SITE MOVED

GO HERE FOR MODERN MYTHOLOGY

We've successfully transferred our domain to the new ad free Modern Mythology. This was done for several reasons, the main one being that Google really hasn't put much effort into doing any real development on blogger since around 2009. Consequently, at best, all blogger sites look... like 2009.

I will be personally going through the archives and picking a small selection -- 50 or so -- articles that I think are the best that we've run out of the 1200 articles on the old MM. And from there, we hope to find new contributors and get rolling again. Want to contribute? Get a Medium account if you don't already have one, and then get in touch on social media.

We will continue to run sponsored content here to support this project.

First Tales From When I Had A Face Contributor Announced

The first contributor I'm going to announce here is P. Emerson Williams. He'll be doing storyboards and pencils for all the comic sections in the 4 issues of Tales From When I Had A Face: The Summer Tree, The Fall Tree, The Winter Tree, and The Spring Tree. I've worked with him on a number of projects in the past, and am very happy to have him help me navigate the immense scale of this project.

---

P. Emerson Williams is an artist and illustrator whose work takes shape in physical and digital media, and covers wide modes of expression. His passion is for embodying the mythic in visual media and melding visual art with narrative form.

He illustrated Bedlam Stories - The Battle for Oz and Wonderland Begins, a novel set in the universe of Bedlam Stories, a twisted world of horror created by cult film director Pearry Teo (The Gene Generation, Necromentia, Witchville). among a number of projects coming up for P. Emerson Williams in 2015 is Adagio Fine, the first in the Star Crossed Chronicles, a series of heavily illustrated novels penned by occult author Nathan Neuharth.

As a core member of UK theatrical company FoolishPeople, P. Emerson Williams took on many roles in London productions of The Basement - Ward 12 - in partnership with Secret Cinema, The Providence Experiments - co-produced with Mythos Media, A Red Threatening Sky, The Abattoir Pages - presented with Guerrilla Zoo, Cirxus and Terra:Extremitas, performed at Amsterdam's NDSM-werf. These roles includes creating a score for choreographer lohan Stjernholm as part of the production A Red Threatening Sky and a solo musical performance at the famed Horse Hospital in London, creation of soundscapes and scores for every production on which he worked, as well as set and graphic design and on top of all this, Williams was in the cast as both voice actor and live actor.

Williams straddles the worlds of industrial music and black metal, electronic dance to dark Americana to pure goth with Veil of Thorns as well as adding elements of his sonic alchemy as a spice to projects with Sleep Chamber, Manes and more extensively as half of the creative core of kkoagulaa with cern.th.skei from Manes. Recent collaborations include playing cello on UK black metal band Ethernal's upcoming third album, subverting the nature of guitar playing with industrial noise merchants Dead Skull and a collaboration with avant garde trumpet player Mark Cunningham.

He is the host of the Necrofuturist Transmission on Nottingham's Nightbreed Radio, was the editor and producer for Music Tuesdays on Alterati.com, and art director for Weaponized , the publishing imprint of FoolishPeople. Articles and reviews by P. Emerson Williams can be read online at Terrorizer.com, Modern Mythology, Disinfo.com and Intravenous Magazine. His visual art can be seen on book covers and interiors for Original Falcon, Weaponized, and Westgate Press, the pages of magazines including Culture Asylum, Isten 'zine, Ghastly, and Esoterra , album and CD covers for Rat King, Primordial, Katatonia, Ethernal, Ptahil, Lethe, Misanthropy Records, SLEEP CHAMBER, Veil of Thorns, Choronzon and kkoagulaa. In 2013, P. Emerson Williams was on guitar and vocals on tour with the legendary Jarboe that took them through the US, Western and Eastern Europe and concluded in Moscow.

[All It Takes Is The Right Story... Mythos Media]

The Fallen Cycle -- Writing Hiatus

Over the past six months I've been doing research and note taking, and looking over the narrative work I've done through Mythos Media. Several years back I made the decision to release pieces of a larger puzzle one piece at a time -- serialization, in other words -- but I've come to the conclusion that this isn't the best way to present this material to you. I want to have the entire codex before I release the breadcrumbs.

The working title for the trilogy is the Fallen Cycle, and some of the inspiration for it goes all the way back to when I started writing. It's taken me this long to build the chops to even hope to come close. As presently planned it comprises three books: Party At The World's End, Tales From When I Had A Face, and Center of the Spiral. Although the latter two include arcs written in sequential (comic) format, so they may wind up being broken up differently by the end. I continue to share snippets in progress at Tales From When I Had A Face.

So I have been pulling the projects I intend to reprise or slash from Amazon, and will continue working with all the energy I have to put together a series that lives up to my notes and plans, an urban fantasy / magical realism series that draws heavily on past myths but also has enough original symbol and 'meat' to hang on those bones.

This may take a while -- so bear with me. Pick up one of the nonfiction books if you're looking for something to sink your teeth into in the meantime. And if you're a publisher or agent that releases this kind of material, feel free to contact me before I begin the real submission process. That'd be a first, I know, but a writer can dream.

I'll leave you with a bit of rough draft from the Party At The World's End intro:

She went down beyond the mountains and disappeared between the crease of sky and land, like a great eyelid folding shut. No one knows what happened out in the Black Hills, but I imagine she lies buried in a rusty coffin under the stars. And on nights when the desert crickets sing her tune, one day she will rise again. On that day, there will is no telling the kind of vengeance she'll demand of us. Fair is fair. 

She rubbed the skin off your headstone of a sternum and painted a sad picture of herself in your eyes. 

I love you, they said, meaning nothing more than cricket song and the thirsty moon over a spot of bloody ground. Those weren’t the nothings we knew: no place no home no song. We heard her song and we followed.  

I know what you were asking us, even if you don't. Lover, why must you deceive me with those eyes; lie with laughing; obfuscate the obvious—Everything is already written. You are you, I am I, unyieldingly ourselves, blindly certain only of ourselves, giving way to the inevitable: we two will die. Time is laid out before us, clean and bare, whole. It fools us into thinking we are free. Time, erotic in its blank submission, a body that needs you to fulfill its desires, and write your life story on its flesh. We must act, we must fight, we must scuttle in the dirt to appease that body. Life demands a performance. But we have foresight. Unlike those pill bugs you once told me of, your first memory—in the garden dirt to your knees and elbows, the insects squirming about you. The only difference between their struggle and our own: I've never seen a pill bug give up. So don't deceive me with those lips and hands, with that smile that hasn't changed since you were four because it always—always!—got you what you wanted. That is the great lie, that in losing ourselves in one another we are free.  

They say when she fell from Heaven she wore a crown of jagged stars that slit the skies throat. They say say loved them all, in the secret corner of their shallow sleep. Like her grave, all nameless, all loveless. Strangers, at the last. They say a lot of things. They’re all lies. Everything is already written.

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

Extreme Futurist Festival 2012

XFF2012 PROMO from EXTREME FUTURIST FESTIVAL on Vimeo.

Are you a Futurist? Are you assured that we are going to burn ourselves out as a species in the next century? Are you an artist set on using these tools we have while we have the time, or an optimist set to create an army of Nanobots (or Nanobats, if you live in Gotham) that will cure cancer? There is room for all these perspectives and more at this years Extreme Futurist Fest (XFF for short) being held in Los Angeles. And December 21 and 22 2012! What a time for it. End of the world, man! This even will feature:

•  Speakers (Randal A. Koene, Dr. Aubrey de Grey, Dr. Ben Goertzel, ...)
• Music (Lydia Lunch, Negativland, ...)
• Art (Kevin Mack, Shayna Yates, James Curcio, ...)
• Films (H+ the Digital Series, Surf Now Apocalypse Later, Tragos, ...)
• Vendors (Grindhouse Wetwares, Re/Search Publications, Mythos Media including the recent Words of Traitors and Rachel Haywire's Acidexia, ...)
• ...and, you guessed it, a great deal more.

This event is not one to miss no matter your outlook. Find out more on the website, and show up if you can. You don't need to be a "believer" to show.

Just pick up a ticket, bring equal parts skepticism and wonder, and the rest will be history.

As you can see, I should be there, short of an airplane crash or getting flagged as a terrorist. So... see you there! -J

As featured on Disinfo.

[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]

November Announcements

• We're still working behind-the-scenes on getting our podcast in order. That'll begin running here and on Alterati when it's ready - hopefully soon - and then will run regularly thereafter every other week. 
• Over the past few months there have been several ongoing fictional (or quasi-fictional, more aptly) narratives. After some thought, I've broken them off to Join My Cult! to keep the content on Modern Mythology itself focused on commentary, critique, analysis, exegesis, even aphorism, rather than strictly counterculture / conspiracy narrative. On JMC you will find high weirdness created by a world-wide network of cabals. 
• In other news, I just finished attending the major SPEP (Society of Phenomenological and Existential Philosophy) conference in Philadelphia. Expect a little about that here in coming days. Among other things, the very split of continental and analytic philosophy is along the same lines as what we draw as myth and science, here, so I'd like to unpack that thought and several others soon.
• The fundraiser continues in November. We've raised $315, and I thank each of the people who have chipped in so far. But we have a way to go. I'm hoping we can kick that up a notch, so we can keep this project going as well as kicking it up to the next level (especially if we meet the full goal.) Minimum donation is now $1, and still gets you a perk - an eBook copy of Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End at less than retail price. 

As you were.

[Check out some of the books, albums, and soon movies produced by Mythos Media and our various media partners.]

Fundraiser for 2012

A new perk has been added - for just a $1 donation, you will receive an eBook copy of Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End (cheaper than the regular eBook price of $2.99.)

More about the campaign:

Will The Real xxx Please Stand Up?

OK. I'm going to break the fourth wall here for a moment (as if there was one) and ask a question.

Why is it that so many readers - at least ten just today alone - have thought posts written on ModernMythology were written by me, when the "By" line at the beginning and end of the article was not my name?

I'm actually asking.

Several of those people were also surprised to discover that there are in fact over a dozen contributors to this site; while I do write about 25-50% of the content on here depending on the month, I'm a voice in a chorus. Despite the description on the sidebar or in any of the sub-pages of the site that are quite clear in that, still the idea persists, so I wonder what we could do to be more clear about the collaborative nature of this project?

Or is the truth actually that none of you pay very much attention when you're browsing on the internet?

Also, one is completely insistent that I am Rusty Shackleford. I really am not. But I'm amused someone thinks that.

[Check out some of the books, albums, and soon movies produced by Mythos Media and our various media partners.]

Presenting -- En Attendant Artaud: a Psychic Rally to Murder Magick

By St Stephen
The 3 September, 2011 is Antonio Artaud's birthday, an Anniversary of sorts. He would be 120 years old. In honor Artaud's life & work, Júlio Mendes Rodrigo is helping to put together a special event, with some quite intriguing performers, VortexSoundTech, Magenta Interior, and Sektor304.

In order to promote this event, which I feel would go otherwise unnoticed in the States. It probably will anyways, at least for the most part. I mean, who among you is into the Portuguese electronic scene? Or is aware of the work of Magenta Interior? Or even of the work of our guest of honor, Artaud? Well, not yet at least, but perhaps by the end of this blog all that will change. That is why I have decided to re-post the concert information, which was graciously provided by Rodrigo and company, not only because I have a deep respect for Artaud's work, a man that has made me laugh harder and say, "yes," more often the when i am having sex with the tooth fairy (for those who don't know its your mother who puts the money under your pillow; well, sometime its your father).

As an FYI, we, of Thee Uncondemning Monk, have been asked to make one of my weird little videos for in between the sets. It's no big thing, but for us it is quite an honor.

To be able, even in the smallest of ways, to bring more to light on the dark topic that is the life and work of Antonio Artaud, who is most famous for his impossible Theatre of Cruelty, is indeed our pleasure, and somewhat of a duty. Instead of attempting some impossible or inadequate summery of Artuad's work or of the impact that he and his writings have had, and continues to have on culture writ large.

Instead we shall examine a small, easy to ingest, piece of Artaud's corpus. We would say that we hope that it does not upset the reader's sensibilities and cause nausea, which usually starts with pangs in the head, but will ultimately end up moving into the stomach, upsetting an ulceration as it goes, until one is force (once again) to spill its contents on the floor; this is that floor...but that would not be the truth or respectful to our birthday boy. From Artaud's, Notes from a Theatre of Cruelty:

I employ the word "cruelty" in the sense of an appetite for life, a cosmic rigor, an implacable necessity, in the gnostic sense of a living whirlwind that devours the darkness; it is the consequence of an act. Everything that acts is a cruelty. It is upon this idea of extreme action, pushed beyond all limits, that theatre must be rebuilt.

So mote it be Artaud, so mote it be (which is just like saying, Amen brother, Amen).

After the event, our video will be re-posted on our blog site, Thee Uncondemning Monk (perhaps bookmark all relevant pages, as it sounds as if our east-coast readers might have some busy days ahead of them). It may well go on to be posted else where, but at this point we just do not know.

As we understand it, the concert will record and streamed live, perhaps via Ustream or Google+, so if you are interested in catching what we feel will be a quite memorable event, please visit their webpage; click here.  Now, without further ado, the performers. Taken in slightly augmented form from the blog-site, Die Elektrischen Vorspiele, we bring you the musical/visual performance and the celebration of Artaud.

En Attendant Artaud: a Psychic Rally to Murder Magick

When: 3rd ov september 2011 at 09:30h pm

Hosted by: Galeria Gabinete

Located: Rua Alfredo Pereira, 3 / 4560-502 Penafiel – Portugal

Clark photoblogging from India

For those of you that have followed the antics of Clark and I over the past years (Gonzomentary, the Murder The World Podcasts, the interview on comparative religion and his first trip to India), or for newcomers to this site, I suggest you stop on over to the photoblog he's keeping of his second trip to India.

I will be running a retrospective on Gonzomentary here on Monday to introduce many of the new visitors to that project.

[Check out some of the books, albums, and soon movies produced by Mythos Media and our various media partners.]

Independence Day: Release Announcements

Meta: this is me,
telling you what I'm saying here. 

Happy blowing shit up day, folks!

We are very busy lately. By "we" I mean myself, and the people involved in the projects I'm about to tell you about. I can only imagine that it is difficult to keep track, so I thought I might help out:

• Citizen Y: Blueprint of a Ritual Experience was published a month or two ago by Weaponized. It is a script, but moreover, the blueprint for an initiation ceremony relevant to post-history. Check it out. ($15)
• 
  
• The Immanence of Myth will be published by August by Weaponized. It uses a deep but also conversational, honest and even subversive approach towards looking at the issue of mythology in our lives, especially as this almost 500 pg. oversize book moves towards personal mythology and conversations with current mythic artists. ($25)
• 
  
• The Best Of Modern Mythology 2011. I have decided. Mythos Media will be releasing an eBook featuring polished versions of some of what I consider to be the best articles that we've run on this site in 2011. The eBook will sell for $.99 through Smashwords, and will go towards the costs of running and maintaining the site, and promoting our mutual work. If it does well we may release it as paperback and/or hardcover. I expect to release this in September or October. 
• 
  
• Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End - I will be releasing the full and final version of this book either through Mythos Media or a publishing partner - if we find a suitable partner. This release will come in late 2011 or early 2012. I intend for it to remain the opening volley for a post-history, transmedia narrative that I've been planning these past few years. Listen: don't worry. It's got tits and machine guns, too. 
• 
  
• Hoodoo Engine's Murder The World, after almost 3 years of work, is nearly ready for the final mix and master through some very nice analog outboard gear. This album is a machine-metal tour through a terrain of conspiracy theories and cult leaders. We don't have a release date yet. I expect a September release through Bandcamp and iTunes, making it one year after the release of our debut, EgoWhore. ($.99 / track or $10 for the CD.) 
• Here's a track from the album, "In The Flesh": 
• InTheFlesh 150bpm by agent139

Looking towards 2012: 

• I am talking with Pearry Teo about working with him and the rest of the Bedlam Stories production team, including Chad Michael Ward and P. Emerson Williams. I can't say more than that at this time, but it looks like it will be a really exciting project to be involved in. 
• 
  
• I am still talking with S Jenx from The Fall Studios about the production of Nyssa, which is the illustrated prequel / sequel to Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End. 

I hope you are as excited about this material as we are. Please support the work, so there can be more of it. If you write reviews or have other involvement with the media/press, please contact me, as there is a lot of need to spread the word about all this work.

An Announcement About This Site

Starting in February (unless anyone decides to get rolling sooner), I am going to be adding contributors to this blog, as we broaden our exploration of modern myth. Many of these contributors - if not all - will be writers who were involved in the Immanence of Myth.

Hope you keep on checking in. And tell your friends.

Expect another announcement about the forthcoming publication of the first full edition of this book on Monday.