Wesley Ryan Clapp
Articles illustrated by Wesley Ryan Clapp:
in Issue 78 | The Weird (Aug 2017)
Image by Wesley Ryan Clapp
in Issue 69 | Carbon (Oct 2016)
Image by Wesley Ryan Clapp
Afterthought on “Modesty”
in Issue 37 | Fashion (Feb 2014)it seems like the modest person must be either stupid or lying - not necessarily in a way that’s good for the naïf - this is only a check against another vice - « he has an excessive self-regard » - a deeper attitude toward (or away from) the self - squandered, emptied, made into nothing - suppose after this afterthought comes out
On Becoming a Woman
in Issue 37 | Fashion (Feb 2014)« don't tell me I did all that treadmilling for nothing » - hissy and bitchy and catty and witty - the cornerstone of your college's genderfuck week - with what relish the boy bats his eyes - size eight, size nine, ten - desire's one thing, competence another - give me three tequila doubles, shave my legs, and land me in a strapless pink thing
in Issue 34 | Bait and Switch (Nov 2013)
Illustration by Wesley Ryan Clapp
in Issue 30 | The Daddy Issue (Jul 2013)
Illustration by Wesley Ryan Clapp
(neé Odradek)
in Issue 27 | Drone Robot Cyborg (Apr 2013)But of course this is insane - no cybernetic loom of fate that threatens - « only the kind of laughter that has no lungs behind it » - intertwining and disentangling - almost apophatic - to let the letter mutate - hallucinogenic Aristotelianism - it is precisely this confusion which philosophy dispels. - Mocking the narrator’s baby-talk interrogation
Lord De La Warr Story
in Issue 23 | Intoxicants (Dec 2012)if you had ever drunk at all - pills are dumped into a just-emptied fishbowl - « Timothy Knox had been wearing his seatbelt » - shrapnel scars on his face - « Yeah I wasn’t too worried about it » - a cruciform joint not intended to be blasphemous - « when I am ready to tell about it in the right way »
Building Paradise: Design Bibles and Garden Homes
in Issue 22 | Paradise (Nov 2012)the promise of Eden - visual theology - large-format photographs - white-on-white salvation - less color, less clutter, less stuff - hinges on nothing less material than taste - the word ‘house’ for the physical container of a single-family unit - perversely modeled after a billboard - the end of history
The Empty Subject and the Art of Ethics
in Issue 18 | No Gods No Masters (Jul 2012)a body and a name - doubt taken as far as doubt will go - pressing entanglements - the religion in which he has happened to be raised - it can inhere in a soul - it cannot inhere in a subject - « I did not ask for this gift! » - we start smooth and grow wrinkled
Championing Rusticus
in Issue 18 | No Gods No Masters (Jul 2012)Ezra Pound - « yeah, but he was a fascist. » - its extravagance, its too-large-to-be-containedness - primordial unity - « in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome » - Whitman, the odoriferous democrat - « worthy of record » - the opulence of their silence
Would You Like Salvation With That?
in Issue 18 | No Gods No Masters (Jul 2012)I went to church most Sundays - an overfed suburbanite - did I have no need for God? - stripped-down, bare-bones gods - abortion, gayness, whether Hell exists - women, money and cars - just one day’s worth of food - a path with no need of a god - quite a few Bodhisattvas - a good flute for Lord Krishna - God is there, beyond.
The Alluring Glare of the Self-Evident
in Issue 17 | Hide and Seek (Jun 2012)the truly self-evident - it is more perfect for something to necessarily exist than to only possibly exist - theological residue - the exotic pleasure of unbounded intellectual charity - « in spite of my willingness and my resistance to it, it began to force itself upon me » - clarification and augmentation of that desire - « an island than which nothing greater can be thought »
Endnotes to an Ode on a Grecian Urn
in Issue 14 | Innocence (Mar 2012)history without footnotes - against all commentary - a very quiet bride - there is something more to the poem than just the poem - they are: the vessels - I think the town is a poem. - the melody closest to but not yet silence - What should have ravished her?
The Virgin Orgy: Queer Innocence and Online Sexuality
in Issue 14 | Innocence (Mar 2012)everyone looks at everything - I didn’t understand male submission - Quiz Bowl summer camp - men in diapers - play Monopoly with a chess set - « Crack Whore Confessions » - the act of being a woman - 15-year-old frilly - every single person is a fag
Brain Wrap
in Issue 11 | Behind the Camera (Dec 2011)the sprockets at their work - the projector’s endless hunger for film - « when something doesn’t sound right » - salvage - the fundamental illusion of moving pictures - the action of the brain-arm - turn off the lights for the last time
Stuffing Myself with Immanence until I Am Scratching a Hole to...
in Issue 8 | Hunger (Sep 2011)isolation - not ballsy enough for anorexia - the duped woman - the pure enthrallment of the mirror - if you are not fine, do not write - she builds a nest in her immanence - twitching in our bell jars - feminism had killed herself - a glimpse of her legs - a scummy jazz musician - the sex of her body grants her access - « anything to more fully degrade this body » - trash, utter trash
Genuine Society
in Issue 5 | Realism (Jun 2011)quoting her cleverest critic - « entirely, impeccably right » - « Silver That Shines Or None » - rule-making, a « cyborg art » - what is really ours - transparency of character - obsessive, prescriptive, and arbitrary - « You May Send Yourself A Telegram » - « sticky or filled with cream » - bridge impulse and action - the great, messy unknown
On Paradigms: Oppression and Interpretive Authority
in Issue 2 | Breaking the Law (Mar 2011)The Dictator and the Artist - interpretive authority should belong to the individual - « a huge, tireless octopus » - Ceauşescu is a bumbling clown - « You'll feel it eventually » - K.'s healthy sense of outrage - entangled in the Law's paradigm
The Amoral Law
in Issue 2 | Breaking the Law (Mar 2011)divorced from morality - a twenty-year-old drinking a glass of wine - this great rupture in legal theory - ignorance, malice, laziness, convenience, to name a few - clandestine raw milk bartering sessions - « to bury his son in peace » - disappointed by law