June Joy

This has been a brutal week, and my heart is aching. I've seen a lot of sentiment that the world is a very frightening place right now, and in many respects it is. But there is still so much beauty and art and magic and love, and I believe it is an act of resistance and revolution to hold those up as reality, too. And to make more of them all whenever we can.

On that note, here's your dose of monthly marvels:

• The new serpentwithfeet album, soil, is out today (pictured above). I have been looking forward to this for years, really, and it is even more gorgeous and majestic and fiercely tender than I'd hoped.
  
  
• SEED is a group show at Paul Kasmin Gallery that celebrates art as a sort of witchcraft, and features 29 female phenoms such as Yoko Ono, Rachel Feinstein, and Lisa Yuskavage. It's up June 21 - August 10. (Thank you, Martin Bland!)
  
  
• David Lynch's new autobiography / personal history, Room to Dream, is out on June 19th, and is chock full of interviews from people in his life, as well as his own writings.
  
  
• The trailer for the new Suspiria reboot looks promising.
  
  
• National Sawdust's month of Hildegard von Bingen programming is sublime. This John Zorn tribute to her, Hilma af Klint, and Agnes Martin sounds particularly intriguing.
  
  
• WE WANT IT DARKER is an evening of surreal and oneiric burlesque, drag, and dance featuring the splendid Cassandra Rosebeetle, Vangeline, and more. It's at Slipper Room on Weds, June 20th at 8pm.
  
  
• Can't wait for this comprehensive (and long overdue!) book about Pamela "Pixie" Colman Smith, the artist behind the iconic Rider-Waite(-Smith) tarot deck. More people should know her name and her story.
  
  
• The Phantasmagoria show at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts is closing on June 24. Wishing I could get there, but my schedule is not looking promising.
  
  
• I am really loving the new Nickelodeon animated web series, Mr. Sheep & Sleepy Bear & the Department of Dreams. It is whimsical and adorable and inventive. And even better: my two brilliant friends, Sean Kenin and Rohana Elias-Reyes, do ALL of the voices for it. INCREDIBLE.
  
  
• More mirror cake videos, please.

Let's keep talking about the good things, too.