Issue No. I: Getting Started
Welcome to Broken Stone Review
A mix by Ian “humanbIAN” Foley
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Editor’s Note: Getting Started
It’s difficult to get started. It was hard for me just to sit down to write this, and it was hard to decide which sentence to put first. I chose the one you just read. I hope you enjoyed it. If not, I don’t know, write me a letter. But even for those unvisited by my particular bastard breed of quaint anxiety, starting something truly novel demands a measure of courage. Certainty makes the heart sing. Like your favorite food, or your favorite smell, or the song from the credits sequence of your favorite show—the one that’s serenaded you through countless dishwashing sessions and immeasurable Toilet Time. (As an aside, I recently swore off re-watching TV, in order to cure my depression, but the point stands: it is hard to depart from the things we know.) This is why beginnings have been so readily taken up by creators and thinkers of every stripe. From the academic historian to the coming-of-age novelist to the avant-garde performance artist to Sir Hugh Beaver, the founder of Guinness World Records. (Rest in power, Sir Hugh.) We all share a tendency to seek out the origins of new possibility. We’re fascinated by the disruption, however subtle, of the ordinary.
I’m hoping that the inherent appeal of something new has brought you this far, all the way to the second paragraph, because there is, in fact, much more to come. A bit more from me, then a lot from other people, who have been generous enough to contribute to the inaugural issue of Broken Stone Review. Which brings me to the point of all this pontificating: Welcome to Broken Stone Review, a quarterly-ish newsletter of creative work across various media and genres. Pretty cool, huh?
Anyway, I thought it would be fitting for the first issue of Broken Stone to be dedicated to beginnings. Because, well… do I really need to spell it out?
The idea for this newsletter came to me in a time of profound uncertainty. Last November, unfulfilled and uninspired, I left my job in search of something new. This pursuit predictably took me down a circuitous and, at times, unfriendly path—one without signage or any particular terminus. Uncertainty is a fan, oscillating between terror and wonder. The stench of one commingles with the sweetness of the other, and it can be easy to lose track of each, to mistake them for one amorphous, rotten thing. During this time, it has been the company of both art and community that has nudged me toward delight and away from anxious despair. I devised Broken Stone as a way to lean closer to art and closer to my community and to Frankenstein the two together into some wonderfully perverse hybrid that might help to keep the demons away. (What I’m picturing here is the following: paintbrushes for arms and legs, a hug for a torso, a TV for a head. Its ears are both kisses. It’s wearing a Coexist bumper sticker as a hat, and wearing a piece of tracing paper as a cape; otherwise, it’s nude.)
The folks who contributed to this issue responded to the theme, “Getting Started,” in varied and inspired ways, proving me correct (once again!) that this is a more than fruitful topic for creative engagement. I’ve heartily enjoyed watching these works come to life, and I’m certain you’ll delight in the results. I’m hopeful that, looking back, we’ll be able to qualify the title of this issue with an optimistic, “only just.” As in, only just getting started. As in, there was so much more to come.
In haste but with all best wishes,
Elias Levey-Swain
P.S. A woman I tried to network with recently used that sign-off in an email. I wanted to share it with you, dear reader.
A note on the name
It always struck me as funny that my grandfather’s name was Larry Breakstone. A prolific sculptor and compulsive builder, he did break many stones—conjuring faces and figures where there once were none, and leveling land for timber frame houses. Not to mention digging a placid mountain pond for his progeny to splash about in. Deconstruction can be generative, he taught me, as surely as it can delete.
More than an homage to a great man, Broken Stone connotes a compelling tension between fixity and ephemerality, stasis and change. Mountains move and rivers dry up. Stones break, and become two instead of one. Artists wake, create, go to sleep, and wake again. The world spins on.
Suspended Latency
By Nola Kim Mayer
This collage celebrates the process of getting started – which, for me, is the prelude to actually starting. It’s the phase of a project where circuitous thinking outperforms its linear opponent, and ideas pay no mind to the constraints of physics, materials, or time. In this half-dreaming world that exists between my mind and a piece of paper, I am unburdened by fear, judgment, or reality… because I haven’t even started yet!
“I gaze across the horizon and see the back of my own head”: Notes on the Uncanny Double & Finsta Collages
By Nicola DiFusco
What you’re seeing is privileged content. Seriously, you can’t be screenshotting this or any other stupid bullshit. Maybe sixteen to eighteen eyes have been on what I’m serving up here, and they’re mostly losers I went to business school with (okay they were nice, I was just in a weird place). Honestly, I’m still in a weird place. I don’t even know who this person is on my finsta. Kinda corny that I’m still a rider for the alternative Insta account, but really it’s more than just an outlet to prove to my friends that I’m edgy and cool and just unhinged enough (“just unhinged enough” is lightyears in my rear view). I don’t even recognize the person in the images. He’s not me, and I’m not him. He’s his own person, with his own motives, memories, and maladaptions; this I am sure of.
There’s something that’s always had me positively jived about the uncanny double. I’d forgotten that I was an absolute Ecco-head until a few weeks ago: Alessandro Michele was citing Umberto Ecco in an essay outlining his debut couture show at Valentino. Like an old friend, my frenzied fetishizing of Ecco’s “On Ugliness” came flooding back to me. Yeah, I AM ugly! And, I’m basking in the ugliness of the uncanny more and more than in years past. Years ago, his words struck me, “Like the self, but other.” I’ve seen this other-self many times. When I find him, my heart leaps with delight. The most memorable time was at Captain Seaweed’s on the East Side of Providence. Staring deep into the mirror, surrounded by nautical accoutrement, I saw him. My own body, my own self, whom I walk around as every day, but still, OTHER!
When I’m logging into the finsta I see him too. He’s not quite me, but something of his own world. He’s my toil, my frustrations, my humor, living amongst the digital artifacts I’m scraping together from across my iPhone. A tweet here, a meme there, a screenshot of a particularly brave text, a gut wrenching email that turns my day around. I can rebuild these blocks, I can make something new, a whole world for my digital double to live within. Is he having fun?
I can’t help but see this double creeping up on me in every corner of pop culture. I quiver with delight as I harken back to film ftudies class as I see a movie or TV show use and abuse a literal mirror. Characters’ reflections, clear as day or obscured and fragmented. It’s all so literal and oh-so palpable. The opening scene of Ti West’s “Pearl” (2022) shows Pearl, our murderous protagonista sitting at her vanity surrounded by her reflection. Honestly, I get why she did all that.
The double is alive and well with the oh-so-useful and talented “AI”! How can we grapple with intelligence like our own, but that of machine? How can we stare back at ourselves from the Captain Seaweed’s bathroom mirror and not question our own sentience, the source of our own thoughts, and if who we see in the mirror is truly the vessel for our own being? The anxieties of this moment are captured in one of the most popular series of 2025, “Severance” (Apple TV). Is my “innie” just the same as my “outie,” or are they a whole being with their own motives and values? Does my digital double portray or have the potential to betray? As the show explores, this is the horror of the uncanny that we’re in the midst of.
Building my uncanny double has been a process I delight in. I’m constructing and collaging, taking the found scraps and junk of my camera roll and weaving a tapestry for a less-perfect me to revel in. Should I keep him alive? Or merely shut him off with the hope that I can find some better outlet for my media hoarding and void-shouting? Perhaps his life has only just started.
SHED
By Tia Fishler
Shading scars clot as dust
on my grandmother’s clogs
settles—to reveal an older mind,
she asks about the dead. Not a mind
right in the room, we laugh ourselves
lonely—we are only your skin
making a home. Here I count
resolutions, hoping a truth new,
though fraudulent—she guards
my life as exoskeleton :: resolute
coughs, snakeskins, dreamscape shaking
awake & back to sleep again. Wisely
the first bite is the last—I accept
wet dust to paint her
silhouette kindly—to simile her
real. Again, the Fall takes
what the Spring gives.
Dunes in winter, shot on expired TX 400 B&W
By Elias Levey-Swain
Editor’s Interjection
Am I naive for being perplexed by all the condoms? On the street, I mean, and also the sidewalk and also the gutter and I suppose anywhere else you can think of, too. Like the grassy part of the park and also the concrete part of the park. And the wrappers, too; sometimes, it’s just the wrapper. Not to TMI and not to be too specific—so as to leave us somewhere in the dangerous, vague middle area between oversharing and under-explaining—but I don’t use condoms much, so perhaps there’s something I’m just missing. But, seriously. Are they left behind by the public fornicators? Those so eager to get started (my single, obliquely-tipped chapeau to this issue’s theme) that they unsheathe their prophylactics early, clumsily, and toss the wrappers aside like an oak shedding leaves? Or are they the refuse of the braggadocios, whose egos are buttressed by their conquests, who get off further by leaving the evidence about for all to see? Are they simply the work of an infinite number of plastic forks or broken lightbulbs, tearing open trash bags and sending the contents tumbling into the world like so many stinking Pandoras?
All I can do is wonder.
Cured egg yolks on rice crackers with scallion and ginger
By Anya Ptacek
Looking for an expensive little treat that you can buy yourself just about anywhere? Might I direct you to the dairy aisle? If I’ve learned anything from the surge in egg prices, it’s that I’m still buying eggs. There aren’t many ingredients that I cook with every single day, and eggs are one of them. And, in the face of obscene price hikes, I’m taking the opportunity to treat eggs as a delicacy in honor of all they’ve done for us. For every fried egg over rice I’ve taken for granted, I offer this recipe up as a tribute. Think of this recipe as such: indulgent. This is an appetizer, to be served at the beginning of a meal where you’re trying to impress.
This recipe hinges on separating egg yolks and whites, and I don’t want to tell you what to do, but you should make the whites into meringue for the dessert course of that dinner party you’re having. That way, the same eggs bookend the entire meal. And in that case, wow, that’s so thoughtful of you. Proud of ya.
Ingredients:
1 c soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil + 1 tsp
2 tsp mirin
1 tsp rice wine vinegar
6 eggs
1 c neutral oil
2-3 sheets rice paper
1 inch ginger, peeled and sliced into thin planks
3 scallions, thinly sliced
1. Pour soy sauce, 1 tbsp sesame oil, mirin, and rice wine vinegar into a small bowl or container.
2. Separate egg whites and yolks. Set egg whites aside and carefully place yolks into the soy sauce mixture. The goal here is to not pop the yolks. Refrigerate yolks in the liquid for two hours or up to overnight, flipping them halfway through for a uniform cure. I recommend starting this process at the beginning of your day and then forgetting about it until dinner time.
3. In a large pan over medium flame, heat neutral oil until 370 degrees. If you don’t have a thermometer, flick a speck of water (but careful, not too much!) into the oil—if it jumps and crackles, you’re good to go. Cut each sheet of rice paper into 3 pieces, for 6 pieces total. They probably won’t be exactly even, but that is A-okay, sister. If you don’t get 6 pieces, just break out another piece of rice paper. Using tongs, drop a piece of rice paper into the oil. It will immediately seize up (if it doesn’t, your oil isn’t hot enough!). Fry for 4 seconds on each side and then transfer to a paper towel-lined plate.
4. Once all your rice paper is fried, lower the heat, and fry your scallions and ginger until fragrant and just starting to brown around the edges, about 1 minute.
5. Strain the egg yolks. You’ll know they’re cured if their texture is gummy and you can pick one up without denting it. Place each yolk on a cracker. Top with fried scallions and ginger. Enjoy, girl.
New spring, shot on Fujifilm 400
By Elias Levey-Swain
Is there anything there?: a reaction to Emilia Perez
By Bekah Hess
The past few months, I’ve experienced an unprecedented craving for fine art. I’ve found myself seeking out jazz concerts, ballet recitals, museum visits—a vast genre of entertainment that never interested me before. Yesterday, I used my day off to go to the Met alone. I stared closely at the paintings, thinking about how long they took to make, thinking about how the artists had to source their materials, thinking about how wonderfully the museum has preserved their frameworks and delicate lines. Art museums are such a fantastic portrayal of humanity—through the art they contain, the work done to display it, the way that visitors interact with it. It is an experiment in empathy: the paintings show how the artist wants to connect to the world, the exhibits show the thoughtfulness of the curators—how they agonized over respecting the pieces. I walked slowly and took it all in.
This newfound appreciation for fine art comes from a place of dissatisfaction. I’ve spent the last few years working in the entertainment industry, across TV sets, development rooms, and comedy theaters. Each gig I get is another lesson in how the sausage is made—through buzzwords and quotas and “will the audience get it?” and dialing down art to make money. It is hard for me to watch movies without wincing at how much must’ve been lost.
This is why Emilia Perez was so upsetting to me. It felt like a 2 hour and 10 minute pitch meeting. I felt legitimately angry watching this movie. It felt like nothing. There was no artistry or humanity. So much was there—ideas, plot, visuals—but it somehow did not have the human experience under its belt. I felt so upset about it because I didn’t even hate it. I felt worse: apathetic.
The film attempted to highlight different cultures and experiences, ranging from gender affirming care access to drug lord culture to relationship abuse. Yet, instead of diving deep into any of them, it breezed past so many that we had no chance to learn or feel more about each topic. In this film, we follow a drug dealer's gender transition and watch her fake her death to her family as she pretends to be her children’s aunt. Different parts of the world were shown so quickly; they were portrayed as empty stereotypes, moving the plot along. Instead of using this film to represent beings in underrepresented communities as multidimensional people, the filmmakers chose to use these people as pawns for entertainment value. You think that being a drug lord is crazy? Well, guess what? She’s also trans!
This is not to say we can’t feature these “taboo” topics in movies. We can and should have a crazy silly musical about a trans drug lord, but we need to give some more attention to each of the topics we tackle. Movies are a chance to share the human experience. Like those paintings at the Met, they require love and attention, from both the creator and the viewer. Without a point of view or intention, we are not making “art.” We are making a product. How can we create something subversive and new if we’re stuck giving people what they want?
5 o’clock walk, shot on Fujifilm 400
By Elias Levey-Swain
Classifieds
Nicola is in search of a perfect glimmering tooth: Do you have a smile that lights up a room? Do you teeth glimmer with cinematic wonder upon the gleeful curling of your lips? I lost my tooth on 1st Ave and I’m in need of a donor.
Tia is looking for somebody to sew her words into a little box--perhaps even a little book
Nola is in possession of two lovingly knitted and remarkably small hats. If you or someone you know is 12 years old or has a 12-year-old’s sized head, please inquire
Anya and Bekah are looking for people to come to Rat Candy (a perfect comedy variety show). April 26th, 5pm, Second City NYC
Also from Anya: Date my sister. She’s really pretty and nice. I would date her but that isn’t allowed
Ian is looking for someone that can do a bunch of backflips. There is no specific event, he just thinks a backflip guy could be a cool vibe on Tuesdays
Luisa Neves (future contributor) is looking for an illustrator, graphic designer, or any artist who can create digital art and assets for her mobile word game! Artist does not need previous experience in game art design.
Needed assets include buttons, icons, UI interfaces, and backgrounds. Samples and final pieces will be compensated, and artist input, creativity, and collaboration on the project is welcome. If interested, please email lmbneves@gmail.com
Elias is looking for people to contribute work to the next issue of Broken Stone Review. Please reach out!
Contributors
Ian Foley (AKA humanbIAN) is always on his feet (when he’s not battling gout). Whether it’s djing, dancing, or playing frisbee, it seems he’s always on the move. Ian is excited to finally sit still and be a part of Broken Stone.
Nicola DiFusco (b. 1997) is hustling at the intersection of art and technology. He’s skinny-dipping into the ether of our postmodern media moment, harvesting bits and pieces from the blurry pixels in between reality and simulation. What’s he searching for? And, honestly, who the hell cares? DiFusco holds an MFA in Digital Media from RISD and is an adjunct marketing professor. His multidisciplinary work has been shown at Boston CyberArts Gallery, Providence Waterfire Arts, and in V. 1 Magazine.
Tia Fishler received her MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She currently lives, writes, teaches, bartends, and flourishes in Iowa City. Her work can be read or is forthcoming in Seneca Review, Bullshit Lit, Prompt Press, and Feminine Collective. You can find her on Bluesky @tiafishler.bsky.social, or X @fishler_tia.
Nola Kim Mayer is a multimedia artist living and working in Brooklyn. Her work ranges across printmaking, sculpture, and interactive installation. She is interested in the unspoken dialogue between people and things, often exploring her own identity through both objects and rituals. Nola is also the Art Director of Broken Stone Review.
Anya Ptacek is a sweet angel comedian who has never made a mistake in her life. She works as a recipe developer at Delish and has, like, really nice friends and stuff. Someone’s moving into the apartment below hers and she’s kind of nervous that’s going to cramp her style (blowing loads on the shitter in the middle of the night). But she will do her best to be a good neighbor. Does she even have a choice?
Bekah Hess is a Brooklyn-based stand-up, film watcher, and 55 gallon fish tank owner. She is trying to get into martinis. You can keep up with what she’s up to on Instagram
Elias Levey-Swain is a writer and photographer living in Brooklyn. He is the founder and editor of Broken Stone Review.
What a power debut!! This is so awesome- great job to everyone involved 🤙
Ravishing!!