WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF MY ILLUSION of seeing a spirit in the triangle of art? Philosophy has nothing to say; and science can only suspend judgement, pending a proper and methodical investigation.

MARQUIS DE SADE presents a purely materialistic rational statement when he writes “Pricks, aye, pricks, those are my gods, those are my kin, my boon companions, unto me they are everything, I live in the name of nothing but the penis sublime; and when it is not in my cunt, nor in my ass, it is so firmly anchored in my thoughts that the day they dissect me it will be found in my brain.” All sense-impressions are dependent upon changes in the brain and so it follows that the phenomenal universe is the creation of the ego.

THE SERPENT IS COILED in the space between the outer and inner circles and it is bright deep yellow. The square in the center of the circle, where the word “Master” is written, is filled in with red. The triangle is to be made 2 feet distance from the circle. The video call is transcribed in the space between the circle and the triangle which is green.

Hi, thanks for speaking with me! I know how carefully you guard your image, so I just wanna reiterate how grateful I am that you’ve agreed to do the interview. I’m so happy, you have no idea. [laughter]

Alright. You’re welcome. I’ll have to keep my camera off, I hope you don’t mind. The connection is frayed. Can you hear me?

You sound frayed. [laughter] Scratchy.

Can you understand me?

Yes, but there’s some distortion... I think what I’m hearing isn’t your actual voice. Not that I need to hear it—I don’t—that would be a weird thing to need. [laughter] [blushing] Sorry, I’m trying to say I don’t need it because I respect your privacy.

You’re okay.

Okay thanks.

You followed my instructions.

Well yeah.

Yeah.

Yes and no. [laughter] I don’t come from a religious background, so I had to improvise. Honestly, I didn’t even know there were seven gods. [laughter] I thought there was just one because like that’s the whole point. Or that’s the brand, you know? [laughter]

There are seven names for the Divine.

Right, well I didn’t know the names. But I read your emails a bunch of times—they’re so amazing—and the sense I got was this is one of those situations where an obedience to form matters more than a respect for content. I guess I figured I could sub in my own names. Invoke like a personal pantheon or something, you know? [laughter]

Okay, so the problem has a source.

The problem?

Our weak connection.

Our weak connection! That’s really sad. [laughter] But do you just wanna logout and try again? Sometimes that’s a fix. Or is it a myth? You know, like blowing on the cartridge. Do you remember doing that? Blowing on the cartridge? [laughter] Sorry, I have no idea if you’re my age. [laughter]

Into the cartridge. You did follow the instructions, yeah?

Yeah.

Aroused the coiled splendor within you?

That is a description of my feelings, yes. [laughter]

I mean is it according to your will that we are speaking?

Oh god absolutely! [laughter] Thank you for obliging me. To be clear, I’ve wanted this conversation to happen for such a long time. Seriously, I’m so happy. The coil is definitely aroused. [laughter]

It’s fine then. Everything will be okay.

Okay, really?

Yes. This isn’t science.

Right, okay. I don’t think it’s science. I just can’t tell if... I don’t know what this is! [laughter] I thought maybe your emails were meant to be funny, you know? Like in a serious way? Or I thought, I don’t know, maybe we’re playing? I also thought maybe he’s fucking with me. I still think maybe that’s what’s happening. I wish I could see your expression. [laughter] Sorry. Honestly um whatever this is, I’m into it. I watch a lot of Kenneth Anger, so... I inscribed his name actually. [laughter]

Kenneth Anger’s name.

On the serpent, yeah. [laughter] Marquis de Sade’s too. [laughter] I read somewhere—I think it was in BOMB—that you’ve also been influenced by Sade. Maybe we could begin the interview there. Would you want to tell me about your relationship to Sade and how his work has shaped your approach to filmmaking?

You inscribed Sade’s name.

He’s divine, so yeah. [laughter]

He is dead.

[laughter] I know.

You know.

Well. Yeah.

Spirit is alive.

Is it? [laughter] Doesn’t always feel that way.

Gods are living, always.

Okay maybe what I’m saying is some of mine died. Well but Culture Club got back together, I think. Does that count? They reincarnated. [laughter] Or no, reanimated? Resurrected! They resurrected, yeah. [laughter]

[growling] This is the source.

[blushing] Of our weak connection.

Yes.

[blushing] I’m sorry. Now I think you’re being serious. Hey, do you wanna logoff real quick? We could start the call again and see if that helps. Or listen, would you prefer to reschedule?

You can hear me? You understand me...

Yeah. Yes.

Okay then. Nothing is wrong.

Okay, thank god. How are you? [laughter]

Buoyed. I was psyched to receive your email.

[laughter]

I am psyched.

I don’t know. If you’re psyched, then I’m ecstatic. [laughter] I definitely wasn’t expecting a reply... three years later! [laughter]

I apologize. Time is odd.

Sure, sure. [laughter] Well that’s okay... that’s okay. [laughter] Sorry. I’m sorry I’m laughing so much. [laughter] I’m just really happy... seriously. [laughter]

Me too. I’m all pleasure and purple.

Oh okay. [laughter] Well. Truly, your films meant so much to me when I was a graduate student. And actually I just watched The Strange Case again this morning because I wrote about it in my shitty dissertation, which I’m currently trying to revise into something... I don’t know, whatever, less shitty? [laughter] Maybe we should begin the interview there. Do you wanna talk about The Strange Case?

Okay. Sure.

Excellent... this is awesome. [laughter] You launched your career by publishing a series of beautifully sadistic montages on YouTube under the channel name Rachilde. For readers who may be unaware, the pseudonym is an homage to the nineteenth century decadent novelist of the same name—

And the ghost of the nobleman residing in the novelist’s body, also called Rachilde. One of my favorite writers.

Right, okay... well, the cinematography of The Strange Case marks a departure from the remediated quality of those earlier works. Not only is The Strange Case your first attempt at telling an original story with a coherent linear narrative, it’s also your feature debut. And it’s basically a satiric documentary, correct? A mockumentary?

More or less.

A note to readers who have yet to view The Strange Case: it is possible to stream the film for free here .

It is possible... which isn’t to say it is worth your while.

Oh stop! The Strange Case is a fantastic movie! It’s a satire of academia in present-day America, one that takes particular aim at scholars of literary theory. The film’s principal characters are comp lit professors employed in tenured positions at east-coast research institutions. They appear to be white and pushing sixty years of age. They are not queer, not explicitly, however like decaying European aristocrats, they’re straight in a way that’s a little bit gay. [blushing] Sorry, I’m not sure how else to put it. And then there’s the undeniable homosocial eroticism structuring the relationships in the group, which, you know, always reads as violently repressed homosexual desire [blushing] to me. Okay so, The Strange Case chronicles these characters and their relationships as they collaborate to deliver a panel presentation before a small audience of like-minded academics at a humanities center in New York City. The subject of the presentation is The Yale School of Deconstruction, and what begins as a grotesque memorial to deconstruction at Yale quickly burgeons into something like a hysterical funeral service for poststructuralism writ large. Lots of crying and raging, lots of tripping the wire separating wet nostalgia for the Eighties from irate bitterness because it is no longer the Eighties... somehow the energy is both farcical and dangerous. Spoiler: there’s a moment near the end when the malevolent ghost of Paul de Man takes possession of the body of one of the panelists. [laughter] I want to ask you about the decisions you made when you were casting the film. I could be wrong, but my understanding is that you declined to use professional actors, opting instead to contract working academics who play versions of themselves on the screen. What did it take to convince these academics to appear as themselves? And was it an explicit goal of yours to humiliate these people and their life’s work? If so, how did you square that objective with the political and ethical commitments of your creative project as a whole?

The actors were willing to humiliate themselves. Poststructuralists are masochists of the most adolescently authoritarian variety: crying and raging is their métier. So yes, those academics had quite a bit of fun acting in my movie. And wouldn’t you know, they were unchanged by the experience. The process effected zero transformation upon the structuring logic of their relationships. Their sociality remained catatonically static. To the individual panelists, however, there came moderate increases in wealth and power which made me want to kill myself so I did. For those reasons and others, I consider The Strange Case to be a cosmic failure. Nobody likes The Strange Case, by the way. You’re the only person I’ve found who seems to be genuinely taken with it. Most viewers feel nothing for the film except for the vaguest longing to recuperate a portion of the pure unadulterated life that is quietly extracted as the parcel of time one forfeits in watching it. They do not care for or cannot detect the irony. They see the flat insipid image of a violently repressed academic delivering a dreary presentation on a dated subject that is at best of no consequence and at worst a virulent distraction from everything that matters.

I’m sorry. I guess all I can do is underscore my gratitude. As I told you in my email, it felt like a miracle to find The Strange Case precisely when I needed it most. The department that educated me was enthralled by deconstruction... and I rejected it. Thus I was not a good student. Well no... it's more like I refused to submit to the law. No... I don’t know. Nothing I’ve said is accurate. It isn’t meaningful, the difference between refusal and failure. I can remember everything I did and yet I am unable to access the truth of my actions.

The truth of action is the force of the will.

In the end, I decided to let them believe they had rightly ascertained through the augury of the exam that I just didn’t know how to read. And then, instantaneously appeased by the con, they awarded me the degree, which I traded for the seeds that I swallow to engender the breath of the demon I’m becoming.

Listen. The world does not diminish by the inch each time you achieve the alignment of body and will... it multiplies. Your only task is to learn the infinite ways there are for relishing it: the surplus of pleasure and knowledge brought on by the marvelous alignment. Are you willing to learn?

I’m not a student anymore.

That's okay. Are you willing?

Everything’s just families and houses now. Without time, without art. Nobody to write, no writing. There's a job and the conversation about liking it. How is that even possible?

I don't know. It's possible.

What the fuck. Now it’s just curdling, curdling and talking about liking it. I mean, come on, what is that? A parasitical passion for excommunicating thought—I swear it's a passion, the liking. It perfects them by replacing them with itself. Dumb aspics, they suck it in like jellied air. They donate themselves to it, some thicker apocalypse, stronger than nature... why? For what? Oh my god, fuck their families. Fuck their houses. I won’t curdle. I will not congeal. Fuck that, I’ll die. Yeah, I guess I’ll just die.

No.

But they've left me for dead.

You're not dead.

Those fuckers. Those congealing fuckers. They’ll just watch.

Alright.

I'm exaggerating... sure.

You resent them.

I horrify them.

The horror is senseless: it means nothing.

It's tucked up in the fold of their liking: the seam of my resentment.

They've bet on the loss. Don’t bet on the loss.

Blackish jelly. The black currant emptied of time. Nothing comes after. You think I am free to leave... no, I am used.

But there are finer uses. There are finer ways to get used: our exquisite collaboration. Come now. [barking] You’re an artist. You’re a writer, are you not? Let’s begin.

Who are you?

Your collaborator.

I saw you... in the woods?

[snorting, puffing]

What? Oh my god. Fuck you.

[growling]

But I wanted to talk to you! I tried to feed you that carrot—oh my god, that fucking baby carrot! You trotted off. You just trotted away, like some kind of trotting animal in the woods and then the world clicked shut... and I didn’t even know what to call you, you asshole! I searched for weeks. I looked for you, don’t you know, with those fucking baby carrots in my pockets like some kind of mad... oh my god, they believe I am mad.

Are you not mad?

I’m livid. [growling] Livid, in front of them... who are strangers! They’re strangers, oh my god. But come on, who serves baby carrots? I mean fuck god, fuck. Must everything be meager and weak? Has austerity come for the vegetables too? Nothing is plentiful but sorrow and shame, nothing gigantic but exhaustion? And what, I’m just supposed to swallow it? A baby carrot. Really? Some people eat with their eyes, you know! I mean fuck, the least they could’ve done is given me something to want! A standard carrot at the very least. Have you ever seen one? A standard carrot? It’s formidable, a glorious vegetable! Put a standard carrot next to a baby carrot atop one of those fucked rustic boards they use to arrange their food on and there’s no contest: I pity the baby carrot. And I didn’t even want to have dinner! Don’t you know that? That’s the thing, I had wanted to set up a meeting, to do it professionally. They were the ones who suggested we have dinner. Really? Okay but now? And sure, the house was nice. Also they handed me a bunch of beers, like one after another, which I downed pretty rapidly—so as to be philanthropic, mind you! I can’t admire a house whilst sober. There can’t be many people on this earth with the ability to achieve something like that! And you have to do that, you know, you have to say it aloud: nice house, absolutely stunning! I mean that kind of shit? It doesn’t come easily. And I was pretty starving so I didn’t want to overdo it, the enthusiasm, or else the tour would never end... but that’s not the point. The point is dinner was baby carrots. Just baby carrots. Like a hill of them. A small hill, a hillock? A little pile of them! Heaped upon a cutting board. Because that’s what it was, it’s what those things are! At the end of the day, what we’re really talking about here are just your average run-of-the-mill wooden cutting boards, a dime a dozen, but drape the foods just so and well then you’ve got yourself a mood. But not if you’re serving carrots, just carrots... babies! Plus, they dropped it! The cutting board, they didn’t even lower it gently. Did not set it down hospitably, no they dropped it from a great height onto the coffee table, as if to say have at it! I mean come on... carrots rolling all over the place. That’s not dinner! That is a crudité. For a pony! Also a mind fuck, right? I swear it was some half-baked attempt to throw me off my game, so I decided to just launch right into it then and there, my whole spiel. Thanks but no thanks. I’m gonna politely bow out now. I am going to delicately extricate myself. I shall have to quietly remove myself from this... this project? I almost said cult! But I didn’t think they’d take kindly to a word like that. So okay this project... it’s been fairly meaningful, yeah? It was very slightly meaningful whilst it lasted, sure. And for sure I’m so grateful we could at least get dinner out of it, am I right? How nice is this? The house too! And the cutting board! Stunning! Stunning specimens of American carpentry! Congrats, okay? Congrats and goodbye. Well, I don’t think they were ready to hear something like that. Or maybe they were ready to hear it, that’s the thing, because they were prepared. They had prepared. They’d printed it out and everything, the paperwork. They dropped that too! They slapped it down, the infernal packet, right next to the cutting board and the carrots! Would I mind filling it out? It might persuade me to change my mind because it’s a game-changer, this paperwork, and isn’t that what I want? What I long for? A change? They’d needed one too. Because they’d been suicidal before. Frankly, they whispered. They were frankly and practically suicidal before... but then they completed the paperwork and next they submitted the paperwork and promptly the paperwork was honored—see for yourself, this is a house, is it not? It is, I said... congrats? And they said: thank you. Yep, they said, we think we are happy now. You heard me. They said they think they are happy now. They think? And then they said right? Like to one another. And they said it again. They exchanged rights with one another. Right? Right. Right? Right. Right? Right? Right? Right? And then I asked them to stop because when you say it that way it isn’t very convincing. I wasn’t convinced. Plus, I didn’t want a house. I wanted... oh, fuck it. I didn’t know how to put it to them. Oh my god. Whatever. Okay sure, I wanted a collaborator. You know. I wanted a collaborator, okay? Alright, they said. Just don’t do anything rash, not before checking out the art department. I told them I already did that. I checked it out. And? Nobody, I said. Nothing, nada, et cetera. Really, they said, nobody who shaves the sides of their head? And then I was like what the fuck! You know that’s not what I mean! I mean sure, hair matters. Okay, at a certain stage or a particular hour of the day hair matters a little bit. To be honest, theirs was beginning to become a tiny problem for me. But first of all, what they said, that is not an accurate description of my hair! Secondly, hair is last on my list, okay? Last! I mean hair is fairly beside the point, wouldn’t you agree? They crossed their arms, said we think our hair is fairly alternative. Fairly alternative? Yes, fairly alternative... alternative, unconventional, nonconforming... you get it, take your pick. But I don’t want it. Because it’s hair. It’s your hair, I said. Your hair! I mean, just what do you expect me to do with it? Would you like me to eat it? Do you want me to eat your hair? What, I suppose I should chop it up and make a savory paste with it? Dip those baby carrots into it and swallow it? Then what. I shall live here in your ghastly forever like, I don’t know, some kind of petrified gumdrop? Fine! I can do that. I’ll eat your hair, alright? I’ll eat it straight off your gelatinous heads if that’s what you need—but only because I want to survive the evening. I want to walk out of this house alive, do you hear? NO ONE TOUCHES ME! I DON’T GET HURT! They took a step back and told me to calm down. Hey now, they said. Hey now, hey. All we’re saying is our hair is fairly non-normative so we’re like, you know, basically friendly. Oh my god! Don’t say that! Never say that! Before they said that I was honestly beginning to suspect the commentary on hair was merely a diabolical tool devised by them to disavow what I... you know, something like a simpleton’s gambit constructed in their image to completely efface and absolutely deny my... it doesn’t matter. Perhaps they only wanted some congrats, right? So I gave them some congrats: congrats on the hair, congrats on the cutting board, congrats on the house! Thank you, they said. They said: yep, we think our life here is fairly nice. You heard me. They told me they think their life is fairly nice. Then they said right a bunch of times again and all the while they’re flipping open the packet of papers and pressing a pen into the palm of my hand. That’s when I snapped—I’m speaking literally now—the pen in two. Recently I’ve become fairly strong, okay? Physically strong, basically. But not emotionally strong or socially strong, which probably explains why I did what I did next. I grabbed two handfuls of baby carrots and fled into the woods. Oh, they’ve got some woods behind their house alright. It really was a stunning situation, that whole apparatus. Truth be told, I’d already been dreaming obsessively about fleeing into those woods... but I was hungry, which is why I stuffed some baby carrots into the pockets of my jeans. Then I exited through the backdoor. The house came with a backdoor, yep. Stunning, congrats! And I sprinted through the backdoor, maybe breaking it? Look, this was a fragile apparatus. At the end of the day, the whole situation was fragile as fuck and I had become fairly strong: physically. Bigger too, basically. I tore through the backdoor, maybe literally—felt no pain though—and promptly slipped into the woods where I immediately spotted you, which was miraculous, totally miraculous—fuck the art department and a curse on its name—and I had all those baby carrots on me, remember, literally spilling forth from my being... and I was pretty sure you eat those. Carrots are a portion of your diet, correct? What I mean is I’m pretty sure your head eats carrots... right? See when I beheld you momentarily in the woods, I noticed that you’re a composite. You’re a little bit of a composite, okay? That’s fine. I don’t mind. I’m merely trying to explain my behavior. I was operating under the assumption that carrots are standard fare for the type of head you have. Therefore I extended a carrot to you as an offering. You ran away. I gave chase. And then they located me. They dragged me back to the house, congrats, manually—they yanked me indoors. It made them worry intensively, they said, to watch me run off like that into their woods. And then to find me... just running like that? In their woods? Well, they hope it wasn’t due to anything they’d said because they meant no offense by whatever it was. Okay, I said... and the paperwork? The paperwork! they said. Don’t be silly! Don’t you give that paperwork another thought tonight. We’ll try again tomorrow because one would be wise to sign the papers first thing in the morning... but for now, one should rest. Like right here and at once. Well, I flipped out. They couldn’t possibly believe that I was psychologically prepared to spend the night in their house with them. I said thanks but no thanks. I’ll sleep in the woods, for the bleeding moon is oozing and brighter than advertised and I for one would like nothing more than to lie beneath it so as to catch the drippings in my throat. I mean have you ever had such an epiphany—in terror? And then sprinted into the woods and changed your entire point of view? I gushed for a while about the experience, which they tolerated. But they weren’t paying attention. So I had to demand they listen to what I was saying. I wasn’t saying: a man or a deer. I wasn’t saying: a man and a deer. I’m not even saying a man plus a deer. Get those words out of your heads! Throw them away, okay? Listen. What I’m saying is: a deer with a masculine chest. I’m saying a deer with a masculine chest... in your woods! I saw a deer with a masculine chest in your woods. Do you hear? Yes, they said, ew. Then what they did next was they made a noise like eek and shut me inside one of the smaller rooms. They told me to collect myself. I was like jesus christ what the fuck is this? Turns out they were standing nearby, on the other side of the door, so they replied. It’s a house. I told them congrats on the house and then I broke out of it, slipping into the woods once more. They grabbed me again and again they dragged me... this time to the station wagon. They yanked me straight up inside of it. Very nice, a hatchback. Basically they loaded me up and drove me home. They deposited me on the lawn of the apartment complex. I returned to them on foot, pretty much immediately. Yep, I jogged right back over and entered the woods. I kept doing that... repeatedly, consistently. In fact, I do it continuously. I am continuously roaming their property—mad creep with baby carrots—and it hardly matters the identities of the twisted minds or fairly non-normative hairs that did once conspire to serve that diminutive demonic dinner... because now the carrots are mine. Those carrots are mine now, mine. They’re my cross. Fucking baby cross! And that’s a pathetic way to make a name for oneself, wouldn’t you agree?

Alright. There, there. I’ll agree. I’m agreeing with you, see? It’s okay. Everything will be okay. But you must tell me and tell me honestly... did you eat it?

What, the hair?

Be honest with me now. Did you eat any portion at all? Any fraction, no matter how small or short?

Did I eat it. Fuck you! I wouldn’t handle it with falconer’s gloves, wouldn’t poke its bloated remains with—

Good! You did good, okay? Our future lives. Look, I don’t want to waste any more time on this matter. It sounds like you had an abominable dinner. That dinner was a hazard, okay? A legitimate trauma. We’ve all had them. Come, come. You’ll be alright. This is me comforting you from an impossible distance which I suggest we close, officially. Now, as I touched upon earlier in our conversation, I did something very stupid in twenty-seventeen—I killed myself—and yet the desire to finish my work remains. I want to finish my work. I need to finish my work. You’re an artist, a writer: you understand.

Sure. Of course.

Excellent, very well. For transparency’s sake, please allow me to explain that even though natural law will automatically prohibit something like a refusal between us to occur, I have decided nonetheless to pitch my proposition as a promise because I suspect the words will move you more powerfully in that form given the experiences you’ve shared with me... that dinner was truly unconscionable.

It was vile, right?

You are in need of a promise. Please, allow me to give one to you. If you consent to accept me into your container, which is becoming gigantic and will only grow in marvelous dimension as our days unfold, then I promise to eat as many baby carrots as you desire. In fact, we will eat the miniature vegetables together. You have my word. I shall never refuse you again.

Thank you. I don’t know what to say.

I require your consent. You must say yes.

I feel like I should tell you something first... I hate baby carrots.

As do I. The mere fact of their existence justifies the notion of genocide.

Wow. [laughter] I guess I’m not that extreme... but it’s alright. I mean, I certainly understand baby carrots. I get them, okay? They’re the same as standard carrots. You think I don’t know that? It’s literally the same material, just shaped differently or cut in a different fashion. I know. But I don’t care. Because I don’t enjoy them. I don’t know why. [blushing] The baby ones taste like shit to me.

I agree. I curse them mightily. [shouting in Latin] A pox upon the house of baby carrots!

Exactly, exactly. [laughter] Okay so what I enjoy is basically writing all day. I mean, whenever a day exists. Frequently reading. And then in the evening, I like to wear headphones and sit outside and listen to music—it must be very loud—whilst sucking a beer and a cigarette.

Divine.

And what, you’re saying we’d both be doing that? Like together, encased in the blood and the meat and... time?

As one and more.

Oh my god, I knew it. I knew this was part of it! I fucking knew it! And I’ve been waiting. I’ve been waiting for you. Because the body can only get so big. You know.

I do—and the enormity is glorious—but you must say it. [growling] Say yes.

Yes.

TO MAKE THE GREATER CURSE

observe thou also the moon in thy working, for

For more information about this piece, see this issue's legend.