Jean-Baptiste Oudry - Swan Attacked by a Dog, 1745
Mutable Sound was originally Mutable Press, a company founded with Zachary Katz and the publication of a small book titled Seven Short Plays for the Bedroom. We had it printed at Kinko’s. We bound them ourselves using a saddle stitch on the floor of my bedroom at 180 Green Street where the plays themselves had been performed. We had discussed it in Brooklyn over eggs.
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Boyer reads from Dracula
A curtain is furled under a pipe that runs just beneath the ceiling, and a spotted cat wanders in. On the makeshift stage there is a ripped couch, a battered metal file cabinet labeled “This Was Your Life,” and a swath of green shag carpet.
Sporting long sideburns and blue Chuck Taylor sneakers, Gabriel Boyer takes the stage and launches into a reading of “Dracula.” The spectators arrayed on the performer’s bed are less than comfortable: The slats beneath his mattress aren’t nailed in, so they tend to shift whenever somebody moves too much.
This is “Bedroom Theater,” freewheeling performances that take place in Boyer’s Jamaica Plain loft every eight days. Boyer, 26, is a frequent actor and the author of some of the plays and skits that have been staged in his bedroom for the past year. He and a friend have even published a guide, “Seven Short Plays for the Bedroom.”
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Colin Winnette is from Denton, Texas.
He is the author of Revelation (Mutable Sound), Animal Collection (Spork), Fondly (Atticus Books), Coyote (Les Figues), and Haints Stay (Two Dollar Radio). His novels have been translated into Italian and French. His latest novel, The Job of the Wasp, was published by Soft Skull Press in 2018.
He was the winner of Les Figues Press's NOS Book Contest, a runner-up for Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Award, and a finalist for Gulf Coast Magazine’s Donald Barthelme Prize for Short Prose.
His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Playboy, Lucky Peach, The Believer, BuzzFeed Books, and others.
He's represented by Kevin O’Connor at Sheedy Literary.
Back in the ’60s and ’70s, ads in the back of magazines beckoned readers to submit their very own “song-poems,” original ditties of often dubious quality. Hopeful songwriters were then given an offer they (thankfully) couldn’t refuse: for a few hundred bucks, creative session musicians would do their best to use the public’s lyrics and churn out an actual, honest-to-goodness recorded album that they could cherish forever. Some of the finest recorded results — not counting those still awaiting to be discovered in thrift store dime bins — can be found on The American Song-Poem Anthology, songs with names like “Do You Know the Difference Between Big Wood and Brush” and “I Lost My Girl to An Argentinean Cowboy”.
We here at Mutable admire this innovative idea, and have decided to begin our own version of this service, but we would do it absolutely FREE. (Of course, we will select only the best among your submissions, based on whatever skewed standards we are using to judge you and your poetic genius.) Just send your poems to us via the internet: submissions@mutablesound.com, and wait to hear back! You too can hear your words captured in song!
If we pick your song it will be made into magical music by our resident music-makers, Normal Feelings (Chicago or Eugene contingent) and posted on the website as the Mutable Sound of the Month! Fun, right?
-Gabriel Boyer
Artist renditions of Satan’s reproductive organs.
Boo Boo and Simone have been sucked into another dimension by their always wily imaginary bear friends. Simone is being sucked into the Earth, while back at the infirmary Archibald the Professor of Arcane Knowledge has just now realized he forgot to pay Pieter for the monkey he’s been experimenting on in the hopes of creating a new breed of humanzee with the help of Satan, who may or may not also be the narrator of our little story. Listen for the sounds of Butcher Billy struggling to free himself from Handyman Jack’s iron grip only to then be zapped by Archibald the Professor of Arcane Knowledge and teleported to the moors where he will wander, naked and enraged.
A battle in Hell
A war is being waged in Hell between different factions of demons, while Simone and Isabel sit on the hill above watching each with a pleasant grin plastered on face, or Isabel is any case, and Simone is being sucked into the Earth as, back in the infirmary, Grammar Instructor Gundrun is violently ill. Could this be morning sickness from the anti-christ growing in her womb? Did a giant vagina just appear in the sky? What are the faeries up to? And as for the imaginary bears…
What mysterious forces are at work now?
What could all this be? Faerie orgies? Metal buckets full of bile? A light emanating from The Lady Jane College for Little Ladies that spans the globe? Somehow all these things are connected. Could imaginary bears have something to do with it? Or the young scholars currently lost in the far reaches of hell? Handyman Jack believes he can make a portal to hell himself with the help of his fleet of miniature porcelain mechanized hot air balloons and perhaps the powers of Archibald the Professor of Arcane Knowledge. But they need a human sacrifice to fill out the picture. Just then the doorbell rings.
The Professor of Arcane Knowledge in a Lighter Mood.
Can no one see that Grammar Instructor Gundrun has been transformed into a sweaty-toothed demon? Is the boy that Archibald the Professor of Arcane Knowledge succumbs using his and-now-I-have-your-mind spell really going to be sacrificed to the forces of darkness? While in the astral plane, the young scholars, Simone, Isabel, and Nathaniel wander aimlessly over undulating mounds while being harassed by snickering insects. Be warned.
The wolf eyes the faeries in a hungry way.
A young boy from the preparatory school down the lane has been put under a trance so as to be used by Headmistress Ursula to create a portal into the realm of death. Grammar Instructor Gundrun has grown awfully quiet on account of how she is transforming into Satan, or an approximation of Satan. Other young scholars, specifically Simone, Isabel, and Nathaniel, are wandering through the astral plane, but whatever happened to Butcher Billy? And why are the Invisible Bears singing that irritating song? And what are the fairies discussing in their emergency council? Only time will tell. Or will it?
The science behind our young scholars’ trip into the future explained.
This pivotal episode in our story involves many things, some to do with time, some to do with dog-sized whales, and some to do with people who just can’t take it anymore because they’re possessed by Satan and crave human flesh, not to mention having an immense dislike fir monologues by overbearing administrators. If you listen closely, you can hear the entire storyline of the up-and-coming episodes splayed out along the strings of time Simone, Isabel, and Nathaniel are traversing after she’s eaten the cursed fruit blooms from out her belly into the most adorable little bird. Be prepared!
(Also listen for Butcher Billy falling through the skylight during Ursula’s monologue only to stop short of the floor with the help of her wizardry.)
The young scholars are battling their way through the nine levels of hell, but are there nine levels or is it just a single infinite expanse full of chipmunk-voiced mongrels manning the controls within the heads of bleary-eyed walking trees pictured above? While back on earth, the administrators at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies are all being sucked into a vortex when Grammar Instructor Gundrun gives in to her demonic desire to suck the flesh of a poor boy from the preparatory school down the lane. Dark days are here again!
Nothing like this will ever happen in our story.
The astral plane has consumed everybody. True, Gundrun will be trapped in an in between place for all eternity, but as for the rest, they are stuck now in a world without windows, a place tickles at the heartstrings and beats upon the brain, where nothing is what it seems, and everything is very much what it seems, where the darkness is blinding bright, and the brightness is pitch black, where nothing could be better, and everything could be far far worse, where Butcher Billy finds a leg in a swamp, lines this marble hall chock full of vegetation moves like snakes in the high grass to cut off any and all escape. Be warned!
Behold the proof and know our story to be true.
Is Jack or is Jack not touching Headmistress Ursula’s breast? What happened to Butcher Billy and Archibald the professor of Arcane Knowledge? Why does Satan sound so suspiciously like the narrator? Who are that strange couple that just showed up at the front door of the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies? Watch, listen, and learn.
What a life they would have led if they hadn’t taken that wrong turn!
Who are these newlyweds who have just stumbled upon The Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies? What did they see at the spiritualist’s in Brixton? Where is this story going? Only time will tell.
All she ever wanted was to save her brother from his brain tumor.
The hordes of hell are spreading across the land, and a strange creature made all of leather but for the cleavage and porcelain face has confronted Archibald the Professor of Arcane Knowledge and Butcher Billy. The young scholars are frozen in time, and the narrator is winning because the narrator is Satan.
What weirdness has happened to the world?
Perhaps you have become confused. In this episode Butcher Billy discovers the secret to hopping from hell to earth and back again, but it’s all blurring together regardless, hell and earth squishing into one slippery slab of sight, until there is no distinction between the fiery pit and the world above, and no escape!
And lo, his tongue birthed a forest of equally-sized tongues.
Travel through the present and into the past, and not just in the usual ways of listening to old stories, but in the not so usual ways of actually being in the past, or rather a timeless place is neither the past or the present. Is Ursula also Satan? What really happened after she and Jack went through the Tongue Forest? It’s up to you to find out!
Today’s story took place long before these men ever met.
The past and the present? Breasts that suck rather than secrete? Where is Butcher Billy when we need him? What is happening to Archibald the Professor of Arcane knowledge? Listen for the demon on the pogo stick as he chases after one of the young scholars.
That’s what you get for opening up a portal to hell.
Wow. This non-stop narrative takes you to so many resort locations within the now fallen earth, overrun as it is by demons from the depths of hell, chambermaids being dragged before pustulant demon mounds and faeries copulating with crickets. Truly, a vacation package.
It is a changed world.
Could Nathaniel and Isabel be the last hope for humanity? What sort of mischief have they been up to these long years gone by while the world ran down? Is there someone else could save us from the maws of hell? Only time will tell, and time is running out!
