I still haven’t gotten over Yoko Ono’s 2007 album, Yes, I’m A Witch. The iconic cover with her wearing her iconic Porsche sunnies, iconic atop iconic squared forever. Infinity icon. The album is an Aquarius, born on February 6th, just like Yoko is an Aquarius, born on February 18th, just like I’m an Aquarius, born on the exact same day, can you even? What an honor.
I’m typing this from a Hyatt in Yonkers, NY, a hotel that is sort of in the midst of a mall, an outdoor-type-mall that is very common where I live in southern California, but less seen out here in whatever region this is - feels like New England. Is the Hudson Valley New England? When I look out my window I see a Target and an Ulta and something called Suzette’s Lingerie. There is a chicken finger joint around the corner called Sticky’s, and two nights ago my man and I made our way over to The Olive Garden because it seemed, I don’t know, safest? Though I have heard great things about Sticky’s. I am here because Sarah Lawrence college has kindly brought me out to speak and teach and read. Yesterday dyring my craft talk I found myself quoting from Yes I’m A Witch during the Q+A that followed, when someone asked about ‘staying small.’ I had talked about the desire to stay small in friction with the desire to get things, have shit, make money. Bless you for your greed / It’s a sign of great capacity, Yoko sings/speaks/prays on our behalf in the beautiful song/ritual Revelations, a collaboration with Cat Power. It’s one of my favorite pieces of art. In it, Yoko blesses all the parts of our ego 12-step programs call character defects, and blesses them, claims the good in them, calls out the assest behind the flaw. At the very end she offers a remedy, prescriptive meditations to manifest the nobler qualities you yearn for behind your messier ways. Yes, she’s a witch.
I am, too. My new book, Modern Magic: Stories, Rituals and Spells for Contemporary Witches comes out SO SOON - October 1st! I have some California events planned: If you’re in Los Angeles, come see me talk about sex + magic Carley Sciortino aka Carley Slutever at Skylight books on October 2nd, AND/OR come see me enact some of the books’s spells and divination techniques on the audience at Rubyfruit on October 17th at my Full Moon Party. I’m also in a big, witchy lineup at San Francisco’s LitQuake at The Lost Church on October 13th.
The book is essays, spells. divination techniques, rituals and illustations from Amanda Verwey, whose incredible art you can find in my books Modern Tarot (she did the deck!) as well as the second installment of my YA fantasy trilogy, Girl at the Bottom of the Sea. Her art is both pretty and really off-kilter; the people are sort of beautiful and sort of goofy. The DIY vibe riffs on Amanda’s history doing ‘zines and diary comics. I really love her work, and when her batch of illustrations came in it amped up my excitement about the book a hundred fold.
Anyways, amidst my writings about breathwork and being a solo practitioner and, like, what we are even doing when we engage in magic-making, there are little tidbits and spells in honor of various witchy people through time. I crafted a protection spell that is actually a party (a party that is actually a spell?) in honor of medieval partygirl Helena Scheuberin, a noblewoman who outsmarted the Catholic creep who went on to write the Malleus Maleficarum, aka, The Hammer of the Witches. I conjured a spell to bring you a familiar, dedicated to the first person brought to trial under the Witchcraft Act of 1562 - and her spotted white cat, Sathan. And, merging a memory of a really great Yoko Ono tote bag I once had and a party where I read people’s fortunes with kids’ toys a Yoko Ono Treasure Tote / divination bag.
The book is available for pre-order now, so if you think you’re going to pick it up, may I invite you to let the publisher know with one of these advance orders? Recently, as I was bemoaning how intense it is that publishers (I’m talking about the biggies) decide whether a book is a success or a failure (twin concepts I actually don’t believe in, btw) by the first week of sales, and someone in-the-know corrected me: it’s actually now by preorders that they issue their PASS or FAIL. Help Modern Magic be a ‘success’ by preordering! Can you even handle the things writers have to do? Like it’s not enough to write the book, we also have to beg you to buy it. Forgive me, readers. I’m just trying not to get fired over here. (Also, if you buy your books from DOPAMINE’s Bookshop.org page, the press gets a lil kickback!)
Come and say hello to me at my California events, and if you’d like me to come to your town let me know - especially if you are in the position to bring me, as these kind people at Sarah Lawrence have brought me. Farewell, I’m off to teach a workshop on writing weird and wild autofiction, using Paul Takes the Shape of a Mortal Girl and Nightbitch as inspo.
i love that yoko ono album! and everything she does 😍
Listened to that album all morning, thank you!