On Music, Mysticism, Masculinity, Masturbation, Metal, Magic, and My Father.
A book-in-progress that attempts to write about the two hardest things to write about: music and mysticism. Also deals with the weird truth of how music was my first encounter with both masculinity and mysticism, and what a fucking mess that was. It made me wonder about bodies, about holes, and about shape-shifting matter, time, and space.
The Mess is part memoir, part hagiography, part political theory, part queer prayer, and part ecstasy at the fact that music exists at all.
Chapters (now and in the future) on Nine Inch Nails and Robin Finck, Sunn O))), Moor Mother, Lightning Bolt, Jeff Buckley, Anohni, Linda Sharrock, Keiji Haino, Thelonious Monk, Odetta, Alice Coltrane, and Diamanda Galás.
Chapters so far—
They’re Really Close to My Body: A Hagiography of Nine Inch Nails and Their Resident Mystic Robin Finck,
The White Review, March 2020
A Vacuum Is Also a Plenum and Both Make Music Make Life, on Sunn O))),
Flat Journal, originally published in Art Practical, November 2019
The Mysticism of Mosh Pits, Or, The Mess of Sociality, Or, Have You Ever Seen Lightning Bolt Live?,
The Third Rail, March 2019
