Posted on: August 18, 2008 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Songs About Ghosts #2 / :20 / $1.00 / 64S / Jasmine Wagner, 252 Norman Ave., #203, Brooklyn, NY 11222 / http://www.songsaboutghosts.com / 

I only realized that the title of Jasmine’s zine wasn’t just a nice sounding collection of words after reading through the entirety of this issue. This time, Jasmine takes us back to a summertime camp, interspersing eir narrative with snippets of eir current life. Through this narrative, a character named Thomas comes to the forefront, who is paralleled quite nicely. Where Jasmine has eir “sharpest Chopin etude”, Thomas has “lyrics [that] were scribbled down and crossed out and dog-eared and dirty”. Regardless of how unimportant this facet is, the way that Jasmine scribbles down eir thoughts in this issue is beyond beautiful. It is as if eir typed everything out into Word and rendered it into one specific font. Each page has a small number of words along with an equal amount of white space; the incredibly minor of monotony generated by the same layout predominating the issue ensures that individuals will stay interested through this issue. The zine’s money shot comes in a strong way, as Jasmine perfectly captures the too-often circumstance that happens with friends, as eir loses track of Thomas for a number of years after the camp, finds eir old address somewhere, and decides to write to eir.. The title of the zine becomes painfully true; the song that they sung together endlessly rattles around Jasmine’s head, as eir gets a letter back some time later from Thomas’ parents. They regret to tell Jasmine that Thomas took eir own life, and at this crux in the story, I couldn’t help but to think back about the hundreds of friends I’ve lost track with and hoped that they were okay. Simply striking.

Rating: 6.9/10

Leave a Comment