Shinji Moon is an 18 year old writer living in New York City. There are times when I've read her words and my heart has almost leapt out of my chest entirely. She has a way of plucking at heartstrings and turning all that music of what it is to be human into words.

Why do you write? People have stopped thinking. They’ve stopped bouncing thoughts between the external world and their own internal world and it’s like we’ve succumbed to this certain numbness that we just don’t want to give up for convenience’s sake. We’re growing up with television screens as parents and society telling us what to believe in. I write so that I don’t forget to stop and look around and take in the atmosphere every once in a while and feel something, anything. I write because I don’t want to forget how wonderful it feels to be human. I used to do this only for myself. Quietly, in journals, I would spew thoughts and words as a release. No one knew. Not even my own family. But then I started writing for other people, and now I’m somewhere in between, easing the pain in my own chest with a poem while simultaneously trying to give a little pluck to the heart of humanity as a whole. I want to move myself and I want to move others, just for a moment. I write for instant gratification. All I want is for people to remember just how awesome it is to feel things every once in a while, and to think, to truly think, without the distractions of today’s world making it so hard to do so. Do you remember the first thing you wrote? When I was six years old I wrote a story about a monster who hid bones underneath a rug that coexisted in the same world as a sweet old lady who fell off of a hill after the dinner bell rang too loud. But I don’t think you’re asking about that, are you? The first poem I remember writing and thinking, “This is a poem that I really wrote” was from when I was what, fourteen years old?, and first recognized that you could find yourself so easily in the world around you. It was called “I, Ms. Dandelion.” It was really just me toying with language and finding a rhythm that I could fall into. It’s funny. I haven’t thought about this poem in years now but I can still recite bits of it by heart. I still say “a could-be, a should-be, a leftover would-be” in my writing every now and then. Reading it now I feel fourteen again. What a strange age. It was such a searching time.

       I, Ms. Dandelion  

Me, I’m a dandelion, everywhere at once.
Unearth me in lawns, in hollow sidewalk cracks.

Underappreciated, just give me a moment;

The smallest of moments, and you’ll see what I can do.

Hold me tight, my dear, for I’ll be gone by dawn.

I’m held here by heartstrings, but for whom do I stay?

     There’s no world for me here,
          No world for me there,

                 There’s not a world for me
                 anywhere.

*        *        *

You’ll break through the cosmos to try to find me,

the remains of a girl, a dandelion girl.

You’ll beg and you’ll plead, but all that you’ll get

Is a handful of hair,

A handful of air.  

Look to the sky, white-faced and burnt,

For remains of a girl, a dandelion girl
    of a could-be, a would-be, a leftover should-be,

    An unanswered wish, a freckle of hope

A flash of ebony

And raspberry lips

And I, Ms. Dandelion, waving goodbye.

Where do you write and what is the process like for you? I write anywhere where I have pockets or a bag big enough for me to carry a notebook in. If all else fails, I make a note of a snippet in my phone. I like to write in places where people are constantly moving, constantly going in and out and staying for a moment. Sometimes I’ll buy myself lunch and sit in a corner of a small restaurant or café and do the whole quintessential late-teens college student thing and feel like a cliché and get some awful satisfaction from it anyway. I like writing where there’s inspiration everywhere, flooding up to my knees and pouring through air vents and coffee taps. I wrote one of my favorite poems on the stall wall of a bathroom somewhere in a rest stop in New Jersey while I was driving to Maryland for a summer. I almost wish I had the poem now. The process of writing for me isn’t so much a process as much as it is just me having a conversation with a page, with another Me sitting quietly on my shoulder. A lot of the time I’ll collect moments and thoughts and people throughout my day and infuse them in my work later on when I’m writing. I can go weeks without writing, and then suddenly, I’ll step in a poem while walking home from class and peel it off of the bottom of my shoe when I get home. The poem come and goes. It’s just that every now and then it stays long enough for me to catch it. I don’t feel like I have a whole process of going about it. I let my hands take control and that’s that. Most of the time, I don’t even go back and check it over because it’s still too fresh, too bloody for me to look at it objectively. What things inspire you? Small acts of candid humanity while walking down the street. A girl in all black carrying sunflowers at three in the morning. A man crying into a handkerchief, folding and unfolding a small piece of paper quietly to himself on the 6 train uptown. Sea glass. The slow ease from first introductions to first kiss to the first time you make love to the first time someone makes you cry. The relationship between humans and nature. The littlest things. Smaller and smaller and smaller until you don’t know if they were real or now. Glimpses into worlds that don’t belong to me. Strangers, above all: how beautifully they move when they don’t think they’re being watched. A lot of your writing explores human emotion, to me it seems like you find the center of a feeling and explore every beautiful and bittersweet angle. What draws you so much to wanting to understand and articulate human emotion? There’s this constant and unyielding pull that we all innately have to try to understand the depths of humanity. And if that sentence was a complete lie, then at least there is in me this unquenchable thirst for something that I can’t understand. There’s a red string around all of our ankles interconnecting us all in a way that is so beautiful to me that all I can do is try to write about it. When you think about your life when you’re older, so much older than now, you’ll think about the people that you’ve met and the ones who’ve touched your hearts. Only then will you be able to tell who was the most important to you. I think what I’m trying at here is writing at every stage of this life of mine, watching myself and the others around me evolve and grow up and into themselves and outward towards others. People bloom and it’s so beautiful to see what colors they hold. Is it not the absolute truth? There are some feelings that are universal. We know the feeling of love, of caring for someone,  for hurting for someone, because of someone, with someone — but it’s just that none of us can put it into words. All I’m trying to do is dissect hearts and souls and minds and human beings without the messiness of open-heart surgery. What do you find beautiful? Dancers. How you can tell so much from someone by the way they walk. A slow rising morning with a cup of tea and a window where you can watch the sky change into day. Waking up, turning over, and kissing a boy you love on the mouth without him waking up, and falling asleep again — all of it a dream. You can find beauty in everything if you remain in an ever-wondering, ever-wandering state of being. Don’t let the world tell you that you what is beautiful. There are roses in the trashcan across the street from me. Someone spilled milk over the petals. A man commented, saying how disgusting it was; the girl he was with called them beautiful. Shut your eyes but never close them off. Don’t let the world tell you what is beautiful. There is no right or wrong answer. What is an experience that really changed you and the way you look at things? When I was sixteen I worked at my stepfather’s barn over the summer, walking racehorses and grooming them and whatnot. There was a woman who worked there who had the deepest ebony hair curled and tied at the nape of her neck. Her name was Gloria and she had low-set shoulders and could carry two full water buckets in each hand. She was strong and she was beautiful, with the elegant rhythm in her step of a retired dancer. She didn’t speak English well, and I didn’t speak Spanish at all, but we formed a relationship with each other through Good Morning’s and small head nods and always feeling elated when seeing the other. She had the kindest face and the most unapologetically green eyes that were surrounded by storylines and crow’s feet. On the last day of my working there, I made my rounds to say my goodbyes, and when I got up to her I spluttered out in broken English and gesticulations that I was leaving, that I wouldn’t be coming back. And I didn’t say much but I know she understand. She held onto the sides of my face and spilled such lyrical Spanish into my ears. A language of sheet music. Soft peals of nonsense. It didn’t matter then that neither of us could speak the other’s language, because I knew that the words we were saying were in complete bilingual symmetry.

 She took her hands off my face and quickly took off the earrings she was wearing. She cupped my hands in hers and dropped them into my palms, curling my fingers around them. I remember not wanting to take them at first — I never saw her without them on for the three summers that I worked there. They were so much a part of her. But every time I tried to give them back, she just shook her head no. This was her gift to me. Without a single hesitation, she gave a gift to a girl that she had barely even spoken to.

 On the plane ride home the next day, I remember crying the entire time. Once in a while, every few decades or so, you meet someone who touches you in such a small and monumental way that your heart grows to keep them in there for good. There are people you meet who teach you more than you can ever learn from a book, a movie, a three-hour lecture on Proust. Sometimes, language falls away, and paves a path for something more beautiful — a truth more honest than the discrepancy between feeling and language, between what you want to say and what you can say. Sometimes, you learn that the most you can convey is through actions. Love through verbs. Feel through nouns. What is you favourite feeling and why? Contentedness. Waking up to fresh coffee. Sitting by the water with someone you love and talking about the thoughts you’ve collected in puddles over the night. The simplicity of being barefoot in August with your pant legs rolled up, sitting around with good company underneath the slow sway of the porch light from across the way, drinking a Corona with a lime wedge in it, and laughing about a memory that is so unimportant now, because all you want to remember is that scene. It’s that feeling of pure ease, letting your limbs fall loose and untying your hair over your shoulders and smiling because the water is so beautiful, because conversation is the best soundtrack, because the most beautiful moments are the ones that don’t require anything but this: the low hum of an August dusk, with the late blue fading into an early midnight; the fireflies, always; and someone had gone and dropped stars all over the sky. When the tranquility of the world around me and the world inside of me are in cahoots, I know that I’m happy — that all is finally okay. Can you describe what the world seems like to you? I don’t really think I can. Is there a piece you've written that really stands out to you (maybe a favourite piece or just one you really connect with)? “A Rendition of Autumn.” I don’t know. Personally, I think it’s one of the best poems I’ve written. It’s so strange to see what people like in comparison to what I like when it comes to my work. We’re all so touched by such different things. 

“

There was a point in our lives

where if I slit my throat, it was you who would bleed.

You say goodbye too often in autumn.
Tonight the last leaf fell off the tree beyond my bedroom window,

and I could hear the sound of branches aching for love to wrap

around their leaves like limbs.

It was three a.m. in the last stretch of May.

Springtime calls for heartbeat symphonies

and when we pressed our bodies together they coincided like

chords, like staccatos when I ran my hand down

your spine.

Fog is one of the top reasons that drivers get killed each year.
In the backseat of my car we almost caused

the hundredth casualty,

but all I got were bruises in the shape of apologies

along my thighs.

There are certain people who leave scars when they go.

Tonight I cut my thumb while I was peeling an apple.

I thought of you.

— “A Rendition of Autumn,” Shinji Moon

What do you imagine the future Shinji Moon to be like? I’m already such an old lady now that I couldn’t imagine what I’ll be like later on. I can only say hopes. I feel as though I’ve grown into my skin for the most part. Maybe I’ll grow another two inches. Maybe I’ll have picked up smoking cigarettes again. Maybe I’ll have quit for good. Maybe I’ll drink more coffee. Maybe I won’t let the smallest pin drop of moments break me. Hopefully, I’ll be stronger. Hopefully, I’ll have lived in so many parts of the world that I feel at home anywhere instead of nowhere. Hopefully, someone will fall in love with me and I’ll fall in love with that someone and we can create a world between us that I’ll believe in more than anything. Hopefully, I will become in myself, a work of art. Maybe one day, I’ll even stop wearing glasses. If you could make a mix tape of poems what would you put on it? Man, what a wonderful question. This is a mixtape I would make for a boy I dated once:

If you were something else, other than a human, what would you be? A travel mug What are five things you cannot live without? My planner, tea kettle, journal, red lipstick and a good book. 

You can find Shinji at commovente and you can read her poetry mixtape here.

Why do you draw? I draw because I enjoy it, it gives me a sense of achievement, and honestly, I don't have many other hobbies. I find myself doodling and coming up with ideas I want to develop- and I find the only way I really can is through putting it down on paper. I've always had an overactive imagination, and it's great to let stuff out, though frustrating when my ideas don't convert so well. What inspires you? Books, music and films, but also a lot of people and places- everyday life. I know I'd love to hide out in my bedroom all day, but going out into the world inspires me a lot. When was the first time you dabbled in the arts, and what made you continue to do it? I've never really been good at art or really loved it. I was quite sporty when I was younger, then injured my knee which stopped that (thank goodness). I was the only class member who did art homework in year 9, so I got praised for it, and it made me feel good. I didn't really draw much up until recently. Last year I was sad and a friend suggested drawing and I laughed at it, but it has really helped. You create collages, drawings, stop motion films and photography, which is your most favorite type of art to create? Oooooh I don't know- I love flicking through magazines and seeing the possibilities of collage within photos but nothing beats a drawing. There's still art techniques I want to explore as well. You have this way of making something beautiful, or funny, or thoughtful out of whatever you're thinking, has there ever been anything you couldn't turn into a piece of art? Hmm I don't know- it's hard to really express the depth of a feeling within something so flat. I love Van Gogh's work a lot because he converted his deep sadness into beauty- I'd love to be able to switch my emotions through my art. You had this great project of putting toy soldiers around places in London to try and get people to pay more attention to the things around them, did you ever find out what happened to your army? And why is it important to you that people notice more? The soldiers were put up in my home town, but I put mini zines round Camden in London, so kinda the same thing. I really like to do a lot of things that are odd and unusual because it is important we look at the world, and it's the kind of thing that would make me smile, or make me think and inspire me, so I wanted to give it back to other people. (soppy alert). You have a wonderfully sarcastic sense of humor, has it ever gotten you in to trouble? Yes, I used to be told I had a "bad attitude problem" but I was just speaking my mind in an almost innocent way. And some people just need shaking up and having a laugh. I once got really told off in primary for making my friends crossword puzzles instead of doing the work, and the teacher called in my Mum for a "serious chat" and uugh LIGHTEN UP PEOPLE. How long does it take you to cover a starbucks cup with your illustrations? It depends, I actually haven't done many because I don't get them often. The ones up on my blogs were given to me on a college trip by the people that drunk them, and I did them bit by bit on the places we went to, and on the bus journey. When and where do you most often make art? Sitting on my bed, after a long day, blasting out some music and howling along, dabbling in paint and pens. Do you have any other future projects planned at the moment? There's a lot of crazy stuff in my head I want to let out. If you could do anything with your art, without worrying about money or time etc, what would you do? Ooooh eeee THE POSSIBILITIES I'd love to just do something to rip the world in two. I don't know. I think every artist wants to do something amazing. I'm not even an artist- I'm a teenage girl. I'd love to have a nice book of my work out, nice paper, something cute. My journals of pictures are all a bit floppy. Describe your dream workspace/art studio: 2 rooms, one with all the equipment and lots of colour, inspiration, EVERYTHING, then a room of white and plain beauty. I love to be surrounded by a lot of stuff, but sometimes it gets a bit much. I'd love a nice bookshelf full of my dream art books. You love a lot of great movies and musicians, but if you could only hang out with one famous person who would you choose? DAVID BOWIE (perhaps in the Ziggy Stardust era though) If you were an animal what would you be? A bat! I collect stuffed toy ones, real dead ones (ok maybe i just have one but it's a collection?!) and have been interested in them since I was little. They are cute, not ugly!

You can find more of Caitlin's work on her website

http://montenegro.bandcamp.com/

Alex Montenegro has a sweet, soft, honey-filled voice, with it she pours out her thoughts over the gentle pull of guitar strings. I had the pleasure of interviewing her and I discovered a lovely and determined soul who feels most at home amongst her records, turning her thoughts into music. 

How old are you and when and how did you get started writing music? I am eighteen years old. I've been writing music for a long time, even before I owned my first guitar, which was at the age of nine! It kind of just started. I used to think of terrible rhymes and I would write terrible lyrics to sing along. Then the guitar came, and songs started becoming actual songs! What do you need to write a song? I don't need much! Something to write my thoughts down on and an instrument. What does music mean to you? Music is a way of expressing yourself...an open journal. To me, it's a less embarrassing way to talk about all the heart ache and wants in life. Without it, I'd probably be experiencing a lot of anxiety, grudges, and regrets. Music is medicine, and it means a lot to me. Not even just writing, but also listening to others. What instruments do you play and what one is your favorite and why? I play piano, guitar, the celtic harp, ukulele, and long grass pieces! My favorite instrument is the guitar. It's the most satisfying instrument for me. I feel like I can share emotion, not only with words, but with sound. It's the only instrument I am capable of doing that with. You have beautiful song titles and lyrics (I particularly love the lyrics of your new song 'it's been a while and I am trying to stop clenching my fist'), it's clear you love writing as well. How important are the lyrics in a song to you? Thank you. It's pretty important. In a way, writing lyrics gives me closure. It allows me to open up, and tell a story. I'm not a fan of talking about things, so every word I write is something you'd find in a journal of mine. Describe your own process of creating a song:

My song writing process isn't anything specific. Sometimes I write poems, other times I pick up a guitar, and it goes from there! Lately I've just been picking up the guitar, pressing the record button, and singing and playing what I feel. It's interesting! What comes out of my mouth without actually processing what i'm thinking. Two of the three songs on the last release were written like that, and the recordings you hear are the actual first recordings. I didn't want to rerecord them, it wouldn't have been as honest if I did. What are some other artists you like and is your work inspired by them? Yes, definitely! There are so many artist that I love and am inspired by! K. Matsson, Justin Vernon, Joanna Newsom, early Bob Dylan, Zach Codon, the list could go on forever! Lately I've been really inspired by fellow upcoming musicians. Mitch Welling of flatsound, in particular.  What kind of things do you take inspiration from? I take inspiration from memories, distance, wanting, loving, and change. What are you working on right now? I am currently working on my next release! It's very exciting. It's taking a lot longer than expected, though. I keep thinking I'm done, but I end up cutting a song or two the next day. I can't wait for it to be finished. Do you go to school? If so how do you juggle making music and school? I do go to school! School doesn't take much of my time, really. It hasn't affected making music. If anything, making music affects school. I sometimes put off assignments to record or write! If you weren't a musician what would you do? I'm not sure. I've been thinking about that a lot lately. People at college are so intent on having an "actual career", it's frustrating. It seems like you are looked at differently for wanting to do something you love. I think I'd open a cute little shop if I couldn't be a musician. Do you perform in public? I do! I try to set up a small gig every now and then. I love preforming. I'd preform every day if I could! What are some things you daydream about? I day dream about traveling, falling in love, touring... silly things! What do you find beautiful? I find a lot of things beautiful! The sky, stars, flowers, and moon. Shared memories, Joanna Newsom albums, animals, the first cold wind of the year, and kind souls. What are five things you couldn't live without? Five things I couldn't live without? My guitar, record collection, record player, friends, and family!

it's been awhile and i'm trying to stop clenching my fist - alex montenegro

You can also find Alex on tumblr at littlerunawaybunny.

You can find more of Sabine's work at zeit-bild or find her on facebook.
Photo credits: 
Photo 2-6 & 9
Model: Bettina
MUA & Hair: Wilma Wahnsinn

Photos 1, 7 & 8
Model: Katharina