Crank Sturgeon is a phenomena. He has continued to perform and tour from Maine, and has released an album through Mutable, an album where his noise art was remixed by Lineland as Other Occasions Not Minded. Crank Sturgeon is a tireless innovator with an indomitable spirit and an endless capacity for the most abstract forms of play. He can be seen here playing at the Middle East Upstairs, all footage care of the legendary and now deceased Billy Ruane and his Road to Ruane feed.
Pisces, Nakrob Moonmanas (2020)
A Review of Coronavirus Manifestoes
Manifesto of the Month
As the number of total recorded deaths from the novel coronavirus also known as COVID-19 slides past the 3 million marker worldwide, we here at Mutable thought we would give you a showcase of some of the manifestoes that have resulted. Due to space restrictions, we have chosen to on occasion present abridged versions or excerpts with links to the original. If you’re wondering how we organized them, they are listed from most manifesto to least manifesto. Although we tried to be as inclusive as possible, there were one or two “manifestoes” that were just TOO academic to truly be understood as manifestoes, or posing ideas (such as that COVID-19 is a hoax) which we felt we could not in good conscience reproduce.
*
A Manifesto of Sorts for Covid-19
[This manifesto from the author Zillah Eisenstein appeared on the NYU Press web site a year ago, in March 2020. You can see the original here.]
“We can rise together against COVID19 and make a better world”
A few thoughts to share:
COVID19 like most disease is democratic—it can affect anyone, although with differing options to respond to it. The world, including the US is not democratic. This does not bode well. But we can move forward because simple individualism contradicts the interdependency of this COVID crisis. “We” all suffer when one person circulates with symptoms—and we will flourish if we accept responsibility to isolate/distance and protect one another.
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Chapter 2: Dream a Little Dream of Dramamine
in Podcast, Series, Weltschmerz
In this second installment of Boyer’s audio memoir of the summer he spent traveling the country, bringing theater to ‘bedrooms across America’ in a 1971 VW minibus, we travel to Brooklyn and the other burroughs, Boyer tries Yohimbe, and an author of comedic drama doubles as a private dick, but what happens when our heroes become lost on the backroads of NYC at 2 something in the AM? Where is it all going? Or is it all just going back?
To hear Chapter 1, Last Week’s Broadcast, go here.
Paperback Book
8" x 5.25"
560 Pages
$16.00
Now Available
Bode Radio: Dusk at Reikai
Mutable Sound of the Month
This month, we have chosen a track off Bode Radio’s most recent album, Onosea. We here at Mutable have been watching Bode Radio’s progression with keen interest over the years. Alex Yoffe, the man behind the music, is deeply involved in Gamelan, and was trained in composition, and Bode Radio emerges from all of these interests. Recorded in Chicago, Boston, and Java between 2015 and 2017. It’s a very dynamic album that takes the listener to many places, sometimes more loping and trancelike and sometimes more frenetic, but always masterfully constructed, with layer upon layer of nuance. Enjoy!
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.
This is Not a Review: of The Reeking Hegs
Gabriel Boyer
Modernist literature was working to uncover something. It had a purpose. It existed in the age of Freud, back when there was a strong faith in the power of dark truths revealed, and what wisdoms can be found hidden undetected in our streaming consciousness—but ideologies wane and ebb. They surge. They subside.
There was a time when manically playful experimental literature was a mainstay of the art, and the lone scribner penning a piece of madness, comedic or otherwise, was a type. From James Joyce to John Kennedy Toole, writers were treated as a kind of amusing malady of the age, to be found in the cafe’s of Paris or living with their mothers, and sometimes, these madmen and madwomen could actually write. But that idea, of geniuses peering over the heads of their small-minded peers, began losing its definition somewhere around midcentury, and slowly morphed into something more insidious. The MFA student.
Nietzsche was right to mistrust the institution. It has done little good for philosophy. Throughout the twentieth century, philosophy has become an increasingly academic pursuit. These days, our philosophers are either populists (like Sartre) or produced by and for the institution (Lyotard and really the whole postmodern school), and at best a bit of both (Foucault and Žižek). The dangerous exoticism of a lone philosopher pontificating in print seems almost as quaint today as the tradition of prophecy that came before.
And the institution is doing the same thing to literature.
People say that writers who learn at MFA programs and writers who sprout from the sidelines are equally numerous, but that is not the point. The point is that, just as the philosophy being produced today is entirely academic, the type of literature being produced is now wholly commercial. You will disagree, I am sure, and rightly so, but when I say something is ‘commercial’, what I mean is it’s written up to the audience, rather than written to some point beyond the audience. There is no more writing for posterity. The thinking class has lost hope in their grand project, and so the publishing industry has lost its purpose beyond the barest of business models.
Experimental literature itself only exists as a subgenre of the institution. We call it “experimental” because it fits that genre, but actual experimenting is no longer something we envision being done by covens of artists with manifestoes clutched in hand but by grad students who are more articulate at pontificating upon their ideas than in presenting coherent works. Which is why The Reeking Hegs is such an important book.
It doesn’t fit into any of these little holes.
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Video: Bliss
“I just feel like I might be done.” Another heartwarming song from Manson & Madri on this Sunday morning. Angels become Fillies and Rage evolves to Sirens, then Surge until a Brigade of Maidens feel the need to let off some Steam. Where is this all going? Could it be bliss? Are John and Dan telling us to find our bliss? Where is your bliss? What is bliss? Listen and find out!
And 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!
Mosaic of Time: Poets
in Series, Mosaic of Time, Poetry, Story
“Film fixes reality in a sense of time—it’s a way of conserving time. No other art form can fix and stop time like this. Film is a mosaic made up of time.”
When director Andrei Tarkovsky put forth this notion, he was before a live audience of cinephiles at the Conference Cinema Thieves: International Intrigue, held at the Centro Palatino in Rome (1982). There, the event itself, was a breathing mosaic of beings captured in a moment with the director. The conference was being filmed, and so, this moment is documented and frozen in time as well. We can go back to this moment and hear the artist carefully describe how he arranges within his artform—as a composer would arrange notes on a scale.
What we think of a mosaic is a whole unit—a piece of art made up of pieces. When we look at each of the pieces—we can see the materials, the tangible elements of which they are made: ceramic, glass, wood, plastic, etc. The mosaic itself comprehensively represents an idea. The object is made of objects but the whole is a concept. The scenes of the movie themselves are a part of the greater, larger, mosaic. The artists and actors who make the film are pieces and parts of the film, the mosaic. The moments a director captures/records is the harnessing of time that Tarkovsky describes.
Short films, specifically poetry films (cinepoetry), can be viewed this way. Tiny pixels are the pieces or elements to make an electronic vignette, or, mosaic. Poems themselves are intangible and only represent (or do not represent) a concept or idea. A part of the whole. Poetry on film is not made of physical film, not made of anything but digital pixels, but is made of the arrangement of digital sequences. When you edit a film, there are scenes and transitions—and these are a part of the mosaic.
This month, we feature a cinepoem by Lina Ramona Vitkauskas (also the curator of this series). This is a cinepoem that captures a moment in time during the pandemic. It was recently featured in the Halifax-based poetry series, EVE OF POETRY. It illustrates how poets (who operate in already isolated, private spaces) have dipped further into isolation and insecurities during pandemic times. The original poem comes from her 2013 collection, Professional Poetry, available on Lulu.
Mosaic of Time is a monthly series that each month explores a cinepoem by a different artist.
The whole body of the “Mosaic of Time” section will create a broader mosaic, over time, and ideally capturing time as the world progresses or regresses—plunging into global events and out again.
Mosaic of Time is curated by Lina Ramona Vitkauskas.
Gae Bolg: Requiem
I first discovered Gae Bolg more than a decade ego, while touring the Pacific Northwest. We were staying with a friend in Olympia, WA, and after playing us the remarkable composition he’d made from frog recordings, he put on a piece of music that would become a regular for me in the years to come, Requiem, by Gae Bolg.
As with everything from Gae Bolg, in this piece of music of French musician, Eric Roger. It is bombastic and medieval, yes, but in the context of the 21st century, it seems appropriately apocalyptic. It is, the appropriate response to the times we are living. You can listen to Requiem below, or check out their equally amazing Aucussin et Nicolette.
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.
Chapter 1: Last Week's Broadcast
in Podcast, Series, Weltschmerz
In this first installment of Boyer’s audio memoir of the summer he spent traveling the country, bringing theater to ‘bedrooms across America’ in a 1971 VW minibus with a woman who’d broken up with him after the first week. In this first chapter learn how Bedroom Theater came to be, and the odd set of circumstances that led to this most useless of people somehow finding himself on the road and touring the country in the Summer of 2003.
Paperback Book
8" x 5.25"
560 Pages
$16.00
Now Available
Before the Ghosts Came (2 of 2)
D Howland Abbott
[For the first part of a two-part article go here.]
Dr. Bob wound a chewed pen in his wiry hair and looked at me over the top of his John Lennon spectacles. “So how is your testimony doing these days, David?” I was appalled at the question; he was asking if I was a good and faithful member of the Mormon church, which was none of his business. This question had no place in what was supposed to be a therapeutic relationship; fortunately I knew the language of this particular lie very well. I’d had to recite it dozens of times in my life, and my response was thoroughly scripted.
“Well, doc, I believe that God and His Son appeared to Joseph Smith in the Garden of Gethsemane. I believe that Gordon Hinckley is a prophet, and that God speaks to him directly. I pay my tithing, I attend all my church meetings… My testimony is in great shape.”
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Video: Diplomat
Renowned video artist, Michael Lewy, has created Mutable’s first-ever video, and we are using this video for Diplomat to kick off our new YouTube channel! Diplomat is from our latest release, Different Directions, which is available now on Bandcamp. You can find out more about M. Lewy here and follow him on Twitter (@mlewy). What a delightful monster-filled romp about disillusioned diplomats!
1. It's Alright Merry
2. Break in the Line
3. Different Directions
4. Hiding Out
5. Parents Disease
6. Diplomat
7. Directions Theme
8. Now and Here
9. Home
10. Insomnia
11. World of Angels
Digital album available to stream or download now!
Illustration by Ali Chitsaz
Escape from Mayor McCheese Prison
John Wilmes
In my thirty-first year, what I looked forward to more than anything were my walks. My wife did not know about them. On these walks, I would get McDonald’s—often a shameful amount, double-digit McNuggets and multiple sandwiches. I would take laps around the neighborhood and, while walking, eat it all secretly. The dexterity, the downright athleticism required to do this with my robust pace was considerable. And here we have to add in that I would perversely construct my laps so to pass by our house during them, adding extra levels of hiding complication to the routine. My ingenuity was pushed to impressive heights by the goals and restrictions of my secret McDonald’s exercise; my left forearm grew much stronger over months of doing this, it being so often a tensed narrow table I put all my food on and kept balanced amidst high walking speeds. I was also required to skillfully hold a coat over this mobile dining structure, as cover, when I passed by our home.
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Video: Steam
“Fill your head with steam, dear.” At the end of a long day, John Manson knows just what you need. Another Song-A-Day from the minds of Manson & Madri, who brought us Angels and Fillies, Rage and Sirens, Surge and Brigade and Maidens. Another barroom anthem for the late-night heavy drinking crowd. Fill your head with steam.
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!
Audiobook: Welcome to Weltschmerz, USA
in Podcast, Bedroom Theater, Series
Bedroom Theater began with a changed lightbulb and ended in a desert in Nevada. The audio book presented here presents the journey it took to bedrooms across America in the 1970 VW minibus pictured above, a journey of two young people, and a journey through the summer of 2003, and its many back alleys and exotic half-stories. This is the abridged audio book version of Welcome to Weltschmerz, unfolding biweekly on the Mutable site. Start at the bottom and work your way up to follow Jill and Gabe through the bedrooms of the past. Enjoy!
AfroSurreal Manifesto
Manifesto of the Month
I'm not a surrealist. I just paint what I see. — Frida Kahlo
THE PAST AND THE PRELUDE
In his introduction to the classic novel Invisible Man (1952), ambiguous black and literary icon Ralph Ellison says the process of creation was "far more disjointed than [it] sounds ... such was the inner-outer subjective-objective process, pied rind and surreal heart."
Ellison's allusion is to his book's most perplexing character, Rinehart the Runner, a dandy, pimp, numbers runner, drug dealer, prophet, and preacher. The protagonist of Invisible Man takes on the persona of Rinehart so that "I may not see myself as others see me not." Wearing a mask of dark shades and large-brimmed hat, he is warned by a man known as the fellow with the gun, "Listen Jack, don't let nobody make you act like Rinehart. You got to have a smooth tongue, a heartless heart, and be ready to do anything."
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Before the Ghosts Came (1 of 2)
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’.
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Food Hackers, the 90's, & TAZ
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
“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
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.
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