Since we launched this project and started signalboosting writers, we’ve felt a blissful amnesia over the literary forces we once reacted to. To be sure, we sometimes unwittingly wander back into the realm of blue checkmarks and corporate aesthetics—like opening a cupboard upon a forgotten miniature universe that feels as irrelevant as it does ineradicable. But with atomization and the long tail of distribution, we no longer have to make things that appeal to our next-door neighbor or local arts council. We can overcome careerism and the canon. We can maintain a deregulated highway that, unlike an MFA chopshop or société of interns, isn’t just a pipeline to selling film rights to Hollywood. And even if we can’t solve the problems of money and cliquism—let alone ideology—we can provide this small refugia for writers to sculpt eternity.
https://tragickal.com
https://tragickal.com/litcoin/
Isolation, Loneliness, Purgatory
Ian Townsend interviews Ian Townsend
This interview is transcribed from a conversation that took place on the morning of 2022-07-28 in Montreal, Canada.
IT: Hello. Thank you for taking time this morning to speak with me.
IT: Of course. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss my book.
IT: Yeah, okay. Let’s get right into it. Your novel, Purgatory, is set in the fictional town of Purgatory, in a modified, semi-modern United States. There are many markers that this is America, but it suggests an alternate America.
IT: The territory has been divided in a way that grants more land to fewer States. In the world of the novel, Texas stretches from Monterrey in the west to Montgomery in the east. A bottle opener reads, “Texas Is Bigger Than Everything”.
IT: What’s going on with this reimagining of state construction?
IT: It was a way for me to provide a contrasting, other, but similar force to the energy that is in Purgatory and the New England area. I don’t know which energy is the shadow and which is the object, but I see the existence of one as dependant on the existence of the other. Within the novel, New England and the northeast is an overly governed, elitist society. It is a paternally fucked up place that wants to deny individuals their agency. There is very little social mobility and the highest tier is completely closed off to those on the outside.
To balance this energy within the novel I started exploring the idea of a different America. I’m not a historian so my reimagining had nothing to do with other probable outcomes, or changing one event that could shape a different present. I picked my outcome and worked backwards. I wanted Texas to be massive. I wanted the myth of Texas to be dominating. It’s not discussed much in the book, but there is this underlying energy that the Texas of the novel is a modern new frontier. A place where people are unrestrained and opportunity exists for those who want to take it. The catch is that we, the reader, do not know if that is true, we never receive that information and thus the Texas of the novel remains a myth.
IT: I felt that reading the text. Like there was an uncertainty to what existed outside of Purgatory. I couldn’t pinpoint whether Purgatory was a median representation or an outlier community.
IT: Exactly. The idea of Purgatory, to me, is stasis. The characters who populate the novel are in a state of inactivity. Not that they don’t do anything, just that they can’t bring themselves to do anything different. Their patterns and routines are rigid. It doesn’t matter if the routine is good or bad, it exists nonetheless. When writing the book, the impact of routine and pattern was at the front of my mind. The effort used to sustain or fight our unconscious behaviour is enormous. When a pattern becomes engrained, we can become limited in our ability to image other patterns. We assume that what we are doing is the right thing. The characters only break pattern behaviour when they are confronted with a situation that shocks the system, allowing for a reboot.
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IT: The characters in the novel spend a lot of time alone. They seem disconnected from their fellow citizens. Isolated and boxed into their role, or their stereotype. Would you agree with that?
IT: I agree with it to an extent. It’s true that the characters seem to be alone, but they are often with unmentioned people. The servants, the coworkers, the other junkies. They have people around them. They just don’t seem to be able to create any meaningful connection. Like, they are too trapped inside their own heads to extend a greeting to the persons who share physical space with them.
IT: So, what gives? Why all the loneliness?
IT: Yeah, that’s the question. Why the loneliness? Some say that our society is the loneliest it’s ever been. There are more single-person households every year. Marriage rates have fallen. Traditional communities are in decline. People are less religious, less community oriented. The more we are alone the more comfortable we are being alone, and the more being with others creates anxiety for us. And people just don’t like feeling anxious. Yet, somehow anxiety seems to be the most common feeling in this moment.
Loneliness festers and becomes physical pain. It leads to depression, self-hate and fear. When we are lonely, we feel as if there is no love in our lives, no love in the world. When we are lonely, we do what we can to blot it out. We take pills, fuck strangers, drink, shoot drugs. The opiate epidemic in North America is deeply connected to loneliness, loss of dignity and fear.
And it’s so strange ’cause at the same time we’re experiencing this weird moment where mental health problems are being held up like badges of honour. It’s another disconnect. It’s hip to be mildly ill. It’s hip to be a high functioning sad person. But like, fuck that. The romanticization of mental illness is no different than that of drug use a generation before. It’s made to be sexy and aspirational. Overcoming mental health problems is almost necessary to being an interesting person nowadays. Hopefully we as a society turn the corner on this fad. Wouldn’t it be more enjoyable to live in a time when it’s hip to be happy? When it’s hip to spread love and to encourage joy?
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IT: Back to the setting of the story, why set the story in America? And not in your native Canada?
IT: As a Canadian I have been heavily influenced by the United States. Its culture, sports and politics. Its wars. Its successes and failures. In my life I have probably spent between one and two months on American soil, half of that time being on a family vacation to Disney World. Canada has this reputation as being America-Lite, or America with socialism. But really Canada is the population of the state of California stretched out across the entire continent. The lack of humans in Canada makes it inherently less interesting than the United States. People are chaos creators. More people means more chaos.
Also, I was drawn to the setting of the Atlantic northeast. I come from the east coast of Canada, but our population and influence are nothing like the eastern seaboard of the United States. There are no coastal elites in Canada the same way there are in the US. Our elites are mostly packed into the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). So, there is no intellectual hub, or dominate culture creator in the Canadian Maritime Provinces. In that sense the Eastern Seaboard of the US and Canada couldn’t be less similar. For years it was common for those who sought a better life to leave the Maritimes, and to sojourn to central and western Canada.
IT: Is that why you left the Maritimes, to find success?
IT: Not quite. I left for love.
IT: How quaint. The other night I was at a dinner party where we were discussing books and I happened to mentioned that I had recently read Purgatory. The other guests were curious and wanted to know what it was about, what genre it was. I had a hard time providing a direct answer to their questions. It’s a drug book. It’s a murder book. It’s a book about bureaucracy. It’s pulp. Sleazy. Something you would be embarrassed to be seen reading. There’s not much of a question here. Maybe just, what the fuck is going on with Purgatory?
IT: (Laughs) Yeah. I get that. I don’t really know how to explain it. At first it was going to be a series of stand-alone scenes, or routines, with reoccurring characters and minimal cross contamination. I had never written a book before and I underestimated how difficult it would be for me to write without plot. By the time I got two thirds through the first draft it was littered with plot points, some connected and some wandering around like stray cats. My editor at tragickal really helped focus the novel. They were integral to the editing process. Like most novels, Purgatory was written in a vacuum. I had spent so much time with it in my head and on the keyboard, that it was hard for me to see it from the outside.
IT: You were trying to write for mood and atmosphere.
IT: Yes. I read a lot of Burroughs, Ellis and Cooper while I was conceptualizing the book. But, a few years ago, long before I even considered writing, I read Dreamland, written by the journalist Sam Quinones. It’s about the wave of OxyContin that washed over America and the subsequent flood of heroin that left a lot of poor and isolated communities drowning. Dreamland had a profound effect on me. If I was from one of those communities I would have been addicted to opiates. Reading Dreamland showed the real drug life, not a glamorized and romanticized version of the drug life. In Dreamland, the despair is so intense, that it’s a visceral, almost physical discomfort you have as the reader. I wanted to try to bring some of that to my own work.
Belinda, the wife of a successful businessman, her life was inspired by Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, and Evelyn Waugh’s novels, Brideshead Revisited and Vile Bodies. Belinda’s character has the most access to resources and material comforts, but in a lot of ways her character is the most tragic. She is trapped at the top of the pyramid. Being crushed against a glass ceiling. And, the small tax bracket makes for an even smaller social circle.
IT: How do you think it turned out? Are you happy with the final product?
IT: The hardest part about writing the book was coming to terms with the fact that I was not able to write like the people who I wanted to imitate. All I can hope for is that a unique voice emerges from the text. I wrote the book for my younger self. The young adolescent who wanted to read about lost characters with flaws. Who wanted sex, drugs and violence. Stories with ambiguity that reflected my own confusion. I think that younger version of myself would enjoy Purgatory.
As to whether or not I’m happy with the final product, well of course I am. There are always things that could be changed, but at a certain point you have to put a bow on it and send it out into the world. I learned a lot writing this book. It may sound corny, but I learned a lot about myself and what I am capable of when I focus my energy on a project. I’ll be better prepared for my next go at it.
IT: Is there something in the works?
IT: Not at this moment. I finished a couple short stories since completing Purgatory, but for the most part I’ve been spending my free time with my wife. When the next story finds me, I’ll be ready to receive and translate it into word.
IT: Very good stuff. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me this morning. Let’s do it again sometime.
tragickal.com/purgatory
PURGATORY (2022) (EXCERPT)
The sun was moving west, and its rays fought through the clouds to cast long, skinny shadows over the dilapidated tenements of East Purgatory. The elevated highway concealed the surface streets surrounding the Johnny’s Pizza that rubbed up against the Port Authority. In a parking lot decorated with soda cans, used prophylactics, and glass vials, the skeleton man sat on a concrete division, flipping through the photography book that he’d lifted from Laz. Waiting for junk was a major part of junk. Throughout his decade-long journey to dependence, he had logged hours upon hours sitting in parking lots identical to this one, waiting for some unnamed savior to relieve him from his personal hell. The waiting was part of the game. Junk is not a kick. Junk is a way of life. He could remember reading this sometime during his formative years before the habit had impregnated him with the sickness. When he was on the fix, his loneliness was kept at bay. Junk was an ever-present shadow that acted as a sort of companion, albeit not a compassionate one. A shadow for his shadow that could be seen in the dark.
The last week without junk had been a strange and suffocating experience. He could not understand why anyone—himself included—chose to give up junk when they had funds and access to it. This last time, the separation was brought on by a feeling of impending doom that he could not shake. Even Dr. Cooper’s treatment had stopped being effective. A body can only sustain itself for so long when it fears sleep and waking. So, as to why he decided to punish himself by withholding junk, it may have been just that: a self-administered punishment, a cleansing of the soul. An allotted period of time for his body to regenerate and replace the junk-sick cells. It was also an attempt to rid himself of the horrific nightmares and paranoid delusions that sullied his existence.
The doom had invaded his dreams where giant humanoid insects carried him off to their colony as an offering for their monster queen. In other dreams, he was dropped into a freak-show zoo where the zookeepers were hermaphroditic gorillas that raped him to death and strung his entrails around the enclosure as if they were tinsel at Christmastime. These experiences were further complicated by the fact that in these dreams, he was viewing the scenes from an elevated position as if he were a ghost who had abandoned his body.
The doom invaded his waking moments by manifesting itself as Manchurian children trained by the OSS and sent into the world to aid with the purification. This level of paranoia made it hard for him to exist in the real world. Every time he passed a child on the street, he would feel an urge to kidnap and torture them until they told him who had sent them. He was aware of the futility of this endeavor because any properly programmed Manchurian candidate would be unable to answer his questions. Still, he found himself fantasizing about dissecting these agents of chaos and probing them for information. Removing their limbs one by one until all that remained was a rectangular torso.
The first three days of withdrawal had been excruciating. His stomach knotted and unknotted. He felt nauseous constantly, and when he wasn’t having the runs, he was vomiting green bile. To swallow a piece of dry toast with tea was a task that required a realignment of his energies. On the fourth and fifth days, he laid around his apartment, eating cold chicken noodle soup from the can. On the sixth day, a degree of normality returned to his body as the majority of the junk-sick cells had been replaced with uncorrupted ones. He had coffee, eggs, and toast for breakfast. He was able to take a comfortable shit for the first time in months. He sat on the toilet bowl, groaning, and felt the hard turd slide out of his rectum and past his sphincter as it plopped into the water. Peering down between his legs, he inspected the single piece of shit, about six inches long and a bit bigger in diameter than a quarter.
After breakfast on the sixth day, he took twenty dollars from his monthly earnings and left his apartment for the first time in five days. Creeping down the stairwell, his twiggy legs provided a weak foundation for his frail body. That morning, while looking in the mirror, he became aware that over the previous five days, his weight had dipped from bulimic to anorexic, and now, his jeans hung hopelessly on his bony hips. Gripping the slimy, grey wall for support, he worked his way out of the stairwell and into a small courtyard to the benches surrounding an empty fountain.
When the tenement had first opened over thirty years ago, the courtyard fountain was an object that instilled a sense of pride in the residents. The skeleton man remembered stories he heard growing up of residents congregating around the fountain on sunny afternoons with the children playing in the open courtyard. The men would sit off to one side, enjoying games of dominos, while the women sat across from them, darning socks and playing mahjong.
Now, the fountain housed a foot of still water, and no one gathered in the courtyard except for junkies and pushers. The four angelic stone children who once let freshwater stream from their genitals into the pool had been abused and distorted. One had been decapitated, the soft baby face replaced by the head of a demented goblin. Another had been chopped down at the ankles and taken away, a massive undertaking for simple vandals. Of the other two, one had remained relatively unscathed except for enduring years of environmental exposure and oxidation, and the other had been spray painted with heaps of cheap paint. If someone was to look closely, they would see layer upon layer peeling away, exposing more than fifteen different colours ranging from pitch black to aqua green.
Working his way into the desolate courtyard, he aimed for the fountain and took a seat next to the spray-painted statue. By the time he sat down and began the arduous process of getting comfortable on his cadaverous ass, a young pusher dressed in baggy jeans and a wifebeater emerged from the shadows and sat down next to him.
“Ain’t got no junk. Got benny strips. Ten bucks get you a day.” He surveyed the pusher and recognized him as a tenement kid he had scored from previously when he did not feel like straying too far from his nest. The kid was probably no older than fifteen. His expression was serious, and under his wifebeater bulged the grip of a small handgun. Kids like this used to work in crews to disperse culpability; however, in the last decade, drug enforcement had become such a low priority that there was no need, or monetary benefit, to working with a crew, assuming you had a connection of your own.
“Yo, you deaf? If you ain’t want shit, the fuck you sitting around here for, confusing the proprietors.” The skeleton man did not want benny strips, but he also could not muster the energy to go any further and find junk. Defeated, he slipped his hand into his jeans and produced two balled-up ten notes. The young pusher grabbed the money from his weak hand and stood up, dropping two pink capsules on the ground as he sauntered back into the shadows.
The skeleton man sat waiting on a concrete division in a Johnny’s Pizza parking lot. The strips had got him through the sixth day, but he hated the way they toyed with his delicate brain, producing visual and auditory hallucinations that rivaled his nightmares in severity. On top of that, the strips destroyed what little appetite he had, forcing him to chain smoke instead. This morning, he’d decided that this was not a life for him. He missed his routine; he missed junk. This same morning, he made a promise to himself: he would obtain more junk this afternoon, the afternoon after that, and every day after that. Damned if those nightmares were going to interfere with his lifestyle.
He sat waiting with a pocket full of cash, the last of his monthly salary. Looking at the black and white photos in Tulsa, he felt his dick harden and his balls scooch up towards his lower abdomen, tightening the skin of his scrotum. His thoughts turned to masturbation, and he realized that it had been months since he had last ejaculated. While he played with himself through the pocket of his jeans, he watched a haggard, middle-aged prostitute sporting a miniskirt and halter top climb into the passenger side of a transfer truck cab. “God, I’d even fuck that trash bin,” he said to no one. The truck spewed black smoke from its stacks as it moved away from the curb. The black exhaust clouded the street, obscuring a small grey car as it pulled into the Johnny’s Pizza parking lot and stopped next to the skeleton man. Without saying anything, he stood from the concrete barrier he was perched on and made his way to the grey compact. The driver cupped his left hand to light a cigarette before he threw open the passenger side door.
Sitting in the passenger seat, the skeleton man produced a wad of fives and tens from his pocket and dropped it in the cup holder. The driver quickly counted the money and then double-counted it. Satisfied with the total sum, he spat ten small balloons he stored in his cheeks into the palm of his hand and passed them over to the skeleton man, who eagerly pocketed them. Without exchanging a word, the deal was complete. Nearly an hour of waiting for a thirty-second transaction. The skeleton man exited the car and shut the door. He watched as it pulled out of the parking lot, turned left, and headed north towards the industrial park, leaving him standing by himself in the desolate parking lot.
DOX (2021)
HORSESHOE THEORIES, REDACTIONS, AND FLAMING SCREENS: IAN TOWNSEND INTERVIEWS ALEX BEAUMAIS
Alex Beaumais is the author of Dox, published by tragickal in 2021. He has also published short fiction at Ligeia, Expat and tragickal.
Without getting into the weeds, Dox is a story that centers around three Polish-Canadian sisters, Ariel, Bela and Jane, and one of the sisters’ new boyfriend, Rick. The story takes place in five sections and the timeline is non-linear. As the title suggests, one of the characters is doxxed and the story deals with the consequences of this, as well as the cultural and technological moment that allows for doxxing.
For those of you unfamiliar with doxxing and redpilling; to dox someone is to publish their private and identifying information on the internet, usually with the intent of destroying their life or punishing them for some perceived injustice. Redpilling is the process by which an individual’s perspective is dramatically changed, introducing them to a new, and typically disturbing understanding of the true nature of a particular situation. The term refers to a scene from the 1999 movie The Matrix, and has been widely used on the internet over the past half-decade.
Below is an excerpt from my conversation with Alex about his novel, Dox.
IT—Greetings Alex,
First, I would like to congratulate you on writing such an entertaining novel. Dox is totally engaging—hence why I read it in one afternoon.
Before we get into the content of your novel, I wanted to ask you about the process of writing Dox. The subject matter is timely and it seems like it could have been written yesterday. Did it take you long to write the novel? How much research went into writing this book?
AB—First up, thank you for doing this. I started the book in 2015, completed the first draft in October 2017, and worked at it with consistent low intensity until the week it was released in February 2021. Probably, it could have been released a long time ago, but I kept polishing.
I devoted two short rounds of explicit research to the Ariel section, although I don’t think this made a big difference. Largely, my lived experience of lurking on Twitter and going to warehouse parties provided my inspiration or source material.
IT— “Sometimes he thought he was a bad father for letting a fire fixation fester in her, but nothing soothed her like holding a screen and staring into the flames.” (p. 1)
The above quote is from the Prologue and describes Ron—the girls’ father—expressing his concern for allowing the youngest daughter to watch hours of fire footage on YouTube. When I went back through the book this quote stuck out to me. It seems like many of us are staring into our phones watching the world burn, or watching peoples lives be destroyed. Was this line meant to highlight the childish nature of wanting to watch things burn? Or, is it just enjoyable to watch things be destroyed?
AB: Jane, the youngest daughter, behaves in some spectrum-y ways, including compiling endless YouTube video playlists, which has consequences for later in the novel. This opening line foreshadows menace and, as you suggest, implicates the techno-alienation and nihilism of the moment.
IT—In the middle section of the novel, which explores redpilling and the dox aftermath, you chose to black out four pieces of text. I’ve reread these sections and I can only guess as to what would fill in the blanks. The blacking out of text only appears in this section of the novel. What, if any, was your intention for using this technique?
AB—The original drafts of the novel were spicier and more extreme. I always knew that the subject matter would impose limits in terms of what the (small) readership would accept, or, more pertinently, what I would accept putting out into the world. I decided that, instead of rewriting sections fully, which a more mature, level-headed person might have done, I would instead tease the reader with redacted words. This felt legitimized when I found the tactic used in Jia Pingwa’s Ruined City (废都), a previously banned book (dismissed as a sex instruction guide) sometimes called the best Chinese novel of the 20th century. I even considered releasing multiple versions of Dox, such as the “mass-market version” and “uncensored version.” Mainly the self-censorship exists as a curiosity or gimmick, but it also nods at speech limits and the need for self-preservation.
IT—Without giving too much away to the reader, one of the things that comes to light in the dox is that Rick participated in the 13 Theses March. What is the 13 Theses March? I’ve tried googling this but did not find anything, which led me to believe that it is a fictitious march, but I could be wrong in thinking that.
AB—The 13 Theses March is another curiosity that remained in the book instead of being cut. This fictitious march evokes a LARPY group of young men nailing their complaints to a wall. It recalls the talking point that “The printing press led to the Protestant Reformation, and the Internet is now disrupting global democratic institutions.” At one point I wanted to write out 13 Theses but this got buried in the other developments of the novel.
IT—Throughout the Redpilling section I felt a lot of sympathy for Rick, even though he seemed like a god-awful person. Ariel, on the other hand, elicited no sympathy from me until the end when she is chastised by Zainub for her talk on Camille Paglia. The hopelessness of her situation, the inability to adhere to the commandments and the anguish it causes her was very sad to me. Was it your goal to force the reader to empathize with both of these characters?
AB—If the original draft was edgier and maybe more entertaining, it verged sometimes on the cartoonish, and I wanted to do something serious. The book needed moral ambiguity or else readers might dismiss it as pulpy Internet-culture porn (which maybe they’ll do anyway). It seemed pointless, therefore, to make any one character a punching bag.
IT—Dox is focused on the culture wars and the Us vs Them mentality of it all. Ariel is an academic achiever and a member of Cell #281. In the first section of the novel she asks Bela if she will attend a talk she is giving that night on Camille Paglia and crypto-fascism (p. 8). Opposite to Ariel we have Rick. A bland Kraut-Anglo (p. 19) who is an assistant editor at Free Speech and secret contributor to Hate Facts. Bela is the only one of the three who does not seem to be 100% self-obsessed. Bela cleans dishes, prepares meals and takes care of her family. At one point she says that she wants to go back to school to study “Japanese again. I think” (p. 166), expressing a desire to improve herself. Ariel refuses her request to help with the family mortgage so that Bela could pay for the classes and destroys any potential for discussion by stating that Rick “works for Richard Spencer” (p. 167).
Ariel and Rick view the world through strict ideology and choose ideology over happiness and well-being, which zaps them of any real personality. Bela on the other hand is grounded in the day to day and the real struggle of life.
Does this make sense, or am I projecting my own ideologies and values onto these characters?
AB—That makes sense. Sometimes you’ll hear about horseshoe theory, the idea that the far left and the far right inadvertently overlap, which is a fraught but also partially truthful idea. Beyond politics, I’m interested in a sort of interpersonal horseshoe theory—say, where people who are bitter, intractable enemies might be so because of a similarity in one attribute and a difference in another. Sometimes enemies start off as best friends—for example, they have almost identical interests but eventually discover a great dissonance in their operating style or morals. To me, this seems more explosive and interesting than two people who are simply very different and therefore alien to each other.
Ariel and Rick don’t share the same exact personality, but they’re both self-obsessed, vain, ungrateful, striving, ideologically driven, stubborn, and somewhat bratty or fortunate in their circumstances. This contrasts with Bela, who is quietly suffering, burdened by family, and overlooked.
In a world where people are atomized and yet often expected to turn up the volume on their ideological engagement with the world, she represents an unmooring from social issues—albeit not a conscious one (like an alcoholic abstaining), but an inborn, organic one. I guess it’s the path to sanity for many. Some consider it irresponsible, like turn on, tune in, drop out. But many are wasting their time (or making things worse) trying to change minds—anyone with a polemical blog could tell you that. For many it’s better to just make hay with atomization. Find the four or five people who can help you stave off your enslavement or alienation and collaborate with them. It’s not that change is impossible, but it requires bigger sacrifices and timescales than many people allow. Even without running out our days on an ideological treadmill, we all have bodies that are rotting.
IT—I was interested in your inclusion of Donald Trump in this book. He is mentioned on a number of occasions. I believe once by Ariel (p. 7), again by Rick (p. 78/80/83) and finally in a debate between Rick and Ariel at the dinner table (p. 174). Given that this book takes place in Canada, what do you make of these Canadians arguing over Donald Trump instead of Justin Trudeau, Andrew Scheer and Jagmeet Singh? Does Canada have its own culture wars, or do we just glob onto whatever the United States is engaged in so that we can feel involved in the process?
AB—I’m afraid it’s the latter. We have microcultures, but we’re downstream from bigger nations and political bodies and unlikely to act out of turn or set the tone. Our COVID experience is illustrative. Many people here and beyond would like to participate in American culture and they’re seldom discouraged.
IT—Finally, what kind of reception has the book received here in Canada, or abroad? How did the pandemic impact your ability to promote the book?
AB—It hasn’t received much attention, although it slowly trickles into more hands. The pandemic didn’t affect my ability to promote it.
tragickal.com/dox/
DOX (2021) (EXCERPT)
The door blew open and hovered, almost closing before flying open again, buffeted by winds, a tropical electrical storm. Rick Speer stood in his housecoat in the hall, not knowing if the lightning flashes were in the world or in his head. Who had opened the door, and why?
His mind flickered with senility, trying to find a signal among the static, and when he found a channel, it was, “I am in my apartment, and the world is gay.” He shut the door and checked his phone—an act that didn’t ground him or restore his vital signs so much as plug him back into the bright blue glow of Sponsored Content and status updates high-beaming the fetal ball of his cognition, a symbiosis close to what it meant to be alive in the current year.
“Where are you?” Telia had texted at 7:49 a.m.
“This is the last time,” she’d written at 11:02 p.m. “I hope you’re having an amazing night wherever you are! Clearly, what you are doing is so much more important than me!”
The little twister forming on the sea of Rick’s moral sense did not have a witness in the plaque of his consciousness, and so it died. He’d learned to leverage these low points in his relationship with Telia in order to accent the peaks, rather than chasing the dodo of a “happy, sunny relationship” or whatever the hell they talked about in the Russian novels he fell asleep reading. Mostly, he did what he wanted, seeing girls from the Internet behind Telia’s back and then, once the winds got too rough, showering her with sweet texts and attention and facing down her threats till one night she was lying under him, parting her rusty locks once again and telling him she loved him, at which point they’d reached the next phase of their sunny relations, framed by a knowledge of trauma and a history of collaborative overcoming.
His mind was dripping like the AC he’d fiddled with at Bela’s. He felt like his mental searchlight was unable to devour anything. There was a reason you didn’t take MDMA if you were somebody. Besides promoting extremely gay thoughts last night—lending answers to life’s impasses that were no more realpolitik than Bambi gallivanting through the meadows—it’d tattooed his grey matter, lasering his short-term memory like hairs in a Groupon session.
Rick Speer lay in bed, feeling dozens of feet below the floor, below the planks, in the cold earth. He picked up his phone again. He needed a VPN like Bela needed an IUD. It was only the morning, or the early afternoon, but already he felt like his phone was a ghost limb, like he would need to scull through the day on little boosts of notification dopamine.
He had bruises on his neck and didn’t know if Bela wanted to talk to him or if he wanted to talk to her. Last night, when the Pomeranian pulled the Glock out and stuck it in his mouth, Rick had promised he wouldn’t talk to the police about what he and Bela’d seen. It was all gauzy and maximally fucked up, fat deposits transubstantiating in water, all these coiled insides of Bela and her family, Bela and the party, Bela and the Pomeranian, Bela and Telia. He did not know where he stood with her, and a larger part—or at least his id—didn’t care. But he felt in the not caring the footprint of serotonin leeches.
His Lake Shore apartment was a convection oven tickled by Freon; he was empty. He could not achieve death by jumping out the window; maybe a broken ankle. He said to himself, I’m bleeding…, a mantra he’d whisper when he looked out at the void, which he was old enough to know not to plumb, for it led either to the emergency room or a hooker’s perfumed embrace. (He couldn’t think of a situation—funerals, his aunt’s cystic fibrosis diagnosis—that wasn’t overshadowed by a hologram of his dick, by the impulse-opening of an Incognito tab with Sugar Babies and Craigslist, or an 18-year-old Moldovan on a webcam.)
This is my struggle, he’d say to his four real-life friends, not knowing what was worse—the shockwaves through his life of having no self-control (especially as a half-German!), or the hypocrisy of editing a men’s webzine that ran three articles a day excoriating “degeneracy” and sexual licentiousness.
He went to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water, then another.
The water could not breed stability. His ruminations were a spiral staircase to a resinous dungeon with candlelight flickering over sleep-sapping repetitions. He scanned his faculties: he was a bit hungry. He felt no direct sexual urge; his testes were inert. His blepharitis was overshadowed by brain damage. His heartbeat was surprisingly light, and he did not feel as groggy as expected. He got distracted taking his pulse after five beats. The real question was the woman question, the question that kept on hatching new versions of itself. He edited a file on his phone:
Telia – Bad fashion – 115 IQ – 42-28-38 – Dutch, Scottish (Beaker) – Mid Beauty – High Economic Usefulness/Agency – Maybe Child rearing – BAD conversation – High Neediness, Blah sex – Obama, Kanye West, accounting, Python, C++
Bela – Good fashion – 107 IQ – 37-26-36 – Slavic / Siberian, Yakut (high Neanderthal, high EHG) – High Beauty – Low economic Usefulness – Child rearing yes – Neediness? – Sex? – Party, drugs, music, dancing, Japanese
Rick wanted to start a family in order to create a productive prison for himself; he wanted to send sons out into the world to fight the rising tide of high-time-preference degeneracy. (If all the last men became remedial teachers in a critical studies class headmastered by the Zuckerberg dynasty, why not commit seppuku now?) He’d given Telia a “pre-engagement” opal ring, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to commingle with her genetic matter and risk the passing on of her love of Beyoncé, notwithstanding her Mensa brain (he rated her IQ lower than what Mensa had, which rated it 133), as well as the manifold advantages of her being a Woman in Tech.
He’d never had sex with Bela, he thought, collapsing on his bed, and therefore didn’t know her, but having a SeekingArrangement profile painted a black mark on her forehead (he was aware of his double standard; he knew he deserved to be thrown out of a helicopter).
As he lay back and stretched, he started feeling more mentally hygienic, as if someone had unscrewed his brain casing, vacuumed the dust, and streamlined the wiring. But when he nodded off and his brain entered pools of false-alarm dreams (more just ephemeral flittings of the dance floor) till he really was sleeping—doing breaststroke in a stone pool overlooking an orchid-lined fjord and shooting his arms out and scissoring his legs froglike—he sensed a karmic shadow darting across the pool floor, or was it his own? As he summersaulted into the wall and kicked out, an infant hand gripped his ankle. He stopped kicking. He could not see anything in the pool but sunflecks on the surface. He tried twisting his head back, but the hand adjusted its grip and he spun in circles. He used the other foot and kicked at the hand, hitting a small torso. He kicked at it again and torpedoed forward in a frenzy, squeezing the kid until the hand pulled him underwater, and he fought to resurface, drawing air, but the hand dragged him to the bottom of the pool and he cracked his hand on the concrete, chugging water, opening his eyes underwater and seeing the child, a beautiful burgher boy in Alpine Swiss suspenders killing him.
He woke to the sound of crashing glass as his skull went through the bottom of the pool. The crinkling continued as he drew consciousness and touched his head, thankful it wasn’t busted open, thankful he’d achieved a few minutes of brain-defragging REM. He lay panting at the stucco ceiling, more optimistic he was going to recover from MDMA and from all his bruises, even if he was still a few feet in the earth. He went to the bathroom to piss a radioactive stream, and when he went to the fridge to pour a new glass of water he noticed the broken window. A rock shaped like a distended brain sat on a kitchen tile. Rick didn’t know whether he wanted it to be real or a serotonin syndrome glitch. He picked up the rock and it felt evil. He put it on the counter, broomed up the glass beneath the curtain. He turned on the light and the rock glared as though hexed by a Javanese shaman. Who had done this?
WHEN ARE WE NOT ACTING? SEAN SAM INTERVIEWS MATT LEE ON CRISIS ACTOR (2020)
Matt Lee’s Crisis Actor is a book because it is the standard shape and filled with words. It is a novel because there are original sections that its creator wrote.
At the same time, the book’s methodology follows the postmodernists, rolling into a collage of other work until it is something else entirely, an extended excerpt falling from many wounds. In the text, you’ll see suicide notes, diaries, manifestos, the famous and the infamous, their faces serried like sutures, the border between everything only an inch of white space on the page.
In this conversation, Matt and I discuss terrorism, censorship, Donald Trump, conspiracy theories, disinformation, and a persistent question for everyone—when are we not acting?
– Sean
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In Crisis Actor, the reader is guided through fragments of quotes, chunks of facts, pieces of other works—from Toby Keith lyrics to the manifestos of mass murderers—interwoven with an original work of fiction. The arrangement is reminiscent of Markson, an author whose work makes an appearance as well. Crisis Actor is a book where it makes sense to have Christopher Dorner’s thoughts on the Hangover films positioned not too far from Woolf’s theories on madness. Who were your influences for this book and what drew you to this style of writing? Did the subject matter influence the style?
I think my writing operates the same way my brain does. Like a kaleidoscope. I’m drawn to randomness, but I’m also constantly sniffing out patterns. The subject matter—terrorism, celebrity, art, pain—feels chaotic. Politicians are quick to denote mass shootings, for instance, as “random acts of violence.” The deeper I went into researching the book, the more apparent certain underlying connections became, which informed the book’s shape. Seemingly disparate voices bound together by strange synapses. Novel as collage. I wanted to dissolve the boundaries between artist and terrorist. To equate Osama Bin Laden with Emily Dickinson. How we define a work of art or an act of terror is ultimately a matter of perspective. One can garner fame through creation or destruction. This slippage compels me.
In terms of literary influences, most of them are central characters in the book. David Markson, as you pointed out, has been a profound inspiration. Discovering his Notecard Quartet gave me courage to experiment with my own writing in ways I’d never considered. Ballard’s Atrocity Exhibition had a similar effect. Beyond the writers who appear directly in Crisis Actor, I’d point to Renata Adler’s Speedboat, Mary Robison’s Why Did I Ever?, and Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts. Adler and Robison for their humor, Nelson for her blend of scholarship and narrative. The common denominator being text as nonlinear assemblage. Around the time I started writing Crisis Actor, I was also reading The Flesh Interface series online, a sprawling drug-fueled science fiction creepypasta epic that surfaced as comments on Reddit posts written by an anonymous user with the handle _9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9. Brilliant, wild writing with a guerilla sensibility. Academic in tone with a batshit insane plot. I love that juxtaposition and try to capture it in much of my own work.
Always enjoyed the celebration of anonymity in the best creepypastas, which may be anomalous among other writing for that reason. On the opposite end of anonymity, one of those major underlying connections you mentioned could be summed up in the hijacker Paul Cini’s quote from page 26: “I’m here and I exist and I want to be noticed.” What do you see as the major similarity/difference between the artist and the terrorist? Do you buy the notion that a “normal” person is a few bad days/months away from committing violence?
The biggest parallel between art and terror is subjectivity. A US military drone strike leaves a dozen civilians dead. A Taliban hit squad guns down foreign aid workers. You can justify or condemn either. The same way one person looks at an abstract expressionist painting and says, “My five year old draws better,” while another is moved to tears at the sight. What fascinates me is the iconography of terrorism. The September 11 attacks were an atrocity, but that image of Flight 11 crashing into the North Tower has been seared into the public consciousness in such an evocative way. The visual impact is undeniable. Terrorism has bled into pop culture and vice versa. Now acts of terror are produced in the same fashion as reality television shows. The Islamic State employed a type of artistry to record and disseminate highly choreographed acts of cruelty. Footage of western journalists being decapitated is inherently symbolic, as is a video of Chris Burden crawling through broken glass. In both cases, real bloodshed is rendered into a depiction, a medium, a form. Where does one draw the line?
The artist and terrorist each make political statements using different methods, different canvases. Art can certainly include an element of violence, and terror can be artful. If Petr Pavelnsky asks for a piece of performance art to be reclassified as terrorism, should we take him at his word? Artists are often treated like terrorists, labelled as enemies of the regime and quietly executed. Many terrorists moonlight as poets or painters. We’re not so different. Like Paul Cini, we all crave attention to a degree. Yet the idea of empathizing with a terrorist is anathema to most people. Given a set of unique circumstances, you too might find yourself plowing a truck through a crowded sidewalk, strapping a suicide belt around your waist, marching into Wal-Mart with an AR-15. Not that I believe people are instinctively evil. We must first recognize the conditions that produce terrorism if there’s any hope of peace. If everyone is capable of violence, then the opposite must also be true.
Pointing out that one’s upbringing creates the circumstances shouldn’t cause controversy, yet it does. There is another figure who may be different from the terrorist, victim, or artist—or maybe a mixture of each—the crisis actor. The idea is contentious, though using crisis actors has been proposed by government forces (Operation Northwoods). How did your background as an actor influence your writing process for those sections? What do you make of the conspiracy theories that appear around every mass shooting?
I was born into a family of actors, so I’ve been around theatre as long as I can remember. For me, drama and literature are inseparable. I’m intrigued by the performative quality of text. The actor embodies a strange paradox. Take something artificial and make it “real.” A performance is both authentic and illusory, fact and fiction. Deep philosophical terrain to explore both on and off stage. Many of the actor’s techniques also serve the writer well. Improvisation, sense memory, the magic if, inhabiting a character.
During a strange period of my life, I worked an acting gig on a military base. We were called “Standardized Patients.” Our job was to portray hypothetical subjects in training exercises for nurses, doctors, emergency personnel. Some days I’d play a soldier suffering from PTSD or a schizophrenic planning to murder his boss. Other days I was just a guy coming in for a routine physical. Occasionally we’d get assigned disaster scenarios for first responders. A plane crash, a suicide bombing, a mass shooting. We’d be decked out in special effects make-up, painted with fake blood, prosthetic broken bones, silicone skin. All the actors had different briefs. You be in shock, you be difficult, you be dead. We’d all be screaming bloody murder with pre-recorded sounds of carnage blaring from hidden speakers. We had to make it as convincing as possible. “These exercises save lives,” we were frequently told. Macabre stuff. Almost immediately after I started working there, the idea for Crisis Actor began gelling. Much of what I describe in the book is based on these actual experiences.
Conspiracy theories are akin to religion. A conspiracy is a belief system, a higher power in which to bestow faith. It makes people feel special, as if they’ve figured out the secret of our existence. It’s a coping mechanism. The reason so many conspiracy theories popped up around 9/11 or the Sandy Hook shooting is because some people simply cannot wrap their minds around the sheer horror of it all. They’d rather believe anything else rather than accept the gravity of what has happened. The September 11 attacks are arguably the most successful act of terror ever committed. Many Americans couldn’t swallow the fact we’d been so badly beaten. It defied everything they’d been taught, so they constructed new realities to fit their ingrained narratives. One can hardly blame them. Processing violence and trauma of that magnitude is no easy task. This is why there are Holocaust deniers. The scope of our capacity for evil is often beyond comprehension, especially for people who live relatively sheltered existences, like most Westerners. On the flip side, there is often a nugget of truth in many conspiracy theories, and a healthy dose of skepticism is useful when studying the “official report” of momentous events. Governments unquestionably concoct lies and cover stories all the time.
Damn, those scenes sound wild. Lately, such conspiracy theories and other alleged thoughtcrimes get regulated on the largest sites, but forums exist outside Twitter. Traditional publishing too has excommunicated certain styles and views, yet “taboo” work continues to live elsewhere. Similarly, in Crisis Actor, you mention facts about the attempts to end violence that seem to hint at the futility of certain methods (e.g., legally purchased guns are often used, the increase in truck murders). What is your take on censorship/control both in the literary world and in general?
I feel there have been both positive and negative consequences. There’s a greater sense of accountability regarding abuse, particularly for those in positions of power. I’m glad people are generally more sensitive to longstanding prejudices, less tolerant of institutionalized evils. Everyone should make an effort to stamp out hateful rhetoric of all shades. As with any movement or ideology, the downside is when dogma gets taken to the extreme. Much of the current crusade seeking to neuter the arts strikes me as insanely puritanical and repressive. Why all the pearl clutching and finger wagging? Censorship, like conspiracy theories, is a means of protection or a defense reflex, a method of social control, as you pointed out. When heightened to the nth degree it becomes fascistic. To disagree with what has been deemed “acceptable” results in exile, or worse. This leaves little room for subversion. Merely silencing your opponent’s voice is the same as treating the symptom instead of the disease. Deplatform bigots and predators all you want, our society will continue producing them, Hydra-like, unless we remedy the cause, dam the source. Trump is the perfect example. He was not created in a vacuum. We made him. Banning Trump from Twitter does not eradicate Trump’s message or make his millions of followers stop caring about him. Now Trump is like a social media martyr.
In the literary world, the fear of being canceled acts as a gag against critical thinking. Writers, academics, artists sacrifice freedom of expression for the sake of keeping a career intact. This produces watered down art that does nothing to challenge people’s perspectives. It makes us afraid to have conversations about race, sex, politics. How are we going to confront these issues if we can’t even discuss them? Because these subjects are often troubling, as well as complex, people are eager to erase rather than reconcile with any piece of unsavory history. That’s the easy way out—forgoing any effort to contextualize why something that was written 100 years ago is now considered politically incorrect. I should be able to appreciate the work of Céline without condoning his anti-semitism, for instance. Likewise, the torture scenes in Crisis Actor are not an endorsement. Quite the contrary. Without nuance (or a sense of humor), people are quick to take everything literally.
On watering down, your answer also reminds me of my frustrations with a literary establishment that claims to want POC writers … but only if they present the “correct” aesthetic (thinking of an experience where a journal not only copyedited my slang dialogue [the kind from lived experience] for grammar/content but also felt the need to italicize Navajo words I used—a conventional othering). That said, you and I are not edgelords. Along with Ashley Wagner, we have edited Ligeia for two years, and I’ve always known you as someone who cares about and makes an effort toward representation. Can you tell the people about Ligeia, its origins, how we view the alleged MFA vs not-MFA divide, and what we’re actually about?
Your experience is sadly not uncommon. It’s tokenization plain and simple. Performative inclusivity. A call for diverse voices met with total whitewashing. Yuck. Part of seeking broader representation must also include granting those marginalized voices more agency. With Ligeia, it’s been a joy to feature such a broad array of contributors, and most importantly, let them speak for themselves. I think because our tastes are eclectic, we attract a wide range of artists. The whole project has been such a wonderful surprise. Legend has it three graduate writing students, fed up with reading slick dick fiction in The New Yorker, decided they could do it better. I’m told there was a blood pact made at an all night diner just outside Baltimore, though my sources are dubious. With the spectre of Poe on their side, Ligeia was born. Since then, I’ve been astounded by the support we’ve built up over the years. Getting to publish and interview some of my favorite writers has been a dream. We’ve always said Ligeia is a home for misfits. I see us as carrying on the gothic literary tradition with a modern twist. Poe’s story “Ligeia” is all about duality, contradiction, paradox. I like writing that operates on a similar level.
Weighing in on the MFA debate, I think it’s silly to chastise someone either way. Plenty of amazing writers come out of MFA programs, whether they get published or not. As we’ve seen with Ligeia, there are also loads of equally talented and innovative writers with zero formal training whatsoever. It’s not a matter of needing or not needing an MFA to call yourself a writer. Do what’s best for you and ignore the snobbery on both sides. I pursued a master’s because I want to teach, not because I thought it would improve my writing per se. But I do feel I came out a sharper, more confident writer, and I think the process of sharing my writing and being critiqued, while also reading other people’s writing and critiquing them, helped me solidify my voice. Not to mention there would be no Ligeia if the three of us hadn’t met in school.
I can’t confirm or deny any blood/adrenochrome rituals at the diner. Getting back to Crisis Actor, how did you get involved with tragickal and what was the process like for creating and editing the book?
When I first started submitting short fiction to online journals, I stumbled across tragickal after seeing some other writers I admired on the site. I was instantly drawn to their mission statement and aesthetic. I thought, “These are my kind of people!” The editor graciously accepted a story of mine and we kept in touch over the years. True kindred spirits, both literary and otherwise. Through our correspondence, the editor asked if I might happen to have a manuscript, as tragickal was in the process of expanding into a press. I sent in a draft of what would become Crisis Actor, which in that early stage was much more anarchic and loose. Initially it was just a stack of mismatched, handwritten note cards. We spent a year or so fine tuning the beast and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. My editor was instrumental in shaping the book, both in terms of its focus and structure. They had the brilliant idea of formatting it like memos or emails. This complemented the idea of all these disparate voices melding together. The best editors know how to suss out how a book is trying to function, how to ask the right questions that push a writer where they’re trying to get. I feel fortunate to have collaborated with tragickal so closely. It’s an honor to have Crisis Actor as their inaugural release. After reading the follow up publication, the excellent Dox by A. Beaumais, I can’t wait to see what they put out next.
A persistent figure in your book is our previous president, the Donald. Many of his presented quotes are about marketing, including his idea that modern art is a con based on popularity. Meanwhile, ratings are down for news across the board, and the media—despite all the bans—seems to crave the return of the man. What’s your take on his ideas about art and mass media in general, and why did you choose to include many of his words and words about him?
I started writing what would become Crisis Actor around the time Trump was elected. In many ways the scenes I composed and the notes/quotations I gathered were a direct response to the Trump presidency. It all seems so obvious in hindsight, but at the time his victory came as a huge shock. I felt as if we’d jumped timelines into some parallel universe. Trump’s presence became pervasive. You couldn’t escape him. Every time I turned on the television or went online, there he was relishing in the attention, delighting in the outrage his words and actions caused. For me, Trump embodied everything wrong with American society. Our obsession with fame and wealth, our bald-faced hypocrisy, our narcissistic sadism, our racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. People adored him for “saying what other politicians would never dare.” In other words, he gave license for a massive swathe of our increasingly disenfranchised population to be their most debased selves. Trump has all the hallmarks of a snake oil salesman. His whole MAGA schtick was one big show. The theatricality of it fit perfectly with Crisis Actor. A true theater of cruelty.
Trump is fascinating because he’s a contradiction. Reality television star and POTUS. Uber-privileged New York City millionaire and blue-collar populist freedom fighter. Comically absurd and viciously cunning. One minute he’s posing before a buffet of McDonald’s hamburgers at the White House, the next he’s signing legislation to put immigrant children in cages. He calls modern art a con but also refers to business as a fine art. He both adored and loathed the media coverage surrounding him. He inspires intense hatred and blind devotion depending on who you talk to. He also created the conditions to disintegrate the boundary between fact and fiction. I try to do something similar in Crisis Actor. Living in Trump’s America forced us to question what is real. Hopefully my book has this effect on readers. JG Ballard wrote of his novel Crash, “I wanted to rub the human race in its own vomit, and force it to look in the mirror.” I believe writing about Trump the way I have achieves the same goal.
The contradictions seem to define America. Along those lines, in Crisis Actor you mention Conor Betts liking a tweet about gun control shortly before his rampage. And you later write, “Do any of us ever stop performing?” Much has been spilled about social media’s influence—and it seems a lot of indie lit places today have a similar, techno-ennui theme—but I want to get your take on whether it has accelerated a decline, making everyone a reality star in their mind, or simply exposed what was always there, or something else entirely?
This question points to the idea of authenticity, whether it’s achievable or not, which is something I wrestle with in Crisis Actor. I’m reminded of Sartre’s concept of Bad Faith—the waiter in a cafe who plays at being a waiter as a means to an end. Social media can operate in this fashion. An avatar is no different than a mask. Online personas are deliberately constructed to convey a certain image or attitude. People are judged on whether they come off as “real” or “fake” on social media. I’ve observed loads of brutally honest posting, from Facebook suicide notes to Blogspot confessionals. But there’s also plenty of cringeworthy, soulless bullshit. Whatever pole you look to, I do believe people are always performing to some extent. I think it’s impossible not to. Every word you speak, every page you write contains a level of artifice by design. Social media, in attempting to depict reality, simultaneously abstracts it.
There’s also a voyeuristic quality, like vicariously enjoying an argument on Twitter or seeing a photo of your ex. It’s the same tension as watching a film in a crowded theater. Online, we can alternate between audience and performer instantaneously. I don’t necessarily believe social media has been a detriment to society. Even without these platforms, people are going to consider themselves the center of the universe. Instagram doesn’t change human nature. It’s an extension of human nature. Social media is a tool. We decide how to use it. Personally, I’ve always viewed my own social media presence as a type of performative project, and my experiences have been mostly positive. I can promote my work, chat with writers, compose diaristic musings. Of course, there’s a dark side as well. Social media can be addictive. Anonymity can embolden people to be exceptionally cruel. Disinformation can be easily circulated. People can be exploited. Again, I’d counter that these phenomena are not at all unique to the digital world.
Right, there’s self performance but there’s also creating other people’s lives as an audience member. People imagine in this way for a variety of reasons, but taken to its political extreme, you have this quote in Crisis Actor from Heidegger’s The Essence of Truth: “The root requirement is then to find the enemy, bring him to light or even to create him.” Much of modern warfare occurs through information, the enemy as a persona. If not censorship—the default solution of ‘modern’ countries—what can be done about disinformation? Especially when the people in charge sling it night and day and sometimes censor the opposite views? There are also those who believe that it isn’t the role of artists to dwell on politics/ psychosocial matters or solutions, but merely to describe what they see. What’s your take on this?
A worrisome number of people simply opt out of paying attention to the news. “Too depressing.” Others refuse to believe anything period. Just the other day I heard someone say, “Reporters are all liars. CNN, Fox, all of them.” Then there are those who swallow everything they’re told without question. If they see it on television, it must be true. This presents a two-fold problem. Objective information is disregarded by some, while agitprop is treated as gospel by others. And this is true for the right and the left. If you look at the same headline or story across various news outlets, you’ll see countless different spins or interpretations. Last year’s social unrest in response to police brutality was alternatively billed as a “protest” or “riot” depending on the source. The US military bombs a hospital in Afghanistan and calls it “collateral damage.” I call it a war crime. In both cases, language is a powerful tool when it comes to manipulating reality. Depravity can be made palatable (torture as “enhanced interrogation”). A threat to the status quo can be demonized (legitimate demonstrators as “anarchists”). The military in particular traffics in phantoms, constructing boogeymen to act as scapegoats, to justify imperialism, to distract from more pressing domestic affairs. Communism served this purpose in the 20th century, now Islamic terrorism has taken its place. The Iraq War, one of the worst military blunders in modern history, was founded on a lie. Ditto Afghanistan. But at the onset there was widespread, bipartisan approval for both conflicts. The propaganda machine works wonders.
If we’re to combat disinformation, we must become experts at sniffing it out, but this is a monumental challenge. If I read something in The Washington Post, I have to scrutinize it carefully because the paper is essentially owned by Amazon. I fear it has become virtually impossible to escape a certain level of corporate influence when it comes to media consumption. Unfortunately this pushes people to seek information from even more dubious sources, like your racist uncle who gets all his news on Facebook. I’m a bit of a news junkie, but I take it with a grain of salt. Typically I’ll put a little more faith in independent, nonprofit organizations. I also keep up with lots of international news agencies. It’s important to see how the outside world is reporting on current events in the US. Fact checking is hard work. It’s time consuming, so I can’t blame people for not digging deeply. My hope is that in post-Trump America, we’re at least more self aware when it comes to disinformation. Where are these facts coming from? Are the facts consistent? Who is the intended audience? Is the source neutral or do they have an ulterior motive? Are they using this information in a specific way in order to influence you? These are the questions people should be asking. Ironically, this is the same way we should interrogate art. For me, all art is political. Whether the artist intends it to be or not, art exists within a political framework by default. So do we all. Shirking any sort of political responsibility is a cop out. Frankly I think it’s cowardly to renounce any engagement with political discourse. You might as well be a zombie.
It’s a truism that most of the people who read literary websites are also writers. To be read by people who don’t write is probably the real signal of popularity. But anyway, to take advantage of that here, some easy questions: Can you tell the writers about your writing routine? When and how do you write? What music do you listen to when writing? When I’m working, I’ve realized I can’t listen to anything with words.
My routine is pretty sporadic these days. Anytime I can manage an hour or two in solitude. I’ll often let ideas marinate in my head for weeks or even months before writing a single line. I like writing longhand as “exercise,” usually free verse or stream of consciousness text I have no intention of ever publishing, but this practice can be helpful as a sort of idea generator. When it’s time to get serious, I always write on a computer. I like composing small sections at a time. With Crisis Actor, I had color coded scenes organized by subject in various documents, split between fiction and nonfiction. I’d pick and choose whichever had the strongest connective tissue while assembling the main manuscript. I don’t outline per se, just compile loads of material and figure out how it all fits together after the fact. I prefer the process to be organic. It’s more fun not knowing how everything will turn out. I leave ample room for surprises, opportunities for improvisation. The research component is also crucial for my work, so I devote a lot of energy tracking down sources to feed creative projects. I’m an obsessive bibliophile and relish any opportunity to go digging through articles, books, films, you name it.
The older I get, the more important I feel it is to not put too much pressure on myself. I stay disciplined to an extent, but I don’t feel the need to write every day. I never force myself to write. Real world experiences are equally informative and take precedence over my “literary career.” I value my humanity above my productivity. I almost always play music while working. Like you, I can never concentrate if the music has lyrics, so it has to be instrumental. Anything ambient or hypnotic does the trick. Writing Crisis Actor, Brian Eno’s Thursday Afternoon was a favorite. Dominick Fernow’s Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement project was another. Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works. Joanna Brouk’s Hearing Music. Honorable mentions for Hiroshi Yoshimura, Terry Riley, Jon Hassell, and Liz Harris/Grouper.
I think I’ve also listened to Thursday Afternoon too much. Thanks for taking the time to do this interview, Matt. What’s next for you creatively? Any teasers for future projects or books?
Thank you, Sean! I’ve had a blast talking shop with you. I’m 99% finished with a memoir that explores the tension between disability and monstrosity. I hope to start looking for a publisher in earnest later this year. I also have a concept for my next novel, which I think has the potential to be something special if I can pull it off. It’ll probably take five years to complete. Stay tuned.
tragickal.com/crisisactor/
Sean Sam is a writer and editor from Maryland. He is a member of the Navajo tribe and has taught at the Emerging Diné Writers’ Institute program. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Malahat Review, The Westchester Review, Salt Hill, ellipsis…literature and art, and Potomac Review—among other places. He is a founder of Ligeia Magazine, a literary website based out of Baltimore.
Matt Lee is an actor, teacher, and writer living in Maryland. He is co-editor of Ligeia Magazine.
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p.s. Hey. Today the blog is chuffed and very happy to host this post focused on the excellent press tragickal, publishers of, among other excellent tomes, one of my favorite novels of this year: Ian Townsend’s ‘Purgatory’. Please give a long look and highly consider adding one of the spotlit books to your inventory. Highly recommended by me. Thank you so much, masterminds of tragickal, for putting this overview together and thinking of this venue. ** CAUTIVOS, Hi. I … don’t think it would enlarge a penis, but I never tried, so who knows? I’m the opposite: I hugely prefer short novels, the shorter the better, both to read, and, as you can tell, to write. Yes, the Nobel Prize, sure, any year now, I’m sure, ha ha. ** Nick., Hi. I know Park Slope a little. I mean I’ve been there to visit people and maybe see music shows or something? Flatbush: such a good name. I wonder if there was some weirdly flat bush there once upon a time that inspired the name. Ah, tacos and rice noodle dishes, understandable. My favorite food is cold sesame noodle, so we’re close. I so seriously highly recommend you go to Japan someday. It’s amazing. Whenever I want to travel, it’s always the ideal. Japan has some really cool abandoned theme parks. It also has this whole abandoned island/city called Hashima that’s pretty mind-blowing. Yeah, it was trippy having ‘Bob’ right there to visit. And Edith Massey from John Waters’ films ran a little thrift shop on the same block as ‘Bob’s’ store for a while. Starry. I really liked that Edith Cain song, so I’m going to snatch her album today. Thank you! I just told you my favorite food, although I think cheese quesadillas is a close second, and candy … Does Pocky count? I love Pocky. I also love those Haribo candies that have little marshmallow smears on them. I think there are a bunch of varieties. What’s yours? What’s your favorite recreational mood enhancer, by which I guess I mean drug or drink or other, if you have one? Mine used to be LSD, but now it’s coffee, ha ha. Hope your Friday is really promising. ** Ian, Hey, hey, hey, guess what’s up above? Well, I guess you know already. Really, thank you a lot for your part in making the post happen. I hate decompressing, but, yeah, sometimes you have to, like eating. Excited to hear about the new thing you’re working on. I hope it stays excitable. I’m good here in Paris, thank you, and you too, I surmise. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yes, RIP Vivienne Westwood. Damn. The greaties keep dropping like flies. ** malcolm, I remember when I was a kid thinking pneumatic tubes were a glimpse into the future. I thought we’d all have pneumatic tubes in our apartments in place of stoves and sinks and air conditioners and toilets and everything. Varied and cohesive makes total sense, sure. I think my career has been like that, but I don’t think anybody else thinks so, ha ha. Yes, I finally got a bit of Ethel Cain in my head yesterday, and I loved it. I don’t know why I waited so long. Her album will be downloading imminently. How cool that you guys are friends. I hope your work break today is super elongated. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yes, I can’t explain my earlier attachment to ‘Survivor’. It’s weird because I’m an anarchist and yet I seem to have this fetish for hierarchical events like awards shows or even the weekend movie box office figures. Strange. Anyway, since you’ve been pulled into the Survivorverse, I guess you get it too. Good question love was asking there. Huh. Maybe wherever s/he lives, they used human teeth as cobble stones? They would make for some pretty streets. Love reversing every celebrity’s cosmetic surgery and botox injections, G. ** David Ehrenstein, Happy b’day Barbara Steele, perhaps a day late. ** alex, Hi, alex! Welcome! Really good to get to meet you! It’s weird to think iPhones and drones and Tesla trucks and whatever will look charmingly naive someday. Well, I guess that’s not that hard to imagine. Thanks for the really kind words about my work. That’s really awesome to hear. And, yeah, I hope you will comment when and if you want. I would definitely like that. You’re writing a novel! Can you say anything about it? That’s exciting. How can I encourage you onwards, not that you need nudging or anything. Wow, no, that’s amazing about the zine you made? You don’t have a pic of it or anything? I’m honored, thank you. How do you like Toronto? Happy next year to you too! ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Everyone, Here’s Steve Erickson’s year-end music list, as published in Gay City News. I’m desperate to get that new Cheap Trick box set. And also desperate that someone will make a digital boot of it since I don’t have a vinyl player. But I’ll probably buy the box anyway just to have and look at it. I was in fact at two of those shows, yes. The part of Paris that has a view of the fireworks gets very crowded on NYE. And they close the metro in that part of Paris in hopes of avoiding drunken underground chaos. So the streets are pretty wild in the early hours what with a million+ Parisians stumbling home. ** l@rst, Me too, about the bank situation. I am in ‘Pathetic Lit’, yes. Boy, it’s huge! And really good! What is this small email list thing? I don’t totally understand. Sounds like a swell NYE that you’ve got figured out there. Ace. ** jade/ellie, Hi. Oh, really? 1lib? That’s a relief. I’ll go hunt it down and bookmark it. If I had a time machine I would set it to the night of that ‘PGL” screening and take you guys out for a coffee or something. Every once in a while I’ll see people talk about what a sick monster I am in some message board or something, and it always surprises me. But I don’t care. These days I kind of only really follow experimental noise music for some reason. It does the trick for whatever reason. But I’m always searching for anything exciting, so your suggestions are a big thank you. Ellie, okay, I’ll imbed that in my head. Be yourself, for sure! I try to do the same. My favorite Kathy Acker novels are ‘Great Expectations’ and ‘Blood and Guts in High School’. I co-edited the Kathy Acker Reader book years ago, and I had to read everything single thing she wrote over the course of about there weeks, and that was a trip. I knew her, yeah. We were friendly, but I avoided being good friends with her because all of my friends who were friends with her were always getting in huge fights with her and being competitive with her all the time, so I tried to keep some distance so I wouldn’t stop admiring her. Fun memories … not fun, but one time she and I were on a panel together, and I said something derogatory about Jean Genet, and she completely lost it and spent about a half hour telling me and the audience how I was totally insane and an idiot to say that. That was kind of fun. ** ShadeoutMapes, I believe some of them did have lollipops in them, yes! Oh, I did get your email! I’m going to read what you sent and write back to you before the weekend is over. Thank you, thank you! I agree with you about electronic music. It’s kind of all I listen to in various incarnations. Well, if you can’t get ‘PGL’ otherwise, I’m happy to link you up. We’re not making any money off the film, so it doesn’t matter. Mayhem, yes! In fact, someone made a post for the blog about Dead a while ago. Here it is. I never saw Mayhem with Dead, sadly. I have seen the later incarnation with Attila Csihar. I know Attila a little because he was in my friend/collaborator Stephen O’Malley’s band Sunn0))) for a while. Do you like Sunn0)))? My day was alright. I did some writing, which helped. How/what was yours? I’m a huge fan of water, so I will satiate myself. You stay hydrated too, man. ** Bill, If God existed, pneumatic tubes would be everywhere. Two weeks, enough time to kill the lag temporarily, good. Happy you liked the Clementi, of course. Do they celebrate the Western New Years there? ** Okay. Please peruse the products and backstories of the lovely venture tragickal today, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
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