Elon Musk, China, & the Multiverse

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

Letter from the Editor

[Our sci fi films are like ads for future Apple products and propaganda for a reductionist view of the present, in which our end is inevitable, and the toys of the rich will become prettier and prettier while the rest of us drown in our own filth. In this letter from the editor I wanted to write about this sci fi present of ours. About the figures who fill it and what functions they serve, the places we’re going and the places that are taking us there, and most importantly about the one thing that is driving it all.]

I. Persons

There are certain persons who contain our fantasy—who, it seems, exist only to act as avatars for those who believe in them and the ideas they represent. Most obvious of course would be your standard everyday politician. In becoming public figures, they also become icons that can then spread in a meme-like way. Or Jesus. But Walt Disney also comes to mind.

*Headmistress Ursula pictured here when she was much younger and wilder.*

Episode 5

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Series, Twilight at the College

Twilight at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies

Handyman Jack has just accused the Headmistress of eating the ears off living pigs, while Archibald is also revealing some unsavory bit of business to the Grammar Instructor. But what of the boy currently under the influence of the psychedelic fumes emitted by the bushes he had set fire to? What of Simone and Boo Boo?

Mutable Sound Chicago, Illinois Mutable Sound is an online gallery for sound and word located in Chicago, IL. We are dedicated to publishing works in all genres, from the dense and inextricable to the light-hearted and absurd, and release albums that are experiments more than anything else, without being particularly experimental.

A new episode of Twilight at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies aired on a semi-weekly basis.

Layered Ekphrasis Collaboration

January 12, 2021 in Article, Feature

Lina ramona Vitkauskas

Delve into the article below by Mutable’s own Lina Vitkauskas, and at the bottom you will find a string of poems that were inspired by a chapbook that was inspired by a film.

I first saw Fando y Lis in 2001. The film is set in a post-apocalyptic world in which the main characters—lovers Fando and Lis—search for a mythical land, Tar, where it is said that all dreams come true. The film documents the journey to Tar—lays before the viewer a series of exquisitely odd and profoundly symbolic experiences; if dreams come true in Tar, it is no matter if we ever arrive, for dreams are fulfilled simply observing the unfolding excursion. The film itself is a poet’s dream—a grand pageant of formidable imagery: burning pianos and high-society aristocrats wandering barren landscapes littered with demolished structures, once beacons of culture/civilization; marionette shows illustrating the rape of innocence; canned peach-testicle metaphors and gaggles of erotic women and transvestites tempting the characters away for moments of sensual curiosity; mud nudes meshing with one another in the soft earth: flower consumption, body-painting, and melodramatic, reclining graveyard poses—a whirlwind of remarkable hallucinations strung together, coupled with intriguing and affected dialogue.

My Asinine Life: How a Body Lights on the Ass End of Everything

January 12, 2021 in Article, My Asinine Life, Series

Gabriel Boyer

You’re always off and away in the airy confines of your skull, like a sparrow trapped in the tiniest cage—that keeps burrowing deeper into the subatomic field in its effort to escape this unfortunate cage—and in general always searching for another crack to crawl into within that fifth wall delineates the back end of your brain. You got hands behind this aforementioned backdrop of your mental operating theater and they’re messing around with the flickering remnants of your dreams while your one sweetest hope is just to see the light over the hilltop at the end of this long night. You erotic ornithologist you.

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

The Three Mulla-mulgers

January 12, 2021 in Isstillcools**t, Feature

Walter de la Mare

On the borders of the Forest of Munza-mulgar lived once an old grey fruit-monkey of the name of Mutt-matutta. She had three sons, the eldest Thumma, the next Thimbulla, and the youngest, who was a Nizza-neela, Ummanodda. And they called each other for short, Thumb, Thimble, and Nod. The rickety, tumble-down old wooden hut in which they lived had been built 319 Munza years before by a traveller, a Portugall or Portingal, lost in the forest 22,997 leagues from home. After he was dead, there came scrambling along on his fours one peaceful evening a Mulgar (or, as we say in English, a monkey) named Zebbah. At first sight of the hut he held his head on one side awhile, and stood quite still, listening, his broad-nosed face lit up in the blaze of the setting sun. He then hobbled a little nearer, and peeped into the hut. Whereupon he hobbled away a little, but soon came back and peeped again. At last he ventured near, and, pushing back the tangle of creepers and matted grasses, groped through the door and went in. And there, in a dark corner, lay the Portingal’s little heap of bones.

In One Story

January 12, 2021

Colin Winnette

Mutable Author Colin Winnette recently released a remarkable new pair of works bound as one, labeled Fondly, and put out by Atticus Books. One of these books is Gainesville, which follows the twisted branches of a restless family tree in a small Texas town, and the other is a collection of stories entitled, In One Story, stories that detail the lives of two sisters, both cast as wildly imaginative entities, each story more bizarre than the next.

Some years ago Mr. Winnette recorded an audio book of In One Story, and Mutable has put this book up for free download at bandcamp in conjunction with the new release!

19 stories available to stream or download now!

Listen

*What horrors will come of Gundrun’s brother’s offspring?*

Episode 6

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Series, Twilight at the College

Twilight at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies

Archibald the Professor of Arcane Knowledge has some unpleasant news for the Grammar Instructor, but then he plucks the memory of their interaction from her mind, slips into a secret opening constructed while sampling a student’s confiscated coca leaf collection. And what does he find in the secret passageway? And what does he do to the poor unfortunate? And what will Gundrun do when they meet again moments after that other meeting she has now has no recollection of?

A new episode of Twilight at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies aired on a semi-weekly basis.

Diaries of a Garish Amateur: Disinherited of the Earth

January 12, 2021 in Article, Diariesofagarishamateur, Series

John Wilmes

My friend Bradshaw’s been out of a home for some weeks now. A year or so ago, the owner of the building Bradshaw rented in, in Chicago, was foreclosed upon—and not just in Bradshaw’s building. The owner was held up to a debt in the range of thirty million dollars, spread across many foreclosed-upon properties, and he thus fled to his native Ukraine.Success, that indomitable wall of my imagination. It’s a wall I so want to climb, however hard it may be, however long it may take, however much blood it spills from me to scale it. I so want to publish plentifully, to perform my thinking and craft for a living; I so want to be something like my own master—I want this more than anything. But I’d have to know where this wall even is, first. Because as things stand, I can’t be quite sure that I’m even running in its direction; I’m shrouded by the fog of not knowing, handed down to me by my working-class family, and extenuated by the lack of ambition that’s defined most of my young life.

The Subgenius Manifesto

January 12, 2021 in Manifesto of the Month, Feature

J.R. “Bob” Dobbs

“Time Control? You’ve come to the right place…”

ARE YOU ABNORMAL?

Then you are probably BETTER than most people!
IF you suspect that things are much worse than you ever suspected—

IF the only thing you’ve been able to laugh at for the last 5 years is the fact that NOTHING is funny anymore—

IF you sometimes want to collar people on the street and scream that you’re more different than they could possible *imagine*—

IF you can possibly help us with a donation—

IF you see the whole universe as one vast morbid sense of sick humor—

IF the current “Age of Progress” seems more like the Dark Ages to you—

IF you are looking for an inherently contradictory religion that will condone megadegeneracy and yet tell you that you are “above” everyone else—

Then…
THE CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS

could *save your sanity!*

This is Not a Review: of Henry Green

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

Gabriel Boyer

Henry Green was the pseudonym for Henry Vincent Yorke, and the author of ten books, most of which are truly remarkable, all short and each one written in its own distinctive dialect. His writing lives in a remarkable place, between the outlandish experiments of Joyce and the everyday exactitude of Graham Greene. He has been categorized as a WWII British voice, but I like to think of him more as a candle in the dark?

Why a candle in the dark?

Henry Green does something that we here at Mutable are very fond of. His books contain experimental elements, but they are framed as traditional storytelling of the Graham Greene variety. This is what makes him such an anachronism.

Amazing Adult Fantasy by A D Jameson

January 12, 2021 in Press, Feature

Jonah Vorspan-Stein

Originally Published in the Noo Journal, Issue 13

AD JAMESON’S Amazing Adult Fantasy opens with a brief indictment: “Fiction may be the worst thing about the 21st century.” The stories that follow—fabled, sardonic, sharp—venture to strip fiction of its conventions, substituting in their place a new narrative logic: one that brandishes an acute playfulness and grandiose sentiment, one of mustachios and infatuation, the most mature kind of absurdity. These are stories about obsessions and deficiencies, about people who glare every bit of themselves, who feel the world on its largest scales. In these stories, astronaut Buzz Aldwin falls into the bad graces of NASA, a girl shares her various and mutually exclusive truths about Oscar the Grouch, and Bronx monkeys devote themselves to preserving earth’s aurora borealis. While these are certainly stories of insistent and shifting forms, they are also stories that always endeavor to a literary beauty.

*Archibald keeps appearing in the strangest places. Will he ever find the gymnasium?*

Episode 7

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Series, Twilight at the College

Twilight at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies

The girls have a lesson in logic soon, but why did Simone’s mommy and daddy have to die? Archibald’s head pops up in the center of the pond and disappears. The Grammar Instructor suddenly appears to be sporting a goiter. “You all disgust me,” she shouts.

A new episode of Twilight at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies aired on a semi-weekly basis.

Pelog Quarrel

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Mutablesoundofthemonth, Feature

Mutable Sound of the Month

Alex Yoffe looks like someone who grew up on a farm. He also happens to be a composer of the weird and the inexplicable. His compositions are bound by no tradition, from the Far East to experimental electronica. We here at Mutable first discovered Yoffe in a church in Hyde Park.

We were attending a night of gamelan music put on by the Friends of the Gamelan in Chicago, or FROG. Yoffe plays with the group and one of the compositions was his. It was during his composition a certain highly-strung Mutable Sound editor started literally hyperventilating as result of the sheer wall of emotion brought on by the piece.

Of course most of Yoffe’s compositions are not strictly in the javanese tradition, but do utilize aspects of this genre of musicmaking as well as others, but for our Mutable Sound of the Month, we did choose one of his more Javanese compositions, although don’t be fooled. He also performs his own brand of electronica under the moniker Bode Radio in bars around Chicago. Of course his various projects all bleed together as even a cursory glance will show you.

Written for a full Javanese Gamelan Ensemble in the Pelog tuning system. This is a recording of the premiere performance which took place in Hyde Park, IL at the Hyde Park Union Church from Sounds (headphone friendly), track released June 15, 2012Thanks to Friends of the Gamelan for making this performance and recording possible!

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.

Screen Shot 2021-02-01 at 7.06.16 AM.png

Video: Lookwell

January 12, 2021 in Isstillcools**t, Feature

In the Mutableye

This amazing show was co-written by Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel, and never got beyond the initial pilot. Adam West stars as a washed-up TV action hero—who at the peak of his career was ceremonially deputized by local law enforcement and now falsely believes he can solve crimes in real life. Check it out below!

Rejected TV Pilot that would have been hilarious if smarter people were in charge.This is from an actual Network Screener which I cleaned up even more and ma...

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.

Last Week's Broadcast

January 12, 2021 in Excerpt, Story, Series, Bedroom Theater

Gabriel Boyer

[The excerpt below is from Mutable’s most recent release, a memoir of the summer Boyer spent touring America with a woman named Jill, performing plays with strangers in their bedrooms as the two made their way south to New Orleans, west to LA, and north to Seattle, the madness that ensued, and how it all began.]

Bedroom Theater began when my roommate changed the light bulb in my bedroom, or rather, it began when he pointed out to me that he had changed the light bulb and for a moment I thought the bare bulb made my room look like an experimental theater space or heroin den, and then I thought that I should do that someday (start an experimental theater in my bedroom not start doing heroin) and then I forgot, for I was constantly slipping in and out of depression in those days, or rather, mostly slipping in and very rarely slipping out of the yearlong depression I was at that moment in the middle of. Most days it would take me a good half hour to put on one sock and even when I was fully clothed in socks, I would still spend hours sitting in the dark of my room contemplating literally nothing while staring at the brick wall facing my couch and the word “Safety” painted on it and above my queen-sized bed.

From the Language of Form and Color

January 12, 2021 in Manifesto of the Month, Feature

Wassily Kandinsky

To begin with, let us test the working on ourselves of individual colours, and so make a simple chart, which will facilitate the consideration of the whole question.

Two great divisions of colour occur to the mind at the outset: into warm and cold, and into light and dark. To each colour there are therefore four shades of appeal — warm and light or warm and dark, or cold and light or cold and dark.

Generally speaking, warmth or cold in a colour means an approach respectively to yellow or to blue. This distinction is, so to speak, on one basis, the colour having a constant fundamental appeal, but assuming either a more material or more non-material quality. The movement is an horizontal one, the warm colours approaching the spectator, the cold ones retreating from him.

Two Things Struck Me: A Review of Jameson's Amazing Adult Fantasy

January 12, 2021 in Press, Feature

Jeff Bursey

Originally published at The Quarterly Conversation

We’re in an unimaginative period when many readers prefer memoirs to fiction. Perhaps there’s something in Canadians and Americans that demands fiction to mirror life, to provide a perspective on how to live, like one would download an app designed to locate chain restaurants in foreign cities. Imaginative writing, so newspaper reviews would lead one to believe, has its best home in science fiction and fantasy titles. The serious novels—written by Philip Roth and James Ellroy, for example—don’t stray far from realism, unless you’re Spanish, South American or Salman Rushdie. When was the last time you picked up the local paper and saw a long review of a book that didn’t pretend to tell you exactly how this or that occupation was carried out in the 1540s, or describe minutely the way clothes were worn in 19th-century Wales? When was the last time an author’s style, above all other elements of a book, received praise in that same paper for its vocabulary, fresh metaphors, complex sentences, and the use of adverbs and adjectives, without once mentioning plot?

*This is how Grammar Instructor Gundrun sees all of you.*

Episode 8

January 12, 2021 in Podcast, Series, Twilight at the College

Twilight at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies

The year is 1903 and Jack just had a strange notion. He is sweet sometimes. They may even munch on some lettuce. They will leave out the back door, but their play is doomed to be interrupted by the very illogical Simone. And what of Archibald? Is it true he is performing his obeisance in a less than private place? Is Gundrun become unhinged? And what is it comes from the wound?

A new episode of Twilight at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies aired on a semi-weekly basis.

Diaries of a Garish Amateur: For Bradford, Saint of Me

January 12, 2021 in Article, Diariesofagarishamateur, Series

John Wilmes

Success, that indomitable wall of my imagination. It’s a wall I so want to climb, however hard it may be, however long it may take, however much blood it spills from me to scale it. I so want to publish plentifully, to perform my thinking and craft for a living; I so want to be something like my own master—I want this more than anything. But I’d have to know where this wall even is, first. Because as things stand, I can’t be quite sure that I’m even running in its direction; I’m shrouded by the fog of not knowing, handed down to me by my working-class family, and extenuated by the lack of ambition that’s defined most of my young life.

Moon Child's Dream Dictionary

January 12, 2021 in Story, Feature

Lesley Dixon

[Appendix: Recurring Nightmares]

Knife

(See also: Mack the Knife, teen dance craze, penetration.) Knives symbolize power. The knife is a phallus. If you are cut with a knife, you are afraid of a man in your life. If you are stabbed with a knife, you feel intimidated by a work situation. If you are chased down an alley into a dead-end and stabbed with a knife, you are afraid of the death of your parents. If you cut yourself with a knife, you are looking for release. If you cut yourself with a knife and you do not bleed, you are lacking in vitamins. Moon Child suggests drinking tart cherry juice, and calling your father on the phone. Note: in non-American cultures, the knife may symbolize entirely different vital organs, and this guide should be translated into other languages only at great risk to the Dreamer.

A new episode of Twilight at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies aired on a semi-weekly basis.

19 stories available to stream or download now!

A new episode of Twilight at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies aired on a semi-weekly basis.

Jonah Vorspan-Stein

A new episode of Twilight at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies aired on a semi-weekly basis.

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.

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.

Jeff Bursey

A new episode of Twilight at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies aired on a semi-weekly basis.

Lesley Dixon

Product