Roy Christopher's Blog, page 8

Official Report on the Intransitionalist Chronotopologies of Kenji Siratori

The Official Report on the Intransitionalist Chronotopologies of Kenji Siratori is a 163 page paperback book, with an accompanying soundtrack, available today on Bandcamp for Bandcamp Friday! It’s a conceptual collaboration between cult Japanese author, Kenji Siratori, the Canadian electro-acoustic duo Wormwood, and a host of well known academics, writers, and other members of the Ministry of Transrational Research into Anastrophic Manifolds, including me!

The Official Report on the Intransitionalist Chronotopologies of Kenji Siratori: Appendix 8.2.3 is an AI-generated, xenopoetic “glitch novel” of sorts, with a good portion of the book also given over to a randomly written and ordered set of strange and beautiful footnotes that were submitted by the 60+ members of the Ministry. This is a futuristic work on all fronts, and in order to contrast with the digitally obtrusive writing, and to play into our belief in“technological mutualism”, our packaging design and visual aesthetic is of a more analogue and DIY, old school cut and paste nature. What we have here then is a work of art that bridges past and future, but is firmly embedded in the NOW!

Coordinator Andrew Wenaus explains:

The result is a work of xenopoetic emergence: a beautifully absurd, alien document scintillating with strange potency. Official Report on the Intransitionalist Chronotopologies of Kenji Siratori: Appendix 8.2.3 is a xenopoetic data/dada anthology that documents the activities of the artist collective The Ministry of Transrational Research into Anastrophic Manifolds. The anthology results from an experimental approach to impersonal literary composition. Similar to surrealist definitions, but on the scale of a technical document, members of the Ministry-poets, musicians, novelists, painters, curators, artists, scientists, philosophers, and physicians-were asked to offer a microfiction, poem, essay, fictional citation, or computer code, in the form of a footnote or annotation to a glitch-generated novel by iconoclastic Japanese artist Kenji Siratori; however, each participant wrote their contribution without any access to or knowledge about the nature of Siratori's source text. After collecting the contributions, the "footnotes" were each algorithmically linked to an arbitrary word from Siratori's novel. Bringing together algorithmically and Al-generated electronic literature with analogue collage and traditional modes of literary composition, the Ministry refuses to commit solely to digital, automated, or analogue art and instead seeks technological mutualism and a radically alien future for the arts.

Accompanied by a groundbreaking original score by electro-acoustic duo Wormwood, the anthology offers the radical defamiliarization and weird worlds of science fiction, but now the strangeness bites back on the level form. Readers should expect to discover strange portals from which new ways of thinking, feeling, and being emerge. A conceptual and experimental anthology, Official Report on The Intransitionalist Chronotopologies of Kenji Siratori inaugurates collective xenopoetic writing and the conceit that the future of art will consist of impersonal acts of material emergence, not personal expression. Consume with caution.

CREDITS:

Book written by Kenji Sartori.

Footnotes by the Ministry of Transrational Research into Anastrophic Manifolds: Rosaire Appel, Louis Armand, David Barrick, Gary Barwin, Steve Beard, Gregory Betts, Christian Bök, Mike Bonsall, Peter Bouscheljong, Maria Chenut, Shane Jesse Christmass, Roy Christopher, Tabasco “Ralph” Contra, Mike Corrao, R.J. Dent, Paul Di Filippo, Zak Ferguson, Colin Herrick, S.C. Hickman, Maxwell Hyett, Justin Isis, Andrew Joron, Chris Kelso, Phillip Klingler, Adam Lovasz, Daniel Lukes, Ania Malinowska, Claudia B. Manley, Ryota Matsumoto, Michael Mc Aloran, Andrew Mcluhan, Jeff Noon, Jim Osman, Suarjan Prasai, Tom Prime, David Leo Rice, Virgilio Rivas, David Roden, B.R. Yeager, Andrej Shakowski, Aaron Schneider, Gary J. Shipley, Kenji Siratori, Sean Smith, Kristine Snodgrass, Sean Sokolov, Alan Sondheim, Simon Spiegel, Henry Adam Svec, Jeff VanderMeer, R.G. Vasicek, Andrew C. Wenaus [Ministry Director], William Wenaus, Eileen Wennekers, Christina Marie Willatt, Saywrane Alfonso Williams, D. Harlan Wilson, and Andrew Wilt.

All music composed by Andrew Wenaus and Christina Marie Willatt.
Performed by Andrew Wenaus, Christina Marie Willatt, and Kenji Siratori.

Packaging design and artwork by Colin Herrick.
Produced by Andrew Wenaus and Time Released Sound.

WARNING!! AS IS STATED ON THE BACK OF THE BOOK:
“Loved ones of those that disappeared reported that prior to their detainment, the victims were sent an unmarked envelope. The envelope contained a letter whose contents consisted exclusively of 317 black rectangular glyphs. Due to the still uncertain nature and status of this Appendix, Time Released Sound would like all readers to be aware of this history!”

Those of you that purchase the Limited Edition version will very possibly be sent one of these envelopes as well, sometime after you have received the book, so please be careful when ordering it!

Get yours today! It’s Bandcamp Friday, so all the money goes directly to the artists!

Thanks to Andrew Wenaus for including me in this wildly inventive project.

And thanks to you for reading,

-royc.

http://roychristopher.com

Like a Totem

A while back, Fevers of the Mind published two of my poems. One was “San Diego” from the inaugural issue of Sledgehammer Lit and my chapbook, Abandoned Accounts. The other was a new one called “Like a Totem” that I wanted to share with you here:

A distant point of lightFilling your hopeless quotaWith memories you had forgottenAnd habits you didn’t know you had.A search party for a souvenir;A gang from a faraway street Running you in from outside,Your wheels wound with worry.A room so quiet you could hear the walls itch;A song stuck in your head like mud;A girl staring at you with eyes so darkThey could swallow you whole.Startled by your arrival,She hides her idols in a dollhouse,A rival altar in miniatureInside a room next to the room.You knew you wouldn’t wake upBefore all your ghosts had gathered On the corner of your quiltGripped tight like a totem. Cover art by me and my Sharpie.

Abandoned Accounts includes a bunch of silly memories I started writing down in poem form, reflections of walks in the woods at my parents’ house in the hinterlands of southeast Alabama, encounters with favorite bands and somewhat famous people, tales of travel and intrigue, and a few stray poems from as far back as 1990.

Here’s an interview with me about the book upon its one-year anniversary with fellow poet, the brutally beautiful, HLR.

And here’s a taste: the great Scott Cumming reading “Virga” from Abandoned Accounts:

It’s a fun little book of verse. Get a pretty blue paperback for $7.99 or the Kindle version for only $3.99!

As always, thank you for reading,

-royc.

http://roychristopher.com

Overlooked, Underrated, or Otherwise Unsung

Last week’s Touch and Go listicle went over so well, I’m doing another one this week!

If I had to pick one thing, I’d say that my taste in movies is driven by the desire to see something I haven’t seen or can’t see otherwise. Be it ridiculous, unfathomable, violent, scary, or visual — just something I can’t see walking down the street.

Perhaps just my own personal cult classics, here are ten movies from this century so far that I don’t think are talked about nearly enough (in chronological order).

Bruce Campbell as Elvis and Ossie Davis as JFK in Bubba Ho-Tep (2002).

Bubba Ho-Tep (2002): I saw Bubba Ho-Tep in the theater. I’d just read Bruce Campbell’s first book, If Chins Could Talk, so I was primed. In a retirement home terrorized by an ancient Egyptian mummy, Campbell is Elvis Presley and Ossie Davis is John F. Kennedy. Writer-director Don Coscarelli manages to tackle some very serious topics from this madcap premise. I am still baffled that this movie hasn’t gotten a thorough and positive reassessment.

High school.

The Chumscrubber (2005): During my initial Donnie Darko (2001) phase, I watched a bunch of recommended-if-you-like movies. Most of them faded away while The Chumscrubber went on to become one of my all-time favorites (The only other one I can remember from that era now is The United States of Leland). How Arie Posin was able to get this cast for his debut as a writer-director is a miracle in itself. Allison Janney, William Fichtner, Ralph Fiennes, Rory Culkin, Glenn Close, Lauren Holly, John Heard, Justin Chatwin, Lou Taylor Pucci, Carrie Anne-Moss, Rita Wilson, Camilla Belle, and Jamie Bell all turn in stellar performances. I’ve recommended this movie to so many people and have yet to find anyone else who likes it.

This is the way the world ends… You have no idea.

Southland Tales (2006): I write and talk about Richard Kelly’s second film every chance I get. Its release was delayed so much that it almost came out in the future it was predicting (2008), yet watching it in the meantime, it seems like a documentary. “Ambitious” is a euphemism people use for a failed attempt at something colossal. This movie has a three-part graphic-novel prequel (The movie itself depicts parts 4, 5, and 6). It’s a mess, but it’s a beautiful mess. Another of my all-time favorites.

Definitely.

Shrink (2009): Featuring Kevin Spacey, Robin Williams, Mark Webber, Jesse Plemons, Gore Vidal, Dallas Roberts, a young Keke Palmer and a pregnant Pell James, Shrink makes me remember how much I love writing and writers. The movie, while largely about grief and recovery, is also about writing and stories. The score, which is unavailable anywhere outside the film, was composed by Brian Reitzel with contributions from Ken Andrews and others, and rivals my favorites.

Coherence (2013): I talk and write about this one every chance I get as well…

See above for my interview with writer-director James Ward Byrkit.

No maps for these territories.

Maps to the Stars (2014): It’s hard to beat a writing and directing team like Bruce Wagner and David Cronenberg. Wagner is a novelist who co-wrote A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) with Wes Craven and wrote the miniseries Wild Palms (1993). Cronenberg is, well, Cronenberg. Mia Wasikowska, Julianne Moore, John Cusack, Robert Pattinson, Sarah Gadon, and Evan Bird all play their parts so perfectly understated. Alphabetically and conceptually between Magnolia and Mulholland Drive, Maps to the Stars explores fame, incest, and immolation in equal parts.

Joaquin Phoenix as Doc Sportello in Inherent Vice (2014).

Inherent Vice (2014): Paul Thomas Anderson took on Thomas Pynchon’s hippy noir novel, and no one seemed to notice. It’s Paul Thomas Anderson, so there are too many people to name, but Joanna Newsom’s presence and narration deserve special mention, as do the brief but memorable appearances of Hong Chau, Martin Short, Jena Malone, and a raucous performance by Josh Brolin. Sometimes I pretend it’s Lebowsky Part Two.

Now do Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge (2013).

Tina Fey and Billy Bob Thornton in Whisky, Tango, Foxtrot (2016).

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016): Based on Kim Baker’s memoir, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan (2011), and , Whiskey, Tango Foxtrot features Tina Fey, Christopher Abbott, Margot Robbie, Martin Freeman, Alfred Molina, and Billy Bob Thornton. This movie really captures feeling uprooted by your own choices and the simultaneous longing for a home that doesn’t necessarily exist.

Crispin Glover can kick, and he can fight.

Lucky Day (2019): Lucky Day is the nearly lost almost-sequel to Roger Avary’s bank-heist classic, Killing Zoe (1993). Standouts in the cast include the amazing Clifton Collins Jr. and a completely unhinged Crispin Glover. If you like Avary’s other work or you prefer your Tarantino of a certain vintage, today is your day.

Amanda Seyfried and Gary Oldman in Mank (2020).

Mank (2020): Another one that makes me remember how much I love writing and writers, David Fincher’s Mank was written by Jack Fincher, his father. It tells the story of Herman Mankowicz, the state of Hollywood, and the political climate during his writing of Citizen Kane. Gary Oldman plays Mank and Amanda Seyfried plays Marion Davies, a movie star and mistress of William Randloph Hearst, media mogul and subject of Mank’s screenplay. As Mank himself put it, “You cannot capture a man's entire life in two hours. All you can hope is to leave the impression of one.”

As always, thank you for reading,

-royc.

http://roychristopher.com

The Power of Independent Labels

There are many record labels that have been beacons throughout my lifelong music fandom, stables of carefully curated bands and sounds. Dischord, Def Jam, Sub Pop, Creation, Merge, 4AD, Def Jux, Anticon, Southern Lord, The Flenser, and Backwoodz Studioz all come to mind. Few have had the impact or staying power of Touch and Go Records though.

They do a thing over on their Instagram where they ask people what they think the most influential records from the label are. I sent one to them a few months ago, but I’m nobody, so it never rated a post (The posts are from band members of Touch and Go bands). I still wanted to share though, so…

Here are the Touch and Go releases that were most influential to me:

[Note: All record links go to the records’ Bandcamp page where you can sample and purchase the music.]

Big Black Songs About Fucking (1987): If I had to pick one, this would be it. Steve Albini’s unique sound and style, as well as his punk-literary lyricism are all here. This record’s median is all of the seedy shit your parents warned you about. I know everyone prefers Atomizer, but this is the one for me. I found it a few years after it came out, and it remains one of my all-time favorites.

Slint Spiderland (1991): I almost skipped this record as too obvious a choice, but no one can deny the influence of Slint. A post-rock hallmark and a haunting slab of guitar music, Spiderland helped spawn at least two subgenres and countless bands. I came to this one late, but a lot of other things I liked made much more sense after I found it.

The Jesus Lizard Liar (1992): I remember getting this one the day it was released. They might have better records than this, but I doubt it. I saw them on this tour at the Capitol Theatre in Olympia, Washington. Sitting on a dumpster outside (the show was sold out), I caught glimpses of David Yow and Duane Denison prowling the tiny stage area. It was perfect… One unadulterated beast of a band.

Tar Clincher (1993): I met these guys at the Cowhaus in Tallahassee, Florida on tour with Arcwelder right before this EP came out. At the merch table, singer/guitarist John Mohr asked me, “See anything you can’t live without?” They might have better records too, but this one gets in, does its job, and gets out.

New Wet Kojak s/t (1995): Ex-Soulside/Girls Against Boys frontman Scott McCloud always deserved to be much more famous than he was, and New Wet Kojak always seemed like his purest form. As much stagger as it is swagger, this record is downright sexy.

Bad Flag Man Amok (1995): This last three-song seven inch, Man Amok, marked a conceptual turn in Bad Flag’s songwriting. The change is subtle but significant enough to make one wonder what would have come next. Acts 1 and 2, “Where the Day Goes to Die” and “Good God Gone Bad,” are on the A-side. “All the Way Down” is the third act and takes up the whole B-side. It’s probably their best-known trilogy of songs. It came out after they broke up and was the only recording not released by the band themselves—or without their knowledge. As one reviewer put it, “No one should have it, and no one should be without it. That’s how controversial it is.”

The Sonora Pine II (1997): I slow danced with Tara Jane O’Neil to a Nancy Sinatra song after Rodan opened for the Grifters at the Moe in Seattle sometime in 1994. Tara was playing bass for Rodan at the time (their records belong on this list too). The Sonora Pine is what she did next, and it’s no less devastating than Rodan’s Rusty albeit in a completely different way.

Shellac 1000 Hurts (2000): Though I got the early 7” EPs (The Rude Gesture: A Pictoral History and Uranus, both released by T&G in 1993) and the full length At Action Park (1994) on vinyl as soon as they came out, this is the one I go back to most often. If you don’t get Albini’s sense of humor on this one, you probably never will.

TV on the Radio Return to Cookie Mountain (2006): After loving their earlier releases, I remember being blown away by how good this record was. Like, how did they get even better than they already were?! The very peak of their output.

Cover art by Jeffrey Alan Love. Book design by Patrick Barber.Bad Flag is Real.

No, Bad Flag never had a record on Touch and Go. No, Bad Flag never actually existed. They’re all too real though. If you like any of the bands above, you’ll recognize them. They are the subject of a short story in my forthcoming collection, Different Waves, Different Depths.

The collection comes out September 12th on Impeller Press. That’s in just a few weeks! Preorder yours now!

As always, thanks for reading,

-royc.

http://roychristopher.com

My Radical Sabbatical

I’m stoked to announce that next week I’ll be joining the teaching faculty in the School of Communication at the University of North Florida, thus ending three years of unemployment. I’ve been calling this my “Radical Sabbatical,” as I spent a lot of time on my BMX bike and my skateboard, but I also did a lot of writing. I really did a lot of writing.

I looked hard for a job when I left my last one in June 2020, but it being the early months of the COVID-19 lockdown, I quickly found that no one was hiring. Fortunately I’d been able to save a lot of what I’d made at my previous position, so I decided to just try to earn it. My dad always says to make sure you accomplish something every day, so I applied a strong reading of that advice and got to work.

I already had a few book projects in various stages of the publishing process, but I dedicated my time to getting them all out there. I also made a new zine, designed some logos, appeared on a few podcasts, wrote some essays, and had my first solo art show, but finishing books was my main focus.

So, as I start a new phase, what follows is a brief roundup of the results of my Radical Sabbatical. Read on!

A few spines of mine.Abandoned Accounts

When the lockdown started, I found it difficult to focus on the larger projects. In the months before, I’d started writing silly little poems about odd memories I had, tiny stories that didn’t fit anywhere else. I went back to those when I couldn’t think any larger. I eventually moved on to short stories and finally back to book-length writing, but not before I amassed a small pile of poems.

Abandoned Accounts collects those silly memories I started writing down, including reflections of walks in the woods at my parents’ house in the hinterlands of southeast Alabama, encounters with favorite bands and somewhat famous people, tales of travel and intrigue, and a few stray poems from as far back as 1990. It was an unexpected project, and I’m really proud of the results.

Fender the Fall

Fender the Fall is a short story about Chris Bridges, a lovelorn physics graduate student who goes back in time to return the journal of his high-school crush in order to save her life and his marriage. As you might expect, the plan doesn’t go as planned.

Tagline: You don’t know what you’ve got until you get it back.

It was briefly available as a standalone novella from Alien Buddha Press. I was fortunate enough to get Matthew Revert to design the cover and Mike Corrao to do the typesetting. As a result, it was a sharp-looking little book.

Though the novella is no longer in print, it will be included in my forthcoming short story collection, Different Waves, Different Depths (see below).

discontents

My friends Patrick Barber, Craig Gates, and I put together the pilot issue of a new zine called discontents. The content covers the usual concerns: music, movies, books, and poetry. We reached out to all of our old zine-era friends, so it includes writing by Cynthia Connolly, Peter Relic, Andy Jenkins, Spike Jonze, Fatboi Sharif, Timothy Baker, and Greg Pratt, artwork by Zak Sally and Tae Won You, as well as work by Patrick, Craig, and myself. Subjects include Ceremony, Unwound, Hsi-Chang Lin a.k.a. Still, Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown, Crestone director Marnie Elizabeth Hertzler, Coherence director James Ward Byrkit, and others.

We did this one as a proof of concept (high-end content, lo-fi production) and will be releasing a full debut issue in the near future.

Follow for Now, Vol. 2

My second interview anthology, Follow for Now, Vol. 2, picks up and pushes beyond the first volume with a more diverse set of interviewees and interviews. The intent of the first collection was to bring together voices from across disciplines, to cross-pollinate ideas. At the time, social media wasn’t crisscrossing all of the lines and categories held a bit more sway. Volume 2 aims not only to pick up where Follow for Now left off but also to tighten its approach with deeper subjects and more timely interviews. This one is a bit more focused and goes a bit deeper than the last. It includes several firsts, a few lasts, and is fully illustrated with portraits of every interviewee.

“Relentlessly stimulating and insight-packed, Follow for Now is the kind of book I’d like to see published every decade, and devoured every subsequent decade, from now until the end of humanity.” — Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

There’s an updated version of Follow for Now, Vol. 2 coming soon!

Midnight Diamond by Human Recreational Services.Human Recreational Services

My old friend Erik Ellington asked me to write some things for his luxury shoe brand, Human Recreational Services. The collection I worked on is called Midnight Diamond, and I have to include it here as it was one of my favorite opportunities from the last few years. Here’s one bit I wrote:

As if trapped in a photograph by Ed Ruscha hanging on the wall in a David Lynch film, a young couple find themselves stranded along the lost highway in the deep desert. At a gas station, they stumble upon a door that leads to unexpected delights, a sudden contrast to their desolation. Figures emerge from the scene promising not safety but salvation, their boots made of distressed leathers studded with jewels, their movements imbued with the gestures of ceremony. Shoes sparkling in the sand, secret messages from parties hidden in back-masked 1980s metal. The flickering signifiers of ritual, dirty glamour marked by the patina of time. Midnight Diamond blends surrealism and serendipity with mystery and metaphor. Mining diamonds in the desert rough, uncertain times demand the discovery of unseen strengths in unexpected places.

Check out the video that goes with the words.

Escape Philosophy

Using extreme examples from heavy metal music and science fiction and horror movies, Escape Philosophy: Journeys Beyond the Human Body is a survey of all the ways we try to shuck off the shackles of our physical forms.

“Too often philosophy gets bogged down in the tedious ‘working-through’ of contingency and finitude. Escape Philosophy takes a different approach, engaging with cultural forms of refusal, denial, and negation in all their glorious ambivalence.” — Eugene Thacker, author, In the Dust of This Planet

“An interesting read indeed!” — Aaron Weaver, Wolves in the Throne Room

There’s a new edition of Escape Philosophy forthcoming. More on that soon!

Boogie Down Predictions

While I was writing my book Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future (Repeater Books, 2019), I gathered up some friends, and we put together an edited collection as sort of a companion to Dead Precedents. Time was one of the aspects of both hip-hop and science fiction that I didn’t get to talk about much in that book, so I started asking around. I found many other writers, scholars, theorists, DJs, and emcees, as interested in the intersection of hip-hop and time as I was. As I continued contacting people and collecting essays, I got more and more excited about the book. Boogie Down Predictions: Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism is a quest to understand the connections between time, representation, and identity within hip-hop culture, as well as what that means for the culture at large.

Me and Ytasha Womack talking hip-hop and Afrofuturism. Photo by Shannon Keane.

Ytasha Womack, who wrote the Introduction, and I did an event for Boogie Down Predictions this July at Volumes Books in Chicago, and you missed a treat if you weren’t there.

“Roy Christopher’s dedication to the future is bracing. Boogie Down Predictions is a symphony of voices, beats, and bars messing with time, unsettling histories, opening portals.” — Jeff Chang, author, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

First Friday Art Crawl

I had a collection of illustrations and logo designs up at Reset Mercantile in Dothan, Alabama. The clip above was shot by Ryan Mills for Big as Life Media. If you’re interested, you can see a few pictures of the pieces on the wall or check out my illustration portfolio. Many thanks to Justin April for the opportunity.

Cover illustration by Jeffrey Alan Love.Different Waves, Different Depths

My debut collection of short fiction, Different Waves, Different Depths, takes its name from a comment an old crush made once about her feelings for the author. It also describes these nine stories, varying in style from the literarily weird to the science fiction and in length from the flash to the novella. There’s even a pilot script in here.

Impeller Press will be releasing Different Waves, Different Depths on September 12th, and you can preorder your copy now!

“Working the borderlands between philosophy, sci-fi, and ultra-contemporary social critique, these stories illuminate our strange cusp moment in a deeply humanistic and bracing manner. A sharp, propulsive, and canny collection.” — David Leo Rice, author, Drifter

Dive in deep, ease in the shallows, or just let the tide lap at your toes. Different waves are waiting.

Cover object and image by me.The Medium Picture

At long last I have finished my post-punk media theory book. Drawing from the disciplines of media ecology and media archaeology, as well as bringing fresh perspectives from music (e.g., Fugazi, Radiohead, Gang of Four, Run the Jewels, Christian Marclay, Laurie Anderson, et al.) and skateboarding, The Medium Picture illuminates aspects of technological mediation that have been overlooked along the way. With a Foreword by Andrew McLuhan, it shows how immersion in unmoored technologies of connectivity finds us in a world of pure media and redefines who we are, how we are, and what we will be.

“Very much looking forward to reading new Christopher, exactly the sort of contemporary cultural analysis to yield unnerving flashes of the future.” — William Gibson

The Medium Picture is forthcoming.

Deborah Harry in 1976 vs. Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn in 2016.The Grand Allusion

I also signed on to write The Grand Allusion for Palgrave Macmillan as a part of their Pivot series. I’m only a few chapters into this one, but it’s shaping up nicely. My dissertation was on the use of allusions in rap lyrics, and I’ve since wanted to expand the analysis to pop cultural references in other media. Our media is so saturated with allusions to other media that we scarcely think about them. Their meaning relies in large part on the catching and interpreting of cultural allusions, on their audiences sharing the same mediated memories, the same mediated experiences.

The Grand Allusion explores these experiences, yielding a new understanding of our media, our culture, and ourselves.

Hope for Boats

Somewhere in there, I decided I wanted to try to write a novel. The seed situation was a funeral and a parade on the same day in a small town, and the story has grown from there. On October 11, 2022, I read the Prologue of “Hope for Boats” to the Rotary Club of Elba, Alabama, on which the fictional town in the story is loosely based. If you’re into it, you can read the excerpt along with me at Malarkey Books. 

More on this one as it develops.

I don’t know if I quite earned three years “off,” but I definitely tried. With all of that said, I’m looking forward to getting back into the classroom, corrupting young minds. My creative output might return to a somewhat normal pace though. You’ll be the first to know.

Many thanks to everyone who had anything to do with the above projects — writers, designers, editors, contributors, collaborators, even if you just read one of them — I appreciate it. Without you, all of this would just be scribbles in my notebook. Special thanks to my parents for tolerating me for the last year.

All of these projects are up on my website. Check 'em out!

Thank you for your continued support,

-royc.

http://roychristopher.com

BOOGIE DOWN PREDICTIONS in Chicago!

Ytasha L. Womack and I will be at Volumes BookCafé in Wicker Park in Chicago on July 13th at 6:30pm to talk about our book Boogie Down Predictions: Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism !

Through essays by some of hip-hop’s most interesting thinkers, theorists, journalists, writers, emcees, and DJs, Boogie Down Predictions embarks on a quest to understand the connections between time, representation, and identity within hip-hop culture and what that means for the culture at large. This book explores these temporalities, possible pasts, and further futures from a diverse, multilayered, interdisciplinary perspective.

Ytasha L. Womack, author of Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture and the forthcoming Black Panther: A Cultural Exploration, wrote the Introduction. Here’s an excerpt:

This book, edited by Roy Christopher, is a moment. It is the deconstructed sample, the researched lyrical metaphors, the aha moment on the way to hip-hop enlightenment. Hip-hop permeates our world, and yet it is continually misunderstood. Hip-hop’s intersections with Afrofuturism and science fiction provide fascinating touchpoints that enable us to see our todays and tomorrows. This book can be, for the curious, a window into a hip-hop-infused Alter Destiny—a journey whose spaceship you embarked on some time ago. Are you engaging this work from the gaze of the future? Are you the data thief sailing into the past to U-turn to the now? Or are you the unborn child prepping to build the next universe? No, you’re the superhero. Enjoy the journey.

Boogie Down Predictions also features contributions from Omar Akbar, Juice Aleem, Tiffany E. Barber, Kevin Coval, Samantha Dols, Kodwo Eshun, Kembrew McLeod, Chuck Galli, Nettrice Gaskins, Jonathan Hay, Jeff Heinzl, Rasheedah Phillips, Steven Shaviro, Aram Sinnreich, André Sirois, Erik Steinskog, Dave Tompkins, Tia C.M. Tyree, Joël Vacheron, tobias c. van Veen, and K. Ceres Wright.

[Cover art by Savage Pencil.]

Here’s what people are saying about it:

Roy Christopher’s dedication to the future is bracing. Boogie Down Predictions is a symphony of voices, beats, and bars messing with time, unsettling histories, opening portals. — Jeff Chang, author, Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

The study of hip-hop requires more than a procession of protagonists, events, and innovations. Boogie Down Predictions stops the clock—each essay within it a frozen moment, an opportunity to look sub-atomically at the forces that drive this culture. — Dan Charnas, author, Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla

How does hip-hop fold, spindle, or mutilate time? In what ways does it treat technology as, merely, a foil? Are its notions of the future tensed…or are they tenseless? For Boogie Down Predictions, Roy Christopher’s trenchant anthology, he’s assembled a cluster of curious interlocutors. Here, in their hands, the culture has been intently examined, as though studying for microfractures in a fusion reactor. The result may not only be one of the most unique collections on hip-hop yet produced, but, even more, and of maximum value, a novel set of questions. — Harry Allen, Hip-Hop Activist & Media Assassin

Boogie Down Predictions offers new ways of listening to, looking at, and thinking about hip-hop culture. It teaches us that hip-hop bends time, blending past, present, and future in sound and sense. Roy Christopher has given us more than a book; it’s a cypher and everyone involved brought bars. — Adam Bradley, author, Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop

Join us for what promises to be a fun talk!

Volumes Bookcafé is located at 1373 N. Milwaukee Ave in Wicker Park in Chicago.

I hope to see you there!

More soon,

-royc.

http://roychristopher.com

Stumbling into Oblivion

I didn’t even know there was an event going on. I mean, when in Austin, The Live Music Capital of the World, one should always assume there’s an event going on. It’s pretty unavoidable. During SXSW bands play in coffeeshops, grocery stores, street corners… I was already going to Austin to visit my partner. We met there while we were both attending the University of Texas, and she moved back after graduate school. So, I go back as often as I can.

This time the trip coincided with a rare appearance by Have a Nice Life, one of my favorite bands, and one I’ve never seen play live. I had tickets to see them at the Strange Day Festival in Olympia, Washington in 2017, but I lived in Chicago at the time and ended up not being able to make it out there. With Planning for Burial and Chat Pile also on the bill, this show was a very welcome surprise.

Next I found out that clipping. was playing the next night at the same venue. Now, I haven’t seen a live show in four years, since July 28, 2019, which is the longest I’ve gone without seeing live music since I saw KISS as an eight-year old. With plans already in place to see Godflesh on July 2nd in Orlando, this was shaping up to be quite the return to live performance.

Oblivion Access Festival, June 15-18, 2023.

I eventually found out that all of these shows — including headlining spots by Tim Hecker and Godflesh — were part of the Oblivion Access Festival. I didn’t know that going in, but it made the procession of bands in town at the same time make a lot more sense.

That Friday was The Flenser showcase, and Planning for Burial, Thom Wasluck’s one-person band, was my first stop. It hovered around a hundred degrees for the whole ten days I was in town, so it was hot out there. Thom trooped through a blisteringly sweaty set of guitar-flailing post-metal anyway.

After Mamaleek, there was a thunderstorm delay. In heat past a hundred, the light rain was welcomed with arms to the sky. We were all huddled on the top deck, watching the lightning when they corralled everyone inside for an hour.

Once the thunder subsided, we finally emerged to a short, sharp set by Oklahoma City’s own Chat Pile. These guys were the buzz of the festival, and for good reason. Their Flenser debut, God’s Country, has been in my rotation since its release a year ago. Chat Pile is able to take the basic blueprint of rock and make it sound intimidating. They’ve gleefully brought back some of the anger and danger that’s been missing from rock music.

Have a Nice Life has been around for over 20 years. They’ve done a few records and played relatively few shows. As I mentioned above, I’d been keeping an eye on their schedule, and was finally able to end up in the same place at the same time as one of their shows. It was well worth the effort.

To call them a powerhouse seems an understatement. Have a Nice Life pull so many different elements together into a firm focus and point it right at you, it’s a lot to take — especially live. Their records are not ones you listen to casually. They are immersive. Seeing them live is massive, emotive, and cathartic. Ask anyone who’s seen them.

Me and Mars Kumari up to no good at Oblivion Access [selfie by Mars].

I spent most of the next day recovering from the onslaught of Flenser bands, but I made it back to the Mohawk to see clipping. I got there in time to meet up with Mars Kumari and to catch Clams Casino’s eclectic live set. Mars has been not so quietly building a hauntological body of work that defies categorization. Check out her record, Mars Kumari Type Beat on Deadverse Recordings, and be on the lookout for her next project, I Thought I Lost You. It’s so dope.

“This is going to be a good one,” Daveed Diggs said at the beginning of clipping’s set, and it was. As story-oriented as they are, each of their records a universe unto itself, their live show was a raucous party. Where some seem to struggle with that translation, the crowd at the Mohawk was all about it, rapping along with all but the most frenetic of Diggs’ verses. He prowled the stage in front of Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson’s table of noise-making gear, rapping nonstop from song to song. It was a party for the apocalypse. They did an impromptu encore without leaving the stage, which included a celebratory cover of J-Kwon’s club anthem “Tipsy.”

Justin K. Broadrick is Final.

Justin K. Broadrick has always been involved in a lot of musical projects, and he performed as three of them in Austin. His most-known industrial-metal band, Godflesh, headlined on Sunday, his heavy-techno project, JKFlesh, did a late-night set on Saturday night/Sunday morning, and his oldest incarnation, Final, played in the giant Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Austin on Sunday afternoon. As this solo ambient-noise act, he rarely performs live. Such a rare setting for such a rare performance. It was a magical, mesmerizing day of drone.

Sound sermon: Tim Hecker.

After Justin packed up, Tim Hecker took to the pulpit. There’s really no way to convey that experience in words. The church was dark, lit only by the light coming through the stained glass. Hecker was hidden in a haze, obscured by clouds from a smoke-machine, so there wasn’t much to watch. What we heard there though, lined dutifully in the pews, was transcendent. His stuff has always been an odd mix of old and new, organic and synthetic. I read a while ago that he admits to thinking about ideas like ‘liturgical aesthetics after Yeezus‘ and the ‘transcendental voice in the age of auto-tune’. Any description I could hazard will read like a similar string of barely descriptive phrases. I might even say it was religious.

The crowd at the Central Presbyterian Church for the Final and Tim Hecker show.

The thing about multi-venue festivals like Oblivion Access is that you’re always missing something. You have to make decisions. Though most of mine were made before I arrived, I could still feel the tug of missing out. You have to go with it and be truly present for the shows and the people around you. Many thanks to Thom Wasluck, everyone at The Flenser, Dan Barrett, Justin Broadrick, William Hutson, Suraj Patra, Mars Kumari, and Katie Alfus for getting me into shows, hanging out, and making my accidental festival experience so much fun.

[Photos above by Renee Dominguez, Andrea Escobar, Robert Hein, and Mars Kumari.]

ESCAPE PHILOSOPHY: Journeys Beyond the Human Body

Hey, if you’re into Godflesh, I wrote a book about them. Well, I wrote a book largely inspired by them, black metal, horror movies, and science fiction. Escape Philosophy: Journeys Beyond the Human Body is available as an open-access .pdf and beautiful paperback from punctum books. It’s really quite good, but don’t take my word for it…

“Too often philosophy gets bogged down in the tedious ‘working-through’ of contingency and finitude. Escape Philosophy takes a different approach, engaging with cultural forms of refusal, denial, and negation in all their glorious ambivalence.” —Eugene Thacker, author, In the Dust of This Planet

“Using Godflesh—the arch-wizards of industrial metal—as a framework for a deep philosophical inspection of the permeable human form reveals that all our critical theory should begin on the street where wasted teen musicians pummel their mind and instruments into culture-shifting fault lines. Godflesh are not just a ‘mirror’ of all the horrors and glories we can inflict on our bodies, but a blasted soundscape of our moans. Roy Christopher’s book is a thought-provoking and delightful crucible of film, music, and the best kind of speculative thought.” — Peter Bebergal, author, Season of the Witch

“An interesting read indeed!” — Aaron Weaver, Wolves in the Throne Room

As always, thanks for reading!

Stay cool out there,

-royc.

http://roychristopher.com

One Podcast, Two Synchronicities, and Three Essential Things

One Podcast:

I had the pleasure of talking with Alex Kuchma of the New Books Network podcast about my recent edited collection, Boogie Down Predictions, as well as my books Dead Precedents and The Medium Picture. A student of hip-hop culture like me, Alex is steeped in the stuff. He came to the discussion with sharp questions and insight. It was a pleasure.

Check it out here, on Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Many thanks to Alex and the New Books Network for the interest and the opportunity.

Two Synchronicities:

I was at the Chamblin Uptown Café last week, one of the locations of the great bookstore in Jacksonville, Florida, looking for a Philip Larkin book. After going through all of the poetry section, I looked through their extensive biography section, to no avail. I went by the other location before leaving town, and I checked poetry again, then gave up.

As I was looking through the essay collections, I came across The War Against Cliché by Martin Amis. My friend Will Wiles mentioned this book specifically when Amis passed a couple of weeks ago. Though I'd never read anything by him, he'd been on my list since I read my first Will Self book about 20 years ago (Amis blurbed it). So, I flipped it open to the table of contents, and there’s a chapter on Philip Larkin...

Then, when I got back home, my mom had gotten me a book. It was the lone text in a shopping cart she bought from this bargain store she frequents. They regularly load up whole shopping carts of stuff and sell them for $10 each. The book in this one was Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I’d read it years before, but its sudden appearance felt important.

A little while later, I remembered that there was something in one of my notebooks that I wanted to double check. I thought I'd left that particular notebook in storage, but then I spotted it in a pile of recently retrieved stuff on the coffee table. By then I'd forgotten what it was I wanted to look up, but I opened the notebook, and on the first page were “The Three Essential Things”—from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury…

I wrote about synchronicities like this (as well as research magick and associative trails) in my recent column for Lit Reactor, and now they seem to be happening more often.

Keep your eyes open.

Three Essential Things:

By the way, according to Faber in Fahrenheit 451, the Three Essential Things are as follows:

Quality, texture of information.

Leisure to digest it.

The right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.

These seem unfortunately germane, lo these 70 years later…

Thanks for listening, reading, and responding,

-royc.

http://roychristopher.com

Different Waves, Different Depths

I’ve been dabbling in fiction since I started writing, though it took me a long time to feel confident with it. During a particularly dark period in my adult life, I decided I wanted to learn how to write screenplays. I’d gone through a horrible breakup, moved back home, and was working part-time at a chain record store. I was floundering around, unsure of what to do next.

One night I watched Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko (2001) for the second time, but I saw it for the first. It struck something in me, in that time, and I wanted to figure out how to write a movie. I got the script, watched the movie repeatedly, and started studying what you put on the page to make things happen on the screen.

As a result, the screenplay I started writing was heavily influenced by Donnie Darko. I’ve worked on it off and on in the years since, and even took an introductory screenwriting class at Second City in Chicago (Shout out to Jeph Porter). A few years ago, at the behest of my friend Jaqi Furback, I finally novelized the whole thing into a loooong short story called “Fender the Fall.”

When the pandemic hit, all of my writing projects slowed to a pause. For a long time, I found it difficult to concentrate on anything of any length, and I found myself writing poems and short stories.

The results of all of the above, “Fender the Fall” and 8 others have now been collected into a book called Different Waves, Different Depths, which comes out on September 12th from Impeller Press.

More on that in a minute, but first, an excerpt! This is “Antecedent,” which was originally published on the Close to the Bone website in 2021.

Antecedent

He held six discrete bits of information in his head simultaneously. No way to write them down so he recalled them in order on three separate occasions, six blanks in formation like a constellation. He awoke with only the memory of remembering, but not the information, his head a form unfulfilled.

An hour later, he was up and reading a well-worn library copy of Debord’s Pangyric over coffee. He put down the book and ran his hands through his greasy hair. His stomach grumbled. “Time to venture out,” he thought as he grabbed his jacket. His one-room apartment was strewn with similar texts: The Revolution of Everyday Life, Temporary Autonomous Zone, The Society of the Spectacle, The Adventures of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysicist. Not much to do but read when you’re chronically unemployed and can’t get away with stealing anything let alone a TV or cable. He’d done several short stretches of time for petty theft, check fraud, and impersonating a police officer, but it had been a while since the last job and the last bid. He fancied himself a revolutionary, a civil disobedient. He downed the last half of a cup of coffee, rinsed it, refilled it with tap water, and downed that. Then he grabbed his jacket and headed for the stairs.

Walking by a gallery down the street, he watched as an older gentleman loaded paintings into the space from a beat-up blue Econoline.

“Can I help you with those?”

The man barely looked at him but nodded.

He grabbed the next one from the van and walked it long-ways through the narrow doorway. The man he was helping never said a word as they filed the covered canvases from the van into the small gallery.

Walking in with the last one, he heard the van’s engine stutter on. Figuring that the man was moving it to a proper parking spot, he delicately ripped off enough of the packing paper from one of the canvases to see the work. He was aghast at the sight of it. It was like nothing he’d seen before. The colors, the shadows, the rhythms sang to him like a bird uncaged. He was seduced completely. If he were able to paint, this would be the statement he would make. Unable to help himself, he ripped open another one. The effect was repeated twofold. He began to sob as he set the second one upright. This one was larger and nearly vacant, having been washed over several times with white gesso. The few extant strokes and colors were exactly as he would have wanted them. He tore open another.   

Lost as he was in the collection of art he had arranged on along the walls of the space, he failed to notice that the man he’d helped with them hadn’t returned. Their spell remained unbroken by the voice of the curator approaching.

“Hello… Sir?”

He hadn’t heard her, still examining the six paintings leaning against the walls, surrounding him: a tryptic along the longest wall, two tall ones opposite, and the biggest one on the back wall by itself: the blanks in order, just as he had remembered.

“Thank you so much for letting us show your work. Do you have an arrangement in mind? We’d like to get them up as soon as possible. The reception is in a couple of hours.”

Still trying to compose himself, he didn’t speak at first. Then, pointing around the three walls at the paintings there, he said, “Just as they are now.”

“Also, are you sure you don’t have anything in mind we could put on the marquee? We’ve left your name off as requested.”

“Thank you. That’ll do.”

“Okay... Will you be joining us tonight?”

He finally turned toward her. “I’m really not sure yet.”

She forced a smile. “Well, I hope to see you in a bit.”

He was hesitant to leave the paintings behind but stepped out into the evening air with a buzzing heart and head.

He stopped by a newsstand to check the paper for an article about the show he’d just taken responsibility for. Looking back through the weekend edition, he found it.

“Renowned Artist’s First Show in Over a Decade,” read the headline. The article said that the paintings had been created during nearly twelve years of total seclusion. After years of acclaim during which the artist felt he could do no wrong, he grew disillusioned with the art world. He decided to isolate himself and dig deeper, attempting to create a completely new form of painting.

“I’d say he succeeded,” he said to himself as he closed the paper. His stomach groaned again as he wondered if there would be free food at the opening.

Back at the gallery, the paintings were mounted just as he’d asked. The marquee out front read simply, “Artist’s First Show in Twelve Years.”

He walked in with borrowed confidence, but his smirk disappeared as soon as he saw the paintings on the walls. It was difficult to contain his emotions in the presence of such passion, such control. He stared into the strokes, mesmerized.

The curator walked in, startling him. He quickly stacked some cheese on a cracker and poured himself a glass of wine. Following his lead, she did the same.

“So good of you to join us,” she said over her glass.

He turned, finally acknowledging her presence.

“There was some doubt that any of us would get to actually meet you, given your lengthy seclusion and request to be alone while bringing in your work.”

“Well, I changed my mind,” he said smiling.

“The show is everything we expected and more,” she said looking at the two paintings on the wall nearest her, but when she turned back around, he wasn’t there. There was only his half-empty wine glass and half-eaten cheese and cracker tumbling to the floor beside her. “Where’d you go?”

“I’m right here,” he said, one painting to another, but she couldn’t hear him. He didn’t recognize his own voice. The peace in the paintings became panic in his veins.

Six discrete bits of information hanging in his head simultaneously. No way to write them down so he became them, six paintings in formation like a constellation. He awoke with only the memory of remembering, but not the information, his head a form with empty blanks. Six blanks now staring out from three walls, their form fulfilled.

Cover illustration by Jeffrey Alan Love. Book design by Patrick Barber. Different Waves, Different Depths

The story above is one of 9 stories in Different Waves, Different Depths, which is now available for preorder! The book takes its name from a comment an old crush made once about her feelings for me (Thank you, Little One). It also describes this collection, varying in style from the literarily weird to the science fiction. Jeffrey Alan Love did the beautiful cover illustration and Patrick Barber did the book’s design, inside and out. It’s 250 pages of flash stories, a pilot script, and the aforementioned out-of-print novella, Fender the Fall.

“Working the borderlands between philosophy, sci-fi, and ultra-contemporary social critique, these stories illuminate our strange cusp moment in a deeply humanistic and bracing manner. A sharp, propulsive, and canny collection.” — David Leo Rice, author, Drifter

Table of Contents:

Drawn & Courted

Kiss Destroyer

Antecedent

Not a Day Goes By

Dutch

Subletter

Hayseed, Inc.

Post-Intelligence

Fender the Fall

“In Roy Christopher’s inquiring, voracious tales, memory is a form of energy, and worlds emerge out of slippages, of which there are many more than we like to admit.” — Matthew Battles, author, The Sovereignties of Invention

There are time loops and time travel, reality television and big data, consultants who can make anyone a winner, a newspaper that’s just gone online-only, a band that never existed but is all too real, mistaken identities, roadtrips, drugs, guns, murder, and a love story or three.

Dive in deep, ease in the shallows, or just let the tide lap at your toes. Different waves are waiting.

Preorder yours now!

As always, thank you for reading,

-royc.

http://roychristopher.com

Déjà View

Do you ever think you like something at first, and then later decide that you don’t? A friend of mine had this happen with a popular record years ago. He was really into it, and then he said he realized it was just the same moment over and over. As much as I like several of them, when the newest spate of Star Wars movies came out, I heard my friend’s words echo in my head.

I see such repetition mostly in television now. Over and over, there are stakes without consequences. Regarding Succession, Bill Wyman calls it “Narrative Groundhog Day.” It happens in the first season of The Mosquito Coast, for example. I was predisposed to like this series, fan as I am of Peter Weir’s 1986 movie and the author of the novel’s nephew, Justin Theroux, who stars in the show. As framed in the series, the premise of the story is one man and his family’s criminal response to the squeezing of means of the middle class (see also Weeds, Breaking Bad, Ozark, etc.). The husband and father of two played by Theroux is an inventor with a shady past (Harrison Ford plays him in the movie in one of his most manic and convincing performances). When the bad men come calling, he has break south and get his family to safety.

During this familial exodus, the following happen: dad is arrested; his daughter (played by the inimitable Logan Polish) crashes his truck into the police car to free him; his son is arrested in Mexico for shooting someone; the family breaks him out of jail and continues their quest for safe haven and freedom. Every time it looks like they’re screwed, they’re not. Stakes without consequences. The same moment over and over.

You can see the same repetition in TV series from across the spectrum: The Sopranos, Weeds, Dexter, Orange is the New Black, Fringe, Breaking Bad, American Horror Story, Ozark, and Succession, to name only a few. It seems more prevalent in the binge era, and I thought it was a byproduct of bingeing itself, but “weekly drops“ — that new thing they’re doing — illustrates otherwise. You really only know upon further reflection or maybe the second or third time through.

A coworker of mine once advised me to make sure I wasn’t repeating experience in my work. I’d like to demand the same from my entertainment.

The Object.Book News:

My short story collection, Different Waves, Different Depths, is currently in production! It comes out on September 12th on Impeller Press. I’ll have more details and a pre-order link in a forthcoming newsletter. So stoked on this one!

At long last, I’ve finished the manuscript for The Medium Picture! It didn’t survive the recent ownership/leadership shake-up at its publisher, so it’s looking for a new home. Here’s some advanced praise:

“Like a skateboarder repurposing the utilitarian textures of the urban terrain for sport, Roy Christopher reclaims the content and technologies of the media environment as a landscape to be navigated and explored. The Medium Picture is both a highly personal yet revelatory chronicle of a decades-long encounter with mediated popular culture.” — Douglas Rushkoff, author, Team Human

“Immersed in the contemporary digital culture he grew up with as a teenager, Roy Christopher is old enough to recall vinyl, punk, and zines — social media before TikTok and smartphones. The Medium Picture deftly illuminates the connections between post-punk music critique, the increasing virtualization of culture, the history of formal media theory, the liminal zones of analog vs digital, pop vs high culture, capitalism vs anarchy. It’s the kind of book that makes you stop and think and scribble in the margins.” — Howard Rheingold, author, Net Smart

Any takers? It’s so good…

Thank you for reading,

-royc.

http://roychristopher.com