On January 23rd, Sofia attended the Drift’s launch party for its 14th issue at 123 Washington St. in Manhattan. She was left with some questions.
1. Where’s my tote bag?
2. Did the cherry blossoms in the women’s bathroom fall, or were we meant to duck and weave to get to a stall?
3. Mom, how do I talk to strangers?
4. Any self-respecting launch party for a literary magazine will include readings. But I wonder about the self-respect of the readers. What’s the difference between performance and rendition? Is one more genuine than the other? Is either one an expression of the soul? Why, then, did they do it in front of strangers?
5. Why the fuck does a gin and tonic cost twenty dollars?
6. The line between avant-garde decor and gaudiness is thinner than, well, my patience in figuring out the difference. It seems to come down to the observer’s tolerance for inconvenience, level of drunkenness (which for me, a no-fun abstainer, was zero), and their own dress (I may have shown up in my “abnegation outfit,” having been called with no time to run home and change). Can you become avant-garde in just your attitude, or do I have to move up a tax bracket first?
7. What’s the connection between Japanese cherry blossoms and the under-the-sea theme, besides the fact that they do not, aesthetically, contradict each other? Does the presence of a koi pond in a seafood restaurant not cause anyone else unease?
8. Follow-up: when are aesthetic grounds a reasonable justification to do something? Can you look at me and tell me yourself?
9. What’s so post about postmodernism?
10. Question four was solved close to the end of the night (turns out you just wait for someone to talk to you first), but we are still wondering: how do you talk (to a stranger) well?
11. In their readings, the fiction writers relied on a cold tone to give their pieces the intended effect–they, too, were cold and plain and sought to flatten experience and perception out into discrete parts. Connectivity was incidental, meaning tangential to some other point. Why does so much fiction these days want to do this? What in modernity compels it?
12. Can one be independent without being individualistic? Sincere without being overwrought?
13. What constitutes good poetry? Is it related to question ten?
14. Can we meaningfully reclaim an oral culture from the jaws (let’s not kid ourselves, the deep recesses of the stomach) of our written culture? Should it take place in the financial district?
15. Should we be asking “should” questions at all, or is it all a matter of acceptance? The translators and critics cause trouble with their lack of compliance, and sometimes to no good end, but they, at least, were the best readers there. They were not so obsessed with their form; they were not asking for acceptance for themselves, and I appreciated this.
16. While there were some members of the crowd pushing the median age of attendance up quite a bit, the readings were all from young writers–the oldest was surely no later in life than his mid-thirties. Does this make the journal up-and-coming?
17. How do I mention I go to Harvard (and, before, went to Deep Springs) without sounding like a jerk? I don’t know if my passive mien to go along with the name-drop is working.
18. When, oh when, will we grow up?
19. What do I do when I see kindness glimmering in someone, but it’s too loud to talk to them without hurting my voice? Are we all too ashamed to dance
20. What makes a party over?
2025