Zine
It has always troubled me that no one has dared to append an apostrophe to the beginning of this word, however the lack of one seems to implicate an entirely new form. Yes, "Zine" is short for "magazine" - as though it is an offshoot, a little parasite grasping its host and feeding off its form and method. Yes - it is a bound assemblage of paper, usually with text or image, and almost always involving some form of narrative. Only these most basic traits are shared with its bigger, glossier brother. The zines I know, remember, and made, were all handmade, all involved working with another person, and were never sold. In the earlier 1990s I made a graffiti magazine on the xerox machine at my dad's work. It was intimately crude but well received, as there was no internet then we all relied heavily on trading photographs through the post and the only way to see what people were painting in a different state was to find a zine from there somehow. The scale was smaller than even word-of-mouth. Later, in highschool I used the same xerox machine to create little booklets of poetry and prose with an ex-vandal friend - writing, just a different sort. We used to have a rule: Only make 50 and they had to be hand distributed, with eye contact and handshaking after thanking the person for accepting the poor paper thing. It wasn't long before they were forgotten entirely, as the friends who were their unlucky recipients would eventually become as well. Later still, on the same aging machine, the text began to sprout some photos and my little collections started collecting their own dust as I had no one to pass them out to.
The first zine I remember was written by Ken Shipley who was an older kid who played music in a few bands from around Cupertino (notably: Mohinder, Indian Summer, Current, and so on.) He wrote about taking walks, about keeping a spoon in his back pocket at all times for whenever he might happen upon a cute or lonely place to eat some ice cream, he climbed the water tower and listened to Slint records, he went on tour and saw the states, he quietly lamented the paving of some parks to make a new freeway, he laughed about being at a Catholic highschool to meet a friend and taking pride in spitting all over the ground, he wore prescription glasses despite perfect vision as a show of symbolism - in short, he was a young boy and did young boyish things. He just happened to have a nice perspective and could write them down in a nice and personal way that seemed so small and inviting. It was all hand-written, it was all hand-assembled, it was all hand-printed, and it was all vanished in only a few years.
Aaron Cometbus may well be the most famed writer in the world of zines. His tome, Cometbus, is well into its second decade of publication and he's seen press as far away as Vanity Fair, and as close as every other black and white xeroxed punk rock related zine. He's the voice of Berkeley, the voice of DIY Ethics, the voice of the Punk, and the voice of a generation. In later years, he's beocme academic and created for his readers a series of more serious texts, of note was the issue devoted to an entire history (a remarkably deep rooted one, and a remarkably well written one) about the used book shops in and around the Bay Area, most specifically those in Berkeley during the 60s. He's also written a fine issue on the subject of "Back to the Landers", people reverting to farms and agriculture after experiencing the caging and trapping life of the city. His older stories keep getting collected and re-collected in different volumes as the little stories become more and more entangled, and just recently the St Louis Stories (most dating back to the 80s/90s) has hit the bookstores and recordshops where one can read about the building up, and subsequent disintegration of a group of friends. His socialogical observances are incisive and as precise as a surgical scalpel - my favorite for a long time is his observation about the pattern throughout one's life of choosing seats on the bus. As a child, you sit up front with mom. When cut free, as a teen you migrate towards the back to hoot and holler and scratch your name into the windows. As an adult, you move toward the middle so as not to be annoyed by the loudmouthed youth and not to be in the way of the elderly and disabled. Then, into seniority, the circle is complete as you sit back at the front again -- your whole life has been a trip from the front of the bus to the rear and back to the front again. It is a small cyclical thing, but a dearly important one to note. And, he does that constantly - he takes a scene, a specific scene, and can translate it into a completely relatable experience to all people (well, all people who read his words and who also rely on public transportation.)
Nowhere Fast is a tri-annual photo journal curated by a fellow named Wesley, an avid photographer and a hearty liver of life. He's got a group of friends, and friends-of-friends, who are all interested in the older sides of the medium that involve both actual film and actual experience. In his own words, it is a humble little thing that is "composed of black and white photography and interviews birthed from the adventures and travels of those contributing. We, as a collective, hope to promote and encourage the use of photography as a craft, as well as a tool to record and document one's surroundings." I think of Henri Cartier Bresson, naturally: "Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory." but, thankfully, we can develop and print a positive from a negative (and, isn't that a marvelous little punning symbolism!) and, of course, the other famous quote of his: "The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box." A lot of hunters have captured a lot of little animals in their little boxes, and I am proud to be included among them in this second issue of theirs. The limited number of copies means that you had better order a copy now as the entire thing will all be as vanished as the subjects and scenes encapsulated among the many pages of the zine.
