good morning, happy valentines day,
just wanted to start this off by gushing about how there’s so much beautiful music out right now, so many cool shows to be excited by, so much to fall in love with, we love you
in other news, congrats on being in the first 500 subscribers of gunk, you deserve a kiss on the cheek. when we’re 1million we wont forget you
SAWYER
by Alexa Penn
There is a smell that I love. It has notes of cedar and home-made chicken stock boiling on an old stove. It’s aromatic like love letters dated way before my time. These daily exchanges were each signed with “1000 kussë”. These kisses would eventually evolve into me.
We all have a scent that airs familiarity and warmth. It always surprises me when the body perceives an external stimulus to provoke a memory.
I have many memories induced by this fragrance. If I could bottle it up and place this scent on all of my pulse points I would. I would spray it on my chest where my heart strings background music for my friends or behind my knees that aid daily strolls to the bodega. I would lather my neck in my grandparents’ home with the hope that its aroma will lead to kisses of my own.
Maybe it’s selfish to want to bottle up the past. I think it’s because I want my own life to be immortalized by others through sense. How do we cope with life without wondering if the memory of us will even last?
The house on Sawyer street smells of high ceilings and large windows that look out into a bright yard full of California’s greenery. New neighbors behind the yard built a second story blocking the view of Los Angeles. The house was never modernized, which I am grateful for. I don’t even know what that means, but I appreciate the mid-century orange leather chair that rests in the bar. My grandparents did not drink, though they loved to entertain. The house smells of dinner parties with their friends and jewish holidays with my family.
Sawyer smells like an era I crave. In my mother’s childhood bedroom, the walls are covered with 1960’s floral wallpaper. It has started to peel, probably from my indulgence. I am thinking of cutting down a piece so that I can reprint it and plaster it onto my walls one day.
I was never allowed to play in the living room because the carpet was inconveniently white. Still, the house smells like a little red box that rested on a side table there. A locked grandfather clock stands tall in the entryway. I would take the key from it and tip toe my way to the little red box where I would hide it. The house smells like this secret.
If I ever have a child, I hope to name them Sawyer. If I hold onto the smell long enough, maybe their scent will remind me of my childhood. The Polish and Austrian accents that were doused in both firmness and tender love.
Once the house sells, my mother said she’ll never drive by. This is how personal memory is to each of us. I will drive down Sawyer every time I come home to visit. All of the windows will be down and I will breathe in the air that is left. I am naive to think that whoever buys the house won’t knock it down.
Even if they do, Sawyer will find its way back to me — through the smells of the red box that now sits in my Brooklyn apartment and my grandmother’s Viennese cookbook where pages are bookmarked by powdered sugar and oil stains or through time passing by the sound of a ticking clock.
shows we’re excited about this week and shows that missed our feb deadline:
Feb 16 Lily Seabird x Renny Conti x Precious Human x Greg Freeman at Baby’s all right
Feb 17 Kolezanka, Frances Chang, Poise (solo) at Bar Sundown
Feb 17 Avery Friedman, Sophie Rose Anger, Lucy Spacehead // Crown Heights house show (email GUNK for address)
Feb 17 Work Wear x Nico Hedley x Jackie West at the Broadway
Feb 20 The Big Net x Lena Bartels x Izzy Oram Brown at the Broadway
Feb 20 Christelle Bofale + hemlock + dorée + mariah houston // Cobble Hill house show (msg @hemlocksounds for address or email GUNK) (this show is mask required + provided) ** and i am personally very excited (-cc)
Feb 21 Karl Blau x Claire Ozmun x more eaze at Jalopy Theater
Feb 23 MER, Vonnie Whatever, and Awksymoron at Brooklyn Made
Feb 25 The Answers In Between (Hannah Jocelyn) at Rockwood Music Hall
Feb 27 Maya Kerin x Denise x Carmen Quill
check out the newest comic zine in town made by local musicians and friends, email grabontodust@gmail.com or message them on IG to scoop one (comes with feb gunk!)
We are still looking for writers for features or prose or show reviews, photographers, distributors. You know what to do (email thegunkyard@gmail.com)
& keep listening to micah’s anti indie rock feb playlist, and then our indie rock editor playlist, too:
thanks for reading, have a sweet day <3
ceci and hannah
*cover photo is elijah wolf and sam weisenthal at the ridgewood tenants union march*
*GUNK is still donating to Anera and Palestinian Youth Movement through our Comp for Palestine, also, send esims to Gaza*
Really gorgeous stuff, had me thinking of this box that used to be in my grandmother's apartment...it holds garish costume jewelry and her scent, a floral powdery cloud that makes her briefly present.
so beautiful <3