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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hey, big D!!! Thanks about the interview. Yeah, we seem to have been in rather continual but maybe fruitful disagreement. If I can wrangle an early copy of ‘I Wished’ out of Soho Press for you, I will. Ha, that’s wild: when I was debating who to choose as my clone it was between young Lukas Haas and young Vincent Kartheiser, so that’s a sign of something. If by some miracle our clone wishes come true, let’s promise to all get together and have a cocktail party or something. Your love is hard to top. Okay, your coach love with the CV getting a little drunk and doing karaoke to Placebo’s ‘Nancy Boy’, G. ** TomK, Hi, Tom, excellent to see you, pal. Glad the posts hit your home. Exciting about the Deleuzian novel. Wow. Say more? You good? ** Damien Ark, Hey. I’ve never seen his ‘LotR’ because, I guess, yeah, I’ve heard so much crap about it. Very ultra-true about the genius of the openness of the pre-criticism exposed mind. ** David Ehrenstein, I admire Bakshi’s stuff, but I don’t love it apart from ‘The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse’, which he stewarded, and which I think is easily among the greatest things ever to have appeared on television. ** Misanthrope, Ah, I’ll try to vibe out Nicholas’s Facebook ghost. Anxious to hear how your mom’s test pans out, obviously. Colin Farrell, whatever happened to him? He was, like, a rising thing there for a while. Or maybe he did rise but just not in my sight lines. Hope your weekend was fun even including the tax stuff. ** Bill, Hi. Like I said to Mr. E., ‘The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse’ is amazing, but he didn’t actually do the animations himself, just caused it to be, I think. I interviewed Lukas Haas once for Spin Magazine around the time of ‘Johns’, and I took a lovely 3D photo him with one of those disposable 3D cameras they used to sell, but current technology prevents me from sharing it URL. ** Ian, Hi. Kanopy’s great. It makes me so wish that I had some kind of academic credentials. Everyone,If you don’t know about Kanopy, the great movies, etc. site that’s free if you’re in academia or have a library card, Ian hooks you up thusly. You can also watch ‘Permanent Green Light’ there if you haven’t. Does bookshop.org deliver to Canada? It seems like they would. If so, you can preorder ‘I Wished’ here. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey, Ben. Cool, glad you and Bakshi were a fit. I haven’t watched the Cowley doc yet due mostly to file deleting brain murder, but I hope to today. Thanks, my friend. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Thanks about the interview. 10 novels was a plan for a long time, but, honestly, when I went back and finished ‘I Wished’ after taking a four year break from working on it, I remembered how much I love writing novels, and how singular the experience is with all of intensity and frustrations and so on, and I decided that since I loved working on ‘I Wished’ so much that I’m going to leave myself open to write another novel if I get a burning idea. So, I’m not sure if I will, but I might. Thank you for asking, man. ** Brian, Bonjour, Brian! Bakshi has a real style and vision of his own, that’s for sure, and that’s enough to make his stuff valuable, I think. I’m okay. A lot of file deleting and some work here and there and a few strolls. Congrats on the first half of your vaccine. It’s getting so I hardly know anyone in the US who isn’t at least half-vaccinated now. Whereas I don’t know a single soul in France who’s been given the opportunity yet. Nice movie watching, indeed. I love ‘Funeral Parade’ and ‘In the Realm..’ I haven’t seen’Angst’. You mean the Austrian film, right? It’s now at the top of my to-see list. The only movie I watched was ‘Johnny Guitar’ because that was the assigned film this time for my bookclub Zoom meeting event with my US writer friends. It was okay. I didn’t love it. I find it really hard to watch Joan Crawford. I think her acting is really stagey and kind of ludicrous. Very best wishes to your dog for the speediest recovery. I’m looking for this week to somehow introduce a new amount of fun into my life, but I haven’t yet figure out how it will be able to do that. I hope yours ends up being like a goldrush. ** James, No, thank you, sir! Love, me. ** Okay. I’ve decided to restore a couple of old posts from back when I was first fiddling around with animated gifs and wondering if I could write fiction using them. So, there’s one. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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Whatever this is, I need. Thank you.
DC, I love your interview at Expat. I adore how you sometimes contradict yourself in interviews, such a clever way for unconventional artists to be less scrutinised by the society… I’m taking notes. I like James Nulick’s questions. I found them to be very ‘real’. I love the lines he references throughout; makes me even more impatient for I WISHED. Not long now…
Dennis, I don’t understand how this is NSFW. Just regular ol’ stuff for us, no? 😉
Thanks for that about the test results. We’ll see, and I’ll let you know if they find anything.
My friend and I skipped Voyagers and just went out to eat and then went back to her place and hung out. Fine by me. That movie looks horrible, hahaha.
Yeah re: Farrell. And he’s done some really fine acting in some movies. He’s still plugging away it seems, but I don’t know that he’s “leading man” or “superstar” material anymore. Kinda weird how that happens. Maybe it was the leaked photos of his dick? Idk. I like him and there’s a lot of him out there, but I don’t think many of the films are that great.
Read the interview with Mr. Nulick. That was…interesting.
Well, I’m one in person in the States that you know who hasn’t gotten vaccinated, not even halfway.
Hey man,
Is the secret of the marble swarm hidden in this post? That there’s this kernel of that novel that I just can’t prise open has been piquing me for an age now. I keep hoping someone is going to write an essay about it that I can believe in.
RE: The deleuzian novel. It’s a total rewrite of a completed novel that I had to scrap. (One editor even told me I shouldn’t be a writer and that I was too in love with my concepts.) It was before a mixture of testimonies, and oral histories et etc and time was completely shattered etc.
Anyway I’ve completely changed everything and now it’s a kind of a post-human noir (because noir is the only plot driven style that I really enjoy). In terms of structure it’s the most conventional thing i’ve done but I’m trying to offset that with peculiarities of style.
A friend told me Lou Reed wrote Loaded after someone said to him that he couldn’t write pop songs. I think this is the same for me re: plot. Finding a way to enjoy that has been the task.
The deleuze stuff comes in via the Post-human applications of his work and in the metaphors I’m using. I’m trying to make my metaphors consistent with the way his ideas about multiplicities, the emergence from the virtual to the actual and how what precedes any-thing is pure difference. I’m fascinated with the kind of Spinoza, Bergson side of his work now but i find it really hard to read. A thousand plateus, anti oedipus…i can read them like fiction but difference and repetition has been really really hard.
anyway, sorry if that went on for too long.
Hope you’re all good.
Lovely Chateau — and such hospitality!
“Johnny Guitar” is Beyind Strnage. Truffaut called it “The ‘Beauty and the Beast’ of Westerns.” Melville loathed it. The chapter of Gavin Lambert’s “The Slide Area” entitled “The Closed Set” is all about the shooting of “Johnny Gitar” andwar between Nick Ray and Joan Crawford in makig it. And on that note Here’s Peggy Lee
Is the Marbled Swarm mansion? I want to visit this place. Especially the garden, where I can rest dying before having my brains blown out, in a gasp of its impressionistic beauty… 🙂 <3
Dennis, yeah re: the novel thing, so long as the ideas keep coming might as well keep at it. I’m actually trying to get into the novel writing mindset again but it’s been hard. The last novel I did (HARLEM SMOKE) I finished the 1st draft in Jan. 2016, and at the time I said I wouldn’t start a new novel until I found a publisher for it… well, that happened around the summer of 2017 and it was published in Jan. 2019, so I think I’m overdue, ha ha… it’s just I’ve done so many short stories the last 5 years that I’m having trouble trying to get into novel writing, but I really want to because novels are my first love. It doesn’t help that there have been a lot of distractions at home recently (for example, a few weeks ago my parents adopted a new dog).
Some awfully fine secrets in that chateau, Dennis.
I’m definitely planning to check out the new Mighty Mouse, thanks.
Spotted this yesterday and couldn’t resist (of course):
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55501553-the-tarot-of-leonora-carrington
Really beautiful book, though the first essay is so-so.
Bill
Hi!!
I’m ready to spend a fruitful, relaxing holiday at your Château Rococo, haha. This was brilliant!
Even the thought of an early copy sounds amazing. Thank you!
Fuck, this is getting creepy, haha! If our clone wishes come true, we’ll throw a cocktail party; you have my word! This is really crazy, haha. Now we know that if we were ever to design each other’s ideal clones, neither of us would be disappointed.
Okay. Alright. I need to abandon our CV love because NOTHING can top him getting drunk and singing ‘Nancy Boy.’ Nothing. So. Love with a superpower that allows him to turn his enemies’ eyes into chunks of cottage cheese, Od.
Unfortunately, Kanopy isn’t a regular streaming service. It charges about $50 to the libraries with whom it works every time someone watches a video (due to library/academic video licensing rules), so many have dropped it. The New York public library is one. I thought I might be able to use it through my parents’ hometown library, but they never even signed up in the first time.
I’ve been feeling an enormous amount of stress about my freelance writing. There’s a lot of stuff going on I shouldn’t talk about in public, but I’m unhappy with the general situation. I have wondered if I could make the same amount of money setting up a Patreon page (or a similar service like Ghost – I don’t want to have anything to do with Substack due to their tolerance of transphobia.) Writers used to dream of getting a job with the NY Times. Now the dream seems to be getting a major job in legacy media, using it to build your brand, then quitting and starting a personal newsletter/blog where you have total editorial control and keep most of the profits. But I hate the self-promotion and branding involved with commercial success in the media and arts and, 13 months away from turning 50, I often feel like the 70-year-old British rap duo Pete and Bas, especially when I write about or make music. I want to be able to write about whatever I want, including think pieces that don’t fit neatly into slots for film and music reviews, and find an audience for it, even if that audience pays very modestly. But I suspect this wouldn’t work out and might lead to burnout.
These photos are the fun version of SALO! Many are missing. Is that a glitch on my end, or did you have to make it R-rated rather than X-rated to satisfy WordPress?
The cleaning agency gave my apt. an initial inspection, and they’re tentatively coming over for the full job on the 20th.
Wow Dennis, that was epic. I’m exhausted.
Hey, Dennis,
Seems like there are plenty of sinister, or depending on one’s inclinations perhaps very fun, shenanigans going on in this extravagantly gilded castle. I was happy to walk its halls and peek into its hidden rooms on this otherwise dreary Monday. (The low point was totally crashing and burning on a quiz for my logic class, the only class I’m struggling with this semester—and I’m struggling with it pretty badly; the high point was rewatching “Persona” for school, and finding it just as rich and eerie as I did on my first two watches.) File deleting sounds terribly dull, and I’m sorry you’re having to go through that process; strolls sound somewhat nicer. The U.S. distribution of the vaccine is kind of terribly messy and often deeply inefficient, but at least the gears are turning. I hope France gets there soon too. Glad to hear your approval of “Funeral” and “Realm”. I don’t know how you’d feel about “Angst” but I highly recommend you take a look to find out. I thought it was remarkable. Yes, it’s an Austrian film. Huh, I’ve been meaning to see “Johnny Guitar” for a while, because it sounds so strange and it was one of Fassbinder’s favorites. I’ll keep your assessment in mind. I’ve only seen Joan Crawford in “Mildred Pierce”, I think, where she was very over-the-top, but I didn’t mind it there too much. Thank you for the wishes re: my dog. She’s in bad shape, but we’ll do what we can. I don’t foresee a goldrush this week, but anything can happen, yeah? Let’s hope by Friday we’re both swimming in riches.