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‘“She Knows Who She Is,” read the tagline of the first issue of THING magazine. It was November 1989, two months after ACT UP movement members had chained themselves inside the New York Stock Exchange to protest the inflated pricing of the AIDS medication, AZT, when writer and DJ Robert T. Ford—alongside Trent Adkins and Lawrence Warren— published the inaugural edition. Featuring quippy columns, editorial features, and fiction, the aim of THING was simple yet revolutionary: to document LGBTQ+ and nightlife culture in Chicago.
‘Two years earlier, Ford had aspired to embrace an emergent intersectional counterculture with his 1987 magazine project Think Ink as the turbulent second half of the 20th century accelerated from the Black Power and Black Arts Movements, producing a broader chosen community bonded by the excesses of an integrationist post-soul aesthetic. Developed at the end of a second Great Migration of African Americans from Southeastern rural states to Northern industrial cities like Chicago—and the accompanying “white flight” to the suburbs—Think Ink and THING were a means of establishing roots for African Americans living in these newly individualist urban environments that offered more access to creative culture. Common terminology and cultural slang would be defined and contextualized in both Think Ink and THING by Trent Adkins, in a column called the “Tee Glossary,” which archived the language of Chicago nightlife in conjunction with need-to-know countercultural figures in music, fashion, and art.
‘Throughout Think Ink’s run, Ford drew from his job at Rose Records, featuring artists from the house music scene with “best of” lists, reviews, and a music column edited by Andre Halmon called “Real Estate.” THING’s second issue, Whose House Is It Anyway? surveyed the rise of house music from queer underground Chicago and New York club spaces and led with a cover image of Little Richard, alluding to the singer as being an early Black, queer music industry icon.
‘In his article, “Acid Soup,” Chris Nazuka, of the acid house trio Symbols and Instruments, reminisced about his first time tripping on LSD while dancing at Muzic Box, noting, “This music is only about the intoxication, the trip is the destination.” In another article, THING interviewed the deep house DJ Riley Evans about the Chicago nightlife scene and his complex infusion of gospel and classical music tropes into house. “Music shouldn’t just be the same thing over and over and not really say much of anything; it should take the person somewhere,” Evans declared, recounting his personal fascination with longform songs like “Love in C Minor” by Cerrone, a 15-minute disco suite with a salacious voiceover intro depicting a group of friends making eyes with a man across a bar. As many dance musicians and friends of Evans fell victim to the AIDS epidemic, he described feeling a heightened sense of community amongst all of the loss. Terry Martin, a frequent contributor to THING, started Crossfade, a music magazine at the intersection between music and gay culture, in 1992, and asked Ford to co-publish it. “Long before it was labeled, house music began to evolve to meet the demands being made on dance floors in Chicago,” Martin wrote about “Chicago’s House History” in Crossfade’s November issue. “So, just to set the record ‘straight,’ it was from the cradle of the Black urban gay experience that house music was born.”’ — DeForrest Brown, Jr.
House of Thing
Primary Information @ Instagram
THING, the revolutionary magazine that chronicled the birth of Chicago’s queer, Black club culture
THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF THING
Buy ‘THING’
Robert Ford, Trent Adkins, Lawrence Warren, ed. THING
Primary Information
‘Started in 1989 by designer and writer Robert Ford, THING magazine was the voice of the Queer Black music and art scene in the early 1990s. Ford and his editors were part of the burgeoning House music scene, which originated in Chicago’s Queer underground, and some of the top DJs and musicians from that time were featured in the magazine, including Frankie Knuckles, Gemini, Larry Heard, Rupaul, and Deee-Lite. THING published ten issues from 1989-1993, before it was cut short by Ford’s death from AIDS-related illness. All ten issues of THING are collected and published here for the first time.
‘As House music thrived, THING captured the multidisciplinary nature of the scene, opening its pages to a wide range of subjects: poetry and gossip, fiction and art, interviews and polemics. The HIV/AIDS crisis loomed large in its contents, particularly in the personal reflections and vital treatment resources that it published. An essay by poet Essex Hemphill was published alongside the gossip columnist Michael Musto and Rupaul dished wisdom alongside a diary from the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. Joan Jett Blakk’s revolutionary presidential campaign is contained in these pages, as are some of the most underground, influential literary voices of the time, such as Dennis Cooper, Vaginal Davis, Gary Indiana, Marlon Riggs, David Wojnarowicz, and even David Sedaris.
‘THING was very much in dialogue with the club kids in New York and other Queer publishing ventures, but in many ways, it fostered an entirely unique perspective—one with more serious ambitions. In a moment when the gay community was besieged by the HIV/AIDS crisis and a wantonly cruel government, the influence and significance of this cheaply-produced newsprint magazine vastly exceeded its humble means, presenting a beautiful portrait of the ball and club culture that existed in Chicago with deep intellectual reflections. THING was a publication by and for its community and understood the fleetingness of its moment. To reencounter this work today, is to reinstate the Black voices who were so central to the history of HIV/AIDS activism and Queer and club culture, but which were often sidelined by white Queer discourse. In many ways, THING offered a blueprint for the fundamental role a magazine plays in bringing together a community, its tagline summing up the bold stakes of this important venture: “She Knows Who She Is.”
‘The magazine included contributions from Trent D. Adkins, Joey Arias, Aaron Avant Garde, Ed Bailey, Freddie Bain, Basscut, Belasco, Joan Jett Blakk, Simone Bouyer, Lady Bunny, Bunny & Pussy, Derrick Carter, Fire Chick, Chicklet, Stephanie Coleman, Bill Coleman, Lee Collins, Gregory Conerly, Mark Contratto, Dennis Cooper, Dorian Corey, Ed Crosby, The Darva, Vaginal Davis, Deee-Lite, Tor Dettwiler, Riley Evans, Evil, The Fabulous Pop Tarts, Mark Farina, Larry Flick, Robert Ford, Scott Free, David Gandy, Gemini, Gabriel Gomez, Roy Gonsalves, Chuck Gonzales, Tony Greene, André Halmon, Lyle Ashton Harris, Larry Heard, Essex Hemphill, Kathryn Hixson, Sterling Houston, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Gary Indiana, Candy J, Jamoo, Jazzmun, Gant Johnson, Owen Keehnen, Lady Miss Kier, Spencer Kincy, Iris Kit, Erin Krystle, Steve LaFreniere, Larvetta Larvon, Marc Loveless, Lypsinka, Malone, Marjorie Marginal, Terry A. Martin, Rodney McCoy Jr., Alan Miller, Bobby Miller, Michael Musto, Ultra Naté, Willi Ninja, Scott “Spunk” O’Hara, DeAundra Peek, Earl Pleasure, Marlon Riggs, Robert Rodi, Todd Roulette, RuPaul, Chantay Savage, David Sedaris, Rosser Shymanski, Larry Tee, Voice Farm, Lawrence D. Warren, Martha Wash, LeRoy Whitfield, Stephen Winter, David Wojnarowicz, and Hector Xtravaganza.’
Excerpts
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Can you introduce yourself, in a way that you would choose?
For sure! I’m 22-year-old girl from Laveen, Arizona with a life-long love of police procedurals, Roddy Piper, and describing myself with lists.
Why are you a poet/writer/artist?
I love writing, and I’m also deeply untalented at anything else. My whole life has been me running from writing even though people kept telling me to write, because school tells you it’s some antiquated profession for, like, syphilitic, British noblemen and 50s well-to-do-alcoholic types. In college, once I decided the final frontier, astronomy, was absolutely not for me, I really began to focus on my writing. A calling is a calling. Me + writing, truly a match made in a Calvinist, pre-destined, ran-from heaven.
Let’s talk a little bit about the role of poetics and creative community in social and political activism, so present in our daily lives as we face the often sobering, sometimes dangerous realities of the Capitalocene. How does your process, practice, or work otherwise interface with these conditions? I’d be curious to hear some of your thoughts on the challenges we face in speaking and publishing across lines of race, age, ability, class, privilege, social/cultural background, gender, sexuality (and other identifiers) within the community as well as creating and maintaining safe spaces, vs. the dangers of remaining and producing in isolated “silos” and/or disciplinary and/or institutional bounds?
It’s hard, because mainstream publishers aren’t going to take the chance on minority voices, often for fear of their pocketbooks getting lightened, but at the same time progress is confrontation. If only people like myself read my book, I’ve affirmed their beliefs and their sense of community but I’ve made no real progress. And as someone who’s grown up in Arizona, which has a population of, like, 4 other Black people, I know how that sense of community and belonging is important to the writing process, or even just existing sanely. Progress isn’t only forward motion.
You need like-minded voices to sort of give you the push to put your work and yourself out there, into the hands of people that would otherwise not be into your work. But community is not everything. Way back when, my family was a part of Black Wall Street, which was a small community in Tulsa, OK where Black people started businesses and commerce amongst themselves. They bothered no one, they needed no one, but in 1921 a race riot decimates the community. Those that lived, fled. Even in isolation, it’s too much for those that wish you ill based on constructs out of your control to let you live. To live and thrive is a direct counterargument to supremacy, and those who believe in that can’t handle a challenge. Community is comforting, but as long as hate’s hanging around outside, you’re never safe. The push against sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, everything else needs to be constant, because the second we let up, we’ll be burned to the ground.
sasha hawkings @ goodreads
[DE-CON-STRUC] BATESIAN PREY OF THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST
DREAM IN FORM AND FUNCTION
Buy ‘For disobeying’
Calamari Press
sasha hawkins For disobeying
Calamari Press
‘For disobeying is a metafictive take on the power dynamics of sexuality and the roles we as humans are expected to play, the directives we’re expected to obey, in seeking approval. By focusing a candid yet critical lens on Marlon Brando and other notable men, the author flips the script on gender, age, race, inheritance, and societal status, luridly exposing the mechanisms by which trauma and mental illness destroy and reinvent the concept of self. By inhabiting Brando’s body, the author replicates the dysphoria of abuse, cathartically acting out not only through the perspective of a lover and idol, but a father figure, a person of status, someone that has proudly given you a chance at a life, but at the same time resentful of the parts of themselves they see in you that they incestuously want back. We compassionately experience both sides of the sexual violence—recepient/victim and giver/aggressor—and through this bipolar method-acting we can cope and understand the bodies/roles given to us at birth, bodies that seek approval from figures other than their own.’ — Calamari
‘Whatever I say about For disobeying will fall short of its scope, its genius, its arrested particulars. Sasha Hawkins is an unusual writer in every imaginable respect: form, style, voice, approach, subject, and the sheer force of her imagination. This full-length debut is a kind of counterhistory to classic film, a phenomenology of cinematic speech, and the voices it summons are uncannily alive, ferociously tender, searing in every shadowy rendering that Hawkins unveils under her unflinching eye. Sex, tears, laughter, madness, regret, and ecstasy—it’s all here in a perfected ventriloquy of excess.’ — Joshua Marie Wilkinson
‘For Disobeying is somehow completely original yet literarily aced to bits and very, very exciting.’ — Dennis Cooper
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‘I’ve been trying to work out how to write about how I wrote my recent book that just came out. I’m not totally sure I know and I’m comfortable with that. I’m almost sure that I don’t know. I gave up trying to have a rationale for writing a long time ago. I realised that I don’t need to have one – actually, I usually feel like I actively shouldn’t have one.
‘I’ve always written. I can’t remember a time since I was able to write that I didn’t write or at least have the idea of writing in my head practically all of the time. There was a big gap after university, when I hated the idea of writing so much and had lost all love for it that I felt like I would never write again – but even within that – writing was in its absence, such a huge part of my thinking.
‘When I’m asked why I write or where any of it comes from, I never can give an answer that seems to please. The question itself seems to ask for a certain type of answer – I’m not sure what type of answer exactly – but when I say, “I don’t know”, it doesn’t feel like its answering sufficiently, even though it’s the most accurate.
‘I imagine two scenarios when I think about the process of writing. One is where I’m entering a fog. A fog has managed to form and engulf the entirety of a room. I walk into it – everything is obscured. I put my hands out to feel my way through. My fingers brush against something. I stop and raise my arms again, opening my palms and relaxing my fingers. I touch whatever it is that I’ve found. The fog is so intense that I’ve given up on seeing or trying to work out what’s in here. My hands move, rest against the bends and turns of the thing. I’m feeling the shape in the dark, trying to figure out what it’s meant to be, trying to work out what’s hidden inside this heavy fog. Trying to work out what my novel is and just letting myself realise it bit by bit, going over it with my hands until the shape becomes clearer.
‘The second scenario is that I somehow create a pile of mud. I have to start scraping the mud with my hands, throwing off wet chunks until I start to feel a more solid structure. I scrub and peel and pick at it with my fingers and nails until I’ve revealed the sculpture that was hidden in the mound of mud.
‘Neither of those are entirely accurate but I hope they at least gave some idea of the state of things. To reiterate again, when it comes to why I write – I just do not know.’ — Thomas Moore
In Conversation with Thomas Moore
All The Boys I Loved Would Leave…All These Boys Are Dead
INTERVIEW WITH THOMAS MOORE – ELIZABETH VICTORIA ALDRICH
“I want these pages to fall apart in your hands.”
Buy I RUINED YOUR LIFE
Thomas Moore I RUINED YOUR LIFE
Kiddiepunk Press
‘A series of haunted and tragic events are pieced back together in Thomas Moore’s first book of poems in 7 years. Told in shattered, three-lined verses, “I RUINED YOUR LIFE” explores guilt, mourning, regret and blame with a searingly precise economy of language.’ — Kiddiepunk
Excerpts
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Christopher Zeischegg & Thomas Moore in Conversation
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‘The origin of the ‘Kurt Cobain was trans’ rumour is unclear. There is a post on the r/Nirvana reddit thread from six years earlier by a member called ‘PositiveStonedCreep’ which attempts to find references to gender dysphoria in the 1993 album In Utero. While most people on twitter attach photos or videos of Kurt Cobain wearing women’s clothing during interviews and performances, ‘Kurt Cobain’s Transgender Ideas from In Utero’ performs a close reading of song lyrics and vocal arrangements to make its case.
‘Speaking in 2002 of the ‘archival turn’ in the humanities, visual resources documentarian Cheryl Simon identified ‘the emergence of an evidentiary aesthetic in the information age’. This line was subsequently quoted by Susan Stryker and Paisley Currah in their ‘General Editors’ Introduction’ to the November 2015 special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly (‘Archives and Archiving’). Though they do not explicitly say it, visual proof appears as one of the central gatekeepers of the transgender archive.
‘But how do we actually know that someone is trans? Without medical transition, we don’t look or sound different from anyone else. Perhaps we can say that we read it in the ‘grammar’ of the person. Which is maybe a more academic way of saying, it’s just vibes.
‘In the blog post ‘Is a Vibe the Same Thing as a Style?’, philosopher and music scholar Robin James argues that vibes are ‘alignments’ or ‘orientations’ that amplify and quieten the perceptual contents of different objects. This definition can be contrasted to ideas of ‘style’ which emerged in the early twentieth century. The art historian Heinrich Wölflinn wrote of style as an expression of the inherent character of an age or a person, a quality which can be isolated and deciphered through careful formal analysis. A vibe, however, has no such essentialist quality. It is not even a quality, but a method of perception dressed up as description. James approaches the current manifestation of ‘vibe’ as an overspill of Web 2.0 into the ‘real world’: ‘vibes are vernacular versions of the methods algorithms use to perceive the world. Vibes are how we perceive ourselves the way algorithms perceive us.’
‘Data analysis replaces formal analysis. Multiple inputs are swept and amalgamated, as the machine works through a process of aggregation. This cloud of information is subjectively selected, with the identifier of the vibe becoming the main determinant of its content. A vibe is a feeling an object has to us. If vibes are the result of a real-world algorithm, then instead of a mathematical equation, our subjectivity becomes the filter.
‘As with most trending internet-speak, the word vibe originates in Black music and youth culture. As Twitter user and sound studies doctoral student @AmbreLynae put it in a tweet from August 2021: ‘When Black people use the word “vibe” we usually talkin bout kickin back with our friends in a cool place. When [whites] use the word “vibe” they finna gentrify a community.’’ — Francis Whorrall-Campbell
Francis Whorrall-Campbell @ instagram
Francis Whorrall-Campbell @ Xxijra Hii
FW-C @ linktr.ee
A Fragment on Kurt Cobain’s Transgender Ideas from ‘In Utero’
Buy THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT HAVE BEEN DOWNLOADED
Francis Whorrall-Campbell THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT HAVE BEEN DOWNLOADED
Good Press
‘Francis Whorrall-Campbell’s THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT HAVE BEEN DOWNLOADED is a zine consisting of the first three instalments of a serialised novella-in-progress. Reprinted with a new addition, the zine presents the story so far, introducing us to the two protagonists – a trans influencer living in the year 2034, and a fictionalised version of Kurt Cobain in 1994 – as the pair travel in opposite directions across the USA, looking for the source the paranormal phenomena disrupting their lives. While Kurt searches for the origin of his ‘dysphoria’ in a sinkhole in Barbados (codenamed the ‘metabolic rift’), Edie is trying to find a cure for ‘twink death’: a real and fatal disease afflicting the cis gays and transmasculine population. These parallel narratives are interwoven with short non-fiction essays which provide context and further explanation for the book’s themes.’ — Good Press
Excerpts
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Trickster Figures: Sculpture and the Body
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‘In her essay “Language and Madness,” the Swedish poet Aase Berg probes a shift in language over time in how it has become less creative and more descriptive over the course of human history, eventually tongue-shrugging: “It’s too bad language had to be transformed into a market-economy power apparatus for pleasure-opposed morons.”
‘As much as we might hope a poet, of all professional roles, would be the natural torch bearer to blaze a trail above such sublunary, earthly desires of success within a myopic economy of USD, with the whirligig of prizes and fellowships and clans and collectives and residencies paid for in full, we typically are not as simon-pure as we might act. Not most of us anyway. “The whole literary scene is a pigpen, especially today.”
‘So says Artaud in “All Writing Is Garbage.” But it’s Paul Cunningham who has achieved in his poetry what Artaud theorized in his Theater of Cruelty, and “recover[ed] the notion of a kind of unique language half-way between gesture and thought.” The capitalist logic we live by doesn’t allow for such artistic poise: I’ve gotta get mine, you’ve gotta get yours, porcine teeth out. To sonically sound off on Berg, we’re all oink—no boink. The problem here, besides the blood everywhere, is that this seeps into the poetics of far too many of us as practitioners (I include myself in this slop, by the way): what sells? What’s hot right now? What can get me higher?
‘Now Artaud’s way of saying it—to “recover the notion”— sounds very controlled and stringent, but the reality is more Cunninghammy than that. As he says it: “My hen coordinates gone awry.” The Surrealists, the Dadaists, the Futurists even, part of their program was to challenge and overturn logic, to fashion, as Paul Eluard puts it, “the poem… [into] a debacle of the intellect.” In Cunningham we certainly have a genuine swash debacle-r, which I mean in the archaic sense to flamboyantly swagger about or wield a sword. He’s cutting prices. He’s slashing into the deal of the century at a moment of literary decadence right around the century-mark of the Surrealists, and yeah, “the violent birds fly out when nu kultur opens its mouth,” as Cunningham writes it.’ — Henry Goldkamp
Paul Cunningham Site
Paul Cunningham @ Instagram
Paul Cunningham @ goodreads
Vi Khi Nao interviews Paul Cunningham
Buy ‘Sociocide at the 24/7’
Paul Cunningham Sociocide at the 24/7
New Michigan Press
‘Ferocious and unsparing, Paul Cunningham’s incomparable poetry is a carnivalesque, nightmare voyage through the dark wasteland that is twenty-first century America.’ — Jonathan Crary
‘In your fantasy, am I duck or dog? The world is ending, but not as fast as one might hope, so let’s kill time at the 7/11 forever. Let’s kill all the time. You bring your bloodlust and your Warhol wig, I’ll bring my copy of Paul Cunningham’s Sociocide at the 24/7, plus the ant-farm I’ve wired to my fear receptors. Here, hold this riveting glittery reliquary of our glitchy lateness, slick w/ambivalence. Btw I drank your smoothie of Gila monster venom, microplastics & adaptogens, so cold and so sweet.’ — Joyelle McSweeney
‘If our post-internet era is in a semiotic labyrinth, Sociocide at the 24/7 is like bringing a disco ball into a mirror maze. Fast, fun, and having its way entirely with the language of our culture: this is my kind of poetics. I really loved this book.’ — Ben Fama
‘Honestly, Paul Cunningham’s sociocidal masterpiece fulfilled my dream of being close to Mary Magdalene’s foot bone. That said, there is something here for everyone: skulls, encryption, landlord cemeteries, CYAO for pseudo-variants! Theologians, this book contains the only soundscape involving the BABE trinity. Pastors, you will witness the resurrection of figments from their encoffinated forms. Rentiers, your horrible landlords are accurately depicted and de-fanged in parentheses. Algorithms and necro-romantics will swoon for the situational hyperpigmentation. I felt simultaneously implicated and liberated by the presence of big data bodies in this sonically-extravagant simulation that slams wellness culture while replicating the hum of socially-mediated existence. We are not well! Long live poetry and Sociocode at the 24/7!”’ — Alina Stefanescu
Excerpts
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Creative Writing Series ft. Paul Cunningham
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p.s. Hey. Heads up that tomorrow I’m going to be in a lab from early morning to evening doing the final color correction on ‘Room Temperature’, so the blog will be taking a one-day vacation. It and I will be back as usual on Saturday. ** _Black_Acrylic, Shelley Duvall was the ultimate a lot of things. Okay, ‘Peep Show’, imperative, thanks. Oh, the ‘Succession’ dude, yeah, TV royalty indeed, it seems. ** Misanthrope, Anything promising or more from the big manager? ** Steeqhen, Well, then I’ve at least seen a gif of ‘Sims’ then. Virgin no longer. Ace on the narratology exam outcome. Exeter … I assume there’s a university there or something? I know the name, and I’m thinking that might be why? If the consulate thing doesn’t work out, I’m in deep shit, so, yes, hopefully and thank you. ** jay, Hi. So much love for ‘Peep Show’ that I’m starting to feel rebellious, haha. Hm, maybe that Jin guy from BTS if his non-whiteness doesn’t disqualify him? I guess Shawn Mendes is more of a twunk? You’re probably right. I used to look a tumblr porn blogs, but I fell out of the habit and wondered if they might be an historic thing. Enjoy the work or post-work if you’re at that phase. ** James, Hi. I like the idea or fantasy that their fear decontextualises them and they become just scared somebodies, but I’m odd. 2 and 3/4 hours of morning left here, so far standard fare. Well, all of Blur are characters in ‘Guide’, but it’s true that one gets the lion’s share of attention. Silverchair makes a cameo too. I didn’t realise that writing smut qualifies as celebrating Kinktober. I thought you had to spend it in a sling or something. Good to know. Maybe you’re one of those people who gets longed for rather than longs. A friend of mine used to make a distinction between those get painted and those who paint. No, Sivan’s ex was with him while he was already super famous. You have two days to pack on more excitement, and I have two days to stare at my film, and I will compare notes with you imminently. ** Poecilia, Hi there. Oh, my goodness, thank you about ‘Frisk’. I’m tongue-tied, but my facial muscles are in the upright position. ** Jack Skelley, YeeeeEEEEEp!!!! ** Steve, God, Steve, that’s so stressful. I hope their doctor will … do whatever he can. So sorry you have to deal with that. ‘Palantir’s Scrying Mirror’ is a good name. I’m getting Incredible String Band vibes. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Aw, thanks, they’re kind of fun to make. I don’t know Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows (D.R.U.G.S.), and I’ll hit them up first. Thanks! Pavement is in my top five all time favorite bands, I think. And Elias is one my all-time favorite singers or at least he was until he started wanting to be Nick Cave. That’s funny, I had to search for love’s lyrics of yesterday, and now I don’t know if he was quoting Wanda Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Les Deuxluxes, Mike Ness, or SQÜRL. I’m guessing SQÜRL? Instead of breaking up (Don’t throw our love away), Let’s do some kissing and making up (Don’t throw our love away), G. ** HaRpEr, Me neither. I think I only just kind of grimace. Okay, pointless, how university-like. I think I read Iris Murdoch, but I can’t remember what it was like. How did the one-on-one with your cool prof go? Riddles … in what sense? Like traditional riddles? You can’t just say whatever experimentation you’re doing is a riddle? Because it probably is, no? Weill’s amazing. ‘Mahagonny’ is amazing. I watched an interesting doc about Brel a while back. He’s great. Speaking of songs made contemporarily famous by Marc Almond, ‘What Makes a Man a Man’ is so great too. And I was so surprised that it was written by Charles Aznavour. I would never have imagined him making a song like that. Punch and Judy was, and maybe still be, famous in the US. When I was kid, my parents banned me from watching them because it was so dark and violent. ** Bill, Hey. Definitely worth a gander: Klahr. You’re almost off again? Me too, but not for about a week. Did the trailer work out to your satisfaction? ** Nicholas., Hi. Well, you know how Milk Duds can get wedged into your molars. That happened, and when I pried it out, it took part of my tooth with it. I assume the tooth was already cracked or something. Junior Mints have that same strangely delicious fake mint taste as Girl Scout Cookies do, if you’ve ever had their mint brand. Favorite season … I would say all of them except summer. I hate summer, or rather I hate hot weather. Maybe fall just because it’s the one that saves me from the summer. Yours? Wow rocks. Hard to beat wow. ** Uday, Well, there they are. I hope your today makes your yesterday feel like it happened a million years ago. ** Okay. Today I present, yes, 5 books I read lately that I liked a whole lot and would like to suggest you might like, and maybe even a whole lot, too. You have two days to look them over, and I will see you back here on Saturday.
Now available in North America 
Dennis, Yes, actually! Everything’s crossed. For now, we’re going to continue with our current plan of one day a month. He was like, wait, you’re not even fed employees, are you? He’s going to try and work it out. Main thing is optics: all the fed employees going back but we don’t…will they be like WTF? He’s retiring in June, so he’s kinda in that don’t give a fuck attitude, and he thinks the return to office thing is ridiculous.
On another note, I’m seriously looking into starting a small indie press. I think I can do it. I’ve got some others who are interested in going into it with me as well as a tiny stable of authors I can tap for our first publications. I need to get some more info and explore it more.
Ah, good to see Thomas and Paul up there. Another great 5 books, Big D!
Hey Dennis,
Nice collection to add to my ever growing reading list, especially that collection of THING.
Uhm I think there’s a university in Exeter, considering it’s the where the Student Publication Association awards are happening. My EiC told me she mightnt be able to go, so either I’ll go by myself or potentially bring someone else with me? I just really want to go now that the idea has been implanted into my brain!!
The magazine launch went well, I’m really happy with the finished product, and I was somewhat surprised with the fact that what I wrote was actually really good! I was a bit gagged by my own writing when reading out a bit for my friends.
Since I only have one magazine issue left before college is over and I won’t have a dedicated publication I know will have my own work, I think I finally need to get to work on my own magazine/publication, which will basically be me using my disability government money to fund the printing, collecting art and writing from every creative I know in Cork, and then using my free transport to travel around the country distributing it; the first theme name will be some pun around corks, popping corks, breaking out the cork, something like that.
Also here is the link to my article from Etc Magazine!!!
https://issuu.com/ucc_societies/docs/etc_issue_3/36
Hi!!
Fingers crossed for the lab work tomorrow!
What an exquisite collection today – all five of these books drew me in. I’m currently reading “You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood” by Eric LaRocca. While I really like its concept (the entire book is presented as a collection of various writings by a character, effectively “removing” the actual author), the execution doesn’t quite live up to the idea. At least in my opinion.
I haven’t been listening to Elias’ current work much. VÅR has been my favorite project of his so far.
Oh shit, love didn’t realize there were so many versions of “Funnel of Love”! He was actually quoting Wanda Jackson, but now I’ll have to listen to the others – or at least the SQÜRL version!
The Supremes? Vast scarlet leisure, Immense blood pressure, Scatterbrained love lecture, Come here and be gorgeous for me now, Od.
Everything listed here today seems great! I did spring for Thomas Moore’s book of haiku but others will be added to my list of prospective purchases. THING looks like being an essential historical Chicago House document for sure. I began the morning by listening to a Ron Hardy DJ set from the Music Box so maybe that is a sign?
Next week I will be getting a tooth extracted, what a drag. Despite eating too many sweets, I only have 1 filling to date. Not looking forward to any lecture about my sugar intake,
… but I will just have to put up with it. Next Thursday is the day of my dental reckoning.
Hoohoo, books, joy. The American healthcare industry is so fucked, I think. Dancing whilst on hallucinogens has got to be, look, feel, crazy. Fuck AIDS. House music’s great though. Zines are things I’m definitely not knowledgeable enough about. Oh, look at that, you crop up. I’m super fond of ball culture. Seeing RuPaul in black and white is quite amusing. Thing covers a queer world I’ve never really gotten to see firsthand. Hawkins – ‘a metafictive take on the power dynamics of sexuality’ – oh, yes. I’m such a sucker for like, any form fun at all. ‘I’ve made myself an animal again, a luxury to be stroked, in your bed, begging’ – phew, hawwwt. I feel a vague affinity for ALBERT LIZARD, having been told I look vaguely reptilian. So many writers think up so many metaphors to describe what writing’s like for them. Kiddiepunk’s website never seems to work for me, ach. Whorrall-Campbell’s THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT HAVE BEEN DOWNLOADED sticks the most out to me on this post, I immediately started to genuinely consider purchasing it. Taco has it for a fiver. That’s a very strong maybe. Joyelle McSweeney can do a fun review. ‘big gulp delinquent’ reminds me of a meme. Thanks for the recs D-Dawg, and best of luck with the colour correction.
Helllloooooo. For me, what decontextualised the people in last post’s GIFs was their existing in GIF form, having one specific emotional moment of theirs cut out just to indicate their fear, as opposed to also showing *what* they were scared of and their existing in unafraid states. GIFs are *usually* short snippets, so there’s not really enough room or time for much context, but what’s funny is when you bump into a GIF that is very, very long. On a laptop I used to have, I think, the entirety of the first Shrek film in GIF form. I think most round these parts are odd in varying ways, so we can all be odd together, and chums and such.
My morning has looong passed. 6:16pm right now. Hope yours was solid, or at least fluid in a good way. Mine was a little different to my usual Thursdays – I think I’ve decided to not bother with waking up before 7am anymore. So I had an extra half hour in bed, or so.
Rightyoh, then. Charmless Man by Blur came on as I got home. I think I listened to it this morning, too. A band I like. I’ll see how they show up once I get round to Guide. Silverchair are a new name to me.
Kinktober to me has only ever meant writing smutty fanfiction. A sweet summer child am I, pah. Sex slings are so funny to me. Like, swings are fun, sex is apparently fun, so, why not mesh the two, boom, added fun. But I can’t help but think they’re kind of impractical. But I’ve no experience, so, whatever.
Oof, embarrassing, if I’m/I’ve ever (been) longed for. For me, because I don’t quite see what’s long-able-for about me, and for the longer, for not having better taste. I’ve had like, two or three experiences of long-term desire for another, and they’ve just, like, taken it out of me and not been worth it, so, longing, meh, can’t be arsed. But I’m only 17 so obvs I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff yet to feel. I’ve written about/for guys I’ve known but I doubt I’ve had that reciprocated, to my knowledge. Save for that one girl in primary school who told me she wanted to write gay ‘fan’fiction about me and another boy in my year.
Bagging a celebrity as a partner, for however long, is a notable feat. Just have no idea how it’d work. I feel like it’s probably easier than I think.
I’ll see what the next couple of days have in store for me, and fingers crossed your film works the way you want it to. Hyyyyyyped for the Friday walk tomorrow. Today, for a Thursday, was pretty fucking amazing! I woke up not too tired, and the weather’s been beautiful, perfect temperature, and my friend took me out for a snack run at lunch, *AND* I got to pet the college cat, and the day was made more bearable thanks to a Dr. Pepper and jam-filled doughnut. Eating jam-filled doughnuts having finished Try made me think of rimming, like, tonguing a jammy hole, ew, teehee. Anyway, geography – I learnt a classmate got an offer from Durham too, so that’s at least 1 person I might know at uni, and another guy on my table said some odd things to me: ‘You look more submissive when you’re sitting down,’ ‘you have the right hair to be a femboy,’ and ‘you strike me as secretly dominant.’ Like, man, what. Why did he tell me these things. Why and how did he say this to my face. It was funny and embarrassing for me, as was being asked ‘what my type is,’ which always makes me uncomfortable. Still, always interested to hear how others perceive me. Got some fun doodles done in that class. Finished the LaRocca, really good. OH, and last night I (started to write?) wrote the first piece of new fiction in quite some time! I’m not sure just where that’ll go. But I’m kind of chuffed to at least get something out. Aaaanyway, I feel pretty damn good, I’m so looking forward to the weekend. The blog’ll be missed, but best with the film. Tschuss!
Thank you Dennis!!! Such a lovely surprise to see this today. Much appreciated and as always you are the best, my friend. Honoured!
Cool to see Peep Show mentioned on here too.
Oh my, what a lineup today. I still have my old issues of Thing! Those were the days in Chicago. Congrats on the new book, Thomas.
The trailer is almost done. I will stop tweaking it obsessively tomorrow.
Just got back from the new Bong. Entertaining enough, but nowhere near Parasite or Snowpiercer.
Bill
Errol Morris’ CHAOS premieres on Netflix today, so it should be available on sites like soap2day too.
I had a good Bandcamp Friday haul: The Tubs’ COTTON CROWN, Philip Golub’s LOOP 7, Violeta Garcia’s IN/OUT and a Sublime Frequencies compilation of Egyptian music from 1968-1975.
Did you and Zac finish the color correction?
I’m still waiting to get in touch with my parents’ doctor’s office. They have new corporate ownership that makes it as hard as possible to speak to a real person on the phone. That’s my priority today, though I plan to see MICKEY 17 or I’M STILL HERE this evening. It’s a strange feeling to realize I can no longer easily get in touch with my dad, and when I do, he usually makes little sense. I spoke to him daily for a long while. I feel much lonelier now, as though I were going through grief before my parents’ actual deaths.
Hi, best of luck with the colour correction – or well done, if it’s finished. Great to see more Thomas Moore, I’ve only read his prose works, so the poetry (assuming haiku is poetry) should be interesting to read.
I wonder about Jimin from BTS, I think the white aspect of twink has sort of fallen by the wayside (at least from the way my friends who like twinks talk), in the same way “no fats no fems” lost the “no asians” part – thank god. I think the weird thing about the definition of “twink” is how varied people’s perceptions are – some people are total purists, it has to be 0 body fat hairless white teenagers, but I’ve seen people calling some very otter-ish guys in their 40s twinks. Shawn Mendes is probably a twink – although I don’t know if he’s gay, or what his body hair situation is.
Anyway, all going great here. I’m super lucky, a church near me is doing a performance of J.S. Bach’s Concerto BWV 1043, which is one of my personal favourite pieces of music, so that should be exciting. Other than that, all lovely here. Hope your weekend gets off to a great start, cya!
Hey jay just wanted to say by the way, previous thread conversation about bringing up personal upsetting events in odd ways being more, “I’m going to present this thing that happened to me in really nasty terms that makes it seem like it doesn’t bother me, but as a way of getting permission to be a bit more fucked up over it”—is exactly right on. It’s good to know in your case guys can and do talk to each other (put in the same room, the people I mentioned just…don’t talk as freely with each other as they randomly did with me, for all I would know anyway. I don’t know if it meant that much more that I hear them out, than their gambit in common did keep working on me.)
BWV 1043’s a bop! My fave’s still the badinerie in BWV 1067, or at least it gets stuck in my head on loop at random times and doesn’t end for days. Put that way I don’t know if that’s my favorite or if it’s a compulsion I learned to live with. Best wishes to your concert enjoyment!
Good to know there are other Bach fans here. I’ve been meaning to do a guest post about harpsichordist Scott Ross for a while. His Bach complete keyboard works blows Glenn Gould out of the water, in my humble opinion.
Hi Dennis!
I survived the birthday chaos. Recovered yesterday.
Having a pool table in your bedroom is insane haha I’m still trying to picture what that would look like. My friends and I do a lot of pool playing, I’m not that great but also not the worst player . Still trying to figure it all out. I work at a bakery. I have never wanted to work at a bakery or had a passion for baking but I needed a job over a year ago and well here I am still. Its really easy and I don’t have to deal with customers so its not too bad. I would rather be doing something else tho, but what that is… I am not sure. I started writing two things, both of them not being the story I have in my head but hopefully these things will help me prepare. First one is about my ex boyfriend I moved out to California with , sort of a letter . Everything kinda exploded and ended horribly and communication was cut off very quickly so its been hard for me to process it. Of course I start writing it and had the worst dream I’ve had in awhile about him this morning. I was wondering if that ever happens to you… The second thing I started writing about was this image that comes to mind when I am really upset sometimes, which is a clear plastic tube coming out from my left wrist taking my blood out . I don’t know what it means or where the idea came from or what I want the effect of it to do to me but….. yeah. Trying to answer those questions as I work it out. The longer story I want to write is going to be about this voyeur in Buena Vista Park ( the cruising park) who finds this guy tied to a tree and is debating on saving him by taking him down , or keeping him up visiting him everyday and getting his rocks off. Both solutions are selfish . ( he thinks if he saves him he will fall in love with him ) Other things happen to the guy tied up to the tree, tourists take pictures of him because they think this is normal sf faggot behavior and coyotes come and nibble on him ,, whatever . The main guy meets another voyeur in the same predicament, not knowing whether they should take him down or not and they both agree they should keep him up there. The main guy goes home , sleeps , comes back in the morning to check on the tree guy and he’s gone. The other one had taken him down and is doing who knows what to him. Something something about nothing is yours and getting things taken away from you. Let me know if that sounds really dumb or not.
Still so crazy I can just type this to you . I go back to read what I say and am embarrassed at my excitement / subject matter and hope its not too childish or thoughtless. What would a scholarly person say to their favorite writer haha ( I am not a scholar )
Hope everything went well in the lab.
P
Hi, sorry to butt in, but if you ever type up that cruising story I’d be incredibly interested in reading it, that sounds unbelievably interesting.
:0 Thank you so much for the shout out! Ugly Man was such a big influence on how For disobeying turned out, this is, like, the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me. You’re the best!!! (Oh! And do you listen to Pulp at all? I think you’d be into them, they’re super sleazy, super grim, and super funny. “This is Hardcore” is a great place to start [the music video is rad])
Hey. Oh yeah, Marc Almond did cover both of the Brel songs I mentioned. He changed ‘queers’ to ‘queens’ in ‘Jackie’ which obviously feels trivial today because queer isn’t a slur anymore. ‘Next’ might be my favourite Brel song which has the line ‘the queer lieutenant who slapped our asses as if we were fags’, though I don’t know what that would have been in the original French.
Re: riddles. No, I didn’t mean I was having difficulty in making a general riddle in terms of form, although I am doing that, I mean I am literally writing riddles. Essentially, the book is structured as a dialogue, albeit without the traditional form of the character name followed by a colon and then the dialogue. What you have instead are two voices, both taking turns to speak, and the dominant voice goes on its spiel in one single paragraph without line breaks, until interrupted by the other voice which is kind of like a sphinx, who delivers riddles. I’m not doing traditional riddles anymore, too corny or something. More like riddles without answers. Poems, maybe. Or prompts. Anyway, a lot of ancient riddles don’t just have one answer and are supposed to be vague. If any of this sounds dumb it’s just that it’s obviously very difficult to explain one’s logic for devising something. Contextually it makes sense, I promise.
The meeting with my professor went well. Something kind of disheartening happened though. He emailed me later and abruptly told me that some of my work was ‘too transgressive’ to be handed in for the assignment and discouraged me from performing any of it at events and things that are affiliated with the university. I’m fine now, but it really made me feel like shit to hear that. Like I was being told I was a pervert. My professor is respectful and encouraging, I think he’s just worried that 1. I’d be expelled 2. he’d be fired if it was assumed that this was the kind of work he was encouraging students to make. Anyway, this might sound kind of pretentious, but I remembered Rimbaud’s seer letter to Paul Demeny where he enclosed ‘The Drunken Boat’ and Demeny told him it was the vilest most depraved thing he’d ever read, and it didn’t discourage Arthur. And I was thinking if a fifteen year old in the 1870s wasn’t ever scared into maiming his vision, then why should I? To be clear, I never doubted myself, but it made me sad for a moment and I got to thinking about why I write half the stuff I write, and how a lot of my interests are actually very innocent when it comes down to it. The ‘transgressive’ work in question was the short theatre piece I was telling you about involving a doll, and in one part I pretended to lick the doll’s crotch. I would never do anything just for shock value. What I wrote was carefully considered in terms of the implications of specific gestures and effects. It sucks that people are so afraid of their imaginations. It’s hit me recently that my university is just as puritanical as I always suspected. I’m going to come up against this kind of thing again, so I’m thankful for the trial run. The elephant in the room is that I’m telling you about this when you must have gone through this sort of thing a million times.
That long-talker + short-talker riddle dialogue format sounds promising. We live in a world where porn is ubiquitous but licking a doll’s crotch to make an artistic statement is too transgressive? Sigh.
I boo at your professor (in a spoilt-tomato-at-the-pillory way, not in the eyeholes-bedsheet-spirit-halloween way, unless a combination of the two would somehow help matters.) ‘Too transgressive’ to turn in as a writing assignment…Egads, it’s words, not powdered anthrax, it’s safely contained on a paper and the context of being fiction. Garamond font is not going to bite him.
Reminds me of an anecdote from Chuck Palahniuk about I think it was a writing workshop and he turned in this bit about a teenaged boy masturbating on an inflatable doll, it had a hole in it so the character kept on having to hurry before it deflated, and then a parent caught him at it and then everything deflated. As I recall, Palahniuk thought it was so funny but the one running the workshop said his story made all the other participants really uncomfortable—but, at least in that instance he got referred to another different writing workshop where he was a better fit.
Oops meant this in reply to HaRpEr but I buttoned wrong so my comments is not indenting.
THING and the Cunningham poetry book most interested me. THING because I’m always looking for underground magazine/newsletter inspiration and Cunningham just did it for me, which for me with poetry is always binary — it either totally does it for me or doesn’t do it for me at all.
So happy that you’re finally putting the finishing touches on Room Temperature. What was it like during and after? I’m usually super sensitive to light and color for the first few minutes after I leave a cinema or editing room. On my current project I’m screwing around with buttons and knobs to make a separate color scheme for each shot, just whatever looks good to me.
I was promoted at work. Now instead of writing cyber security software manuals I’m the boss of other people who do that. It’s better pay and less monotonous. Plus it’s now part of my job to play around with AI to figure out how our team can use it. That’s more interesting than writing “click here, click there…”
My dance obsession keeps deepening. I’m even preparing to appear on stage. I joined a choreographer’s workshop a few months ago. At first it was just a class but now she’s adding rehearsals, is inviting untrained dancers to her new project. This is a promo for her solo project that started it all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PYYwa0R5jU
Not quite sure if my other comment showed up but here is me testing to make sure before I attach something.
Im going to attach this past comment in case it didn’t send as its not showing up.
Lets hope I can send this in time, Its about…2:20 am here. Im up scrambling to finish drawing this picture for the deadline today. Im taking a break for a moment. The good news is its pretty much a straightforward job, coloring in the ink, but I know I can be impatient and impatience can really mess things up.
Ive been so busy with the new job training, all good things. I have something kind of interesting to share with you, it happened today. Today we were going through the dog report cards and Felix handed me the “G”s and the first name, im not kidding, this Labrador retriever, his name was George Miles. I thought of you for two seconds and was like huh. Im sure its a very common name, but now you now, and I suppose I do too, that there is a dog here named George Miles.
On the other hand there have been some charming dog names. There is a reoccuring client with a dog named Penny Lane for one. If I meet a dog named Clive Barker I’m gonna lose my shit. I bought a book of his artwork at a bargain store for a price so desired I hide it behind a shelf and came back t buy it.
Oh so here are some uplifting highlights. So far this year I can count two different times someone made food for me. No ones ever made food for me, I think, or at least its been a while.
A coworker gave me a mason jar of some kind of spiced pickles she canned, and I dont even eat pickles, I hate them but I’ll put them in my ramen. Oh, and then at Animal house, Felix took me home with them for our lunch break, as there was a storm warning so I couldn’t walk. He made me a potato/scrambled egg burrito and it was sooo good.
I started going to the gym every morning in hopes to bring strength and happiness so that I can start waking earlier again. Yesterday I came home agitated and frustrated about some particular thought I had, and the agitation, culminating from a week of unscathed breakdowns just blew apart. I took a very sharp instrument, and it happened, so much relief, but I was quickly horrified by what I did, because I hadn’t felt it, or I guess what I mean is it was as if it never happened. It probably should’ve been stitched although its not the first. I feel there is some risk of going to the gym when your mind can’t control the relentless strength of an unsettled body.
Will your film be previewing elsewhere besides LA? Ive been meaning to watch your older movie permanent green light. Is there a way? I hope you aren’t bothered by the things I say. Ive already admitted that I can never really tell if im being annoying. .
Present me
By the time I resend this you might already be scanning the comments so I probably won’t have time to add media I was going to send tonight. Maybe. Fingers crossed.
Quick! Can I send this in time? fingers crossed…fingers crossed…
https://youtu.be/KyF0CrLnMng?si=kV0tJIrLex5L8we5
Do you happen to recall owning one of these?
hi dennis! these all look so amazing. i’m extra excited for ‘i ruined your life’ and ‘thing’ but each book here feels like someone i’d love to know. charalampos recommended depraved indifference to me which i’ve been obsessed with and i’m reading latasha diggs’ village and also lisa robertson’s nilling for class. i hope you’re having the loveliest day!!
ciao dennis..
remember me? it’s been quite some time. im the one living in amsterdam, i wrote my thesis on “frisk” and also managed to graduate! wanted to be back on here, to say hi and to see what has been going on lately.
i also come here with a question, seems like the EU link to get “flunker” is not working. is there another way i can get the book sent to me in NL? let me know please, i really want to read it.
talk to you soon!! I have to catch up with your blog!
ps: me & my boyfriend are actually coming to paris in july, if you would still be up for that coffe!