Pink Blood

Here’s what happens when you run a blog with someone: you stop being colleagues somewhere in the first few months and start being something harder to name. Shared late nights, shared instincts, shared embarrassments—it compounds. By the time Hannah had already gone and Wenke and I were steering this journal together, it had already become something neither of us had quite planned for.

We spent the better part of a year in each other’s orbit—parties and festivals and the kind of long nights that don’t fit cleanly into any category. We were good at it, too. The blog was growing, the ideas landed, and we were one of those pairs who could finish each other’s cultural references without effort. I’d say it couldn’t last but that implies it failed, and I’m not sure it did.

What happened was more ordinary and more painful than failure. We’re both the type to get emotionally knotted in proximity—sentimental idiots dressed up as cynics—and after enough shared time the knot became too complicated to work through while also writing about music and films and whatever else needed writing. Closeness brought pressure, pressure brought expectations, and expectations ran headfirst into who we actually are rather than who we’d decided to be. We tripped over ourselves. It was very human and very annoying.

So Wenke is leaving this journal to focus on her own work. Her writing, her music taste, her specific willingness to be publicly unhinged about the things she loves—all of that goes with her. This place will feel the absence and I’m choosing to say that plainly rather than perform nonchalance, because the nonchalance would be a lie and she’d know it anyway.

What I do know is that once you’ve spent time in the same room as that kind of creative energy, you don’t forget it quickly. Once you’ve had a taste of pink-blooded chaos, you want more of it. So, Udo—go be brilliant. Make something worth reading. May the Fitch be with you.