Hey Feelers, what’s up? It’s been sparse around these parts and I’m sorry about that. I just passed a year at my job and I’m doing well and I feel like there’s finally room enough in my brain to get started over here again. It was nice to take a break and realize that nothing really happens - you just give yourself some grace; a year goes quickly, especially when it’s punctuated with a few Big Life changes, and the thing you love is always waiting for you like some perfect angel dog.
In my absence, I was, of course, always thinking about Feelings, Inc. There’s more to do here, but I wasn’t sure what, and I was too busy mainlining everything business, marketing, and sales to daydream about it. So I’ve been daydreaming more recently and reliably, the ideas have been forming.
I love people and I love their stories. I love their pain and the ways they have grown around and bigger than their pain. People are so beautiful, and I’ve been privileged to meet and become friends with some seriously special people. I love the memories that we share, I love the substance of their being. I cherish moments spent together and rewatch them like a VHS on the screen of my eyelids, feeling for all of the nuances and pleasure remembered therein. I’m a sucker for nostalgia and a keeper of memory and I want to share those people, stories, and feelings, with you, Feelers. That’s really giving Feelings Incorporated, am I right?
I’m going to do this in a few ways. First, my very beautiful friend Tyler, a fellow writer and artist, and I showcase our email penpal friendship with a new feature called The Weather.
Additionally, and what is to be one of the cornerstones of Feelings, Inc., are the interviews, or conversations, really - featuring people that I know and love in my life. They won’t be entirely freeform - I’ll be providing bowling alley bumpers along the contours of the conversation to ensure a meaningful path. I’m aiming to feature the video interview in the future if you’d like to watch it.
Enough with the introduction! I’m pleased to present the first installment of The Weather - a living, breathing, eternal e-mail thread with artist Tyler Hoffart. Every Sunday. Or nearly every Sunday.
Tyler Hoffart
Jan 31, 2024, 8:53 PM
to me
Hanna,
I'm so tired I could fart twinkle twinkle little star. I'd say that's pretty tired. Anyway I just said fuck it let's get this thing goin already.
So here we are.
Questions (pick at least one)
Is it possible for a horse to love an elephant? Please provide evidence.
If you could change the color of the sky what would you go with and why?
How do you fix a broken heart?
- t
Hanna Waters
Sun, Feb 11, 10:30 AM
to Tyler
Tyler,
I am late, but depending on how you look at it, I could be early or right on the nose out of the context of linear time. Working a weird corporate job while trying to be an animal that scratches around and thinks about words often proves too much for the animal that I am.
2. Never really thought about changing the color of the sky, except when I strap a pair of rose or piss-colored glasses to my face, or eat a few mushroom caps, and everything goes kaleidoscope. That wide expanse of blue has oriented me and every other thing upright and sound in this world for as far as can be remembered. Given that, as humans, we've given context and meaning to colors, I fear any other color would elicit low or high levels of internal conflict and anxiety - orange and yellow and red speak of dust storms, nuclear fallout, environmental collapse; a green sky might be noxious; a purple sky might make everyone who didn't like Prince (fucking losers) feel a type of way, a white sky, like the unending parameters of an excel sheet, would probably trigger mass suicide. A bible-black sky? The kind that's monologued about in Our Town? Just go to Alaska, or Finland, or Svalbard and sink into that good night. It will eat you, and I think that's the draw. No, I'm afraid I am a sky purist--wash over me, take me under, give me shelter in the blue - it really is so blue sometimes - isn't it?
I wrote about the Minnesota sky once - I loved Minnesota, but was about as raw and feral and vulnerable as an abandoned fledgling. It was hard.
Winter Song
The sky looks like Minnesota
In the morning or the early evening
feeble February blue.
There is not a paler palette.
The sun gives nothing of its heat. Not all
doldrum day. Bitter bitter, from rise to set.
Mornings without promise. Prelude to the heaviest snow.
Always warm before the storm. Except
when it’s catatonic cold. I do not miss you, Midwest,
but here you are, candling the sky with weak light.
A memory measured in temperatures.
My hands have never been so warm.
Questions:
1. Have you ever seen an angel?
2. What does God look like?
3. Have you ever had a moment where you thought I could die right now and be so fucking happy. What did the moment look like? And the moment after?
-HW
Hanna Waters <hannamwaters@gmail.com>
Sun, Feb 11, 7:44 PM
to Tyler
Also, would you be open to me running our stuff back and forth to each other as a feature on my substack? We could call it something cool. Make book eventually.
Whatcha think ?
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