Loam Loves: January
Amirio Freeman on Scorpio Sounds & New Narratives
PHOTO BY AERAN SQUIRES
Loam Love is a new series within our Substack. Each month, we’ll share a curated missive from one of our contributors on some of the perspectives and projects that are shaping their current praxis.
We’re really excited to launch Loam Love today in collaboration with Loam co-conspirator Amirio Freeman! As the creator of the Down to Earth Deck—and the host of our Loam Listen Podcast—Amirio has been a cherished star within Loam’s constellation of creatives for many years.
Amirio is a “writer, interviewer, and Scorpio exploring the relationship between humans and our beyond-human kin through a Black, queer lens.” You can find his work in the current issue of It’s Freezing in LA!, and be sure to stay tuned this March for the launch of their PLANTCRAFT newsletter. It’s going to be GOOD.
WHAT I’M READING
“Models of progression, advancement, linearity and individuality — models, in short, of hierarchy and dominance — collapse under the weight of actual diversity. Life is soupy, mixed up and tumultuous.” This is one of the many, many lines I’ve hurriedly underlined, highlighted, and annotated while reading James Bridle’s Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence. I’m only halfway through this book, but I’ve experienced a range of emotions—hefty sadness, sheer delight, visceral discomfort—while diving into James’s threading of personal narrative, research, and lyric, exploring how being an Earthling is a relational experience, between humans, more-than-humans, and newer life forms such as artificial intelligence. Anchored in unpacking whose jurisdiction “intelligence” belongs under, James unravels the myths that make our world, and the unmaking is a thrill that reminds us to pay closer attention to our neighbors who make our existence possible.
WHAT I’M LISTENING TO
“Hold you closer, closer than those damn gloves / Kiss you longer, longer than a opera” Hot! Sexy! Sweaty! As a Scorpio, that’s the vibe I’m constantly craving, and serpentwithfeet’s “Damn Gloves” delivers it with this record—perfect for those moments when you need to be in your body, escaping the numbness that daily life too easily activates. Laptops off, asses on.
If you’re not already hip to serpentwithfeet’s music, please dig into their discography immediately. Always queer as hell, Black as fuck, and deeply embodied, ranging from the ecstatic to the erotic, serpentwithfeet’s catalog just scratches a particular itch every time. February 16, the release date for their newest album, can’t come soon enough.
WHAT I’M STILL PROCESSING
Around my 29th birthday last year, I persuaded my fiance to see some of artist Simone Leigh’s work at the Hirshhorn in Washington, DC—and I was stunned. By the beauty of the work. The imposition and authority of the work. The care for Black women, the love for Blackness. I keep thinking of one sculpture of a head, obscured and bejeweled by a towering structure of rosettes that remind me of coral or some other undersea creature. I’m reminded of a quote from Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s M Archive: After the End of the World: “The critical black marine biologists, scientists of the dark matter under fathoms, suggest that there may be a causal relationship between the bioluminescence in the ocean and the bones of the millions of transatlantic dead…. what the dark scientists are saying is that now that the bones are there as fine as sand, the marrow like coral to itself, the magnesium and calcium has infiltrated the systems of even the lowest filter-feeders. So any light that you find in the ocean right now cannot be separated from the stolen light of those we long for every morning.” Thank god for art!
WHAT I’M PRACTICING
As larger media institutions continue to be eroded or lend their power to uphold oppressive forces and egregious daily evils, I’ve been more committed to supporting indie print. I have so many favorites, including a few that I’ve been lucky enough to write for: Mother Tongue, Lux, The Baffler, Mold Magazine, It’s Freezing in LA!, Butt, The Funambulist, The Drift, Ecoes, Broccoli Magazine, Cake Zine, Are.na. Through subscription services like that offered by Stack, I’ve discovered new, inspiring artists and writers who are covering the most niche stories overlooked by more traditional outlets; breaking down and complicating tired, well-trodden narratives; and providing visibility for perspectives that continue to be pushed to the edges of our cultural discourses. If you want to browse IRL, I’d recommend purusing the indie magazines and artists’ books at Printed Matter in New York City. Fingers crossed I have the opportunity to get lost in Casa Magazines soon!
WHO I’M THINKING ALONGSIDE
As our kin in Gaza continue to be subject to genocide, I often find myself losing things: losing the right words to articulate my feelings and perspectives; losing a sense of how to continuously, meaningfully show up for Gazans in all areas of my life; losing clarity on how to make sense of my place within an empire that’s bankrolling the entire atrocity. The words of those connected and bearing witness to Gaza have been the compasses that’ve navigated me. The words of countless Gazans using social media to document their realities. The words of writers in America like Zeba Blay and Sarah Thankam Mathews, who constantly remind us of the necessity of our attention right now. Words from dear friends in our group chats and in-person huddles. Words from Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire. These words are the prayers I add to, for something better, anything but this.