Hey subs and Chubs!
It’s been a very busy post-Canada Day weekend and I haven’t been around to write here. Maybe you’ll actually like having a short post for once. :)
But I have written a long, provocative piece on my main Concerned Netizen website titled Turning the Friggin’ Frogs Gay in Three Easy Steps which is a bit of a milestone—it goes into more about ritual and cyberspace and how much all the time out of our bodies contributes heavily to “queerness.” It’s a subject both widely discussed in post-human literature and yet also almost entirely unacknowledged in popular discussion. Why is that? Maybe I’ll find out the hard way.
A recent interview with a trans film-director sparked my interest for recapitulating a lot of what I’ve written before about art, spiritualism and psychosis. Check this out:
DREW: I turned 35 this year, and I really met my own limits after TIFF [Toronto Intl’ Film Fest]. I haven’t really described it this way publicly before, but I feel safe saying it here. I really was almost pre-psychotic in a way after TIFF. It showed me that making art is really powerful. And when you wrap your identity into this, when you project your will out there like that, it can be very destructive on your brain and your body. I think specifically about doing psychedelic drugs or something, people have experiences where they’ll literally feel like they’re seeing the Godhead, and billions of souls attached to one giant entity and stuff. That was what the experience of making this film was like.
LABRUCE: And also the ego death, you know?
DREW: Yes.
LABRUCE: You can’t get to the Godhead until you have the ego death, which is like experiencing your own death. It’s interesting, because I had a similar experience with my movie Super 8 ½, which you’ll be talking with me about next week at 2022 Arts + Archives in L.A. We can talk about this at the screening, but I had a kind of a nervous breakdown, prepsychotic, whatever you want to call it, while I was making Super 8 ½.
I’ve a lot of questions. For every person with the talent to work through and overcome such a terrifying experience by creating celebrated art, how many people are just lead or driven into groundless flights of delusion and madness? What are the merits and limitations of art scenes which provide community and structure for interpreting psychoses through analogies with drug trips?
I’d like to watch some of the films by these directors before saying much more, but I really appreciate the honesty in this conversation, give the whole thing a read.
I’ll be back at it soon and writing more regularly, but have a good weekend!