“The blood will surge.” This prophecy of apocalypse is an anthem of our times. John & Dan, as usual, are taking us down roads we do not want to travel, to contemplate realities we wish would just leave us alone, but unfortunately, you are living and breathing this time and place along with rest of us. From Angels to Fillies, from Rage to Sirens, John & Dan’s Song-A-Day project continues to drag us through the muck of our times.
Roy Orbison in Clingfilm
Ulrich Haarbürste
It always starts the same way. I am in the garden airing my terrapin Jetta when he walks past my gate, that mysterious man in black.
‘Hello Roy,’ I say. ‘What are you doing in Dusseldorf?’
‘Attending to certain matters,’ he replies.
‘Ah,’ I say.
He apprises Jetta’s lines with a keen eye. ‘That is a well-groomed terrapin,’ he says.
‘Her name is Jetta.’ I say. ‘Perhaps you would like to come inside?’
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My Asinine Life: The Non-Existent Machine
in Article, My Asinine Life, Series
Gabriel Boyer
How does the crisis come? What is the moment? Who owns the disaster? And where does it lead?
There is no one moment when the things we saw become things that are seeing us back. There is no time coming when my own hands will turn to birds and begin fluttering about the pages of my face. There will never be a day when I wake with a single yelp and hop skipping from my bed to go do the two-step down to what paradise lurks on the first floor. I am not draped in the lights of epiphany. I know no answers, but the questions continue to evolve into ever more exotic questions every year.
I am the kind of half-assed loser who categorizes different vistas of bathroom tile as to their degree of ominous and/or disease quotient. I am the one who hyperventilates over video conferencing as the clicks begin to invade our connection. I wake on my firm sheetless mattress wrapped in a single fuzzy blanket to protect from the incessant attacks of mosquitoes whirring about the vicinity of my earholes in an otherwise empty room in rural Vietnam, where I now live, as in I rent a four-story house with other foreigners and work in the rural city of Phủ Lý, and generally speaking am haunted by the more unpleasant sexual encounters of my younger days while also ensconced inside of what hungry ghosts latch onto the already dwindling days gone by, hopes to come, and passion spent—and the body begun its long dysfunction unto death.
Enter the disease.
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Enter Mister Maurice (2 of 2)
William Levy
“Hello, Bill,” he croaked.
“Hello, Bill,” I echoed.
“Where did you get that manuscript of The Wild Boys?” he asked.
“From Gerrit Komrij.”
“Who’s that?” He cried out with exasperated incredulity.
“He’s Maurice Girodias’ agent in Holland.”
“You mean Maurice gave you permission to publish it?”
“Well, not exactly,” I sputtered. Even back then, Burroughs and I had known each other a long while, over a decade. We had first become acquainted in 1960 and in 1961 at the now famous, albeit then deeply shabby “Beat Hotel” on rue Git le Coeur in Paris, had seen each other in New York at his loft on Centre Street and also often in England, and he had generously given me manuscripts to publish in other magazines I edited, The Insect Trust Gazette(USA) and International Times (London).
“Your book came up at a dinner party. I asked to read the manuscript and Maurice gave his agent, this Komrij, permission to give it to me. I took it on my own to publish it,” I admitted. “Out of admiration for your work, Bill. I wasn’t trying to harm you.”
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Moréas’ Symbolist Manifesto
as translated by C. Liszt
As with all arts, literature evolves: a cyclical evolution with strictly determined returns and which become more complicated of various modifications brought by the step of time and the confusion of circles. It would be superfluous to point out that every new progressive stage of art corresponds exactly to senile degeneration, at the ineluctable end of the immediately previous school. Two examples will be enough: Ronsard triumphs over the impotence of the last impressionists of Marot, Romanticism unfurls its royal flag on the classical debris badly kept by Casimir Delavigne and Steven de Jouy. It is because any demonstration of art succeeds inevitably in becoming impoverished, in exhausting itself; then, of copy in copy, simulation in simulation, what was full of sap and freshness becomes dried out and shriveled; what was the new and the unprompted becomes banal and commonplace.
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Kelly Reaves, Untitled (2019)
All the Unseen Things
Gabriel Boyer
Among the doodlers, portraitists, conceptual artists, and illustrators, there are some who lurk in a kind of indistinct atmosphere. Their works do not so cleanly fit inside the confines of an ideology. Their ideas follow a more intuitive path. They may be stuck between epochs, like William Blake, or they may be describing a taboo world. I am interested in two such artists that form a kind of subgenre of this larger type and kind of marginalized scribbler. Both of my subjects are holy wreckers who annihilate the very thing they are tasked with presenting—who wrestle with the paradox of the seen world and the unseen spirit—the contemporary Kelly Reaves and Hyman Bloom, an until recently lost artist from the height of Modernism.
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Video: Sirens
“The preparations were not in vain.” How true. John & Dan, after taking us on a journey through the purity of Angels, the twisted inner life of Fillies, and the wonderful curative powers of Rage bring a song that should become the anthem of these trying times. Enjoy this timely addition to John & Dan’s Song-A-Day project.
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!
Saba Lou: Novum Ovum
Mutable Sound of the Month
Saba Lou, daughter of the infamous King Khan, released an album not that long ago that caught the attention of us over at Mutable Sound. Garage rock at its finest with lyrics that are pure poetry. The music has a classic sound without being kitschy, and a voice that is equally comfortable crooning, growling, or sliding into a deadpan drawl. Occasionally, the song-writing sounds a little derivative of the 60’s garage rock from which she takes her inspiration—like on the chorus of Dirty Blonde—but at its best it transcends its psychedelic roots to straddle the worlds of Black Mountain with its epic sound and a more pared down singer-songwriter sound. Saba Lou likes to play with extremes in her songwriting in general. She has that kind of elastic voice that can play it either way, and this is also where she shines, sliding from sweetness to gritty and back. It is a captivating, even hypnotic back-and-forth, and expertly rendered on Novum Ovum. “Darling, you are the weather.” Novum Ovum is Saba Lou’s second album, and at 19, she’s primed to explode on the world stage.
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.
Click on Wes’ face to read all our letters to him.
The Wes Letters: Ben, Letter 3
in Excerpt, Story, The Wes Letters, Series
Ben Segal
Dear Wes Anderson,
There’s a thing Feliz didn’t mention. Let me explain or at least narrate:
We left Crestline quickly and got our lunch in Lake Arrowhead Village. It isn’t really a village, just a collection of shops and underdeveloped attractions with a free parking garage. Its got an ugly bit of walk by the lake and seems mostly bent on clouding up its natural beauty with commerce. Still, the lake itself is beautiful. They can’t take that away.
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Video: AD Jameson Talks Geek Culture
Mutable author AD Jameson has turned his insights and discoveries regarding geek culture into a fabulous book, I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing (FSG, 2108), and in the video below discusses the book’s themes and key ideas. Jameson has always been a great advocate of genre fiction, and his passion really shines in this talk. If you enjoy what you see here, give the book a look!
Paperback Book
8" x 5.25"
168 Pages
$12.95
Now Available
Video: Logos For Love
In 2009, friend of Mutable, Lineland went on tour and created some amazing videos, and we are going to be posting them throughout the coming weeks. Below you will find a playlist of Northside, Planeta Igreja, Amtrak Emerald Board, Pat Garrett, Victorian New Worst, & finally Hollywood Graves Tinsel Spots Two Twenty. These are lovely songs, and the accompanying video adds a lot to the enjoyment. We here at Mutable would recommend you take twenty minutes out of your day to enjoy this delightful show!
Malcolm Felder is Lineland. The featured video is from his Logos for Love album shown above.
Myself from a Great Height (1)
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.
Myself from a Great Height is from a series of podcasts from Gabriel Boyer’s Apocryphal 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
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.
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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