There are many versions of the fall of Pittsburgh, and there are many versions of Jackson Cole. But in this particular version of events, Mr. Cole is a drug addict and a vagrant, and he may even have finally found the thread that ties all this terror together. Pittsburgh's collapsed in the civil war America lost, and a down-and-out detective strung out on a very potent hallucinogenic narcotic is going to find the answers in this first part of a three-parted history within the larger Apocalyptic Histories of the Parasite.
Sinclair
Talbot Penniman
My name is Sinclair and I live on The Ship. I’ve only got a minute before I’m going to go see a doctor about some surgery I need. I got pretty famous recently. I fully disrupted the ship’s milk supply. Now when I say disrupted I don’t mean I like… changed the way people think of milk… or use milk, I didn’t invent a cheese computer… I didn’t disrupt the milk supply in any innovative sense. I mean we had a ton of milk, and then I lost most of it. I guess it’s sort of my fault, if it’s anybody’s fault. In a sense we still have the milk, it’s in the bilge.
The milk tank is an extraordinarily large cylinder made of bones. The milktank is (or was) a complicated piece of equipment and it is very old. Maintenance records date back over 1200 years, so it’s at least that old. For some reason it will shunt the entire milk supply into the bilge in the event a catastrophic failure. I guess there used to be a way to filter the milk back out from the bilge water… but that’s lost knowledge now. So yeah, the bilge is full of milk now and I guess that’s my fault.
So. Maybe you’d like to hear how this dumb thing happened? Two things: Chromomorphs and Crabgoats.
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Manifesto of Amateurism
Anton Krueger
preamble
…as everyone has by now, surely, become aware, the word “amateur” arises from the holy name of amaterasu – the japanese goddess of the sun who was born from the left eye of izanagi…it is to her alone that all true amateurists turn for benedictions of light and love…
aligning the field: amateurism & professionalism
ONE
…every action (drama / karma) is a creative gesture, because every action continuously creates consequences…
…if there is to be a division, then let it not fall between “bad” and “good” or “good” and “better”, but between action and non-action…
…amateurism is about action – praxis, rather than spectatorship…so the first thing to do is to GET OUT OF THE GRANDSTAND…
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Video: Rage
As we continue to venture further into John and Dan’s unique songwriting style, after the lush pessimism of Angels and wild cynicism of Fillies, once again we are struck, in this spoken word piece, by this pared down gem. Enjoy!
You can find a selection of these songs on their album Secret Griefs here.
John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved 4 years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!
This is Not a Review: of Super Flat Times
Gabriel Boyer
Full disclosure, there was a time when I tried to write exactly like Matthew Derby.
I first read Super Flat Times probably something like 15 years ago and at a time in my life when I was on the hunt for the gritty new thing in world of science fiction—the genre that gave the world Philip K Dick and William Gibson, Arthur C Clarke and Robert Heinlein—a genre I despised and adored in equal measure—that would come to dominate my life. And with Matthew Derby’s brilliant collection was part of that. Re-reading them for this essay, that initial electric feeling I had the first time around came rolling back. These stories are on fire!
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Fatigue
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. His most recent album, Fatigue, due out April 24th by White Sepulchre Records, can be pre-ordered now either on vinyl or as a digital download on bandcamp. This most recent post-rock masterpiece is another gem on par with Memory—dark, transcendent, and a lush ambient listening experience. But don’t just take our word for it. Hear for yourself below!
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.
Video: Fillies
In our on-going showcase of SAD, we bring you a story, Fillies, a story of five fillies, their names, and racism. We here at Mutable are pleased to offer this gem from the dark imaginings of John and Dan and will continue to offer their twisted harmonies and discordant visions for the months and years to come.
You can find a selection of these songs on their album Secret Griefs here.
John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved 4 years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!
Interview with Mike Sauve
What I am struck with in your work is the macabre playfulness. Would you like to talk about the relationship between comedy and pain in your writing?
As I respond to your questions, it is Christmas morn, and I have messaged several friends asking, “Know of any local bukkakes I might partake in?” This is not going to go over at my in-laws breakfast table, but to me it unearths something very vital: the vertex of all that Christmas is meant to mean with not only the lurid nature of the bukkake, but the logical extrapolation that:
1) Bukkakes are known to exist.
2) Since bukkakes are known to exist there must be men ever on the prowl for one.
As a lapsed journalist, I see little value in simply making ledger entries regarding the world’s immeasurable darkness. We know human’s heads have been stomped against curbs. We know people boil dogs alive to release an adrenaline they find flavourful. I’ve largely outgrown horror fiction as both a reader and as a writer because there isn’t a single thing Jack Ketchum or Stephen King might conceive of that anyone couldn’t find in the news were they motivated to look. And yet for me to write any alternative to the boiled dog reality results in platitudes that are worse than banal, they are insulting to the boiled dogs! Regardless, I must abide these platitudes. I must direct my feet to the sunny side of the street. I must live, laugh, and love to the extent I am capable. (I have gone calendar years without laughing aloud.) In this need for capital-P positivity, I find myself at the same sacred and profane vertex as the Christmas morning bukkake: taking a deep breath, practicing gratitude for my daily bread and NBA basketball and the more wholesome pornographic categories such as “nude breasts,” all while knowing perfectly well that the world is full of rotten old ragamuffins who needed to boil a dog alive rather than dead just so it would taste 5% more adrenaline-y or whatever. In other words, you got to laugh to keep from cryin’.
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Enter Mister Maurice (1 of 2)
William Levy
“Numberless are the world’s wonders,
but none more wonderful than man.”
– Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus
For over half-a-century whenever authors met talk would eventually come around to the maverick Maurice Girodias, and his Olympia Press. Did you or didn’t you? Did you or didn’t you hit him for money? Did you or didn’t you hear about what he had just published? Written. Done. Amazing really. Awesome. He seemed to internationally float about on some magic carpet surrounded by a suave fog both elegant and dangerous, ecstatic and ironic. For all the writers who claimed Maurice “ripped me off” there was an equal amount that used him. For every novelist like J. P. Donleavy—who had a justifiable vendettic rage against Maurice and spent an enormous amount of time and energy pursuing it, finally buying back the rights to The Ginger Man at public auction—there were versifiers like Christopher Logue. Plagiarist or premature post-modern deconstructionalist? According to a rare bookseller’s catalog, Count Palmiro Vicarion’s Book of Limericks was “in fact, almost entirely lifted by Logue from G. Legman’s then recent The Limerick, from a copy borrowed and not even bought.”
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LA in the End Times
Letter from the Editor
Fruit seeds sat in the fruit are like as pieces of wood set in the middle of a sweet veil of meat. When some sliver of wood comes free from the seed to sit in a jiggling yellow mango slice, for example, it Is like a solitary tooth sat in some otherwise free-floating gums. It is like witnessing a breach in the universe.
I moved to LA—which is also like a breach in the universe—or more as like a rift between the larger storytelling worlds of Hollywood and the everyday mundane walking around world of Target and Marshall’s. This is before any end of the world began, and back when Bladerunner had a quaint other-worldly quality to it, back when we were all content to live through scenes that have only been touched by the barest inkling of realism. There are still the same homes in the hillocks that are like slices of marble arranged decoratively upon the horizon, and it still seems people here can glide on through to the other side powered only by the brilliance of their bling, but—as we do indeed slide into the unacceptable end times, making the occasional detour through places of no clear definition—as our mouths veer out of themselves in our horror and our eyes become shrink-wrapped in tears—what apocalypse is being written? Here in this shifting miasma in the desert? Are the fires rising? Are the water lapping at our shoes? Do the bureaucrats hint at darker goings on in the pantries just outside the halls of justice? Are the piles of the dead truly alarming?
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Video: Sophia Darby
Mutable Sound of the Month
On a quiet summer evening some several months ago, I found myself sitting out on the grass beside a farm in New Hampshire, while on a haybed left parked just by the sheep pen a pair of musicians were in the middle of the most dreamy set of folk-pop. Later, I was to learn the singer-songwriter who stood with her hair perched on top of her head was Sophia Darby. Her voice has a similar lilting confessional style as Cat Power—the same casual almost lullaby quality that I enjoyed so much on early Cat Power masterpieces, such as Moon Pix and Covers—Sophia Darby has the power though to grab your attention and keep it there. I hope you enjoy this other candid video. Someone please produce her album!
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.
Video: Angels
in sad
Here is the first of many magical moments we’ll be bringing you from the minds of John Manson and Dan Madri. Personally, I find John’s lyrical compositions and delivery somewhere between late Leonard Cohen and Scott Walker, and Dan’s bare bones accompaniment only accentuates the song’s stark beauty, making the above track, Angels, truly angelic.
You can find a selection of these songs on their album Secret Griefs here.
John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved 4 years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!
Video: Eternal Family
In the Mutableye
Mac Demarco has long been known as an inveterate weirdo, but we here at Mutable went down a bit of a k-hole that began with the remarkable video to Here Comes the Cowboy, which introduced us to Cole Kush, of the GIMME SUMMN video fame, and from there, we discovered the wonderful world of Eternal, with its bizarre collage vignettes and delightful stock footage, and tips on how to set up your own recording studio or write a killer pop song. We were sold on the idea immediately. This is an artist-run streaming service with 60% of the funds going to the artists, and the rest to operations. And it’s a delight! Check out the trailer below.
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.
The Unraveling Prism
Gabriel Boyer
1. You Get up in the Morning
You get up in the morning, and you go to our job, and you do whatever it is you’ve been trained to do, through school and circumstance, and you come home to this place that you call yours, except for maybe it’s just a rented bit of flooring in some basement and beside a work desk or under someone else’s pillow, but you got a stove to heat your food, and maybe someone to talk to, maybe not, and the years pile on the years, and your body turns to a more brittle version of your body and maybe every once in a while something shatters or starts to wobble in its seat of cartilage. Eventually, one of these things will end you. Is this the dream?
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Big Babies, Groupthink, & Willpower
in Podcast, Series, Three Things
This week on Three Things we talk about adults who never grow up and still live a meaningful life, how no matter how smart we may seem on an individual scale, we’re not too bright in groups, and our struggles with self control.
Three Things is Gabriel Boyer, Malcolm Felder, & Adam Scotto. Every episode one of them brings up one topic that has been bothering them this week, and they discuss it. You can find subscribe to this podcast here. That’s it!
Myself from a Great Height (2)
In this second installment in the story of post-apocalyptic Pittsburgh and one strung out man's effort to get to the bottom of Chinook Electricity and his own unraveling in the world, we witness buildings come alive as they implode, and come face to face with some very unhuman characters in an otherwise abandoned park down by the Point, and generally speaking things just get that much uglier as we continue to follow Jackson Cole down his ever-constricting hole. Enjoy!
Myself from a Great Height is from a series of podcasts from Gabriel Boyer’s Apocryphal Histories of the Parasite.
This Alienated Hero: A Review of Gabriel Chad Boyer's Welcome to Weltschmerz
Matt Ampleman
Originally published in The Lit Pub 9.21.12
I wanted to walk away from this book as if a newly single man from a conflict-wrought relationship. I wanted to forego any sense of duty to the protagonist and his attendant world. But I had to see things through.
Friends, to read Gabriel Chad Boyer’s book, Welcome to Weltschmerz, is to enter into a conversation with an interlocutor that will break all the rules of polite authorship, but you find you cannot leave for niceties sake, for interest, then for sheer incredulity and inspiration at the arc of the story before you. It is like talking to a homeless man, at whom you are nodding out of politeness until you realize that he knows every line of John Berryman’s Dream Songs and can recite them backwards.
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Video: Gabriel Boyer performs w/ Talbot, Talbot, Talbot
in Podcast
ApesNest@Mutable
A few weeks ago, Mutable’s Gabriel Boyer read a story from his soon-to-be-finished Apocryphal Histories of the Parasite along with the musical mayhem of Talbot Talbot Talbot, not to be confused with their alter ego—Death Shepherd!
Gabriel Boyer has been making up stories about himself for as long as he can remember. There was never a time he was not fully seated in his various delusions. He continues to delude himself daily. Here’s where you can read more about him.
Cars, Apocalypse, & Internet Irony
in Podcast, Series, Three Things
This week on 3 Things we talk about the cars we have owned, or in Gabe’s case, about the cars we never in actual fact have owned, the apocalypses we would like to see, and whether or not the apocalypse is even happening, although it is definitely true that the internet is killing irony, and I don’t mean it’s killing it, but more like it’s dead. Which is the third thing we talk about.
Three Things is Gabriel Boyer, Malcolm Felder, & Adam Scotto. Every episode one of them brings up one topic that has been bothering them this week, and they discuss it. You can subscribe to this podcast here. That’s it!
That Moment, Adrian Ghenie (2007)
The Last Electrician
Michael S. Judge
Mean density of rubber buckshot thuds against the left side of your chest, where cardiograph blossoms tangled with the disk-image star’s genomic stutter, dulled cartridge juddering newly nerveless across grooves worked into kerogen wax and compressed exoskeleton, the milk we’ve wrung from insect marrow,
eaten sunlight feathering the wet-gate star’s medical imagery with chordate quills of charcoal, vertebral preamps each potential for the signal it might route and amplify to some englobing flesh, a dendrite map dwindling with heat loss till it terminates into such gasping syntax as the glyph must break across to get metabolized,
if partially, erratically, momentum altered by the buildup of its own approaching wreckage, swaddled in fallout, cinders to turn the morning richly gray as carbon-heavy glass, optical track snarled up with the feedback of a cell-disruption star and peaking hard on all immunologic frequencies to matte down any EQ’s osseous smile again, the helpless seething grin of the dentition underneath what meat could lend it the appearance of a face you might interpret, still, even this late, render decidable and then pass fractious inaccurate verdict upon, unsure, as we must be, whether that constitutes a habit more tenacious even than the habit of survival or survival’s best remaining chance.
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