#15 “Close to the Knives“ by Cami Stanley

This summer I have been reading David Wojnarowicz. My playlist is inspired by his collection of essays, Close to the Knives. I think it’s best to hear it verbatim:

I carry silence like a blood-filled egg, ready to drop into someone’s hands. When I was small and it would rain I thought it rained all over the world, but I don’t think so anymore. Riding out here over the dirt roads, the day opened like a kid falling into sunlight; sprawling out on a green lawn tasting milk on his lips. Right this minute I could tip right down into the deep of that canyon, jump from rock to rock effortlessly, thinking bird thoughts weightless like death. Smack my face against that tree, like the bird against the front of my car. The hot sun as my witness: blind sun, blind me, blond bones, bleeding hills— put thistles and mud on the wounds, roll in the dust like a coydog, scream into those anthills, run fast without looking, close those eyes, shut those curtains, high sun, high strung, big snakes in the road, big desert, big sky, clouds zoom by…

This playlist is an attempt to channel the feeling in his work: being haunted, feeling hatred, sex and street life, drugs, death, the bigotry of unrepresentative politics.

Cami Stanley (@teenwitchxx) is a neuroscience graduate currently living on the east coast. She is very passionate about purple yam dumplings and kicking it with her parents in Ottawa, ON.

Cami Recommends:

Reading Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration by David Wojnarowicz
Submitting to Found Magazine
Straight 8 Filmmaking Competitions
Supporting your local library!