Jetlag
Splinched in mid-air + Gusto Magazine is back!
Home is a feeling in flux right now. Subscribe to this newsletter for more emails list this as I try to flip my life on its head, move across the planet and find creativity in the process.
Splinching was what occurred when a witch or wizard Apparated or Disapparated unsuccessfully, leaving part of his or her clothes or body behind in their former location.- Harry Potter Fandom
I got splinched on my way back to LA.
This happened when I got back from Paris in March too, and it took me a week or so to heal. I thought it was just jetlag and heartache at first. I thought I was just sleepy and sad. But then I would do something totally normal, like walk to the pharmacy or step onto the escalator into Trader Joe’s, and my body would pull at my flesh as if trying to jerk me back in time and place. As if I’d left part of my mind behind.
With each step down my mind would flash to the stairwell into the Paris metro or my grandparents’ street in Tehran.
I would blink and be back in LA.
Blink again, back in Tehran. Blink again, the narrow streets of the Le Marais neighborhood in Paris.
If my life were a Harry Potter movie this is where I would throw myself onto my hands and knees in agony as the camera slowly panned around my face under sinister music and a dark green glow in the Forbidden Forest and Voldermort would whisper in surround sound.
But alas, I’m just a muggle walking through a Westfield shopping center trying to get to the post office.
I dind’t get splinched. I’m just having a hard time physically being here when my mind and body are universes apart.
flying into Los Angeles’ thick layer of smog last week
Anyway, switching gears. I’m bringing Gusto! Magazine back! Hopefully, this will keep me rooted in the present.
Here’s an interview with a Paris-based painter and tattoo artist I finally posted up this week.
I have some people in LA I’m excited to photograph and interview while I’m here, too. The next few months are going to be nutty. I'm applying for my French visa on July 5, and if all goes well, I’ll be out of here in late Aug/Sept. I really, really do want to keep this newsletter going through all this and I really, really do want to find ways to grow it and push myself out of my comfort zone.
So if you don’t mind:
Why do I read your emails? Because Shabnam Ferdowsi is a compelling human and I want a front row seat to see what's next.
I first met you buying your merch after Blushh blew me away at a Hi Hat show in 2018. A month later, I went to see you play a DIY space and you came up to me in the crowd during the first band's set, recognized me, remembered my name, and... as an introvert, that blew me away. (I won't claim to understand all the ways your vision impairment affects your life, but that can't make "recognizing someone in a crowd after meeting them once for five minutes a month ago" any easier!)
Since then, I have witnessed your nonstop evolution in music, photograph, pizza making(?!)... and now Gusto! I do not know where you go from here, and I am glad that you are conscious of your own mental health so that you don't burn out again. But I can tell from incidental contact that you are a rare person, and I want to keep watching your evolution. To me, you have nothing to prove to anyone, but I would bet good money that you will have a hand in great things, and it's thrilling to witness that in real time.