State of the Hands: New Year's 2019 - 2020

That’s us! The logo was drawn for us by the inimitable Cassie Allen.

Real quick before we begin: if you’re reading this website and haven’t yet, we’d really appreciate it if you follow us on Social Media — there are badges down at the bottom, but for the record you can find us on Facebook and Tumblr. None of us are really Twitter people, and I think there’s an Instagram, but that’s more Alex’s call. I’m one of two word guys we’ve got, so I don’t know how insta works. In the coming year, I’m planning on giving more attention to Tumblr, so watch that space.

This is a year-end post. It is, in fact a decade-end post, hence the image: the general consensus is that the 2010s has been an unpleasant, disorienting decade with a few bright spots. Hence, a dumpster fire.

It’s the end of the decade. So many people are writing recaps and retrospectives and meditations on what that means. There’s one from Rolling Stone I particularly liked, called “The Twenty-Teens: the Most Sort-Of Decade of All Time” and I listen to the Daily Zeitgeist religiously. We can’t really do one for Broken Hands Media, though: we’ve only really been live for about a year.

Personally, this decade has been both up and down for me – at the start of the decade, I was in graduate school in New Mexico, lonelier than I’d ever been, and locked into a cycle of behaviors that fed anxiety and depression. Now, I’m married, living in my hometown again, going back to teaching in January, and locked into a mostly different cycle of behaviors that feed anxiety and depression.

We keep citing the article from Plan C, entitled “We Are All Very Anxious” for a reason.

So the decade hasn’t been a complete dumpster fire — this photo is from mine and Edgar’s wedding in 2017.

Between then and now, I’ve worked as a legal courier, a medical record keeper, a pizza delivery man, an editorial assistant, an adjunct instructor, and a retail associate – oftentimes with a great deal of overlap between these jobs. I traveled internationally for the first (and thus far only) time, and self-published two books, one of which I even think is good.

Edgar had a similar journey, which I will not disrespect them by attempting to relate in my own words, though they did find a job that really speaks to them, and it provided grounds for one of the best pieces of the year.

And here’s Alex and the aforementioned Cassie Allen earlier this year, at their own wedding.

Which brings me to our joint project with Alex. We can’t really do a recap here: Broken Hands is getting up to speed, and it’s really only been this year that we got going.

I mean, yeah, Perdition’s Teeth went live back in 2018, and we started work on that back in 2015 (I think? I’ll have to check,) but the blog is where my focus is until Alex solves the engineering issues that are holding up the last two episodes. We’ve also bought our first piece of fiction and are waiting to acquire more before releasing it.

For the moment, the public face of our group is this blog, at least on the wider internet. We’re associated, loosely, with the Kansas City area band Killer City. We actually share a domain with them.

So here’s the current State of the Hands:

• Perdition’s Teeth is still ongoing, but on hiatus due to technical issues. We’re hoping to get this resolved in the new year.

• Currently, you can hear Killer City at the spotify link above and on bandcamp, and Alex’s own music on Spotify and Bandcamp.

• We have one short story bought, which will be coming out in the first quarter of 2020 – I want more in the can before releasing them, so we need submissions. This means you!

• We have one longer piece of fiction that we have plans for but we are not announcing anything yet. Talks are ongoing relating to other long-form fiction: we’ve mentioned it in the past, but definite things are still

On the blog:

The Nostalgia Trap started with our reflection on seeing Refused at Liberty hall. Picture taken from The Pitch, Aaron Rhodes.

• We have three ongoing series. Chances are these will update sporadically as ideas come to me. So if it hasn’t been updated in a long time, don’t worry – more will probably come:

  • “The Nostalgia Trap” – meditations on the toxic effects of nostalgia on creativity, and what the culture we grew up in tells us about ourselves.

  • “Crafting a Healthy Masculinity” – the past few years, sexual misconduct by powerful men has been taken more seriously. This has always been a problem, and it’s necessary for those of us who identify as men to do better. This is my attempt to contribute to that greater project.

  • “Fisher’s Ghosts” – a retrospective on the works of the late, great cultural theorist Mark Fisher, celebrating the tenth anniversary of his book Capitalist Realism.

• Our most popular posts of the year, outside of any series:

  • Cameron: “Buried in the Tombs of Their Luxury SUVs: Notes on Exterminism”

  • Edgar: “Some Notes on Aesthetics”

  • Other Contributors: “The Why of GM (AKA Why I’m in Control)” by Joel Gilmore

• Our least popular post of the year: “To Live or Die by Metaphor”

• Cameron’s Favorite posts:

  • His own: “Complex Pleasures: A Litmus Test for Art” or “Closed for Construction: On Leaving Midtown”.

  • By Edgar: “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Hourly And Have Had It With Your Behavior”

• Edgar’s favorite posts:

  • Their own: “‘Part of the Work’: Notes on ‘Walking Wall’” or “Let Us Not Disappoint Mr. Waters: Sartorial Decision-making”

  • By Cameron: “The Difficulty of Developing a Personal Style”

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If you enjoyed reading this, consider following our writing staff on Twitter, where you can find Cameron and Edgar. Just in case you didn’t know, we also have a Facebook fan page, which you can follow if you’d like regular updates and a bookshop where you can buy the books we review and reference.