DC's

 

‘Filmmaker and make-up artist Yoshihiro Nishimura lives by his own rules. Known affectionately by fans as the uncontested godfather of contemporary Japanese horror, he’s responsible for cult classics such as Tokyo Gore Police and Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl. A glance at his IMDB page shows just how influential he’s been as a make-up artist: a veritable wizard of carnage. Japan’s Tom Savini.

‘In a career spanning three decades, Nishimura has done about every job on the credit crawl — from gaffer to director. He is best known, however, as a mad master of effects and makeup, spewing blood sprays that achieve a certain demented grandeur and building fantastic creatures that resemble raging piles of medical waste with body parts attached.

‘His low-budget movies may get labeled as sci-fi or action, but they’re little like the films of those genres that at least attempt to maintain a veneer of sanity. Many, such as Tokyo Gore Police and Hell Driver, have played at international festivals and been released on subbed DVDs. Despite this recognition, Nishimura rarely strays outside the exploitation ghetto.

‘Wherever Nishimura dives in, he makes a huge crimson splash—but he’s far more than just a bloody face. A bonafide jack-of-all-trades auteur, he’s a DIY screenwriter, producer, director, make-up artist, FX master and editor. Even better, in the process of achieving all that with minimal outside assistance, he has developed an unmistakable—and surprisingly hilarious—style. His latest victim is the Fantasia Film Festival, where his Kodoku Meatball Machine had a standout North American debut this past month.

‘”My number one goal is to amuse my audience. Many filmmakers are too selfish; they make their movies for themselves, like masturbation.”

Nishimura is pure entertainer at heart. He showed up at his premiere in a blood-spattered white jumpsuit, throwing candy to his audience. During the film’s credits, he stole the mic and danced down the aisles singing along to his movie’s theme music. When the lights came up, he got a standing ovation. And during the Q&A that followed, when an audience-member asked for an explanation of the film’s meaning, he belly-laughed, pulled out a Vodka Nip and downed it.

‘“For your amusement!” he bellowed. “That’s why I give you candy. The film’s meaning is pure entertainment.”’ — No Film School

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Yoshihiro Nishimura @ IMDB
YN @ letterboxd
‘Film Your Nightmares’ and 6 More Tips from Horror Godfather Yoshihiro Nishimura
Asian Extreme, Tokyo Gore, and Sushi Typhoon
INTERVIEW : YOSHIHIRO NISHIMURA
An Interview with TOKYO GORE POLICE Director Yoshihiro Nishimura
All’s fair in blood and gore for special effects maestro Yoshihiro Nishimura
NY Asian Film Fest Guests Bring Props

 

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Extras

Yoshihiro Nishimura – splatter + nudity = NSFW clip reel

Greetings from Director Yoshihiro Nishimura

Master Class Yoshihiro Nishimura 2012

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Interview

 

You have been making movies since you were in junior high and you have worked in quite a lot of films through the years. How difficult is it to make a movie in Japan and do you think that it is easier than in other countries?

First of all, making a movie in Japan is pretty challenging. I’ve been making movies in Japan and I can say that both time and budget are very limited. For example, the situation now is getting better but in the past it was so challenging to find all the ingredients for the special effects makeup. Not every ingredient was available in the past, therefore it was a race against time.

I haven’t had much chance to make movies outside of Japan, so I can only speak about the cases in Japan. There is no union in this industry in Japan. People work long hours. We do lots of overtime to complete a movie. It is getting normal for me to work like crazy, but I think it is a challenge in Japan.

You have majored in law. Have you ever thought about pursuing that kind of a career?

My father is a patent attorney. He suggested to me to study law, so I did. I liked social study and history. I liked memorizing. I thought law was a good choice for me and then I majored in law at the university. It was a good choice after all. I never thought of following a law career, however what I studied there still helps my movie making.

You have stated in previous interviews that the paintings of Salavador Dali were of your earlier inspirations. Could you elaborate on that? Which ones, for example?

“Inu Onna” the poison girl from “Tokyo Gore Police” has no arms nor legs but wears four Japanese swords to fight. This girl is inspired by Dali’s long legged elephant.

You have worked in 16 different departments of the production of a movie, from makeup, costume and special effects to actor, writer and director. Which one do you enjoy more and where do you find the time to study and perform all of these?

I enjoy every task at every department in making a movie, but I would say directing is my calling. I would say I have no stress working as a director. For other roles or tasks, I would feel frustration due to the gap between what I try to imagine and achieve, and what the director wants to create, and due to disagreements with the other departments.

After graduating the university, I worked at a company who creates commercials, for five years. In Japan, in order to create a commercial, you have to work as a director assistant, a producer, an assistant producer, etc, all the tasks at the same time. That’s where I learned all the tasks. I even learned budgeting and working as a producer there. At that point, I had a clear intention of learning everything about movie making and start making movies all by myself alone in 10 years, before I turn 30 years old. So I studied every task I need for a movie production during this five years. After that, I kept learning art work, camera assistance, lightning, etc.

I’ve been making independent movies with Sion Sono together for about 30 years. When Sion was 30, he decided to make a commercial film. So it was on-the-job training. It wasn’t easy but that’s how I learned movie making. I learned the business while earning money.

You have worked in low budget films as much as in high budget. What are the differences between the two and which do you prefer?

Basically, there is no difference between low-budget and big-budget movies. What I do is the same. If there are differences, they are just small ones: more time, better meals, more staff, etc. I like them both.

Why did you decide to shoot only splatter movies? What is the appeal you find in the extreme depiction of gore and violence?

Actually, I didn’t mean to shoot only splatter movies. I really didn’t realize I was making splatter movies. I’ve been involved in hundreds of splatter movies, creating blood, special effects makeup, monsters, etc in before “Tokyo Gore Police”. I wasn’t always satisfied with the requests I received, but for “Tokyo Gore Police” I could do whatever I wanted, to make it more fun for the audience. Usually the scenes with actors speaking are considered more important than those splatter scenes with blood exploding and special effects, which I had to make them in a hurry.

Besides the obvious horror elements in your movies, there is also quite a lot of humor. Do you prefer to scare your audience or to make them laugh?

I want to create a “wave” to the audience. I want to show something gross but at the same time I want to make them chuckle. I would like to show something nobody has never seen before. What I create is entertainment. I like them both, making sure the audience doesn’t get bored. I always adjust the audience’s emotion, the “wave”. I call it the margin of audience.

You use a lot of blood in your movies but it looks realistic and impressive at the same time. How do you achieve that, even in low budget films?

My movies use lots of blood. Sion demands realistic in his movies. He has been a good friend to me and we’ve been making some independent movies together. But I don’t want to make the same movies as Sion, so I go my own way consciously in my movies, showing much more blood. I love his movies and I can make it realistic for his movies. For my movie, I make blood more showy. As a professional I should manage to create both ways.

I don’t ponder too much but I use different effects depending on the scene. When more impact required, I use a pump for getting water from a well or a balloon for creating blood splattering.

You have repeatedly cooperated with Sion Sono and Tak Sakaguchi. Could you tell us about these experiences?

Sion and I have been friends for about 30 years. He has been helping my movies. Tak has been an action actor and a director for action movies and he has been helping me too. Sion also asks Tak for help, therefore these days we three work together.

You prefer female main roles in your movies. Why is that and is there an actress that you would like to cooperate with in the future? Is Eihi Shiina your favourite actress to cooperate with?

I always had an image that women are strong. I’ve been using women in leading roles. Recently, I started using men. I heard some people want to see some men. This time I use an older man. I don’t always have to use women as a leading role but I prefer a female leading role because I think women can express their strength better.

I don’t plan casting for a leading role in advance. The actresses have ups and downs. Some actresses have a long shining career and others don’t. So timing is important. I don’t choose one actress all the time.

Not always as a leading role but yes, I do want to work with Eihi Shiina again. I like her but I don’t plan to choose an actress for a leading role in advance. Shiina has ups and downs. She works well on an actual stage but has a strong character. We have to offer her a role only for her, a character that nobody else can do, otherwise she may be lost.

Is casting actors-actresses for these films difficult, considering their extreme nature?

I don’t have a hard time. I work with new people but since my movie style is very unique, there could be some confusion. So I need to have some familiar faces who know my movies well to pass on some tips for my movies to new actors. So that new actors don’t get drown by the blood.

Since “Tokyo Gore Police” you have achieved fame overseas. What are your feelings towards this and what are the differences between Japanese and western audience?

I’m happy that more people enjoy “Tokyo Gore Police”. The Japanese audience is very quiet. Too quiet. When overseas, I can feel their reaction right away. I can see what makes them laugh or be surprised.

The Japanese audience let me know what was funny a bit later, sometimes after two days later. In this movie, “Kodoku Meatball Machine”, the leading character is a bald old man. Everyone in the movie calls him “bald head”. The Japanese audience laughs In Japan “bald head” is a name-calling but not in overseas. Outside of Japan, it is not something people laugh. “Bald” is considered as a symbol of man and not something people laugh about or pick on.

What is the situation with the extreme movies (splatter etc) scene in Japan at the moment?

In Japan, the pure love movies with teenagers are more popular. Not much splatter movies are being made. Or the yakuza movies are also popular these days. We don’t have a big audience for splatter movies.

Why did you decide to shoot a sequel of Meatball Machine? What was the inspiration behind the script? In general, what inspires you to make movies and how do you work in the scripts?

Technically speaking, the very first Meatball Machine was an 8mm movie version as a totally independent movie. And we reworked the first Meatball Machine from the 8mm version, therefore my “Kodoku Meatball Machine” this time is my own creation with the same concept from the original Meatball Machine. So it’s not the sequel.

Three years ago, I made an action movie called “Torakage”, a ninja movie. It was a hit. The producer from King Record wanted me to make a movie. I wanted to create “Torakage 2” but he suggested a new Meatball Machine. I wanted to create another Meatball Machine movie so I happily accepted. The producer only requested two things for “Kodoku Meatball Machine”; one request is to use a monster Nekurobogu and the other is to include a love story. That’s all. Other than that, I could do whatever I wanted.

For two years I was only involved in making “Shin Gozilla”, no other movie and we lost money. I was shocked to learn that you couldn’t make money even with this popular movie. The theme came from there; working hard forever, but not making money. So the Russian folksong was inspired from this difficult experience. The letters appeared in the bottle was inspired by Twitter. There was such a flame in my Twitter. Every day I got about 2,000 nasty messages from animation fans, therefore I also included the flame to the theme of the movie. All my negative experiences became the theme of this movie.

The theme of “Torakage” is family. At the beginning I often used this theme. It is changing now. The way I work is like this; I write a plot in a few pages and then I ponder what I want to say in the movie for a week.

Why did you choose family as the theme?

Maybe it comes from my problems with my own family.

What is your opinion of the movie industry in your country at the moment?

Money-making movies are very limited with sloppy love story movies, or someone dying from rare sickness now in Japan. I don’t think they would be popular outside of Japan. There is not much budget for splatter movies in Japan.

Which are your favorite filmmakers/movies?

David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky are my favorite movie directors. I watched many horror and splatter movies such as Romero’s. But that’s not what I aim at. I watch them to learn technique, not to enjoy.

What are your plans for the future?

I plan to go to South Korea and I have two movies to direct. One is about an embalmer.the other one is still confidential. I want to continue to make movies but I also want to teach young people who are in twenties. I’m 50 and I’m not that young.

 

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18 of Yoshihiro Nishimura’s 33 films

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Anatomia Extinction (1995)
‘The rather oddly titled Anatomia Extinction is an avant-garde horror/sci-fi hybrid by the director/special effects artist Yoshihiro Nishimura. A precursor to Tokyo Gore Police (2008), it is a bizarre trip of giallo like beauty and gross out body horror, all tied in a neat little 54-minute package. The hectic editing style, together half-man/half-machine type body horror, are noticeably reminiscent of Tetsuo, the Iron Man and it’s fairly obvious that Tsukamoto’s 1989 fantasy of flesh and metal has been at least partly the inspiration behind the film. Anatomia Extinction is a strange watch to say the least and definitely not for everyone. Fans of Tokyo Gore Police might enjoy seeing where the inspiration for the said film came from and equally fans of Tsukamoto or Cronenberg might enjoy the macabre little world Nishimura has created. If you’re not a fan of the avant-garde or prefer your films with dialogue, you need not bother.’ — Horror News

Watch the film here

 

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Speakerman: The Boo (2004)
‘The story of an odd creature called the Speakerman, who served duty in a small mining village by sounding the siren/megaphone that is his head to tell the workers when it was time for lunch and to alert people in case of a mining accident. When the mine closes, Speakerman ends up lonely and in search of new friends and meaning in his life.’ — letterboxd

Trailer

 

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Meatball Machine: Reject of Death (2007)
‘In 2005 the directors Yudai Yamaguchi and Jun’ichi Yamamoto came together create a film called Meatball Machine. Based on Yamamoto’s earlier work from 1999, it’s an aggressive cyberpunk, sci-fi/horror-hybrid romp about alien parasites turning their hosts unto slave “Necroborgs”. It was a breakthrough film for the special effect’s wizard Yoshihiro Nishimura, who would later on go on to direct such films as The Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police, as well as a bizarre ten-minute sequel to Meatball Machine titled Meatball Machine: Reject of Death. You can pretty much summarise the whole ten minutes in one sentence: That escalated quickly. It’s complete cyberpunk madness from start to finish, with very little plot and dizzyingly fast action. Basically, the film consists of two necroborgs attacking people around them in the weirdest weapons imaginable. The AV idol Asami is a good sport as usual and plays her outlandish role brilliantly, although when it comes to acting, it hard to assess anyone’s performances as the whole experience is so chaotic that it leaves very little room for any deeper analysis.’ — Horror News

Why You Should Watch: Meatball Machine

Watch the film here

 

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Tokyo Gore Police (2008)
‘“Tokyo Gore Police” is quite possibly the goriest, craziest, most eye-blowing, chunk-spewing, head-exploding sci-fi movie of all time. It takes place in a futuristic Tokyo, where the police have been privatized into a paramilitary force that uses extreme violence – even public rub-outs – to maintain order. The force’s scourge is a race of “engineers,” criminally insane gangsters who can turn wounds into weapons (in one case, a penis gun). But the mutants are no match for Ruka, a no-nonsense cop who carries a samurai sword and dresses more like a schoolgirl than a crime fighter. The hunt for baddies is personal to Ruka because her father, also a cop, was assassinated. Enough blood is unleashed to fill Tokyo Bay. Garishly filmed over-the-top mayhem is nonstop and includes S&M-attired quadriplegics walking on swords.’ — V.A. Musetto

Trailer

 

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Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009)
‘While “Tokyo Gore” contains trenchant political satire, “Vampire Girl” only dabbles in silly lampoons of Japanese youth fads with girls who take their wrist-cutting to an intercollegiate competitive level, and “ganguro” girls who make themselves up to look like golliwogs in misfired worship of African-American culture. Despite claims of a higher budget used than “Tokyo Gore Police,” production quality looks a little shoddy. HD camerawork is also sloppy in certain scenes, such as the definitive duel between Monami and Keiko atop Tokyo Tower, or the sword fight between Monami’s mother (Eihi Shiina). Visuals sometimes become monotonous, with blood spraying and blurring the frame like a garden sprinkler. Creature designs are jaw-dropping.’ — Hollywood Reporter

Trailer

Yoshihiro Nishimura and crew takes questions re: Vampire Girl Vs. Frankenstein Girl

 

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Mutant Girls Squad (2010)
‘If you think you have seen all possible mutant weapons before, it only gets better with the new ones discovered amongst this group of monsters. There are limbs that transform into swords, a claw arm, tentacles that grow from fingertips, even an anal chainsaw! Take the X-Men and add a ton of blood, crazy special effects and a demented leader and you get the MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD. They band together to get revenge, take over Japan and, ultimately, to transform it into a land for mutants only!‘ — Calgary Film

Trailer

 

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Hell Driver (2010)
‘Nishimura, as usual, incorporates as much absurdity as possible in the film, starting with the movie’s titles that appear after almost half an hour has passed. Furthermore, the zombie boxer, the guards with the peculiar helmets, and a fighting scene involving a kind of pole dancing are only a few of the irrational scenes and notions appearing here. Apart from these, his usual tendencies are also present: constant bloodbaths, surreal humor, impressive battles and a rudimentary effort for social remark, specifically concerning drugs and racism. The technical aspect is quite impressive for a splatter. With him doing his own editing, the film retains a frantic pace, that mostly looks like a collage of his preposterous ideas than an actual movie. Shu G. Momose’s cinematography manages to follow on these crazy ideas and the 6 members of the visual effects team manage to make them into reality. Both tasks could be perceived as colossal. The 7 special make up effects artists have done a spectacular job under his supervision, as is the case with Minori Niizaki who is responsible for the costume designs.’ — Asian Movie Impulse

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Gekijô-ban: Harapeko Yamagami-kun (2012)
‘Director: Noboru Iguchi, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Jun Shiozaki. Starring: Keisuke Horibe, Marin, Maki Mizui, Takashi Shimizu.’

Trailer

 

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Z is for Zetsumetsu (2012)
‘Twenty-six directors. Twenty-six ways to die. The ABC’s OF DEATH is perhaps the most ambitious anthology film ever conceived with productions spanning fifteen countries and featuring segments directed by over two dozen of the world’s leading talents in contemporary genre film. Inspired by children’s educational books, the motion picture is comprised of twenty-six individual chapters; each helmed by a different director assigned a letter of the alphabet. The directors were then given free reign in choosing a word to create a story involving death. Provocative, shocking, funny and ultimately confrontational, THE ABC’s OF DEATH is the definitive vision of modern horror diversity.’ — Magnet Releasing

Trailer

Watch “The Making of Z is for Zetsumetsu” here

 

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Zombie TV (2013)
‘A Monty Python-esque collection of shorts, animation, sketch comedy, instructional videos and more, ZOMBIE TV showcases the natural evolution of zombies in the 21st century, no longer a frightening menace, but rather an annoying neighbor you realize you simply have to put up with. ZOMBIE TV answers such natural questions as: in a world full of the undead, wouldn’t some of the surviving humans want to join the majority and become zombies themselves? Would becoming a zombie solve the emotional and relationship problems we all have as living, breathing human beings? Do zombies have their own idols? Would zombies worship a zombie god? Who would win in a fight: a cannibal, or a zombie? How did zombies evolve from walkers into runners? And the most burning question of all: how do zombies have sex?’ — Screen Anarchy

Trailer

A look at director Yoshihiro Nishimura’s ZOMBIE TV!

 

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The Ninja War of Torakage (2014)
‘Silliness is a superpower in The Ninja War of Torakage, Yoshihiro Nishimura’s genre-fluid adventure about a man who thought he escaped the world of warriors, only to get pulled back in. A touch of Yojimbo creeps into the story, where our hero must please two rival clan leaders in order to keep his wife and child alive, but danger and intrigue are here just as ballast for a goofy, self-mocking streak that otherwise might not hold our interest for an hour and a half. The picture’s silly spirit is admitted early on, when our hero’s plight is set up: Torakage (Takumi Saito), a retired ninja who now lives a peasant’s peaceful life, is forced by the vicious Gensai (Eihi Shiina) to go steal scrolls that will lead her to ancient treasure. He is brusquely interrupted by an on-screen narrator — the man, wearing Coke-bottle glasses and ruffled-collar frippery, claims to be a Portuguese scholar of ninja culture; he drops in on occasion to introduce tools of warfare and explain bits of backstory via nicely done shadow plays.’ — Hollywood Reporter

Trailer

 

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Tengoku shori kôjô (2016)
‘Tengoku shori kôjô, the first volume of VR “Dead” Theater, is a VR horror short written and directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura that was released at 124 Internet cafés across Japan on October 17, 2016.’

Trailer

 

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Tetsudon Kaiju Dream Match (2017)
‘Tetsudon: The Kaiju Dream Match is a wonderful salad of techniques and narrative films sometimes parodic, sometimes experimental, Japanese with a bit of spicy Mexican. With the participation of the Mexican Ulises Guzmán, the only foreigner of 17 directors among which stand out Sion Sono ( Suicide Club , Deadly Fish , Let’s play hell ), in a fabulous cameo; Yoshihiro Nishimura ( Tokyo Gore Police , Helldriver , Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl ), Kiyotaka Taguchi ( UltramanX , Ultraman Orb ), Hideki Oka ( Urutoraman Saga ,Tomica hew rescue force ) y Tomohiko Iwasaki ( Fool Japan , Tetsudon ABC ).’ — Cinando

Yellow Road trailer – Yoshihiro Nishimura-directed short

General trailer

 

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Meatball Machine Kodoku (2017)
‘Nobody knows where they came from. They parasitize in human beings, take control of them and change their bodies into hideous monsters (Necro-borg). The Necro-borg fight each other until the other dies. Where did they come from? To what end? Yuji and Kaoru, whom both have dark secrets within themselves, get caught up in the horrific battles of Necro-borg. What will their fate be?’ — Kingu Rekôdo K.K.

Trailer

 

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Welcome to Japan: Hinomaru ranchi bokkusu (2019)
‘A unique violent action film by Yoshihiro Nishimura (Meatball Machine Kodoku) about female assassins mixed with Japanese food culture.’ — Cinando

Trailer

 

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Go Home (2020)
‘In a grave at dusk, a girl whispers, “Let’s go home.” From there, a terrifying journey to the girl’s home begins.’ — IMDb

Trailer

 

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Holy Mother (2022)
‘A racist corporation is looking to expand its territories of domination and for that it needs to destroy the Yakuza mafia. It is then that a transgender woman suddenly appears willing to defend the Yakuza tradition. With her bare hands, a she rips off a man’s erect penis and sticks it onto his nose.’ — Letterboxd

Trailer

 

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Tokyo Evil Hotel (2025)
‘With Tokyo Evil Hotel, Nishimura returns to his splatter roots but cloaks the viscera in something more spectral, an unnerving meditation on urban legends and the hidden machinery of Japan’s entertainment underworld. The premise sounds almost folkloric: a cursed hotel, five suicides in a year, a ghostly figure in a wheelchair propelled by betrayal and heartbreak. But Nishimura, ever the provocateur, is less interested in quiet ghost story chills than in conjuring a fever dream. The film drags the viewer down its neon-lit corridors, where reality and nightmare blur into one another. Images arrive in waves — some baroque in their grotesquerie, others achingly poetic — before dissolving into the next eruption of slime, latex, or digital delirium.

‘What anchors this onslaught is not narrative cohesion (which Nishimura deliberately unravels) but mood, texture, and metaphor. The hotel itself becomes a nexus of exploitation, its walls absorbing the residue of despair from a culture that glamorises seduction while feeding on vulnerability. Nishimura weaponises the tropes of J-horror — the wrathful woman, the haunted threshold, the cyclical nature of trauma — and splices them into his splatter lineage. If Ring and Ju-On explored the horror of technological contamination, Tokyo Evil Hotel maps the horror of commodified intimacy, where every smile has a price and every fantasy its corroded underbelly.’ — Surgeons of Horror

Trailer

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** jay, Hey. The title only kind of tells you what to expect. Enjoy your tour of the locations. When Zac and I were in Japan last we went to the island where ‘Princess Mononoke’ is set and did the same thing. Naturally the realities were somewhat less magical, but still. Fine weekend, sir. ** Adem Berbic, Oh, I’m almost eternally optimistic as you know. Things seem far more achievable to me when they’re bright. The Russian Dolls reference makes sense, yes. Maybe I just start with the littlest one first. I think LSD basically invented me. It made me realise everything’s a prism. Mushrooms just made everything look sparklier and cosier. Well, ‘Babyfucker’ is certainly Beckettian. But it uses that layout differently? ** Laura, Ah, score! Don’t know if he wrote that other book. I’m not even sure if his others books have made it into English. I’m following you on Instagram now that I know who you are. Pretty intense eyes, yes. I’ll study them the next time I’m dwelling over there. Btw, since you asked over there, that person in the ‘RT’ promo photo is a boy. His name’s Syd. ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Hey! Understood and no problem about the screening, but the film may still show in Charlotte itself at some point. We’re waiting to hear if that’ll happen. I’ll give you as much advance notice as I can if it does. American Spirits are too strong for me. My lungs are hungry but they’re wusses. When you describe those people at your work, I immediately feel suspicious if that means anything. But I guess it’s better that they like you even in their deluded ways? I don’t know. It’s a question. I’m quite tall and I tend to romanticise being short. Except at music gigs. But even if you can’t see well, at least you don’t feel immense hostility radiating at your back like I usually do. ** _Black_Acrylic, That Behind Bars channel does look kind of fun. And informative. Hard to beat that combination. Thanks. I’ll give it the old college try. ** Steve, Ugh, pay for play. I don’t know if you’ve ever submitted to film festivals, but there are so, so many that are just money making scams. I’d love to have a conversation with Picton. Maybe they’ll play here and I can find him and ask him out for a coffee. Yes, there’s a Gig post next week. This weekend: I’m going to try to finish the new film script once and for all. The new Lucretia Martel film/documentary is playing down the street, and I want to see that. I want to go to my favorite bookstore (After8) and see if they have new Ken Jacobs book in stock. Did you see ‘Arcana’? ** julian, It’s not not about fucking babies but it’s not about fucking babies in the normal way. If that makes sense. In theory, your discovered description of that Jesus film makes it sound less interesting to me, but that might just speak ill of my inclinations. Although an actor named Gustav “Tava” Von Will is a bit of a lure. Well, I did say the sigil aspect of ‘Guide’ hasn’t worked, so maybe sigils are a little uptight about their subject matter? It’s worth the try. I’m rooting for you. Don’t let my seeming failure stop you, for goodness sake. Will do on the ‘Chris’ pic. ** Carsten, All hail your returning to normalcy. I guess I think organised religion will only be in the dust when the believers come to their senses. And there’s no sign that they ever will. People still call Elvis Presley the King, for Christ’s sake. I laid my weekend out to Steve just above, or my intentional weekend at least. Strength be yours. ** fish, Totally understood about your disinclination. These days I’d much rather go to an amusement park. I just looked up Justine Kurland, and, no, I don’t know that work. It looks really interesting. Huh. I might try putting together a galerie post of her stuff. Thank you for the tip. Have the best weekend you can. ** HaRpEr //, Is that book completely out of print now? I guess it would be. Wow, ‘The Tunnel’, that’s an undertaking. I don’t think I ever got all of the way through it, but I rarely get all the way through books, especially when they’re giant. But I remember it being pretty extraordinary for reasons I can’t precisely recall. Yeah, I guess Rimbaud gets exclamatory, but that doesn’t bother me at all from him. Maybe it’s his youth. I sort of inherently think people that age have a lot to teach me. Joy Williams is god. Lutz too. Does it? I mean that MNBB song? Wow, I’ll go listen more carefully. Wow. ** sal, Hi, sal, welcome! Yes, I do remember that Dennis Kelly book. Huh, I haven’t thought about it in ages. I’m pretty sure I read it, but I don’t have a clear memory of it. I remember it was kind of well known or talked about at the time. Gay Sunshine was one of the most prominent gay publishers back then. Sure, I’d love a scan, thank you! How can I get it? Are you on Instagram by chance? Thanks a lot. How are you? What’s up? ** Nicholas., You’re joining the self-styled clear headed set? Welcome. For your birthday? A hot fudge banana spilt. Wow, that’s a lucid and intense near death drug situation you had there. I only just almost went permanently insane on drugs, but death didn’t want me. I have read ‘City of Night’ and I’m pretty sure I read ‘Numbers’. I was not a fan. But I did read them. ** Okay. How about you guys spend the local portion of your weekend subjecting yourselves to the output of the wacky, gory filmmaker/sfx maestro/makeup artist Yoshihiro Nishimura? See you on Monday.

* (restored)

 

‘When I interviewed Urs Allemann about his book Babyfucker in the spring of 2010, my family was outraged, and understandably so. Less than a month had passed since my mother divorced her husband, my stepfather of twenty years, after discovering that he had lived a secret life for almost the entire extent of the marriage, including sexually abusing my older sister throughout her childhood. It was not that my family opposed the idea of a book like Babyfucker so much as they could not understand why I would ever willingly associate myself with the words “baby” and “fucker,” especially only eleven months after learning about my sister’s abuse. Their approach was to get over “it” as quickly as possible. However, I was not so sure that this was something I wanted to move beyond; I didn’t want “it” to lose its shock value.

‘Excessive books like Babyfucker elicit excessive reactions. Excess, here, can be defined as that which is more than necessary, or desirable. Not only is the act of “babyfucking” an extremely rare occurrence in the realm of sexual abuse, the setting of the book is also excessive. In fact, it is all but impossible to imagine, except, perhaps, as a bad acid trip. The book opens: “I fuck babies. Around my bed there are creels. They’re swarming with babies. They’re all here. Always have been. Always will be.” As Allemann noted in our interview, “These sentences have no place in a realistic story [and] definitively exceed every notion of reality that claims to be adequate to reality.” More specifically, the last two “create a context that corresponds perfectly to the timeless present of the sentence ‘I fuck babies.’” As I was all too aware, nothing can be as it has “always been, always will be.”

‘Excessive responses to the book typically range from horror, disgust, and outrage to that other extreme, extreme insouciance, or denial, embodied by those who shrug off the very idea that they could be shocked by a book, no matter its content. A popular reaction to Babyfucker: “The author is merely trying to shock. So what?” However, if shocking behavior, i.e., writing something shocking, is nothing more than a shameless attempt to get attention, it is also an individual’s desperate attempt to be recognized, to be seen or heard. Allemann has suggested that the narrator of Babyfucker has lost the “certainty that he exists” and attempts “to catapult himself back into existence with an extreme sentence.” In this sense, I imagine the narrator as a kind of fanatic, stammering to himself in the desolate abyss of a dank attic, driven not by any specific appetite or longing, but by the absolute conviction that if he ceases, even for a second, to utter his sentence (“I fuck babies”), the very narrative of his life with dissolve, and he will be left only with the excessive frustration and confusion of his suffering.

‘The Babyfucker is helpless. His “extreme sentence,” and his belief in the power of it, is a kind of cure for his excessive vulnerability. That is, the vulnerability we all experience as animals who cannot easily identify what we want, and even if we can identify it, may not be able to get it, much less keep it. Worse: we may discover that desire, and its twin suffering, no matter how excessive, may lead us nowhere. “I fuck babies” is the narrator’s conviction, his fact, safe haven, which is to say, also a fantasy. One he must return to again and again, not because it gives him any identifiable pleasure, but because it keeps him hopeful in his very uncertain and meaningless world.

‘When I found Babyfucker—or rather when it found me—I was still actively grappling with the significance, perhaps even “meaning,” of the wild, roving ache I felt on a daily basis as a result of the dissolution of my family. Of course, during these months, I wrote next to nothing. (It was unfortunate that I was enrolled in an MFA program for creative writing.) As an avid reader, I was also horrified to discover that no book could hold my attention: they all felt so trivial. Every book, except Babyfucker. Since my pain was still too ripe, I could not dismiss it as “just a book” or “some pervert’s riff.” I was immediately intrigued by the beauty, the hypnotic elegance, of Allemann’s prose. It’s true: the thing I found most interesting, initially, was not that Babyfucker served as a potent reminder of the “power of literature,” but rather, that “monstrosity can’t be beautified away by skillful prose pirouettes” (Allemann). That is—no amount of gloss or spin can sublate the horror of a monstrous act.’ — Elizabeth Hall

 

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Further

Urs Allemann @ Wikipedia
Babyfucker @ goodreads
Three Books Blurring the Borders of Memory and Reality
Babyfucker Blog Project: Jessalyn Wakefield
Babyfucker Blog Project: J.A. Tyler
Babyfucker Blog Project: Lily Hoang
Babyfucker Blog Project: M. Kitchell
Babyfucker Blog Project: Jon R.
The Old Man and the Bench – Urs Allemann
Urs Allemann’s Beginnings
Wüst gedacht, brav gemacht
Buy ‘Babyfucker’

 

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A FURTHER READING OF URS ALLEMANN’S BABYFUCKER (WITH DRIPPING FAUCET) Concerto No3 for 2-7 Voices

Created by Daniele Pantano & David Kelly/Erkembode for Enemies of the North

First public screening: 30 March 2013, The Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK

Words/Sounds: Daniele Pantano
Visuals: David Kelly/Erkembode

 

____
Extras

Urs Allemann bei Sprachsalz 2011

Urs Allemann zu Gast bei Züri Littéraire im Kaufleuten

Freemix la segunda (Urs Allemann, Suiza)

 

____
Interview
from Tarpaulin Sky

 

What prompted you to write Babyfucker? Did it start as an idea, a sentence, question, challenge?

It wasn’t an idea. It was an image. An image in my head. A vexing image. An image that was just suddenly there. Without reminding me of anyone or anything. Without eliciting any feeling in me. That’s what was vexing. A challenge. And then suddenly the sentence was there. As a response to the image? As an escape? As self-defense? I don’t know. “I fuck babies.” And then there was the decision to attempt to extract something like a story from this terrible sentence.

Your prose is often hypnotic. Babyfucker evokes its own associative logic by which words generate further words, creating a dazzling rhythmic trip. Yet the beauty of your prose is offset by the disturbing nature of the text. Everything hinges on the monstrous “I fuck babies.” Why did you choose that sentence specifically?

I’m very happy to hear you use the word “beauty” to describe my prose. Because, as strange as it may seem, it was in fact my intention to make something beautiful out of this monstrous material. To write a beautiful story. In this anything but obvious intention a certain idea played a role: the idea that beauty as an aesthetic category can only have relevance today if it passes the endurance test represented by the most un-beautiful, revolting material thinkable. I had the somewhat megalomaniacal idea that I could transform shit into gold by writing. And there was the quite crazy corollary idea: only gold made from shit is true gold.

Ten years after Babyfucker I wrote an ode titled “Censure.” It opens with the verse “The black bar in front of the sex organ.” And the first verse of the second strophe reads: “The axe that – chop now! – that shatters beautifully in your hand.” There’s a similar crazy notion at work here: the notion that a murder weapon is transformed into its opposite in the last second, before the deadly blow, right when the axe holder is ordered to act. The axe, it is claimed, doesn’t just shatter, no, it even shatters “beautifully.” Hard to believe, isn’t it?

Few concrete details are given about the narrator or his surroundings. The reader must navigate the narrator’s grunts, groans, stutters, and mumbles. He repeats “O I am babbling.” It’s unclear whether his activities are a fantasy, dream, real-life telling, or all three, all at once. The instability of the narrator’s mental world mimics the physical world he perceives. Was the structure of the text set from the first draft or did it come to you through the writing process itself?

The character, the first person narrator only has one thing: his sentence. The problem with the sentence – beside the fact that it’s monstrous – is that it has no context. The only thing that the narrator does, and he does it incessantly, is this: he attempts to invent something like a context for this context-less sentence. Not to remember, but to invent. Babbling away, he produces and discards his “reality.” It’s meaningless to decide in this context whether something is a dream, a fantasy, or reality. Reality is simply what is narrated. And what’s narrated is only what could correspond to the sole certainty that is alleged to exist: “I fuck babies.” The “few concrete details” that the narrator tosses us are, at closer examination, just as fantastic as his grotesque hallucinations.

Take the very first sentences in the narrative. Sentence one: “I fuck babies.” The foundational sentence. The theme. The challenge. A sentence that isn’t just monstrous, but also fantastic. A sentence that no living person could ever say. The verb’s timeless present and the noun’s plural make the sentence one of trans-real monstrosity.

Sentence two: “Around my bed there are creels.” An attempt to invent a place for the first sentence where either A) the sentence is spoken; B) the narrated event occurs ; or C) the sentence is spoken AND the narrated event occurs. This sentence, read by itself, in version A, might be a “true story.” A realistic story could begin in this way: a real man lies on a real bed surrounded by real creels. For reasons that we expect to learn in the course of the story, the man utters THE monstrous sentence: “I fuck babies.”

Sentence three: “They’re crawling with babies.” This sentence has no place in a realistic story. A situation in which four creels surround a bed and in which each of these creels “crawls with babies” cannot occur in reality. CANNOT occur. A baby in each creel, ok. Two babies? Maybe, whatever. Three babies? Oh come on, stop already. Four babies? Shut up, you idiot. What does exist is: cans that crawl with worms (on fishing boats). But creels that crawl with babies? Definitely not.

But what if they were there, these babies? Dozens of them? Twelve in every creel? Ok, we are prepared to picture the impossible and against our better judgment accept the assurance offered by sentence four: “They’re all there.” But sentences five and six finally, definitively exceed every notion of reality that claims to be adequate to reality. “Always have been. Always will be.” These sentences create a context that corresponds perfectly to the timeless present of the sentence “I fuck babies.” In reality however NOTHING always has been and NOTHING is for always.

I don’t know if that’s an answer to your question. Hopefully it is. Reality is annulled after six sentences. At that point one can no longer distinguish “from the first draft” and “through the writing process itself.”

The narrator is someone who has lost his identity, is unsure if he even exists. There is the hint of a Linda and a Paul, but their reality is tenuous: “Linda. What if she asked me to substitute a stuffed dog for the dog. If she asked me something. Anything. Could I then claim she exists.” Throughout the text, the narrator struggles to regain his existence through his sentence: “I fuck babies. Therefore I am, maybe.” Repetition-as-comfort. He relies on his sentence to save him, yet by the end, he is unsure whether “I fuck babies” was ever “his” to begin with: “And what if its a mistake. A mix-up. What if I’ve been saying that Paul’s sentence the whole time. Because someone somewhere put in the wrong tape for me.” Can you talk a little about your intentions here?

That’s correct: the narrator has been afflicted with a feeling of total derealization. The world’s presentness, the existence of others, his own existence: nothing is guaranteed for him. Only one terrifying sentence – “I fuck babies” – is vested beyond any doubt for him with the reality index that the cogito had for Descartes. That’s why it’s “his” sentence. That’s why he clings to it as if it could save him and catapult him into existence. AS IF – that is the decisive point. It’s IMPOSSIBLE that a sentence like “I fuck babies” can help bring a human being into existence. Because it is necessarily an UNTRUE sentence. The person for whom it would be a true sentence – if we want to admit for a moment that such a creature exists – someone who would actually “fuck babies” serially, on a conveyor belt, many of them one after the other, many times a day: such a person would NEVER SAY this sentence.

To whom for heaven’s sake would he say it? On what occasion? For what reason? When the narrator says, “And what if it’s a mistake,” he begins to realize that “his” sentence, despite the index of reality it bears for him, might be the wrong sentence. He begins to realize this. He has already begun to realize this when he arrives at this “maybe” conclusion: “I fuck babies. Therefore I am maybe.” But it’s no more than the beginning of a realization. The narrator doesn’t get any further. It’s not even possible for him to pose a question about what problems the phenomenon of the “untrue sentence with reality index” might cause for understanding. WE, you and I, can of course come up with some thoughts about it. An idea might be: the sentence is not the thing that is vested with the reality index. Instead, it adheres to the sentence’s components, the individual words. To the fact that they come together in a constellation. It’s enough that a sentence occurs to the narrator (that a sentence is foisted on him) that brings together “I,” “fuck,” and “babies” – and that’s enough for the feeling of security – secure because it promises something like reality – to come about for him. But it’s also imaginable that the sentence “I fuck babies” connects the CORRECT words in a grammatically INCORRECT way. False presence. False plural. False voice (active instead of passive). And who would be responsible for the narrator’s blunder or parapraxis? Well, me of course, the author. Maybe I put the wrong tape in for him. Maybe on purpose.

Can you discuss the influence of Beckett on Babyfucker, and your writing as a whole?

I read Beckett intensively ten or twelve years before I wrote Babyfucker. But Beckett’s prose – the novels more than anything, and The Unnameable more than any other – has remained the non plus ultra of modern narration for me. Modern in an emphatic sense. Narrating as not narrating. No narrative as narrating in quotation marks. No “I,” no place, no time. Only this tentative speaking and writing movement that hints at a speaker, a place, a time only to immediately revoke them, hint again, and again revoke them. This tracing out of a trail left behind by a successive writing down and crossing out, by a crossed out writing down and a writing down crossed out. This textual tracing that is NOTHING (thus: “Texts for Nothing”), and, yet, no, absolutely NOT NOTHING. The incomparable, inimitable about Beckettian blackness is: this black is not just the blackness of a message, as black as it may be. It’s more that this black meaning turns into a black syntax. Into a meandering of sentences knotted together. Into a flowing, branching out, uprooted, blocked rush of black sentences. Phew. Such abominably imprecise metaphors! Sorry, Ms. Hall.

When Babyfucker won the second prize in the 1991 Ingborg Bachmann Competition, the book became one of the biggest literary scandals in recent years. Specifically, Jörg Haider claimed that the text was “inexcusable” and a “sexual perversion.” Were you surprised that many misinterpreted the book, focusing on the title rather than the subject matter? Has your view shifted over the years?

Here we are again with the contradiction of “beauty” and “monstrosity.” I really thought that everyone would clap and say: this author does such a wonderful job of making us forget how dreadful his topic really is. The aforementioned shit-gold-thing. That was A) naïve of me; B) but also a misjudgment of the text. Perhaps I even underestimated the “Babyfucker” by minimizing for myself the antagonism between beauty and monstrosity. Monstrosity can’t be beautified away by skillful prose pirouettes. Beauty doesn’t sublate monstrosity. And today I understand much better those people who find that there’s nothing beautiful there, nothing at all, just a triumph of monstrosity. However: the fact that there were people who read the text in all seriousness as “Confessions from the Life of a Pedophile” – that baffles me to this day.

How did you get involved in writing? As a young writer what books were especially influential? What texts do you continue to revisit?

I’ve always written. But intermittently, with long breaks. At first, poems and plays (when I was eight or nine). Then poems again (at sixteen, seventeen: Celan imitations, with poorly measured doses of obscenity). Then once an isolated prose text, under the influence of Proust: “An Attempt by Martin T. to Remember.” Then poems again (at twenty-five, twenty-six: undoubtedly imitations, I just don’t know anymore what of). Then during a long stay in Tuscany in 1978-1979 once again an isolated prose text: “The Condition of Mö or What and how a Story” (now, instead of Proust, Finnegan’s Wake, a book that, unlike the Recherche, I never read). I’ve only written regularly (more or less) since 1983. 1983-1988: poems. 1988-1995: prose. 1999-2010: poems.

I read most enthusiastically (idiotic superlative!) Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Beckett. And as far as poets go: Benn, Rilke (despite everything), and, more than anything, Hölderlin. And not to forget the “experimentalists”: Ernst Jandl, Oskar Pastior. Right now I’m reading Kleist.

What projects are you currently working on?

I’d like to return to prose after a fifteen-year hiatus. An epistolary novella maybe. A man went into the mountains fifteen years ago to write the following letter to a woman: “Dear B., I’d like to strike you down with an iron rod. Maybe I love you. If you feel the same way and your wishes conform to mine, then please please get in touch with me posthaste. We’ll discuss this matter together and make the necessary arrangements if everything works out. With warm wishes, Your Bernd.” The letter is, however, never mailed and never written. In further letters to B. from Bernd, he pursues, among other things, the question: why? The last letter could be the one in which Bernd lets B. know that the matter has been settled since he has just been struck down by a group of women with iron rods.

 

___
Book

Urs Allemann Babyfucker
les figues

‘A Beckettian character, who may or may not be trapped in a room with four baskets full of infants, focuses obsessively on a single sentence—“I fuck babies.” This virtuoso text by Swiss experimental writer Urs Allemann won the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Preis des Landes Kärnten in 1991 and caused one of the biggest literary scandals in the post-1945 German-speaking world. Translated now for the first time in a new-bilingual edition, Babyfucker will change your idea of what literature can be and do. Babyfucker belongs in the canon of twentieth-century provocations that includes Bataille’s The Story of the Eye, Delany’s Hogg, and Cooper’s Frisk.’ — les figues

______
Excerpt

I fuck babies. Around my bed there are creels. They’re swarming with babies. They’re all here. Always have been. Always will be. Like me. I’m here too. For others it would probably be different. Others would leave. Would have come. Would go somewhere. Have come from somewhere. Not us. We’re here. The babies in their creels. Me in my bed. With closed eyes. Reach into the swarm. Fish one out. Fuck it. Throw it back to the others. All of them naked. All of them here. No names. At night everyone sleeps. Me. The babies. Linda. All is calm. During the day the babies get fucked. Always been that way. By me. Before going to sleep. After waking up. The babies here. Me here. Linda not here. All the lightless day long.

Sometimes I catch a male. Sometimes a female. O it doesn’t matter. Ring finger and pinkie span the flesh notch. The flap of skin can be hidden between my thumb and pointer. It’s all very chaste in my garret. Scraping. Rubbing. I want to write a chaste story. Middle finger. Bumhole. Fontanels. Their toothless, salivating mouths. Where do I penetrate. Where do I slide right in. Their pores flung open to me. My chaste ambition. With closed eyes. Feeling my way. Conquering. Every baby pore a hole for life. I want to write a story about holes for life. The babies sleep. Not only at night. During the day too. When I fuck them. They used to always scream. Now they’re always sleeping. Some other time. It just doesn’t work without any time. I mix a little morphine into their milk. Males. I’m a man. The babies get the bottle from me. Females. It just doesn’t work without any difference. The babies would be breastfed by a woman. From one of two breasts. From both. From neither. O I take that back. But how would the woman mix the morphine into the milk. Maybe it would be injected into her swollen breasts. Into both of them. Into neither. Into one. O I take that back. But where do I get the milk. There appears to be a milk spigot in my garret. It just doesn’t work without any cause without any reason. My head. I could hold my head under the milk spigot. Until. But where do I get the morphine. There appears to be a vat of morphine in my garret. A barrel of morphine. With morphine powder. With morphine brew. My torso. I could roll around in the morphine powder. I could dip my morphine-tossed body in the morphine brew. Until the day. Instead I soak babies. Drug them. Fuck them. Sleeping babies. Haven’t been screaming babies for a long time.

Just as long as none of them die on me. Just as long as Linda doesn’t die on me. Just as long as I don’t die on myself.

All is bright. Once a day the babies are cleaned. Before the fucking that follows the cleaning. After the fucking that precedes the cleaning. By me. Always been that way. I spray them down creel by creel. With lukewarm water. The hose is permanently attached to the water spigot. It would not be advantageous to attach it to the milk spigot. It would not be advantageous to hose down the babies with milk. The milk might go bad. The babies might start to stink. I might possibly be forced by the stink to puke. O it wouldn’t help at all to fling open the windows. How often do I fling open the windows. Without any success. Fresh air refuses to rush into my garret. Stuffy air refuses to rush out of my garret. The cinema outside. The fresh breeze of the movie. Reality inside. Life’s old chamber farts. The babies are drugged with milk. Sprayed clean with water. I drink water. Bathe in the morphine vat. Linda. A word that calls to mind wells trees songs graves. Makes me want to puke. To puke in the well. To puke on the grave. O I won’t puke though. Will eat something though. But what. Maybe some frogs. From where. From the bucket. How did they get in there. They didn’t. They are there. Flourishing. Ribbiting. They would have to be drugged with morphine brew morphine powder. Ribbiting. Jumping into my mouth. Ribbiting. Ribbiting. Can’t be swallowed. Secreting my saliva. Sitting in my saliva. Wallowing in it. They’re inedible. Immortal. Ribbiting.

I fuck babies. Therefore, maybe, I am.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** jay, Hey. I debated giving Bargain Bin Blasphemy its own post, so tempting. I did find that excerpt from that manga very interesting. I’ll put the totality on my wish list and will keep my eyes peeled. Thanks much for that, pal. ** Adem Berbic, I knew Peter Christopherson and, cover your eyes, he really did believe in that stuff. But one invents what sublimity is and then reaches for it, no? I don’t think of sublimity as pre-existing and solid. That probably comes from my younger drug use too, but for me it was the great demystifier LSD. Again, barriers are one’s own invention and what constitutes breaking through as well. I don’t know. I guess my suspicion is re: roundly agreed upon definitions. That’s a helluva great sentence indeed. ** Laura, Hi. Jesse actually showed up here yesterday. Yeah, I know zero about the Islamic occult arts or pretty much every occult art. Interesting to read about, thank you, although it’s a world that my mind usually tends to bounce off like a red rubber ball. I saw your eyes from a distance in that photo but they were in competition with the rest of you. Well, blasphemy posits disbelief as a template for belief? I’d need to think about the Hegel filterers as it’s still morning with mid-level concentration. Uh, I guess I must like when that happens, right? That’s logical. ** _Black_Acrylic, You were in fact being fully clever in my book, sir. ** Carsten, The doctor’s reasoning makes sense, and he’s a doctor, and it’s one of those situations where you have to believe that means something. Luck, man. Oh, granted I’m a lifelong atheist with no pony in the game, but I like how death metal excoriates religion. I assume if you grow up with that stuff hanging over your head it does become a kind of fascism that naturally inspires hostility. Plus I like the theater and ferocity. I like how it empurples the prose. I like it in Bunuel and Sade for the same reason, I guess. But I’m a window shopper re: all that stuff. ** fish, Hi. I too have no religion in me at all and never have. Churches just seemed like assisted living facilities to me as a kid. But I guess I find it interesting in art in the sense that it’s one of the big buttons you can push and drive people crazy. I’m sort of interested in seeing how artists push that button. ** julian, Good question. Maybe they don’t like the idea that Jesus would taste good if you ate him? I haven’t actually heard of ‘Him’. I’ll see what I can find. I am interested in ambitious 70s porn. Yes, ‘Guide’ the novel is, among other things, a sigil that has a specific goal/wish, which of course I can’t reveal because that would be the sigil’s killer. I guess I can say that it didn’t work, or at least not yet. I’ll see if I have an image or so of ‘Chris’ in my ‘TMS’ files. It seems like I must. ** Steeqhen, It seems like you’re saying the colostomy itself went okay, so that’s good. I always believe that if you start believe that you have that much impact on other people the only result is personal misery. Other people are too complex and private to read. I’m not religious at all, like I’ve said, but becoming religious seems like accepting a generality as a truth, and I can’t buy that. Thanks for the clarity on steroids. Ixnay on the anabolic. ** HaRpEr //, No, I mean Artaud is a very brilliant writer. It’s just a taste thing. He’s too exclamatory for me. Yes, I do agree about the My New Band Believe record. It’s quite something and quite unexpected based on his part in black midi. ** Jesse Bransford, Dude, how great to see you! That post is most certainly still alive and kicking based on the output it inspires and the traffic it accrued. That’s so wild that ‘Guide’ was a directive for you in your work. That’s a serious honor for it and me. Wow. We have to find a way to have a real lengthy sit down and catch up one of the near days. I miss you. That would be so awesome. You ever come over to Paris? Love, me. ** Steve, True, but religious people with their hair triggers are such tempting sitting ducks, I guess. I hope the community radio station recognises a gift horse when they’re offered one. I just read somewhere yesterday that Camron Picton likes my work. That completely blows my mind as you can imagine. ** kenley, Yay, the post has found its true blue fan. Now it can skulk off into the past knowing it made a mark. Understood about the envy of the comforted religious people, but they’re such limited people to talk to in most cases, in my experience, and I guess I prefer my confusion to being so easily compartmentalised or something. And I think I’d probably still be confused if I believed anyway. Who knows though. That album does sound very intriguing. Thanks! I’ll go listen to it in a bit. Seems like a total find. Montreal does sound pretty interesting on balance. It sounds a little like Paris but without the welcome ‘live and let live’ vibe over here. I hope the noise in that backyard was sufficiently harsh. ** Hugo, Sneezing blood gets you a hall pass for sure. I’ve never read The Bible. It’s like Proust. I totally get why that tension re: MJ interests you. I mean it is inherently very interesting. I guess for me there are too many people out there interested in him and that stuff, and I trust them to pass along their findings and speculations to a degree that satisfies whatever interest I have. ** Uday, Hi! That’s okay, wholly understood. And I’ve gotten to deal with you a bit outside the blog. But welcome back, and I’ll see if I can get this place to rivet you. xo. ** rewritedept, Hi. The artist doing the graphic novel is Sylvain Bordesoules. He’s had a few graphic novels published in France. He’s very good. My New Band Believe is very different than black midi. I remember thinking ‘Get Out’ was really good until the disappointing last quarter or third. I liked ‘EEAAO’. Maybe a little overrated, but pretty interesting that it was such a success. ** Right. I’ve (re)turned on the blog’s spotlight that once fell on Urs Allemann’s notorious and quite excellent novella. Know it? If not, you can. See you tomorrow.