Check out some photos from the event below and come visit us on 424 Fairfax, LA—we'll be here for a while.
As I make my way toward the venue on the night of the show, I aptly spot one of the readers along my route. Emilia Petrarca and I climb the 23rd Street subway stairs and compare notes. Given the prompt is “pop culture events only you remember”, she’s chosen to re-platform the baffling series of 2011 courtside photos that suggested a coupling between (very different) public figures Chloe Sevigny and Pauly D. Whew.
Upon arrival, Substack’s Matt Starr ushers us into the space, where guests are ordering “Carrie Bradshaw Banging On The Window Cosmos” and “Power Publicist Tree Paine Palomas” while donning name tags that share their favorite pop culture moments. Milling around reveals that the audience are almost all Harris disciples — fans of her on-the-nose commentary through her 90,000 subscriber strong “Hung Up” newsletter, and curious about what the format of the night will present.
“This newsletter is for the extremely-online and the extremely-with taste: readers, writers, agents, publicists, at least four movie stars, and my middle school boyfriend,” Hunter shared before the show.
In a front row gathering including Ira Madison III and Ludwig Hurtado, Vanity Fair’s Chris Murphy opens the night with a damning accusation against the Tony Awards, exploring the fateful night they (per his recollection) conspired to kill performer Bret Michaels.
A flurry of talented readers follow, from Jordan Coley describing an almost Game Of Thrones level of interpersonal drama in the NBA, to Peyton Dix narrating the aforesaid Lindsey Lohan interview with vigor, to former Vogue writer and fashion Substacker Liana Satenstein in Tom Ford Gucci and Wrangler deliberating on a much-paparazzied moment when Ben Affleck rose out of the ashes (a Hawaiian beach) with an oversized tattoo of a phoenix. Honorable mentions are included for the venerable Akosua Adasi, Tembe Denton-Hurst, and Sydnee Washington, who take the stage with grace to share their stories to raucous cheers.
“It was really fun, I’ve never done anything like this and I didn’t feel scared, weirdly. I felt very supported by the crowd,” Satenstein says post-performance.
After the show, I sneak away with Hunter for a few minutes to discuss what just happened. She shares: “I wanted to include people who think about things differently than everyone else around them, and I was really excited to be learning about all of these different moments tonight. That’s how the newsletter operates, and I was excited to see that come to life.”
It’s one thing to write about these different series of hijinks from behind a screen, but to witness them being shared and appreciated in real-time is something new entirely. Guests opted to stay and continue the evening after the show, ordering more cheekily-labeled drinks and comparing notes as the night wound down.
What will Harris be bringing to the stage in the future? Loyal Substack readers will know that she’s already hopped over from the medium of newsletters (and events) to “Lemme Say This”, a new collaborative podcast with Dix on pop culture news — the first episode now live on a variety of streaming services.
To label Constance Debré an author is not contrary to calling her books autobiographical. It’s equally false and misleading, as askew as labeling Hilma Af Klint an abstractionist, for all I know. Through her writing, Debré calls to a consciousness many seem to have forgotten, now so foreign the language is practically lost, a vocabulary which never really were our own.
By putting her characters at odds with the so-called liberal societal standards, Debré (the lawyer) calls them to the stand only to strip them naked, leaving words dressed in nothing but shame in their conservative shadows. But the magnitude of the work transcends beyond the page, realized only once Debré's readers allow her practice to decolonize their minds just as she undresses her page. However, it is my second belief, they don’t.
“The world of literature should be more free than that other world,” said Debré at Albertine. It was a Sunday when the French book store on Fifth Avenue celebrated the launch of Debré's debut book, Playboy (the American edition), translated by Holly James. French and Americans mingled like yin and yang. As an author, Debré's ambition gains prominence throughout each of her books by acquiring the same weapons — love, sex, family, motherhood — only to have them all slaughter each other on the bourgeois battleground or in the courtroom.
It is no wonder Debré seeks freedom in literature’s alternative reality. The autocracy of her life had been inaccessible, hidden behind a bourgeois background. Perhaps her relentless search for justice made her realize that she deserves some of her own. At the age of forty, she abandoned her marriage, her career, and the bourgeois to become the lesbian writer who tells us about conventions, convictions, constraints. Through a poetic sensibility, she shares her know-how on how to take a piss on the social order’s worn-out contracts.
Debré leaves us with disorder and disorientation, the same could be said about her short talk on Sunday. Yet she does not do so for the sake of simply being provocative, "but because there is truth to be found in looking at things upside down.” Posing questions about what love means without (financial) stability, what family implies once it's not just for the sake of keeping it together, or, if one has to become a victim in order to justify their suffering, Debre’s answer is obviously no, but that’s almost beside the point. Addressing the commodification and acceptance of false values as the absolut is at the core of her work.
Debré’s linguistic efforts towards, not objectivity, but liberty, have a lot in common with the qualities of painterly Suprematism. She sees the world in different, perhaps unfixed, “shapes” and raises her razor sharp eyebrows to the idea of a self: “I’m only using [my life] as material, there is no identity.” Thus she doesn't just approach a theme from “upside down” but she intentionally lets the whole form fall apart, pointing the finger at gravity.
After the presentation, Debré receives questions from the audience. There’s one in particular which stresses her case: “Why is the [previous] book called "Love Me Tender," when it's not exactly about tender love?” Debré can’t seem to escape herself; as a lawyer: stuck in the past, as a writer: trapped in autobiography, as a portrayer of delicate love perceived as fierce. It's a confusion which has little, yet everything, to do with her way of writing.
She prefers the American approach to language because it’s what she refers to as “fat-free,” free of the French ornamentation in her native tongue. But once the fat is gone and the words are beautiful in their selected few, the art coefficient shines bright; Duchamp's definition of the gap between the artist's intention and its audience's realization has never felt as present as when the question above filled the room. The relation between the unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed became crystal clear. “But isn't the relationship just that — tender?” answered Debré.
Debré can continue reforming her shapes, or reshaping her forms, but to some a square will remain a square, while a globe will always be a circle. This isn’t to say that her work, as a literary lawyer, a Suprematist, or simply, as an author, isn’t capable of confronting the conformative, it’s a testimony to the relevance and shortage of work like hers. It’s also an acknowledgement that perhaps a book can indeed only be read by people who know how to read it. However, perceiving it your own way makes you guilty of no crime, as long as it is just that: your own.
Recognizing injustice within food systems across the state, New York artist Dan Colen founded Sky High Farm in 2012. The non-profit farm donates 100% of its produce to food pantries and organizations across the Hudson Valley and New York City, serving as a model with the aim of expanding access to food and promoting food sovereignty. In 2022, Colen co-founded Sky High Farm Universe with Daphne Seybold, a fashion label intended "to propel the farm’s work to the center of the cultural dialogue." Since its inception, the label has produced collections with Dover Street Market Paris and collaborated with retail giants like Balenciaga, Comme des Garçons, Denim Tears, Tata Harper, and Erewhon. A portion of the brand's profits is donated to support the farm's cause, which encompasses philanthropy, capitalism, climate change, social justice, and education.
With host and advisory committees that read like a fashion who's who, including stylist Alastair McKimm, fashion designer Marc Jacobs, model-actress Chloë Sevigny, and actress Tommy Dorfman, it was no surprise when the city's glitterati began to trickle into the sunlit grounds. As attendees settled around the stage, American Ballet Theatre dancer Devon Teauscher set the tone for a series of great performances from DJ Michaël Brun, singers Kelsey Lu and Moses Sumney, and, for the finale, Grammy-winning band The Roots. Volunteers and community members played a crucial role in making the event a success. The proceeds are set to fuel the farm’s future projects, expanding access to fresh, nutritious food across the region. All in all, the picnic was a big success, proving once again that for Sky High Farm, the sky's the limit.
Check out skyhighfarm.com, follow them @skyhighfarmhudsonvalley, and mark your calendar for the next event.
