#thinking of my artistic interpretation of john & trying to come up w a sort of shapeshifter-form index as a visual cue system for his moods

[luci-z-wont-shut-up]

I'd like yalls help w something, please

Regardless of its intelligence level, how many non-human creatures have Arthur and John had an emotionally positive experience with?bc I am wracking my brain and the only ones I can come up with are the lamp-eft, the buopoth, the cana, and the owl (I have yet to figure out if cana is a species or a job title but yall know who I'm talking about)

If anyone can fact-check/correct/update me on this I'd appreciate it so much 🙏

[aion-rsa]

With Far Sector, N.K. Jemisin Gets a Turn in the Green Lantern Sandbox

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We talked to author N.K. Jemisin about diving into the world of Green Lantern, her favorite comic books, and why fanfiction matters.

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A three-time Hugo Award winner for her Broken Earth series, N.K. Jemisin is one of the most exciting and celebrated authors working in speculative fiction today. For the first time ever, Jemisin is working in the comic book medium, collaborating with artist Jamal Campbell on a new Green Lantern story that's part of Gerard Way's revived Young Animal imprint for DC.

The new series is called Far Sector, and it follows Sojourner "Jo" Mullen, a member of the Green Lantern Corps who is the sole protector of the City Enduring, a massive metropolis of 20 billion people countless lightyears from Earth.

read more: N.K. Jemisin's Fifth Season TV Series in Development at TNT

The City Enduring has maintained peace for over 500 years by stripping its citizens of of their ability to feel emotion. Therefore, murder and other forms of violent crime are virtually non-existent... until now.

We had the chance to catch up with Jemisin earlier this month at New York Comic Con. Here's what she had to tell us about diving into the world of Green Lantern...

Den of Geek: What your familiarity with Green Lantern before taking on the project?

Jemisin: Almost none. I watched the Justice League cartoon back in the day that had John Stewart as the main Green Lantern. And I mean I knew that Green Lantern was a popular superhero, but beyond that I really didn't understand very much about it. I knew there had been a movie; I didn't see the movie. I rode the Green Lantern ride at Six Flags. That's about all I knew.

That was the limit of it. So when Gerard Way asked me if I would be willing to write the Green Lantern comic, I said, "Look, I need to do some boning up on the lore and the literature," and so the first thing that they did was send me the big Geoff Johns compilations. I don't know if you've seen them, but it's like this big. All hard cover, and the first few years of the original Green Lantern storylines. Not the original, but of some of the most iconic Green Lantern storylines.

And so I was able to read through those. Of course I was able to jump on the various Wikis that exist out there, and then I began to realize that I was drowning in information, because Green Lantern continuity is like any other comic book continuity: there had been retcons, there are contradictions, and I had to try and find ways to resolve that. So, fortunately, with the the Far Sector comic, because it takes place outside of the normal Lantern system, so far away from Earth and all the other Lanterns. In some ways, I was in an isolated space where I can make things happen.

What kind of freedom did you have? Were there things that you did that they were like, "No, actually this contradicts something that already exists in canon," or did you really have pretty much free range to tell your story?

I mean, yeah, I had free range, but I wanted to fit within canon. I mean, there's no value for me in taking these stories so far away from its fanbase.

So the challenge is to make it fit into the continuity, even if it's not directly related. So,at some point, if this character proves popular, if the book proves popular, at some point, she may want to come back and meet the other Guardians ... the other Lanterns. She may move back to Earth, so I need that to be able to work if I do.

I'm curious if your background and presence as a fanfic author helped you in that process of diving into an already-existing narrative universe?

Yeah, effectively, I was writing fanfic—I love it!—except that I wasn't already a fan of this. So I mean it's professional fanfic, but we've seen that out there before. There's a long history of, effectively, fan works insisting within the literary fiction sphere.

Sherlock Holmes story, for example, or the Cthulhu Mythos, all of that is effectively fanfic. The challenge of it is you read the history, you make sure that you've got the canon down pat, and then once you've got that down pat, then you can riff on it.

So that was the idea.

Tell me about working with Jamal Campbell. What did it look like logistically, in terms of your process?

Well, logistically what it means is I gave him a phone call at the beginning of it and I haven't met him in person. So we're doing everything electronically. I write the scripts, we send the scripts to Jamal, Jamal sends us pages.

That's how it's been working, and then we talk back and forth about ... For example, I wanted to convey in this one particular scene that she feels like she's being disrespected. Can we add a little panel where she looks at a thing and gives it a side eye? Something like that.

Cool, and I don't know how much experience you have collaborating in that way while writing a story.

None. This is my first collaboration.

What's that been like?

I'm loving it, I really am. This is the first time, outside of fan art, this is the first time I've ever seen anyone put my stories or characters or anything that I've created to a visual form. I'm used to being able to see it in my head, but I've never had other people try and see it for me.

And he's got a good eye. He's been able to capture what I've been thinking, for the most part.

This story takes place in a city where people no longer have the ability to feel emotion. There are a lot of mainstream, especially female-centric superhero stories that have been commenting on emotion as power, or trying to do that in ways that I feel haven't been super nuanced or complex. I'm curious about that setting and what, if anything, you wanted to say about the strengths or limitations of emotionality or emotional intelligence.

Well, remember that Jo is a black woman, so there is a different nuance or a different variation on that problem that I feel like black women often have to deal with, which is them being treated as too angry, as if anger is dangerous or problematic in some way.

Even when we aren't angry, we're perceived as angry sometimes, and it gets to be a problem, and so Jo is in some cases going to have to deal with being the only emotional person in the room, and she can't get too emotional in her reactions to what she's seeing and what she's having to deal with.

When she starts working through bureaucracy and she expresses frustration with it, she's not going to be perceived as just an emotional woman. She's going to be perceived as a primitive human being. She's going to be perceived as a poor representation of her species, a poor representation of the Lanterns.

She can't get too emotional, so she's got to be able to solve these problems as the lone person in the room that's allowed to be this way, but also judged for being this way. And there's definitely commentary in it.

You're telling a frontier science fiction story of sorts...

A super high tech space society with near omniscient power. I don't know if that qualifies.

It is a high tech story, but Jo is the only Lantern there. She is the only person, as I said, who has emotions. She has to work with the local cops. She's got to form alliances and relationships with her local community and earn their respect in order to have any real power, cause even one person, no matter how powerful, is not going to be able to solve the problems of 20 billion people unless she gets some buy in from them.

Where there other graphic novels or comics that you looked to during this process?

Well, learning how to write, yes. I read The 2000 A.D. Script Book, which has art rendered pages alongside the script agents so you can see how the writer communicated with the artist or how the writer framed the scene and the artist chose to interpret that scene. So that helped me figure out comic writing format and how to do it.

Of course, I read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, which was really helpful for helping me understand how storytelling changes in this medium. I've been a comics fan for quite some time, ranging across different media. I did superhero comics a lot when I was back in college, but it got super expensive and I was a poor college student, so I quit around that time.

I read a lot of Japanese manga for awhile. Lately, I have read more indie comics, like Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, Monstress by a Sana Takeda and Marjorie Liu. I'm a big fan of Kelly Sue DeConnick's work, so I've read a lot of comics more recently ... I mean I enjoy the format, I enjoy good storytelling in all of its forms, but lately I've been reading more superhero stuff.

I did already bring up fanfiction, but I have been asking the authors I'm talking to, especially after Archive of Our Own's Hugo win this summer, that fanfic has meant to them, if anything, both professionally and personally.

I mean, I'm not going to say I started out as a fanfic writer, cause I didn't, but fanfic helped me, I think, develop in a lot of ways, my storytelling. I've been writing fanfic basically since grad school, when I started writing it for stress relief, and really when I got access to the internet. That was back in the AOL days. I'm dating myself, and I continue to write it to this day.

It's a place, like a playground, where I can go and sort of write things that I feel like writing without having to worry about my professional fiction readers coming to scrutinize what I do, and I'm not going to tell anybody what fanfic write or what pseudonyms I use or any of that.

Yeah. What else are you working on that you can talk about?

Oh, well I've got a new novel coming out next year. It's called The City We Became. It is based on a short summary of mine in which the city of New York comes to life and develops an avatar, a human being, one single person who represents the spirit of the city.

Well, in the book, all of the boroughs come to life too, and so there's an avatar in Brooklyn, an avatar in Manhattan, and they all have basically magic powers that grant them the ability to protect the city, and they're protecting the city from basically Cthulhu.

It's not really Lovecraftian, and it's not really a Lovecraftian story, although I'd say it's in conversation with Lovecraft, but yes, there is a giant eldritch abomination that is not happy with New York right now and is trying its damndest to destroy the city, and that comes out in March.

Green Lantern: Far Sector comes out on November 13th. Find out more about N.K. Jemisin's work here.

Kayti Burt is a staff editor covering books, TV, movies, and fan culture at Den of Geek. Read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter @kaytiburt.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Interview Kayti Burt

Oct 21, 2019

Green Lantern

DC Comics

NYCC

NYCC 2019

from Books https://ift.tt/32ArcdJ

[rfhusnik]

Memories:  Gethsemane Underground

                                  Written By:  F. John Surells

              His spirit still walks amongst the olive trees here. His body is gone, but his challenge to join him and his father lives on.

           W used to hide whiskey bottles by the river. Sometimes when he and T argued about how best to live out their remaining days on Earth, he’d sneak down there and imbibe.

           My thoughts herein may be confused and random, but at least they’re authentic. And today I think I’ve finally learned what Joseph Same meant when he said “I can feel the cold bitter winds of Eden blowing from out its eastern gate.”

           And today, like him, I’ve also been expelled from a biblical garden. The angel of literature appeared here this day and said “In honor of the celebration of his birth, we’re going to ask that for three minutes now only those mortals who’ve never sinned would remain in the garden. Would all those who’ve, during their lifetimes been tainted by Lucifer’s devices, please exit the garden now, and return again, if such is their wish, after those three minutes have expired.” The garden then became completely emptied of humans.

           And upon exiting the garden, I and the others who’d left with me heard a prophet postulating on a pedestal. His words were: “Unleash the corporate and corporeal bodies. Let the freedom bird fly uninhibited through liberty’s skyline.”

           “I’ve got a feeling that this time the movers who control the chess board aren’t playing games anymore. What’s that pounding sound behind us? Whose flag waves before us? Oh, it’s a cloth of words:  ‘Save the republic! It belongs in-house, not out-landerish.’”

           And then it seemed that some sort of fog lifted from my recognition. And then I realized that in regard to actual deeds performed or accomplished, one’s physical location may not always be as important as one’s mental state. And I understood then that sometimes we might gladly book passage on a magic carpet ride, simply to once more see a smile on the face of someone known to possess keys to the kingdom.

           X ran off the road late one evening as he was driving home. His windshield had fogged up, and he turned the steering wheel too quickly. His car needed to be pulled from the ditch with the aid of a farm vehicle, and FJ was extremely angry.

           No one, I’m thinking, can reach backward or forward on the clock hands and change what has been, or alter what will be. Yet, we’ve learned that there are mind riders who, within their own comprehensions, have come to believe realities of deeds which sometimes weren’t, aren’t, and/or someday won’t be in actual correspondence with what verifiably was, is, or may still be. Nevertheless, no one can stop the mind riders. Their scopes of possibilities of fact are limited only by their own possibilities of imagination.

           And on one of their transports of focus, I’ve today ridden back to a famous garden. And I’ve been allowed entrance. But then I’ve been asked to leave, apparently for a remembrance of next month’s great holiday. And so, I’m standing here on the outside now. And I’m very fearful now. And yet, though I never asked to, or had any desire to journey here, today perhaps I’ll meet the man who actually is one part of a trinity which, I believe masters all of time; and that means not only the way in which it passes, but also all that it’s ever wrought, or will yet grant.

           And there’s supposedly a convention (or gathering) of “the people of the underground” occurring here today. And the “goings on” of those people at that gathering will, I guess, constitute the majority of “underground memories” I’m to disclose in this piece. And, as is often the case with matters of concern to our city and its enigmatic population, our mayor, Ralph Hawk, has once again decided to make certain aspects or memories from this rendezvous known to the public at large.

           Thus, as I said, I’m standing outside the gate. And now, suddenly, in violation of what we’d normally consider a normal passage of time, night has fallen. And just inside the gate now, I can see that his friends, whom the Master brought with him to pray tonight, have fallen asleep. And I guess they’re sleeping in an innocence of unknowing, or perhaps in an innocence of an inability to know.

           No, they don’t know how their friend prays in wretchedness now. And they don’t know what lies ahead for him. Nor do they know what, in a few hundred years, will befall the empire that rules them now. They can’t comprehend that foreigners from outside a domain can destroy that domain simply through infusion, without ever acting militarily.

           But the Master approaches now. He sees his friends asleep, and with words that awaken them he says “Your spirit is willing, but your flesh is weak. Couldn’t you have watched with me here for one hour?”

           And then seeing me standing outside the gate he said “John, I know my father has sent you here from your existence two thousand years hence. I hope you know that symbolically you and all God’s children were with my disciples and I earlier this evening as we consummated one last supper together. Go back now to pages of memories that occurred much closer to your allotted time on this planet. Relive now some glimpses of the future, or the past, depending upon your interpretation of my father’s book of eternity.”

           And then suddenly the Master and his disciples were gone from my sight, as were all others whom I’d previously seen both inside and outside the gate; and I found myself riding (apparently in someone else’s stead) once again in that car on those icy roads. M loses control, slides off the pavement, enters the ditch, and hits an electrical pole. Much of the front of the car is severely dented inward, but FS tries to comfort M. And he tells another passenger from the car, whose identity is meaningless today, to walk away and summon FJ, who in anger then drives along with the unknown person to the scene of the accident. And as soon as FJ opens his car door upon reaching the sight, he’s stopped from unleashing the tirade he’d expected to pronounce. FS immediately confronts him, tells him to keep his mouth shut, and do what is necessary to extract the car from the ditch and the pole.

           W was standing by a bridge which permitted the crossing of a small river. And W was angry that day. And he was drunk. And he was complaining to FS that although he had plenty of money, he couldn’t do anything with his life anymore. “I’ve got money to burn” he said. “But what good does it do me? All I can do is sit in that house all day long. T won’t let me do anything. And it looks like all she’s living for now is her expectation of her and my deaths.”

           And W took a ten dollar bill from his wallet then and lit it on fire. But FS grabbed it out of W’s hand, and before it would have become worthless, put its fire out; and, with the blessing of W, gave it then to an unidentified person who also happened to be there at the time.

           In preparation to attend a convention of so-called undergrounders, wouldn’t one’s greatest goal be to at least attempt to learn and understand the mindset of such people? I thought so. And in my endeavor to do so, I was very strangely aided. As I looked about at the people entering the garden that day, I actually recognized an elderly gentleman from our city! It seemed obvious to me that this chance meeting must have been orchestrated by some otherworldly force. Nonetheless, I called out to the man “Hey, I recognize you as being from my city! Why are you here, waiting to enter Gethsemane?”

           “I’ve lived my entire life in our city” he said. “I was born and raised there, on the south side. And I graduated from elementary and secondary schools there; and then worked there for forty some years in the factory owned by Mr. Havess. And nowadays, of course we know what’s become of our city. While many still work for a living at the factory, there’s now a whole new bunch of people in our town – artistic types – or whatever they call themselves. And the funniest thing about it is that their leader, a guy named Hawk, actually works full time at the factory, even though he’s now been elected mayor of our city as well.”

           “Oh yes, I know Ralph very well thank you” I replied. “But what’s our greatest problem as you see it?”

           “To me, our greatest problem is a national rather than a local one” he said. “I’m getting so sick and tired of the constant criticism people such as myself are receiving from this nation’s liberal politicians and media. People like myself worked many years to support ourselves in this nation, and now that we have a chance to perhaps enjoy our elder years, all we hear about is that during our lifetimes we didn’t care enough about lazy people who didn’t want to work. And now we’re also being chastised because we’re trying to stop people from entering our nation illegally.”

           “And some of the things you see on television, or hear in the news nowadays are just plain shameful – like what happened in those Supreme Court hearings recently. And now we have people who publically encourage Americans to commit acts of violence against government officials.”           But then suddenly my discourse with this gentleman ended, and I found myself seated in a church pew, attending an evening Maundy Thursday worship service. And the officiant was speaking about the Lord’s anguish at Gethsemane, when suddenly a significant noise was heard by the congregation. FS, who had a drinking problem, had been more or less forced to attend church that evening, even though he’d been drinking during the day. (He always drank on the five weekdays, but on the two weekend days he wouldn’t touch a drop)

           “My wife made me go to church that night” he’d later say. “I was alright for about the first half of the service, but then my head started to swirl, and I knew I had to get up and leave. On my way out, I fell down in the aisle between the two sections of church pews, and my fall made a large noise. But FJ then came to my aid, and helped me get out of the church. And boy was he mad at me! He said I’d embarrassed our family, which I guess I’d done. But RS shouldn’t have forced me to go to church that evening in the first place.”

[how2to18]

IN 1979, FOR A LECTURE at the opening of his Walker Art Center exhibition, artist Ray Johnson streaked (as in ran naked) down the aisles when he was introduced. This act was a reference to another Ray Johnson (no relation) who had recently streaked at the Vatican, causing him to be expelled from Italy back to Connecticut, where the two Johnsons met each other at the Wadsworth Atheneum. This mix of wordplay, coincidence, and absurdity characterizes Johnson’s entire body of work, which includes collage, mail art, and performance. While his art incorporates such wild, grand gestures highlighting the incongruity of daily life, it also encompasses the intimacy of writing personalized letters to strangers. Johnson’s art is layered with texts and references; his mail art project involved thousands of solicited and unsolicited letters, notes, and objects sent and received over decades. Johnson was ultimately interested in the successes and failures, the gaps, the misunderstandings and slippages in human communication.

His interview practice fits squarely within this concern. For someone whose whole life was a performance, it’s no surprise that he did not conduct traditional interviews. Always interested in the layers of communication, the possibilities of intimacy and distance, and the ability to rewrite and reconstruct history, Johnson’s every answer and pause came freighted with meaning. This is especially evident in Julie J. Thomson’s selection of interviews, That Was the Answer: Interviews with Ray Johnson. The book spans 1963 to 1987, including previously printed interviews from magazines and others transcribed from audio, never before published.

Each interview is unique and designed specifically for the interviewer. As Johnson explained to Detroit Artists Monthly creators Diane Spodarek and Randy Delbeke in 1977: “Everything I make is made for the person I’m writing to — there is a whole daily process of what the envelope enclosure is to be, how it is folded, what is enclosed, what the envelope is, what the style is, whether it is very casual or very formal.”

This intimacy is just as much a part of his works as the absurdity of the “Mickey Mouse” or “bunny” glyph he would stamp on them. Even in the cases where he would write to celebrities, art dealers, and other figures he’d never met, each work was crafted just for them. “[W]hat I do is made for each person,” he said. “When I’m speaking to you, I am creating this composition for you by telephone, on the spot.” This methodology extended into everything he did, even and especially his interview practice. When photographer Richard Bernstein traveled to Johnson’s Locust Valley home to cover him for Interview magazine, Johnson remarked: “Of course you’ve noticed that there’s no furniture in the house, because when people come to visit me I spend two days hiding everything and then I do these arrangements. I take what little furniture I have and make little works of art.”

For Bernstein, he made “about twenty-four separate arrangements which no one will ever see; which only I know about, and which will never be documented.” Johnson acknowledged no division between his life and his art; everything was an opportunity to perform correspondence.

cor-re-spon-dence n. Communication by letters. Answering to each other in fitness or mutual adaptation; congruity, harmony, agreement.

Johnson’s work makes us rethink definitions. His extensive epistolary practice, collage work, and lectures expand what it means to correspond. To the artist John Held Jr., Johnson defined his correspondence as “a giving, but it’s also a distribution and a planting and a seeding, and it takes time”; he went on to note that he has “demonically pursued the subject.” His process of working and making mailings was exhaustive. “It’s like prayer, it’s a ritual for me, a ceremony,” he explained to Spodarek and Delbeke. The ritual included gathering his mail from the mailbox, turning on the television (to listen to it, not to watch), and drinking coffee, as he “surgically insert[ed] the knife in these envelopes” and sorted through them, always working his way down from the top to the bottom of the pile.

His process was not the traditional receive-and-reply of letter-writing: his replies were often sparked by some play on words, some correspondence between things on the page or in life — like his nude homage to the other Ray Johnson. Johnson tells art critic Henry Martin why he responded to a man who sent him a book of his poems:

I’ll ping-pong back to him and do a whole Belt Club about him, because of his name, which is Beltrametti, he’ll be the Spam Beltrametti Club, just like Cavellini got into some of my caveman collages because the first four letters of his name are CAVE. There’s a reason to write to him, to thank him for his book, but also he gets involved in other things because of some combination of alphabetical letters and names.

Johnson had already created the Spam Belt Club, of which this name reminded him. His art is an art of associations, an endless linking together of words, images, and people, a chain of correspondences.

As he tells Bernstein: “My reason for being interested in people is their anagrammatic names. Since I cut everything up, they’re all people in a kaleidoscope, but one person is many-faceted, like a crossword puzzle.” Kaleidoscopes recur throughout his interviews and serve as a fitting image for his thinking: fixed objects with pieces that can be rearranged by a slight turning, like his collages that he would often revisit and rework years later. As he put it: “The Correspondence School is related to the collage work and all these images, conversations, associations, complexities of what for me I’m trying to make some meaning out of.”

com-mu-ni-ca-tion n. The fact of having something in common with another person or thing; affinity; congruity. Interpersonal contact, social interaction, association, intercourse.

So what is the meaning that Johnson’s correspondence attempts to communicate? His physical works and performances play on our assumptions. In the introduction to his interview included in the book, Martin recalls something Johnson once said: “[T]hese collages are really like playing cards, and everybody gets a different selection […] [T]hey’ll bring up other people and images and ideas.” Each was made for one specific person, and each person brought his or her own interpretation to the arrangement of images and words. “[T]here’s a whole history, then, of objects that have been actually mailed or presented or delivered,” Johnson tells Martin. Many of his collages include the phrase “Please send to” with the details of a future recipient he hoped the objects would reach. “[T]his is a part of what I call the Correspondence School because these objects are things that are exchanged for some reason […] [T]here was a kind of communication between these objects, a kind of communication of objets trouvés.” As the objects moved, they were transformed through contact, with each sender adding to the piece or removing from it.

Following his interest in names and people, from Marilyn Monroe and Greta Garbo to Gertrude Stein and Joseph Cornell, much of Johnson’s collage work takes the form of portraits. “That’s what these portraits are all about,” he explains to Spodarek and Delbeke. “They are all the interior of the head. I’m trying to depict what goes on in the interior of the head: thoughts, images, or ideas.” There is an interiority to his communication as well: it’s not just about an exchange between objects but also a communication of internal thoughts and associations, of the Freudian slips we think but try to mask. In a 1984 radio interview, Weslea Sidon raised the issue of Freudian slips and purposeful slippage, “to catch an unconscious process and make a decision to do it, to use it.” “Well maybe that’s what writers or poets do,” Johnson responded. Despite his extensive use of text and wordplay, Johnson eschewed the label of poet: “I shouldn’t call myself a poet but other people have. What I do is classify the words as poetry.” Poetry is an apt model for Johnson’s communication, though, since his words, images, and symbols require a deep unpacking of possible meanings.

What about the social aspect of communication? While his mailings offer a model for sociability, they aren’t exactly a social interaction. His performances and lectures (which were usually more akin to performances than traditional talks) use many of the same models I’ve noted — i.e., wordplay and free association — but they also involve a more immediate social interaction with the audience or other participants. On the day of his lectures, he would look to his morning mail for inspiration, finding something during his ritual opening of letters to use in his talks, whether it be something to wear or to hold. “I’m dealing with magic,” he told Spodarek and Delbeke. “I provoke the mailbox to provide me […] Or, I will use what is in the mail for the subject of my lecture.” Pieces, sometimes from strangers, would become essential elements in his communication to that day’s audience, adding an element of chance to each lecture and making each event a one-off occurrence.

in-ter-view n. A meeting of persons face to face, especially one sought or arranged for the purpose of formal conference on some point. Looking into; inspection; examination.

But Johnson also upends communication by playing with its failures, the nothings and silences that communicate so much but are often hard to interpret. This brings us back to the interview format, a technique of communication — a social interaction — but also a kind of correspondence. And Johnson performed it much as he did everything else. In a 1968 oral history interview for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Sevim Fesci begins by asking about Johnson’s background, where he is from and when he was born, to which Johnson replies: “I find whenever one begins a tape like this that it doesn’t get interesting until you’re into it […] And your beginning questions prompt a certain silence.” As with his rearrangement of furniture, Johnson never approaches an interview as a blank slate awaiting questions; he always has a performance in mind. As Martin notes: “He explains himself only in the very same ways that he expresses himself, and getting an interview from him means accepting potluck.”

The transcript of a second 1984 radio interview, with Shirley Samberg, is filled with “[pause]” notations. After the first occurrence, Johnson tells Samberg: “This is something I planned hours ago. That I would create spaces in reply to questions. Or in reply to logic. As I’ve done here. I’ve just created a sort of a rectangle with nothing in it.” A rectangle of nothing evokes a series of performances — happenings — that Johnson gave throughout his career. A student at Black Mountain College at the same time as John Cage tenure there, the most famous artist of nothing, Johnson was similarly interested in these blank spaces and pauses. As Thomson notes in her introduction, “Johnson’s emphasis on, and inclusion of space, allowed it to become an active part of his work.” She draws attention to this moment in the Samberg interview, as well as to the moment during his Archives of American Art interview when, asked about time in his work, Johnson paused to smoke a cigarette and then explained: “By the way, that was the answer to your question about time.”

In his interview with Held Jr., Johnson describes an appearance he made on a talk show:

They thought I wanted to sit and talk and present, and they set up the camera and the background, and so forth. But what I was doing was action in the outer edges, and I began moving, physically moving everything, which is like a recurring theme of my lectures, which is to set everything in motion.

Even in his blank spaces and nothings, Johnson is working around the edges of what we presume an interview to be, forcing us to rethink our roles. If every question becomes a prompt for an artwork, the interviewer becomes a participant in an ongoing performance. At one point, while speaking with artist and longtime correspondent Richard Pieper, Johnson claims that many of his performances are not conceptual art but rather “participatory action. I keep saying to people who want to find out about the Correspondence School that the only way to truly understand it is through participation, because what I do is made for each person.” In his interviews, Johnson offers a chance to participate, correspond, and communicate, in the fullest meaning of those terms.

¤

Megan N. Liberty is an arts and culture writer based in Brooklyn. She is the Art Books editor at the Brooklyn Rail and has a master’s in Art History from The Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

The post Ray Johnson’s Kaleidoscopic Interview Practice appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[swipestream]

An Interview with Brian Niemeier, Part I

Brian Niemeier is a best-selling science fiction author and a John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer finalist. His second book, Souldancer, won the first ever Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel. He chose to pursue a writing career despite formal training in history and theology. His journey toward publication began at the behest of his long-suffering gaming group, who tactfully pointed out that he seemed to enjoy telling stories more than planning and adjudicating games.

Released this week, Brian’s newest book, The Ophian Rising, concludes his groundbreaking Soul Cycle series. Recently, I sat down with Brian to discuss The Ophian Rising, the rest of the Soul Cycle, and more. Part I focuses on the Soul Cycle.

*     *     *      *      *

You’ve mentioned on your blog that the Soul Cycle has been a passion project for you. What about it made it so riveting as a story to explore?

It’s kind of like trying to quantify love. Forgive me for going John C. Wright for a moment, but you kind of just asked me, “why do you love your favorite child?” I could point to how pleased I am with how the characterization has turned out and I could probably point to a few sequences in each book that I’m particularly proud of. It’s just in my wheelhouse. It’s the kind of project that I find esthetically pleasing. Like a lot of writers say, the Soul Cycle is the kind of sci-fi fantasy series that I always wanted to read but could never find, so I had to write it myself.

For those new to the series, could you take a moment to describe the Soul Cycle? What they can expect?

The unexpected. The Soul Cycle came out of this mélange of my earlier influences. Everything from 90s anime space operas, to Dune to Star Wars. There’s some Golden Age JRPG–16-bit and 32-bit era–role-playing games in there. It’s been described as a kitchen sink series, but that’s not to say that it’s incoherent. I miraculously managed to weave an internally self-consistent narrative through the whole thing and now it’s done.

You mentioned some influences on the Soul Cycle. Was there a moment that inspired it? Can you remember where the idea came together to start writing?

This is going to sound weird, but bear with me. As a kid and even up through college, I would occasionally amuse myself with amateur model building. I put together some commercially produced kits but quite often I’d just find stuff around the house and just hot glue stuff together into a shape that I thought looked cool.

So one day I was sitting down, and I had all of these used plastic frames from old Warhammer 40k figures. You know, the actual parts that aren’t even punched out. So I just had these slender plastic almost girder looking pieces and I though I’d see what I could build with them. I started forming the skeleton of a spaceship. I was just sitting there at my card table with some sort of cable movie the week on to the background and it just started taking shape into this big severe angular brutal looking behemoth thing that I ended up painting glossy black. It had this one gold rimmed emerald green eye in the center of the bow. Then I just did what sci-fi authors do–I asked, “what if?”

Who made this thing? Where did it come from? What is it? I actually took a page from “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by thinking, “what if this ship is powered by the torment of a child?” Immediately the idea for the entire character of Elena Braun popped into my head. Elena just kind of stepped out of my subconscious like Athena sprouting from Zeus’s forehead and introduced herself to me. I just took it from there and curiosity did the rest.

I’m looking at the Nethereal cover right now. Is that anything like that ship that you kitbashed?

It’s close. That is my artist Marcelo Orsi Blanco’s interpretation of the ship I kitbashed. I’ve actually got pictures of the model.

During the Puppy of the Month readthrough of Nethereal, I noticed that the Great Chain of Being was a big part of the world building. But the full implications didn’t hit me until I was reading Secret Kings yesterday. It made perfect sense that the fire souldancer would be the one to redeem the universe because fire is the element closest to the divine. What other mythologies or stories influenced the world building of the Soul Cycle?

Primarily the Christian Manichean heresy. I set out specifically to design a Manichean cosmos, partially in an effort to disprove it. I’ve read a lot of Augustine of Hippo. He’s one of my favorite authors. He’s right on the edge of antiquity and the Middle Ages, he’s been called the Last Ancient Man and the First Medieval Man, and his writings always really resonated with me. He made that journey personally from paganism to Manicheanism and finally to Orthodox Christianity. One of his arguments against the Manichean order–I suppose I should define what I mean.

The Manicheans believed that there were two gods, the god of Good and the god of Evil. That was sort their way around theodicy, or the problem of evil. By saying the good god created only what was good and everything that is good and evil comes from the evil god, that’s how they thought to get around it. The problem with that is, if evil has substance of its own and its own order of being, then it’s really just another good. There really is no evil because there’s no cogent argument for not choosing the evil getting the “evil” god’s order over the good god’s. You inevitably end up in moral relativism. So I tried to depict that in the work, especially in the climax of Souldancer like you’re alluding to.

There’s been some debate on where new readers should start the Soul Cycle. Jon Mollison and many others have said Souldancer. I loved Nethereal. I love what you’ve been doing since then but to me it’s still my favorite. Where would you recommend that the reader starts and why?

First of all, thank you for that glowing praise.

That is a question that I’ve debated myself and I’ve spoken with others about that. Listen to your readers, you always want to try to write to market. There have been a few who said start with Souldancer because it hits the ground running more. They find some of the concepts tend to be clearer, but the majority side with you. They say start with Nethereal and read in order.

The order of release is my preferred order. Actually, I ended up doing what Nick Cole and Jason Anspach just did with Galaxy’s Edge, where they actually wrote the second book first and then went back and wrote Legionnaire. I wrote Souldancer first and then I thought, you know there’s a lot of background here that needs to be covered. For example, how did the Cataclysm happen? Who are Thera and Shaiel? Why should we care about them? Where does the  name “souldancer” come from? I went back and wrote Nethereal to fill in the back story, so I think the most logical progression is to start with Nethereal.

With The Ophian Rising newly released, could you set the stage for the readers?

How about we start with just the general background of this novel as it relates to the others?

What I can tell you is if you’ve read The Secret Kings then you know that–spoilers for anyone who hasn’t read it yet–the good guys had their climactic and decisive final battle with Shaiel, with Vaun Mordecai, that’s been brewing since the first book. In The Secret Kings, I largely wrapped up the main through-line that started with Nethereal, which is you know these two beings who are vying for godhood. They each get half of the pie. So Elena as Thera’s soul inherits the power of the White Well which is the opposite of her birthright. Vaun kind of stole her birthright and ended up as Shaiel, the new god of the void. That conflict has resolved. Shaiel’s attempt to dominate the entire cosmos and turn it into one giant undead Void full of undead damned creatures serving him was thwarted. So really what you’ve got at the end of The Secret Kings is the last of the old pantheon that used to rule the cosmos being overthrown and this new group of misfits that we’ve been bringing together since Nethereal rise to become the new royal family of the whole Soul Cycle universe. Really only Zadok in the form of Szodrin is left, but he’s kind of the watchmaker god. He just likes to step back and see how things play out like a model train enthusiast.

So people said, “Well, The Secret Kings seems to come to a satisfying resolution. Why do we need another book?”

It’s because whereas The Secret Kings might have resolved the main plot or the first three books to the Soul Cycle, my work isn’t done until I’ve tied up all the themes. There’s at least one major theme that was left dangling, one major question that a lot of my readers have asked about and you just asked about earlier. Which is, so we’ve shown as early as Souldancer, that the basic moral underpinning Zadok tried to build with his cosmos doesn’t work. There is no guarantee of right and wrong. There’s really no way to avoid moral relativism except by Zadok saying “Because I said so.” So readers have been asking me if there is any point to it. Is there any clear right and wrong? Is there any clear definition of villainy or heroism? Any reason to hope and not despair? Any reason to choose love over apathy? So that is what The Ophian Rising primarily addresses.

I do show what the ultimate source of morality is and the ultimate reason for hope–but also fear. Realizing there are moral absolutes can be quite scary when you realize there is a standard that everyone is held to.

I definitely agree that the first three books have a satisfying arc. There’s still the judgment of Zadok over Astlin from the end of Souldancer.

You’re very close and it’s interesting that you honed in correctly on the character of Astlin. She’s another character who just one day showed up and knocked on my door and introduced herself. I haven’t had to do any nuts and bolts work on that character. She was fully formed from the first moment I met her. She wanted me to tell her story.

That’s a very keen insight that, in the order of this cosmos, the Fire Stratum, composed of elemental fire, is just one step down from the White Well, which is the closest that this cosmos has to the divine. So if you look at her powers, her elemental fire is able to harm demons. A spoiler alert for Souldancer, she’s able to harm Hazeroth with her molten brass blood and with the fire she can release from her soul. Fire doesn’t normally hurt those creatures, because being demons from hell, they’re used to the flames of hell. It is that residual spark of the Divine in it that can harm them.

She’s got this redemption arc where she begins as, you can argue, a villain, but certainly an antagonist. Through love, through someone telling her, “You are lovable. You do have dignity. You are worthy of redemption,” she gets her act together big time and turns her life around. It turns out that, as Sulaiman says, she may be the chosen one. Because, you know, tropes work because they’re tropes. So most science fiction and fantasy lately, and for quite a while, have had the promised one, the chosen one, the hero of legend. The Soul Cycle is no different, but it’s not really front and center. The references are in there. Sulaiman makes reference to one with the heart of a star who will make the final decision for good or evil before the gods on behalf of mankind.

Wow, I read Souldancer close but I missed that. Just how layered the Soul Cycle is still surprises me.

Let me get around to full answering your question. Sorry to go all fire hose on you. For that scene, go back to Souldancer, right after Hazeroth’s defeat when Sulaiman and Tefler and Cook find Astlin passed out after their battle. Sulaiman thinks to himself, “well, is this what’s going on? Is she the one the Burned Book talked about?” But then at the end of the book, Xander makes a deal.

First of all, he points out–and it’s hinted under divine inspiration, like these aren’t his words, they were they were given him by someone else–he points out the flaw to Zadok. He says that “Your test was faulty from the beginning because it’s lopsided in favor of evil. So the Zadokim are knocking to get in. Let them in to balance the scale and make it a level playing field.” That is when Zadok agrees to let Astlin, the first Zadokim, in.

So she then says, “We’ve got to help make others like us. We’ve got to help others escape and get back to the light. We’ve got to save these shards of Zadok that have the potential to become real people.” So that’s what she wants.

Interestingly, it in Zadok’s judgment of her, where Xander begs Zadok for her life, where Zadok says, “No. You know her crimes convict her,” and cuts her silver cord, which allows her to escape and receive a real soul and then return.

*     *     *      *      *

Get the final book of the award-winning Soul Cycle today, and complete your collection by picking up the other captivating books in this supernatural space adventure series. And come back tomorrow for Part II of our interview, where Brian discusses editing, his favorite books, and his next project.

  An Interview with Brian Niemeier, Part I published first on http://ift.tt/2zdiasi

[kitemist]

switched at birth season 5 episode 10 / series finale thoughts with spoilers

live reactions included.

Overall, I’m almost sobbing like the rest. Goodbye to this show I both hate and learned to love. <3

To be honest, even though I have been shitting on this show since I live reacted every episode of season 5, and some ever since I first saw it on netflix, it was in fact the first show that I bothered to binge a lot on, besides some 1 season anime, I am actually partially unprepared for this. Like, some parts have been nice actually. You got deaf representation(I am aware that it’s not the best, but it’s better than Hush), going into difficult subjects like rape, alcoholism, addiction, death, and trauma, and aside from all the romance, some drama that does in fact make sense and engages the audience into it.The writers may have no idea how deaf people actually work in real life, but the characters feel real aside from that. The camera people may have no consideration for some of the signing scenes, but they have great composition and lighting use other times. The music? Even though that’s not for the deaf audience, it is very engaging and the songs are always great choices. It’s a well made show, with lots of leaks, but it was well constructed.

My own personal experience with the deaf community, with those two sign language classes, seeing a deaf rapper(probably Sean Forbes) in person, going to a deaf convention and everyone still liked my hat and I bought a print from a deaf artist, was amazing. ASL class was instantly my favorite and I made new friends, and picked up new skills. I need to pick up again for sure, I still have the textbooks. It was very unique, and something you can never get from the hearing community. Some things you just DON’T REALIZE are extremely audio centric until you mute everything.

I’ve already been partially flooded with some spoilers thanks to the official twitter. Even though this is the finale, just like any other episode, it needs to chill. It retweets literally everything in their hashtag.

A shot of Daniel Durant? I hope you ALL are coming here. Well, not 100% everyone, but Vanessa Marano did say that a lot of other actors who weren’t working did come that shooting day, and even her sister (who sang an alternate theme song for Miraculous) came along too.

5 years ago? You’re IMMEDIATELY cutting so some things from season 1? That sure can get the flow going. 

Wow, Mom and Regina were sure bitches to each other. Regina being overly modest.

And back to the present without any other transition card.

Yeah, Mom confirms that they were bitches to each other.

This finale was directed by Lea Thompson, who is Mom. She also directed the episode where Alie came along. She is a good director, I’ll give her that. Somewhat.

So is Regina going back to Eric? Fuck.

Of course it would be the Alie pictures, because Emmett couldn’t control composition when it was himself being in front of the camera.

And Dad ruins all the fun. Such as that electric bill.

So Travis is going out again.

Yeah, that disaster which YOU thought of, and FORCE KISSED her, Travis.

Seeing this next shot of Daphne and Iris irritates me, because Daphne claims that Chris took the biggest fall for this cause, giving up the game and getting arrested. But Iris almost died and that was enough to get some big shots to move their asses. Iris gets that award. Not Cocky Chris.

Mingo continues to jump onto race to race. I still think he’s a racist. And an ass. He deserves NOTHING. Maybe you SHOULDN’T have a girlfriend. You shouldn’t have ANYTHING!

Good job coming up front about it.

And now the only conversation you two can have now is about your relationships away from each other.

It’s been what, months or something, and you still are calling her RED. God DAMMIT.

Yeah, how crazy would that be that an ATHLETIC TRAINER and a DOCTOR are going to be together, specifically you two?!

Toby has absolutely nothing aside from music. So Dad is bashing Bay for not having a backup plan for not getting into college that one time, and for not paying her bills, but lets Toby off the hook when he flies off to fuckin ICELAND and getting married, even though the first one tore him apart and the second one, although making less sense than the last one, is having difficulties since they are in the situation of taking care of a child which they have no idea how to do, and learning is hard. And not only that, Toby completely ditched college!!!

“Don’t you worry Eeyore. We’ll find your tail.” <3

Okay, Luca wants to hop onto the ride. From twitter, I know Regina just feels so inclined to tell him because she loves both of them, doesn’t she?!

“Let’s do it.” After thinking about your intense makeout session!?

“Tattooing has a long history of saying ‘screw you’ to society.” This show has never said anything truer and it’s about TATTOOS. You’d expect it to be about, i don’t know, DEAF PEOPLE?

If Bay tattoos a celebrity, then she’ll explode much like badass tattoo lady. Is that the case?

Daphne has a CART but looks to his lips the majority of this scene.

6 week paid internship. The only possibilities are Mingo and Daphne because this show.

THIS IS LITERALLY YOUR FIRST CONVERSATION, MELODY AND REGINA, THIS ENTIRE SEASON!!!

Melody is right. Which Regina isn’t doing because she’s just as if not more impulsive than her daughters.

And first time we’ve seen Melody’s boyfriend. in...forever. And he does not interpret for Regina. Or, doesn’t know to.

Yeah, thanks to neuroplasticity, you excel at all 3. Magically. Along with your magical lipreading.

You don’t like making art with other people, only OF other people. To be fair, that is in fact what photography is. Making art out of other people and other things.

Both of you are lone wolves. Emmett is...well, self-centered but not arrogant or egocentric. Bay is impulsive and can be violent. So you both have to be. But you both are magically compatible because reasons.

Yeah, you need a change. Actually, a lot of these characters can use a change. You’ve been sitting in the same city for 5 years, after all.

You’re gonna mirror this line from 4 seasons ago, from the promo. Also, 5 years ago, you were just as good at acting, Marano.

A second test...?

JOHN KNEW TOO?! THEN WHY--WHAT--WHAT THE FUCK

WHY

Yeah, you read lips TOO WELL.

Well fuck you too

Okay you have masks and it’s pretty audio centric. But you didn’t consider anything else to her face. Is mingo only going to get the job only because he can hear? He SUCKS at school, focusing, pushes his own body too much to care about anyone else’s, and he’s a horrible person!!

First conversation between Daphne and Emmett ever since..season 3? No idea. But it felt longer than just last season.

There’s the neck tattoo. And from this, I guess her disease is magically cured.

Also, how is Emmett taking pictures? You’ll have to crank your ISO so high all your photos would be a sandbox!

Is Dad purposely trying to avoid this conversation? That just confirms it.

Dad is so awkward right now trying to get around this.

And now Travis and Melody. Well, I guess her birthday doesn’t count because it turned out violent.

NATALIE!!! I MISSED YOU

Daniel Durant got kicked out because he was gay, huh?

Yeap.

Awww, season 1 moments. Gold old wilke who cared about making out more than anything else.

UM..THANKS NOELLE?

THANK YOU INDEED

You mean you WERE  in love with someone else. Luca was your boy toy until he unexpectedly came back!

Luca is bashing her for being unloyal to him, while he was lying so many damn times because reasons. Shut the fuck up Luca, no one deserves you anyway.

Hi Mom? ;v;

Yelling in her face because this is what all hearing people do when they have no idea how to deal with deaf people.

Thanks mom ;w;

This is how to be patient with someone with down syndrome huh...hmm.

Kara sort of did this to me, but not in a condescending sort of way. It was a way to quiet me down at Phoenix. Thank you, Kara.

Well, you and Mom did NOT try hard at all. Because Art thief’s big shot dad was too much for you to handle after ONE conversation.

After landing in something she finally wants to do, Travis wants to drag her along because..reasons. and it was Travis's own choice to go to china, not hers.

Well, that’s a stereotype breaker. Down syndrome people can have down syndrome caretakers. Toby’s really nice about that.

First conversation between Daphne and her mom since the racist outfit.

And John couldn’t stand it. Great. He can’t stand ANYTHING!

Yeah, women are tough. Just not you, Regina, partially. Kathryn took no shit at all, while you didn’t let anything good happen to you because you victimized yourself.

Every relationship is different, even in this show. But all of them, in this show, are crap.

What else are you expecting, Mom? You’re quite the digger.

;n; thanks dad.

Bay. What are you doing with this mirrored line.

Come with them, Daniel. It’s a much safer place.

Aw, Toby and Lily. Dorks.

Bay has grown up so much here and I am proud. ;v;

YEAH. THAT FUCKING ACT.

YEAH, FUCK THAT GUY

Will!!! ;v;

wait WHAT

okay...this was the path that grandma wanted angelo to take.

this should have happened SO LONG AGO

yup. hey, daniel. :3

WHAT? PASSING ON GALLAUDET? FOR HIM? ;W;

</3 ;n;

LUCKY YOU BECAUSE THIS IS HOW THAT SHOW WORKS.

Well, You ARE a jerk, no matter what you seem, mingo.

You two are the dumbest.

no you do not.

well. not like daphne had anyone else.

hey, what a spot to meet up at. seems so familiar.

“he was my first love.” i didn’t like this ship, but ;v;

aww, a montage.

OH FUCK THIS, REALLY

Well. Looks like you can be the first good ex’s. In the history of switched at birth. What a nice ending scene for them. See you around.

So many scrapbook pictures...

Hey dad, what do you want.

well, thanks dad.

Regina’s leaving, yup.

Is bay the most shaken up? ;w;

</3 DON’T DO THIS TO ME.

If we never met..well..i would both love it and not like it.

THANKS, PERSISTENT VANESSA MARANO, FOR ALWAYS FINDING YOUR BIRTH PARENTS.

DAD </3

I THINK THE ACTORS ARE ALL CRYING IN REAL LIFE FOR THIS? </3

SHUT UP BAY ;v;

JUST EAT ALREADY--

OKAY, THE COMET.

Let’s all go out now.

Heh. the iconic shot.

We’re all here now.

What a beautiful shot.

</3

Holy SHIT. I didn’t get all the answers I wanted, but this was enough loose ends tied up for me. What a beautiful ending. I couldn’t have asked for a better one even with these loose ends. All our characters are happy, and we can leave off with a good note. Thanks, Switched at Birth. I will and won’t miss you.

I’ll give you 9.4/10.