Issue 6

Description

Cover story on Shane Jesse Christmass (SJXSJC) “Unlearning Requires Collapse”

By Danielle Altman

DA: One of the biggest themes or recurring images within the novel is collapse. Environmental collapse, political collapse, and the collapse of consciousness. This version of the book includes a wonderful afterward you recently wrote, which feels like a brief reflection on the themes of the novel and an artistic statement. In the afterward, you use this phrase I love, “unlearning requires collapse.” What was on your mind with collapse? What does collapse mean to you?

SJXSJC: There’s a period where you’re trying to work out how to be yourself and how to be a writer. I can see parallels with being young; everything is overwhelming, and there is so much information. In the late 1990s, I was reading a lot of stuff about mysticism, which I touch on in the afterward. I was reading a book called Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill, and it talks about how in life there’s automatic knowledge, but also lots of rules about how to do things and how to find a way forward. Then there is elimination—unlearning things to work out the way forward. Because of bad life choices, I had to figure out a way forward.

Conor Hultman reinvents true crime with DOE ‘book as object.’

By Jared Billings

“I was immediately salivating. And then, slowly, the traces of a black one-word-titled authorless cover started to trickle through the corners of my social media—as is the unending joy of CLOAK, with its releases being unannounced, the books taking on their own autonomy and falling onto your doorstep whenever they want. This is how I received DOE, how it came into the world. Similar to its contents—hundreds of John and Jane Does: unexplained, ready to bash you over the head with its matter-of-fact visceralness. I became overwhelmed by DOE, in the best way, within its first few pages. Something so simple, straightforward, but singular. Bodies, bodies, bodies—but also their garments, their belongings, their surroundings. Everything can tell us something, but who knows if that something means anything. I wanted to know more about where this thing came from, how it was molded into tangibility from empty death and the essence of America, like Eve by God via dirt and Adam’s rib. I reached out to Conor Hultman—DOE’s author, or maybe more appropriately put, its overseer, conglomerator, organizer—and what follows is our correspondence, which provided me some clues to DOE’s creation, but left me without a conclusive definitiveness—fit for a book that seemed to desire itself into existence, with Hultman used as a vessel. How appropriate that DOE—and death—are explained by the same thing: nothing.”

The Process of Weeding Out: On Marijuana, Psychosis, and Clear Judgment Among Writers

By Gabriel Hart

“Allow yourself to accept that “fear” that often looms unexpectedly when consuming marijuana is a glimpse into (if not a temporary bout of) psychosis. Much like a psychotic break, marijuana induced “fear” can resemble a complete disconnect from reality’s anchor, where everything takes on a nefarious hue, igniting immediate Truman Show-like paranoia that we are being watched (we are), possibly even surveilled by a hidden hand controlling everything (we are). Are we experiencing a “breaking through to the other side,” or have we become accustomed to losing our minds? Does this all depend on whose consciousnesses is pre-privy to what is behind veil, some perception of it thinner than others? At a party in 2005, my very normal Swedish friend once got so stoned he began speaking to Adam from the Exploding Hearts (who had died in their fateful 2003 van accident) insisting that Adam was “right there, don’t you see him?” There was no one sitting in the chair. When he sobered up, he was humbled with embarrassment, and while he admitted it could have been temporary insanity, he also couldn’t 100% deny it really happened. Should marijuana be reclassified from a psychoactive to a psychedelic? And if so, would you take LSD every day, like I did when I was a teenager, then again for an extended stint in my late thirties? Pretend I didn’t say that, and instead, remind yourself that marijuana stays in your system for thirty days. Even if you’re an occasional smoker, simply imagine that accumulated residue, then “occasionally” consuming on top of its effects long burrowed in your system. It’s judgment at a perpetual deficit. At that rate, it never leaves your body. Congratulations: you are now marijuana!”

Becoming Lisa Carver: Rollerderby Zine Live at Earth in NYC

By Danielle Chelosky

“I realize she picked me for this specific role because of my drunken excitement at Weird Fucks. For once, someone wants me to be drunk and I can’t offer that. How frustrating. Nonetheless, I’ve been wanting to channel my drunk self sober, see how free I can be without the help of alcohol. Lisa stops me a few more times to encourage me to be more unhinged; she collapses onto the floor, kicks her legs in the air. She tells me to fall off the chair, then demonstrates. Then she ushers us off the stage and other actors do a miniature rehearsal. In the bathroom, I take off my Deftones tank top and Adidas sweatpants and change into my yellow slip that falls at my thighs. I feel like my pussy is out, I tell Lara as we sit in folding chairs beside each other. That’s good, she says, channel that energy.”

Outside the Inside: Empathy, Repulsion, and Dread Curiosity for the Incarcerated

By Jean-Paul L. Garnier

“From line to line his tone became angrier and more frantic. From word to word the letter escalated. From illicit trade in antidepressants to sexually assaulting nurses, he detailed his life on the inside, thinking that he had found a fan. He told me that he was a serial killer and detailed his many crimes against women and children. My horror grew from page to page, and I began to think that he was fucking with me, trying to get a rise out of his reader, or to continue his reign of terror with words. It was beyond appalling.

I felt disgusted that the paper in my hands had once been in his, the same hands which had done unspeakable things to innocent people. My moral stance crumbled out from beneath me. I simply couldn’t accept that someone who had done such things could still be human. These feelings went against everything that I thought I stood for—this man was an animal far beyond any possible redemption. He had laid himself bare in the letter, chronicled his deep illness, and seemed to enjoy recounting it all. It made me sick that my stance was no longer tenable. I could no longer think of the system that caused so much damage. I was forced to confront my own flimsy morality. Thinking that it may all have been a manipulative ruse, I looked him up. Everything he had written was true.”

PLUS:

Poetry by Jesse Hilson, excerpt of Troy James Weaver’s upcoming novel, Forrest Muelrath retaliates against AI phishing, Wartime Author reports from Operation Epic Fury.

Reviews of Dryback, Better to Beg, Beyond the Planet of the Vampires, Crisis Actor, Death Kit #2, Digital Exhaust, Ezra’s Head, The Fate of Last Things, Flat Earth, Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, Hollywood Nocturnes, House as a Cemetery, The Hustler, Incurable Graphomania, Kickstand: Collected Short Stories, The King of Video Poker, Kill Dick, Latex Texas, Lost Lambs, My Loose Thread, Poor Damned Souls, Rainbear!!!!!!!, Ripped Backsides, The Rules of Attraction, The Third Reich, Total Destruction, The Undead Shepherdess and Further Cavities, The Weather of Our Names, and more