Contributor Confab: Jenny Parrott

"The vast darkness is comforting. A long view of time is soothing."

A writer who dances? A dancer who writes? Whichever way you look at it, Jenny Parrott is inspired by movement. Her newsletter Vera Monstera breathes, shimmies, and leaps with every line, with an imagination as nimble as a dancer’s frame. Her slips slips contribution, “The Clang,” follows this fascination with motion all the way across the cosmos.

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ss: Is there any special background/context to “The Clang” that you'd like to share?

JP: Sometimes, in the middle of a pandemic, you find yourself lying on the carpet in your basement, stretching (or – more accurately – immobile, like your skin is full of sand and not humanity). You watch documentaries about space relentlessly because without so much gravity, the sand floats away and your human parts take shape again. The vast darkness is comforting. A long view of time is soothing.

Other times (when you’re not pinned to the carpet) you walk for hours and hours, up and down the hills of your neighborhood. Full of rage. Full of being full of rage. Moving faster so the sand can’t catch up to you quite as quickly this time. And you hear a story on your walk that does what good stories do. Floats you up, up, up and out. It’s a love story. A what-are-the-chances story. Maybe the same odds of finding each other as a giant space rock crashing into another space rock and making a moon.

Or maybe that’s just me.

I’m also thinking about my parents’ love story. I wrote this piece a few years ago, but having just lost my mom, I’m thinking freshly about cosmic connections. This one goes out to both my mom and dad, Margie and Bill, two crazy kids forever in love.

Bonus! Here’s a fun NASA simulation of how the moon may have been formed:

ss: Ghost, vampire, werewolf, or zombie? Why?

JP: Ghosts. Obviously. I am just into them. The idea. Ghosts! Do I ever want to see one? No. But do I like knowing they’re out there? Absolutely.

ss: What's the book everyone seeing this should read if they haven't already?

There are two books I just read that are still clanging loudly in my mind. The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger and Little Weirds by Jenny Slate. Actually, both have a lot to do with plants. Schlanger brings to life the latest research on plant intelligence – the ways plants communicate, connect, and dare I say care. Intelligence is a touchy word with scientists when they’re thinking about plants, but isn’t it wonderful to have evidence now that points us towards the powers of beings that are non-human? It’s not our way or the highway. We are only beginning to discover the breadth of vivid experiences of our green neighbors when we step into the woods.

And Slate brings to life her deepest, weirdest, most powerful self in essays that are more like dream states. At every turn, plants are slyly at Slate’s side during her evolution of becoming more fully herself. She communes with geraniums. And lemons call out to her – she bakes a tart and the lemons transform her.

Although Schlanger and Slate wrote two wildly different books, they both lift language up and shake it out, shaping it to their own particular purposes with loving finesse. They show us how to burn brightly in the name of what’s good. Schlanger’s science writing shows us the way to and through natural mysteries and Slate holds a candle up to personal essays and sets them on fire with her own heat.

Thanks to Tim for bringing home The Light Eaters and to Carrie for sending me Little Weirds.

ss: What has been one of your most satisfying/gratifying creative moments?

JP: Being mid-process with other creative humans is my happy place. I think about being in the woods in Prospect Park surrounded by hundreds of handmade paper flowers and dancing with my friend Erika. I think of being buried in heaps of clothing littering the Merce Cunningham Studio stage for a show made by my friend Kim.

And today, I’m especially thinking about Friday afternoon production meetings in college for dance company concerts. Back in the day, as a student choreographer, I was utterly spoiled with a costume designer, a lighting designer, a stage manager and a mentor. No sophomore has any business having access to all of that. But I did. And the experience brought to life what otherwise would have been passing fancies.

Creative endeavors post-college typically pale in comparison to this experience in my early days as an artist. The lesson was, “this is how you make something.” You do it with other people. You mix it up with newbies and professionals. You make mistakes. And you laugh your ass off while you’re doing it because goddammit this is supposed to be fun. Anything I make now is made better because of other humans. Shoutout to my late, great mentor Danna Frangione who set me on a path. Still trying to live up to her legacy.

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See more of Jenny’s work at Vera Monstera

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