... One last post from Splendor Buttons :):

She's dead, but lives in me. I have become the Zine

Alright, I have to be honest. I’ve been hesitant about publishing this post. It’s been hanging in the back of my mind for almost two years. I’ve been trying to write it for months. There’s something I’ve been yearning to articulate about this project, Splendor Buttons, which, if you happen to remember or care, is the zine I started in March 2020 that has been left hanging in the wind.

The funny thing is, I know I haven’t left anyone hanging with the lack of output for this project, except for myself. As I’ve been processing letting go of this container to make space for something new, I’ve felt Splendor Buttons is deserving of a proper sealing closed, even though it’s kind of been half-shut for a while.

Publishing this essay acts as a seal. But it’s more so of a confession. A confession of the dreams I hoped might find wind beneath Splendor Buttons’ wings, and how those wings were clipped by the shortcomings of my own longings.

Splendor Buttons was born during the first week of quarantine, March 2020.

I started it with the mission to write about fashion and pop culture through a critical lens, and intended to publish an annual zine around a central theme with contributions from friends and collaborators from around the world. It was going to be My Big Project every year, and I would release them on a routine schedule and never get overwhelmed or side tracked by trying to make a living, heal from heartbreak, build community, and get my art career off the ground in a way that felt tangible and “successful”.

The title came from reverence to Gertrude Stein, an American writer who had lived in Paris, just like I was at the time. Splendor Buttons wasn’t going to be sparse minimalist poetry; Splendor Buttons was going to draw from the Steinian act of noticing, of taking the most mundane (bathing) to the fabulous (pop stars), and elevating it all by obsessive attention, as she did in her work Tender Buttons. Splendor Buttons was going to be the culmination of my galaxy brain, the dispersion of the ordinary into the extraordinary, the kaleidoscope of multitudes to talk about everything everywhere all at once

By no, why stop there? Splendor Buttons was going to be Gertrude Stein Reincarnate in Zine Form. Gertrude Stein Reincarnate in Zine Form was going to have thousands of Instagram followers, hundreds of entries to sort through for each upcoming issue, and eventually a podcast where I talk to other people about… oh I don’t know… something in between pop culture brain rot and Barthes Camera Lucida? I had five zines mapped out, but only two of them actually exist in our current corporeal reality — the other three are lost to the ether, which also means they are on their way to becoming something else.

But of course, Splendor Buttons never came to this culmination. Splendor Buttons has remained small, underground, and deeply personal. If you’re reading this newsletter, you are part of a very niche audience (cool?). But in all honesty and vulnerability, how small Splendor Buttons has stayed is something I have had to grieve. The lack of what Splendor Buttons has not become — and more so, who I have not become with it — has punctured straight into my wound of not being enough, and more deeply, being unworthy of creating compelling work that is so good it cannot not pick up, it cannot not reach a wider, eager audience.

I’ve been sitting with this weird mixture of grief and hope for a couple of years, because the original intention was always to have a container to write critically about culture. I still resonate with that, and I still want and plan to do that. But I have learned that I have to let go of this container — as both a print and digital publication — in order to move forward with the greater dream.

Around the time the second zine was sent to the printers, I also started this newsletter as digital output of Splendor Buttons. I wanted to challenge myself to write more frequently, which is a good practice, isn’t? I wanted to let go of the need for polish, which is great to encourage process-based work, but it can get confusing when you are aiming for excellence. I wanted to write critical essays with my latest and extremely clever hot takes on culture, all while brilliantly weaving in personal insights into my life, story, artistic process, and obsessions.

I congratulate all the Substack writers who are able to whip up an essay a week for their vast readerships, but I also feel skeptical of it too. I care about outputting writing that is concise, edited, and in good form, and I know that if I force myself to write as quickly as one could consume, I will produce poor quality work. The kind of writing I had originally imagined might fall into the Splendor Buttons container — the critical pop theory analysis mixed with memoir — asks something of me that I cannot polish up in a week, month, or even a year. I am currently in the very early process of writing something of this pop/memoir texture, and it is in such tender stages that to imagine churning out this piece of writing in bits and pieces for a newsletter, or on a “tight schedule” I created for my zine (??) , feels counter-productive and not in service to the process of the work.

This is all confirmed by the fact that I first sat down to write this essay in December of 2024, and it’s taken me the last seven months to find the words I truly want to say. I’ve tried not to feel too bad about this, and find some comfort in what Fran Lebowitz once said: “I write so slowly I could write in my own blood without hurting myself”.

I have been thinking a lot about function, particularly as an element in artistic creation. What is the function of a newsletter? The more I simmer on this, the more I realize that the function of my newsletter cannot be a space to hold my most thoughtful writing, but a quick place to keep in touch on the most recent up-to-dates, offerings, and such. I think Substack is a great platform for this, and so I plan to continue to use it for this purpose. (More at the end).

Zine-wise, part of my mind-fuck has also been this: if I’m going to spend years writing something, wouldn’t I want to, like… submit it to a publisher so there’s more than 100 copies of it floating around in the world?

The part that is talking here is the part that wants my voice to be heard by more people. The part that believes I really do have something to say in the world. The part that says I am worthy publishing a book. That I am deserving of expanding what my idea of success for myself might be. And here is where this part — who is a believer in self-publication and doing things grassroots-style — meets the part that yearns for recognition by a wider audience, or even, dare I say it, by The Institution.

The ironic thing here is that I set out to make a zine. A zine! A tender little thing that is intended to be raw, unpolished, and most importantly, non-commodifiable.

Again, back to function. What is the function of a zine? Zines originally functioned as a way to democratize information and generate community in a post-war pre-internet punk scene. Riot grrrls took them over in the 1990s, and zines functioned as a medium to empower young women to start producing their own work. They functioned as spaces for girls to engage with the music and the art they loved. This speaks to me deeply.

And, yet, times are different. We have the internet. We have brain rot. We have algorithms. We have online fandoms. We have spaces like Substack. What’s the function of a zine anymore?

I want to believe that zines can still place for obscure obsessions to be celebrated and niche-of-the-niches to find a home. They can be short, silly, serious. They can also be personal, political, poetic. Zines can host sketches, manifestos, deep dives. They are inherently communal, participatory, and versatile. Zines can be a place to hold something you have always wanted to say, but haven’t yet.

And this is why I started Splendor Buttons in my bedroom on a March day in 2020. I felt something I wanted to say bottled up in my throat. I needed an outlet, and so in the lineage of the riot grrrls, I made the zine. The process was full of flow and magic. I felt a release, but also an anticipation. I saw the potential for Gertrude Stein Reincarnate in Zine Form. But that’s where the magic was lost. I became so focused on the product that I not only lost track of the spirit of delight and play Splendor Buttons began in, but I lost the heart of the rough-around-the-edges lineage all zines are born into. In other words, I lost the Splendor for the sake of the Button.

Some favorite spreads from Issue No. 2: The Dancing Issue.

I write from the table in my apartment five years on — still so much I want to say, and still feeling like I’ve said so very little of what I could, or what I have the potential to. My life and goals and dreams and interests and process have evolved into a place I couldn’t have pointed to five years ago. I am overall better, more healed, more regulated, more filled with love and ready to give it. I know myself more. I know my shortcomings, and I also know my strengths.

What was the function of Splendor Buttons? The function was to be a container to hold not just something, but everything I have ever wanted to say but hadn’t yet. But that function proved to heavy for her to hold. And so I’ve had to put the the everything-I-want-to-say-but-haven’t-yet somewhere else. It’s not a stacked list I am able to tick off. It’s more of a pool of dreams and ideas that will continue to change, to move, to flow.

And there is a great impossibility to it too. Will I ever be able to say everything I truly want to say? Will I ever want to? As much as I want to give myself space for what must be said, I want to leave room for the unsaid to swim freely in this pool of ideas. Even if they are frightening creatures, I will be curious. I will find the magic in the unknown and unnamed. I will seek the language of the water. I will drink it and let it rush down my throat, clearing out the knot. I will sing. I will bet on my pen becoming a fountain. I will devote myself to the dance of the formless longing for form, and the form longing for the formless.¹

And so I release Splendor Buttons into the formless. But in doing so, the form — the zine — looks for a new home. I welcome her in. This ethos of making something from nothing. The discipline of writing, the devotion to art. The spirit of the punks and riot grrrls who photocopied their manifestos on bi-folds. The heart of the simple-silly-serious-poetic-personal-political-raw-unpolished-tender-splendor-button.

I become the form, and by doing so, I embody function. Everything I have ever wanted to say still lives inside of me. It is right here. Right here.

I am both the Splendor and the Button. I have become the Zine. I pray Gertrude, wherever she is, looks down on me with some tenderness.

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What’s next? 🦋

I started a *brand new newsletter*. The function will be to communicate updates on classes, workshops, offerings, art stuff, performances, retreats, and other cool happenings. You’ll also get poetry, playlists, musings about embodiment, yoga, artistic practice, and my current faves at the moment.

If you are subscribed to this list, you have been automatically subscribed to the new one. AND! You should have received the first email in your inbox a few weeks ago :) Check for an email from Kat Freya (the name I’m using professionally now). See you there! ❤️‍🔥

1. The Radiance Sutras.