In this second installment in the story of post-apocalyptic Pittsburgh and one strung out man's effort to get to the bottom of Chinook Electricity and his own unraveling in the world, we witness buildings come alive as they implode, and come face to face with some very unhuman characters in an otherwise abandoned park down by the Point, and generally speaking things just get that much uglier as we continue to follow Jackson Cole down his ever-constricting hole. Enjoy!
Gabriel Boyer
This Alienated Hero: A Review of Gabriel Chad Boyer's Welcome to Weltschmerz
Matt Ampleman
Originally published in The Lit Pub 9.21.12
I wanted to walk away from this book as if a newly single man from a conflict-wrought relationship. I wanted to forego any sense of duty to the protagonist and his attendant world. But I had to see things through.
Friends, to read Gabriel Chad Boyer’s book, Welcome to Weltschmerz, is to enter into a conversation with an interlocutor that will break all the rules of polite authorship, but you find you cannot leave for niceties sake, for interest, then for sheer incredulity and inspiration at the arc of the story before you. It is like talking to a homeless man, at whom you are nodding out of politeness until you realize that he knows every line of John Berryman’s Dream Songs and can recite them backwards.
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Video: Gabriel Boyer performs w/ Talbot, Talbot, Talbot
in Podcast
ApesNest@Mutable
A few weeks ago, Mutable’s Gabriel Boyer read a story from his soon-to-be-finished Apocryphal Histories of the Parasite along with the musical mayhem of Talbot Talbot Talbot, not to be confused with their alter ego—Death Shepherd!
Gabriel Boyer has been making up stories about himself for as long as he can remember. There was never a time he was not fully seated in his various delusions. He continues to delude himself daily. Here’s where you can read more about him.
This is Not a Review: of Haints Stay
Gabriel Boyer
Haints Stay is something like as if Cormac McCarthy’s bloody West were touched by the hand of Samuel Beckett, and something of the aesthetic spirit child of Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, except for more honest. It breathes through its bloody teeth and sings in places you thought were immune to song. It has a power that is difficult for a reader to reconcile themselves with, but also difficult to turn away from, or something like rubbernecking a divine accident.
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Toward an Apocalyptic Literature
Letter from the Editor
We have officially entered the Apocalyptic Age.
And as we sit in our rooms writing our precious notes—our lists of what we’ll miss most and how we want our survivors to dress the corpses we leave behind—scrawling these thoughts on bits of paper and the odd receipt—as we wait for the door to be knocked in by the stormtroopers of the future—we must not look away from this dark rising. Rather than censoring ourselves, we must take this opportunity to speak the most terrifying of truths, for this may be the last moment we get to say anything at all before the duct tape is slathered across our snot-slick lips and we are bound to the particular vision of reality the cruel and heartless among us want to seer upon our skulls. Which is not to say that we should stare into the coming darkness with the timid paralysis of deer, but to stand with a pathetic confidence that we can withstand this blow of history even if it means everything we thought to be true turned false, and everything we hold dear crushed to dust by the oppressors among us. This is the literature for the end times.
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Myself from a Great Height (3)
As we end this installment of Jackson Cole's face-off with the beyond, the obfuscuting darkness has only become more infuriatingly bright. How are we to judge this lost junkie? Searching for answers to questions he hasn't thought to ask? Stumbling into rooms without any clear dimension. Walking down streets invaded by the cannibalists among us. Where will he end up? And why did he have to end up there?
Myself from a Great Height is from a series of podcasts from Gabriel Boyer’s Apocryphal Histories of the Parasite.
The Bedroom Theater Variety Show
in Podcast, Bedroom Theater, Series
The show below, pasted between two nights of Bedroom Theater, features avant punk musical stylings, a monologue of a teenage girl flowering as a multi-dimensional lifeform in the abyss, candid unplugged versions of classic songs from Mutable’s Glitter Tracks [by the Box Kites] and No Place to Die [by Normal Feelings], as well as a few brand-new numbers, a four-person retelling of The Nightingale by Hans Christian Anderson, and a recorded round table discussion of contemporary politics. Enjoy!
Bedroom Theater began when my roommate changed the light bulb in my bedroom and ended in a five-hour crying spree in the Nevada desert. There is no audience, only people performing for each other. For more on this, please see Welcome to Weltschmerz.
The Apocalyptic Manifesto
Gabriel Boyer
Life is always a meeting point for other life. Death is a ruse. Money is a trick. Fear is what you must face and no matter how often you face it, it will not go away as long as you’re still alive, but not facing it is not an option. And the symbols we use to paint the world are only stand-ins for the emotions we use to paint our lives. While all the while, generally speaking, belief is the driving force behind our emotions, and how we see is who we are, and “if we are unable to see then no more you” sort of thing, and when there’s no you then you are easily manipulated by the money-lovers of the universe, and specifically through the use of the binary ruse system involving sex and death with obligation as the cohesion tying this entire faulty belief system together. Wow. I just said that.
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My Asinine Life: The Metaphysics of Snot
in Article, My Asinine Life, Series
Gabriel Boyer
You know it might seem kind of trite considering how everything’s being exploded all over the place by the authoritarians among us, but—I woke up one day without a brain. The other morning I woke up and thought, Gee. Where’d my brain go, only to then have realized that—gosh. Someone’s going to be so upset with me. I should be out parading in front of the fascists and screaming in their faces in a tight-fisted squadron—but I got no brain.
What I mean by this is—wow. I actually just said that. I can say anything and act like it’s actually true. Wow.
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Sarah Ruhls Rules!
in Podcast, Bedroom Theater, Series
“The dust always makes progress!” What a brilliant amateur rendition of the first three pages of a brilliant play. If you have no idea who Sarah Ruhl is, I encourage you to explore her surrealist dramas. If you have never thought of performing plays in your bedroom, I beg you to consider transforming your home in this manner. If you have never thought anything, I pity you. Enjoy!
Bedroom Theater began when my roommate changed the light bulb in my bedroom and ended in a five-hour crying spree in the Nevada desert. There is no audience, only people performing for each other. For more on this, please see Welcome to Weltschmerz.
What Goes Up Must Come Down (Pt 1)
A detective in Beijing finds a dead foreigner up a tree in the small forest beside the new mall they’re building in Beijing-East, and ends up following a winding trail that may lead him nowhere, but will take him to the resort town of Yangshuo and in a seedy underbelly of Eurotrash and drugs here in among this sea of miniature mountains just north of Vietnam—where nothing is what it seems. Listen to Pt2 here and go here for Pt3.
What Goes Up Must Come Down is from a series of podcasts from Gabriel Boyer’s Apocryphal Histories of the Parasite.
What Goes Up Must Come Down (Pt 2)
A man can’t seem to leave his apartment—a manikin textbook at the end of time has a voice inside its head—a woman running towards a house in the snow is desperate to share some important information—a policeman in southern China is dealing with a strange foreigner in the Sober Up room—a CIA operative is giving a motivational speech about the end of America—a firm partner off to visit his ailing friend in an industrial city in northern China discovers his friend is more than just quaintly broken—a spokesman for a Chinese fast food franchise no longer believes he exists—and a pastor who gets some unlikely visitors in the middle of the night. These are the characters you will meet in this segment of Apocryphal Histories of the Parasite. Listen to Pt1 here and go here for Pt3.
What Goes Up Must Come Down is from a series of podcasts from Gabriel Boyer’s Apocryphal Histories of the Parasite.
The Hyperobject & the Artifice of Me
Letter from the Editor
In this age of cultural criticism, punditry, general micro-blogging and endless gaffes, shock, and outrage on the Internet and beyond—although mostly on the internet, perhaps in part because it’s a place that exists nowhere, like the Na-koja-abad of muslim mysticism, the Persian term for utopia, which literally means, “the place that exists nowhere”—but also because it is currently the primary means through which we interact with our society and is furthermore the average American’s primary means for self-expression in general. This bodiless heaven, where we can instantly and immediately be gratified of any unbodily need we have while our actual bodies fester in the increasing hell of our actual room, is an interiority exposed and the internal uploaded into the closest our technology has come to mind, with servers as stand-ins for the more mundane ganglia of people and people as stand-ins for the more mundane mind of the masses.
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What Goes Up Must Come Down (Pt 3)
In the third part of this 3 part history within the larger Apocryphal History of the Parasite, we find ourselves in the minds of a seedy Brit hiding out in Southern China for mysterious reasons, a woman in a basement apartment full of holes, a teenage girl who is also a long-bodied lifeform flowering from one end of the universe to the other, the founding member of ELF in an interrogation chamber, and the younger brother of a dead man. They’re all being torn apart by something. What is it? Listen to Pt1 here and go here for Pt2.
What Goes Up Must Come Down is from a series of podcasts from Gabriel Boyer’s Apocryphal Histories of the Parasite.
At the Sunshine Retreat Center
In this first apocryphal history of the parasite we find ourselves at a retreat in the Southwest and some strange goings on, as the residents grapple with some incomprehensible force creeping in from the beyond. What it is, and why it is here no one knows, but it is invading our reality.
What Goes Up Must Come Down is from a series of podcasts from Gabriel Boyer’s Apocryphal Histories of the Parasite.
My Asinine Life: Fake is the New Real. Watch as it Eats You!
in Article, My Asinine Life, Series
Gabriel Boyer
As abyss has come calling on your doorsteps this holiday, and your openings are twisting into the most convoluted of holiday shapes in their efforts to disguise themselves as the non-sacred things that have replaced their authentic originals—as what we thought was a thing is now transforming into a much older more disgusting thing—as there is no more time left—as time is always running out—as we move without clarity of vision into places without clear contours where the weak among us can be feasted on by bodiless persons as if these bureaucracies could sing in the spirit of the stars, when these are paper card constructions, built of paper so as to maintain their fully paper empires.
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My Asinine Life: Tongues are for Drinking
in Article, My Asinine Life, Series
Gabriel Boyer
So here’s a person without cares within the larger care-riddled world, and this person then takes on certain responsibilities. This person is known to have a very irresponsible outlook on life, and this person readily accepts a situation in which being careful and watchful are necessary requirements. This person moves a person they care most about in the world from her familiar environment and off to another less familiar environment. This person has the best of intentions, and we know how those can be paved to build roads that lead to places far from heaven. This is where we are now. It’s called Boston.
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No Place to Die
in Product
It begins with a few good lies. Then something terrible happens and those lies are shattered. You’re looking for someone to blame but also terrified and barreling off into god only knows where when you see something else—maybe a girl on a rock, or a hummingbird midflight, but something—and you see that where you are is just nowhere, and you see where you are for what it is, and everything becomes clear for a moment. You’re going to die someday, and it’s terrifying. This is the album.
These songs were written in the throes of passion, while slinging roe in the Bering Strait, and while staying up all night keeping an eye on an old man named Larry who would occasionally stumble out to the kitchen and ask me where he was. They are songs that were captured in a park outside Beijing, and songs we first charted in a basement in Chicago when the country’s economy was collapsing. One of them is a song I wrote to the woman I ended up marrying. These are personal songs.
Sometimes they twist out of control or nudge off darkly. They are full of my loneliest moments. Once or twice they might sparkle uncertainly.
—Gabriel Chad Boyer
Lyrics by Gabriel Boyer
Music by Normal Feelings
Normal Feelings is
Gabriel Boyer – vocals, organ, keyboard, fun machine
Malcolm Felder – organ, guitar, bass, drums, ciblon, kendhang agen, percussion, backup vocals
Jason Allen – drums, melodica, bass, organ, keyboard, kenong, kempul, peking, percussion, samples
Phil Arezzi – guitar
Piotr Wereszczyński – guitar
Alex Yoffe – celempung, peking, gendèr barung
Dan Katayama – guitar
Paul Medrano – tape ghosts
Michael Gorka – guitar
Recorded in Chicago, IL, Eugene, OR, and Yanjiao, China
Produced by Jason Allen
CDD Pre-Mastering by Scott Craggs.
1. Schizo Kong
2. Nevada
3. Stolen
4. The Waiting Song
5. Alaska
6. WAD in Space
7. Nervous
8. Train to Hong Kong
9. Grace
10. I fell in Love with a Lady
11. Hummingbird
12. Montana
13. Antimontana
14. Wild West, Far East
15. The Houses I’ve Seen
16. Last Night with Larry
17. Unless you Disapprove
Digital album available to stream or download now!
Tom Clemmons, Frank, & the Found
Letter from the Editor
Those of us who are ourselves involved in manufacturing the sorts of weirdness showcased in the award-winning film Frank are prone to be a little over-sensitive that others are chuckling darkly in corners at our futile efforts. We are the sensitive children others beat with mounds of dung. We are the ones who wore the dung-shirts for the sake of something greater than just coins of refined dung, but rather for the sake of the greater dung god in the sky sort of thing. Even while screaming silly that this omniscient dung being could never exist. What is Frank?
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My Asinine Life: The Ejaculating Soul's Unlikely Apocalypse
in Article, My Asinine Life, Series
Gabriel Boyer
The first thing you incoherent erogenous zones should understand is that there is no apocalypse. The apocalypse already happened, you pleasantly subdued psychologies. There will never be an apocalypse if you keep this up my half-whored verb friends, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t prepare for it like you would prepare for one of your notorious cyclical weddings or any of the other great beginnings or endings of you. It is in this way that your brains become peopled with new and colorful crustaceans of the cartoon variety.
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