Nov 24, 2020

 

Sirens is the lyrical story of Her which means it is the story of you and I, just as it’s also our story too, and a story that has yet to be, a story that is now, and a story from before (which is to say it is spun from the fabric of myth). If David Lynch died and reincarnated into the body of a little girl with wings who hatched from an egg painted by Leonora Carrington’s ghost, Sirens would be the fairy tale this version of Lynch would then write. Toni Oswald has paid homage to the Dadaists and the Surrealists equally in this creation of story and sound; this hybrid narrative about a hybrid character that asks the reader to engage in this fever dream about being born and giving birth, about dying and being resurrected. Sirens then shape-shifts into a recipe for baking blue pies before reshaping itself into a ritual and feminist manifesto before blooming into a wound that is stitched together using embroidery to draw a palimpsest of the sacred pussy upon the page. The synesthesia in Oswald’s language borders on mysticism as the reader witnesses light become smitten with the velvet darkness of the void, to then watch the void thrust itself into the mercurial surface of a mirror where shadows play in the threshold between reflection and the corporeal. Sirens is an interactive narrative that invites us in so we can explore all the serpentine trajectories of the Self. I love this poetic narrative so much I’m tempted for my next tattoo to read: “Let’s be friends even when there is no us” because that is exactly how I feel about the book from which this line was excerpted and the author who composed it.

                                —Sarah Elizabeth Schantz, Fig 

 

Film by Jonas Leuenberger

Music by Max Davies


Sirens out Now on Gesture Press and Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Sirens-Toni-Oswald/dp/0578773945/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3OJ28MEADKMBO&dchild=1&keywords=sirens+toni+oswald&qid=1606242011&s=books&sprefix=sirens+t%2Caps%2C257&sr=1-1


 My New Book Sirens:

In Sirens we encounter the multi-bodied, simultaneous emergent, ever-emerging, Her. Her(e) mystical hybridity conjuncts with real life emergencies offering dazzling, pained views of the charnel grounds where we might die a thousand female deaths and finally and also: resurrect. Toni Oswald’s writing teaches us how to endure – and ultimately – celebrate the most difficult verbs.

Selah Saterstrom,
author of Ideal Suggestions and Slab


Film by Jonas Leuenberger

Music by Max Davies

 Available on Gesture Press and Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Sirens-Toni-Oswald/dp/0578773945/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3OJ28MEADKMBO&dchild=1&keywords=sirens+toni+oswald&qid=1606242011&s=books&sprefix=sirens+t%2Caps%2C257&sr=1-1


Jan 26, 2016

Day Crack Into Moments (Notebook series)

 Johnne Perez and his Sculptures

 


 Carmen Hawk, Mariah O'Brien & Lucia Santini Ribisi (Italy)

 Photo of Ic Explura by Carmen Hawk
 My Mother at age 12


 John Spencer and me London 2003

John Frusciante 1991

All art ,writing and notebook collages by Toni Oswald Copyright 2016

You Really Were the Prettiest Star!

In tall trees apples grow,
no one knows where we go.
Forever seams,
sows,
grows
Bowie shines, it's like snow.
Talking inside out,
Talking sideways
when all those beautiful clothes were ruined in the pool.
Real good food
Style
cocaine
We just tore up the experience.
X
I cried in bed this morning when I heard the news that Bowie had passed. He was such a huge inspiration for my art, music and life. I'm crying again now. RIP Mr. Bowie, you really are a starchild, hold now, dancing in and out of light.


Collage and writing by Toni Oswald Copyright 2016

Feb 5, 2015

How To Discard The Life You've Now Ruined - Lara Glenum


HOW TO DISCARD THE LIFE YOU’VE NOW RUINED


Sneak in to the “shame hole”
Remove the squirming pink sack from the gray pelt
& put a second body inside

or hang the body from a telegraph wire that transmits instructions
to those who’ve drowned in an automatic wind
while choking on state-licensed vision cloths

Hang the loose skin in a weeping museum

Use the smallest bones as buttons
Sew the buttons onto your face & pose in several helmets

Or collect the larger bones & make a stylish 4’ x 6’ cage
Plant the nerve-cords in window-boxes
Let them trail down like vines outside your new home

In the evenings
Use the spine as a flute to play
the soft nationalistic marches of the “bodies without organs” collective

Make tiny beasts out of the teeth & strands of black hair
Sew the animals into your stomach
Advertise your crimes as “the failings of a zoo”

Tack the two legs onto your own hips &
gallop through zones of agony
Now you’re a four-legged animal downed in the onslaught

You’re a weeping brute clogging the light-hole
in the eye of the sun

Nov 20, 2014

Theater Carnivale Days!

Photos from back in the daysof Theater Carnivale; a Punk Rock/Avante Garge/Vaudevillian theater group featuring, Stephen Holman, Aaron Osbourne, Johanna Went, Adam Tankell and myself.
Stephen and I performing on the BBC4 Tony Wilson Show in Manchester, England
Aaron, Johanna, Stephen, Toni, Adam
Stephen and me as Felicity the Butterfly and her agent Ricky the Roach on Bug Night
Me and Stephen on Birth Night
Adam, Johanna, Stephen, me & Aaron on Fish Night
Stephen, Aaron, Adam and myself on Fish Night