I am excited to announce that my first poetry collection, A Love That Lives in the Dirt, available here.
I have said many times over the last few years that I hoped to work on a longer term project, to exist in a molasses-paced creative exploration for an extended period of time. Between the urgency of capitalism and the frantic nature of the rapid transformation I’ve undergone the last few years, I yearned for slowness like a lover I had never met. And yet—as I reached a point with my poetic work in 2024 that signaled it was time to publish a new collection, I became impatient to understand how it would come to ground in Asyiah, as we Hermeticists say. But after living through the summer that would mark my personal history as the worst to date
—nearly taking my home and threatening my life—I removed all pressure and expectation once I found myself living in Spain just weeks later for my first art residency at Can Serrat.
My acclimation to my first real trip out of the country was not an easy one. It’s confusing enough to figure out where you exist in time and space three weeks after nearly having to leave your home and city of over a decade, but to do it in a massive villa on the Spanish countryside co-habitating with 20 international strangers was not my most graceful moment. Moreover, I had never been left alone for an entire month to simply...make art.
My body did not know what to do with itself. The first jet-lagged week, I woke up at the break of dawn and went out for walks on the property, literally putting my body in the space to figure out how it made sense. I remember looking at the beautiful foliage, the fruit trees, and the huge mountain of Montserrat that we stood at the foot of and felt like I was some gnarled, contorted skeleton in their presence. I felt like they were laughing at me and how much I felt I had to do, when they simply were just there, being. I filmed myself moving. I watched it back, squinting, trying to make sense of all I’d been through and how that resulted to being here in this strange and beautiful place.
There are things that are happening to us without ever seeing or consciously knowing. Things we can only prove the presence of from the evidence of their effect on us. That’s how it was at Can Serrat, and in Spain, for me. For all of the numbness, confusion and feeling like I was just floating along at times, getting to know this new place and learning a new language enough that I could effectively order a cappuccino and croissant at the local café, there was healing happening from the land and the people and cooking and eating together without me knowing. When we drank wine and chainsmoked rolled cigarettes at the large stone table most nights, this mysterious process was happening. It was happening when we came into the kitchen in the morning and mumbled to each other in Spanglish, conjuring shitty coffee from one of the broken Moka pots. From the late night conversations, learning about lives back at home, from how wildly different every one was from me and each other, and from the grace, patience and understanding every time someone would ask me how I was and I didn’t know what to say, it was happening. But I didn’t realize how much I was truly changed until I was home.
In our first round of art shares at the residency, I had already taken a number of videos and so showed them, along with a few of the spoken word videos I had made with pieces from this collection. It was the first time I had shared this work in any critical way, and the feedback I received lit a spark to explore my poetry and movement with greater consideration. I hadn’t published this book yet, because I kept saying that this was a “sacred text,” and nothing felt right. So, without any expectation of what I would make during the month, I decided to put my money where my mouth was and figure out what the fuck I meant by that.
I did some research and decided to play with bookbinding. I went to an art store in Barcelona and asked if they had the proper supplies. I was referred to a place called An-Car, which I figured was just another art supply shop. I took the train down to Montjuïc to check it out and found myself in a traditional bookbindery. The man who showed up at the counter quickly learned that I did not speak much Spanish. At the time, I couldn’t even say the word for bookbinding: encuadernación. And so, we navigated a shaky Spanglish conversation where I tried my best to express my interest in getting a copy of my book printed like a Bible, leather bound with gold foil. I looked at fabric samples and picked out the metal stamps for the type. It was exactly what I wanted. We strategized timing that allowed me to understand that if I wanted this to happen, I needed to go back to the house and design the book over that very weekend in order to have it finished before I left the country at the end of the month. I rushed home with fire in my belly, purpose once again in my eyes, and committed to the three-day endeavor. After a few frustrating back-and-forths with the printer, we reached our goal, and I picked the book up just a few days before we were all set to leave.
In September, a year will have passed since I printed a single copy of this text in Barcelona. The pieces in this book span two years of the most intense transformation of my life, with the last piece, “A Corpse Beginning,” written just weeks before heading to Spain. This body of work has a mind of its own and has written its timeline. But I merely aim to listen and be an accommodating vessel for its transmission. It is with all of this in mind that I share the release of my first official poetry book, A Love That Lives in the Dirt, will be available to collect and fund on Kickstarter beginning on July 31st until August 31st.
When I got home from Spain, I released my first fully self-produced spoken word song and video from the book, The Divinity of Darkness. After three videos with the accompaniment of others’ music, it was time for me to create my own with the intention of releasing a full album, as the pieces are written with rhythm in mind. Through this Kickstarter, the album will also be funded and released on vinyl. I also have a few other special offerings up my sleeve that will be revealed upon launch that will only be available through the campaign.
This collection is a Scorpionic journey, initiating me into expanses and depths of grief that I never knew were possible and of my own erotic nature in equal measure. This work is a devotional to Death. To the process of dying, killing, ending, and existing in the void thereafter. This book is a talisman for the destigmatization of suicidal ideation and an artifact of surviving parental abuse. My hope is that these words can sit with you whenever you are in the dark and that you will feel less alone. And that they can serve as a testament to your own erotic capacity.
I am grateful for every person who has been a part of my journey through these words, up to and including those who have broken my heart in ways I will never understand in this life. I am grateful to everyone who held me in the times I wrote these words, as it will always be a mystery to me how so many could love a corpse. I can only seek to embody their unconditional love and generosity as a devotional practice in their honor. I am truly built by community and by Divine Intelligence, in alignment with Divine timing. And decimated by it, all the same.
Bless this death, and every one hereafter.
LVX,
Jillian
Jillian Adel is a multidisciplinary artist, Hermetic practitioner and archetypal reader with her esoteric practice, Vague Intellectual Pleasure. You can book 1:1 Tarot and Archetypal Life Path Readings as well as Transmutational Counseling here. You can view and buy art here.
Her work lives at the intersection of the mystical, the intimately personal, and the philosophical. She utilizes energetic and emotional landscapes, archetypes, and alchemical processes of death, rebirth, and ritual, in order to observe and discuss the far corners of the human condition. Through configurations of paint, pastel, and poetic phrasing, she makes the subconscious conscious and discusses the unseen forces that move us. She has been featured by Philadelphia Contemporary and was a 2024 artist-in-residence at Can Serrat, Barcelona.