THEATRE OF THE MIND WINE
What is it about the podcast that allows a raw incursion of reality that elevates it into another artistic realm? The accidents and incidents of āreal lifeā puncturing and invading the envelope of interview space. In the first episode of Self Exposure, a new podcast Iām really excited about, Sabrina Small has to exit stage left to speak German with a handyman to unlock a mysterious sealed box. Right in the middle of the conversation. Normally this would irk me but here the busy life beckons me somehow, itās extra information ā and it echoes the fractured attention span that was one of the defining characteristics of probably my favorite podcast series of all time, Alt-Write. In that podcast, the ātheatre of the mindā wine was flowing strong. The interviewers were apparently constantly on the move, especially bibles at work at the steelyard, and āreal lifeā invaded. The connection was frequently lost: cellular signal disappeared, the fragile means of communication was cut and the conversation needed to be repaired and backfilled. A fatalism of COVID-era society at the whims of technology marked everything. It was frustrating as a listener but it also had an aesthetic quality that defied the typically protected form of the interview where everything is edited and people say their names at the beginning and set out the scope of the conversation in a neat, tidy, professional manner. Some brainiac aspect in me wants to bring up Godelās Incompleteness Theorem but I donāt know it well enough to explain why. The podcast interview has holes in it, is porous, and real life floods in. Why is this valuable? Because it knocks the subject off its pedestal? The interviewer and interviewee, the people talking, are not sanctified or protected. Egos are vulnerable to the demands of reality. Often itās technology itself that is the goblin stealing focus away.
In freestyle rap, if you can prove that you are really freestyling and that you didnāt prepare ahead of time by writing your verse, it is a higher display of artistry. Reacting to whatās really going on in the situation where you find yourself. A phone call comes in and the rapper incorporates that into his rhyme: no way he prepared for that. On the edge of an impromptu cipher in Brooklyn at a hip hop event, a kid has been spitting bars continuously and is almost hit by a guy pushing equipment and without pausing he says āthey tryin to run me over, Iām on the run like Red October.ā Unplanned. He was able to fit what was happening into his flow.
I have spoken with Derek Maine ā who is one of the principals from Alt-Write who is also in the first episode of Self Exposure doing much of the work to direct the conversation ā about ācharactersā on Alt-Write. There was a sense of arcs and personas being somehow shaped by the podcast in a way that was not fictional but somehow not quite non-fiction either. Listening in on the meeting place of these voices was a bit like watching reality TV with its notorious ācharacters.ā People being themselves but the media creates a soundstage environment and you start following the relationships with interest as if it was literature. Which, according to some of biblesā currentivist ideas (which I still donāt fully understand), it is literature. Podcasts are literature. The fictive interpenetrates the real, and vice versa. Or maybe better put, a layer of reality punches through the layer on top of it, and the layer above that, etc. It could be that Iām just noticing something which is that some podcasts allow their hosts to have messy lives that interfere. Thatās all. Nothing interesting about it, either formally or content-wise.
I like to pace in my house when Iām on the phone with people. I get out of breath. Itās extra info about me. Itās not great. One thing that often happens when listening to a podcast is that fantasy spark is ignited: āHow would I be on a podcast? How witty and interesting would I be? How would life interfere? Do I even have a life to interfere?ā Often on podcasts people apologize for their dogs barking in the background. And thatās it. Bibles cursed at other workers on the steelyard from his forklift or wandered around narrating his peripatetic adventures, while recording for Alt-Write. They would drive around while talking. Being in motion. Currentivism, the current. I feel I should be paying royalties whenever I use that word. I donāt understand it but it fascinates me. That a literary movement could be right under our noses and we donāt even know it. I just have been reading about Ezra Pound and Modernism and āthe Vortex.ā Donāt even ask me what that means. Vorticism. So many -isms at the beginning of the 20th century. I will need to read more but I think Vortex meant in at least one usage: āthe scene.ā They were part of the London Vortex. Or there was a New York Vortex. Today with the distribution of writers in a cyber fashion there is no clear geographic vortex or scene: itās all over the place. Thatās if youāre willing to grant reality to writers who never physically meet. Is it more of a privilege to meet or never meet? Iām not going to Chicago in June and July to Expat events. I really regret it, but I canāt make it happen. Am I dooming myself to obscurity because I canāt make the scene? I probably would remain obscure even if I went and cut the most tremendous path across all those people in three (or four) dimensions of social life.
I am noticing a slackening of the pressure to publish another book. Maybe the fact that Iām not stressing about it is a canary in the coal mine, a sign that Iām about to die. Publish or perish. Or a hint from the universe that there is still time to compose something worthwhile. I have more fragments of novels than the fashionable millipede has pairs of hot sneakers. A decoupling may be taking place: I donāt feel like I have to rush to get this or that novel out there just now. Iām writing and publishing, in my head. Iām showing it in tiny pieces to small clusters of people. It doesnāt matter in real time. Iām on novel time, which progresses and flows according to a different metric. Iām not Mozart, but I just watched the movie Amadeus and I thought it was such a cool detail the way he serenely composed music on the billiards table, gently rolling the billiard ball so that it caromed off three bumpers and back to him, square like, and in the interim he wrote two or three notes. All while around him his wife and father savagely argued over money. The tranquility of those private beats of time. I want to be suspended in those shapes, those rhombi of sunlight creeping across the wall and floor. Art has to capture time and reality.