Right.There you go.You know, it takes, it takes a second to like get into like, um, content mood.You know what I mean?
Yeah, like when I was a kid, I watched this film called Alegría, which I believe was connected to Cirque du Soleil, where there's this like one speech by an elder performer that said, you know, when you step through that curtain, you're a different person and you just have to like embrace PCM Christ.
So.Yeah, man, like it's I usually like, I always, you know, screw up the introduction.So I guess as an icebreaker, you know, radical agenda, what's your agenda?
We're here to talk about your book, but like, I want to talk about other stuff, you know, before you talk about your book.But I guess like,
Um, I always ask this question when I interview like frogs or frog adjacent people, but, um, we're like, okay, where are you from?How did you get here?What's your deal?What's your favorite color?
Can you, you know, how long have you been an alcoholic?Yeah.So, um, Also, do I just call you PCM or like, is it?Yeah.
That one's up to you, man.I've had, I've had two people actually call me Christ other than that's PCM.Mentious Mold Bug Man was actually the first to ever do it.
Oh man.RIP to Mentious Mold Bug Man.He's not dead, but like he had to leave though, unfortunately.Oh yeah.
I was, I was there for that.
Yeah, that was sad, man.But are you an old head though, PCM?Or like, what's your like arc?What's your journey been like?In other words, is what I'm really asking.
Sort of, sort of half-half, man.Like, Like I'm only early thirties.And yeah, but like I was I was around like back in the B days, like, you know, real hard probably since about 2008.Yeah.
Somehow, though, then after after that, then I kind of I kind of dipped out of being online, really, and just, you know, started reading a lot more and all that.But Then, um, as far as, as far as finding the scene goes, it's, it's pretty cool.
That's what you're referring to.Yeah.I mean, it's, it's, it's cool, man.Like I've been, I've been on the Trump train since 2015, like since the first debate.Um, and you know, like on poll constantly, but for whatever reason, maybe I was just.
you know, too erratic, but I never really, I had a lot of associations with Twitter, mostly because of the people that I knew who were like really about it in, in college.And so I just, I just never messed with Twitter, man.
And so then when I had stopped writing, completely for a long time.And I happen to see a thread on the Matrix 4 by a dude named Starlight Berserker.I didn't even have an account.It was just trending.I would just kind of scan it sometimes.
And it went kind of viral for him.And I was like, you know, his first thing was, you know, I recommend these people.And the first one that he listed was Zero.And so that was back in like 2021, I think maybe.Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But then I mean, I was back on the chance then to especially like fit and lit.But then that's when I joined that was like right before the passage prize, like the first one was announced was when I made an account.
And and then it was just just got me back into writing man and learning and making friends and everything else.So not not a true old headed by any means, but I've been around a little bit, I guess.
Oh yeah.And of course, like the chancer, I don't know.They're like in this weird, like dead zone space.
Like it seems there's not a lot of, uh, I could be wrong though, but there's not like a lot of vitality anymore compared to what it was even before, like the frogs all came onto Twitter.For sure.
Well, a chain kind of, when a chain like really, really got big, like around 2016, I think that was when it brought a lot of heat and things kind of changed and ownership changed too, as you know.So.
Yeah.Was it, did Hot Wheels originally own a Chan or was it, he created a Chan, right.And then he like changed ownership.
That was funny.That came out in, um, There was like a lot of weird things with him, not to gossip, but like there is that terrible journalist, the Antifa journalist, what's her name?Elle Reeves.
She wrote about Hot Wheels in her book, which that came out recently, which is like, I don't know, like maybe like five, six, seven years out of date, because it's like, who the hell cares about like Seville?
I mean, well, I shouldn't say that because it's like, You know, they still use the tiki torch in like Kamala Harris ads, which is quite strange.But yeah.
Were you ever on something awful like back in the day?
I was never on something awful.I like lurked for Chan, but I was never that much acquainted with like goon culture.
But yeah, yeah, I found a little bit later.But the book barn, man, like the lit form on there used to be so good.
Oh yeah.Like there, there are people like, uh, there was that one YouTuber, um, he had like an association with Sam Hyde, uh, Don Jolly.Uh, he like was an OG something awful person.
And he would like have these videos where you talk about the, the lip culture and like the, like weirdo social experimentation, uh, that was going on.But yeah.Um, so you, you were also involved in something awful then I assume.
Yeah, just kind of lurking like the lip board and stuff like I was I was never like Gooney or anything like that.But it was it was fun kind of bounce, right?
It was because like so many of those dudes are so much older, you know, so like hopping on there after B was kind of big, then, you know, it's just a change of pace.
Oh yeah.Oh yeah.Um, it's actually funny, like the amount of journalists and people that were like OG goons, then they became like, you know, professional, professional, like libtarded journalists.
Yeah.Yeah.And I think like, I think it was an irrevision that said like a lot of them are in perpetual fear that like those old essay.
Like those old essay threads are going to like be resurrected and seeing them say like a bunch of, you know, sacred words.
Yeah.So you but you.What did you did you start off did you start out being a fiction writer or.
Were you like more of, um, I guess you could say a part of the take economy, like writing articles, like, you know, that's how I started with the thing with whatever this thing of ours, uh, yeah.
Like with the magazine, but were you always into fiction or was it just a later development?
No, I mean, it's been fiction since the beginning for me.I really like that, that Cthulhu essay, if you recall, that was the first article I'd written since like college.
And so it's, and besides that hiatus I had, which, but it's always been fiction, man.It allows a, The creative part is what I need.You know what I mean?I don't, topical stuff, I'm kind of blank on a lot of times.You know what I mean?
Because it's just, I'm kind of, I don't know.I just move on with my life, I guess.
Yeah, you're not invested in the hot take economy.
Yeah, which was I'm kind of I mean, just to be real with you, I'm kind of proud of that, because I like I'm still like, I'm not good at Twitter, right?
And, like, you know, I've gotten better, but it's because I kind of found my lane.
And but so I kind of tried to build that up, like, you know, since I was in the beginning, I got so excited about like the the writing scene, then especially like the lit scene.
You know I can promoting other authors and like really like I think I've bought I buy at least one book From from every author in our sphere.
Yeah, and And then I had book maggot for a while So so fiction is really my lifeblood, you know, and I kind of built up my audience Through stories and then I mean Cthulhu helped a lot to be honest with you.I
And then so it was kind of cool to do that.Then what I've kind of done with Twitter was if you ever saw like my my aesthetics posting something I really, really enjoyed.And that was kind of my lane.
I just got I needed something outside of words, you know, from doom scrolling all the time.
Yeah, so that and I was while writing my book too.So it was a really good escape, but people seem to like it.I post them way too late for it to ever get traction, but that's when I started doing them is like one o'clock at night.
So yeah, but aesthetic posting.I mean, like I've critiqued aesthetic posting in the sense that a lot of it's turning
Like, especially in the era, like a lot of like the trad aesthetic posting or whatever, like there are people that do it very well, but it becomes like this weird, like becomes a brand, but also I guess it creates like an ephemerality around the image.
It's like, you know, you share it like anything else.
I absolutely agree with that.
But then I guess there's the need for the aesthetic in terms of just like, and I think this is fits with your essay, because Thulusim's right in that it's sort of like you're given the hand that you're dealt when it comes to digital technology, when it comes to, I guess, what could colloquially be termed hyperreality and it's just like hypermodernism.
And it's just like, that's sort of the wave that you have to flow in, because honestly, like, images are so like, like the internet is slowly being polluted.Well, not slowly, actually quite rapidly being polluted with junk AI images.
And it's just like, it's over.Right.
But the funny part is, I mean, I don't know, it seems kind of long.I mean, you know, like you said, we're forced to deal with what we have, but it's, it's kind of funny.
Like, you know, like let's embody Greek culture and then have a, have a picture of a statue.
You know, it's just it's so far removed.And I mean, you know, it has its place, especially like some of the ones where back in the day, like when they would do like vaporwave type stuff with them.
You know, just because it was like, OK, like it's acknowledging the time and place that we're in.Right.Rather than this sort of only having an ideal.And even mine. The images I used in sort of the.
The text, the algorithm hated what I did with the text man.I'm gonna have to like embed them in the image, because I think it thought I was trying to skirt it with all the symbols and everything else.
Yeah, but yeah, it's definitely not not a trad aesthetic at all.But yeah, it was cool.
And for those, I encourage everyone to read it, but I remember I read the essay when it came out, Cthulhu Sim's Rite, but a lot of your point is that
we're sort of we're given over to this postmodern moment and now that in terms of like the right wing as a whole not just as a political series of ideas but also a sort of cultural idea that the right wing fosters now that we're like very much in the back foot and forming some new counterculture
But again, there's always criticisms of the way, I guess you could call like the dissident, right?Quote, unquote.I like to call it the E-Right.But there's always criticisms of the way things are going.
I'm not going to comment on specific drama, but or whatever.But but I guess you could see that, like, because we're in this sort of.
I try to avoid words like insurgency because, you know, that's like Fed Posty, but like, I guess you could say like cultural insurgency.
your message is very much like just to to ride the waves to like ride the tiger and be like, OK, but yeah, you go ahead.Go ahead.Like, what's the basic thesis of?
Well, like where it ends, I wrote a follow up to Cthulhu, which did nowhere near as well.It's called Post Heresy or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the End of the World.
And Cthulhu was a very brief, I mean, you know, it was a little bit of bomb throwing too, but basically it was acknowledging the fact that we live in, you know, in postmodernism, but that the right, my idea was that the right is never actually engaged with it.
And I drew a lot of parallels between 60s counterculture and the current time, even from, you know, something like hippies, like right wing bodybuilders.
And so then the idea being that the and this this is a big, you know, a big thesis of all of my stuff, I kind of think is is the, you know, even riffing off the trad posting. And it has its place.I mean, I'll try not to go on too many tangents, man.
But with postmodernism and the right not engaging with it, right, is it doesn't acknowledge the truth that postmodernism revealed, right?Because there is truth there.But it also, because postmodernist, as we know, I call it reductionism, right?
Like the reductionist left was what people, that's what I call for the traditional postmodernist. Because it is reductionism, right?
It's deconstruction.Yeah.
Yeah.It's deconstruction, like taking as far as it can possibly go.And like, you know, starting with the structuralist and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.And all the lines got pulled out.
But with the right, I don't think that a lot of the things the right tends to rely on, including and this is the kind of controversial one was hierarchy.
that by not engaging with it in the post-modern, then the right can't move into the cultural space and make any room.
And then the ending of the essay was sort of throwing away a lot of the things that people associate with as status and hierarchy markers.And that was sort of where post-heresy came in to where it elaborated sort of
generally speaking on the path of the 20th century of what capitalism did, then what reductionists did, and then where the right finds itself.
And I think the biggest thing, and this is something that the book kind of talks about in the themes, is everyone wants to talk about decline.And we may disagree with this, man.
This is the first time we've talked like this, but everybody wants to talk about decline. But it just keeps declining, keeps declining, keeps declining, but no one imagines it's the end.
Yeah, right.It's the end though, right?So if it's like, okay, so one thing I said in Cthulhu was any sort of conservatism is to support the current regime.That's how much I believe that leftist postmodernism and wokeism has taken over.
Right, regime as it stands represents all of that.And if that's the case, then the sort of things that people are trying to hold on to, then, you know, we're forced to recontextualize them, if nothing else, right?
My big thing, I repeat a lot is universal truths, but recontextualized through rediscovered, rediscovered through recontextualization.And I think that's necessary, even like, you know, you looking at the at the Greek statues, man, if you
If you lived back then and you saw a statue, no matter how hard you try, it's going to hold a much different weight than it does now.Not only because of your surroundings and the lack of technology, but now it's within context.Back then it was not.
It was just then.It was fully present.And that's sort of my big thesis right now is to imagine, and I find it incredibly liberating,
like from an artistic angle to where if these things are collapsed, and I truly believe that they are, then in the same way that the internet's a blessing in that we can sort of pull our inspirations and learn so much from everything.
then you can also do that, right?I said to, uh, I said to Ren on the, on the, in the raw podcast, like I, I want to see what, and it obviously wouldn't be termed the same, but you'll get the gist.
I want to see what a futurist doing, you know, like interacting with the internet looks like, right?Like we're still stuck with, with, you know, analog and mechanics.Right.But I want, I want to see what it looks like digitally.
And so that that's kind of thing is just trying to like, push everything past these these previous indicators.And and even so, like, this is this is kind of the hard part, like the controversial thing. Um, to like the pointing soy jacks, right?
That's, that's sort of, uh, to me, it's a conception of people pointing back at how great Western civilization used to be.Right.I could have its place.Sure.
And you, like I said, you can pick and choose from it and learn from it, but you're, you're not going to recreate it.
Oh yeah, definitely.Like, oh, you mean like the Chud Jacks, like the West has fallen, you know, millions must die.Yeah.No, that's, that's, yeah, that's true.
In a way it's almost like, I think like, this is like a tendency in the right wing in general
if you want to like include conservatives in that mix, I guess, because we're both products of North America, we're very much, you know, even though I'm Canadian, it's still the same.
We're very much a product of like the sort of normie conservative conception of reality.And there's still like a lot of like contart or like conservative priors that a lot of people even in the distant right have.
So I guess like that's how we filter reality.Like a lot of conservative thought is essentially like you were saying, it's like a weird ghost dance that ends up reaffirming the trajectory of whatever you want to call it.
Like I like to call it the transnational progressivism, which is like the old, like early 2000s conservative term, but like some people call it the GAE.Some people call it the other words I can't use on YouTube.
Um, which is crazy seeing that one particular word, like with like super viral tweets, you know what I'm talking about, right?
Like it's like, you have to be like, you have to be like a hardcore, like Aryan nations, like white supremacists to know, like what that word, you know, like normies are exposed.Oh, that's so funny.Yeah.But, but, um,
But yeah, it's almost like you were saying in the act of trying to preserve something.
And like conservatives do this, but I fear that the dissident right or whatever you want to call it is equally guilty of that, where in the act of preserving something, you end up reaffirming the present moment or at least reaffirming the things that led to like, I mean, I hate the word.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.But but you were saying like hierarchy, like Maybe elaborate a bit more in the two essays.What do you mean by the idea of hierarchy and the inability to embrace this postmodern moment?
Yeah, like, well, well, part of it is, is like the the former indicators and people see this as, you know, decline and degeneracy and blah, blah, blah, like, like, that's another sort of qualm that I have, whereas any, any idea that that involves collapse, right, then I find it irrelevant.
Right.Like it's because because we already know its end point.Right.And at that point, it's total chaos, which is fine.If you want that, that's fine.But if that's if that's the requirement and that's the end point, then I'm not really interested.
And so the previous indicators of anything that is considered aristocratic.Right.And then I'll get into sort of where it goes now.But, you know, any of the indicators of, you know, going to going to an Ivy League school no longer means anything.
Right. You know, um, what, what's your, that's like the postmodern thing.Like that's sort of what it revealed.
Like, you know, with globalism is these things, if whether they're not, they mean something to you doesn't mean, whereas they used to mean something to everyone.Right.
Like, you know, oh, my grandpa did this or, um, you know, oh, you know, I went to, went to Harvard.
It doesn't mean the same anymore. Right?Even, even coming from money.And, and part of that is, is, um, an example I gave once was, was like, like the postmodern truth is that things are consensus, right?Like everything is consensus.
And so if the, if the King of England walks into my house, now I know like this, this is like, you know, it's like Dionysus, right?Like, you know, if he walks into my house, if I don't care, then his status is removed. Right?
So, you know, in my own mind, which is, you know, in the end, what matters, right?If it's especially if it's at scale, so so there is one, there is a place where his status is hierarchy does not matter to me or to him, right?
And it has no place there.
And, and that's kind of the hard part is because people are reliant, the same as when I said pointing back to Western civilization, right? whether I agree, which I do.
But at the at this present moment, it's like, you know, quit look pointing back and point to now, right?And then all people can say is, oh, this is decline.
And so some, I think the answer to this, right, something I noticed, I started formulating, like Western civilization, I think it, as opposed to like the East, like it truly mirrors an individual life. Right.Right.
And and I think that it's not a coincidence that the that, you know, returning to the Greeks is recurrent in every major intellectual movement we've had in Western history.Right.Except, I mean, except for, like, you know, the Reformation.Right.
You know, like the Rome had it right.The Enlightenment had it.The early 20th century.We have it now.
Yeah.Excuse me. And so, um, so, right at this point, right.So I'm encouraged, right.This is in the total black, but like you said, like someone like BAP and the vitalist, right.That's, that's sort of where you can go.
Um, for a level of hierarchy, right.You go, you go back to, you know, biological vitalism, basically. And then it has to start there.And then, then, you know, new ideas can take hold and be sort of brought into being.
Um, I guess, um, I'm kind of going off a little bit, but it's related.Something I, I think I'm doing.
Well, this podcast content, mine is full of different tangents that go everywhere.So don't worry about it.If you have to, if you have to riff, then just go for it.
Um, like, so I kind of came up with something like in a podcast when when someone asked me sort of like, what was what was the goal of my work?Right?Like, how do I write?What am I doing?And, um,
You know, William Blake is important to give up the ghost and he's more than important to me.But the description I came up with this connected to what I was talking about with, you know, like taking nothing away from him.
Bap's approach is almost easier because by skipping back to the Greeks, he doesn't really have to address anything else.Yeah, it's not a cop out.It's just inherent to it.
And the first paragraph of Cthulhu was sort of my opening paragraph for this idea, right?It was like my thesis, where by returning to subjective reality, we return to the perspective of the ancients. Right.And then that's how we'll rediscover God.
And, you know, the leftist scientific objectivism, all that becomes just to read it really quickly.
Yeah.As reality dissolves, we have to as reality dissolves.Sorry, I was editing my own book today with with my good friend Matthew.And it's just I get tongue tied when I read stuff.
as reality dissolves we have returned to the perspective of the ancients to a time of direct and subjective interpretations of experiences that crushes the realist mode set forth by scientific objectivism in such a world the left has only found nihilism and nothingness ultimately termed terminating in the fake and g-word the right still breathing don't worry the paywall version we could get
you know the paywall portion would you know say these words um the right still breathing will return to the unfiltered realities of the past and there will find god god's archetypes truths and absolute freedom but the right is as it currently conceived cannot and will not be the force that creates a new the strong men that create good times in true postmodern fashion it is the rights in questioning faith and hierarchy and reliance on implied structures which is and will cause to a collapse under the sheer weight of the topsy-turvy
Well, yeah, that's that's very true how.
You could see that even though it's filtered through the lens of like postmodern pastiche and sort of like a weird anachronism, right, that even people like Frederick Jameson talks about this when it comes in his book, postmodernism, it's like even though still there's still there's still like a thread to the past that betrays the sort of like linear
history of like liberal progressivism, if you will, or whatever you want to call it, like woke is, I hate that term woke, but like, yeah.
But at the same time, it's like coming to terms with the fact that there is inspiration, but there can never truly be like a quote unquote, like return with a V. Right?Like, yeah, Mother Europa is not whatever.Go ahead.
I disrupted your point, but go ahead.
No, no, no.That elaborates on it, man.Because I think that sets it up.The way I put it was to imagine, as far as what I would hope for an experience or what I'm trying to get out of writing or reading both, actually.
to imagine, you know, you're in a collapsed society, right?Okay.The structures are gone.
And you know, you're literate.And I think I said, like, you know, perhaps you were taught on the Bible, right?Is it like a foundational canon of most of Western literature, right?
But then you find the complete works of William Blake without intellectual annotations or asides or addendums.And you read William Blake in that, in that environment. right?Within that context, you know, you don't know who Swedenborg is, right?
You don't know exactly what he's addressing.But that's, that's what I want, right?That's what I want out of my reading.And I think that that's sort of my artistic approach that I kind of figured this all out today.
Like, I kind of think it mirrors what BAP did, right to where it's like, Hey, I can pull from everything, but I'm still going back to like, is as much to gain as much of this experience and insight as I can.
Oh, yeah, definitely.And I mean, William Blake.
Yeah, I mean, he's convenient for example, too.I mean, that's that's like my.
Yeah, because I think that even though he created his own poetics, his own mythology, like a true.
total work, I forget the exact German word, but like a true total work, the fact that he was an artist, he was a great illustrator, but the fact that he created a mythos onto his own, but still that mythos encapsulated pretty much all themes of Western history and thought, if you really look at it.
I mean, he truly was like, He truly was a figure that maybe comes about every few centuries or so.
Someone was talking about an Ubermensch and I kind of agree with that.
Yeah.Yeah.Someone, I guess you could say a man of history.Yeah.But so, but how was, but I guess, like, as an aside, what was your engagement with William Blake?Like, what did you read, like, Heaven and Hell?
Like, what was your, like, real moment with William Blake?Because I see, like, I can see it coming now that you mentioned William Blake, I can kind of see it coming up in your novel.But yeah.
Yeah.Funny enough, man.Like I, I found him through Alan Moore and, um, and I mean, dude, political stuff aside, man, like Alan Moore was like the first writer I ever loved.Right.And, and that love has never gone away.
Like I just, you know, I ride or die with him, man.And, um, yeah, it's too bad.
He's got like a weirdo, like, Like, yeah, it's too bad.He's kind of like a lib and I think he's got like Trump derangement syndrome or whatever.But yeah, that's yeah.
He's kind of broken.Yeah.Brexit was was really what did it.I think.
Yeah.Brexit like really broke his brain.Yeah.Nigel Farage like broke his brain.Yeah.
But then so I mean, I followed his work.And then, of course, I read Jerusalem, which I love, which I love.I sorry for repeating myself.I've told other people, it's just, you know, like, you know, like we're old enough, right?
You just want to share cool stuff.Yeah, there's there's a just as we're taking a tangent against Senegal.There's an aside in Jerusalem that he wrote in the style of Finnegan's Wake.
about Lucia Joyce, who purportedly, you know, like Joyce's best work was stolen from her.And she died in an asylum in Northampton. And he wrote it in, uh, in the style of fitting as well.You can find it online and it's only like 20 pages.
I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's not a slog.You have to work for it, but, um, it's just following her in the asylum and her having a good day, basically sort of his eulogy.And it's, it's freaking incredible, man.
Like it's one of the most sublime experiences I've ever had reading.Uh, but anyway, so, you know, and then Jerusalem is obviously from William Blake.Um,
And so I read more about him, and then I started reading more, and then I read Jerusalem, and then I read Marriage of Heaven and Hell.And to me, Marriage of Heaven and Hell is Blake's sort of thesis on art.
Um, and, and that, that was just remarkably meaningful to me.And I mean, I keep, I keep a copy of his works, like on my desk at all times.
So, um, still newer to it, man, this has just been within the last, you know, year or two, but, um, I don't know, man, he scratches an itch that nothing else ever has.
Yeah, like even when Blake, like for example, what's it called?America Prophecy.It's sort of like, he really kind of intuited even at such an early stage that America is sort of caught between like two polar opposites.
There's sort of like something that is very old, and something that produces a unique like emphatic mythology for, you know, the seat of Albion, right?Like particularly like European civilization, but also like the figure of Urizen.
Like, by the way, I remember because I did this podcast with Matthew, the stout, where we talked about the the stupid Sanford Bigger statue in Rockefeller Center, you know, the big the big like it's got like Greek, like like treachery, a Greek symbols.
But it's like the huge, like graffiti style, cartoonish black kid with a huge head.You remember that one?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but but it's funny, because the Rockefeller Center also has a mural or installation piece on a doorway that is essentially the figure of Urizen by William Blake.And America embodies the sort of.
The the acceleration of the Industrial Revolution of reason and science, and I guess you could say like this sort of overarching techniques, but at the same time as something very like. old and mythological.
So, uh, and, and I think that comes up in your work as well.Uh, but, but yeah, yeah.Um, where am I going with this?
Uh, to, to get back to like, I guess the essay before we get into your book, yeah, there is something, there is a problem with hierarchy or rather, uh, the fact that, and, and a lot of like writers that are very popular in the Disney world, like be it like Molobog or whatever,
And they're all, you know, there's a lot of critiques you can make at people like moldbug.
Because I think that the notion of hierarchy is something that in our time, when the institutions or when the sort of symbols of wealth and power have been corrupted, it's very difficult to embody that value as a virtue unto itself.
Because like you were saying, academia is totally corrupted.The literary world doubly is corrupted.It's all run by
you know, blue hairs and people that really don't, um, don't think of themselves as an extension of the Western canon, whatever that, you know, whatever that notion may find you as right.Yeah.
So I guess like, and, you know, William Blake himself was also like a product of, I guess you could say particularly like Protestantizing, uh, like, I mean, well, maybe like a schizophrenic version of it, but like,
a particular like malleability of Christianity that happened during his time.Yeah, like there's for example, like there's a very interesting and a lot of times like.
adversarial relationship, for example, between like William Blake and Catholicism, for instance.But like there is with America and Catholicism.
But yeah, but I guess like the notion of hierarchy is something that the right wing has to struggle and contend with.So, I mean, what will be like a possible answer besides just.I don't know, we'll all become like bohemes, I don't know, like, yeah.
I mean, I think, you know, I think the starting point is defined, right, you know, because the biological truths are, you know, universal truth.Yeah.
And so we have, you know, that we still have that, right, which is sort of like where the the right can start.
But I think I think you kind of answered it with Blake, man, is it is a lot of people like I've said before, like I think the reason that America was never fully able to develop culturally was because of the I don't call the elites and I call them the institutional class.
And I think Jarvin was essentially trying to get the institutional class to LARP as aristocracy.Right.
Well, that's also, you know, I mean, and you have, you know, like the swamp and all that, you know, the the unelected blah, blah, blah, places of power, which, you know, the system has been very good for.
But at the same time, you know, when when it comes down to it, if people knew who those people were, right, there's no longer consensus on their power.And I think that as best as I can tell,
Um, whether, you know, it's someone like Trump sort of upending politics and creating a new way to do it, you know, Vance coming in, like, I mean, that's, that's impressive, even though they're an existing inside the old system.Right.
You know, as far as what we've got so far, uh, whether it's artists, um, I think it starts with art personally.
Um, but I think that with the collapse and, you know, I think that America's individualism, right, you know, is the, is the blessing and the curse, right?
We're so decentralized, but that's the only reason that America is still, still where, where it is, or at least has hope, right?Like I'm pretty black pill when it comes to Europe.I'm not completely black billed on America.
And you know, we have the geographic size on, you know, Canada has that too, man, but y'all can't use most of it.
Yeah, exactly.And most of it's a wilderness and a wasteland.So yeah, it's kind of, yeah.
Well, apart from the reason natural resources, but then you don't want to like look at the, the nature of the beauty of the Canadian wilderness and be like, oh, well, you know, maximize economic productivity.But I mean, well, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but I think that, you know, so it's going to be that recontextualization I talked about, right, to where you're pulling, because the thing is, like all of the truths that that were cultural, like, and this is across the board, this isn't just America or the West, they were all conceived in isolation.
Right.And so what what globalism and the internet has done has exposed them to one another and all of their contradictions. And, and so of course people can't, can't put anything together, right.Or make heads or tails of it.
So I think that, and the, and there's, there's similarities here.I mean, I'll, for example, like the power of like the mono narrative, right.Like there's a reason that the, the big religions all have mono, they're all monotheistic.
Um, you know, so, so there's a meta level to it, but I think that where. consensus hierarchy begins is when you create art or create notions, recontextualize notions that people at large begin to agree with.
And it starts on an individual level, which I think is why Nietzsche and BAP and the Greeks are important.But then as for the people who are willing to look into it, you know, sort of like mytho-America, right?
Like mytho-America is the end of something, but it still has meaning and it still points to something.I think as things can be recontextualized, remoralized, then hierarchies are going to start being based on on consensus that it used to be.
But there's there's just no way to to find it now, unless, you know, sort of the artistic vision of just trying to thread everything together, which which I think I was told, I don't think I was told that that's what Cthulhu did.
Well, was it was it took a lot of ideas that everyone was familiar with and drew a line through them?
So I think that's where it starts, man, is just, you know, looking into the void, right?Like, you know, beyond structures.And, you know, the right has its universal truths and it has, the right likes itself, right?
Which is the big difference with like, with the left, you know, that you can, the right can look at itself and like what it sees.And, you know, that's something that can sort of get you through this kind of shit.
I think, you know, the left can just eat itself.
But um, yeah, man, I think that that's where it starts is once now that we're exposed to everything you can pull from everything Right, and so as long as it's not woke as I'm God help us man, which seems to be kind of the prevailing trend right now, but maybe that's just because the the GAE Almost said the other one Yeah, but you know, you know, maybe maybe it's I mean, I'm manufactured right as maybe they all have to be but I
you know, if there's something and come along that appeals.This is why this is why I don't really have any like arguments against Ren is because everything is people get.No one wants to be sick, right?
I don't want to be unhealthy and full of microplastics and all this stuff.And I think that's one reason, like what he says resonates so much is because he's speaking to people on a very basic level, right?Like at a biological level.
And that's something people can agree on.So I think it just kind of comes from from there.
But yeah, but I guess like you mentioned the sort of like a different like a remoralization of society after the sort of.
The the sort of like overcoming of the current regimes of truth, like the current like, I guess you could call it woke moment or whatever, but for example, like BAP is very clear.
that he like really doesn't, uh, he really doesn't like any sort of like, like a moralization of things or like the religious right or whatever, or, or sort of like these older figures of religious conservatives or right-wingers that
Maybe remoralization.I don't mean like the opposite of demoralization.Not actual morals, right?I'm not a moral, like, you know, everything's degeneracy, man.Not like that.Not like that.
Yeah, yeah. Well, no, but yeah, I think like I mean, he probably to me anyways, he goes a bit too far.But I think that there is something to be said about.
I guess if you're looking at it as an American, you could see, like, for example, the failures of the moral majority, even though they've more or less correctly diagnosed the problems, it's like, well, they sort of lost the mandate in a lot of ways.
Yeah.Yeah.So. But but you mentioned but you mentioned J.D.Vance, and I guess that's like a good bridge.I mean, there's like criticism of J.D.Vance, obviously, like like I've always said that there's like legitimate criticisms of him.
But I guess I'm trying to like pin down your accent.I mean, I don't know if you want to like dox yourself, but what particular southern state are you from?Or I don't know if you don't want to.
Yeah, that's fine.I was born and raised in Georgia.
Yeah.Okay.Yeah.I figured.Yeah.
I don't, I don't live there anymore, unfortunately, but that's where I, that's home.
Yeah.Yeah.I was like thinking another, like Georgia or Tennessee or something like that.Yeah.Yeah.Um, but like as a Southerner, uh, have you read Hillbilly?I've I've only read parts of Hillbilly ology, but yeah, I've read it.What do you think of it?
Do you think that like the, the criticisms of people have a JD Vance that he sort of got like, like a sort of like a resentment complex over his upbringings?
Or do you think that someone who like understands the current day Southern experience is more or less a good thing?
Yeah.I honestly, I mean, I felt it was more.It doesn't address the criticisms, I guess, but I almost felt it was more of him purging himself from being so self-aware at Yale.To be honest with you.
As far as, you know, like the utility of it, I. Like I said, I think it was mostly personal for him, I don't.And that's that's because, you know, it was personal, I.
I mean, there's like, like that, I believe a lot of the stuff about Vance, you know, to where Vance tends to really go where he needs to go and do what he's got to do, right?Like he is he is more of a traditional politician.
Yeah, not he's not there to blow things up.So, you know, he was aware of what it would do. right?He knew that, especially like, you know, being in Ohio.So like, there was political utility to it.
But as far as like, on a personal level, that's what I read.I don't think that I think it serves for votes, maybe, and it helps sort of his populist stance.
The biggest thing, even something with the book, man, I've kind of been surprised about is people really, really do have their knee-jerk conceptions and reactions of the South.
They really do like talk to anybody and they'll immediately start doing sort of a draw.But it's never like kind of like an earnest one.
But until they're down here, though, that's kind of the funny thing is, um, like everyone that comes down here says, Oh, I think I kind of picked up one.I think I kind of have an accent now. you know, and it's funny, right.
And that's sort of the joke I've made about the South is like, like people look down on the South, but like the South, the South's position is basically like, we know we're better than other people.
So like, why don't just the curiosity is like, why don't you recognize that?Or why can't you? Um, but I mean, it's, I don't think it serves, man.
Like, like, it's so the, the coastal, the coastal institutions and sort of the, the structures of power are so bare right now.Like there's, they're laid bare.
And at this point, I think there's, even if someone isn't going through sort of the hillbilly elegy story, I think there's so much solidarity among just like normal people. Yeah.
And that's the thing too, is, is kind of in contrast to a lot of the sphere, you know, like, like, sort of the Southern Democrats, right?
Like, why are the Southern Democrats they where they were, are very real part of this, because you know, everyone, right, you know, people that are like that.
you know, and so to not have sort of consideration, there's a, maybe it's left over from the Southern aristocracy days, but there is still a responsibility when, whether you come directly from it or not.Right.
If you're, you're familiar and it's in your purview, then I think a lot of people do still feel that kind of responsibility instead of just being like, you know, I'm going to New York and going to write about how much I hate them.
Yeah.Yeah.And there certainly has been like some people like there, there is like a lot of, uh, Hicklibs that were born in the South.Like there's this one, um, yeah, absolutely.Yeah.There's this one like absolute parasite.
I think, uh, he wrote this thread in Waco once his name is, uh, Sexton, I think it's like, he's got like the, the beard and,
He like, yeah, yeah, he's got, I think he comes from like either Tennessee or Alabama and he's got like this obsession with JD Vance and he's like one of these horrendous, uh, just terrible people really, truly.
Um, but I think like from my limited knowledge of Southern politics in the 20th century, A lot of people, they, I guess, because nowadays it is true that the heart of conservatism in America largely lies in the South.
But like you mentioned, like the Discocrats, right?
I think it's anti-federalist, really.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.But what I was getting to that, like, I think that
Um, when people think about like conservatism, they mean like this sort of like weirdo Republican fusionism where it's like libertarianism, neoconservatives, you know, but the history of the South.
You know, barring OK, like to acknowledge like, OK, the racial issues, whatever, but in terms of things like public policy, like you have figures like Huey Long, which you wouldn't consider economically libertarian, quote unquote.
I mean, the South always had an aristocratic structure.It had something that wasn't like the more like northern conceptions of like free market capitalism, if you will, that is equated with Republican conservatism nowadays.
So I think like the South is a very interesting a very interesting place in terms of like where political categories in America.
I mean, maybe not recently because nowadays it seems that the two major parties in America are so totalizing that, OK, it's like, you know, but at least historically, the South wasn't
the same as you, you would consider, you know, Northern like libertarian, capitalistic, individualistic, totally.Right.I mean, it could be totally wrong, but yeah.
No, you're right.You're right.And I mean, even then, you know, I think it was, have you read, um, let us now praise famous men with James McGee.
Oh, no, I haven't read it.No.
I recommend it, man.It's good.He and, um, who was it?Well, Walker Evans, like they were sent down by a magazine to, to talk to, um, uh, what am I trying to say?Dude, Jesus Christ crop. Crop shares.What am I talking about?Oh, I lost the word.Damn it.
You're not supposed to do it in the podcast, right?Uh, but anyway, so they, they went back and that's, that's their whole story was sort of documenting the South and like the early 1900s.
And, and even then there's a, there's a lot of sort of, you know, Northern influence on it, but, But he also notices structure and hierarchy in it.And that's part of it.
He talked to a lady about, why are all these doctors and lawyers, why do they always go to church?And these are like educated men.And she's like, because that's where everyone meets.And so it was small enough.
And the thing was, is there was, with the death of so many people, like their granddaddies and their dads or fathers,
then that's, that's sort of what it was born out of, right is, is there is that community identity, and there is this idea of no one's coming for you.
You know, I have, I don't know how somewhere that's not in the south will react to something like like Helene is, you know, the way they are in North Carolina, the Carolinians are doing well right now with the lean.
I don't know how like, the Midwest or especially the Northeast would act in such a way.
But politically, it's people people like to think, you know, like, oh, it's like always backwards looking and like the Civil War and, you know, look at what we used to have.And a lot of Southerners at this point, LARP.That's true.
Even like gardening gun is sort of just.
kind of like keeping the, trying to keep something alive, even though it doesn't really exist is, you know, it's all LARPing, but what has carried over from civil war is that was that loss of structure, you know, especially like hierarchy and patriarchy.
And I think that that's, that's had more to do with the politics than anything.
Oh yeah.Yeah, definitely.And, and, um, and that, that comes up in, in your work too, but, When it comes to the South, like you were saying, like a lot of people have their preconceived ideas and I guess like to jump into it.
One, one theme that I noticed in like a lot of the literature in the sphere, whether it be like Marty Phillips is millennium or yeah.Yeah.
A good friend, a good friend of mine, uh, or mixtape Hyperborea or the Jackalopeans is that a lot of the literature that comes out of the scene, uh, there's this, this weird mix of like alienation. and trying to relive a cultural moment.
But the sort of like current perception of the South as like this poverty stricken, opioid addicted, like totally blown out nowhere land, like that's what the popular conception is, I guess.But you're saying like there's something else there.
There is like a secret heart to it that does come out.And like you mentioned, MythoAmerica.
Like a lot of those images embody sort of like that Southern Gothic spirit of something that's deeper, even though there's a lot of these hardships and struggles.
And this sort of like picture of the South is backwards, quote unquote, or or nowadays being like subjected to forces of deindustrialization and economic exploitation by these coastal cities.
All those themes seem to come out all together in a lot of quote unquote dissident literature, for lack of a better term.
So was that like a conscious thing or was it just like you trying to capture like a genuine experience or was it or did it have like a purpose?Because because in your book, there's like a lot of what's a good word?
Like, I guess longing could be a good word. Like there's a lot of. Like there's a lot of longing and loss, and there's a lot of like this sort of reverie for something deeper.And, you know, I mean, I personally, I really enjoyed your book.
I think it was like very compelling.Yeah, it was very much like I had to like keep reading it.And I don't read it like a lot of fiction.I should.But, you know.But yeah, it was.But yeah, go ahead.Go ahead.I guess before you get too far ahead.Yeah.
Just the whole thing about alienation.
Yeah, I well, it's interesting to like most people like starting from the beginning, like most people's knee jerk reactions to the south of the trailer park.
Yeah, that's not that's not the true self.Right.And when I mean true, so I'm not talking about like Charleston.I'm talking about like, you know, I mean, you know, common parlance, right?I mean, I'm talking about rednecks, right?
Yeah, self sustain, right, you know, mechanics, like people that can work on their own stuff.
That's that's sort of I think that's why it carries over as far as people saying the south is the most based or the south is the most American right as we brought that stuff into the West.
right, not just the South Americans in general, brought that self reliance.And there are places out there that still, you know, cowboys and stuff that are still doing that kind of thing.
But that's, that's really the problem is, you had things like deliverance, which is actually a really good book.
But you know, you had that that sort of thing, right?It's like the South equals white trash.And that's, that's not the case.
um and that was you know feeding into the book is more than anything in that regard i wasn't conscious of it in that way as far as what well let me start over the the you've read the book so like like the the presence of nature
is massive in the book, right?Yeah, that's sort of my thing, right?As far as like an answer to what you're talking about.
That's that's true self to where, rather than in the north, you know, to where you have to hunker down, you know, for three to six months, and to where everything dies.
Then, you know, and yes, you know, trees fall down here or leaves fall down here, too.
But it's still it's still alive.And that's only like for maybe two months where it's kind of cold, right?Like hoodie weather.
And so the the the presence of a are inside of of nature is probably the closest thing to what what I would consider like more of like a Southern experience or a way of life. Um, there, there was a, actually I threw it in.
Um, a lot of people probably thought it was just from the sphere, but like, uh, like Weinstein.
The character of Weinstein was like, that was my, I think that was my only like real indulgence for the most part was that was just me sort of like mocking New Yorkers, like, you know, making New Yorkers stereotypical.Right.
It's kind of like the mic hasn't been anything like with the grits, you know, um, if you've ever seen that.
So that was that was me just like kind of making fun of New Yorkers, right?Like, you know, here's the here's like the stereotypical New Yorker, you know, bagels in black and white cookies.
So that was as far as I was aware of it.And I think I think, you know, with the way people spoke, like I made sure it was sort of a southern thing, you know, like with the trucks and the cars.But it was never
never meant to appease people's expectations of the South.Regarding this sort of longing and stuff, that's an interesting thing because you go back to Faulkner, right?And the thing about Old South, most Southern, even now, I'm Southern.
I don't consider myself a Southern writer.Give Up the Ghost is the first Southern story I ever wrote. and like not like you're gonna see my substack like none of them are like that but um
But Faulkner, O'Connor, and even the Southern writers now, there is always that back looking, right?That's why they're all set between 1840 and 1940, basically.Because that's people's conception, like, here was the true South kind of thing.
But there's a South that still exists now.And that's not sort of the South will rise again thing.It's acknowledging that, like, you know, sort of the recontextualization, right?Like we're so far away from like the Civil War.
And I understand people, you know, when it comes to lineage and stuff like that. But as far as telling the stories, right?Like, what does that look like?
A VN Ebert, he does a lot of the older stuff too, but he has a couple that are sort of brought into modernity.And so the longing, you think maybe, maybe I pulled from it sort of subconsciously.
Cause like I said, you know, I mean, especially like Faulkner, right?Like it's sort of these, these better times and these more interesting times. Um, but for me, I think it was, it was much more of a, a spiritual thing for AR, you know?
Um, and I mean, and we can talk more about that when we talk a little bit about the book more, but I think that was really it, especially like once he leaves the mountain, you know, like that's, that's where a lot of the longing comes from.
Cause it's the destruction of innocence.
Oh, yeah, yeah.And the whole book is about the destruction of innocence.Like, what was the.
Prologue?Can I ask that real quick?I just wonder if you noticed the prologue.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.OK.Let me let me actually pull it up.Did I get the prologue?I think I did.Prologue. No, I think I just yeah, I think I did.Was it a go rest high in the mountain?Was that the prologue or.
Not right before that.It was just like a little poem kind of thing, right?I don't even know it's a poem, but yeah, it's right before that.Because every time.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.Great power.Oh yeah, oh yeah.
That was my one kind of hint to like the meta stuff.
Oh, interesting.Because there was a lot of like very trippy scenes that, um, I was like, like, especially the last vision that, that, uh, that AR has with like the woman of, I interpret it as sort of like, what did I see in my notes?
Um, I interpreted her as sort of like, The goddess of life and death, if you will, like sort of like you talk about in the cave.Yes.Yes.OK.Yeah.Was it was it an allusion to like a specific like Gnostic tradition or specific symbolism?
Or I know we're like we're jumping way ahead, but we'll get to like the book.Yeah.
Yeah.No, that was. That was one of my happier moments.Like it's not as profound as I wish it was, but I actually like that whole, I found a way to subvert Baphomet, basically.
Yeah.And so that fed sort of into the, because that was the hard part.I agree.Like the one criticism that's been kind of consistent is that people wish that the ending was a little bit longer, right?They felt it was a little rushed.
Yeah, which I can actually agree with.
But the ending was was fun, but it was difficult because throughout the whole thing, and, you know, I'll save stuff when we talk later, but throughout the whole thing, you have this sort of, you know, back and forth between like, like the spirit world and reality, if you will, or, you know, in AR's physical world.
And the ending had to be where they both, where they all meet.And so that was actually pretty challenging, but I thought that, that the inversion of it was, was appropriate.
And the fact that, you know, it's kind of ambiguous as to whether it's in the spirit world or whether it's in, in, in reality.
Yeah.Like I could imagine like a director, like doing something quite good with it.Like,
Dude, imagine as an anime, dude.
That was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.Or maybe like something like.Like, I don't know, I wouldn't say someone like Ari Aster or whatever, like spring breakers is art, dude.
Like, I mean, that's Ari Aster.No, no, no.
Spring break.That was Harmony Kareem.Like, oh, yeah, it could be something else.
I have this, I remember writing an article once about, I mentioned how Harmony Korine has like, when it comes to the subjects that he's directing, he's writing about in the screenplays, there is like a sympathy there, like to a very deep part of Americana, whereas his directing partner, Larry Clark was sort of like, when I, I think the metaphor I used in American Son article was,
Larry Clark comes off as if like he wishes that when he takes connector flights between New York and California that he could like open the window and spit upon the heartland.Yeah, yeah.
Whereas like Harmony Kreen, like actually I was talking about this with Keno Corner that Harmony Kreen actually does have like a supreme sympathy for people that he's depicting, like even in Gummo, like Gummo.
I mean, yeah, it was an exploitation film, but there are like a lot of beautiful moments in Gummo.
That yeah, yeah, but I mean maybe a lot of like the trippy dream sequences reminds me almost of that one film By Was it called blueberry by Terrence Malick?Yeah Yeah, where it's like he's taking DMT and yeah.Yeah.Yeah.Yeah.Oh
No, no, Blue Valentine was, um, that was, uh, someone.Okay.
I haven't seen Blueberry.I haven't seen Blueberry.
I think Blueberry was Terrence Malick.Yeah.Uh, it reminds me of that.Like it could be maybe Terrence Malick could direct this.Um, like, no, because he does have like those trippy dream sequences.Uh, but no, but so yeah.But to begin with the book, um,
Was the mountain thing, I mean, it is very ingrained, uh, in that sort of like Southern imagery and in Southern Gothic, but was it, was it like a conscious, like Nietzschean metaphor, like the sort of Zarathustra descending from the mountain?
Or was it just like the preacher on the mountain is a very common theme in Southern Gothic or is it?
Yeah, no, it was, it was very much conscious.It was, um, Well, I guess like spoilers or whatever, as far as the meta goes, like when, so, so the, the prologue is the death of Christ.
And, and that being Osby in the actual narrative.And so when he comes off the mountain, like the, the sort of the approach that I took with it was, you know, as a, as a pure being, right.
Someone who is, has never been mortal before, who is exposed to death and murder and evil in this story.What would their, what would their natural reactions to such a thing be?
And so by, by leaving the mountain, then he's, and I think there are, I don't know, I'm not really, really well, like I'm not well read on Nietzsche, right?
I like to think that maybe there's some little tiny accidental synthesis between like elements of Christianity and Nietzsche in this.Shout out to Zero for his article on that.
But the, yeah, him coming down from the mountain was very much him having to leave God. And, um, and sort of the, the sort of dogma that he knew that existed on high to where he was sheltered from everything.
And this is also why he encounters the city.The first thing he encounters is the, is Atlanta.Um, before he goes back into, into nature as a mortal, cause he had to, he had to see what sort of what mankind was capable of, excuse me. So, yeah.
No, you go ahead, man.I was done.
Oh, no, no.But that's what I mean.Like, and of course, the the figure of his father, Killian, like as like sort of like a heretical preacher that has like this like weirdo polygamy thing going on.
And it comes up over and over again in the book where there is like a sense of like, which again is very common in a lot of dissonant literature, which is like that sense of like you are in an aware land.You are caught between two worlds.
Like there was this one moment where he's, He's calling his father and he's like, I want to come home, but he doesn't really know what home is.Like his mountain is not like even States.
And I think like the mountain is no, no longer feels like home, but that is father back.
He wouldn't be the same in the first place.
Yes.Yes.And his father killing is like, well, no, actually you can't come until you've like completed the mission.And you've like, you know, you've actually fulfilled your purpose, but his engagement with the evils and with the sort of like.
the repressed darkness of the, of the soul, it like tears them apart at certain moments.Like he trips out on drugs and he like, uh, wants to basically destroy himself after, um, what's, what's his love interest.I forget her name now.
Marilyn and Lizzie, yeah, after Marilyn dies or was killed, he goes insane and he sees these visions of her and her twin sister.And I think the boys of the Cyber Podcast, they really emphasize the southern goth GF thing, but was it...
There obviously is something there to do with like a form of like sacred femininity.There's something to it.But but yeah, but the metaphor of like.But to talk about his father a little bit.Was it like.
Because, you know, the self does have like a very interesting and idiosyncratic relation to Christianity, right?Was it like and in the book, it deals a lot with the questioning of especially like Old Testament Christianity.
So what was like really the sort of like stated purpose of the sort of like the craziness of killing it in the book?
That was Blake talks about it in Marriage of Heaven and Hell, but it's sort of, nowadays it's sort of called like the priest class.And it is Blake and I's shared opinion that
any sort of human construct that is attempting to interpret God is inhibitive and eventually sort of suffocating.
And so this is kind of illustrate, I guess it's kind of illustrate a little bit when the shepherd tells his past as far as Killian's approach to established religion.
But as far as, you know, I think it was required to separate him from denomination, right?Then I think him
And this is, I guess this is sort of what I was talking about when I was talking about Christianity and also Zarathustra, where for, for him to have his own heretical interpretation, and then for people to also agree with it is to validate it.
And he had to be farther away from earth.You know what I mean?He had to be separate from that to the point that it was sort of driven away and he can only exist in a, in a specific, specific world or context.And Yeah.
And, and with the, with the shepherd is it's, I think that's sort of the, the biggest theme has started the religious stuff goes as far as some of AR's epiphanies besides the, the peanut man is a different thing.
That's sort of his step into the next level.
But with. with the Shepard and especially with the exorcism scene, then the exorcism scene is sort of him returning to Sicilian's tradition, finding his own version of it.
And his his dad, because you mentioned like the Old Testament thing, I think that was also necessary because in his life, right, he finds that it's it's made kind of explicit where he's discovering that all of and I guess this mirrors Western civilization to where he's discovering that these dogmas and his father's teachings, which he completely adhered to, don't really have
you know, easy answers or even answers at all, seemingly, to the things he's encountering as a mortal now, you know, and being on his own.So I think that killing is sort of representative of a force that is still identifiably God, right?
Because he's not part of, you know, he's not part of society, but also still something that A.R.has to come from.
He's like the order of the father in terms of like psychoanalysis.He is the sort of godlike figure that places.
But instead of order, he's very much like an agent of chaos because there was that dialogue between I'm assuming like a megachurch pastor about like how.
yeah he knew his father and his father was like you know he's evil because he like subverts our order man like it's yeah yeah go ahead um no just like two things but just maybe to find it interesting well one like i i framed it as a mega that one i was actually really aware of the reader on that one right i framed it as a mega church but if you notice um when he's going through uh you know he's being escorted back to the library he'll wait for the shepherd
That's actually a really accurate description of the office that looks over Saint Paul's.
Yeah.So so is also kind of kind of a shot at centralization and Catholicism.But that whole scene was essentially like my version of the Grand Inquisition, the Grand Inquisitor from Brothers K. Hmm.
Oh, I see. Yeah, and there was that great exchange.Let me try to pull it up, actually.Do you remember what page it was where they had that dialogue?
I believe it was chapter nine.
Oh, yeah, yeah.But even before that, there was also the metaphor of the hog that was attacking AR.
Yeah, that was chapter five.
That was chapter five.Yeah.And was that like the conscious thing?Like that one parable where the the sins entered the hogs and they drowned themselves like the the thousands of them in the Bible?
Was it leaving?Yeah, yeah.The part afterward was an acknowledgment that when bosses explaining to him sort of the he doesn't know what's going on because a big group of hogs drowned themselves.
Um, but the, and I'm, I'm sure the, the hog has death sort of started there.Um, when I, when I originally wrote that whole, that whole vision, it was not, that was, that was just pure flow state on that one, man.I had a lot of fun writing that.
That was crazy.Like I tried to piece it together.Like, was he having a vision of this hog dancing?Uh, you know what?Like it was like a very weird thing.Like he had this vision, before he killed the hog.
It was right around where all those, one of those children were discovered in the, in the barn.And was that just like purely like a self-interest thing?Like you, you say like you had fun writing that.And so.
Well, no, it was, it was fun, just because I sort of came out of it was like, holy shit, I like what I wrote.But the someone pointed out that I recently had an interview by Virginia gentry on substack that was I've never met him before.
He just kind of DM me as like, Hey man, I want to read and write your book.You're from the South, right?
And, and I mean, he had some incredibly kind things to say, but one thing he pointed out, and this is true was that when it comes to the vision sequences, then.
Then as AR experiences them not knowing what's exactly happening, then, then sort of the reader is forced to do the same as well.
And that was sort of the big part is to introduce the, you know, this goes back to that first paragraph of Cthulhu, right?To reintroduce a mythology into one's own personal life. to where regardless of what it is, the experience itself is very real.
And it was, you know, it was heavy on symbolism, obviously.But yeah, so so each one of those things is sort of a really. in my mind, really important and grand narrative that it's each narrative in my mind that a mortal has to face, right?
And so to blur the line for AR and to make it sort of that to give it the scale that I did for the visions, especially the hog, because I thought the death was the most important driving one.
Then it sort of allow, hopefully allowed the reader to sort of like blur those lines too, and have something of a contact with the spirit world, just by sort of forgetting reality.
Yeah, yeah.It seems like the pig becomes like a powerful animal like metaphor, like animistic metaphor, because like
I, there's like, there is kind of like, you could even say like an older, like pagan or like Manichaean vibe that isn't specifically just like Christianity in, in your book.And so, yeah, I found the thing with the pastor.
There's other things I wanted to talk about in terms of like nature, but it's implied that like, Killian stole his wife or something like, or turned her into like his girlfriend.Yeah.Yeah.He like really like ramaged through them.Yeah.
He like ran them through.Um, but, uh, I'm trying to like find a good quote here.Um, let me see.Uh, Catechism itself was a folly.Only creation was an expression of divinity, for only mortality could be experienced intuitively.Why?
God's first act was to create, but he could only do so by creating the finite.And so God himself in his eternal glory could not express what is intuitive through the interrelation of our senses and consciousness.
Eventually, the word reached here, the center in your father was summoned.He stood in the room where you sit now, with rags, without education, armed and in insolence.His message was without logic, without institutional backing.
And so, yeah, so that's like the sort of surface level, like his father was a subverter.But then what's very interesting is that you talk about Creation and mortality as well in this, or rather death and eternity.
So here it says, and so to direct them towards death is to direct them towards the afterlife, towards the true eternal and the right towards God.But your father would find eternity in creation.Creation is antithetical to the eternal.
What must begin must end, but only what ends is permitted to live forever.Life is not a gift, but a burden.God cannot be found inside mortal creatures, only before and beyond it.
Whether return to God be punishment or reward, each person must choose be like a children.They must be guided towards this choice, like a father, a mother, you must take them, make them aware of it.
I thought that was like a good exchange because he seems like the shepherd is sort of like the figure of like the you know, he is an authority figure.But then later on, when it comes to the exorcism scene, he gets exposed.
But what was your point about going into this business of creation and eternity?Yeah.Like, is he saying that the sort of finality, like the finite nature of mortality is something that we contend with.
And it's like true eternity is something that is yet to be accessed or.Yeah.
I think that that is. as long as one considers the something better outside of mortality, then it's a death cult.And so on both sides of life, then there lies a conception of God, and that was sort of Sillian's heresy.
to where, you know, where he was talking about sort of the paradox of God creating what is mortal, but not being able to see it.And so, excuse me, and so with The we're kind of jumping ahead a little bit, but do you remember the scene where A.R.
is handed the the tome by the angel?Yes.
That was that.That's sort of A.R.'s conclusion on the matter to where anything that is a death cult, like the ultimate contention is why live?Why celebrate life?Right.
This is the idea of life being a struggle, life being a burden. But then, so it's also the question of how does one, if divinity is on both sides of mortality, then how does one find divinity inside of one's own life?
And so by doing, by advocating for creation, as Selene does, then he's performing an act of God, essentially.And so this is what the peanut guy talks about, right?The man-made loops on the eternal timeline are sort of the embodiment of this.
to where through mortal creation, then mankind is able to perform acts of God outside of God.And so that's sort of the contention against, like I said, anything that's a death cult.
And ultimately the thing that AR is facing, once he encounters death, then it's a bit like, what do you do with it?And I don't know if this is super insightful, but a conception of the eternity comes from outside death.
Our self-awareness, our conception of God comes from the fact that we're all mortal.
So, so in my mind, everything that we sort of face and deal with and, you know, whether it's looking for meaning, whether it's, you know, it all comes from being self-aware and self-conscious that we're going to die.Right.And that's what it means.
Yeah.Being towards death basically.Yeah.
Yeah.And so, I mean, it's, it really is that it's sort of the first signs of, of mortal agency inside of the narrative of eternity, I think.
So, but what do you mean by death call?You mean sort of like, like a life denial thing where... Life is a burden.It's something to be surpassed.And something outside of life is the ultimate goal.
And sure, it's being separated from God, right?Like most anything that he deals with theologically in the book is is like explicitly Christian, I think.
And so so from the beginning, right, for for the Bible to begin with our separation from God, right?
We condemn our mortality.
And then everything else that we've, we've sort of dealt with and done since then is, is born out of that.
Well, yeah, well, but it's born out of like human fallenness essentially from Genesis onwards.And right.
And that was the point, right?If we're all fallen, you know, then it's always like, you know, you know, work towards the end, work towards heaven, work towards death.
Yeah.Yeah.And then of course, like a lot of people like have their own delusions about, you know, um, Why don't we create heaven here through our immortal hand?And that never works out.And it's like it doesn't work out for a reason.
Like there's this one passage later on the book where you say that death as a blinder to further continuity in life.I don't know why I wrote that down because I thought it was important.Yeah.
Yeah, it's, um, that that's where that, that whole part gets like really trippy and quarter sort of theory.So I'm trying to remember if I can remember directly.
That's when he's is, um, that's when he's also talking about the kids to where the conception of self and continuance, if, if measured by death only. that I'm really trying to remember that I was like, that was really trippy part, man.My bad.
I don't have the book in front of me, dude.
Yeah, it's all right.Yeah.
Damn, my bad, dude.Well, no, but then before that, though, like there is on page 47, there was a very interesting quote because you mentioned how the book was Uh, all about nature.Right.Um, that says, and it was highlighted in red.
It sort of reminded me like house of leaves where like every time that said house, it was like highlighted in blue.Uh, on page 47, you say, um, where man is not nature is barren.
Um, I thought that was a great quote, but I kind of struggled to be clear.
All the red, all the red text is Blake from marriage of heaven and hell.
Oh yeah, that's right.It did sound familiar, but where man is not nature is barren.And so what would be your interpretation of that from Blake?And how does it relate to the work in general?Yeah, sure.
Yeah, this goes back to both the pig scene and to to being kind of like, you know, self-conscious of one's death, right?In the pig scene,
then the in the pig scene, then there with all the threads of the threads of existence, right, that eventually are swallowed up by the configuration.
once and ar is the last thread and so once death has killed off ar then then death continues but there's there's nothing else for it to do right that's that's the power throughout the story and so i think that with blake the most important thing and this is why cillian was the way he was and this is sort of
Why emphasize nature?And in response to like in in mirroring the perspective of the ancients to where they gave things locales and they gave locales names and personalities.Yeah, who?Is is Blake believes that?
That that what is given meaning is through through unfiltered perception.
Yes, yeah, yeah. And so there was a conscious extension of this divine reality.
Yeah, exactly.So exactly.And so, and that's kind of the most important part of the book is to where, where with each one of these experiences, it can be considered divine, right?It's an encounter with divinity.
And so the presence of nature throughout and where nature is bearing, if it had, you know, it's sort of not to reduce it at all.Right.But it's sort of like the tree falls in the woods thing.
is by considering, and this is, I think, where Blake pulled the most from Christianity was the fact that he believed, like, if we are, you know, believing that we are truly children of God, and if that is the case, then our perceptions are also God's perceptions.
But they're encased inside of a mortal life.And so even, you know, with the priestly class, right, denominations,
which were made explicit in the exorcism scene, then every filter or sort of explanation given, and this is the peanut guy, right, when he's talking about touching the divine and finding nature and then Christ.
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