‘A palimpsest is “a parchment or other writing surface on which the original text has been effaced or partially erased, and then overwritten by another; a manuscript in which later writing has been superimposed on earlier (effaced) writing.” In other words, a palimpsest is a “multi-layered record.” In the Middle Ages, these parchments were created from vellum, which was then recycled due to scarcity. Chemical agents were used in the recycling process to erase the existing text; the new text was subsequently superimposed onto the clean sheet. With time however the traces of old writing reappeared, leading to the creation of a palimpsest. Palimpsests are there therefore the product of a layering of texts over a period of time.
‘In his 1845 essay titled ‘The Palimpsest’ *, Thomas De Quincey refers to the structure as an “involuted” phenomenon where otherwise unrelated texts are interwoven, competing with, and infiltrating each other. As scholar an author Sarah Dillon notes, this idea, along with the coupling of the word with a definite article for the first time, transformed the palimpsest into a figurative entity, investing with metaphorical value that extended beyond its status as a palaeographic object. The nature of the palimpsest is two-fold; it preserves the distinctness of individual texts, while exposing the contamination of one by the other. Therefore, even though the process of layering which creates a palimpsest was born out of a need to erase and destroy previous texts, the re-emergence of those destroyed texts renders a structure that privileges heterogeneity and diversity.
* ‘”What else than a natural and mighty palimpsest is the human brain? Such a palimpsest is my brain; such a palimpsest, oh reader! is yours. Everlasting layers of ideas, images, feelings, have fallen upon your brain softly as light. Each succession has seemed to bury all that went before. And yet, in reality, not one has been extinguished. And if, in the vellum palimpsest, lying amongst the other diplomata of human archives or libraries, there is anything fantastic or which moves to laughter, as oftentimes there is in the grotesque collisions of those successive themes, having no natural connection, which by pure accident have consecutively occupied the roll, yet, in our own heaven-created palimpsest, the deep memorial palimpsest of the brain, there are not and cannot be such incoherencies. The fleeting accidents of a man’s life, and its external shows, may indeed be irrelate and incongruous; but the organizing principles which fuse into harmony, and gather about fixed predetermined centres, whatever heterogeneous elements life may have accumulated from without, will not permit the grandeur of human unity greatly to be violated, or its ultimate repose to be troubled, in the retrospect from dying moments, or from other great convulsions.” — Thomas De Quincey
‘Although the palimpsest does not seek to illuminate the relation between a text and its context, there is a constructive relation that could be drawn between the concept of the palimpsest and that of intertextuality. Kristeva describes the text as a “permutation of texts, an intertextuality,” and by doing so gestures to the idea that “in the space of a given text, several utterances, taken from other texts, intersect and neutralize one another.” Differently put, a text is not merely comprised of other texts, but of ‘utterances’, a product of “the productive violence of the involvement, entanglement, interruption and inhibition of disciplines [and texts] in and on each other.” This notion of a “productive violence” mirrors both, the destructive and the accommodative nature of the palimpsest.
‘Sigmund Freud alludes to the idea of the palimpsest as a metaphor for the perceptual and memory apparatus in his 1925 essay “A Note Upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad.'” This article is a brief meditation on a toy writing instrument that contains a “slab of dark brown resin or wax” underneath a thin sheet of waxed paper and a transparent celluloid sheet. The children’s toy allows writing as “a pointed stilus scratches the surface” and ‘magically’ enables re-use of the writing sheet when one severs the contact between paper and slab. Thus, the mystic writing-pad, like memory, “provides not only a receptive surface that can be used over and over again, like a slate, but also permanent traces of what has been written” upon the wax slab, “legible in suitable lights”. For post-structuralist theorists, the palimpsest acts as a useful model of intertextuality, the emergence of texts within a field of other texts, much like the emergence of the fragmented and decentered speaking subject from pre-existing overlapping fields and vectors of language and intersubjectivity. Linguistic enunciation partially overwrites pre-existing language within arbitrary and unstable chains of signification and is, in turn, overwritten. This fluid process thus layers discourse in infinite ways, thereby subverting notions of singular and autonomous authorial control.
‘In “Freud and the Scene of Writing,” Jacques Derrida remarks that “the depth of the Mystic Pad is simultaneously a depth without bottom, an infinite allusion, and a perfectly superficial exteriority: a stratification of surfaces each of whose relation to itself, each of whose interior, is but the implication of another similarly exposed surface. It joins the two empirical certainties by which we are constituted: infinite depth in the implication of meaning, in the unlimited envelopment of the present, and, simultaneously, the pellicular essence of being, the absolute absence of any foundation.” Derrida posits that Freud’s frequent use of writing as a metaphor for the psyche bolsters Derrida’s own deconstruction of phonologocentrism. According to Derrida, Freud’s “Mystic Writing-Pad” reveals not only the primacy of writing but also how humans experience the world retrospectively “through the traces of previous experiences and through the signifiers which are in effect the condition of being”.
‘In postcolonial discourse, the trope of the palimpsest emblematizes colonial history and its series of writings, overwritings, and erasures. The palimpsest implies that colonial trauma is not just singular and discrete events, but an encompassing and long-lasting pattern of writings and erasures on land, colonial bodies, and colonized minds. One can also relate the trope of the palimpsest and postcolonial interrogations to the genre of memoir, especially its connection to memory (both individual and collective), as well as through the mediums of history and power. Patricia Hampl speculates that the “real job of memoir” is to seek the “congruence between stored image and hidden emotion”. More significantly, Hampl notes the political ramifications of the memoir genre: “Memoir must be written because each of us must have a created version of the past. Created: that is, real, tangible, made of the stuff of a life lived in place and in history. And the down side of any created thing as well: we must live with a version that attaches us to our limitations, to the inevitable subjectivity, of our points of view. We must acquiesce to our experience and our gift to transform experience into meaning and value. You tell me your story, I’ll tell you my story. If we refuse to do the work of creating this personal version of the past, someone else will do it for us. That is a scary political fact.”
‘The multifarious and diverse vision projected by the palimpsest, despite being the product of an attempt of destruction and erasure, demands a revision of conceptual systems based on the notions of fixity, linearity, centre and hierarchy. It impels us to replace these systems with new foundations that privilege the conceptions of “multi-linearity, nodes, links and networks.” Roland Barthes’s description of the slippery nature of an “ideal textuality” matches that of the palimpsest: “In this ideal text, the networks are many and interact, without any one of them being able to surpass the rest; this text is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can reach, they are indeterminable […] the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language.”
‘The internet, in its obsession with being current, projects itself as a virtual palimpsest. Like webpages, the parchments of vellum constantly get refreshed to reflect current trends, practices and preoccupations. Though many elements of structure and content remain unchanged, there is still an emphasis that the internet places on immediacy, or on the current. The old pages that are written over can consequently, at best, be archived. Webpages are also loaded with hypertext or hyperlinks which ascribe a sense of multi-linearity, characteristic of the palimpsest, to our viewing experience. On a single webpage, it is not uncommon to find several hyperlinks contesting with each other, much like the texts on a parchment of vellum. Furthermore, the constant slippages which are produced as the viewer navigates these hyperlinks resemble the ambivalence engendered by the palimpsest.
‘Hip Hop is another clear and dominant example of a contemporaneous palimpsest. In the words of DJ and ‘Underground Railroad’ founder Jay Smooth: “You can go back to, throughout the history of music, back to the first –-in Western music–-the first polyphonic music was based on taking a Gregorian chant in a lower register and then singing a new Gregorian chant–-singing a new melody on top of that, in a higher register. You’re basically taking a song and then adding something new on top of it–-that’s the same creative process as hip-hop. The only difference is that in the mid-Nineties we had samplers that let us actually manipulate the recordings, and do it that way instead of other ways. You can look at jazz standards, you can look at what Led Zeppelin did with blues tracks—there are parallels to that all throughout music, but people get caught up in the fact that we’re using the actual recordings. They see it as lazy, but if you’ve ever tried to make a beat as hot as what the Bomb Squad made, or try to make a beat like Just Blaze made, or even the beats that we see as really simplistic, like the beats that Diddy made. If you tried to make a beat that sounded that good you’d find that it’s much harder than you think it is, and I think the amount of creativity and innovation that goes into sample-based hip-hop is very underrated.”
‘The palimpsest is also often likened to the human brain and to memory. In comparing the palimpsest with human memory, De Quincey emphasized its propensity to preserve over its intention to destroy. The palimpsest is therefore presents a utopian possibility of eternal preservation. Sarah Dillon asserts that this “fantasy” of the palimpsest of the mind results in a “spectralization of the self” which inevitably leads to a “spectralization of temporality”. She further notes that the palimpsest represents what Derrida describes as a “non-contemporaneity with itself of the living present”: The present that the palimpsest projects, is constructed by the unintended presence of texts from the past and the possibility of the inscription of future texts. Therefore, the palimpsest “evidences the spectrality of any present moment which already contains with it (elements of) ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’.”
‘The emergence of the disunified, spectralized subject mirrors the unruly and fractious nature of the palimpsest, which eventually leads to a descent into the utopian realm of the carnival. The carnival due to its propensity to plunge certainty into ambivalence relies on the mask, which enables fluid identities. It is however important to recognize that just as the carnival must always give way for order, and all masks are eventually discarded, the palimpsest, due to its inherent unruly nature, will also make way for a structure that privileges an ordered heterogeneity. Although this new structure could be perceived of as a favourable departure from the chaos rendered by the palimpsest, it would certainly lack the charm of its predecessor, which through its fluidity, endorses the reveries of the carnival and its lack of order.’ — collaged from various sources
Turning Pages of the Archimedes Palimpsest
Wugazi ‘Sweet Release’
52 secrets in Google Earth
Showgirls – Black Swan : Trailer Mash-Up
Smog ‘Palimpsest’
Ray of Gob
Stan Brakhage ‘Moth Light’
X-ray demonstration with Van Gogh Painting
‘Funny Games’ remix
Three short video collage vignettes of the Milwaukee Noise Festival 2007
3d video mapping in the Jerusalem Light Festival 2010
Bruce Lee’s Kung Fu Ping-Pong
Pia Borg ‘Palimpsest’
Tim Hecker’s ‘Palimpsest 2’ co opted by Christian zealot
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p.s. Hey. ** CAUTIVOS, Hi. Thanks. Stimulating? If you mean, like, attractive, then none. If you mean stimulating due to vocal greatness, my long time favorites are Robin Zander of Cheap Trick and Gram Parsons. I have a complicated relationship to the objectification of attractive people. Mostly I really don’t like it. I do like ‘Welcome to the Dollhouse’. Not as much as ‘Happiness’, say, but yes. I like Solondz’s films in general. Happy Monday. ** Bill, I like to binge on psychedelia. Totally agree about ‘Freak Orlando’. Now I really want to watch it again. ** Tosh Berman, Hi. In my memory there was a lot of crappy pop released in those years, but I haven’t re-listened, and time is the great healer or whatever they say. Thank you, sir! ** _Black_Acrylic, Very happy you found likeable stuff in there. Shit, that sounds so … backwards about your frames. Yeah, pop over here and I can get you a shiny new pair of frames in a near finger snap. Do you get your full eyesight back today, I sure hope? ** Nick., Hi, Nick.! Okay, your dream date does make me think twice about my rejection of the possibility. And it sounds completely doable. And, yes, kind of like an Araki movie but without the snark. If your thinking time leads to articulating time, know I’m all ears. Wait, all eyes, I mean. My weekend was, as usual, kind of stressful and busy, but it panned out okay, so I’m good with it. Film stuff. And a tiny bit of fun. I’m a Capricorn. My birthday is tomorrow in fact. Mm, I’m sort of a practical person so I don’t think I really buy astrology, but, on the other hand, when I’ve read the description of what Capricorns are supposed to be like, I’m always, like, Yep, that’s totally me. So maybe I’m a bit skeptical but pretty open to its possible realness. Sure, I’m sure we’ll meet up. For one thing, I need to get to NYC one of these soon days. It’s been ages. And Paris is highly recommended. I hereby decree that your Monday is amazing. ** David Ehrenstein, Oh, yeah, Autosalvage. They’re good, Did I forget them? Strange. ** l@rst, Hope you made it through the psychedelic wilderness. Oh, cool, let me pass along your exciting offer. Everyone, l@rst, amazing poet/writer and dude, has an offer you might want to take him up on. Here he is: ‘I’m putting out a call for submissions for volume two of my zine, feel free to share if it’s not too long winded!! Submission Guidelines for Skullcrushing Hummingbird – The Zine Volume Two. The theme is Rock and Roll (whatever this means to you.) To me Rock and Roll is an umbrella term under which lives Punk Rock, Classic Rock, Kraut Rock, Indie Rock, Prog Rock, Folk Rock, Rockabilly etc. but your ideas may differ. Some people think it just means Chuck Berry etc. Looking for poems, prose (fiction and non-fiction), photos, artworks, comix. I’d prefer concise but rambling will be considered if it’s extra good. Black and White, Letter size folded in half (5 1/2 x 8 1/2). Deadline for submissions is 2/15/23. I’d love to know you’re committed by 1/15/23 and then I’ll send you a reminder before the final due date. If you have commitment issues and still send something rad by 2/15/23 it’ll be considered. Send submissions to larstonovich @ gmail.com. Volume one of zine is here.’ I recommend you go for it if it’s suitable! ** ellie, Hi. Oh, no, Alex isn’t a problem whatsoever. Thank you for the intro. I think Ryan is a genius. A rare genius. A friend of mine kind of discovered him back when he was just putting his stuff on Myspace, and she turned me onto his work, and I was the first person to ever write about him, lucky me. I didn’t know about Rafman’s rapey behavior. That’s awful. I’ll investigate. Oh, haunted houses. I guess I could easily have picked them, yeah. I think I knew about Kathy pretty early on, like in the early 80s before she was a thing, from friends who knew her, so I kind of knew who she was in all her complicatedness from the beginning? Um, gosh, if you made me a present I’d be extremely touched and thrilled, thank you. But only if you really want to, no sweat. You’re not blabbing, don’t worry. I like reading/ listening/ discovering. I’m so happy you like ‘TMS’ so much. That’s my favorite of my novels. I don’t know when the stories book will come out. I’m going to be so busy with the film soon that I don’t know when I’ll be able to finish it. Hopefully fairly soon. How was your hopefully lovely day? ** ShadeoutMapes:\, Hi! I’m … okay. Yeah, I’m fine. My bad linguistic habits when typing at people is ‘oh, …’ and ‘mm, …’. Probably when I talk too. What did the JGL cake look like? Seriously, if someone had told me I’d reach the age I’m going to reach tomorrow, I would have bet a million dollars that they were nuts. Time is really fucking weird. I love Neutral Milk Hotel, and of course I love ‘April 8th’. So, high-five and all of that. They were amazing. I really liked the whole Elephant 6 area too. You know, what do I know, but it’s really impossible to know how much you mean to someone/people. Even to really close friends. So you never know. I only know you from here so far, but I already know you’re really valuable. But, yeah, writing that intro sounds like a good idea if you end up using it or not. ‘I’m trying to make it as narratively and structurally as confusing as possible’: yum. My motto is ‘confusion is the truth’. Sounds really exciting. French people often do smoke at cafes, yes. Not always, of course. But there are a lot more smokers here than in, say, the US by far. I’m a smoker, so I’m all for it. You never met a French person? They’re real. Realer than real. I like ’em, to generalise. You should come visit Paris. It’s great and very French here. The first written thing I published would have been a poem. I don’t remember how or where that happened. I should. It was probably hard. My stuff was rejected endlessly by magazines and stuff for a long time. I forgot, have you published any of your work? I hope your week has started lustrously. ** Robert, Hi. Congrats on quitting the job and getting the flexibility. I’ve always managed to figure out some way to get by without having a proper job so I could write and make stuff without too much interference. It wasn’t easy sometimes, but it was so, so worth it. I hope the gig took you places. What’s on your week’s agenda if anything? ** Caesar, Hi, Caesar! I’m happy you came back. I was in Buenos Aires in 2014. My friend Zac and I decided to do this crazy, ambitious thing and go to Antarctica. And the boat to Antarctica left from Ushuaia, so we decided to spend time in Argentina before we left. So we were in Buenos Aires for a while and then rented a car and drove through Patagonia before we left. I don’t know Mariana Enriquez’s work. Wow, amazing that she likes my stuff. I’ll go try to find a book of hers in English. That’s great, thank you for telling me that. I actually haven’t read as much Spanish fiction as I want to. I only really know the obvious stuff like Lispector, Bolano, Borges, Goytisolo, Vila-Mattas, … and I forget who else. Who do you recommend? Thank you for the anime recommendations! I’ve written down the names of every one. Journalism is a great form! Fantastic if that’s what you want to write. I highly encourage you, obviously, and I can’t wait to read something of yours. Ha ha, thank you for that amazing characterisation of my poetry. I should use it as a blurb. My favorite contemporary poets … there are a lot. I guess my favorites are John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Eileen Myles, James Tate, … Too many to list. Lovely talking with you. Look forward to much more. ** Joseph Earp, Hi! Oh, yeah, I love your paintings. I was poring over them this weekend. You have such a beautiful touch and the tone has this great simple/ complicated combo that I adore. I’ll go find and get your book. Great. I’m very curious. I’m doing well, and you are too? ** Dominik, Hi!!! My pleasure, naturally. We’re auditioning a new possible Line Producer tonight and ‘praying’ he works out because we need one immediately. Gulp. Ha ha, your love had great plan there. Please thank him and his creator (you) kindly. Love eating a big plate of mashed potatoes with a little salt and pepper and a lot of melted cheese, G. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. We absolutely have to get financing, and we will by hook or crook (possibly literally). Yes, we’re going to LA next Sunday. Man, as a semi-non-dreamer, that is quite an incredible dream. Your sleeping head is very generous. The whole Clear Light album is really good. They’re very underrated. Their singer became a pretty well-known character actor. Cliff De Young. ** Misanthrope, One can’t be too careful. Or reckless maybe too. You are the living manifestation of today’s palimpsest theme, George. ** Loser, Hi. I think I’ll call you Twelve. Hi, Twelve! Gosh, yes, sure, please send me your fanart. Wow, that’s amazing. Thank you a lot! I’d love to see your work in general. Is it seeable somewhere? You can send me the fanart or whatever you wish here: denniscooper72@outlook.com. Thank you again! It’s really good to meet you! ** Right. I was sure I made a palimpsest post a long time ago, but when I went to restore it there was nothing to be found, so I made a another one for better or worse. Welcome to your local today. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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Hi Dennis, here to send you some birthday love! Do you have any thrilling plans? I hope so xoxo
Mr. Cooper (Dennis),
Please pardon my posting so early (I’ve been working nights and I post before I go to bed).
I only wanted to ask you something about your film, not complicated, but I’m not sure it’s a blog-gy sort of question. I’ve seen your e-mail posted here, though I don’t want to use it without getting your permission first. Would it be alright? I just wanted to check on something simple, if that’s okay.
Many thanks, Kettering
P.S. I’m sure you are tough as nails when it comes to getting things done, but do hang in there for the film… I’m sure it will be so worth it. PGL and LCTG were beautiful, singular dreams. Such lines of tenderness running through (LCTG in particular); I did not expect that. I found LCTG really humbling in a strange way. Resonant, yes? That kindof achy loveliness that trails you like a motherless child for days, but… That’s your work, isn’t it?
So. If you need a ray-crepuscular cheer-sun-lit brightly brightly Bright— Here it is!— The film— It— Will— Happen!— And it will be Amazing! I can see it, yes. Can you?
-K.
P.P.S. Mmmm… Palimpsest… pentimento… Barthe’s amphibologies… and architecture, if there’s enough time-depth there… Hauntings. Poltergeists, everywhere!
Hello Dennis, good post in the usual line, you never disappoint me. Of female voices, which are your favorites? There are hardly any female voices in your top 50. Bjork… little more. A female voice that has impacted you like my Nina Simone or something like that. By the way, do you like jazz? I’m curious to know your opinion on slightly older music. Is it your birthday? Just a hug
Gore Vidal’s 1995 memoir was titled Palimpsest. It kind of reads like one. For instance, at one point in the present he meets Allan Ginsburg. They have a conversation about Jack Kerouac, and the flashes back to a meeting–a very intimate meeting–between Vidal and Kerouac.
Dennis, Hahaha. Right? So weird how worlds collide in the ether.
Damn, I didn’t get to bed early and now I’m really tired. Erp. But we’ll make it through and be better for it.
So these new McCarthy novels. I bought the box set. Here’s the strange thing: the cover of The Passenger has the title on the back. I’m wondering if there isn’t some mistake. And both covers are just all blue with the pic of the boy in the water on them. I should’ve bought them individually.
Covers and shit don’t ever bother me, but this is fucking weird.
Hi!!
What a fascinating post again! Thank you!
Fingers hugely, massively, impossibly crossed for tonight’s interview! How did it go?
Agh… I’d love to join love in his feast. I love mashed potatoes. I love potatoes in every shape or form, haha.
Love making hate’s mouth smell like wet dogs, Od.
Thank you much for spreading the word re: SkullHum zine!
Palimpsest is one of my favorite words and concepts, so right on!
I’d been lamenting the fact I never really have alone time lately, as much as I love being with my gal, I just need to reset. Well in the careful what you wish for dept. her cousin just died unexpectedly at 41 cause of death unknown so she’s taking of for the east coast for 5 days. I’ll get that alone time I guess. 🙁
That Grind daily email list has been really great, I’ve popped out new material everyday. It’s certainly not all great but ending the month 30 new poems in various stages is pretty cool. And it’s an opt in on a month to month basis so i’d get paired with different people. Yahoo!
Thanks again.
-L
Palimpsest post made my day – I use similar technique in my writings and drawings too; I wrote yesterday the technique of adding bits in the drawing when I unearth them tons of time after they are done – So it looks complete but with a secret too
Last drawings I posted were done this way with added bits 😅
So nice it is your birthday I remember clearly the post with all your favourite songs, I went through some of them and was very inspired at the time – one of my favourites was Sebadoh – As the World Dies, the Eyes of God Grow Bigger – I used to listen to it with my former friend and I still get visions of levitating over her carpet listening to music
Love from Athens
William Gaddis
Happy birthday to you, squashed tomatoes in stew! Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number, as Aaliyah did sing. I did once try get my dad into 90s R&B but never did succeed, sadly. But anyway, have yourself a good one.
Hi DC,
Been a while, I hope all is good with you. Made a resolution to do more things which make life a bit more enriching so here I am again! If I drop off it’s 100% a reflection on me!
What a day on the DC blog to come back to, thanks. So much stuff I love here – the materiality/environmental nature of this kind of text, also the incongruity and the meaning vs gaps in meaning it creates. Like the best ‘theory’ it’s super exciting and opens a whole range of creative possibilities, which I guess reflects the range of settings it was applied to in the blog snippets. Awesome.
I’m always amazed at your discipline with this so thank you. Made me think about how hurtful it must have been to have the old blog taken down, not just because of the censorship but because your commitment to the work was undermined by the platform. Maybe there’s something palimpest-ic about your ressurection of it. (I read today that -ussy was made suffix of the year in the states, so maybe that should be *palimpest-ussy*)
Things here are good. Pre-covid I was trying to balance my creative practice with working in the health service and so obviously when COVID kicked in that took priority. It was the right decision, but I also feel like I lost something along the way. I’ve recently moved to Swansea and I’m really enjoying living by the Welsh seaside. Very windy and rainy here, which suits me down to the ground.
All the best
Peter
Have you ever taken the prescription drug Gabapentin? It has the side effect of enhancing your dreams. My father quit taking it because it induced frequent, vivid nightmares.
From Slant Magazine, here’s my review of Margo Price’s new album STRAYS: https://www.slantmagazine.com/music/margo-price-strays-album-review/
These video remixes/mash-ups are new to me. The FUNNY GAMES remix introduces a spectral dimension to the film.
Did you see that the New Pornographers released a new single, co-written by Dan Bejar? I hoped he’d rejoined the band on their upcoming album, but no such luck.
The most debased form of the palimpsest I can think of: Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long,” which sampled “Werewolves of London” and “Sweet Home Alabama” on top of each other. But “Ray of God” kicks ass.
Happy birthday Dennis!
No point in repeating how much you and your work mean to me haha hope you have a nice day with the people you love over there. I kind of hate birthdays myself, feel super self-conscious and you end up hearing from people you don’t really miss all that much lol but it’s nice to feel a little love!
How was the weekend? Pretty rainy over here so I mostly just stayed home, re-read some Kawabata and Dustan and watched Pasolini’s Porcile for the 20th time lol. It’s my 2nd favorite of his after Saló. Mike Salerno also followed me on IG and liked some of my AI stuff which is pretty great lol.
Have you read Kawabata yourself? He’s one of my favorite writers and I feel like there’s definitely some similar sensibilities to your work, especially his books The Lake (my personal fav) and House of the Sleeping Beauties.
Also in the Dustan book that I bought when I was in Paris last summer it says in the liner notes that he translated My Loose Thread, which was an amusing fact I had no idea about. You’re even featured in this hilarious “acknowledgements” page alongside David Lynch, Dostoievski, Malcolm McLaren, Madonna, etc haha. I like Dustan, though some of it does come across a little dated, for better or worse.
You’ve been living in Paris for more than ten years, right? It was my first time there this year, it was funny cause I only found out I was staying at Le Marais when I got there and saw all these gay sex clubs I’d read about walking around the hotel hahahaha. I was being a good boy (and it was the height of that m0nkeypox craze) so didn’t go in any lol, just hung out with some friends and locals around the city.
Almost everyone I talked to was surprisingly really nice tbh, I guess because I tried my best to speak French lol. All the bookstore people were especially great, I had a really cool convo with this girl at the Gallimard store about Guyotat and Leduc. The French get a bad rep cause they don’t beat around the bush but they’re my favorites, my French friends are some of the most interested and attentive people I know, they take the things they like very very seriously, which is great. I was taken aback a little by how “big” the city feels though, from the amount of people to the architecture, even the width of the streets and avenues lol, we’re often sold this sort of quaint provincian view of it but it really felt like a full-blown (albeit classically beautiful) metropolis. Also the summer heat was no joke, and I’m from Rio so I know what I’m talking about haha. Great trip overall
Anyway, enjoy your day! Hope you get lots of cool gifts 🙂
xxx
Have a Happy Birthday Dennis! I want to be more of a frequent commenter, but let’s see how that goes. The last comment I made was for your birthday as well if I remember, hah.
I sent you an email of the fanart, as well as some information of my social media. I hope you enjoy. I’m a bit embarrassed that most of my artwork is cutesy fluff stuff, but I guess there’s a place for fluff in this world? IDK.
The idea of palimpsest is interesting, and an inspiration for when I make those video movie edits set to music. I enjoy watching those on Youtube, and have discovered some nice music and film that way.
I always feel the need to explain myself after a post a comment, because I feel like I end up sounding incoherent as hell, lol. I enjoy drawing cute and comedic artwork, but I do aspire to be a “serious artiste” that I feel a bit insecure in my current work. I do other stuff besides the digital work I tend to post online though, as I’m mostly a traditional artist actually.
Also you may have noticed looking through my social media that I actually have a child character named Dennis, named after you, which may be a bit weird and I apologize and I’m open to change the name. To be honest though, the Dennis character is completely based on me as a child though. Can you tell you have influenced me greatly? Hah.
Wishing you a Happy Birthday!
Hey Dennis, Quinn aka Bzzt here.
I’m writing because I see it’s your birthday tomorrow and wanted to send you some birthday love. Joyeux anniversaire!! Have a great day man.
What’s going on with you? How is your film coming along, how are your various travels? Are you feeling inspired lately? Staring into the void?
As for me, all’s well in Brooklyn. I don’t have a job right now, but these are the times we’re living thru, the Great Resignation. Fortunately my rent is real cheap, I’ve been at this apartment for over two years now and it’s rent-stabilized. I live hand to mouth, but it’s pretty cozy. I might apply to work at a Trader Joe’s in Queens soon. in the meantime I’m writing a lot, I’m still doing my therapy, I’m sober, and I have faith that things will work out for me. The universe has my back. Being the sunny Capricorn that you are, I’m sure you will appreciate what I’m saying…
I wish you a happy birthday Dennis and I look forward to hearing back.
Hi Dennis. Thanks again for replying. This text about the palimpsest is amazing. I didn’t know the term and it almost seemed to me a synonym for rewriting but after seeing the associations you made with Internet, Hip Hop, colonialism and so on I understood that it is something more than that. Your mind works in incredible ways.
First: God! It’s amazing to think you were here in those years which is when I started reading you (I came to you through a fanfic of The Sluts made with characters from an anime called Zodiac Knights: Saint Seiya made on a blog that was clearly +18 but whatever). You should write about that trip, I’d love to have more details about it because I imagine it as a road trip documentary. I would definitely watch/read that. In my fan line I just had a somewhat silly question come up, that Zac friend you mention, does that have anything to do with your tetralogy of Zac novels? (I had a hard time getting into that world but it seemed very edgy plus I love ghost stories and haunted houses like the one you did in Zac’s Haunted House).
Second, Lispector, Borges and Bolaño are sacred. In a line of authors I think you might like I would say read Silvina Ocampo (my favorite writer, she is our Shirley Jackson for me, dark and very funny), Jose Donoso (Chilean, his novel The Obscene Bird of Night I am sure you will love), Julio Cortazar (the closest thing we have to an M. John Harrison, very good), Manuel Mujica Lainez (always), Manuel Puig, Roberto Arlt, Ricardo Piglia, Ernesto Sabato, Pedro Lemebel, Felisberto Hernandez, Ampuero Davila, Juan Rulfo, Rodolfo Fogwill and Jose Saramago. More contemporary Mariana Enriquez (safe bet), Samantha Schweblin, Monica Ojeda, Maria Fernanda Ampuero, Alejandro Zambra, Lina Meruane, Cesar Aira, Federico Falco, Natalia Garcia Freire, Andres Barba, Pilar Pedraza, Ariana Harwicz, Bernando Esquinca, Guadalupe Nettel, Irene Sola. All are translated so read them at some point.
Thanks for your kind words. I like journalism very much and even though here in Argentina it’s difficult to make a living from it (although where can you make a living from just that, right? haha) I’ll keep trying as hard as I can.
Your poetry is most remarkable compared to many poets of today. Not many touch on the themes you work on. It is brave. And gay hahaha that’s why I love it. Last recommendations I’ll give you because I’m unbearable if not but this time it’s poetry in Spanish maybe you’ll be interested: Alejandra Pizarnik (the best), Alfonsina Storni, Jose Watanabe, Antonio Cisneros, IOSHUA. thanks for your recommendations! I’ve already become a fan of Eileen Myles and James Tate. They have very beautiful and haunting poems.
My pleasure, Dennis. I am honored by this exchange of words with you. Thanks again and sorry again for the text saturation. I will try to be briefer next time. I hope you are well wherever you are. Kisses!
PS: Last question I swear. When is “Jerk” coming out on VOD ? I can’t wait to see it!
I love the idea of palimpsests, though it’s hard for me to work them into my pieces. I suppose I need to try harder. That’s a favorite Xenakis piece of mine.
Like Caesar, I’m also a big fan of Mariana Enriquez. “Things We Lost in the Fire” is one of my all-time favorite collections of dark fiction.
Interesting you describe yourself as a semi-non-dreamer. For me it’s usually feast or famine. A couple nights ago, I had this elaborate one like a funny movie about tech bros at a tech conference, packed with mocking situations and ridiculous characters, which eventually transitioned into a horrific sequence when a baby suddenly went missing (!). I have no idea where all that came from, but it was highly entertaining.
Bill
Hi Dennis, happy birthday! Not much on my plate this week, how about you? Finally got my novel going again which is a relief, and it looks like I’ll be able to find someone else to rent out my apartment pretty easily so I can get the hell out of Chicago and figure out what to do next, so right now I feel like the world is my oyster.
I really really really liked this post, super great evening read here, and I love how the videos at the bottom layered (ha!) onto the things written before, which I suppose you do in all of your posts but for some reason I really liked the effect of how it worked in this one.
Dear Dennis,
It’s your birthday as I write this, over here in Sydney, Australia. I hope you are having a wonderful day. As something to share with you, for your birthday — do you know the musician Torres? If you don’t, I think you would really like her work. She started out doing a very direct kind of indie rock, and then became angular and tangential in a way that I find so rewarding. Her song ‘Helen In The Woods’ is my favourite — I feel like you would appreciate it, if it hasn’t come across your ears before. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmGSNrg6bM0
Thanks again for your kind words about the paintings — I have a backlog, and I am uploading them to Instagram one by one, so there’s always things going up there. I am planning an exhibition at some point, but I’m just trying to find the right space. Sydney is an odd place for that kind of showing, and in general — I’m not sure if you’ve ever been here? It is firmly upper middle class, and almost impossible to rent/buy in, so the cashflow is awkward. People of my generation here are scraping by to make creative spaces, even though there’s a huge amount of wealth. But I can’t complain. I love it, even as it’s a lopsided and sometimes harsh place — I live right in the middle of the city, where there’s always something happening, against the odds.
Thanks for saying you will find ‘Cattle’ — that is very kind. It’s a book very much about violence, but also about animals and tech and all sorts of things. It’s the longest thing I’ve written, after some time writing only short stories and poetry and scripts for short films. So I was both exhausted by having to find the structure internal to something so much larger, and really enlivened by it.
I saw in the ‘ps’ that you are under the pump with a line producer. I hope that is going well for you? My day job is working at a film production company, which I love — I’m their writer. So I have seen some of the stress involved in these personnel hunts, and know that finding the right person becomes so important.
I came back to work at the day job after a three week break, yesterday. I am very happy to be back — I love the structure, even though the break was wonderful. I became really fascinated by the Frank Perry film ‘The Swimmer’, which I hadn’t seen in so long — do you like it? Burt Lancaster is a forever favourite. ‘The Sweet Smell of Success’ sits happily in my top ten favourites — I think about the line, “the cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river” all the time.
Happy birthday, I do really hope it’s going wonderful for you out there.
Hi! Happy birthday! Do anything fun? I hope you did! Are you a cake fan? And you were right my Monday was amazing! Yes I can elaborate now! I went out looking for fun last weekend and long story short some boy who’d I normally be obsessed but wasn’t was drunkenly telling me he like me while I was hanging with him randomly. I was mostly looking for a place with good music to dance to and he decided to tag along and the attention was definitely a high I rode while he was telling me in his roundabout way he liked me or whatever. I spend a lot of time thinking about this boys whos really special to me so I never expect stuff like this to happen to me I’m
Way too focused on trying to i dont know? get the courage to speak to him again.
It was fun and I felt hot doing it cause he was by definition hot and sorta broken and we’re in a club just seems like the thing you should enjoy. But I really didn’t wanna buy into his specific type of broken if that makes sense I rather sadly only wanna handle the really special boys crazy and I don’t think he likes me very much. So yeah that’s what I was thinking about rambling and all! New question. Whats your favorite feature of yours and one you look for on other people first? Mines eyes for both. Hope your well as always.
Happy birthday!!!
Uh, Hey!
I posted earlier, inquiring after your e-mail only to realize that I’d addressed what I’d wanted in my P.S…. (I’ve got to get it together, girl). That was all I wanted to say– just sending some positivity. No need to reply, and, hey… Happy — Day!
Just popped in to wish you a happy birthday, Dennis. Hope you have the day that you want. You’re the palimpbest!
I’ll leave a proper comment this evening, maybe another bad pun.
Celebratory love,
Jamie