Now is the Time of Monsters (What a Time to Be Alive)
A Community Collection 2025
Human
[ hyoo-muhn ]
Noun
any individual of the genus Homo, especially a member of the species Homo sapiens.
adjective
- of, relating to, characteristic of, or having the nature of people: human frailty.
- consisting of people: the human race.
- sympathetic; humane: a warmly human understanding.
Humane
[ hyoo-meyn ]
adjective
acting in a way that causes the least harm to all living things: characterized by tenderness, compassion, and sympathy for people and animals, especially for the suffering or distressed: humane treatment of prisoners.
Monster
[ mon-ster ]
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English monstre, from Latin mōnstrum “portent, unnatural event, monster,” from mon(ēre) “to warn” + -strum, noun suffix
noun
As in: a giant animal, or supernatural being
a nonhuman creature so ugly or monstrous as to frighten people.
an animal or plant of abnormal form or structure
one who deviates from normal or acceptable behavior or character, an immoral monster
a threatening force
a person who provokes or elicits horror by wickedness, cruelty, etc.
"Now is the Time of Monsters" takes its title from a passage by Antonio Gramsci: "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters." In this liminal space—between collapse and rebirth—the monstrous emerges from the fractures of what we once called ‘normal.’
A monster is something we imagine as deviating from the human norm. Yet we live in an era where monstrous injustices—genocide, systemic violence—are routine, even normalized. Our vision of ‘normal,’ itself a construct, is enforced through laws and social codes, shaping not only what is but also its shadow: the ‘abnormal,’ the ‘inhumane,’ the so-called monster. But what if the monster is not just the feared Other, but us? The unrecognizable, the unwanted, the ones who refuse—or are refused by—the world as it is?
Perhaps the monster is born from our desires for what does not yet exist, from all we fail to understand about the human condition. To be alive today is to be living in a time of monsters, hunted or hunting and haunting or haunted. Some monsters crave humanity’s love, fighting for belonging and for their full humanity to be seen; others embody the inhumane, consumed by fear of difference, destroying the very world we all share.
Many of the works in this publication ask us to consider the following question: Is it fear that creates the monsters, or the monsters that create the fear? The answer may be both. The monsters we imagine are the ones we bring into being. The pieces featured here all exist in that tension, to interrogate, to witness, and to ask what it means to live, love, and resist in a monstrous time.
The Beautiful Life
(read by Tianna Sheppard)
written by Ernest Williamson III
april001reverse
by Uintah Gearhart
This track is meant to be a frenetic tapestry of radio static, commercial breaks, and fragmented melodies. I wanted to capture the dissonance and urgency of life in a fast-paced city, like flipping through stations in a cab stuck in gridlock and the commotion of a busy transit system. Layer upon layer, you can hear samples of desire, distraction, and disconnection into a chaotic but strangely familiar rhythm. The ads and sudden tonal shifts reflect the noise of modern existence—where attention is currency, and identity is often spliced between what's sold and what's sought. It's a sonic portrait of the human condition under pressure: fragmented, overstimulated, but always searching for a signal in the static. What a time to be alive.
ANOLE
by Chris Topah
Flare dewlaps twice at the birds
Not sure that I know if it works
(she’ll come back to me)
Green anole you were kind to me
Head with a tilt to scan
Eyes on a ceiling fan
Await awake
You feel no shame
And by glass pane
Drafted theory of pain
I learned what hurts the most
God please don’t be a ghost
//
All the pennies that got sent
Was it time well spent
I never knew
You like how I do
The last words that she spoke
Oh father i’m the joke
I share your pain
We don’t eat the same
On a slow ride fleeting
As eyes drip dry
God I be