excavation

a voice message turned zine

Author

Tristan Willis
July 17, 2023

a scanned page from a zine. The background is a piece of mail from a health insurance company about home delivery of medication. Black blocks cover any personal information. One block has cut out magazine letters spelling "Excavation." Another has strips of printed text that say "a voice message turned zine." "by Tristan B Willis" is written in ink below those blocks.

Last week was my birthday and, as I’ve done every year since I turned 30, I took a week off to write a new piece.

I’m real lucky to be able to do this, and often what comes out is the culmination of a year’s worth of intake and random images and bits of writing I’ve gathered in my notes app.

It felt great to get to “end of play” this year. But I also spent some time each night putting together a zine: collaging ink drawings, pages from a magazine, a brown paper bag, strips of text I printed.

Scanned page from a zine. A drawing of an older iPhone with shiny collaged pieces from a magazine as a squiggly background and the screen of the phone. Cut out strips of text read "(a breath) Hi again uhm (laughs)"

I kind of

don't even know

how to start this message

In 2022 I was also real lucky to receive a grant I could put towards working with a integrative health coach to help me manage my autoimmune diseases and chronic conditions. One day I left her a voice message about all my pill bottles.  Now it's that zine and you can read it online or download a printable version from my itch page.

Hope you enjoy, let me know what you think here or on the itch page!

Scanned page from a zine. A drawing of an older iPhone with shiny collaged pieces from a magazine as the phone screen and organic shapes around it. Strips of printed text read "Uhhh how do I end a message like this I hope you're having a good Monday I will talk to you tomorrow Bye"