Before the Ghosts Came (1 of 2)

March 10, 2021 in Article, Feature

D Howland Abbott

Sit beside the breakfast table. Think about your troubles. Pour yourself a cup of tea, and think about the bubbles. You can take a teardrop and drop it in a teacup. Take it down to the riverside and throw it over the side to be swept up by a current and taken to the ocean to be eaten by some fishes, who are eaten by some fishes and swallowed by a whale who grew so old he decomposed. He died and left his body to the bottom of the ocean. Now, everybody knows that when a body decomposes, the basic elements are given back to the ocean. And the sea does what it oughta, and soon there’s salty water—not too good for drinkin’, ‘cuz it tastes just like a teardrop. Goin’ right into a filter, it comes out from a faucet and it pours into a teapot which is just about to bubble. Now: think about your troubles.
– Harry Nilsson

I have heard it said that LSD, once ingested, remains in your system forever. They say that it sits, hibernating or just bored, somewhere in the gnarl of one’s spinal column; waiting for an inopportune moment to put on its hobnail boots and start stomping around. When this happens, often for no discernible reason (although I have found that certain geographical locations have a tendency to agitate the little devil), it is referred to colloquially as an ‘acid flashback’.

Food Hackers, the 90's, & TAZ

March 06, 2021 in Article, Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

The first time I met a man I will call M, I was traveling across the country in a 1971 VW minibus with a girl who broke up with me after a week, and performing plays in people’s in people’s bedrooms, and he was going to cooking school. Sometimes it takes a really destructive love affair to realize this’s no way to spend your life. Writing code for hours and hours and hours and then? What do I get at the end of the day? A headache. We then proceeded to perform an anarchist musical in his living room.

That was years ago now, and he has since gone on to become a food hacker, his own term.

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Video: Maidens

March 02, 2021 in sad, Series

Song-A-Day

“Spare me your story.” Our heroes are weary. Another low-fi masterpiece from John Manson and Dan Madri, but where are we going on this journey of mind? We have witnessed Angels and Fillies, been torn by Rage and Sirens, and then came the Surge and its Brigade. And now… Where to now, John?

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!

Lawrence Ferlinghetti RIP

February 28, 2021 in Article, Feature, Poetry, Story

Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15)

(Lawrence Ferlinghetti, perhaps best known as the champion of the Beats, founder of City Lights, a star lost in the lap of San Francisco, was of course something of a poet in his own right, and is now dead. We wanted to mark this moment with a poem from the man himself. To hear more beat poetry, including by Mr. Ferlinghetti himself, go here.)

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of day
performing entrechats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be

For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap

And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence

Gabriel Boyer & Malcolm Felder: 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.

February 25, 2021 in Mutablesoundofthemonth, Feature, Podcast

Mutable Sound of the Month

For this Mutable Sound of the month, Malcolm and I thought we’d present you with a song we recorded one fateful night many years ago. I will never forget my irritation when Malcolm nudged me to come out to the car to record another pop masterpiece. I remember very distinctly thinking to myself, Oh. God. Do we have to record every time we hang out?

The idea was to record an inappropriate holiday country song using an array of instruments from Malcolm’s stash, like his chinese accordian and autoharp, in Malcolm’s grandfather’s old Chevy Caprice Classic. What we ended up with was a new year’s song about an absentee dad.

Then Malcolm began recording, on a stereo microphone attached to a simple cassette. After each track had been recorded, he would play it back on the car stereo, and we would record over it on a new tape, then put that tape in the car stereo, and record yet again, until our final track was this bizarre blown-out mush. Then Malcolm performed his usual production magic, and voila. Here it is. Another song I love.

Gabriel Chad Boyer

Mutable Sound 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. If you have a track you would like us to hear, please feel free to send it on to mail@mutablesound.com along with credits and a brief description.

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Boston Bands in the 90's: Morphine

February 21, 2021 in Series, Boston Bands in the 90s

Here at Mutable, we remember the 90s with a fondness, and especially the bands in Boston of the 90s. We thought we’d start this series of live footage of Boston 90s bands with the notorious Morphine as filmed below at the Middle East in Central Square circa 1990. You may not be able to go to live shows currently, but you can remember the world that was, when bands, both momentous and ill-advised, played the venues of Boston with vim and vigor. All footage care of the legendary and now deceased Billy Ruane and his Road to Ruane feed.

shared by the Billy Ruane live archive preservation, videotaped by Jody Urbati-Moore

Billy Ruane was a staple of the scene at one point, and he documented endless shows throughout the 90’s and beyond. These videos came out of that.

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Video: Brigade

February 18, 2021 in sad, Series

Song-A-Day

“I want to fight when you say fight. I want to kill when you say kill. I want to play for the winning team.” John is taking us further into the depths of the American psyche with his ongoing treatment of themes with Dan Madri. From Angels to Fillies to Rage to Sirens to Surge, John & Dan’s Song-A-Day project is relentless.

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!

The Manifesto Manifesto

January 19, 2021 in Manifesto of the Month, Feature

Manifesto of the Month

1:There is an art form

1.1 There is an art to manifestos as there is an art to anything. Avoid this art form. Make other forms of art. There is no reason to make unfounded statements into strong declarative sentences. Do not believe yourself. Believe others first. Rather than holding yourself up as somehow a larger life form, remember that your unique perspective is a wondrous fallacy. Instead believe everything and anything. Be credulous.

1.2 When writing your manifesto, find yourself hidden behind a potted plant. At other times be other places. Make sure that you are always somewhere. If you are ever somewhere that is also nowhere, then be warned that this is dangerous. This is the sort of place that happens when a person is walking around without formed thoughts. It can be pleasurable. Some people drink themselves silly to achieve this placeless place on a nightly basis. This has little to do with the art of the manifesto.

Gloomy Sunday

January 18, 2021 in Article, Isstillcools**t, Feature

In the Mutableye

According to one anecdote, the song Gloomy Sunday was originally written by Hungarian pianist and composer, Rezső Seress in Paris in December of 1932, the day after a row with his fiancée over his failure as a composer had led to her departure, this being a Sunday, but then again, Gloomy Sunday is plagued by anecdotal evidence. Mostly having to do with its ability to drive perfectly sane people to suicide, and who and when. Rezső Seress’ now estranged fiancée for example? It became famous in the states as the “Hungarian suicide song” before Billie Holiday ever touched it. However, speculation aside, that it was connected with a rash of suicides in Hungary around 1936 seems uncontested.

Scripted Cocktail Party

January 16, 2021 in Article, Bedroom Theater, Series

Bedroom Theater Dispatch

During these strange covid times, perhaps we all need to calm down, down a few drinks, and read aloud the words of others rather than venturing into the dangerous theatrics of our normal everyday improvised speech.

Forced to have a cocktail party for two because you’re under quarantine? Or a cocktail party of one? Worry not! These dialogues are engineered to entertain! Often surreal, occasionally audacious, silly, unrepentant, and embarrassing/humiliating, you are guaranteed a good time if you and one or two friends sit yourselves down on the couch and read and act out the attached plays for your amusement.

With such memorable one-liners as: “Are you the object of my affection? I forget,” and, “Who put the rotten tentacles in my bed,” this Collection of Conversations for Everyday Use is best done over Moscow Mules. These plays have been performed in Chicago, Boston, New York, and throughout America, in living rooms, art spaces, lofts, and of course bedrooms, as many of the attached short plays came out of the two years I spent performing plays in my bedroom, which culminated in a summer spent traveling from Boston to New Orleans to LA to Seattle in a 1971 minibus performing plays in bedrooms and courtyards and all with a girl who broke up with me after the first, a tragicomic experience to be sure.

These short plays are written in the hopes to alleviate the boredom and strain upon my fellow Americans during these trying times. Please feel free to pass them on to your friends. You can view or download the scripts here to throw your own scripted cocktail party or click on the link below!

Read Scripts

Bedroom Theater began when my roommate changed the light bulb in my bedroom and ended in a five-hour crying spree in the Nevada desert. There is no audience, only people performing for each other. For more on this, please see Welcome to Weltschmerz.

Video: Surge

January 15, 2021 in sad, Series

Song-A-Day

“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.

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!

Roy Orbison in Clingfilm

January 15, 2021 in Story, Feature

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?’

My Asinine Life: The Non-Existent Machine

January 15, 2021 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.

Enter Mister Maurice (2 of 2)

January 15, 2021 in Article, Feature

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.”

Moréas’ Symbolist Manifesto

January 15, 2021 in Manifesto of the Month, Feature

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.

All the Unseen Things

January 15, 2021 in Article, Isstillcools**t, Feature

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

January 15, 2021 in sad, Series

Song-A-Day

“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.

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!

Saba Lou: Novum Ovum

January 15, 2021 in Mutablesoundofthemonth, Feature, Podcast

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.

Limited pressing on "Bone" colored vinyl Includes unlimited streaming of Novum Ovum via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Purchasable with gift card Send as Gift Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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

January 15, 2021 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.

Video: AD Jameson Talks Geek Culture

January 15, 2021 in Interview, Feature

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!

A. D. Jameson is an author of both fiction and film criticism, as well as a teacher. He's interested in narrative, realism, fantasy, geek culture, and experi...

Paperback Book
8" x 5.25"
168 Pages
$12.95
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D Howland Abbott

Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15)

Billy Ruane was a staple of the scene at one point, and he documented endless shows throughout the 90’s and beyond. These videos came out of that.

Bedroom Theater began when my roommate changed the light bulb in my bedroom and ended in a five-hour crying spree in the Nevada desert. There is no audience, only people performing for each other. For more on this, please see Welcome to Weltschmerz.

Ulrich Haarbürste

as translated by C. Liszt

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.

Ben Segal

Paperback Book8" x 5.25"168 Pages$12.95Now Available

Product

Paperback Book
8" x 5.25"
168 Pages
$12.95
Now Available