#my vocabulary has been irrevocably FUCKED

[novelconcepts]

You can really tell how much Drawfee/Secret Sleepover Society I’ve been leaning on between projects lately, cuz my brain is just a riot of Jacob-isms.

“NnnnnnnnnnAOOOW. it’s NOT.”

“Ohhhhhh HEEEETMAN.”

“Scoop it. Scoop it. SCOOP it. SCOOP. IT. SCOOPIT. SCOOOOOOOOOP IIIIIT.”

[jo-does-things]

Ways that my vocabulary has actually been irrevocably changed by Tumblr.

I was chatting with one of my friends the other day who had just quit a shitty corporate job and I said that as a general rule the higher ups in those sorts of situations "Don't know fuck about shit" And she laughed So Hard having never heard the phrase before meanwhile I'm like "Oh No I meant to say Shit about Fuck it's usually the other way around".

[thesinglesjukebox]

BILLIE EILISH - BURY A FRIEND

[7.76]

Why you always play that song so loud? Oh.

Ian Mathers: Over a series of songs and videos, Eilish has practically offered a survey of fears and bad feelings: spiders, isolation, drowning, physical assault, mental illness, poison, other people as monsters, the self as a monster, etc. and here she leans harder than ever into the horror tropes, both sonically and visually. The sampled dentist drill, lyrics equally evoking the monster under the bed and sleep paralysis, the haunted house/nursery rhyme lilt of the verses, the bravado that at least partially stems from her narrative persona already feeling bad enough about herself that you sure as hell can't touch her, and of course the line that recurs over and over: "I wanna end me." It's the sort of thing you can imagine parents freaking out over, and even possibly the (yes, yes, very young) Eilish looking back years from now and thinking the better of. But, much as plenty of pop music conjures up outsized romantic sentiments that listeners gravitate towards despite not actually wanting to follow through with them in a literal sense, it also feels like the kind of darkness that I know many people who don't struggle with suicidal ideation still identify with in the context of a pop song. I'm not actually arguing for its total harmlessness so much as admitting that I don't think total harmlessness is necessary or even desirable in pop, maybe especially when it is from someone as young and who seems to be as tapped into a new vocabulary (sonic and gestural as much as linguistic) as Eilish is so far. The line and the song make me uneasy even as I love it and feel seen by it, as opposed to (say) Juice WRLD's bullshit which doesn't to me feel like it has any redeeming element at all. Eilish and "Bury a Friend," meanwhile, don't need a redeeming element unless you have a problem with the rich history of darkness in pop (as opposed to the rich history of misogyny in pop). Not for nothing does my friend Jess Burke describe her as "Fiona Apple for a Blumhouse future" and of all the paths to go down, that honestly feels like a pretty great one right now. [9]

Tobi Tella: Billie Eilish is one of the first true Gen Z pop stars, and as someone only a year or so older than her I'm impressed with how fresh her music feels on the pop landscape. The sense of dread that appears in most of her music is in full force here, and while I have found some of her music to be a little "2edgy4me," this works by fully leaning into it. It's unlike anything anyone else is making right now. [7]

Alfred Soto: If "Bury a Friend" is a gesture, an experiment -- as if Billie Eilish said, "Let me show how minimalist my music can be, and put in cool noises too" -- then its failure to be more than this is my failure. She's been tuneful before, which means she knows what she's doing. [6]

Jonathan Bradley: "Bury a Friend" sounds like the product of a musical landscape where anything can be heard on demand and none of it comes with context. Billie Eilish's artless murmur suggests that her roots lie in the DIY aesthetics of bedroom folk, but while her music can be wispy and personal in that mode, it wanders into other realms in which it seems not to realize it doesn't belong. This song is punctuated by producer Crooks intoning Eilish's name like a mixtape DJ's drop, while the shrieks that tear into the dark low-end pulse seem torn from Yeezus-era Kanye. There's even some Fiona Apple in the stops and starts punctuating her phrasing. Like Lorde before her, Eilish is adept at playing up the adolescent's attraction to darkness, and the haunted house atmosphere and lyrics about stapled tongues and glass-cut feet settle into a delicious murk. Perhaps most unsettling and most unexpectedly novel about it all is that Eilish doesn't sound like a paralysed gothic heroine. She sounds like one of the monsters. [8]

Katie Gill: Insert that Marge Simpson 'kids, could you lighten up a little?' reaction image here. It only makes sense that the hot new pop sensation is the musical distillation of nihilistic memes and the lolz I'm so depressed joke culture that's permeated the popular consciousness. To her credit, Eilish has her finger perfectly poised on the zeitgeist. Unfortunately, we've been dealing with the zeitgeist for at LEAST two years now. Such ironic detachment and 'I want to end me lmao' already feels out of date -- the fact that the song seems tailor-made to score an American Horror Story scene only dates it even more (those backing screams were a baaad choice). The main thing this does is make me wish that Eilish leaned in more towards her lighter fare. [5]

Vikram Joseph: I've been a Billie Eilish sceptic, but "Bury A Friend" is, if not quite Damascene, certainly revelatory. It feels deliciously, obscenely engrossing; that minimalist pulse, the mocking, nursery-rhyme motif ("What do you want from me? Why don't you run from me?"), those swift, decisive industrial gut-punches, the breathtaking turns of pace and time-signature tightrope-play. Most of all, it's fun, especially when her vocal affectations come off like a demonic sonic negative of Lorde. It feels like her entire aesthetic coming together, a camp horror-flick dark-pop queen finally wearing the crown she's been threatening to unveil for a while now. [8]

William John: At 28 I feel far too old to be pontificating about Billie Eilish, but what I will say is that if their new formula for chart success is to mine the aesthetic of Róisín Murphy circa Ruby Blue, then I'm ready to submit to our new zillennial overlords. [7]

Iris Xie: I've been hearing Billie Eilish everywhere I go, and her music always vibrates with a moody, dark warmth while I move through thrift stores, coffee shops, and sidewalks. Reclaiming whisper-singing from Selena Gomez is a fantastic move, especially when paired with that slight rhythmic drumming, sudden starts and stops, and that little omnipresent danger that I miss so much from f(x)'s Red Light. Our times are escalating faster to some kind of destruction, but in the air, there is exhaustion and energy of both a defiant joy and a quiet numbness. "Bury a Friend," and her album overall embodies that energy in spades. [7]

Will Rivitz: Jump scares in horror movies suck; they're cheap, calculated cash-ins on human predilection to react badly whenever something threatening pops out from the underbrush. Much more difficult to pull off, and much more impressive in its execution and creativity when it succeeds, is the slow-burn thrill. When a ghoulish, uncertain threat is buried ever so imperceptibly below the surface, it roils adrenaline in the most painfully pleasant of ways, as we fail to put our finger on anything about what's about to destroy us except that, make no mistake, it will indeed destroy us. "Bury a Friend" nails that most sublime skin-crawl. The lowing bass and teeth-scraping industrial synths roll around the aural triggers that make every hair on a back stand up with the cold impersonality of coins circling a hyperbolic funnel forever, the end always implied but never achieved. Appropriate, too, since Billie Eilish's main triumph is capturing the slow-burn existential dread of living as a young person in a world thoroughly ruined by those who won't live to see out the ramifications of their present actions. Obliquely, that's "Bury a Friend," a nightmarish Borges y yo resurrection, endlessly Genius-ready especially given the original story now has a Genius annotation itself. (The internet continues to be bizarre.) Instrumentally and lyrically, it's a warped and terrifying celebration of a muddling and destruction of identity supercharged by the less savory bits of our constant interconnectedness; it is, in other words, the best summary of Billie Eilish she could possibly present to us. Eilish affirms our base fears that things are fucked, we're all irrevocably in shambles, and there's absolutely jack shit we can do about it; we might as well learn to celebrate where we're at, since there's nothing else awaiting us. [9]

Alex Clifton: I can't remember the last time I felt this astonished by a song, nor can I remember hearing anything this sublime. I mean this in the gothic sense -- something beautiful and terrifying and subsiding where you've just got to stand and soak it all in. "Bury a Friend" is every nightmare and melodramatic thought I had as a teenager set to music, the suspicion that I was a monster who was better off dead and everyone knew. It felt so plainly written on my skin. But it's not just dark and monstrous. Billie feels scared and sad on the chorus: when we all fall asleep, where do we go? Something in her voice is so vulnerable that I feel cut open myself just hearing it. I fear some older people may hear "Bury a Friend" and write it off as emo teenage poetry, but it's so much more than that. It's the honesty of Lorde's first album mixed in with the sharp crunch of being a teen in 2019, living in a world constantly on fire with questionable prospects for a future. I would expect nothing less from a teenager to be honest, especially one as talented as Eilish. I just wish I had had the courage to be this dark and messy when I was her age. [9]

Will Adams: So much of the Billie Eilish discourse concerns her aesthetic and how it relates to Gen Z, but it often misses a key part of her appeal: how electrifying her music sounds. Tactile, confronting and claustrophobic, Billie and her producer brother Finneas create music that tightens its grip and refuses to let go, and "Bury a Friend" is as good an example as any. Alternately screeching, skittering and booming with sub bass (like "Black Skinhead" crawling with spiders), it conjures up a nightmare you can't look away from. [9]

Katherine St Asaph: A game that is both fun and great for making yourself acutely aware of how fast the grave is yanking you down is asking yourself, and being honest: if you were a teen today, who would you stan? Would you be an Ariana Grande Teen? A Blueface Teen? A Billie Eilish Teen? The depressing truth is that I probably would've been a Lana Del Rey Teen, but I could see myself reluctantly liking this for its weird drama, its dramatic weirdness. I'm convinced people confused about why Billie's dark music appeals to teens have never themselves been teens, the time of life where you endless-repeat Nirvana (ask Dave Grohl) or Sarah Brightman's cover of "Gloomy Sunday" or "Bury a Friend" and often make it out regardless. The flavor of darkness here is more than a little Tim Burton, in the twisted-nursery-rhyme melody, but there's also more than a little "Black Skinhead" and "Night of the Dancing Flame," and how many teen sensations can you conjure those references up for? [9]

Stephen Eisermann: Billie Eilish, especially here, is the exact representation of what would happen if Lorde pulled a Jack Skellington and entered the portal in the trees to find herself in Halloween Town. The same intriguing vocal tics, off-beat metaphors, and bold production choices -- just decorated with horror-tinged jack-o-lanterns and ghost sheets. In other words, I love Billie and I love this song. [8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: "Bury a Friend" is less a song and more an intentionally jarring collection of phrases -- even Eilish's individual lines sound cut off, as if they've been reassembled from a previously coherent whole. Not every piece works -- Crooks' vocal additions are unnecessary and some of Eilish's longer phrasings in the bridge are too stylized. Moreover, the picture that this collage is supposed to be forming never gets cleared up. And yet there's almost an illicit thrill to listening to a pop song that sounds like this, in all of its chaotic terror and joy. [6]

Edward Okulicz: In truth, this song feels like it runs out of gas, but its first 30 seconds are incredibly arresting. It's not that the rest of it is bad, I mean there's a bit where she sounds exactly like Róisín Murphy and that's never bad. Over the course of a bunch of singles, Eilish has used lots of existing musical tropes in an interesting way and built up a style that's unmistakeably her -- maybe I'm just disappointed she's taken it to complete fruition in half a minute and maybe there's nowhere else for her to go but to do a full-on macabre Glitterbeat thing. She's got fans that'll go with her to any place she chooses. [8]

Taylor Alatorre: I'm inclined to dislike most of the well-manicured teenage dramascapes that make up Billie Eilish's discography so far. Maybe it's the narcissism of generational differences -- sure, I was moody and disaffected as a 17-year-old, but I wasn't this kind of moody and disaffected. You're doing anhedonia all wrong, kids! Yet somehow, "Bury a Friend" is able to dislodge me from this self-consciousness by brandishing its own self-consciousness as a weapon and waging a merry war on itself. It's a staging ground for a bunch of one-off experiments and on-the-nose signifiers and 2spooky vocal tics and vintage 2013 alt-pop tropes, all of which seem to communicate: "This is a song that I wrote, and I can debase it however I want." It's squeamish about its own existence yet sure of its purpose, with a simple driving beat that yields to miscellany while warding off the specters of musical theater. Its high point is an archly written low point: the sneeringly drawn out "wowww." in response to a blunt confession of suicidality. If it turns out that reducing the stigma doesn't always lead to better outcomes, at least we got some good banter out of it. [8]

Joshua Copperman: Huh, I guess we are seeing the beauty at the end of culture. And it's suicidal, it's offensive, it's ugly. Then it's fake-deep, and it's edgy, because Heaven forbid we legitimize the concerns of teenagers. The common thing is supposed to be how, as a teenager, everything feels like it matters, but today's teens are growing up in a political moment when nothing feels like it does, if it ever will again. Okay, that's a bit much -- there's a chance that actual teens aren't like this, and this is what people whose brains have been poisoned by Twitter pundits think teenagers must be like. It can't be a huge coincidence, though, that "I wanna end me," "why do you care for me?" and "I'm too expensive!!!" all wound up in a Top 20 hit by a 17-year-old. Like any good writer, Eilish sublimates those fears into a horror movie song from the point of view of the monster under her bed, a pure Tumblr or r/writingprompts move. But with this many Spotify plays, with this much success, it's hard to shake the feeling that along with the stellar "idontwannnabeyouanymore," Eilish is actually onto something with The Youths. Finneas O'Connor's bonkers production, with dentist drills and the 12/8 "Black Skinhead" bounce, certainly helps this stand out. (Rob Kinelski, too, has crafted a mix more interesting than anything his more successful contemporaries like Serban Ghenea have done lately.) Underneath the grimdarkness, what really separates Eilish is the sense of humor; the nursery rhyme bridge seemed a bit obvious, but after hearing songs like "Bad Guy," Eilish sounds completely aware of the tropes she is using. I have no doubt this blurb will age badly if her music gets worse after this, but who cares when there's not much aging left to do? Lead us into the apocalypse, Billie and Finneas! [9]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[frankpanioncube]

Writing thing - some random ‘world becomes an RP’ thing I started writing at some point.

It had been a thursday in late April the day the world had changed irrevocably. Everyone had their story to tell. For Fiona May, she had been roused to the sounds of angry shouting.. Crossing to the street-facing window, she'd looked down into the road to see Mr. McLain at the end of the row positively yelling at Mr Prentice and his two children.

With a sigh, Fiona turned away and went to go have her morning shower.

It was a little bit odd, she supposed. Not impossible, but a little weird. When her parents had still lived in the house with her, they had mentioned that 70-something Mr. McLain  with all the cats had done some very serious and traumatizing things in the Iraq war and his cats were akin to service animals. No, it didn't excuse his constant drinking and the occasional disorderly and embarrassing behaviour that particular vice afforded him, but despite him being somewhat introverted, he wasn't normally given over to excessive yelling, particularly not to the Prentices and their children who were very well behaved and made no more noise than regular ten and twelve year olds who enjoyed playing outside during the afternoons and evenings after school ever did.

The argument apparently was still ongoing when Fiona had dressed, applied her makeup, fixed herself some toast and put out Ranger’s kibble. By this point, she’d have to walk past on the way to the train station, which was in a way kind of nice. At least she could find out what was going on without looking like she was being nosey.

The scene that came into full focus when Fiona stepped into the street was a nasty mess. and nor did she have to walk all the way to the end of the row to find out what it was about.

The ruddy glow of Mr. McLean’s face  was as vibrant as the eviscerated half-a-cat in the middle of the street.

"I'm telling you Duncan! It was not our dog!” Mr. Prentice was saying with the patience of someone with children and used to repeating information patiently. He was being as loud as he could without shouting above Mr. Duncan's ranting, which was surely teaching the two Prentice children some spectacular new additions to their vocabulary. Mary Prentice had her face burrowed in her father's hip, her sobbing adding to the din, evidently in mourning for the poor cat.  Fiona could spot the top of Kristopher's head watching the scene unfold intently from inside the family car.

Apparently, Duncan McLain was blaming the Prentice family dog for the death of his cat, and Fiona couldn't help but privately agree with repeated assertions that  Crunchy, the family’s yellow lab couldn't possibly have done it. If the fat old dog had perhaps SAT on the cat, maybe...

"Crunchy has NO reason to go for your cats. My kids feed him too many table scraps as it is. I'm certain it must have been a fox or maybe even a big owl. You. Are. Drunk, Duncan. Think about what you’re saying!”

And then Mr. Duncan's shouts had abruptly stopped.

For a moment, Fiona thought she'd been spotted or maybe Mr. Prentice’s words had finally gotten through. Maybe even Mr. McLeans drunk brain had caught up with him and realized he was screaming in front of 2 young cildren and now a woman. And then, Fiona, Duncan and Mr. Prentice all saw it at once.

"...What the fuck is that?" Mr. Prentice shook Mary from his leg, the shock of  it evidently too much to censor himself in front of his kids. "Get in the house sweetheart....no, THE CAR! Uh, Miss May, come here!" Slowly."

Fiona gladly edged into the relative protection of Mr. Prentice's vicinity and together the three of them stared at the...well...it could only be described as a monster. A fat, oozing black glob of slime with wide, gleaming eyes. It shivered along the ground towards the dead cat corpse and engulfed the head like some kind of overly large slug. A horrible crunching noise could be heard.

"What the fuck?" whispered the two men in tandem, something that would have almost have been comical if Fiona wasn't presently watching a giant slug eat a cat.

Duncan turned on his heel with surprising agility, despite the fact that he was evidently still drunk or hungover or in some level of intoxication and disappeared into his house.

“Fucking drunk old coward…” muttered Prentice.  

Fiona whipped off her heeled shoe and lobbed it at the slime. It made a shriek of some kind and looked up from the now headless cat.

"That was a very stupid thing." said Mr. Prentiss.lowly.  "You...go in the house too, Fiona.”

Before Fiona could agree with him or do as he said, there was a pistol shot and the thing shrieked again and oozed into a puddle which flashed  and disappeared as though it had never been. There was however, a handful of coins and...strangely a five quid note, with the only evidence that there had been anything out of the ordinary at all, a quarter of a dead cat.  Duncan McLain stood in his doorway, still-smoking handgun pointed at the spot.

"The...hell?"

"The trio was soon sitting in the Prentice’s' kitchen. All three were drinking strong tea, Mary and Kristopher were confused but happily watching re-runs of the Sarah Jane Adventures. Jim Prentice had walked Fiona back to get Ranger from home while Crunchy had been let inside.Both animals were circuiting from the kids in the televion room to the adults in the kitchen and back restlessly.

“That’s funny.” Fiona said, putting down her mobile. “May I try your phone, Jim?”

“...In a moment. Um. The kids’ school is closed. There’s a message on the machine to says not to bring them in. And we’re supposed to…”

Jim didn’t get a chance to finish as the phone rang just then.

“Sharon? Sharon! A monster? Okay. Explain this to me again. Um...wait. I have Fiona May and Duncan McLain here. Maybe you should talk, just a moment…”

Jim hit the speakerphone button. “Um, hallo?”

“Daddy? And um...Mr. McLain and Miss May...I guess?”

“Aye.”

“Hello Sharon.”

“Oak Fen Academy is um, having all the students call home. Because of the...the monster. Mrs Salema...ah, that’s um, our House Mistress made us all come to the common room and gave all of us our mobile phones and told us to call our mums and dads and guardians...and we’re all supposed to say that you’re - dad - to wait for the school to call with updates. I believe they’re going to close the school. Oh and you’re to put on Channel 4, I think that’s the one that’s covering our school. And um, maybe Miss May’s work too.”

“Is anyone hurt?”

“Any dead cats?”

“There aren’t any dead...students?”

“Um, No...cats, I don’t think. Um, Mr. Singh got really badly hurt and so did George Cunningham, The health centre was on the phone with the hospital all morning. We only just finished breakfast because no one wanted to go to the Dining Hall to get carts.”

“Black slime?” Duncan piped up again.

“...no. Mr. Singh said it was a dragon...we...we all just thought he was traumatized, but then...then when George woke up he said it too. So did Callum Boyle and Anthony Goldman.”

“Here, some kind of black slug killed and ate one of Mr. McLain’s cats. He thought maybe Crunchy got out and did it.”

“Oh my god!” Sharon squeaked. “Is Crunchy ---”

“Inside with us. And your brother and sister, and Fiona brought over Ranger. Mr. McLean shot the slime thing. It seems like it’s dead. I mean, it looked like it died...and then disappeared.”

“SHOT?! With...with a gun?”

“Yeah and you’d better be glad I had it.” growled Duncan from his space at the table.

“I threw a shoe at it.” Fiona frowned, realizing the pump was still in the street.

“Wow…” Was all Sharon could say, evidently having forgotten or at least ignoring Mr. McLean’s illegal firearm.

“Daddy?”

“Mary?”

“Um, the television says we need to put on Channel Four and get our mummies and daddies.”

“Okay. Get Kris and talk to your Sister. She’s on the phone.”

“Hello Mary!” came from the speaker.

“Yes Daddy. Hi Sharry!”

The adults trooped into the sitting room, stepping over the animals and around the children, with Jim punching in the channel. A professional looking woman in a business suit filled the screen.

“..reports of.the strange creatures plaguing the countryside continue to come in to the station. For those of you just tuning in, authorities are advising everyone to stay in doors and if you must go outside, to travel by vehicles whenever possible. Please refer to our ticker below for the names and numbers of businesses and schools that have checked in. If you or anyone else has seen or encountered one of these creatures please call our tip line number at 0755523333. Please stay tuned while we go live to Dr. Mumuni Balewa at West Shire Infirmary for some advice for immediately treating any wounds sustained by encounters.”

[tkmedia-is-cosmicmystery]

For you, Atreyu.

I realize that if I never start writing this post to you, that I simply won’t ever have the ability to - and that the only way to be able to, is to attempt to try. I do know that I owe that to you; not in the sense of “owing” it to you.... but in the sense that you have deserved so much more than I have been giving to you recently.

I don’t really know how to begin; and also, there are so many things that this medium of communication just isn’t appropriate for... things that we really probably should talk about in person; but at the same time... given our current circumstance, and the actuality of where we left everything off, and everything that actually transpired between us, it’s just simply impossible to even broach, or begin to discuss, because it is all stuff that we are conscious of, and that we live with, but not anything that we technically live *in* ...y’know what I mean?

Everything that set “us” awry has been entirely my fault, and I am painfully aware of that. I have been tormenting myself with the fact that after everything that we have been through, this trust that we have built between us, and the foundation of my being a rock in your life, spiritually holding your hand through your healing and growth processes has been irrevocably broken, at precisely the point in time when our relationship was “ripe” for everything to finally happen, when you were finally *ready* - and when that beautiful little girl inside of you that I so adore that you share with me, and started to set free so purely with me was shaken and more than likely forced her self-taught lesson upon herself again, that it is important to mask, shield, and protect, that sweet, sensitive, root of your soul, because when shared too openly, purely, and freely, it is all too easy to become hurt, and for the heart to become scarred. I was so privileged that you trusted me so completely and purely, and that you were, for the first time, so willing, to give yourself to someone so honestly, candidly, openly, freely, courageously, and purely. And I went and fucked it all up. I really did not intend for this to happen, and the timing of everything that has been happening spiirtually on my end, has been god-awful. There is no vocabulary word to even define how awful the timing has been; and I wouldn’t even be able to put it into words.

The truth is, I will always love you - that is never going to change. And of course, I would never want to be a person that would ever become a memory in your personal history, as somebody that ended up hurting you, or making you feel betrayed. I’ve beeen going through some spiritual shifts, and have been feeling very lost recently, since I snapped back into consciousness from my recent “mind attack” episodes - and  the experiences had catalyzed some sort of spiritual transcendence process, that is putting me in a wobbly state. I’ve been sorting of sitting really deep inside of myself, just going through the transition in personal silence, simply working through it in my consciousness and soul, and experiencing it. It’s been very difficult for the most part to even emit sounds, and often, I have to force myself to do so, in a guttteral way to even start.

This thing with bun has been something that has been in my life for as long as I have been an “adult,” that taught me how to be an adult, and to become the solidarity of a human being that I am proud of being... and if I’m going to be honest, I have always known, and even when I forced myself to block it out and push it away; to become numb and jaded to it, I’ve come to realize, that it’s always going to be there, and it’s never going to change. Whenever her energy and my energy meet in thought again, the soul of the bond is always ever-present, even as it evolves and changes through the years.  I have long told every romantic interest, connection, and in fact, I am certain that there is not a single friend in my life that is not aware of this fact, but essentially, even as I did with you, early on in our own relationship, I always make it clear, that there is this insidividual, this presence in my life, that is always going to have the place she has in my life, and that it is never going to change, that I will always be keeping up with her, and that my romantic partner is going to have to understand and acccept that, if they really want to be with me. Because I do not know any way to not be connected with bun in this lifetime of mine, given that this is not just any general individual that I have crossed paths with at some point in time in my life, and shared some sort of fleeting transient experience with; but somebody that has been a powerful spiritual bond, a cosmic relationship, that has been a force in shaping much of what I am and have become.

Having said that, I think I need to make it known now, that as I’ve been meditating in solitude, and going through my process, I’ve realied and come to terms with the fact, that I am certain that I would absolutely be open to exploring what would happen with her, if she were to get in contact with me in concrete form. The nature of our relationship though, is that this has never happened, and has never seemed likely that it will. I just wanted to let you know that this is something that I realized, and that I want to be honest with you about.

Having put that on the table, I want to leave it on the table to leave the decision to you, as to what you would like to do about all of this; because essentially, I have been battling with my conscience, in all directions, and trying to figure out the best way to face this situation and handle it, while taking into consideration the fluidity of life, and the well-being of everybody involved to the best of my ability. I’m going to lay out where I stand on everything, and at the end of the day, it’s up to you what you think is for the best, what you want to do, and what you think would be best for you.

After our one-year disconnect, I came back falling straight back into you, being completely with you even while I was going through my “mind attack.” But at the same time, through the flow of what happened, my numbness, and your own withering process, the disconnect left me having lost feeling, with exception of my memory and feeling that I wanted to be there for you to lift you out of your depression that I could see you had fallen into. Then I started getting confused as to what the hell was going on with you and C-Man, and what else you might’ve been up to while I was “mentally out of it,” because after teh whole fiasco with the demon, I started getting really jaded and in my own way started to lose the ability to trust you.... or just became really suspicious really easily, really confused all the time, and just simply got so tired of it. All of that added to my jadedness... I was tired of feeling like I didn’t actually know for certain what you were actually doing on your side of everything beyond our communications through these mediums and channels, and feeling like the reality between us is/was so hopeless and pointless, because you have cut of off so completely even though I have in no way deserved it, with promises that it was only temporary while you were going through your own processes or sorting situations out, but that you never actually set straight or right again in the end, that led to our estrangement, with no way to actually be in actual contact. It all has felt so pointless, hopeless, and helpless, and I just wanted to start being open to going with the flow and taking life as it comes, because I have tried so hard to reach you, but despite all of your plans, everything has just seemed to turn out to be empty promises, with nothing ever actually panning out. I have seen how hard you have been trying... and I can see how genuine and sincere you have been... and I know you have meant well, and I appreciate how much heart you put into everything... but I think I just started feeling really tired. In many ways, the way that we are alienated and estranged from each other, is similar to how bun and I are alienated and estranged from aone another, despite the healthiness and purity of our actual bond. I had mentioned to you from the beginning, which I think you finally understand the context of now that you have experienced it, and can understand why... I really didn’t want to get involved in another one of these types of relationships again, where it’s mostly just screaming through the void, or rather, these days, just communicating through the void, that really is, what I tend to refer to, as just a black hole vortex of a Mad Hatter’s rabbit hole. There’s really no other way to describe it. I told you from the beginning that I didn’t want to get stuck in another one of these experiences indefinitely for years with no possible outcome, and that while we could avoid it, we should, because getting sucked into it, is and was what wa going to cause it to happen. You thought that I was playing games or was being closed off, but no... I was trying so hard to make “us” happen, trying to prevent what has actually happened from happening. But you know, in hindsignt, I’m certain that whatever has happened, has had to happen, for your own spiritual reasons, and maybe now, for my own spiritual direction.  Bun and I have been lost in the black hole vortex of a Mad Hatter’s rabbit hole ever since we were young adults, and you and I have unfortunately fallen into the same black hole vortex of a similar Mad Hatter’s rabbit hole. This was entirely the reason why I had pushed her away and closed myself off, and this is also entirely the reason why I have become numb and jaded to you and I. While others may seem to enjoy this type of dynamic, and while I also enjoy what it has to offer... simultaneously, I try to avoid it as best as I can, because I just want to live a real life.

So... I guess that statement having  been made... I just want to live a real life. If that means it’s with youy, or with her, or if somehow life takes us all in different directions into relationships with other people unexpectedly in our futures to come, I just want to go with the flow, and live a real life. To take action whenever possible. To bridge the schisms whenever there’s the opportunity. To make the best decisions possible... and ultimately, to enjoy life, and live the answers to all of our deepest questions, so that we die without any regrets.

That’s where I stand, currently. If you feel that this is something that you can accept... I do hope that you will try to find some way to reach out to me, in a way that is more concrete, than just communicating through this black hole vortex of a Mad Hatter’s rabbit hole.

Love, love, love. Always.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Beer with a Painter: Peter Acheson

Peter Acheson, “Eva Hesse” (2011-2015), oil, acrylic and collage on canvas, 12 x 16 inches (all photos by Charles Benton and courtesy Brennan & Griffin)

Peter Acheson, who lives in upstate New York, uses his living room as his winter studio. The “hearth,” which we sit around, is an old bookcase/hutch. He uses it as a provisional viewing station for paintings — propping them up and rotating them on the shelves and along the floor — as we talk. It’s also where he keeps the sound system and a stack of CDs. The Stones or Dylan are usually on deck.  A paint-splattered tarpaulin lies in front of the bookcase, and chairs are pushed to the edges of the room. Jars of acrylic paint and yogurt containers filled with brushes are right on the floor; this is where he works.

It’s a painting and rock ’n’ roll den, where art is the total, almost devotional focus; Acheson does not care about trading niceties or being ingratiating. He would rather propose and debate philosophical ideas. But he’s been quoting poetry all day, ever since he met me in a café in Hudson, where he was holding a copy of Robert Bly’s Eight Stages of Translation. We read Guillaume IX of Poitier’s “In the Great Sweetness of Spring” together, and one passage in particular became a point of reference: “Our love moves in this way: / like a branch of the hawthorn tree / …I want my God to let me live / to have my hands beneath her cloak again…”

Peter Acheson (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

A similar combination of rawness and sensitivity is what gives Acheson’s work its potency and range. His paintings are ravaged, earthy, and acutely considered, all at once. They employ a host of painterly gestures, mark-making, and collaged interruptions to the surfaces. He often paints on rough panels, burlap, and wood scraps, and attaches found elements like seashells and animal bones. He makes delicate, scribbly line drawings on paper, à la Henri Michaux. He also makes paintings with mysterious pictographic forms, bands of color, and dense layers of impasto paint. He frequently scrawls the names of his artist-heroes, or lines from poems,  across the paintings. They are abstract odes to felt experience.

Peter Acheson was born in Washington, DC in 1954 and received his BFA from Yale in 1976. He was an early member of the Williamsburg art scene in the 1980s, and now lives and works in Ghent, New York. His work has been exhibited at Novella Gallery, New York; John Davis Gallery, Hudson; the Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York; and Baumgartner Gallery, New York. In the winter and spring of 2017, he was the subject of two solo exhibitions, at Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, New York, and at Brennan & Griffin, New York.

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Jennifer Samet: Do you have childhood memories that factor into your paintings?

Peter Acheson: I have this memory from when I was about four years old. I was on a tiny beach in Cape Cod, digging my feet in the sand at the waterline. I got my legs fully buried under the lapping water, and felt something under my toes.  I kept trying to reach it but it was way down at the bottom of a hole. Finally I pulled it out and saw that it was a small toy truck.  It was metal and old, probably something from the 1940s. It was so corroded that the original shape of the truck was obscured into a pitted, abstract mass. To my eyes as a child, it was highly mysterious.

I was overwhelmed by the sense of discovery and wonder of excavation. I think about that still, because at certain moments I have felt a shudder of recognition — that same feeling of wonder and discovery. I have felt it with images in my own paintings that seemed to spring from a buried place outside of myself. And I’ve had it when looking at other art and objects. It was strong when I saw Cy Twombly’s plaster sculpture, which can be just on the other side of recognizability, as if they are weathered or eroded. They are like manmade things that are returning to nature. Everything has been softened. That is a quality I am looking for.

Myron Stout’s paintings can look like some kind of goddess sculpture from pre-dynastic Greece that’s been buried in the Mediterranean for one thousand years, and excavated. Is it a creature with two horns, or is it a seashell? That sort of mystery is what art taps into.

Peter Acheson, “Untitled” (2015), oil, acrylic and collage on board, 17.5 x 21.25 inches

JS: You studied at Yale in the 1970s. How did it impact your development as a painter?

PA: Yale was very much a problem-solving environment. Al Held was the dominant force and the graduate critiques would also include William Bailey, Bernard Chaet, and Lester Johnson. They would say things like, “He has to turn the figure three quarters of the way around, or “The foreshortening on the arm isn’t long enough.” There was a dissection of the painting as if it was a math problem to be solved. That affected my thinking about painting; I used to think like that.

Judy Pfaff and Joseph Santore were also there, and everybody talked about how “You’ve gotta make space.” I bought into it for a while, and when I got out of college, I was trying to make overlapping planes. They never looked spatial enough to me. Then I would sort of get confused by Minimalism.

Now, I don’t care about space; I’m interested in place. I want the painting to be an extremely specific event. It is as if you were walking in the woods and you saw a tree with rotting mushrooms growing out of it. You’re interested in it; you’re drawn to it; you’re looking at it thinking, “God, that’s so beautiful.” Then you look up and you see silhouettes of pine trees against the blue sky. It’s a completely different event, but it is the same world.

In several paintings, I have incorporated text from the poem “The Deer Fence,” by the Tang dynasty poet Wang Wei. It is one of the most famous poems in the Classical Chinese canon. “Empty mountain / no one to be seen / but hear — human sounds / returning sunlight enters the dark woods  / shining again on green moss.”  It is nineteen Chinese characters, but English speakers have translated the poem in a wide variety of ways. Eliot Weinberger wrote about this in his book 19 Ways of looking at Wang Wei: How a Chinese Poem is Translated (1995). I love that idea: how did all that variety get built into it?

Peter Acheson, “Untitled” (2012), acrylic and collage on canvas, 12 x 9 inches

JS: Your exhibition in Chatham incorporated different painting approaches, and work from different periods, installed in little groupings. Why is variation important to you?

PA: When your vocabulary is dispersed enough, you can go from one painting to a totally different one. I am hardly ever stuck on one. It is a formal strategy that I devised for myself: you make fifteen different things, and hopefully they will circumscribe a circle that you could loosely describe as yourself.

I think of it as a polytheistic aesthetic, and it’s my response to the stress of having to find one style that suited me. You and I and each of us are like the cast of Hamlet — a play with many actors. Our psyche incorporates all of those characters. James Hillman is the psychoanalyst writer of the polytheistic soul. He said the Greeks had it right. You have to have your God of War. And when you are in command, you better have your Zeus; you can’t be Eros. All these characters are necessary.

I am not interested in being a reductive formal artist. I grew up in a reductive formal environment. I went to private school, and a private college. I was expected to achieve, to be good. I grew up with Chris Martin; we were best friends since childhood in Washington, DC, and we talk about this all the time.  The expectations on us were so high that we just want to fail.

I was told, “You are an Acheson.” So doing what I am doing is tremendous freedom. Once I sent Chris a text message saying, “I made a really bad painting today and I love it.” He sent me back a text saying, “Irrevocably bad, irredeemably bad, terribly bad, awfully bad…!” I have gotten out from under that WASP work ethic. I don’t want to harsh painting’s mellow by getting all formalist on it.

When my youngest daughter was seven, she saw me painting in the house and would ask if she could paint too. At the end of the evening, there would be five paintings by her and one of mine. All of hers were much better and I thought about why that was.

Peter Acheson, “Untitled (Clearing)” (2010), oil and acrylic on canvas, 11 x 14 inches

When I was about seven years old, I was sent to private school and had to start wearing a tie, get my hair cut, shine my shoes. I was being told, “Peter, it’s time to grow up.” I had to leave my seven-year-old imaginative inner feminine behind. My daughter Izzy came along years later and demonstrated what that was, right in front of me. I come to the canvas with all this baggage. In that period, from about 2004-07, I tried to unpack that baggage, to get more childlike and open.

JS: Does being open mean not making many painting decisions in advance?

PA: I don’t want intention to be the driving thing. It’s more about an aesthetic response. It is similar to the response of going outside and saying, “Wow, what a beautiful day.” You didn’t conceive it. You didn’t invent the trees or the sky or the car or whatever. You just go, “Fuck, what beautiful light right now.”

That is the state I want to present to the viewer. It doesn’t matter what the content is. It could be a mud puddle; it could be a bright red tractor in the rain; it could be your girlfriend’s face; it could be a cat.

Hillman discusses how the word “aesthetic” is related to the Greek word “aisthesis,” which means “to breathe in” — a sudden intake of breath. He said when something causes you to suck in your breath, that’s aesthetics. That is what I work for.

JS: You often write the names of other artists right on your paintings. It’s like announcing your influences. I was thinking about how you like Julian Schnabel, who seems to be an artist unafraid of taking from other artists. Can you talk about that, and some of your other artist heroes?

Peter Acheson, “Eva Hesse” (2016), oil and acrylic on canvas, 12 x 28 inches

PA: Yes, Schnabel is a big, grandiose, open-hearted, wear-it-on-your-sleeve artist, and I love that about him. His work is saying, in effect, “I am just making a love letter to Twombly.” They are big acts of erotic interest — in Van Gogh with the Roses, in Twombly with the blobs of paint. The great thing about Schnabel is that it is an act. It is painting as a performance art, like a band up on stage. What is the act? How well does your band play? Schnabel’s whole act is making the movies, being the director, wearing the bathrobe.

In his autobiography C.V.J. (1957), Schnabel talks about the work of a painter as “a bouquet of mistakes.” That is poetry — because we are all going to make mistakes. But, what if you made the mistakes on a twenty-foot scale and they ended up being beautiful?

I am proceeding by means of granting myself more and more permission. It is like, “I just visited [Forrest] Bess in my studio today; we hung out.” Or, it’s a fantasy of being in Raoul de Keyser’s studio and he asks me, “Hey, do you want to study with me for a while?” I say, “Fuck, yeah; you’re one of my heroes.” So I paint like de Keyser for a while.

Peter Acheson, “Palermo in…” (2015), oil, acrylic and collage on panel, 18 x 24 inches

Blinky Palermo’s painting series “Times of the Day” (1974-76) at Dia:Beacon is another thing I am influenced by right now. The paintings are so specific.

JS: You mentioned allowing oneself to make mistakes. Can you talk about the idea of failed paintings and how that is part of your process? Also, you mentioned big paintings, but you tend to work on a medium to small scale. Why is that?

PA: I am interested in the idea of making a painting that fails. Sometimes I will be making a painting and say to myself, “This painting is just failing.” Then I’ll look at it for a long time, and sometimes realize the painting is not actually failing.

I’ve made big paintings before, but I am no longer interested in impressing anyone. I want to draw your attention. My heroes are artists like Myron Stout, Forrest Bess, Gandy Brodie, and Jan Müller, who work on a dense, small scale.  You always are walking up to the painting. You’re drawn in.

It is like the way you would look at a rose bush. It draws you in and rewards close looking with the feeling of general erotic attraction. Hillman says that it is not a question of whether it’s good or bad. It is a question of whether you are interested in it. The Latin root of interest is inter esse, which means “to be between.” There is an energy; it’s not just the painting; it’s not just you. It makes you think, “I am interested in this.”

JS: Your work often becomes object-like; you collage pieces of wood or other scraps onto the surface, and sometimes use irregularly shaped panels. How does that impact the work?

PA: I want to proceed by means of violations and defacements. Often, I am trying to violate the abstract painting language. So I will glue scraps of wood onto the work. I tend to save things and have a shop in my studio, so this stuff is around. I love paintings, but I like using objects to challenge their painting-ness.

Peter Acheson, “Untitled (Thornton Dial)” (2012), oil, acrylic and collage on canvas, 18 x 24 inches

I have been in the position before, when I was painting only with oil on canvas   and I always had this feeling, “The world doesn’t look like this.” The world has got all this shit in it: thin people, fat people, babies. My sneaker has a hole in it, my car has a flat tire. How do you get all that experience — experiences like watching your wife give birth — into your work?

I want my wobbly, uneven life in the work. An artist with a solid base under him or her can make a work that is, as Schnabel said, “a bouquet of mistakes.” It’s like — I broke up with the wrong woman; I was in love with the wrong woman; I was a fool. The fool can make the painting. Why edit the fool out? Why edit out the bad luck? Why edit out the heartbreak? Why edit out the joy and the ecstatic?

JS: Despite the fact that you talk about incorporating failure, I feel that each one of your paintings in the show at Chatham is so beautifully considered, and has a sense of quality. Do you think about “quality”? 

PA: Yes, and I love this question. In the early 1960s, the Beat poets, especially Allen Ginsberg, were criticized for not caring about quality, for just getting drunk and saying whatever they wanted to. Gary Snyder was asked about this in an interview. He said, “I worship at the lotus feet of Quality.”

I agree; I want quality like the experience of seeing a hummingbird on a flower.  The particularity of that event, the quality of the flower, the bird, its energy, and the fact that it even exists, puts you in a divine state of grace.  You are hooked on the quality of the experience. It is like looking at a lichen-covered rock on the North Peak in the Catskills, seeing an owl feather, or experiencing an autumn day. It is a natural event but it’s stunningly beautiful in its particularity.  I don’t want the work to be general. I want it to be extremely specific. The quality is tied to the particular attributes of a place. It’s not space, it’s not casual, it’s not sloppy. I am asking the painting to speak back to me, and until it’s speaking back to me, I will keep working on it. You know when a painting is done when you fall in love.

JS: Tell me more about the connection between love and painting.

PA: Several years ago, I was dating a woman artist who was such a muse.  I was in love and it was just fantastic. For six months I went around feeling like I could not fail because all I had to do was work on the paintings, and let that energy be there. The muse energy was bigger than me, and I was spreading it out over all these canvases. I was making the paintings that the art dealer Kevin Rita calls my “vibratory paintings” using the side of the brush. I could make formal decisions, but the general approach was just ecstatic. Then I would go back into the paintings and tighten them up.

Peter Acheson, “Untitled (Reef)” (2016), oil and acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24 inches

I think about Eros and love. The equation is that you start with beauty — beauty in the world, beauty in a person, or beauty in a painting. Beauty creates desire. It creates an attraction, which, in a human being, translates as desire. It is not mere wanting.  You can solve wanting by going to the mall. Desire is unattainable. Robert Bly says, “I desire to be as great a poet as Shakespeare.” It’s not going to happen, but the desire for that makes life sweet.

Hillman says, “Desire creates the growth of the wings of imagination.” To me, that makes a lot more sense than sitting around figuring out a problem. There is a Rainer Maria Rilke poem called “Remembering,” which is about this. It is about looking for something that will, in Rilke’s phrase, “infinitely increase your life.” I think about the idea that there is a painting in your future, either as the viewer or the maker, that will “infinitely increase your life.” You haven’t found it yet, but you better get busy.

The key is that you might not find it. It is in the looking, the working hard enough. I am in a hurry to find that painting. I may not find it, but the journey towards trying to find it will be fucking awesome.

The post Beer with a Painter: Peter Acheson appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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