Tag: Retrograde Motion

What Kind of Monster Are You?

Self-fashioned life. No more a monster than Lovable, Furry Old Grover in The Monster at the End of This Book.

“Why should I be scared of you?” asks DC punk guitarist and vocalist Christina Billotte near the end of her band Slant 6’s song “What Kind of Monster Are You?”

Several more of the group’s songs turn up on the eternal mixtape soon thereafter.

“Ladybug Superfly.” “Babydoll.” “Partner in Crime.” “Don’t You Ever.”

Am I a victim of my own desires?

The lyrics to a song of theirs called “G.F.S.” stand out to me today, causing me suddenly to hear the song anew, its references to “stars going retrograde” and “recollection starting to fade” far stranger now than I ever knew them to be before.

The perfect guitar solo on “Time Expired” leaves me mulling my past in the hours afterwards, the song’s words forming a hieroglyph, echoing if not quite rhyming slant with the words on your necklace.

Setting Forth

“What happened at the house on Shady Blvd? Who was the Gay Wizard?” There’s a story there if I can recover it, thinks the Narrator. The notebooks are here on my desk. Or we could dither away the Text’s capacity for transport, pursue a rabbit hole, and read Moyra Davey: Burn the Diaries. The lines of hers that give me pause read as follows: “The dross of the diary. The compulsion to scribble, the delusion that we can hold on to time. Countering this neurosis is the anxiety of being read, the fear of wounding; and just as strong the dread of being unmasked.” Given the Davey book’s cost ($173.20 on Amazon), let’s learn what we can from books here at hand. And when the opportunity arises, set forth the tale. Consult with Reanimator-folk; ask about the Wizard. Remember: We go back to go forward.

Apparent Retrograde Motion: A Way Forward

José Esteban Muñoz finds a way forward through cruising: the gay subcultural practice of seeking sexual encounters in public places or online.

“I know little of my sexuality,” thinks the time traveler. “Catholicism got in there and fucked my shit up years ago – hence these sexless days and nights.”

Is that a thought to be made public or kept private? Fear not, dear readers. Have I any decency? Yes I do.

“Aspects of Love’s Body have been occulted, occluded, hidden from consciousness,” thinks the time traveler. “So, too, have years prior. Trance-scripts of years past have gone unpublished. They appear to me now as I sit here reading them like repressed memories manifesting as pages of old journals – and thus times to which I can journey. Hence the trance-scripts ahead.”