simple question; had I heard of AWKWARD: A Detour by Mary Cappello???

I hadn't, but a quick look at the author's website made me glad that I now had.

If you're interested, have a look for yourself at www.awkwardness.org

While admittedly this fanzine's content bears only an abstracted relation to its title, the eloquence Mary Cappello is using to relate her chosen subject can only help to bolster the understanding of what it is that we - Awkward Magazine - are trying to do here. I mean, Awkward (the zine) could have gone in lots of different ways. It could quite easily have turned into a comedy routine; a juxtapositional exercise in the jolt of incongruous collage; an account of its various authors' most self-conscious moments. What I happily think that it has actually become is something far harder to categorize, something like a collection of works that each don't quite fit, but are fitted, together, in some sheets of paper, and delivered to your door, for a reason that none of the involved parties quite understand in its entirety. It's this edge of understanding and comfort that I guess is the most important thing as far as Awkward is concerned. I get the impression that Mary Cappello's effort is something of a tidier, more eloquent, professional affair, being a series of memoirs and historical layers, you know, like a real proper book like wat an aktual orfar as rit, but envy aside, I really hope that there is some kinship somewhere in there somewhere between the two namesakes. 

(You'll notice that I've tried to write this post as if I know how to use language like an adult. This is of course in case she reads it. Think I've pulled it off?)

Anyway, in order to reestablish the status quo here, I think it's time for this week's youtube hit.

Ha!