My 2024 In Weird Art
The year of our lord 2024 has turned out to be incredibly challenging on a number of personal and professional levels — most notably, I was laid off from my job at iHeartRadio in the fall after spending the previous two years helping to organize the iHeart Podcast Union and bargaining for our first contract (ratified in June!) But regardless of that considerable setback, it was a productive year full of creative work. I was scrolling through my social media going back to January to take stock of my work and kept finding things I had completely forgotten I had done! So if I might indulge, I’m sharing in roughly chronological order my year as a writer, musician, podcaster, and general weird gremlin in the Atlanta arts.
My winter and spring were spent alternately woodshedding in my bedroom and sitting in on rehearsals for Burning Bones Physical Theatre’s production of Small Mouth Sounds. Artistic director Frankie Mulinix tapped me to write the score for this show which expanded Bess Wohl’s play to include a number of butoh dance pieces. Read about it in ArtsATL.
I had previously done live scoring for theatre and for Burning Bones itself, but I had never taken on a fully fleshed-out, recorded soundtrack, and this really forced me to stretch my limits as a musician and an engineer.
My bestie, Nicholas Tecosky, has produced at this point hours and hours of fiction podcasts, inviting writers to contribute work to create these moody and intricate anthologies. The concept for The Passage was to take on the perspective of a figure from American history as they are ferried to the afterlife by the Grim Reaper (here portrayed by Dan Fogler of The Walking Dead). For my episode, I wanted to give perennial cautionary tale Kitty Genovese some dignity.
This spring I was privileged to help launch But We Loved, a podcast focused on telling first-hand stories of queer history. Hosted by Jordan Gonsalves, we put voices to a wide spectrum of LGBTQIA+ issues, always with a message that through the struggles we have faced throughout the decades, we have always found space for hope, humanity, and love.
The Atlanta Film Festival has been running for almost 50 years, so to be invited to take part is quite something, especially if you are a scrappy, shouty live literary series. This year I not only got to moderate a panel on the role of podcasting in TV and film, but also performed in a Write Club exhibition show in the beautiful art deco Plaza Theater.
Body Horror and the Single Girl
Thrashing through dysphoria and suicidal ideation
mykaljune.medium.com
It had been a while since I had banged on a guitar onstage at the EARL, so getting to do that alongside about twenty other musicians with Claire Lodge/Academy of Staring Daggers was so much fun.
I’m an over-sharer by nature, so after years of engineering recordings for Story Collider, I finally volunteered to get up and tell a story of my own. This storytelling series and accompanying podcast focuses on the place of science in our everyday lives. Seeing as how I am conducting a laboratory experiment on my own body (read: going through hormone replacement therapy), I figured what the hell.
This year the little show I help run turned 14. And Atlanta Magazine gave us some space in its pages to wish us a happy birthday.
My friend Kit co-hosts this amazing variety show called Monster Show for Monsters and so of course I wanted in. This particular month there were burlesque performers, a musical number performed as Mothra, and a puppeteer who was joined by dozens of audience members with sock puppets performing “Fish Heads.” Somewhere in all of that, I got myself looking slightly demonic and played a couple of songs.
The folks at the Public Radio Exchange reached out to me, of all people, to ask if I could sit in at the PRX Podcast Summit to mentor the creatives in attendance. Who am I to say no?
I absolutely adore my friend Gina Rickicki, and they way she approaches all creative endeavors with a giant wide-open heart. Joy Deficit is part variety show, part pep rally, part primal scream therapy, and it’s simply fun as hell. I got myself dolled up and got onstage to give advice on growing tits and loving your friends.
“Girl, you have got to get your mind off dating for two seconds,” my friend Sally lovingly scolded me. “Maybe throw yourself into a project.” FINE. I did just that and make this album of cover songs
Existing in the writing and performance space in Atlanta for so many years, there are a number of people who you get to be friendly with even though you might only bump into one another at shows. So when Shannon Turner invited me onto her conversation series “Tea & Jam w/ Me” I was eager to actually have an in-depth conversation with and really get to know someone who I’ve been friends with for years. It was lovely!
My friend Kacie Lauders invited me onto her show Could Be Pretty Cool News to share my perspectives as a writer and performer in the South, juxtaposing my weird ass with the auspices of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment. Pretty cool!
And finally 2024 has a beautiful symmetry to it — I began with Burning Bones and I rang out the year with them as well. Frankie Mulinix had been dreaming up “Hysteria” for years — a meditation on mental health through movement, sound, and poetry. And when they needed a poet, I got a phone call. I composed a number of new works for the show and created textured electric guitar pieces to accompany them. Read the review on ArtsATL.
But the piece I am perhaps most proud of is a poem called “fa**ot.” It is meant specifically to make straight people feel bad. Content warnings for language, slurs, and description of hate crimes.
That’s a lot of stuff. Here’s to a 2025 spent making even more weird art with friends.
