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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Happy b’day to Mr. Scorcese. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. I would think so, about hearing back. But yesterday we found out that the festival curator who was supposed to watch our film in a screening here in Paris this past Monday didn’t for completely unknown reasons, and now there’s a scramble to find out why and make sure he or she sees the film, and it’s getting late in the process, and it’s all no small amount of stressful, ugh. Top ten time already, wow, yeah, I guess so. I have to get on mine. Zac saw and really liked the new Haneke, but apparently it has been divisive. I can’t say that Lil Peep’s work spoke to me personally, but I think it’s quite interesting. He’s coming out of Emo rock/ Screamcore/ whatever that genre is generally named, and, as much as I admire Emos and the aesthetic and style and so on that they have built, much of the music they’re attached to is not my thing, but, objectively, it’s a very developed, unique and legitimate genre of music, I think. And I think what Lil Peep did is really new and clever and also authentic. I totally get why he’s important to people and significant within the area in which he was working. ** Jamie, Hey, J. It goes good. Um, no schedule at all re: the new film yet. We’ll just work on the script until we’re completely happy. Then I think we’ll need to translate it into French and then finesse the translation carefully, and then we’ll show it to our producer, who hopefully will like it and want to produce it, whereupon the fundraising would begin. So we’re early on. Yeah, I mean it’s pretty infuriating that what Jonathan did to you is unethical and even maybe illegal, so, I don’t know, … letting him get away with that seems obnoxious, but then starting a legal battle sounds potentially ugly, and, urgh. I know you’ll make the right move. So happy you liked the post so much! This weekend: This afternoon a film festival here is showing this new documentary ‘Queercore: How To Punk A Revolution’ by Yony Leyser, and I’m interviewed in it, so I’m going to see that. The director wanted me to agree to do an onstage Q&A after, but I haven’t seen the film and that sounds like a stress fest so I said no, and hopefully I can just watch the film. And, yeah, script work. And Gisele gets back tomorrow from the run of ‘Crowd’ and ‘Kindertotenlieder’ shows, and we have a lot to talk about, so I’m sure I’ll meet with her. The weather here is wonderfully gloomy and grey. Sounds like yours is a relative match. I hope your weekend puts your favourite album on the turntable and winds the volume up to 10+. Evergreen love, Dennis. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I hope you had a very lovely birthday! Yeah, Wolfson’s pretty good, even with all the hype. Ooh, you got to weave through the animals on wheels. King for a day, or, well, for the weekend ahead at minimum. ** Armando, Hi. Uh, probably because the licensing fees are outrageous? I’m not really that big a fan of haunted places. I’m just a gigantic fan of haunted house attractions, especially the ones people make in and around their homes circa Halloween. I haven’t seen ‘Crimson Peak’. I should? Hm, I would have to think about movies I especially like about hauntings. Does ‘Enter the Void’ count? Favourite Fassbinder: ‘In a Year of 13 Moons’. I don’t know why ‘Blair Witch Project’ scared me. Maybe not knowing is why it scared me. I think it would be hard to watch it now that 100s of movies have copied its form. At the time, it was really fresh and one of a kind and quite exciting, to me anyway. I went to Museum of Death once, and I really hated it. I thought it was morally bankrupt and salaciously nihilistic, and it just made me sick and depressed. A Gertrude Stein post … I don’t think I’ve ever done one. Odd. Let me see what I can cook up. I’ve basically given up entirely on writing essays. I never could quite suss that form to my satisfaction. So, yeah, understood. My email: [email protected]. I hope your weekend is a work of art. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Thanks for the patience and reassurance. Much needed. As I told Steve above, there seems to be some kind of problem with the festival people not having yet watched our film when they were supposed to have by now, and we have no idea why, and we’re trying to make sure they watch it, so we’re even more nervous than we were. Nervous as I am about the film stuff, I still have a reserve of patience and reassurance to transmit to you about the publishers, and know it’s flooding your way. Your work sounds crazy busy, but … yay about you getting two days off now! What are you going to do with the days? Treat yourself royally, my friend. Make sure to. Yesterday for me was just work, phone calls, stressing, … I did an interview, or, rather, continued a long interview. I might have mentioned a while back that this French magazine L’incroyable that devotes each book-like issue to a single artist is doing the next issue about me, and it includes a long, thorough interview, and I’ve been doing that in increments for months. It’s nice, you know. Have a great, great freestyle weekend! ** Natty, Natty! Holy moly, it’s nice to see you! It’s been agrees and ages! Thanks about the post. Great about your new novel! I’ll will go hunt it down and pre-order it. Fantastic news! I hope life is treating you extremely well, maestro. Really, really nice to hear from you. Take good care. ** Misanthrope, Hey, G. I think the fear of robots taking over is pretty funny. It’s so 1950s or something. Oh, cool, I’m happy what I said made sense. Yeah, it’s weird when people who are happy or think they are become proselytizers for the way they found it. I guess that’s how religion has lasted so many eons. It’s a weird impulse. Generous in a way, I guess, but blinded by the light too. Cool, sounds like we are same-pagers about love. And that’s probably really rare, actually. ** James Nulick, Hi, James! Well, SRL were in the post for a very good reason. I’m good. Yes, we are in the phase of submitting PGL to festivals and hoping and waiting. We just started, so it’s early on, and we’re waiting for our first acceptance. We’re dying to premiere the thing and start its life. Uh, I think, yeah, distributors are often found via festival screenings, but there are probably other ways. You’re edging closer and loser to your novel’s finish line, which is very impressive as well as mouth-watering. No, my novel’s still back burning. I’m starting work on Zac’s and my next film and a couple of big projects with Gisele, and, as evidenced by today’s post, I’m still more interested in making fiction using animated gifs instead of language. I’ll get back to the ‘novel’ novel at some point. Thank you for the excellent wishes and right back at you, sir. ** Okay. I made a new short literary gif work, and the blog is being used to foist it upon the world this weekend, and if you would be so kind as to say something in its regard, that would nice, but that’s totally up to you. See you on Monday.
Now available in North America 
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LOVE the Demon from “Night of /Curse of the Demon” and the juxtaposition of the dental exam and the Shark’s mouth.
Queercore was a fascinating moment (just before the internet took hold — with “Zines” ruled the world) Are you familiar with “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist” ? It’s a personal fave that involves a Queercore band.
This is GENIUS
Latest FaBlog: It’s Slut-Shaming Time!
I get your point about the validity of Lil Peep’s aesthetic. It’s just something I personally can’t get into, based on a set of influences that mean nothing to me, and that seem alien to what I like about both punk and hip-hop, even if he was interested in combining these genres and did so in an inventive way. Ka5sh’s EP and Lil Uzi Vert’s “XO Tour Lif3” seem like far more successful versions of the “SoundCloud rap” aesthetic. Have you heard or seen the video for Logic’s “1-800-{actual sucide prevention hotline}” ? The video is a 7-minute epic about a teen who becomes suicidal after his dad catches him in bed with another boy, featuring cameos from Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman and other Hollywood stars. Ten years ago, it would have been unprecedented to do something so explicitly pro-gay in mainstream hip-hop, but to me the song and video play like a PSA, not enjoyable music. (I had the same reaction to Macklemore’s “Same Love.”) However, calls to the suicide hotline the song is named after have tripled since it came out, so it’s doing some good in the real world.
A friend of mine in his late 60s recommended the Amboy Dukes as one of the psychedelic bands he was actually a fan of in the 60s, so I recently downloaded their album JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE MIND. The title track is the high point, and in retrospect, it’s quite amusing that Ted Nugent co-wrote a song that’s obviously about an acid trip without realizing it and that the artwork depicts about 20 different kinds of bongs and water pipes. (But one other song has a line he probably wrote: “I don’t need a joint.”) This is a really interesting mix of psychedelia and hard rock, and it shows the strengths of the Detroit scene at that time – it holds up alongside the Stooges, MC5, early Bob Seger and Funkadelic without being that great. I don’t like Nugent much, and he’s a vicious right-wing nutcase now, but I have to admit that his nascent metalhead tendencies give the band a real edge.
I had a meeting yesterday with my co-programmer on the Iranian series, and basically most of my work is done beyond watching one more short and writing program notes on it. He has edited all my notes for the next calendar’s text. He also set a date and times for the series and all its programs. We are still waiting for the director to put together a program of his favorite shorts and write notes on it, but the series is far enough in the future that the theater’s next calendar could just say “program of shorts, see our website for more details closer to showtime.” Also, the US distributor of several of his films suggested that he do a videotaped introduction, since he can’t travel to New York under present political circumstances. That’s a great idea. Unfortunately, the director also E-mailed that he’s at a film festival right now and will be hard to reach for the next few weeks. Things seem to be going on the right track. I’m sorry if I’ve been coy, but in about a month, I should be able to be totally open about what director and theater I’m talking about, and exactly when this series will take place.
I saw Michael Haneke’s CODE UNKNOWN last night – for the third time – and was really impressed by how good he can be at his best. I met a total stranger when I was hanging around the lobby beforehand, sat down with him and talked with him for 20 minutes afterwards. He respected the film but prefers THE WHITE RIBBON because it’s a pretty coherent account of the mentality that led to German fascism and CODE UNKNOWN is deliberately a collection of fragments that don’t add up to a coherent story, filled with a postmodern reflexivity about cinema and photography. To me, that’s exactly what I like about it. It seems like a critique of the “we are all connected” sub-genre of films like Paul Haggis’ CRASH and most Alejandro Gonzales Iñarritu films a few years before that trope became popular!
I must’ve commented on the robot post at the exact moment you put up the new post, so a ditto follows. I like that the interface for the GIFs is “mindless” scrolling. I could see one character in a movie using them as a Rorschach test on another.
I enjoyed all of the robots. Even while watching on video, it made a huge difference to me whether the robo parlor tricks were taking place in white or black box Art spaces or someplace, anyplace else. Something felt much less stuffy about “colmena” being in the woods or “Extremely Cruel Practices” being in what looks like a run down arena. Although I guess art galleries do almost always look like rich people’s parlors in that everything is minimal white and shiny.
I was reminded of Sophia, a robot which was declared a citizen of Saudi Arabia. You can find an earnest Campus Leftist critique here:
https://thebaffler.com/latest/sophia-with-love-and-hate-marques
You were right to sense a silver lining to me being the slow kid in class. It was a very pleasant surprise and honor to have been placed in the highest class offered at my school (some kind of Intermediate level in the grand scheme of things) after a year of passionate but not particularly rigorous study back in USA.
I had a painfully poor understanding of what was going on in USA both in my own life and in general, but it turns out my intuition about old Vienna (or Warsaw, Vilnius, Berlin, Lower East Side of Manhattan etc.) living on in Tel Aviv was spot on. The whole vibe of the drag show felt like the Yiddish theater continued through intergenerational transmission. I felt more at home in that room full of strangers than I ever did at any kind of event in USA.
One performer had a particularly timeless way about her and moved me to tears with a ballad in Yiddish-inflected Hebrew underneath magic marker graffiti on the wall behind the stage area that read Arbeit Macht Fried Chicken (looks like it’s there all the time but wasn’t visible last week when the lights were off for hard tekno night). That’s all I can say about this moment here but it’s probably worth writing more about.
Best of luck with your various artistic endeavors. Your descriptions of process are helpful and give the impression that it can very good to keep several irons in the fire.
Been a crazy week, Dennis. Don’t think we’ve had a gif story in awhile. The interactions within each group are very interesting: events sync up sometimes, then slip out of sync again. Some of the groupings are hypnotic.
Loved the robots from yesterday; will spend more time with them this weekend. Sorry to hear about the distributor stress.
Like Steevee, I have a story about meeting a stranger after a Michael Haneke screening. Mine was Amour, the stranger was a charming and attractive fellow, a film critic visiting from London. We spent an hour chatting about Haneke, Tsai Ming-Liang, Weerasethakul etc. But I was so rattled after Amour, I didn’t even think about inviting him back to my house.
Bill
Hey Dennis, how’s things? I just woke up from a deep nap, and am drinking some yogi tea and was reading the new GIF story, Pearlescence–great great title BTW. This story is one of my favorites, the transitions between images and juxtaposition of images was really amazing–I felt like I was still dreaming. It’s kind of like reading one of your written stories, but with each paragraph distilled down to its essence. really beautiful. I love where the piece gets quiet for a bit with the breathing thorax.
Things are pretty good here. I did a reading where I teach couple weeks ago that was really fun. I’ve had a bit of a cold the last week, but its been kind of a good way to chill from the year, which has been pretty busy mentally and physically.
Were you disappointed the dodgers didn’t win the WS? They did so good though right, it was pretty exciting!
Love, Alistair xo
Hi Dennis, enjoyed the GIF work, as always. I’m having terrible sleep problems in the morning, so hearing from you early Monday won’t seem to make a difference one way or another…I’m up anyway! Hi there! The one advantage to this that I can think of is that the first hour of every day starting at dawn is the best time to work magically with the power of that planet/day, so first hour of Monday is the day and hour of the moon; Tues, Mars; Weds, Mercury, etc. Just a little info that magickal people know, or don’t. Many don’t.
I’m reading Murakami. I like him. Just read his latest stories and liked them a lot. And currently re-reading COLORLESS TSUKURU TAZAKI AND HIS YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE, which I liked the first time except for the end, which felt to me like his publisher said they need it soon, so I felt he rushed the ending. I’ll see if I feel the same way on the 2nd go. I’m very intrigued by 4 friends dropping the main character for no explicable reason, which is something that has happened to me – I forget why the friends dropped him, so that keeps me interested on this second read. I never heard you mention him, but have a feeling he’s not your favorite. He just hits me right, and I’m able to read him, unlike many other authors these days.
Getting ready for Thanksgiving and family anxiety – you’re so lucky not to have that there…I hate Thanksgiving, though the food is always great. It’ll be the first time in years that the whole immediate family will be together, and I hope we get along. I’ll try my best to be agreeable…bringing my favorite wine, Vrac, a Cote du Rhone with a twist off top – my sister’s and my fave…so maybe I’ll get drunk and smoke on the side of the old folk’s place in NJ, even though no smoking is allowed on the premises. So that’s about it for now…not commenting much these days anywhere, just a little silent, but wanted to say hi.
This No-Longer-in-Any-Way-Shape-or-Form-Charming-Man
Hi!
Thank you for sharing your newest GIF piece! I loved absolutely everything about it. The pacing is amazing and I kept revisiting certain “sentences”. Truly, it’s brilliant!
Are there any developments about the festival thing? Did you at least get a proper explanation as to why they didn’t watch your movie on time? Gosh, I hope everything works out!!
Thank you! It’s been a while since I submitted the book so all the patience comes in handy!
Oh yes, yes! I remember when you told me about the French magazine! It must feel pretty unbelievable that they devote a whole issue to your work. It’s fantastic. And well-deserved. I wish I could still understand French.
My weekend turned out to be really, really peaceful and relaxing. I had plans with Anita but she, unfortunately, got sick and stayed home instead. I had a refreshing and lovely Skype conversation with my dear friend and artist Christin Pietzko, though, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Otherwise, I’ve been just reading and watching series. Stuff like that.
I’ll get home really late tomorrow so I won’t be able to reply then but I’ll be back on Tuesday!
Please tell me: how was your weekend? What happened?
This is an intense story, really masterfully put together. Like others have also found, it’s the dental exam giving me the instant heebie jeebies here, but there’s also plenty more besides and I found myself scrolling back up to revisit the sites of particular trauma.
My family are away back down to Leeds now. Tomorrow I start my last 3 weeks of work at the bank, having served the best part of 15 years at the call centre coal face. I’m looking forward to finishing alright, but the coming phase of Yuck ‘n Yum activity has hardly been worked out. I hope to meet Alex next week and maybe Donna too,so that we can at least touch base before I go back home for Xmas.
Wow, really amazing GIF story! The way the two and three panels work together in each mini-sequence feels stronger and more impactful than ever. Lots of little shocks and jolts of humor. The first appearance of the pepperoni pizza almost made me spit my drink over the computer screen. And it was great to see it reappear in combo with the water carnage and wine image. The rainbow shooting from the guy’s crotch was remarkable as well. The overall flow was wonderful and the final sequences that modulated into the ending were really sublime. Look forward to revisiting it in a few days, too.
Performed with the band on Friday and it went well overall. I fucked up one cue but it didn’t derail anything. There were a few other minor snafus, but decent for a first ever performance. Glad it’s over as the lead-up anxiety was consuming.
I forgot to mention that I saw Nathaniel Mackey read his poetry a few weeks back. Hearing his flow and cadences was revelatory and helped me to better understand how to read his poetry. Got his new chapbook ‘Lay Ghost’ which is excellent. Super nice guy, too.
You’re a fan of Mackey’s work, am I remembering that right? Have you ever done a post on his poetry and fiction? You have favorites among his poetry collections?
Dennis, Wow, a really interesting stack, my man. There’s a bit of horror I’m not really used to in your stacks. Or maybe it’s just really sticking out to me today.
You know what’s so interesting about what you said? It’s that whole love as a monolith thing. You said it so much better than I ever could. But yes, I totally agree. I think that when you lived -and not just lived but observed- you see that such things aren’t monolithic at all.
And really, that’s what’s wrong with so much of our discourse these days, how every group has to be a monolith and anyone who strays just the tiniest bit from that is suddenly a this or a that and not worthy of existing. I have more than a few friends -weirdly, mostly liberal friends this has happened to, but a couple of my conservative friends too- who’ve expressed an opinion about one tiny little thing here or there that wasn’t toeing the line of the monolithic group thought and were suddenly branded racists or homophobes or Nazis (most of these people were some sort of minority themselves, gay, black, mixed, Jewish, etc.). That’s insane to me. Totally insane.
Like I’ve said, most of my liberal friends think I’m a fascist Nazi and most of my conservative friends think I’m a pinko commie. I think my really good friends know I’m just kind of all over the place, though maybe kind of consistent in a weird way.
new gif work !! i went through this one carefully and made a rough outline of what i thought was going on, which helps me think about them clearer. i was especially paying close attention to the different patterns u were using in the gif sets, thinking about it in terms of the micro-format, like we were talking about the other day. gathering ideas that i want to experiment with.
in this latest gif story, were there any newer or new-ish patterns that u had in mind? or old patterns that u noticed? i hope that’s not a vague or difficult question, i mean probably a lot of this is intutitive. but i just wanted to pick your brain about if any of those type of ideas came up as u were putting this story together.
i looked up the meaning of the title. what did u like about that title?
i liked the “fuck” between the twirling kid. like revealing a hidden slice from another dimension, or at least that’s went through my head. i sometimes wonder if thoughts and feels are part of this world. or to what extent they are. because they’re sort of immaterial, although they come from brain chemicals. maybe that’s the crazy christian evangelical in me talking.
can i ask, why did u decide to put the flashing grey blue black and yellow bar below the guy who’s peeling off his shirt and dissappearing? and the blue red green gif below the kid slamming his hands on nails? u don’t have to say if u don’t want to, it can be something for me to ponder. but very interested and curious about it though.
the two identically suprised/happy faces are perfect. perfectly synched. that made me smile. that like a small-time miracle that u found those two and could put them side by side.
i really like the dentist and shark teeth one too. i feel like maybe i’ve already talked about this with u, but i’m fascinated about how u can make metaphors by combining images like that. i mean it happens in sentences all the time and i’m used to it, but it feels different and foreign and therefore a bit more surprising or something when it’s done the gifs. less specific. more free and wandering. idk, i need more time to really articulate what i mean.
the rocket smoke trail above the joint is brilliant. and they have the same green background.
the justin bieber one reminds me of period and the black house. idk if that’s an interesting comment, it’s just what popped in my head.
the gif of sawing the head’s jaw off is intense. plus combined with the bottom gif
the gif set with the ring between the dummy head and breathing torso also makes me think about the spiritual world. like a secret thing inside, a thing not from this world.
i really like the rotating…piece of rock? looks like an asteroid maybe? i just think it looks really good by itself, against the white of the website.
the ‘i don’t like u bitch’ + guy getting whipped + ‘you’re fucking perfect to me’ followed by the handshake made me laugh out loud
anyway those were some of my reactions, interesting or not. were there any parts of the gif story that u felt particularly satisfied with? if u were asked to present this gif story at a reading or something, what would u say to introduce it? or would u say nothing to introduce it?
please only react to the questions and comments that interest u, i’m throwing a lot of things around. i always find yr gif works very interesting and fruitful to spend time with, thanks for sharing them.
take care !! hope ur having a good morning
so beautiful, breath taking, freighting, scary and funny, with all your odd rhythmic juxtapositions, counter weights and swings. much love
Hey,
“Uh, probably because the licensing fees are outrageous?” You mean about the T-800 Terminator and Unicron? Well, I just think it would be out-of-this-fucking-world cool if they could be built. But, anyway, it’d be impossible, since, you know, Unicron is bigger than the Moon, so… But, you know I’m just stupid like that.
“I haven’t seen ‘Crimson Peak’. I should?” Well, if you like Gothic movies about haunted houses with incredibly dark and fucked up and insane pasts; and that have a few little bits of black humor; then I’d greatly recommend it.
“Does ‘Enter the Void’ count?” No.
You don’t like ‘THE SHINING’, ‘The Haunting’, ‘Burnt Offerings’???
“Maybe not knowing is why it scared me.” Yeah, I guess that does make a lot of sense. The last horror movies that *truly* disturbed me a little bit/got under my skin were Wheatley’s ‘Kill List’ and Zombie’s ‘The Lords Of Salem’. But of course, the contemporary movie that’s disturbed the most (to the point of causing me an anxiety attack and a crying fit) isn’t a “horror movie” at all…
“morally bankrupt and salaciously nihilistic” Just my kind of place. Sounds like shitloads of fun and extremely interesting. Now I really, really want to go.
“I’ve basically given up entirely on writing essays. I never could quite suss that form to my satisfaction.” Oh, wow, I obviously had no idea about that whatsoever. I’m really surprised, to be honest. In my case I just think of DIDION and how much I love her and her work and it makes me want to write an essay so, so, so fucking bad… You know?
“I hope your weekend is a work of art.” It wasn’t. But it was filled with Art, that I can assure you. “Somethin better than nothin” as Jack White would say, I guess…
Recently I’ve been listening A LOT to Mr. Leonard Cohen’s (May He Rest In Peace) ‘Ten New Songs’ album. I LOVE it so much. It’s just genius and brilliant and so exciting and beautiful and utterly wondrous and enjoyable and filled with classic Cohen lyrics… Just Great. It’s my 3rd Favorite Cohen album, after ‘Songs Of Love And Hate’ and ‘You Want It Darker’. I’ve been very obsessed with this album these days.
Thank you so much for the email. I really appreciate it.
Good day; good luck,
Hugs,
A.