By Birdy Francis

For a lot of us, especially in the extended zine and blogosphere, Messy — née The Messy Heads — was a big part of our lives. Run by Emmanuelle “M” Czerwinski, Cybelle Corwin and the friends they made along the way, Messy proved to its readers that art didn’t have to fit inside any particular box to be interesting or valuable. They invited an audience into their lives as they traveled the world, stayed up late painting and writing, and created a unique community I haven’t seen anything quite like since.

When I was 17, M was visiting Salt Lake City and agreed to meet with me and Sunstroke’s former Art Editor, Anna Grayson, over coffee and french toast at a local vegan diner. We told them about Sunstroke and our aspirations for the publication and they gave us pointers and lent a helping hand in the early stages. M quickly became one of my biggest inspirations — as an artist, as an editor, as a friend.

Messy has been offline for some time now but is back up temporarily, until Sunday, January 15 at midnight PST. You can use the code “eternal” to browse the archives, reminisce and grab a copy of Eternal Sleepover for the last time before Messy goes dark permanently. To honor Messy’s legacy, I spoke with M about the blog and its final days. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Birdy Francis: Hey, M! It's an honor to chat with you. As you know, Messy has been a big part of my life and part of why I started my own publication. Can you tell me about Messy for anyone who might not know about it? When did the journey begin?

M Czerwinski: Truthfully, Messy was a combustion from me being trapped in Vegas as a teenager and then depressed at university. I was brimming with a need to escape myself, create something and be different. When I first was in California at 18, [nannying for the summer,] it felt like an imaginary place and I instantly fell in love. The way people talked, looked, sports they did, the clothes they wore (or didn’t wear) and the latte designs and huge skies. Everything felt fake and amazing to me and I documented it from this outsider's perspective but one of genuine love, probably even obsession. Everyone was really into the [1970s] at that time, if you remember. And I felt instantly liberated. I think a lot of it was just how I perceived the world to be at the time, but I needed a place to pour all of it into and that was Messy.

I had a scholarship for one year at UW in Seattle, and while I was there, I couldn’t really figure out myself or what to study. I kept dreaming of that summer in California. When my scholarship year was over, things got harder — harder to feed myself, harder to get out of bed, harder to afford things with full-price tuition. I was working, going to school and pouring everything into the blog. I had no friends at school, for real. Would you be friends with the girl who played Lana Del Rey on cassette while presenting her photo project of hookers’ bedside tables? I was doing the most.

I decided, instead of paying my tuition for the semester, I was going to use the money to print a magazine. I dropped out in a philosophy class — the topic of the class was [how] "there’s no way to truly tell if we aren’t just brains in a vat being fed stimuli," and I thought, “yeah, what if we are just brains in a vat?” I took out my laptop and dropped out before the lecture was over.

Now, tell me about what's online right now until Sunday.

It’s all the old content on the digital archives and a forum that I’m updating every night. Right now, I’m just making cup after cup of black coffee and crying a bit reading everyone's messages and thoughts. We reopened the website because our old Australian distributor turned over some boxes of Eternal Sleepover, and I had no idea we had any left. So, in order to get them into people’s hands, we had to re-launch the website, and in doing so, it’s sort of a last hurrah and a goodbye to this community.

What has it been like to express yourself and create on this platform for so long? How does it feel to have created the community you have?

I don’t think about it much, to be honest. You can’t really connect to the thought that there’s a community when it’s all online and not in person. It doesn’t feel as tangible. These days, I spend so much time with my actual communities and almost no time online. If anything, I psych myself out about how to translate who I am now back into an online space again when I want to release more projects, and I keep putting it off but I also don’t think it's important anymore. I feel the digital space falling away. I made it my life for so long and it was my only escape to be who I didn’t know how to be yet, but now, I’m just being — if that makes sense. So, it feels like the process of growth.

Tell me about Eternal Sleepover and what someone can expect to receive in their mailbox! What does the issue mean to you?

Wow. It’s a huge dreamy book of writing and photos — definitely the proudest publication under Messy. This one comes with the Australian version of the CD since it’s coming from Australia. We printed different covers for UK, US and Australia, so I think that’s special. The songs on the CD can’t be found online anymore. I think it’s a piece of Messy at its best, collaborating with people in all mediums and presenting it in a beautiful format.

What do you hope people remember about Messy and take with them going forward?

Remember to not lose that part of you that makes you see the world with wonder. ♦

Before Messy Goes Dark: A Quick Chat with Emmanuelle Czerwinski

By Birdy Francis