There have been a lot of images that have stuck in my mind since Renee Good was murdered by ICE earlier this month. The now-viral video of ICE agent Jonathan Ross. The hundreds of photos of vigils and memorials. The art. The smiling photos of Renee shared by her loved ones and members of her community.

But the image that comes back to me time and again isn’t directly related to Renee’s death at all. Except for the ways it is.

The hundreds of thousands of people who died of AIDS during the years that the government refused to acknowledge and research the epidemic were victims of state violence, just like Renee. Renee’s death was a more personal, individual act of violence, more brutal in its intimacy, but these deaths — as well as every other death caused by ICE since its founding in 2003 — are inherently political, inherently violent.

But just like queer and trans folk and their allies rallied around one another in the worst days of the AIDS crisis, queer communities and their allies have come together in Renee’s memory, too. Showing up, again and again and again, in the face of a violent state. In this piece by Aly Gibbs, when she asks Kat Rohn (Executive Director of OutFront Minnesota, the state’s largest LGBTQ+ organization) what she’s seeing from the queer and trans community in MN right now, Rohn replied:

Community action is a creative work, as much as a painting or a poem. The way a community comes together, the magic of individuals working for a greater whole, is generative. It’s powerful. It’s a kind of art.

Who or what do you try to honor through your creative work? How does your work pay tribute to your community, your values, your sense of purpose in the world? How does that translate into the way you show up for your community — with your time, your energy, your wisdom, your skills, your work? If there’s a misalignment: What would it feel like to change something?

Prompt: Make a list of three things you love about your community (whatever “community” means to you). How can you bring those things into your work — and then back to your community itself? Create about it.

The best thing about recommending a piece of Meg’s writing is that it’s so good I want to share the entire thing. The worst thing about recommending a piece of Meg’s writing is that it’s so good I want to share the whole thing.

Ah, the duality of newsletter-writing.

This piece came across my BlueSky feed just a few posts after the one above, so it seemed fitting to bring them both together into one newsletter. So much of what we’re experiencing right now — not just in the aftermath of Renee’s death, but in the kidnapping of children and the detention of elders and the daily assault on human rights and dignity happening not just in Minnesota but around the world — is collective grief. Grief that we aren’t just experiencing together, but that we also have to heal from together, because:

Meg goes on,

(Do you see what I mean??? About sharing the whole thing??? Go subscribe to Meg’s newsletter. Like, right now.)

I think there’s a belief out there that grief is somehow inherently in opposition to creativity. That grieving is a state of being that causes everything around it to stagnate, rather than a process within itself — one that sparks new processes even as it moves through its own cycle(s), a neural network sending out signals to trigger sensation, transformation, and change. We can experience grief in stillness, but it isn’t stillness itself. It has movement and growth, currents and tides.

When we learn to move with the waves, we can turn that water into magic. It’s when we try to swim against it, to pretend the current isn’t moving at all, that we’re swept away.

What does “grief work” mean to you? How has the process of grieving, working through grief, or learning to understand the role of grief in your life shaped, impacted, or changed your work? What kinds of work from others do you find yourself turning toward in times of grief? Why those works? How do they make you feel?

Prompt: What three creative works are the first that come to mind when you think about grief? Go broad — it could be a poem, a novel, a friend’s tattoo, a family recipe no one other than your grandmother has been able to get just right, a street side memorial, or anything else. Choose one and spend some time with it this week, whatever that looks like for you. Create about it.

Okay, that’s enough grief for one newsletter — let’s talk about what really matters: Canadian government-funded hockey porn.

This particular piece isn’t spectacularly quotable, but what I like about it is that, in a landscape where everybody seems to be writing a thinkpiece about Heated Rivalry (AS WELL THEY SHOULD, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION) this one focuses particularly on the show as an adaptation, and beyond that, an adaptation of a romance novel, and beyond that, an adaptation of a MM romance novel.

Recently, Jordan Moblo, executive vp of creative acquisitions and IP management at Universal Studio Group and the face of jordys.book.club on Instagram, did an interview with The Ankler newsletter where he spoke about romance IP in particular. He noted that while studios are often on the hunt for romance,

(I have a lot of AO3 coffee shop AU bookmarks that suggest the opposite, but far be it from me to argue with the experts.)

What Heated Rivalry showrunner Jacob Tierney has managed to do, of course, is create an adaptation that does lend itself to a multi-season arc, but could just have easily have ended after one season without causing a riot. The happily ever after is there, with the possibility that there’s potential for so much more happiness ahead.

Adaptations are delicate things — it’s why people usually either love or hate them. But that’s also what makes them such an absolute art form, distinct from original works. We should be so lucky to have more Jacob Tierneys out there, making things like this.

Or at least, like. So much more Heated Rivalry.

How do you feel about adaptations? As always, go broad in your definition: book to movie, movie to novelization, cake recipe to cupcake recipe. Do you have a favorite adaptation? A least favorite? One that makes you think all adaptations should be outlawed forever? What makes you feel so strongly…and what would you have done differently?

Prompt: Choose a creative work you love that does not have an adaptation. Think of five things you would do with an adaptation of that work from one form to another. Create about it.

One of my beloved teachers, Jeanna Kadlec, has a great essay on how (and why) to build a book altar. It’s an essay I come back to every time I’m starting a new project, partially because it’s so good, but also because there’s one paragraph that always reminds me why this practice has become so integral to my creative work:

Thinking of my work as something that I honor and connect to, something I have an evolving and mutual relationship with rather than something I do, fundamentally changes the way I approach my work. Writer’s block becomes friction between me and this project. Slow word count days become days when the relationship needs more nurturing before I can ask more of it. Revision days become collaborative, less stressful, the goal being a sense of satisfied growth rather than something strained too far.

In discussing altars on the podcast she shares with her sister, Autumn Brown adds an additional element to this approach that I find deeply moving:

Most creatives have Pretty Strong Feelings about ritual and ritual spaces, though those might not be the exact terms that they use. We have go-to pens, a favorite brand of sketchbook, our grandmother’s spice grinder that’s been going strong since the 1970s, a candle we associate with a particular character. We have strict rules about how we approach the practice of creativity, of how we get ourself into that headspace, of what the physical space in which we create needs to look or smell or feel like.

All of this is ritual. All of this is devotion.

How do you see yourself as being in relationship with your work, and what ritual items or spaces are part of that relationship? Have you ever created an altar as part of your work — intentionally or without noticing it? Are there items, routines, or practices that have become part with your creative process, whose loss you would notice and miss? What are they, and why are they important?

Prompt: The next time you set yourself up to do some creative work, pay extra attention to what your space looks like — what tools you bring, what you do to prepare yourself to start working, what needs to be “in place” before you can begin. What do you notice? Create about it.

One of the many images that has stayed in my memory from the genocide in Gaza was a video of two young mothers dancing with their children in the rubble of their homes. They were dusty, wearing sandals despite the cold, with visible grief and exhaustion on their features. But they had scooped up their children, cradling them like the sacred, precious cargo they were, and danced with them to make them laugh.

That was the video that I kept coming back to as I read this piece in Waging Nonviolence, about a cultural center in Bethlehem (in the West Bank) and a dance studio in East Jerusalem. Under occupation and the constant threat of police and military violence, these institutions have turned art and memory into a form of artistic resistance. It’s resistance that may be quieter and less sensational than what we’re seeing in Minnesota or Chicago or Los Angeles, but no less fierce or dedicated.

Later in the article, she speaks with Hanna Tams, who founded Douban Professional Dance group in East Jerusalem in 2012:

While scent is considered to be one of the most powerful sensory ties to memory, movement and song are also major triggers for bringing us back to people, places, and moments in our lives we thought were gone.

Here’s another story: During the Holocaust, there were thousands of Jewish parents who gave their children to non-Jewish neighbors or orphanages in an attempt to save them from the death camps. After the war, many of the parents who managed to survive found that their children had either been indoctrinated into other religions…or had disappeared entirely.

In May of 1945, Rabbi Eliezar Silver and Dayan Grunfield were sent as chaplains to assist with the liberation of the death camps. While they were there, they were told that many Jewish children had been placed in a monastery in Alsace-Lorraine, so they went to try and reclaim them to reunite them with any surviving family — or to place them with other Jewish families if they had no surviving relatives.

When they arrived, the priests told them that there were no Jewish children there, and denied the Jewish identity of the children who were there. Silver had the idea to request that they be allowed to return when the children were being put to bed that night, and walked through the dormitories singing the words of the Shema — the most foundational prayer of the Jewish faith. Children sat up in their beds. Completing the prayer. Recognizing the melody. Calling for their mothers.

Music is memory. Memory is resistance.

Whatever else they take, they cannot take the music from your heart.

What music, movement, scent, or other sensation do you associate with a core part of your identity, and why? What do you notice when you experience that sensation? What do you feel? What thoughts come to mind? What memories does it bring up? How do those memories — individual or collective — play a role in your work?

Prompt: Think about the question above, and identify a piece of music or form of movement that stood out most significantly to you. Consider how you might share it with someone else. Create about it.