Interview of Colin Winnette in The The

January 12, 2021 in Article, Interview, Feature, Press

(Author Colin Winnette, whose novel, Revelation, was put out by Mutable last Fall, is interviewed below by The The’s Brian Chappell.)

Brian: What authors and styles have shaped you?

Colin: Influence is a tricky thing to talk about. I can say that Ben Marcus’s work was extremely important to me. It still is, but at one point it totally saved me. Or, reinvigorated me. I was finishing up undergrad and I was in love with writers like Beckett, Proust, Chekhov, Joyce, Kafka, these iconic figures who did what they were doing so masterfully that there seemed nowhere to go at all after that. That was also the result of my age at the time and what being in school can do to you. I didn’t realize it then, but I had a pretty narrow vision of what it meant to be a writer and what one could do with fiction. But then I picked up Age of Wire and String and Notable American Women and I was just totally blown away. It was an entirely different approach to working with and examining language than I had ever encountered before. Those books led me to Gertrude Stein and William Gaddis and all of these authors who were breaking language apart, yes, but also reclaiming it, making it do new and fascinating things. And, I mean, they had been doing this for a long time and in different ways, and here was Ben Marcus doing it still in his own way and just killing it. So I suddenly felt very free again. It’s interesting the difference between grad school and undergrad. In undergrad I was constantly being told what good writing looked like. It looks like Carver. It looks like Chekhov. It looks like Pynchon (and indeed it does!). It looks like Austen. Etc. Workshops were little help because they were often the same kind of thing: I think you should do this, or I think this should happen, etc. Initially I lacked the confidence to assert myself. Then, when I gained a little confidence, I asserted myself by just ignoring pretty much everybody and only listening to the 2% I thought made sense or seemed to come from a good place. I started to tune a lot out. So I left undergrad fed-up, but with a lot of energy. I wrote and worked and traveled and didn’t write and two years later I went to grad school with a much different attitude. I used that time to write as much as possible. I listened to people and read as much as I could, but took the whole thing less…personally, I guess…than before. I took it seriously, but I knew the conversations we were having in class were often selfish in that we were all interested in enhancing our work by discussing the work of others. Helping one another wasn’t exactly the point, although we certainly did help one another from time to time. And I should say I think all that’s great. The two most important things grad school gave me were time and a sense of purpose. I felt encouraged to work and I had the hours in the day to do it. Or if I didn’t have them, I made them because I knew my time was limited. I taught myself how to make time to write. I was writing a lot on the train and in bed my first year. I wouldn’t let myself sleep until I had done a certain amount of work. I’m not sure I would have had that kind of discipline at first if I weren’t in a program. Now, it comes much more naturally. I had to learn how to kick my own ass.

The End of the World: A Review of Colin Winnette's Revelation

January 12, 2021 in Press, Feature

Steve Himmer

Originally published in the Steve Himmer Blog

Revelation, a novel by Colin Winnette, is a story about the end of the world in which, somehow, the apocalypse isn’t the biggest thing going. The story follows a core of three friends (Marcus, Colin, and Tom) from youth to old age as they lead ordinary lives in the midst of exploding trees, vanished oceans, plagues of locusts, and the Four Horsemen. Mundane traumas like a lost teenage girlfriend are more devastating to these characters than a lost ocean, and the vast wasteland of dead, rotting fish left behind as it dries are taken as a wretched novelty but not much of a warning.

Video: Dr. Doowop

January 12, 2021 in Isstillcools**t, Feature

In the Mutableye

Below is a short film about Mutable author, William Levy (1939, Brooklyn, New York), and his notorious radio show, The Dr. Doowop show. Levy is an author, publisher and pioneer of independent erotic media, who currently lives in Amsterdam where he has the only doowop radio show in Europe. We have been honored to reprint his writing on Otto Muehl and Christian Loidl, and now we are honored to showcase the above documentary about the life and times of William Levy, and his radio persona Dr. Doowop. It’s a film about radical media, loneliness and eternal love, absurdity and close harmony music. ‘There’s nothing that makes you feel so alive as getting a death threat.’ Indeed.

'There's nothing that makes you feel so alive as getting a death threat.' What do cigarettes and erotic literature have to do with close harmony music? They come together in The Dr. Doowop Show, the only doowop radio show in Europe. This documentary shows the Dr.Doowop in his habitat in Amsterdam.

In the Mutableye is a segment that sometimes showcases something interesting that is happening somewhere in the world at this moment, and sometimes showcases some fad or person from the past that we here at Mutable acknowledge is still cool s**t.

William Levy (d.2019) was more than an author we were privileged at one time to know. He also would on occasion give us well appreciated advice. He will be missed.

A Statement of Principles

January 12, 2021 in Manifesto of the Month, Feature

Twelve Southerners

The authors contributing to this book are Southerners, well acquainted with one another and of similar tastes, though not necessarily living in the same physical community, and perhaps only at this moment aware of themselves as a single group of men. By conversation and exchange of letters over a number of years it had developed that they entertained many convictions in common, and it was decided to make a volume in which each one should furnish his views upon a chosen topic. This was the general background. But background and consultation as to the various topics were enough; there was to be no further collaboration. And so no single author is responsible for any view outside his own article. It was through the good fortune of some deeper agreement that the book was expected to achieve its unity. All the articles bear in the same sense upon the book’s title-subject: all tend to support a Southern way of life against what may be called the American or prevailing way; and all as much as agree that the best terms in which to represent the distinction are contained in the phrase, Agrarian versus Industrial.

The Other Way Around's Sado Okesa

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Mutablesoundofthemonth, Feature

Mutable Sound of the Month

The Other Way Around is a local Chicago underground musical phenomenon comprising Jason Allen, Patrick van Slee, Dan Katayama, and Piotrek Wereszczyński. Among their current repertoire, this song stands out as a truly weird and wonderful thing. It is a cover of a traditional Japanese song. Pat, who knows no Japanese, transcribed the lyrics as best he could, and Dan, who knows a little more Japanese, says it’s fairly accurate. But we here at Mutable are not interested in cultural accuracy, but in psychedelic ridiculosity, and regardless of its truthful rendering of a wonderful folk song, this thing certainly cuts my brainstem a new peephole if you know what I’m saying.

The Other Way Around Sado Okesa, released 23 April 2013

Mutable is pleased to present a unique musical experience every month or so by ourselves or someone we’ve been introduced to. These are from the reel-to-reels and tascams of the garages and basements of the world. Send tracks to mail@mutablesound.com along with credits and a brief description.

How PKD is the New World Order?

January 12, 2021 in Article, Letter from the Editor, Feature

Letter from the Editor

It’s Saturday night and I’m drinking alone while contemplating drones and metadata; complacent celebrity culture staring its own collapse in the face with remarkable calm and indifference and the various potential proofs for a multiverse I’ve been reading up on lately; wars over natural resources and increasingly more extreme weather all the time and the civil unrest that goes along with it and the NSA just trying to plan ahead with its massive domestic surveillance program we’ve all been hearing about recently thanks to Mr. Edward Snowden. And in the back of my mind, there’s always Philip K Dick, like a critic in the corner. Specifically, how PKD is the New World Order?

Illustration by Dorothy P. Lathrop for Walter de la Mare's Three Mulla-Mulgars (1919)

Ten Thousand Faces

January 12, 2021 in Isstillcools**t, Feature

E C Large

It is an eerie and a horrible experience to be in attendance on a stand at a Flower Show, day after day, and to watch the staring faces that come to rest before my exhibits and then move on. From right to left, from left to right they pass, these faces, propelled with hesitating pace and starkly turned towards me. I watch them, because I cannot help but do so, and in the day’s reckoning I have looked into perhaps five, perhaps ten thousand human faces.

Building Innovative Teams: A Manifesto

January 12, 2021 in Manifesto of the Month, Feature

Kaylea Hascall

Imagine: One fine morning, the boss walks into your office and says “I need your group to be more innovative.” Hmm. What does she mean by that statement? How are you supposed to go “be innovative”? What questions do you ask her about this new mandate? Can you do it? Can your staff?

Video: Smash putt!

January 12, 2021 in Isstillcools**t, Feature

In the Mutableye

The industrial artists of The Department of Culture re-apply and reinvent their practiced predilection for mechanized mayhem to the humble sport of miniature golf. Forget everything you would normally expect from this national past time and be prepared for innovative chaos teetering on pure bedlam. Smash Putt, originally opened in Seattle, has since moved on to Portland, and soon Denver, CO.

We Live in Public (2009), a documentary by Ondi Timoner — *Consider Your Grandmother's Stays, Mina Loy (1916)*

Mina Loy's Aphorisms on Futurism

January 12, 2021 in Manifesto of the Month, Feature

Manifesto of the Month

On the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, various poets read from their favorite Futurist Manifestos. Charles Bernstein chose to read from Mina Loy’s Aphorisms on Futurism.

Before Valerie Solanas coined her S.C.U.M. Manifesto, Mina Loy was writing on the emancipation of women, specifically in her Feminist Manifesto, a call for social and economic reform in the lives of women. Lifelong friends with Djuna Barnes and Gertrude Stein and one time lover of Futurist leader Filippo Marinetti, Loy is known primarily as a striking poet, artist, and thinker. The below reading was recorded on February 20, 2009 in the public space of MOMA’s Garden Lobby.

Download or listen below.

The manifesto as a literary art form is often forgotten, but we here at Mutable have had the audacious notion of collecting these remarkable objects for our Manifesto of the Month series.

We Don't Like Cats

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Mutablesoundofthemonth, Feature

Mutable Sound of the Month

The Mice Rock Group Band consists of Ray Davis (vox), Gabriel Boyer & Danyel Johnson (synth), and Mike Tolman (drums). It has had other members in the past, but always with Mr. Davis on lead vox, and Mr. Davis was always the inspiration and the reason for the rest of us to be there. His ideas, always versatile and pinging about the room, about whatever thread of thought he was stringing through his fingers.

That we could capture this moment with Mr. Davis is truly a blessing, and although we here at Mutable have not seen him for many years now, he should know that he is often in our thoughts, his delightful banter, and his occasional back seat serenade. If I had my way, Mr. Davis’ songs would be popping up on every radio, crackling through the fuzz as the car veered a corner down some blue highway. It’s a tragedy that he’s been lost somewhere in the sticks of Oregon, but he is not forgotten. His vision lives on!

The below recording is from an afternoon in May in which for once we all were able to bring it together and capture Ray as he freewheeled from song to song. Here is one of the highlights from that afternoon.

Mutable is pleased to present a unique musical experience every month or so by ourselves or someone we’ve been introduced to. These are from the reel-to-reels and tascams of the garages and basements of the world. Send tracks to mail@mutablesound.com along with credits and a brief description.

Amazing Adult Fantasy by A D Jameson

January 12, 2021 in Press, Feature

Jess Stoner

Originally reviewed in Necessary Fiction 11.14.2011

The artist statement of sorts, “Fiction”, that begins the first half of the stories in A.D. Jameson’s Amazing Adult Fantasy, teaches us how to read the entire collection: we’re told that we’re reading a book that’s been lost in a fire, that the book we’re reading doesn’t exist. A better metaphor for childhood, the gratuitous fiction of how we remember it, might not exist either.

Interview of Colin Winnette in Monkey Bicycle

January 12, 2021 in Article, Interview, Feature, Press

(Recently, Monkey Bicycle interviewed Mutable author Colin Winnette about Revelation, his writing process, pressures, and hopes for the future. This interview can be found below.)

MB: What is your religious background?

CW: I’m not a religious person at all, really. Far from it. But I had the unique experience of being a non-religious person growing up in a small town in Northeast Texas. So throughout my life I was steeped in various devoted interpretations of biblical narrative. The closest our family ever came to adopting a religion was when, in an arguably noble attempt to set our family on a, well if not more righteous, certainly more socially accepted path, my older sister (who was very young at the time) insisted our family begin attending church. The idea was that we would then be more like the other families in town, more like her friends’ families, and a little less…our strange selves. My parents were very open-minded and supportive, so we went. I don’t remember which denomination it was, or even what we did there. I only remember dressing up for a few Sundays in a row, then being very happy when we abandoned the project. Christianity, in one form or another, was the dominant religion in our hometown, but I never really got into it and, aside from this little experiment, I was never really asked to. Then, in grade school, I had a good friend who was Muslim, (his was the only Muslim family in our school, I think) and I used to talk to him a lot about his beliefs and his particular religious practices, and the benefits/challenges of these. I distinctly remember him telling me that I had to believe him about something or other because he couldn’t lie as it was against his religion. That struck me then as very convenient; to have a system of beliefs that worked as a set of rules governing your behavior. In my head, he didn’t have to worry about lying because he couldn’t lie. It was against the rules. I was open to, and enthusiastic about, his religious experiences and accounts because he was my friend and they were so unfamiliar to me. The idea of finding something like that for myself became appealing, and I asked my mother to take me to the library so I might read up on various religions and see which one best suited me. Then I too might have a set of rules by which to live. On the one hand, the project was a failure. No single text, or tradition, really fit me that well, but it all seemed really wild and each religion exhibited these great imaginative capabilities. I was learning a lot. At the same time, I was struggling my way through Tolkien, some Shakespeare, Greek mythology, that kind of thing. It’s probably for this reason that I have always viewed religious texts simply as powerful narratives, as literature, rather than existential truths or solid guidebooks for how to live. At best, I guess, they’re examples of how things could be, or might have been. But, again, this was just my experience. Since then I’ve always studied religious texts as/alongside literary texts, particularly the Bible, as it was such a dominant narrative voice in the town/state/country where I grew up. This was one of the initial sparks for this project, engaging a biblical narrative on literary terms, and exposing it to the same manipulations/experimentation one might any other literary tradition.

The Haunted Woman

January 12, 2021 in Isstillcools**t, Feature

In the Mutableye

(We’ve written about David Lindsay before, but all the same, this week wanted to present you with some of his own words, a selection from one of Lindsay’s lesser known novels, entitled The Haunted Woman, a book that reads like Victorian Scooby Dooby Doo with a hefty dosage of spiritualism and a good deal of romantic intrigue. Below is a selection from the first chapter.)

In the latter half of August, Marshall Stokes went to New York, in order to wind up the estate of the lately-deceased brother of the lady to whom he was betrothed. As a busy underwriting member of Lloyd’s, he could ill afford the time—he was over there for upwards of a fortnight—but no alternative had presented itself. Miss Loment had no connections in America, she possessed no other relations, except a widowed aunt, with whom she lived, and it was clearly out of the question for either of the two ladies to travel across in person, to examine books, interview lawyers, deal with claims, etc.—they had not the necessary business experience. The task, therefore, had devolved on Marshall. He had not been able to conclude the business, but he had put it in a fair way of being concluded, and had appointed a reputable firm to act as Miss Loment’s representatives. The estate was worth forty thousand dollars.

Revolution of Everyday Life: The Decline and Fall of Work

January 12, 2021 in Manifesto of the Month, Feature

Raoul Vaneigem

The duty to produce alienates the passion for creation. Productive labour is part and parcel of the technology of law and order. The working day grows shorter as the empire of conditioning extends.

In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create. What spark of humanity, of a possible creativity, can remain alive in a being dragged out of sleep at six every morning, jolted about in suburban trains, deafened by the racket of machinery, bleached and steamed by meaningless sounds and gestures, spun dry by statistical controls, and tossed out at the end of the day into the entrance halls of railway stations, those cathedrals of departure for the hell of weekdays and the nugatory paradise of weekends, where the crowd communes in weariness and boredom? From adolescence to retirement each 24-hour cycle repeats the same shattering bombardment, like bullets hitting a window: mechanical repetition, time-which-is-money, submission to bosses, boredom, exhaustion. From the butchering of youth’s energy to the gaping wound of old age, life cracks in every direction under the blows of forced labour. Never before has a civilization reached such a degree of contempt for life; never before has a generation, drowned in mortification, felt such a rage to live. The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry. Already the front against forced labour is being formed; its gestures of refusal are moulding the consciousness of the future. Every call for productivity in the conditions chosen by capitalist and Soviet economy is a call to slavery.

This is Not a Review: of EC Comics

January 12, 2021 in Article, This is not a Review, Feature

Gabriel Boyer

Mr. Beaser: Is there any limit you can think of that you would not put in a magazine because you thought a child should not see or read about it?
Mr. Gaines: My only limits are the bounds of good taste, what I consider good taste.
Sen. Kefauver [alluding to the cover illustration for Crime SuspenStories #22 shown above]: This seems to be a man with a bloody ax holding a woman’s head up which has been severed from her body. Do you think that is in good taste?
Mr. Gaines: Yes, sir, I do, for the cover of a horror comic….
Sen. Kefauver: This is the July one [Crime SuspenStories #23]. It seems to be a man with a woman in a boat and he is choking her to death with a crowbar. Is that in good taste?
Mr. Gaines: I think so.

The Stendhal Syndrome

January 12, 2021 in Article, Feature

Luther Philips

In 1989, Professor Graziella Magherini, a Florentine psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, made her name with the publication of The Stendhal Syndrome, addressing clinical instances of queasiness, disorientation, heightened sensitivity, and panic in people confronted by great works of art or architecture. Named after Stendhal, the pen name of Marie-Henri Bayle, best known for his novels The Red and the Black and Charterhouse of Parma, whose diary contained an account of his visit to the Church at Santa Croce, where he fainted in sympathetic response to a painting. This affliction, also dubbed Hyperkulturemia or Florence syndrome, is a psychosomatic illness that can cause rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations, usually when a person’s viewing art that is particularly beautiful or a large amount of art in a single place. The term can also be used to describe a similar reaction to a surfeit of choice in other circumstances, e.g. when confronted with immense beauty in the natural world, or when overwhelmed by the viewing possibilities presented by Netflix.

Bellows, Al-Saadi, & the Outsider

January 12, 2021 in Article, Letter from the Editor, Feature

Letter from the Editor

The Hungry Brain is supposedly the best bar in America and it is getting further and further away with every step I take. Later, my brother will tell his friends how he had been psychically dragging me the whole way, whatever that means. Then we’ve been walking for I don’t know how long and we’re standing in another bar called the Burlington. It’s got just enough lighting to allow a person to maneuver from one end of the bar to the other without hurting themselves, but not enough lighting for anyone’s acne to be noticeable, and Jules and I are discussing walking BACK to the Hungry Brain, and the show is about to begin. Which, in the end, we just slipped in the back and I ordered a beer in a stupid little plastic cup, and there was this awkward-seeming guy with an acoustic guitar on stage. I thought, “Oh God.” The man with the acoustic guitar began to play.

The French Song

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Mutablesoundofthemonth, Feature

Mutable Sound of the Month

The French Song was originally written by Gabriel Boyer in an effort to test the boundaries of his knowledge of French and recorded on Walking Stick (’01). Lyrics go something like this: “French it’s the language of fingers, french it’s the language of fingers, hey hey hee hee ha ha the language of fingers / Do re mi it isn’t fa, do re mi it isn’t fa, hey hey hee hee ha ha, it isn’t fa / But french it’s in the head / But the fingers are in regret / But your tongue is on my eyes / But your fingers are in my heart.” I leave the rest of the song up to your own fertile imagination.

This song was recorded with the Dynavox 2000 at Exile Studios in the Fall of 2002 with back-up vocals by Corey Tatarczuk and Annie Heringer, with Corey also playing bass and Annie playing accoustic guitar. Malcolm Felder was on drums, Dalton Eljer on electric guitar, Gregory Kenney on keyboards, and Gabriel Boyer performing lead vocals and piano. It was recorded just a few short months after The Textbook Tapes and with largely the same aesthetic in mind, and involving many of the same performers. Since that time it’s been sitting in our storehouses waiting for the moment when we would unleash it on your unsuspecting ears. This is the month, and today is the day.

Feel free to listen or download below.

Mutable is pleased to present a unique musical experience every month or so by ourselves or someone we’ve been introduced to. These are from the reel-to-reels and tascams of the garages and basements of the world. Send tracks to mail@mutablesound.com along with credits and a brief description.

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The Animal Hospital Ensemble

January 12, 2021 in Isstillcools**t, Feature

In the Mutableye

Animal Hospital‘s Kevin Micka makes beautiful music. His luscious soundscapes mesmerize as they dig deep in with loops that dig deep and wailing riffs that cut. Long ago, we were lucky enough to put out one of his albums, Good or Plenty, Streets + Avenues, and have been following his career since with a keen interest. One side project of note is his Animal Hospital Ensemble, in which a group of players come together to perform under Micka’s direction. Enjoy the performance!

Animal Hospital Ensemble plays at DOT A I R Experimental Music Festival in Pawtucket, RI on August 23, 2014. More on Animal Hospital Ensemble: http://animalhospitalmusic.com/animal-hospital-ensemble Musicians: Emily Arkin Chris Braiotta Ryan Brown Anna Cimini Scott Craggs Dave Michael Curry Brent Frattini Dan Gonzales Jason Heasley Hilary Jones Bill Johnston Ernie Kim John Kolodij Matt Lavallee Ken Linehan Dan Madri Seth Manchester Steve Norton Rob Noyes Karen Orsi Mark Pearson Daryl Rabidoux Nick Sadler Michael Samos Georgia Young Jane Wang Matthew Whitcomb Brian Williams Thalia Zedek Pete Zetlan DRUMS Dan Boucher Jonathan Ullman Alec Tisdale Mark Fede Rick Prior Ryan Dwyer Recording by Ernst Karel http://ek.klingt.org/ DOT A I R 2014 was presented by Machines with Magnets and Blackstone Valley Culture & Tourism

In the Mutableye is a segment that sometimes showcases something interesting that is happening somewhere in the world at this moment, and sometimes showcases some fad or person from the past that we here at Mutable acknowledge is still cool s**t.