Dear Friends,

How are you on this first Monday of the summer? I hope well and even better.

I'm missing having guests at la Salle A Manger (SAM), imbuing the space with their conversations, laughs, pleasures, dreams, smiles, hungers and much more...

So this week, I invited for our Monday "rendez-vous" a sunny and solar, bright and radiant guest. Last February, for their residency at The Invisible Dog, we were sharing a meal at SAM with their marvelous friends, "tirant des plans sur la comète*" as we say in French.

But the stars decided some other way.

When today's guest stays over at SAM, my favorite moment is to prepare them a breakfast.

ALOK, thank you for sharing your words and feelings for everyone's breakfast today. Please welcome a marvelous artist, a phenomenal advocate and a dear friend.

Pridely yours,

Lucien Zayan
Director

*literally "to pull plans into the comet", pipes dreams my dictionary and lover say.

ALOK (standing, second from the right) with their friends at la Salle A Manger dinner, part of their residency at The Invisible Dog in February 2020. — ALOK (standing, second from the right) with their friends at la Salle A Manger dinner, part of their residency at The Invisible Dog in February 2020.

Dear Friends,

My name is ALOK ! I am an artist! I have a lot of feelings!

Thank you Lucien for inviting me to curate this week's ID letter! Happy Pride! #BlackTransLivesMatter!

It's my birthday next week and I've been thinking a lot about time, aging, becoming. I wanted to share a short piece by Ross Gay, one of my favorite writers.

"GROWN"

I suspect it is simply a feature of being an adult, what I will call being grown, or a grown person, to have endured some variety of thorough emotional turmoil, to have made your way to the brink, and, if you're lucky, to have stepped back from it -- if not permanently, then for some time, or time to time. Then it is, too, a kind of grownness by which I see three squares of light on my wall, the shadow of a tree trembling in two of them, and hear the train going by and feel no panic or despair, feel no sense of condemnation or doom or horrible alignment, but simply observe the signs -- light and song -- for what they are -- light and song. And, knowing what I have felt before, and might feel again, feel a sense of relief, which is cousin to, or rather, water to, delight."

I turned to Gay's work during quarantine because he teaches us how to notice the beauty, the glamor, the dignity of everything around us. There is so much around us teeming with life, possibility, poetry—even in what at first glance comes across as stillness. That even amidst profound despair, there can still be glimmer of delight. Gay reminds us about the distinction between "happiness" (dependent on external conditions) and "joy" (an internal, unshakeable orientation to the world). I have been trying my best to cultivate joy, which—I'm learning—is often about surrender.

Here are some things I've been reading and thinking about that you might appreciate:

The Subway Book Review published a list of Black-owned book stores across the world for us to support. Maybe get some Ross Gay from there?
My friend Joshua Allen wrote a powerful essay on why organizers are centering Black Trans Lives right now
Black feminist abolitionist Mariame Kaba wrote a particularly helpful op-ed on abolishing policing. Her work sparks joy!

Growing,

ALOK

OTHER UPDATES

Pride Music Video Festival is commissioned by The Invisible Dog and curated & produced by Raja Feather Kelly
10 artists - 10 videos - 10 world premieres
New music videos and interviews released each weekend of June
Support us to commission more LGTBQIIAP artists, donate now

Week 3
"We are in history, truly. We've been waiting for this, we did not even know we've been preparing for this."
Una Aya Osato, creator of You Had Me at NY
“Mother Nature and the Goddess make us look at yourself, where you are, who you are, what you are doing and what that is meaning to society.”
Garrett Allen, creator of Untitled (Pride)

"My death may be more likely to be caused by my own hand".
x, creator of Parts 4, 5 and a little bit of 6

Week 2
Brian Gonzalez, creator of The Fire Next Time

"We are all finding ways to enact and support a social revolution."
Kevin Shotwell, creator of Stonewall Barbie
"What white people are experiencing is shame, and shame is the direct opposite of pride."
Becca Blackwell, creator of My Body Had aThought / My Mind Complicated It

Week 1
Superficiel by 2Fik
Pink Narcissist by Jack Murphy
@justiceforgeorgesnyc Instagram account
centralizes information and updates on protests in NYC