Deep & Fast

Jul’21
Poetry, Book, Performance Lecture
Kickstarter

Book

Deep & Fast is a book of poetic answers to questions no one thought deserved poetry.

Each poem in the book begins with a question scraped from the internet. Some are common: “What motivates you to do more?”, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”. Others are stranger: “Do we have guardian angels?”, “Can certain exercises really lead to better sex?”. The idea was simple: no question is an orphan. Every question belongs to a lineage of questions: Ancestry, heartbreak, societal pressure, loneliness.

Writing these poems, I stopped inventing and started collecting. I began to see found language not as lesser but as holy. Like Glenn Ligon’s stencils or Jenny Holzer’s aphorisms, the act of selecting, reframing, and presenting became its own authorship. In a loud, clever world, I wanted small, slow humor. Not Maurizio Cattelan’s spectacle but something humbler. A tenderness in the wreckage.

The book itself took shape as a kind of poetic search engine, a sideways answer to the dominant structures of online inquiry. It’s a refusal of self-help’s forced optimism. A rejection of the productivity gospel. A counter-spell for the question “Where do you see yourself in five years?” might be: “How did your mother relate to her mother? What is your relationship to your love handles?”

In that sense, Deep & Fast is not interested in giving answers. It’s a long, looping attempt to unask the question. A refusal to flatten longing into advice. A reminder that every search is also a prayer. Visually and structurally, the book was designed as an intimate companion, pocket-sized, lo-fi, collage-textured. It launched on Kickstarter and sold over 100 copies. It’s one of the projects I’m proudest of because it’s quiet and doesn’t beg for attention. It just sits beside you, whispering back. At its heart, Deep & Fast is an ode to introspection. A poetic mutiny against clarity. A refusal to go viral. A language of intimacy disguised as a language of utility. A minor literature for a major collapse.

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