letter from the guest editor: disrupting identity

by Tavis Gray

Summer wanes and green leaves grow crisp, and still I sweat through local trains in coats meant for shorter days. When will I learn how to dress?

This week I’m thinking about how hanging can be a way of dressing. How in attempting to fit into prescribed molds we may define ourselves too narrowly; how we are prone to walk down the street in an ill-tailored way, cropping already cropped pants because someone else has incredible middle shins. Does anyone have incredible middle shins?

What a nervous word, identity. It sticks like hot glue, smells like sulfur. We spend lifetimes looking for the right one, the perfect one—the messiah sweater in an endless thrift store heap. But the thing about perfect sweaters, and identities, is that we’re often trying to fill an empty room with a single chair. What does a room full of anxieties, memories, feelings, thoughts so incendiary they require a ladder and a pole, do with one chair? After all, out in the cold, is it not better to wear two sweaters at once?

This week on the Fluf we’re disrupting identity, and everything that comes riding sidecar with it. Stay with us as we delve into the experience of growing up between cultures, discuss expressions of love across languages, and tackle country music’s slow burn toward inclusivity. And, of course, more after that. 

Wishing you a week of dressing in many sweaters, 

your guest editor