The question mark is a terminal mark used to indicate a direct question¹.

A happy coincidence prompted the thoughts that follow. Just a few days after the participants in PRAKSIS's Party as Form residency first met on Zoom, my online doppelgänger (the “other” Lexie Owen, who I suspect lives in Pennsylvania) signed me up for the mailing list of the American party supply chain, Party City. Normally, when Other Lexie signs me up for things, I dutifully unsubscribe (although at times I've considered trying to figure out her email, in order to ask her to stop using mine). This time, however, the greetings from Party City seemed somehow auspicious. In time I found, hidden beneath the shiny advertorial surface of these daily dispatches, both the inspiration and raw material for the durational project this text emerges from, A Year in Party City².

In non-fiction and academic writing, quotation marks most often indicate that material is being reproduced word for word, from an external source. They may also enclose a translation, clarify the subject of a sentence when writing about letters or words, or be used as “scare quotes,” which function to cast doubt on a word or phrase, or emphasize euphemistic usage. In fiction they usually indicate that a character is speaking out loud.

The Party as Punctuation. This notion first came to me on the cusp of summer in 2024 while sitting on a grassy hillside in the industrial area of Alnabru, across the street from one of Oslo's two IKEAs. The party that was the Party as Form residency had been in full swing for some weeks. I had moved into a new flat the week prior to the residency, and had to pry myself away from the contact high that comes from being-with in a group of likeminded folks to buy some banal (and entirely unmemorable) necessity. I sat beside the bus stop, gazing at the iconic blue and yellow warehouse, eating soft-serve ice cream while waiting for my ride back to the city centre—back to the party my life had become over the course of the residency. The idea came to me suddenly and fully formed:

If everyday actions are the nouns, verbs and adjectives that make up the grammar of our lives, then surely parties must serve as punctuation.

The apostrophe indicates a contraction of two short words (she is becomes she's), or possession (as in Lexie's writing). It can also be used to pluralize certain nouns, especially when an abbreviation or letter is used as a noun: don't forget to cross your t’s and dot your i’s.

My artistic interest in the party is only indirectly connected to rave culture or other forms of exuberant nightlife, although as a Queer person who is a member of certain BDSM subcultures, I have an embodied understanding of the vital and life-making importance of such gatherings. My artistic interest lies in attempting to understand how ‘the party’ (or, more broadly, celebration and social gathering) can function as a sort of life-marking metronome—providing a sense of regularity, of repetition, that helps us distill meaning from what would otherwise be an undifferentiated stream of experience.

Parentheses are a tool permitting the addition of information to an otherwise structurally complete sentence.

Parties give shape and structure to the flow of events that make up a life: they differentiate a ‘before’ from an ‘after,’ mark (or even make) a change in circumstances, and also (if scrutinized closely) can expose the boundaries and values of the political imaginaries that shape a shared world. Parties are not the content of a life; the meaning derived from them is, in many ways, dependent on external context. These external dependencies in no way diminish the function they do preform, providing a type of order to the experiences that make up a flow of life. Experiences that would otherwise bleed together into something less easily parsed.

Much like punctuation, parties provide a format for ordering individual experience in a manner that allows it to be shared, that creates a bridge from the singular to the plural.

The asterisk functions as a reference mark in a text that is informal, or where there are not enough external references to warrant the use of numbered footnotes³.

In his book Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks⁴, Keith Houston notes that the format of written communication now familiar to English speakers only became formalized after the introduction of the printing press, when the printed word began to take primacy over speech as a mode of communication. In much earlier European writing culture, neither the early Greeks nor the Romans used much in the way of punctuation or word spacing. The Romans relied entirely on capital letters: the implementation of lower case letters in Latin being a medieval development. The expectation that readers should be able to parse texts with ease is a modern concept, and the scholarly consensus is that early on, the act of reading was intrinsically linked to speaking. Readers would not simply scan a text in silence in their heads, but rather read it aloud, in order to gain understanding.

Colons are used to introduce lists, to separate independent clauses when the second clause expands upon or clarifies the first, or to emphasize a single word or phrase at the end of a sentence.

The written word, without a formal system of punctuation, must be spoken aloud, must be given rhythm, in order to be understood. This rhythm, this structure of speaking, this structure of understanding, is intrinsically linked to the content which is contained, conscribed, distilled and abstracted into words. Without this rhythm letters run upon themselves, inseparable and unparseable into words, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs—the structures of shared understanding.

The period marks the end of a sentence.

Reliance on an innately understood rhythm in order to parse the meaning of a text brings obvious limitations. Unpunctuated text may have functioned appropriately for ancient playwrights and their actors, who shared an understanding of the meters needed to deliver each part of a drama, but it poses a problem when texts are removed from their authorial sources, through time, distance or cultural change. For a text to remain understandable beyond its regional boundaries, a rhythm of speech must be communicated as clearly as the letters it shapes into words. This is particularly true when meaning is being dictated from a power-centre to a provincial outpost, and is not left to be a matter of individual interpretation. All must know the right rhythm if we are to parse meaning from letters oneaftertheother.

The hyphen is primarily used to combine words into compound terms. Compound verbs and nouns (and an indication as to whether they use a hyphen or not) are generally included in dictionaries, while the use of hyphens in compound adjectives is more subjective, often depending on location in a sentence and individual style preference.

But what, you might ask, does this have to do with parties? It’s my assertion that the party gives form, gives rhythm to life, just as punctuation does for the undifferentiated stream of letters that encode speech. What we celebrate, who we celebrate, and how we celebrate communicates to others what we believe, who we are, and how we live. These practices, especially for subcultural bodies who celebrate differently, can serve as a signal to others who are like us. They can also help us to understand that others who live in a different rhythm are not so different. New Year's Eve, Nowruz or Tết are celebrated at different times in different ways, but they remain recognizable for those on the outside looking in.

The semicolon joins two independent clauses, which could stand alone as individual sentences. The semi-colon is often used to emphasize connection between clauses.

This translatable understanding embedded within the beats of the party on a societal scale, remains true on an personal one. The way in which I choose to celebrate communicates a particular rhythm of life, points to what and who I value, and signals to others who care about the same things I do. This can function in an emancipatory manner—but of course, the opposite is also true. How, when, and why we celebrate can also be a function of power and control. When we celebrate a national day or a monarch's birthday we reinforce the stories that support a particular shared political imaginary. When we celebrate one type of achievement (such as university graduation or a new job) rather than others (such as coming out or gender affirming surgeries) we say that one rhythm of life is more worthy of celebration than another.

The exclamation mark is a terminal punctuation mark that indicates excitement or surprise.

So far, during my Year in Party City, I have noticed that the exclamation mark takes pride of place in what I've come to envision as the Party City Political Imaginary. I’ve come to connect the ! party with a certain type of jubilant conviviality that one might celebrate with balloons, ready made and in-step with rhythms of life so prevalent an industry can be based upon them. My counter-imaginary asks for, or perhaps demands, an expansion away from the beats of !PARTY!, to consider what other grammatical rhythms might be gleaned in between the

Commas are a multi-functional element of punctuation, indicating a pause or a place to take a rest when reading out loud. They can also divide the components of a sentence or a list. Commas both structure and stylize text, and their presence or absence can transform the meaning of a sentence (as in the famous example, ‘the panda eats, shoots and leaves’ versus ‘the panda eats shoots and leaves’).

My intention here is to not paint out what these other rhythms of celebration, rhythms of life, might be: I'd rather make space for your own thoughts about how, and when, your personal rhythms align with others, when they are in discord, and what they clash with. I will however leave you with two interconnected anecdotes that serve to sketch out a different type of party grammar.

The em dash can be used in place of many other forms of punctuation, including commas, colons and parentheses. The use of the em dash is largely a stylistic choice—a way to add emphasis to the sub-clause or aside it delineates.

The scene is a graveyard. Autumn. Oslo. Two friends. It’s a less sombre setting than you might assume: this particular graveyard forms the heart of a lively, popular urban neighbourhood and serves for walks and gatherings much like any other public green space, though visitors treat it with due respect. We’re chatting about art and death. Our conversation turns to Norwegian restrictions around burials and the bureaucratic process one must go through in order to inter one’s remains, including cremation ashes (cremains), outside of “holy ground”. This surprised me, coming from Canada. My grandparent's ashes became bone meal for a cherry tree planted in their honour, after hanging around in a box on a shelf in the spare bedroom for some years (no official permission needed).

My friend was reflecting on the twentieth anniversary of the early demise of her own dear friend. Twenty years marks a significant point in the afterlife of one's molecular remains—it’s the length of time it takes for the matter that makes up a human body to become soil. Her grief over this anniversary was somehow deepened by the fact that thanks to Norwegian burial conventions, her friends molecules were surrounded by those of a random group of people who happened to also die in 2005 and not by anyone he might have felt to be a peer. As we become soil our molecules shift sideways, mingling with those of our neighbours. He was, in essence, partying with strangers. She confided to me that she had secreted away a small soil sample from his grave—just in time, just before the matter that had composed his corporeal being transformed entirely into something else. She plans to take him to one last rave.

The ellipsis can represent the trailing off of a thought, or hesitation, but most frequently it indicates an intentional omission.

This story made me reflect on my own recent beats connected to celebrating life after it has left us. The scene is a dining room table. A family cabin on a gem of an island off the West Coast of Canada. Two siblings and a (sibling-like) cousin. A bottle of Sheringham’s Seaside Gin. It’s a more sombre setting than you might assume: sitting in the centre of the table is a box that contains human cremains. We’re discussing the best way to funnel this precious dust into impossibly small, but objectively cute, glass vials with tiny corks. The cremains are those of my beloved auntie, an avid traveller (and liver of life) whose final years coincided with the COVID pandemic. This inauspicious coincidence doubled my grief at her passing, and left me with a deep bitterness, that those years were her last. This feeling, and the sense of injustice that always lingers after the death of a beloved one, was compounded by the reality that COVID era travel restrictions and the vagaries of immigration processes made it impossible for me to spend any time with her before she passed.

We were gathered on the eve of her memorial service, dutifully complying with her final request.

We were facilitating her desire to become a party favour.

In a note, left in a drawer in her bedside table, she detailed the plans: fill small vials (20?), put them in little bags (nice, amazon.ca?) for friends and family to take on travels. She instructed us that in-between End of the Line by the Travelling Willburys and Time to Say Goodbye (Conte Partiro) by Brightman + Bocelli (she also left us a playlist⁵) we should pass her around, telling those gathered in her memory to take her, if they wished. She wanted to go travelling with them, to extend the rhythm of her life beyond that which is normally given, and to be set free—if they found a special place for her while wandering.

The poetics of this request are undeniable. The practicalities were something . . . else. Makeshift funnels constructed from paper. Small silver spoons (my grandmother’s). Some swearing. Dusty fingers. More than a few gin and tonics. A recipe for the most bizarre party of four I have ever attended.

The graveyard conversation, and my friend’s determination to also extend a beloved one’s rhythm beyond the barrier between life and death, lead to the realization that this request would have been impossible to honour within the confines of Norwegian funerary regulations. Regulations which dictate that internments must happen within a set timeframe, and that entrust cremains to specific organizations before they are interned, denying family or friends such intimate and prolonged access. The rhythm of grieving, the rhythm of what is perhaps the most important party we will never attend, is shaped by these external conditions. I can’t help but think that this externally enforced timeline makes the joy of celebrating a life less palpable, less possible. The joy of raving with a long-dead friend, the joy of fulfilling a posthumous desire—these joys compose a different rhythm of grief, a rhythm we define ourselves.

As our strange party with my auntie went on, my bitterness over her death started to diminish, loosened a bit by the bitterness of the gin we drank for her, dislodged entirely by that salty kind of laughter that signals catharsis. The feeling of empty loss, of lost time, of lost opportunities started to ease. Her request had given us the chance for one last party.