Starting with the original Lalochezia caption because its sentiments re-registered as important re-reading it:
Swearing is a luxury not everyone can afford. What does that mean? We can exercise our freedom of speech as we please! This is true, but prejudice and microaggressions and exercised pretty freely as well.
This also informs how we perceive aggression, victimhood, and how individuals are relegated to stereotypes. I'd like to take this opportunity to politely say "fuck you" to everyone who has labelled me angry for gently following something up, and to those who use women of colour as a scapegoat for their own personal mistakes.
We should be able to express our anger without fear of prejudice and racially charged accusations. We should also be able to swear because it's bloody fun. Language is shaped by the people communicating in it. Why not be as colorful and inventive with your passions as you'd like?
Lalochezia is the relief felt after swearing your rocks off, after keeping it all bottled up for so long. Like kicking your boots off, or taking your hair out. It's the little things.
Good night April, you have been many things. We begin this newsletter with a goodbye: let’s welcome in May properly. So, April, thanks for the love. The cuddles we had with lovers, friends, pets - the laughter we’ve had leaving us crying for air in our lungs. A sweetness lies behind the kind of giggle you share where your senses don’t care to breathe - the moment is just too good. April. April. You have been rain, you have been sorrow, you have been birthday cake, you have been snow, sun, heatwaves, tanned shoulders under Ray-Bans and you have been hope. You have been success, awards, commissions, book writing, idea creations and friendships. Risk, replying slowly, relish on a hot dog. April, you did it all girl.
We offer you Lalochezia. It means, to enjoy and feel a release from swearing. It doesn’t mean to curse and enjoy profanity, instead it refers to the sensation that comes FROM swearing: an emotional relief gained when we call someone a twat. We’re honouring that as we sign off April. From now, our pieces will not go directly onto our website as soon as they are made. They will first go onto our Patreon under the category of “Hotstepper”. We will upload pieces throughout the year 3 or 4 times in bulk. True meaning of archive: activated. This decision comes for two reasons: first to try and protect our work from misusers and secondly, we move into charity and corporate contracts and soon our website will reflect a new, product based display to easily navigate our content and services. We’ve been working with Gajan Panchanalingam, a visually genius kind of designer whose German-Tamil-London diversity fits right in with our meticulous need for the raw, real and culturally creative. We’re working with the Alfred Kennedy Trust, giving interactive workshops to LGBTQ youth facing homelessness or hostile living environments. We’re working on individual projects too, as ever: freelancing, museum commissions and writing for our books. Gratitude to you our friend and reader - thank you for supporting us.
Lalochezia reads below, best served with a coffee or on a commute.
FUCK. Your alarm’s gone off. The picture of me in your head is yours alone: you need it to survive. You need the picture you have of me to remain evil, terrible, unresponsive. All in order for you to keep the innocent and banal victim of yourself you’ve created intact. What I say breaks down the facade and you don’t like it - do you? Oh, say you hate me. Say it loud. You like saying it because it feels good: because it is true, because it feels nice to shout when you’re in a world that doesn’t want you to really shout.
Your skin expands and fills out more space. This girl's favourite thing to do is tell me that I’m angry. She loves assuming my feelings because it helps her fulfil her self-portrayal as a fair-skinned, delicate victim. White women have weaponised their femininity for as long as the Empire has been a thing. Brown women are not allowed to be disgruntled or express how they feel about manipulative and passive aggressive treatment.
FUCK. Your alarm’s gone off. The volume in your throat rises higher and higher as if it’s meant to pierce and burst 1000 ear drums: tiny fractal pieces of human existence all obliterated, terminated, emancipated. Castrated: your voice is. Saddened: your being is. Scream from the top of your lungs and hire me to do the management. Let me produce you: I’ll tell you where to scream and when to do it whilst getting a suitable rooftop ready for the ambience to sink into your veins - dilute - weaken - watery chaos. The need to scream is final now. Resolute as fixated, I look at you with eyes of tall wheat swaying in the wind, hold me closer; a cradle shall fall.
Your skin expands and fills out more space. So I hold my tongue and don my best customer service voice. But when a line has been crossed, I mean who knows what triggers it, it could be being spoken to like a dickhead for hours on end when the entire meeting could have been an email, and I let out those deliciously satisfying words: “fuck you.” I experience a headiness that turns my brain into a balloon and floats me up past the ceilings, over the fields, and into a private heaven. I experience lalochezia whenever I know profanity is necessary because my gut tells me. If I spoke up about every indiscrecion, every racialised aspect of a professional setting, no one would want to work with me. And babe, that list is already dangerously low because I don’t accept runarounds or three month unpaid invoices.
FUCK. Your alarm’s gone off. Indulge in fuck. Indulge in you bloody whore. Indulge in cunt.
Your skin expands and fills out more space. I worked with this gorgeous white girl at a Cafe once. She’d always turn up late and miscommunicate the smallest things. One time I turned up late for work for the second time (every time I was late was under three minutes) and I was fired on the spot. A year later when I visited that cafe for brunch, I called the manager a scrawny little cunt with a rat king for an assistant. Some white guy with dreads who kept asking me if I had been raised by animals.
FUCK. Your alarm’s gone off. Indulge in saying crap for the first time when you’re 10 years old - finally saying it out loud, breathing crap into abstract existence. Hooray! You did it. You just elevated from a child into pre-teen. You fucking awesome pre-teen, you! Being such a child that your adult brother and sister tell you that for your 10th birthday they’ve given you the rightful permission to walk around all day and stick your middle finger up at things as much as you like. The fact that you could have done it anyway: but someone has told you it’s now your god given birthright to DO it. Telling you that they’ve also gifted you an engraved iPad but it’s the fact you can swear all day, without Mum or Dad having a go at you - that makes your heart set on fire. What a good, cheap gift to give a child. Thank me later. Thank Lalochezia. She’s a wonderful lady who lives near the water somewhere in Venice. She likes good wine and she was the inspiration for Lollapalooza. Not many people know that about her and her legacy. But I do, and I’ll tell you more about this cheap lie when you’re 20 years old.
Your skin expands and fills out more space. Lalochezia is a great high because I can’t get my kicks whenever I want. I usually sit through an hour of feigned ignorance, of being told I’m being “aggressive” leaving the poor girl feeling “attacked.” So what is there to do, other than attack? I call myself a fairy godmother because I always make people's dreams come true. It’s like taking your doc martens off after a long day of standing and stomping. Your skin expands and fills out more space, it stretches and you can feel that gorgeous relief of letting go. I make the choice to sit through microaggressions just as much as I make the choice to let this girl know how aware I am of her favourite role to play. How did we get so intuitive to know when to release our frustrations at the right time, where there’s absolutely nothing to lose?
FUCK. Your alarm’s gone off. It does make you feel good to swear. It cements you as an adult. It cements you as a punk. It cements you as far away as possible from the good christian who revels in the forgiveness Jesus once gave us all. Swear as you fuck harder. Swear and you bite your lip. Swear as you get taxed. It feels good. Like crack. Crack open the coconut which collided with the soft earth beneath the tree you once climbed when you were small. Smallness is fine if you know how to sell it. Sell and work it: give it all you’ve got.
Your skin expands and fills out more space. Moments like these I commend my mother for making it this far. I never understood her when she used to tell me my mouth would get me into trouble. Now I know she was talking about the realities of being a brown and Muslim woman in the Uk, it just makes it sadder. The other day I was thinking about a femme revolution - not marching in the streets with signs but a revolution that closes the banks, shuts the schools, and hacks into housing systems. I thought women were thought to be scary because they’re irrational, hysterical, are too stupid to understand their feelings. That’s what I was taught. I still fear women, for new reasons, for reasons I’m yet to understand, but it’s probably closer to the original fear than what it’s been mocked up to be now. I wonder what actually happened to quash power. Like, pre “witchcraft.” Was there a global revolt three thousand years ago that we don’t know of? Was a king executed in front of his adoring crowd? Let me dream. Why is swearing so unwomanly, why anything?
FUCK. Your alarm’s gone off. Go forward wishing you had done better by them, by yourself, by your family name - go forward wishing you could have spent more time laying beside her in bed. Her ugly pyjamas, oh how they fit her so badly. Spend time nestled in the warmth - not of her body - the warmth that she’s your tomorrow, she’s your everyday. She’s the one who will hold you, the moon who teaches the sun to slow down. Spend time - spoon her properly: push your head into all of her hair, don’t avoid it - become one with it. Let it find its way into your ass crack or in your shoe. Spend time with this girl until -
FUCK. Your alarm’s gone off.
Your skin expands and fills out more space. For the most part, I hide how satisfying it is to swear at a disrespectful person because I’m playing the game. Oh yeah, you forced me into it, but your tone is making me feel very attacked and I know I’m the one bringing this up constantly, but now that you’re not taking my shit, I actually need you to leave me alone and stop being so angry. But honey, why? I thought we were playing the game.