NO BAD IDEAS 03
On new book plans and nostalgia
It’s nearly 2023 and I've somehow managed to finish out this year in a state of artistic nostalgia and a revisitation old ideas instead of picking away at the newer projects of Flight Interpretations or the asemic notebook. It rarely feels like I have a choice when ideas strike me and this urge has only compounded with the NO BAD IDEAS ethos I've adopted.
All of that is a roundabout way of saying that I’ve started putting together a fourth volume of No Gods But My Own and I'm calling it Archives of Anger.
Archives of Anger will have an unusual structure that is unlike anything I’ve done before. It will consist of three distinct but entirely related parts: a reappraisal, a reprint, and a redux.
December started with my finishing out three weeks of writing up the first draft of The Feck-Up Manifusto, the first part and only fully original piece that will show up in the collection. It’s an exploration of what it is to be a laborer and probably the most anti-capitalist piece of writing I’ve ever done. The Feck- Up Manifusto revisits the themes of both the works that follow it but in a much more direct fashion and doesn’t hide my feelings on the subjects the way a couple thin layers of metaphor and narrative might. It’s still in pretty rough shape but I’ll share pieces as I get them polished up for the book.
The second part will be a reprint from the blink-and-you-missed-it series of pocket books I released in 2017 called Outlet Shorts. Written in 2016, Boundless Loyalty to Our Faceless Master was what I called an unproducible play. It centered around someone arriving at their job to find it turned into something alien and malevolent. I’ve never written something so directly inspired by a situation in my life before or since. It’s brutal and unforgiving but remains a personal favorite among my creative works. I actually shared it on No Gods But My Own back on May Day if you want to read it in full before this new book comes out.
To round out the collection I've begun something I've never done before. I decided to revisit an old book and redraw it. I released Operators Code back in 2017 and it explored the life of faceless, thoughtless laborers of a strange industrial planet. It was messy and absurd, never following a narrative thread for too long, and the art was sketchy and unrefined since it had all been drawn in a small sketchbook while I was either at work or while my newborn son napped. Like Boundless Loyalty to Our Faceless Masters, Operators Code explored my thoughts on working and the way corporate culture can corrupt and destroy the individual. Of the original run of Outlet Press books I consider it one of my absolute favorites and probably the most spiritual of the bunch.Â
Here are a couple examples of the original pages and what they’ve become after 5 years of continued artistic practice:
I understand that these may not seem like the same kind of magical catharsis that the previous volumes have been but I assure you it will very much be in line with what came before. I have spent most of my life working shitty jobs and dealing with everything that a life filled with that kind of labor entails. All of the anger, the regrets, and the desire for change that are embodied in this work is just as vital and important to my practice as anything I’ve already explored and ignoring it would do myself a great disservice.
Archives of Anger will be the first of two planned releases for 2023. I’m hoping to have it done by the end of February but we’ll see what happens.
Because of all of that I have decided to put Flight Interpretations on hold for a while. These last couple finish out the first run. I don’t know if I’ll ever come back to it but I never say never when it comes to things like this.
Since this will be the last newsletter of the year I wanted to take the opportunity to wish you the best for the upcoming holidays and hope that 2023 will be treat us all a little bit better.
I also want to say that I appreciate each and every one of you and thank you for sticking around through all the changes of subject and format.
Until next time,
EJM