The Weather is a living e-mail thread between artists Tyler Hoffart and Hanna Waters. Are you lost? Catch up here: Part 1: Introducing the Weather, Part 2: March 24, Part 3: March 30, Part 4: April 7.
Last week’s edition of The Weather introduced the big fuckin’ inline, where Tyler and Hanna, in addition to responding to the most recent e-mail, also go back in and build on each other’s work with inline responses. It’s apparent that the inline, or a continuous inline, will not work well on Substack. I can’t change font colors within the body text, it’s gonna get weird—but in the meantime… I’m going to post what we have. Had. Have. Who knows where this is gonna go? I don’t. Nice. That’s the point. Hope it makes sense! Maybe it won’t! Such is life! Thus far, it will be the response, followed by the inline. Godspeed!
Hanna Waters <hannamwaters@gmail.com>
Mar 23, 2024, 1:18 PM
to Tyler
Tyler,
I love a good inline response. Find my comments below in PURPLE [ed note: Tyler’s comments in BOLD, Hanna’s comments STRIKETHROUGH. Old and new, I’m sorry, I’m doing my best with this mess!] Together, we'll build some horribly beautiful frankensteined inline marked-up cluster fuck abomination about all of the holiest moments. It will be good and we can print it out and hang it on the wall and laugh and invite viewers to add to it and then maybe we'll meet God or something. You never know.
I may have seen that piece somewhere on IG but otherwise, it is fresh to me. It is most excellent. Do tell about the book? Unless it's hush-hush. Then you can whisper it on the wind and el nino might see it fit to bring it my way on the 'ol jet stream.
I have a few poems that have approached a Place of No Return. Your last bit about the Big Blood song and your "I am fucking obsessed and burnt out and dying and alive and oh my god I'm alive" made me think of this one poem that's sat like a stone in the recesses of my Notes app. Because it was meant to be about how fucking hard and nasty life can be but also how it's just so beautiful and all of the woe of the world can be lifted momentarily by the perfection of small, fleeting moments. I love how hard this life is. I love that it takes everything I have. It should. I should have nothing left to carry when I exit except a big-ass smile and a sense of humor.
I shared it with someone and they were like oh, no. That doesn't make sense. That's not something I would post. That's sum bullshit but, wanna help me with it? Wanna workshop in real-time?
-
It’s hard. It’s arriving as helpless as you leave, all wide-eyed, screaming and sipping virgin breaths or silent and deflating like bellows well worn. It’s hard. Some have shiny toolkits, soft pillows. Some are beaten and buried. Rare is a roadmap. I know— I patted my breast pocket one thousand times: it’s never there. It’s hard. Everyone you love is dying. Some are already dead. There are drugs and rivers and leaky hearts. You feel too young to be dressed for mourning. I don’t know who I am, you think, and the sky blisters overhead. It’s hard. But isn’t it strange? How a monarch can sway into the frame And the hard softens with the silent beating of wings How a star can fall and you can catch it if you’re careful, If you don’t blink. How a sky can erupt crimson and pink, Fade violet and umber before your open eyes. How a hand can reach down into the blackness Grab yours, tug upwards... And isn’t all good and beautiful? Sometimes I hold it so tightly that it jerks and slumps slack. I clench my teeth and they nearly explode before widening into a smile and I laugh and laugh and oh my God, isn’t everything good and beautiful?
-
I dunno, what do you think? Feels pretty hot damn pretty ass lifey to me. Maybe it's top-heavy.
-hw
[INLINE] On Fri, Mar 15, 2024 at 10:47 AM Tyler Hoffart <tylerstevenhoffart@gmail.com> wrote:
I have some thoughts below in your text in BLUE
Here's a list i wrote a while back (it's on my insta somewhere maybe you already seen it) and that I'm currently working on to be included in a potential book:
when your puppy pisses outside for the first time
when you meet a stranger who also knows your serpent by her first name.
when a tiny piece of light moves in an animal way.Yeah this forever. I was watching tiny worms of light shiver along my wall this morning.
when you take a chance and fail terrifically and realize everyone knows exactly what you mean when you don’t say anything at all but you have that look on your face that they see and they go oh-boy-oh-shit-oh-my-god-she’s-gunna-fucking-do-it.
when a dog curls next to you and there is no other curl in the world.
when the sun comes back, says whoa motherfucker take it easy, dont worry, hold on, I exist.
when you see the full moon at dusk and no matter how much you read and understand and guess at the math there is still a feeling you will never put into words.the ineffable always gonna ineff, huh? I looked through my blinds last night at the waxing moon and went all dumb and doe-eyed.when you remember to breathe and feel your body.
when nothing needs to be said but somehow you’re saying everything you’d ever have to say because someone really sees you, hears you, feels you, imagines you, stands with you.
when a thunderstorm begins on the prairie and you see from one end to the other.watching a storm move over the land - the inevitability, the growing power
when you finally get to pee after staying until the end.
when he picks you up, starts running, gives no impression of ever stopping.
when she puts you in a head lock.
when knowing comes through feeling.
when they have waffle fries on the menu.
when someone finally says spring is coming and looks you dead ass in the eye and you both know they’re actually fucking right thank sweet baby jesus in drag.
when the time comes.when you just know. when you just know, when it is revealed to you, when the wind lays down and drops the body. when I do the same.
when you’re truly here
then,
gone.ALSO some noobies:
the feeling i can almost get to when my catahoulas howl (a few times a day). they get right beside each other and unleash some kind of emotion that puts static in my beard. it's obvious that it is so important to their being and so i jump on in, cuz they are my babies, and i howl with them and we pull the world's heart into my bedroom. we sing for the sky. we burn for core of the moon. i'm pretty sure they understand something so thoroughly and completely with that howl. the sound of everything.
laughing at our chickens. each one is different. Inga, Agnes, Jono, Arvo, Big Bean, Lil Bean, Eunice, Eunice, Eunice. Eunice is my dead grandma who i never really liked and was mostly scared of and now she's back to fuck with me times three. Honestly she was a bit (lot) of a bitch. And yes, the Eunices are bitches. But god damn are they pretty. Don't worry my other grandma Anita is my soulmate and fuck i need to call her.
the motherfucking sun. thank sweet baby jesus in drag (again)
Somewhat related to your catahoulas howling - I live hood-adjacent. It's cool and fine. There's a pretty rampant stray/feral/abandoned animal problem here, so we've got wild packs of family dogs (great song) running thru the yard daily, literally. When a siren sounds - like a fire truck, and cop car - all of the hood dogs howl in unison. It's kind of terrifying; sounds like a choir of ghosts in harmony. Up and down they trill with the siren and then it fades. I've come to really enjoy it.
And another - when you're covered in outside. My favorite feeling in the world is when I've been out in the sun all day baking and swimming in the lake. My hair is dirty and looks great and my skin is all sun-warm like a stone and I'm a little feral. I could walk into the water and never resurface. I could let the sun cook me. I'd do anything for a blue sky, a soft breeze, and the smell of outside on my skin.
[INLINE] On Mon, Feb 26, 2024 at 9:20 PM Hanna Waters <hannamwaters@gmail.com> wrote:
I hope I get lots of your dad. It has been a blessing to bear witness to all of the ways you celebrate and live his memory through your work. I'll take it.
I love that photo and the pic of the snowy owl in the photo and your snowy owl angel of a dad. I imagine you feel him a lot as you live your day-to-day, and I hope it can be a balm on your heart when he passes through.
I've been keeping this list of things I love lately, those lovely perks of existing in a body and being alive. Here's where I've gotten so far, and I would be interested to know yours. You see, it's hard to catch them in the moment and remember to write them down - I don't even like to take photos for that reason. But when I've remembered...
When someone smells amazing - like clean, or a nice fragrance, or shampoo - and you discover it in the air they just vacated. It's like getting to know them in a very specific and intimate way even though you are strangers.
when the shop smells like cedar from working with it. one of my fave smells in all the world. was my dad's fave smell too, along with fresh cut alfalfa. God, to watch him pick up a handful of alfalfa in the field, to twist and wrap it into a rope to test its moisture. To watch him smell it, taste it, roll it around in his thick hands and look off into the west of a dying sun and say, "should be ready about midnight i bet."
i'll see that sun and his alfalfa face on my death bed.
When someone listens to and loves a song you recommend or a playlist you built. This is also a kind of intimacy, of taste and disposition and provenance. Sharing music is among my most beloved activities.
same my friend, same. we need to absolutely share a few playlists. just by your posts i have a hunch we're birds of a feather there.
Getting into a sun-warm car when it is cold outside. Once I was getting into a car with a friend in Italy and he said che bel caldo - a beautiful heat - and everything sounds better in Italian anyway but it stayed with me since.
CHE BEL CALDO. holy shit i love that
Witnessing something beautiful with someone else, like a buck bedded down a few yards away or an eclipse or a delicious sunny bluebird day. The same goes for witnessing funny things (especially if you and the person need little but eye contact to communicate) and witnessing scary or crazy things - like ghosts. I've never seen a ghost myself, but my friends and I spent a lot of time looking for Bigfoot, the chupacabra (wrong area in hindsight), and other creatures in middle school.
When a song that you have a love affair with comes on shuffle (or the radio) and it reanimates your spirit and whisks you away to all of the moments in your life that have been punctuated by its sound.
there's a new song lately that ive been blasting non-stop erryday as I cruze around running errands. i both love and hate that i can kill a song in a few days by non stop bangin. it's 1000 times by Big Blood. it's a nod to my girl and to Three Circle Shop because i am fucking obsessed and burnt out and dying and alive and oh my god i'm alive. you should check it. Ok i'm putting it on now. FUCK YES
I checked out that song and it fuckin rocks. Yeah let's exchange playlists. Yeah let's sing forever.
Hanna Waters <hannamwaters@gmail.com>
Mar 23, 2024, 1:30 PM
to Tyler
We didn't, I just had a feeling.
My dad is a man of few words - a simple, salt-of-the-earth man with many similar trappings to your pops. He's a cowboy and hunter and a fisherman and couldn't cry until I was in my 20's. We didn't have a relationship for a decade or more, now we do, now I spend much of my artistic practice exploring the remnants of my broken family, handed down to my sister and me in a few cardboard boxes. Dad said take it, take it all, otherwise I'll burn it.
We talk a few times a month and it often centers on the weather - a point of comfort and simplicity, and, you're absolutely right, it brings you together under a hot sun (we know hot) or a rowdy breeze (fuckin' rippin' off the bay down here baby) or the impending doom of a South Texas summer (it's here, girl). A kind of tuning - I couldn't have said it better. It's consistent, always accessible, and again, fosters a kind of intimacy by shrinking the space between.
The Weather. Like a north star.
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