1 – HEADLESS THE NOVEL
I didn’t finish The Loop yesterday, because I became distracted. I really do need to finish it. I’m going to have Jeremy on the podcast soon. He was my very first publisher and one of my best pals. Looking forward to the ride ahead. It’s a lot of fun so far. Something I’ll never get tired of telling people is that a character in this book is based at least in part on me. When he is introduced, one of the first descriptors is that he has bad posture.
I will finish it…but first, I have to finish this one. I picked it up on Kindle after another rabbit hole. I found Goldin+Senneby (the Swedish artist duo behind the novel) through “The World for the Trees” article by Gary Zhexi Zhang, which details various new ways artists are reinventing the way stories are told. Interesting sync: the article first mentions the piece Crying Pine Trees (2018-present), in which Goldin+Senneby have attempted to send a genetically modified pine tree into sap overdrive, in the interest of investigating (fixing?) autoimmune disorders. Katie Kitamura will simultaneously write a novel (IIRC a chapter every year) as the genetically modified saplings grow.
Anyhow, back to Headless. It’s a mystery novel that was written in conjunction with several live talks over the course of 2007-2015. G+S (more on them at some point) were interested in “investigating offshore companies” in the Bahamas, etc. If something doesn’t exist hard enough, it begins to exist. That’s what the novel is: the existence of something that powerfully did not.
2 – HEADLESS BY DOG FASHION DISCO
I will never not take an opportunity to shout out one of my favorite bands of all time. I used to spend summers with my grandmother, and on one of those summers I downloaded Napster on her computer. I was in a deep pirate fugue state, clicking everything labeled “System of a Down” (remember how you could find really, really deep cuts?), and one of those tracks, “Mushroom Cult,” was in fact a Dog Fashion Disco song.
It had Serj guesting on it. Remember though, how things would be intentionally mislabeled? You think you’re getting a Bloodhound Gang song, and you end up with something three levels deep into the Dark Carnival. What a time that was to be alive.
Anyhow, this isn’t their best song, even off of this album, but it reminds me of a different time. They hadn’t come for us, yet.
Broken River Blog 