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Of Montreal interview
March ‘254 Static Magazine; read on their site here
Known for free-flowing collaboration–like 50 people playing 50 snare drums at once–and glittery psychedelic pop music inspired by the Beatle-esque sounds of the 1960s, Elephant 6 served as an influential trampoline for the Of Montreal pupper master, Kevin Barnes. They loved the unceasing, unworried creativity that seeped out of the music and its accompanying fantastical performance art– a freedom which can be attributed to the fortunately unfortunate fact that most Elephant 6 bands were effectively off the radar of major labels.
The scene began to fade around the same time that Barnes became interested and soon after absorbed into electronic and dance music. Over the course of their career, they recorded to cassettes on a 4-track, graduated to computer recording, then revisited tape for its charming quality. In the process, they pumped out 19 studio albums, crossing, mixing, and twisting genres like pop, indie, funk, psychedelic, electronic–and probably some stew of noises none of us would know how to name. Along with the recorded music itself, Barnes’ live shows have garnered a notorious reputation for the wonderfully weird, with seemingly endless ideas for dances, costumes, props, lights, and performers.
This past March, Barnes revisited one of their most beloved records, The Sunlandic Twins. Originally released with 13 tracks, the 20th Anniversary Edition boasts 53 recordings, amounting to a casual 2 hours and 45 minutes worth of blissfully mind-microwaving sonic epics. This includes the songs you’ve heard, the ones you probably haven’t, the ones you definitely haven’t (aka an unreleased treasure trove), some remixes, some demixes and a generous lot of live recordings from Norfolk, Virginia in 2006.
I had the honor to chit-chat with Barnes about two weeks shy of the release of The Sunlandic Twins 20th Anniversary Edition. When they answered the phone, they were in the middle of a hike in the uncivilized forests of Vermont with their two dogs and casually carried on most of the interview through their hiking.
We spoke about how they might want to zipline across the audience, what breeds their mutt dogs might be mixed with, and how depression sucks. But we also talked about music too, like the second-to-none role of performance in their work, the story of when they began producing for bands like Godcaster, and their process of putting together the perfect setlist that’s fun for both the audience and the band.
And hey, if you ever wanted to get human hair dropped on you like confetti, maybe go to one of their shows in America this summer.
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Miles: How are you doing?
Kevin: It’s good. I’ve been building this little recording studio and I spent the day painting it. Now I’m on a hike with my dogs.
M: Wait, currently right now? Do you hike a lot?
K: Uh huh. We live in the forest in Vermont and there’s so many endless acres all around us. It’s great just to get out in the woods with the dogs.
M: Oh yeah, that's the dream. You’re up in Vermont now, but you were living in Athens, Georgia for much of your early adulthood and career–what was the balance like between Southern conservatism and the lively pocket community of Elephant 6?
K: The conservatives didn’t really encroach into our world very much because Athens is a little liberal bubble. It was pretty easy for us to exist without that stuff entering the equation. But to be honest, the conservatism was one of the reasons I moved from Athens. I was getting sick of being surrounded by so many of those morons, so we moved up to Vermont to be around more like-minded, progressive people.
M: Speaking of Elephant 6, you've talked about how no one really cared about what y'all were doing. You weren't on any major labels, and you had the freedom to experiment. Do you ever miss being in those sort of DIY scenes? What do you think is lost and gained from growing out of that?
K: Definitely a sense of community and having collaborators was lost. It felt really special to be a part of what everybody was working on, playing on each other's records and going on tours together. Especially when we were first starting out, it was incredible to have that support group of like-minded people that were doing really great things. We definitely inspired and motivated each other to keep working.
M: I've read that there was a ton of collaboration in those spaces. There were at times 15+ people playing the same acoustic guitar part or 50 people playing 50 snare drums. But now, like you said, you live in Vermont in a forest outside of civilization. What sort of role do you think collaboration versus solitude plays in your practice?
K: I got a lot out of that collaboration in Elephant 6, but after a while, the scene splintered. Then I tried to turn Of Montreal into a collective in a way, with performance and visual artists and different kinds of musicians. It's not the same thing as Elephant 6 because it's a bit more insular, but it's something adjacent to what that was. I’m working alone now, but I have definitely collaborated with people since then. The weird thing about Vermont is that there actually are a lot of people that I could work with. I've started making more friends in the music scene, and I had someone play on one of my new songs. I can see how it could actually be a similar environment here as it was back then in Elephant 6.
M: I recently saw you play in December [2024] at that festival in Austin. Before going into it, I really didn't have much of an idea that you had such a huge performance aspect to your work…And it just blew my mind a little bit. When did that love for performance start?
K: There definitely was a lot of that happening in Elephant 6. People wouldn't really approach it in the typical indie rock fashion of just going on stage in your street clothes; or if you did, your street clothes were more interesting than normal street clothes. Seeing those Elephant 6 guys and what they were doing was really cool, like Olivia Tremor Control, The Music Tapes, and Neutral Milk Hotel. At the same time, I was rediscovering Prince and getting more into Bowie and Kate Bush and all these different artists that had a really strong theatrical element. It definitely becomes more of a traveling circus when you have so much going on on stage. Even just the day-to-day touring experience is more fun because there's more people and personalities. You never get bored of anybody because you could always just go talk to this other person. Everybody is bringing in something special. In that sense, I do have a community when I go on tour just because there's so many of us.
M: When you said traveling circus, it just reminded me of all those objects and costumes and props. Where does all of that go after the show? Is there any sort of archive of all this stuff?
K: Sadly, a lot of it has been lost and the things that we really like live in my brother's garage. We used to have a storage space and we had all this stuff packed in there, but then we realized we're never going to bring these things out again, so we just got rid of them. But we try to re-use the props in different formats and it's fun doing that. We could take a mask or something that we had made specially for us, and then add some other new layer to it that actually transforms it into something new.
M: Who's making these things? Do you just have an idea and you're like, “hey, I know a guy who could make that.”
K: Pretty much. We've definitely used a handful of different people. Often my brother will draw a sketch of what he wants it to look like, and he’ll either make it himself or we'll find someone to realize it. Sometimes one of the other performance artists will make some costumes. We try to do as much in-house as possible just to keep things less expensive, but sometimes it's something really special and it requires somebody that actually has a ton of talent in that area.
M: I think that adds to the whole collective thing you were talking about. Have you ever had any performance ideas that have been shut down?
K: Definitely the one idea that I thought would’ve been cool that got shut down was to collect a bunch of human hair from hair salons, and do a balloon drop on the crowd. I don't think it was a bad idea, but it would be really creepy.
M: Oh my gosh, that would be crazy. It would be like when people drop confetti from the ceiling, except it's just human hair.
K: Yeah, it'd probably be really awful.
M: And then getting people's mouths.
K: Oh, that'd be terrible.
M: Yeah definitely. Well looping back to your origins, I've seen that you were doing a lot of work on 4-track at first, but now obviously you're a huge artist and you have the resources to have big studio production if you wanted to. How does fidelity affect your songwriting and recording process?
K: I used to use a cassette 4-track because I didn't have anything else and it was the least expensive way to do it. But then I loved analog recording so I started getting nicer tape machines and kept moving in that direction for a long time.
Later, I started getting into more computer recording because it's really quick and you can experiment in an insane amount of different ways. It’s really fast because you don't have to clean the tape heads, put the tape on the machine, and get it all set up. Computer recording is just faster and easier, but at the same time it can feel kind of sterile.
But there's something really special about analog recording. I actually own a tape machine again and we've made some recordings on tape fairly recently. It's always weirdly really fun even though it requires more of an effort. You can't really comp tracks in the same way that you can with a computer so you actually have to be able to play the parts, which is a challenge, but it's fun in that way.
Tape recording also has a natural vibiness and distinct personality to it that computer recording doesn't really have just because it's not as common anymore.
K: We've been playing shows with them for many years and when I first met them, I just thought they were incredible. They have so much energy. The lead singer is one of my favorite front people because he has such a strong, weird, kind of scary, kind of loving vibe to him. He's incredible and the band is an incredible group of people. I love hanging out with them when we tour together.
They were fans and asked, “Hey, would you be interested in working with us?” and I was like, “Definitely.” So they came up to Vermont and stayed in my house. And it was really fun because each one of them does their own side recording and we made each room its own little recording station. The house was filled with music and they're really funny and fun people, so it was a great experience.
M: Have you ever had any moments during this process or past projects where you had a really cool idea for one of their songs and kind of wished you kept it for yourself?
K: Not really because most of the people that I've worked with have had a really strong sense of what they wanted to do and a really strong identity of their own. Sometimes Godcaster would ask me to play bass on a song and hearing my bass on their song was almost upsetting for me because I was thinking, “I'm ruining your song, I'm making it sound like a stupid Of Montreal song.”
M: You've talked a lot about not wanting to get pigeonholed into any certain sound, so in response, you keep hopping around between genres. You've done funk, psych, indie, electronic, etc. Is there any genre that you've been wanting to try out?
K: Quiet acoustic type songs have been something I don't want to do because I don't want to put people to sleep with boring music, but I've actually been writing a lot of songs in that style recently and my new record might actually be more like that. I've always worried that this is just adult contemporary singer songwriter bullshit. The Vermont vibe is very much someone playing an instrument and singing cool lyrics, and I think I've definitely been inspired and influenced by that.
M: A new record! Is that exciting?
K: I'm always working on something so once a record comes out, I instantly jump into a new project. So it's exciting in a sense but it's also kind of just my life.
M: That's beautiful you just immediately hop back into another record. Do you ever get burnt out?
K: I've definitely had periods where I haven't been very inspired and I've had different mental problems like depression and that can feel like a block in work. I've had periods where I haven't been feeling it but lately I have been.
M: What usually kicks you back into gear when you're like, “Okay I haven't recorded in a while, maybe I should get back in there.”
K: In a weird way my self-esteem is very much connected to my current work and if I'm not creating something then I start to have a lower self-esteem and I just feel worse about myself. So it's really important for me to always stay engaged in that way.
Can you hear my dogs fighting?
M: Yeah I thought that was the wind a little bit. Wait–this isn’t music-related at all, but what kind of dogs do you have?
K: They're both mutts. One of them looks like a black lab but she doesn't actually have much black lab. She's more what they call a Mountain Cur, which I had never heard of before, with some pit bull and some husky. She has two different colored eyes, she's very cute.
The other one is also super cute and she's a mix of German shepherd and black lab. She's like a little dumpling.
M: Thanks for humoring me, I just really wanted to know.
Back to music and such. There's not a lot of genderqueer artists out there yet that have amassed the same level of popularity as you have. What's it like being non-binary in music but also just being such a huge presence?
K: I guess to be honest I don't see myself as that but it's really nice that you would say that. I feel like we all have to live our truth and I don't really think of myself as doing anything other than that so it's pretty easy. When you can just accept yourself for who you are and make sense of your reality that way then it makes it easier to do you.
M: Do you think the music industry as it stands effectively serves the queer and trans community?
K: As far as artists being able to be themselves and find their own audience, it's totally fine. The industry to me–the people who get Grammys and sell out arenas–I don't really even think of that as music, that's like Walmart. It's just corporate and there's not much there. I think we're in a cool time with people like Chappell Roan becoming extremely famous. It seems like a more open-minded industry than it was when I was younger. We're probably moving in the right direction with it.
M: How was it when you were younger?
K: Very heteronormative. There were super famous people who were obviously gay, like George Michael, but they weren't really allowed to be out of the closet. It just seemed pretty toxic in general. The world that I grew up in was so toxic, it's insane to think about it now.
M: Do you feel like being open with sexuality and gender in your music was something that came natural to you, even at the very early part of your career?
K: Weirdly it did come naturally, probably because I wasn't on a major label and I didn't have a huge audience. I felt like the music was just for me and my own personal journey. No one was really mean aside from a few writers being really cruel about it. In general it seemed like the stakes were very low for me, especially early on, and because of that, I could really explore that side of my psyche. I didn't fight it. I'm realizing now that I have been a very closed off person in my real life, but I've been able to be a more dynamic person in my creative life. For whatever reason, it was always a safe space for me to explore different personas and feelings, express those in the music and not feel self-conscious about it.
M: With the Sunlandic Twins 20th Anniversary Edition, how has it been revisiting work you created 20 years ago?
K: It's interesting because a lot of the songs have just been a part of the daily fabric of our lives–it's not like we wrote them, recorded them, and then never played them again. And so many of the songs have been a part of the set forever and it doesn't really feel like revisiting some old trend. But then there's some songs that we've never played, so those are actually exciting to do and set up in a way that it's not like, "Oh yeah, we're gonna bore everyone with this deep cut that you've never heard before." Hopefully, if people are coming to the show, it's because they are fans of the whole album and they're excited that we're playing songs we don’t play often.
It's funny when you tour and putting a set list together. On a normal tour, we don't want to just play the most popular songs, we also want to play some songs that we're vibing with. But we have to anticipate that the songs we play that aren't that popular are probably gonna get less of a reaction than the super popular ones. If you just expect that, it's fine.
I think this environment with the anniversary tour will actually be a different scenario where people will be like, "Oh cool, they're playing that slower weirder song that doesn't really work as far as keeping the energy going, but it's just its own musical moment.” I'm actually really excited about it.
M: Are you bringing back any sort of old performance shenanigans from that Sunlandic Twins era or testing out anything new?
K: Mostly new. We're doing it almost like a rock opera, but adjacent to that where the theatrics and visuals have a lot of pre-production. Certain songs lend themselves to a bigger theatrical or visual moment, and then other songs might lend themselves to a more party atmosphere. So we're just going through each song and figuring out what would enhance the music the most.
M: You've had a crazy massive career, obviously tons of records, tons of tours. Are there any bucket list items you've yet to check off?
K: It's a good question. I haven't really thought about it because anytime I get an idea, I'm pretty much able to experience it. I'll have to think about something that I've never done, but it’s crazy when you watch the Grammys or arena shows, and people will do some insane thing like acrobatics or ziplining while you're singing a song–it's pretty funny.
It might be cool to be in one of those crash derby races where you're smashing your car into other cars while singing.
M: There's just a camera in the car showing you singing, and it's on a giant megatron. That would be huge.
Do you have any musical pipe dreams?
K: I think it'd be really fun to work with some people like Thundercat, Flying Lotus, D'Angelo. Oh–collaborating with Björk would be amazing.
M: Oh yeah you and Björk would make some crazy songs. You could just email her–invite her up to Vermont, say, “hey, come hike with me and then make a song with me.”
K: That's a good idea, you never know.
M: Okay well that's everything I have, thanks so much talking with me. Are you still hiking over there?
K: I stopped because I didn’t want to be breathing heavy.
M: Okay well you didn’t sound like you were taken aback at all. You sounded very fit and able to talk and hike at the same time.
K: Okay cool.
Juliette Collet Interview
July ‘24For Bluekeys Magazine Issue #5
AN INTERVIEW WITH THE INFAMOUS JULIETTE COLLET--NEW YORK-BASED ARTIST & FILMMAKER & MUSICIAN. WE SAT DOWN WITH COLLET IN HER FOREST GREEN SANCTUARY, MUGS OF WATER IN HAND (COURTESY OF COLLET HERSELF), AND TALKED DATING & SEX LIVES, FINDING COMMUNITY THROUGH ZINES IN A NEW CITY, AND HOW TWO FRIENDS AND A COUPLE BEERS CAN RUN A PUBLISHING COMPANY.
Miles: Alright, so here we are, with four issues of Blah Blah Blah under your belt, Blah Blah Blah being your solo comic anthology that changed my life. It's experienced a significant style change from the beginning to now, from a sort of traditional comic style to the incredibly unique multimedia style that you have now. How did you get there? But you have to answer this using the structure of a three-act play with pivotal moments, lessons, and people that have molded your style.
Juliette: Okay before any of the acts, here’s the context: This is somebody who’s been incredibly bored and dissatisfied with whatever experiences life had to offer--dissatisfied with people and the way that they behave, the things that they find interesting, the things that people like to talk about. So that's the background.
[cont.]: And then there's actually a very straightforward answer to the beginning of things, and that is I went into Desert Island, which is a punk comic bookstore in Brooklyn. I actually don't think that store is very punk at all, but they do maintain one tenet of their punk ideology, which is they will sell anything as long as it's an illustrated book. They have this agreement with the store next door, Quimby's, that [the other store] gets literature and photo zines, but Desert Island will sell the illustrated zines. I walked in and the store owner, Gabe, told me "Oh, do you have a book? We'lI sell it," and I said "Oh, I have this photo zine," and he said, "Oh, no, we don't do photo zines, it has to be an illustrated zine." And so I was so taken by the fact that anybody could come in and have a platform that I made a zine and I made it personal and I was in art school and I was upset with what I felt was kind of an impersonal and smartass kind of way of making artwork that was uninteresting for audiences and uninteresting to me. So I made this zine and I distributed like 10 copies at school and I put some in Desert Island and two people came up to me and were like, "This is awesome!" And I was like, "Oh my God, this is the best thing ever I want to do this again." There's a real feeling of agency that you get when you're able to do every step in the process of making an object that’s distributed and passed around and then has a physical reality.
[cont.]: So that's act one. And then um... then there's descent (laughing) and someone gets really into this idea of seeing their life through the frame of these books that people are enjoying and how validating is that? To have your life mean something to other people and what a crazy power you have to turn yourself into a kind of protagonist you know everyone's empathizing with your character because that's the lens that this story is being told through. And then meanwhile you're meeting these really sexy weirdos all the time who, without you having to impress them with some kind of social sleight of hand, already have accepted you because you've handed them something upon meeting that you've put a lot of time into and has the essence of your being soaked into it. And so now you have a bunch of friends who are also doing this and who are more talented than you and you're looking up to. And they're treating you like an equal and suddenly being weird is the norm and so you don't even feel weird anymore because everyone's stranger and more maladjusted than you are and so then it's just like, "Wow I can only go up from here."
[cont.]: The third act is that throughout the whole course of this thing, I'm basically single. I dated someone religiously through the entirety of my high school career, he proposed to me without a ring, and there was a pregnancy scare, and it was like, "Oh, you're gonna move in with me" and there were all of these promises, and then it didn't pan out. So I was basically single for four years after that, until somebody very interesting and attractive and talented and weird approaches me, telling me that they have fallen in love with me through my comics. And I'm pretty distrustful of that statement, but then I guess we fall in love, although in retrospect I'm not sure if anything was what it seemed to be at the time. And then that goes absolutely terribly. And so the last book is written and it's very self-referential, autobiographical, and also self-pitying, because, you know, the format is: I am the protagonist, and woe is me, here's why shit went belly up. This is just soaked in tears, it's so excessive, and it's yearning and self-pitying, it totally puts me off the whole gambit of making self-referential work. So I drop that, and I guess the next thing starts when I try to do something different.
Miles: Wow, that was awesome and beautiful. Where do you see your style or your work going from here? Are there new things that are interesting to you, or things that you're growing bored of?
Juliette: I think something that's interesting to me is longer-form work, like longer-form storytelling, in terms of comics. But now I think what's happened is my practice has split off in two, where I have the narrative work following this path of fiction and longer-form narrative. I'm trying to write a story right now about a girl who's sleeping with somebody who used to be her college professor. But that's not something that's happened to me. And so it's fictional, but it's interesting. I think something about comics... it's supposed to be smut. Because you can draw sex scenes, like flat-out sex scenes, and somehow it's still tasteful because they're drawings and because they're not animated. So I think it's just going to get dirtier and darker and weirder. And then I have like these standalone drawings that might be collected in a book of sorts but they're kind of ironic and playing off of the idea of what makes something a product and also the male gaze through fashion.
Miles: Your work is some of the most intricate handmade stuff I've seen. What draws you to... draw? It feels like you are innately drawn to handmade things, what experiences/textures/qualities are lost using a computer?
Juliette: I think it's very simple and it's just like an aesthetic decision. It's just a desire so it's hard to philosophize about it. But I simply have an aesthetic preference for things that are handmade. It's a reaction to the times. As things get more digital, the coolest thing to do go in the opposite direction. And that feels somehow more poignant because of the context that we're in.
Miles: Speed round. Dream date?
Juliette: Dream date? Who's the pianist?. Adrien Brody.
Miles: What would y'all do? Hang out, go eat?
Juliette: Have sex probably.
Miles: Dream workspace and/or job?
Juliette: Some kind of co-op print shop. If I had the means to be a part of an independent newspaper that was circulating regularly and that everybody was contributing to while sharing a space-which I know used to happen, like The Village Voice, they were all physically around each other--I think that's the dream.
Miles: Dream spouse? Dead or alive.
Juliette: Presently, I wouldn't like a spouse dead or alive.
Miles: Dream lineup for a show?
Juliette: Elliott Smith is back alive! And I really like the band Quasi, so it would be Quasi and Elliott Smith. They were friends man. Maybe I'll just leave it at them, but I feel like there's like a million more bands that are a part of this lineup. But just them. Just them two...Oh! Oh! And Jeff Mangum from Neutral Milk Hotel. Yeah, but just him with a guitar. So it's those three bands in a lineup.
Miles: What about the city and venue?
Juliette: Maybe it's just like a house show with all of their cool friends. And I've never been to New Orleans.
Miles: Where do you want to be at 63 years old?
Juliette: I don't know, dead?
Miles: I watched your YouTube videos and those are great, I watched the leghumper one and I was literally LOL-ing.
Juliette: That one's bad because it got back to him! You think you sleep with someone random from a dating app and then of course he's just vaguely alternative and so I know people who know him.
Miles: Did he say anything?
Juliette: No, we immediately cut off contact. But then I told one person when I found out that they were dating someone who was in a band with him, I said, "Oh my god, I have to tell you this" and it definitely got back to him. So that's... shameful.
Miles: It's okay. It happens. If you're gonna be that real on the internet and with your comics, it's bound to happen eventually.
Juliette: Well, originally, you're making this stuff alone in your room, so you're not really thinking about it being distributed. But that has been something that I've had to contend with. And I've had people be very angry at me.
Miles: You've worked with so many different mediums. Is there any medium that scares you that you won't do or won't do again?
Juliette: I don't know how to paint.
Miles: I don't know how to paint, either. Painting scares the shit out of me. Any medium you want to master before you kick the bucket?
Juliette: It'd be cool to do a play. [Editor’s Note: Juliette did end up making a play after this!]
Miles: You're very involved in the art community around you, particularly the New York comic scene. What does community mean to you and how does it inform your work? Do you think your art would be different if you lived in the middle of the woods?
Juliette: This whole medium [of comics] is kind of built for people who like to seclude themselves because you can do it by yourself. But it gets kind of dark. It's a lot more hopeful to work on something that is collaborative or to work to help other people. The work might be stronger if I did it completely by myself because it would get kind of obsessive and maybe weirder. But I think I would be unhappy. Everybody's really talented too, so you learn a lot from them.
Miles: Across comics, film, and music you are so real and funny. You've said that you like making comics about your sex and dating life because it's empowering and validating to have these experiences in ink on paper, but what do you hope your audience gets from your work? You do it for yourself but obviously, people are reading it. Do you have thoughts about what they take away from it?
Juliette: I want them to be entertained as a baseline, I'd like to give people that. But outside of that, I'm independently trying to figure out what it means to be a good person and that gets complicated when we're living in such a fucked up world. Honestly, a lot of the work kind of stops at myself, I don't have time to think about how it's going to be perceived. I think some of my earlier work was trying to please people, entertain them, and hook them in. I know with the last book I was thinking, "Oh this is not like the other ones" in that it's not as flashy and it's not funny. I think humor does a really good job of letting people in and giving them something that they want to stick around for. I've tried to make work that is more directly talking about things that are "important" but it always just feels like a school project where this is the biography of so-and-so and here's why they were a good person or a terrible person and this is the lesson. It would need to be synthesizing having some kind of lesson and making it funny so that you want to read it. But I don't know, I mean a lot of the work kind ofjust stops at my own experience and that feels maybe interesting but ultimately frivolous, so I don't quite know how to break out of that. But we'll see.
[cont.]: And a part of the thing that feels good about this stuff is it's a kind of processing of some way that you're feeling. For example, if I'm writing this story about this girl who sleeps with her professor, that's a mechanism for me to do the opposite of what I'm doing right now which is kind of like being frozen and feeling really ashamed of desire and not wanting to act on anything that might hurt people or implicate me in some situation that would be disastrous. So if I have this character as a mechanism to do everything wrong then that's a way of integrating fiction and doing some kind of processing without just making autobiographical comics about sex that I'm not having.
Miles: Tell me more about Bootleg Books. What's the deal?
Juliette: Bootleg Books is Ashton and I's publishing company. But that just means that instead of folding books alone, I'm folding books with Ashton and a few beers. And we're sharing a website so that we don't have to have as many ego trips. He knows how to print books, and I know how to print books, and we live together, so it's convenient for us to kind of approach some of these questions as a team. But it's just a storefront, and we table together too, which is nice.
Miles: How did the idea sprout? What was the process?
Juliette: There is a story. I was like tepidly involved in the cartooning scene, which has, like I said, a lot of sexy weird people, and a lot of them are men, and a lot of them are charismatic men. Sometimes I feel like a charismatic man, but I'm not quite one, and it felt like there was a power imbalance, specifically when there was this huge heartbreak, which was with a charismatic man who makes incredible work. And simultaneously, there was this other man, who is a charismatic man who makes incredible work, and I was blacklisted by these two men because I had slighted them in some way. There's also a significant number of anthologies in New York, comics anthologies, and they are run by charismatic men who feel comfortable asking people for their work without paying them, which is fine because the work deserves to circulate and the work is made stronger by being put together with all this other people's work, but basically, I was supposed to be in this magazine, and then this guy was upset with me, so he was no longer allowing me to be in this magazine. And I felt like this was totally unprofessional. I mean, I felt like it was totally uncalled for because I didn't feel like I had done anything wrong and I was thinking "If I ran a fucking magazine, I would never! I would publish your work anyway." I made these pages for you because you asked me to. I made them a specific format because this is the format that your book publishes in, and that takes time. And god damn it, I deserved to be in his thing! So I was just ruminating on this.
[cont.]: And then also there's a bunch of random people who will reach out and be like, "Can I have two pages?" and I'll be like, "Okay, hi, my name's Juliette, what do you do? Why do you want to make a magazine?" And they're like, "I just want to make a book." And so it felt like there was this impersonal thing going around, there were maybe too many of these magazines. And they were run by men. I felt like I had a bit of claim, I’m respected enough and I know how to make these books and I want to make it beautiful. So I spent the summer reaching out to these specific groups of women who weren't really involved with any of these other magazines because I didn't want to poach, some of them were even my friends from school. I sent these handwritten notes and I tried to ruminate on "What is this magazine?" and get into their psyches. I was also really lonely because I was abroad and I didn't speak the language of the place that I was in. So this parasocial relationship was important for me at the time. And then I got all the submissions and they were incredible. And hopefully in sync, because there was this common thread of us all having been in contact through these weird cryptic emails that I was sending.
Miles: Would you do it again?
Juliette: I don't know. I don't like serializing things. Because when you slap a "#2" onto something, there's a framework there that I think is uninspiring, like might as well just start a new magazine, unless you're trying to create a brand that is recognizable. I don't want to do that, I want to do something different every time. I'm working on collaborative stuff right now, but I'm not in charge of it. I would have to have a good amount of time and a strong drive to do it.
Miles: Advice for people moving to a new city?
Juliette: Oh, God. I think making zines is actually what saved me. But if you don’t make zines, I don't know... I think would have been miserable still if I hadn't started doing this and making friends through it. The essence of that is just finding some way to communicate who you are to people. I guess the first step is to figure out who you are and then figure out how to make people be able to tell that that's the kind of person you are. I don't know. It sucks moving to a new place, so just know that as well.
Miles: Yeah, it does suck. Any advice for people wanting to get into/make their own comics, zines, books, etc?
Juliette: Probably the thing that people don't want to hear but it's like the only thing that's actually true is just that it takes time and practice and if you spend time on something, eventually you'll get really good at it. So just start and try to put your ego aside and make a really bad zine and then make a slightly better one. That was a good brain trick for me. You can do it, anybody can do it, so it s just about spending time on it. The most talented artists I know are obsessed and working all the time on this stuff so there's no secret.
Miles: Dating and/or sex advice?
Juliette: Don't. Never date anybody ever. Okay but no. I guess there is the idea of permanency, or the myth of permanency, that we really hold on to. This idea that if something is one way at one point then it will always be that way. I think maybe if we let go of that, we can be more open when things change and be able to address them. Because mostly when relationship troubles happen, it's due to someone holding onto something that's not true anymorе.
Miles: Any favorite comics or stores? Shops, zines, co-ops, any of that?
Juliette: I have a lot of artists in mind. Sean Pearl. He's incredible. Julie Doucet has incredible comics and so does Dame Darcy. Dame Darcy is an amazing punk rock, weird cartoonist. The best Julie Doucet book is "My Most Secret Desire.” You can get it at the library. Dame Darcy has this zine that was really popular in the 90s called "Meat Cake" and there's an anthology of all of her work called the "Meat Cake Bible.” My roommate, Ashton Carlos, he's a great storyteller, weird sci-fi books, very romantic. Floyd Tangeman, this guy is incredible. He used to live in New York but now San Francisco and he started a lot of comic stuff. He kind of introduced me to the scene. He makes these comics and they'll just like break your skull open. There was this collective in Japan in the 90s called Garo and this is one of the artists, King Terry. He did a lot of the covers. I have a friend, Charlotte Pelissier, and she screen-prints. Austin English, he is local to New York, and he makes beautiful work. As for a manga rec, Taiyo Matsumoto, you can find him in most bookstores or libraries. He has a book called Tekkonkinkreet that's really good. And then Anke Feuchtenberger is just such an incredible artist, and she had a series, "W the Whore,” that she was releasing in single issues, but they just released this book that’s all of them together.
Miles: How can our readers participate in your creative universe in some way?
Juliette: I used to do this thing called Comic Club where I would draw in a 24-hour diner and anybody could come every week. I think I'll do that again. I mean--read comics, make comics, don't censor yourself. I'm accessible via email too: thejuliettecollet@gmail.com
Josh MacPhee interview
April ‘25 For one of my classes, we did a research project on artistic activism collectives. Near the end of the semester, Anjeli Savajol and I co-interviewed Josh MacPhee of the Interference Archive.
Josh: My name is Josh MacPhee and I was one of four founders of Interference Archive. I'm the only founder who is still active. I do some administrative stuff in the background, but I'm not as involved as I have been in the past, partly just to give space for more new people to take the project on as their own.
Miles: Do you think that it’s important to have a constant flow of new people and ideas?
Josh: There are different kinds of institutions in society and some of them are relatively static and some of them change as times change. I think that it's important to be dynamic enough to evolve with whatever the needs are for the space. There's very few spaces like the Interference Archive, places where people don't have to buy something. The point isn't commerce and people aren't here because they're being paid to be here. They're here because they want to be here. Then ideally, for people to want to be here, they will want to participate in the construction of what the space is, and there needs to be space to do that.
Miles: I've always been so interested in the lack of hierarchy here because you just don't see that in other places. I feel like no one really having any real authority over each other really opens that door for people to actually learn and contribute their own ideas.
Anjeli: How would you describe or define the purpose of the archive?
Josh: When we founded this space back in 2011, the four of us all were participants in social movements and making culture within those contexts, whether that be posters or film and moving image, design work, etc. At that time we felt like the stuff we were doing was important, but it wasn't being represented in traditional archives. You would learn about social movements through people writing about them, not through the primary documents that were being produced by them. We wanted to create a space that foregrounded the idea that people make this stuff and so people should have access to it. It shouldn't be sequestered away in institutions that have massive gatekeeping mechanisms that make it difficult for people who aren't credentialized to access. For example, you could make a poster that ends up in an NYU archive and then you literally can't see it because you don't have the credentials to be able to get access to the library.
Miles: They have all those Riot Grrrl zines and it's so hard to access them. The only time I've seen them was because I was in this feminist studies class and they set up a time for us to go and we all had to put all of our stuff in a closet, go wash our hands, and be closely monitored. I don't think it's the most productive learning environment.
Josh: It's a research environment, not a learning environment.
Miles: How would you differentiate those two?
Josh: You know, this could be a two hour conversation. I think that somewhere along the way, knowledge became a commodity in higher educational institutions that was being sold to students. When you perceive something as a commodity, it's not there to share, it's there to be bought and sold and therefore it's in your interest to be retentive of it as opposed to be open with it. Academic research facilitates competition amongst people. Everybody is saying, “I'm the first one that found this, I'm the first one who said this.” None of which furthers the goal of actual information. The structure of the institution gets in the way of the free distribution of ideas. The goal of a place like Interference is to try to remove as many barriers as possible and free the distribution of ideas. I don't think it's possible to remove all barriers. Our society is way too inequitable to do that. But we can try.
Miles: Earlier you mentioned that there were four founders. Were y'all coming from different places?
Josh: Three of us–Molly, Kevin and I–were all part of Just Seeds artist cooperative. And then Dara was a filmmaker. Molly was the only one who was in library school at Queens College, so she was coming at it with some training. The rest of us had no formal training in archives or library science at all. We were friends and we were friends for a reason, so it wasn't like we were coming from wildly disparate places. But we weren't all doing the same thing.
Miles: What were those conversations like when trying to decide the ground rules of how this place would function?
Josh: We all had different experiences, from neutral to negative, trying to access the kind of material that's at Interference in other kinds of collections. A lot of the space was built in contrast to those experiences. With most universities and art spaces, you need to show ID to get in the door. You don't need to show ID to get in Interference. It’s simple things like that, but also in a traditional archive space, things are organized based on who donates them. It’s not like that in libraries so much, but in a capital-A Archive, you would bring in five posters, two books, a newspaper and, and ten cassette tapes. Then there would be a box that said “Miles” on it, and all that stuff would get stuffed in it. And it would get a providence number. So the material would be found based on the fact that you had donated it.
Miles: That is so bizarre.
Josh: Here, we think things need to be findable based on what they're about, because this is about social movements and people organizing. At this point, we're 14 years into Interference, and no one's ever come in the door and said, “Can I look at this thing that this person donated?” They come in and say, “I'm working on water stuff. Do you have things about water struggles?” “I'm making a poster about a boycott. Do you have other posters about boycotts? So that's how things are organized–they’re organized by how people use them.
Miles: How do you think the archive has changed since the beginning of the Archive?
Josh: Maybe the best way to answer that is to say that there's always been three primary overlapping communities that have made up Interference. There've been cultural producers, artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, etc. There've been activists and organizers. And there've been archivists and librarians. Those are not separate entities. Sometimes volunteers are multiple of those things. Sometimes we have volunteers who are all of those things. Over time, the composition has evolved and changed. The space looks a certain way when the majority of volunteers are librarians. It looks a different way when they're activists. It looks a different way when they're artists. I think that in some ways, the character of the space evolves based on the character of the volunteer base. Now it's a lot more activist than it was pre-pandemic. It had gotten very archivist-librarian pre-pandemic and it was more organized than it is now, but it was less active. Some of that has to do with what was going on in the world. During the pandemic, the George Floyd Floyd uprising was happening, and then people were looking for places, but those places were shut down [because of the pandemic]. Then October 7th happens soon after we're really opening up again [after the pandemic] and people needed space. The Archive became a space, and a lot of people came in and got involved because they were mobilized by what was happening on the street in 2023. That activity has built some of the contemporary character. And that will change over time depending on what's happening [in the world].
Anjeli: What would you change about the archive now?
Josh: Coming out of the pandemic, I was leaning towards thinking that maybe people should get paid. The pandemic really pushed the
Miles: If you had an unlimited budget for the space, what would you do with it?
Josh: It would be interesting to see what people [in the Archive] thought. To me, the first thing would be real estate–to not pay rent and secure a space that better facilitated all of the aspects of the archives. Especially the space for events, which ideally would still be within the collection, would be bigger, so there would be more infrastructure to facilitate events and fit more people. But money is weird. People are more important than money. It's so easy to replace people with money, but money doesn't do the same things that people do. You see these fancy art spaces that are heavily funded, but they’re kind of dead, kind of astroturf-y. It's dangerous what money can do because people just intuitively want to replace labor with money. But I think that labor is important. People working together and doing the stuff matters. Having to figure out how to pay the rent matters on some level. Rather than just throwing money at problems, we actually have to solve problems. I don't know if it would be good to have an unlimited budget. It's a nice idea, but practically, maybe not. Historically, we've done four or five, ten, twenty times as much with almost no money as these highly professionalized archives that have staff and huge budgets, but only do one exhibition a year. Here we do four [exhibitions] plus publications plus programming every night, all of which depends on almost no money.
Miles: What's the relationship between the archive itself and then all the events going on? They happen in the same space, but they're two pretty different things.
Josh: Historically they were less different. There's things happening now in the space that we didn't used to have. For example, the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research has classes that they hold here, but in doing that, we're more of a venue than anything. We didn't used to do that. I don't know if I would've made the decision to let that happen. Real estate is hard in New York, so everyone is looking for spaces to do things. I never wanted Interference to just be another space where you do things. The things that happen here should relate to the collection and to the volunteers. Part of the reason why those sorts of classes happen here is because there are volunteers that participate in those classes. If there weren't volunteers who didn't want to take those classes, then they wouldn't be here because no one would volunteer to come and open the door for them. So that’s a built-in mechanism where things only happen here if there's someone who's volunteering here who's willing to do the work to make it happen.
Anjeli: How can people get involved at the Archive?
Josh: People get involved in any number of ways. It's been interesting to see that, since the pandemic, when we've started these volunteer orientations that happen every six weeks and every single time it's full. They announce it on Instagram and then within an hour, all those slots have filled up. So there's about 25-30 people every month and a half that are being trained as volunteers. Because the space is all volunteer-run, there are real limits to what we can do. Some people see Interference as a resource that they want to use, but don't want to participate in. There's always this conflict because they come in thinking that there's some sort of structure or authority for them to interface with. They’ll ask, “Who's the boss?” But there's no boss. So if you want to make something happen here, then you need to get involved enough to know how to make something happen here. There's a part of that that's not very efficient, but the goal isn't to be efficient. The goal is to work with what we have and what we have is volunteers, and that means that there are gonna be limits to how much we can do and we shouldn't be taking on more than what the volunteer base is gonna handle. For instance, it'd be great to be open every single day. It's really hard to get volunteers to staff during the week because unlike you [students like Miles and Anjeli], most people have jobs that aren't flexible enough for them to be able to be here on Tuesday afternoon, so we're not open on Tuesday afternoon. We'll take the volunteers that come in but we're not advertising, going out and putting up flyers, or asking people to come and volunteer. We've never had to, people just come. And maybe that's a good problem. Maybe it's luck, but it's always been true. We've never had to work that hard [to get volunteers] and we've never had to do a lot of promotion for activities either. Also, the space just isn't that big. You get 25 people in here and it feels full. You don't need to spend a bunch of money on corporate tech platforms to try to get 28 people instead of 25. But with some events, people were out the door and it is what it is, you know?
Anjeli: What's next for the Archive?
Josh: What's next for the Archive [pointing to Miles, an intern at the Archive]?
Miles: I have an open mic on Saturday. That'll be fun. It’ll be music, poetry and performance from trans, queer, and non-binary artists. But it is interesting–you really never know what's really gonna be next. It's just whatever the volunteers decide to do.
Josh: The exhibition is coming down this weekend and there's talk about doing an ad hoc, anti-fascist exhibition. But I don't know, it really is like, “Who knows?” But I think that's a good thing. We've had periods when we've had exhibitions booked out for two years, and then we've had periods where there's just nothing. At a certain point everyone just stopped being stressed about that because our job is not to perform for people. There’s just a fundamentally different orientation to questions around audience, use of space, archiving. Ultimately, use is preservation, preservation becomes how people use things, and how people use things changes over time. Setting up a bunch of bureaucratic architecture to maintain a thing that doesn't want or need to be maintained doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. But it’s easy to say that when we know that most of what's here is also in other collections that are much more rigid. So it's okay if a kid comes in here in middle school class and rips a newspaper in half by accident because there's probably another copy somewhere else. But even if there wasn’t, I don’t care that much. Honestly, to me, the stuff is kind of a prop. The stuff is great, I love it and I’ve collected a lot of it. We live and breathe this kind of stuff, but at the end of the day, it's just stuff. What matters is what people do with it and for people to be able to do things with it. It's the maintenance of a space that's open for people to flow in and out of that is way more important than the stuff. This stuff is a platform for things to happen.
The Point. interview
October ‘22Some Bluekeys critters (Rid Ott and Mason Jones) and I sat down for lunch with The Point. to chit chat for the fourth issue of Bluekeys. Transcribed and designed by Marisol Gonzalez. get ready 2 zoom in yall!
Die Spitz interview
March ‘23Conducted by Rid Ott and myself for Bluekeys Magazine’s mini zine “Real Odd Interviews.” Transcribed by Rid, edited by myself, and the zine design was by Marisol Gonzalez (you can find that on the zines page on this site).
Ellie: Get outta here! (lovingly, to cat)
Miles: But I don’t think [the question has] been published yet.. If you could flood any major U.S. city what would it be and why?
[silence]
Chloe: Wooooooah…
Ava: Fuckin.. Uh, what’s that North Carolina place?
Ellie: Oh Durham?
Kate: Yeah.
Ellie: Fuck North Carolina we hate it there’s terrible people there.
Miles: You’ve been there?
Ellie: Uh huh we played there.
Chloe: I would… flood a place that needed to be flooded.
Miles: …What is that supposed to mean?
[giggles]
Chloe: Like, a droughted, like a drought area.
Miles: Oh okay, but-
Ellie: Lake Michigan!
Miles: -the whole town is just gonna wash away..
Ava: Yeah we’re spreading kindness here :)
Kate: The power of God.
Ellie: We’re spreading hate, I'm sorry..
[some redacted stuff about House of Commons]
Ellie: Okay, I feel like Durham can get washed away.. All the people we met there kinda sucked balls.
Miles: Why did they suck?
Ellie: Just some fucking guy-
Kate: (the loudest burp you’ve ever heard)
Ellie: -tried to kidnap Kate 20 times.
Ava: Confederate flags everywhere…
[laughs]
Miles: Are you just really kidnappable?
Kate: Well we were walking around-
Chloe: The men there are just dated back 30 years.
Kate: Yeah I almost got abducted two times.
Ellie: Well there was a really sweet crackhead that was following us around… they were so nice.
Ava: And a little kid riding a dog!
Kate: And the kitty on the leash!
Ellie: It’s so hard to find alcohol there…
Miles: Why?
Ellie: I don’t know… all they could find was Twisted Teas.
Chloe: They don’t do alcohol there, it's so bad.
[silence]
Miles: Was the show good at least..?
Kate: No it was the worst one.
Ellie: It was just really hot, I felt like I was gonna pass out.
Kate: It was at a brewery, and they said they couldn’t afford to give us food.
Miles: I saw this video of this guy complaining about the heat in North Carolina, and then he walked outside and his glasses completely fogged up from the humidity outside, is it that humid?
Ellie: When we were there it was kinda nice and temperate.
Chloe: It wasn’t any more humid than Austin, but it might be a different time of year for that. It is rainy.
Kate: Yeah this man with a cat on a leash was like “Girls you better be careful you walkin’ around alone here.”
Ellie: Clarence!
Kate: Clarence, he was super nice.
Ellie: Clarence was cool, we’d evacuate him first.
Chloe: What about the guy with the dog? With the child that was riding the dog who called the kid's mom a bitch?
[laughs]
Kate: He had a blunt in his mouth, a bloody Mary in a glass cup in his hand-
Miles: And he said what?
Chloe: He was in the park and he had this little kid with him. I asked the kid, “Do you know this man?” and the guy was like “Oh, I know him, his mom’s a bitch.”
Ellie: But the kid was riding on the back of a dog.
Miles: Really? A big dog? How big was the kid?
Ellie: He wasn’t successfully really riding it but he was trying his best.
Miles: Okay this one's gonna take a little bit of coordination.
Chloe: Okay good.
Miles: But on the count of three–you can't talk before.
Ellie: Okay.
Miles: On the count of three, you have to name a song that you would wanna cover at a show. It doesn't have to match y'all's sound at all. It can literally be whatever you want.
Ellie: Can we get seven seconds to think?
Ava: This is way too fucking difficult…
[7 seconds later]
Miles: Okay. 1, 2, 3.
[unintelligible]
Miles: Okay. I didn't get- I only heard Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath.
Ellie: Oh, it must be the one we should do then haha..
Miles: Okay wait go.
Ava: Picture of Burn Taylor Swift.
Miles: Dude, doing Taylor Swift but yall’s version would be so crazy.
Kate: Everybody would lose their minds.
Miles: Okay (points at Chloe).
Chloe: Probably Milk It.
Miles: By? (this loser doesn’t know Nirvana) (Rid Ott transcribed this and she left this here so nice and sweet wow<3)
Chloe: By Nirvana! I’ve been wanting to play that for so long.
Miles: (with sass) then why don't you!
Ellie: Because the other girl band that we went on tour with that was also a supporting act also did a cover of Milk It.
Chloe: Oh they did?
Ellie: Yeah.
Chloe: Aw God damn it.
[laughs]
Miles: Bad answer.
Kate: I said War Pigs by Black Sabbath
Miles: You guys should just–don't tell anyone you're doing it but play a show of Black Sabbath covers.
Chloe: We’re playing Orlando, Florida on Halloween, I want to pretend we’re Black Sabbath and [British impression] and play a Sabbath cover then do our normal set.
Rid: I imagine you guys stop at gas stations on tour, what are snacks or drinks you continually go back to?
All: Bag pickle!
Miles: Are there flavors of that?
Ellie: We usually just get the normal ones.
Ava: Pickle me dilly!
Ellie: I personally really like the cucumber lime gatorade and lime hot cheetos.
Kate: Nerd clusters. If I was in a fight, that’s what I would eat first, they make me crazy.
Chloe: Gas station chicken nuggets, because I bring my buffalo sauce.
Miles: That's a dangerous game.
Ellie: Oh it is. And she plays it.
Chloe: Every time! And I'm fine.
Ellie: Me and Kate got some at some place in the south..
Kate: And we drove off with the gas pump in the van.
Miles: If you were to play a show at any grocery store, what would it be?
Kate: HEB, Fiesta.
Ava: I kinda feel like fiesta could throw down.
Chloe: I feel like Fresh Plus.
Rid: Why?
Chloe: It’s small, local, it reminds me of Rio Mart and I’ve always wanted to play Rio Mart. And it’s next to Quack’s and I love the blueberry pie there.
Ellie: I tried to work there. There were two redhead girls working there so I was like “they gotta hire me.”
Miles: Assign yourself these positions in a grocery store: customer, cashier, manager, person who does carts outside.
Ellie: Ava works outside.
Ava: Yeah, I would like that job.
Ellie: Cashier because I was just a cashier. [Points to Kate] Manager because she could cry at work and still be happy. Chloe–I don’t know, she deserves to go shopping.
Ava: She needs her pickles.
Ellie: Kate and I go to HEB or Fiesta and get boring ass food, Chloe will go to Central Market and get her nice cheeses.
Chloe: I do indulge in those fuckin cheeses dude.
Ellie: Chloe gets to get nice cheeses. And I get to check her out!
Rid: What's the best and worst thing a person has said to you after a show?
Ellie: Oh, worst? ‘You're soooo pretty’, nothing else, just that.
Kate: The best thing? When An old man sound guy who hated us at the beginning comes up at the end and is super enthusiastic.
Ellie: He was super misogynistic- like ‘ALL THE OTHER GIRL BANDS SUCK!”’
Chloe: That has been said.
Miles: Does it feel good though?
Chloe: A little bit–
Ellie: It feels bad but at least he’s bein g honest, I’ll take that.
Chloe: My least favorite–they said I reminded them of Mort from Madagascar. I was drumming my heart out–I thought that was so insulting. Is it true, yes, but why would they say that? The best thing was at our last show when this guy named Emo- old dude who started Emo’s- that’s what he was alluding to- He said in his 40, 50 years being in the music scene, I was one of his favorite drummers he's ever seen.
Miles: I would shit my pants
Kate: My least favorite thing that someone can say to me after a set is, “What are you doing after this?” Showering and going to sleep.
Ellie: There’s been some compliments that are just, “Wow, this is so amazing,” that we’re inspiring people. If we ever get, “Oh my daughter, my younger sister, or me have been inspired to play music because of yall,” that’s just- wooh.
Miles: Fuck marry kill–Dr. Pepper, Yerba Mate, Liquid Death.
Ellie: Kill Liquid Death.
Chloe: Kill Dr. Pepper.
Kate: Yeah, kill Dr. Pepper.
Chloe: Fuck a Yerba Mate. I need water so I guess I'd marry Liquid Death.
Kate: I like water from a can.
Ellie: If I kill Liquid Death, does that mean all water is gone? Oh, fuck Dr. Pepper, marry Yerba Mate, kill Liquid Death. It tastes like mucus.
Ava: What kind of Yerba Mate- like the yellow-
Ellie: The brand.
Ava: Oh, I'm not gonna marry that. I think I would marry Liquid Death because it sounds badass. I feel like Liquid Death would keep me entertained.
Miles: Your name would be Ava Death. Mr. and Mrs. Death.
Kate: I’m thinking about the fact that you’re marrying a doctor.
Miles: Is that for better or for worse?
Kate: For better.
Ava: My full name would be Ava Danger Death.
Miles: Do you have a mascot? If you don’t, choose one right now!
Ellie: The monkey. What was his name? Or Evangeline.
Miles: Who’s Evangeline?
All: Evangeliiiine (fairy voices)
Ellie: Our mascot is Kate's ridiculously fat ass.
Miles: It steals the show every time. Did we come to a conclusion?
Chloe: Maybe Evangeline…
Miles: Who is Evangeline?
Chloe: My cat.
Ellie: Her cat. Also the monkey because it’s an inflatable monkey and we’re just monkeys.
Ava: Kate is kinda our mascot.
Rid: If yall were to start a secret side project, like make an alternate Soundcloud account, what genre would it be?
All: HARDCOOORE
Miles: You’re already halfway there.
Chloe: I have music that I write that’s just not for our band.
Kate: Chloe and I wanna do a psychedelic rock, double drummer kind of thing.
Chloe: For a little bit we had these slow demos that were kinda Nirvana.
Kate: Or Mazzy Star.
Miles: Pass this five question quiz and we’ll buy you each a candy. You have to get four of them right. Well, maybe three.
Rid: Is corn a fruit, a vegetable, or a grain?
Chloe: Grain…right?
Kate: Uh… Fruits have seeds on the inside…
Ellie: Maybe vegetable… Ava?
Ava: I think grain.
Chloe: It’s a grain, because you can make cornmeal.
Kate: Fruits have seeds on the inside! Oh I guess it is on the inside.
Miles: It’s a fruit! It says that it’s produced from the ovary of the corn plant. It’s a one seeded fruit where the seed pod and the flesh are tightly joined together.
Ellie: Oh. Fuck, one down.
Miles: How long did the oldest lobster kept in captivity live? 36 hours, 9 years, 37 years-
Ellie: 37 years.
Miles: -or 140 years?
Ellie: 37 years. 37 years.
Ava: How the fuck do you know that?
Ellie: 37 years.
Chloe: I’ll go with 140. But I also feel like that’s there to throw us off. In captivity?
Ellie: 37 years.
Chloe: What’s the second longest?
Rid: 36 hours, 9 years, 37 years, 140 years.
Kate: We’re splitting up. End the band.
Ava: But lobsters can live long as fuck.
Ellie: 37 years (claps).
Chloe: I don’t know.
Miles: I'll give you a hint. Kept in captivity, lobsters never stop growing.
Ellie: Oh, so then hours.
(Silence)
Ellie: Wait, no.
(laughter)
Kate: Wait, maybe 9 years then. No, 37 years.
Ellie: I think I read something and it was 37 years.
Miles: This lobster outlived its owner.
Kate: It's 140 years.
Miles: Giving it to y'all–It’s 140 years.
Kate: Yes!
Ellie: Damn, that’s crazy.
Rid: What was the first food planted in space? Potatoes, broccoli, tomatoes, or corn.
Ava: I think it was potatoes.
Chloe: Potatoes.
Miles: Potatoes.
Ellie: Yayyyy.
Miles: Which is the lie?
- Raspberries are in the rose family.
- Pistachios are a fruit.
- Figs are classified as both flowers and fungi.
Ava: Yeah because cashews.
Ellie: Oh yeah they do come from flowers.
Chloe: And then fungi-
Kate: But-
(debate)
Chloe: I'm gonna go with the figs.
Ava: I'll go with the raspberry shit.
Miles: Pistachios are not fruit.
Kate: I should've known.
Ava: So corn is fruit and pistachios–what fuckin planet are we living on now?
Chloe: Figs are fungi then?
Miles: And flowers–they’re classified as both.
Miles: Here's your last question: Red skittles contain which of the following ingredients?
Ellie: COCKROACHES!
Miles: Crickets, beetles, bees, moths.
Kate: I think it's beetles.
Ellie: Bees.
Chloe: Maybe a bee?
Kate: Crickets–is that an option?
Miles: This is not gonna translate over text–but they’re making cricket noises.
Ava: Bees.
Kate: Beetles or crickets.
Chloe: I have no idea.
Ava: I don’t think it’s a moth.
Miles: I’ll tell you it’s not a moth.
Ellie: I'm going with beetles.
Kate: We’re going crickets or beetles.
Chloe: This is make or break.
Kate: I think it’s beetles.
Ellie: Beetles or crickets.
Miles: it’s beetles.
Ellie: What was the final thing we said?
Miles: I'll give it to you.
Miles: I'm technically out of questions.
Ellie: Ten times 4.
(Multiple): 40!
Miles: And that’s a wrap!
Cristina Mauri aka Moonbby6 interview
April ‘23Also for the Bluekeys mini zine, “Real Odd Interviews,” I sat down with Cristina at Hole in The Wall and talked talked talked. Transcribed by Rid Ott and designed by Marisol Gonzalez. I hope you’re good at zoooooming in.... (sorry)
“Pull”
September ‘24A Poem! What else!
- In the Northeast
in my left lung
It rumbles around, ricocheting with shallow echos
in the gummy flesh sack that didn’t have much
room to spare in the first place
outside of the routine cyclical air its used to
I noticed it one real winter morning,
sitting up and seeing no sun and
feeling an anything but hollow thud behind my ribs
Later, through the doc’s x ray vision,
an engraved
S
lit up electrical blue amongst the otherwise black advance
Walking back home downtown, steps were taken for me
awkwardly faster than usual, plopping each foot on the ground like one of those
too-little dogs being yanked along on a leash
2. Down South
Twenty-seven inches (the length of my right arm)
below where pasture begins to shoot its strands,
nestled in spring-fed soil,
is a gravitationally involved alloy with manmade dips
dirt pressed into these valleys letters
an umber-coated
N
Otherwise invisible
except to the earthworm that scooches its way
in and out of the shape on its own accord
The metal sometimes makes an effort to push
up and out,
find its counterpart,
but the barefeet carrying a hundred and a half pounds or so
keep driving it back down,
rendering it planted
but unable to produce life like its neighbors
3. Between
One of these must things be dug up, extracted, removed, I think
but the lung remains frosted tight, yet to thaw
and the soil is being turned into the next layer of a future sedimentary rock
by the still-there’s, the not me’s
Gotta wait for the next season to get something done, I suppose
“The Firefly Two-Step”
October ‘24Another.... Poem!
Down by the greenbelt
She and I crawl between the glacial ribbed grooves
Of raspy eroded limestone
Dusk has started inhaling its supper of cedar trees
So we find our way home with the knowledge of our barefeet
From rock to dirt to grass to road, that’s the way home alright
But before meadow our eyes snag a flicker
Of the firefly two-step
Those glittery bugs had heard her
Rumbling late summer philosophies
And her twanged lilts
Began pulling them to and fro
Till they altogether lit up
In a marmalade glow
Now their exoskeletons
Are like the veins of a leaf
Pulsing with microscopic lightning
They keep on flashing tangerine and amber
Under the inky fluttering shadows
Of bobbing moonbeams
Then as a herd waft upward
Toward our pearly orbiter
Following their float with my gaze
I see
Her
Up there on the moon
Her freckled cheeks mirroring craters
Her eyes lucent with the sun’s long-distance luster
Her sweet, sly smile looking down at me
So naturally,
I follow the insect lead,
Cracking the joints of my antennae toward heaven
And rising with their invertebrate rhythm
A cicada orchestra provides the percussion
For our levitating tango
And the tempo continues till I've landed
on the moon
And met
Her
So we two-step to the beat of our hearts
A rhythmic vibration standing in
For that old country music she likes
And I held her head on my chest till Montana
She’s sending postcards
And my foot’s still tapping to her pulse
“Are the Mountain Lions Real? Does it Matter? As Long as It’s Working”
November ‘24(Prose) poem written the night of the 2024 election... trying to think of anything but
Well
What would it be like to be nestled between two furry pigmented fibers of a moth’s wing? Bobbing through the late July humidity on a beeline toward the towering lamp post that lights up in flickering yellow glory the striped painted field that bears the punctures of cleats for the soccer practices of pre-teens trying out goalie for the first time because the league just added that position and they’re gonna play it tomorrow at the afternoon game where the air is then dry and the droughted lack of grass will whip up dust devils that those 11-year-olds might stop a whole game for just to stare at and rehash over and over on the backseat ride home while winding through progressively more rural roads that one of their little siblings would call sweet potato hills dotted with broccoli and maybe they’d catch a glance at a white-tailed deer or worse a hog but really they wanted to see a mountain lion/cougar/puma/the closest thing to Nat Geo Wild and who knows if the mountain lions are even real because most of the town’s only heard talk but they’re supposedly stalking prey between shrubs, giving cause to those late night rabbit cries that disrupt dreams about some ambiguous mix of that asshole bus driver and jersey giant pizza and who’s even been to jersey and also jumping off the high cliff at the lake but waking up and realizing you can’t jump it anymore because of those droughts–
That, right
“Toolkit”
November ‘24Toolkit4Heartbreak! 3Poems inOne. Very touchy-feely hence the-bottom-of-the-page-ness. Also the formatting is bad on mobile sorry guys
NASA’s Newest Space Exploration Scientific Slingshot
I wish I could slingshot you
Up and out as far as damn possible
I’m not talking just off the earth but
Somewhere post-solar system,
Let’s get you far enough to be of use to NASA
Somewhere none of us have ever been
Somewhere we could use some real reporting, some real picture-taking
Some star-soaring mother-fucking galaxy-touring
Lord knows you need something new and exciting
So just keep on going.
Refrigerator Flamethrower
If it tastes good, go ahead
and swallow mouthfuls of that icy celestial soup
till it freezes solid your feeble earth-bound innards
because later, with the subtle tap of a passing meteor,
you’ll ignite into an ultramarine-copper-infused nebula wildfire
that takes innumerable generational births and deaths to turn pages in lifecycle
from star to supergiant to supernova to black hole
Where finally, though it’s not an ideal form of it,
and swallow mouthfuls of that icy celestial soup
till it freezes solid your feeble earth-bound innards
because later, with the subtle tap of a passing meteor,
you’ll ignite into an ultramarine-copper-infused nebula wildfire
that takes innumerable generational births and deaths to turn pages in lifecycle
from star to supergiant to supernova to black hole
Where finally, though it’s not an ideal form of it,
you’ll finally get a rest.
(No scratch those weapons of choice,
Let’s call it
a
Boomerang
So that maybe you’d be back by morning
And when you’d arrive
You’d come crashing down next to me
Burning up the fibers of worn-down sheets
Your limbs collapsing around my silhouette
I’d be the crash pad
And you’d be the jolt
That’d yank me out of that half-empty sort-of-hollow sleep
And back into your mostly-absent arms
That way, maybe there’d be a reason
Why I didn’t feel you all night:
You were just real far away, billions of miles far away