Come On Home
...to my new zine and my new website + yes I'm here
Hey there. For the folks keeping track at home, we just moved for the third time in three years. Yes, the situation was that bad. We are fine now.
Really, a lot has happened that you missed. I missed just as much from all of you in the meantime. Marriages, babies, moves, careers, solo shows…
Remember this post? Can you believe that everything has gotten worse since then? I still stand by all the points I raised. Instagram is still evil. Posting on there sucks. While I nearly got to the heart of it there, the actual reason why I needed to make that big cut-off became even more clear as the months continued with no rest. I was:
creatively burned out;
overwhelmed by the weight of responsibility;
chronically depressed;
resentful of the local scene for being so coy about its capitulations to Zionism;
actively being traumatized by my world; and
scared of perception and unsure of whether I would ever reemerge in the same capacity.
On one particularly bad night at our old place, with tears welling up as I hit the pillow, I pulled up my Notes app and started writing a poem. Since then, I have written several more. Many of them are about living in that two-family unit above our landlady who, to put it very simply, never really granted us “quiet enjoyment” per our lease. I compiled a few of them into a collection that has been complete (purchasable, even!) for a while.
Honestly? It’s taken me this long to post about it because, liberating as my lengthy period of online dormancy was, I wondered if it caused me to fade so deep into “irrelevance” that nobody would care to look if this came across their feeds.
But it is real. It’s called “Come On Home.”
The title is one that was rattling in my head for a while now, longer than most. I always thought it would be the name of my radio show when I got to college; I wanted to curate mixes of downtempo indie and slowcore tracks interspersed with melancholic free verse. I never did get an opportunity to fit the station into my schedule.
The song of the same name, by the German ambient techno group Lali Puna from their LP “Scary World Theory,” was one I discovered in high school. Released in 2001, the record was a foundational product of this era’s trip hop genre trend; a gentle portrait of looming paranoia written from the perspective of Korean immigrant and occasional full-time journalist Valerie Trebeljahr. Soft cradling beeps and sharp hi-hats punctuate matter-of-fact, almost spoken word lyrics depicting the constant malaise of media-induced panic in a fascist, post-capitalist society.
The final lyrics of “Come on Home”—and the album—follow:
The man on the plastic bag looks like terror
He’s staring at me
I can’t say why
His face seems spoiled
When I think of calling a friend
I notice that
Most of them have mutilated into acquaintances
Maybe, that’s my fault
Maybe, it’s a form of getting old
I’m used to small talk at the moment
And I thought I could relate to this as a 16-year-old. Nothing could have prepared me for what isolation would truly feel like. Typically, I pride myself on doing what is good and seeing the good in every individual. This past year nearly corroded my spirit. It made me angrier, sensitive, and so, so much more distrustful. Ironically, I felt like myself as a teen.
The mind and body snap back to old habits fast. After years of unlearning, I started viewing my world—my relationships especially—with an intense level of trepidation, burdened by secrets and concerned over whether any of the love I felt was genuine or deserved. Not hard to slip into when the neighborhood you were so excited to discover seems to have you on a watch list and stares daggers whenever you walk by. Eventually, I finally got the label bestowed upon me by my therapist: borderline personality disorder. Essentially, a chronic fear of abandonment and a constant identity crisis. It had been thrown around before, but I guess I needed someone to make me go “actually crazy” for it to register to myself and a mental health professional. Small town homeowners only ever think about themselves and their property, and not the consequences of defending their delusions.
I never wrote poems until now. I was so used to expressing myself through visual art, but in this situation, for the bandwidth I had, there was no way for me to paint about it. All I could do was spout out words. And I had published zines in the past, but of the more “professional” variety; my best friend Julia and I collaborated on a (for now) one-off liberatory literary mag called inVISIBLE in 2022. It was sleek, inviting, incredibly long, and deserved to be professionally bound on glossy material. A lifelong square posing as a punk, it took me this long to create a true, DIY, printer paper-folded zine. To understand the medium as a worthy means of communication and self-expression. To understand that a zine can carry as much weight as a massive framed portrait on a wall.
Penning this collection was instrumental to the beginning phase of my healing journey. Putting it into the world reminds me that, even when I question my every movement until I barely exist, I am still alive, physical, and valid in feeling. My hope is to reach other people whose homes feel broken even when they know in their hearts that they’re doing everything right. Power to the renters, the homeless, the queers, and the mentally ill forever.
You can buy a copy right now at Smush Gallery in Jersey City! They appeared to the public for the first time at the Jersey Art Book Fair in the beginning of May and I was tickled—albeit intimidated—to have it exist in the same room as so many publishers who have been at it for much longer than me.
Otherwise, for those who wish to view my work and purchase a PDF or printed edition directly from me, there’s a place for that…
Yeah! Remember when I also said I would update my website? I finally did it! I…well, you can read the screenshot, right? For accessibility purposes, it says:
pardon the mess! here we are now!
my squarespace site will be going down...soon. ianeking dot art is DEAD! i am so sick and tired of the sloppification of the internet that i am going old-school. i’m learning as i go; ty cowsites for making it easy!
my new web url is ianeking.cowsite.net. my new email address is ianeking.art@proton.me. my instagram and substack i am...pretty much sort of still on because the people need to be updated on my whereabouts (links below). enjoy what is here for now and look forward to what’s to come!
Yeah. I just wanted a plain old HTML website and to eventually migrate off Squarespace and Google. Need I elaborate more?
It is a work in progress, but a work in progress I don’t mind sharing for now. Bare minimum, you can see images of my art on it, which is more than I can say for my previous portfolio page. The idea is that you will be able to click on each photo tile to zoom in closer, read a short description, and (especially in the case of zines, stickers, prints, etc.) find prices. If you are interested in buying something, you can shoot me an email (or DM, or text, or however you want to reach me). Don’t ask me to set up Square or Stripe or whatever the hell else, do you really want to create more yellow tape for my anti-capitalist artistic practice?
And as for Instahell…it was in a story so I can’t quote it exactly, but this week Gold of Stelton Distro shared that they post updates from their business on there in service of more in-person engagement and engagement with real art, not to feed the algorithm. This is a good way of putting it. The reality is that, well, most of you aren’t going to quit the platform like I did for a while. Not even trying to sound high and mighty here, but also I sort of am. I will meet you where you are so that you see what I’m up to, but I challenge you to engage with my work and the work of all your artist friends on a more meaningful level than “liking” it. Subscribe to mailing lists, hire creatives, buy prints…
…right, buying! “Come On Home” is $5 for a digital print-at-home version and $7 for a mailed copy printed and folded with love here in Hudson County!
To be transparent with you, here are the next few personal things I am teeing up to announce:
The 2nd Annual Transmasc Day at the Beach in Asbury Park (it will be in August!)
An exhibition opening in Brooklyn in early June
More zine creations
Not necessarily a new thing, but I would like to state more explicitly to the public that yes, illustration and design commissions are open
For now, below is one piece from “Come On Home” that I am the most proud of. One that went through countless revisions and changed meanings so many times over the course of a few weeks, but now resonates as an apt metaphor for the tender, emotionally volatile love we shared in this apartment.
the summer of pigeons
the pigeons were a problem. they
left their shit everywhere, decreased
the property value. they saw
sunflowers blossoming in a
town nearby, and to the neighbors’
chagrin, dared to land right on in.
i could use them for a number
of analogies—for instance,
illustrating the state of the
epidemic of homelessness;
the standards of suburbanites;
that lonesome aching sensation—
but i want to write about us.
the pigeons used to gather in
a mutilated polycule:
one balanced on a single leg;
one whose speckles patched like droppings;
one distressed, plucking its feathers.
that one reminded me of you
in college: skinny, sad, lost cause.
i’m glad you dropped out and tracked me
up in the clouds and settled down
despite the hopelessness still there
though with more body to covet.
you hated to see the birds but
i’m beginning to miss them and
their broad, hulking mass. envying
how they occupy their space and
enjoy complete, total stillness:
for hours, at rest, on one leg.
could you imagine how it feels
to be an invasive species
in your own terrain? there’s no need
if you labor in crowded trees
and shoddily build your nest where
sticks could break like bones in a flash.
does putting our lives in terms of
nature—its cyclical essence—
make them appear beautiful?
like our window watcher’s plumage
deformed, extracted one by one
but united, regenerating.
damn the avian types i’ve known
that perched nearby only to jolt
the second i approached. i know
you never mean to be afraid.
but still there are some solutions;
cardboard boxes to catch the shit.