The guiding principle of Six Ridiculous Questions is that life is filled with ridiculousness. And questions. That only by giving in to these truths may we hope to slip the surly bonds of reality and attain the higher consciousness we all crave. (Eh, not really, but it sounded good there for a minute.) It’s just. Who knows? The ridiculousness and question bits, I guess. Why six? Assonance, baby, assonance.
The guiding principle of Six Ridiculous Questions is that life is filled with ridiculousness. And questions. That only by giving in to these truths may we hope to slip the surly bonds of reality and attain the higher consciousness we all crave. (Eh, not really, but it sounded good there for a minute.) It’s just. Who knows? The ridiculousness and question bits, I guess. Why six? Assonance, baby, assonance.
The last time I talked with Amina Cain it was 2013 and the subject was her book Creature. Now, Cain has returned with a new book, Indelicacy — a novel about a woman’s artistic awakening amidst questions of art, intimacy, and class. It’s a difficult book to describe, because so much of its power stems from the manner in which Cain tells it story: what she keeps in, what she leaves out, and how she transforms the familiar into something almost fantastical. I talked with Cain about her new book and how she created it earlier this month.
Robbie Lee is an artist who thrives on collaboration. Among his recent partners: Guitarist Mary Halvorson, who won a 2019 MacArthur “Genius Grant,” and composer Lea Bertucci, whose album Resonant Field, named a top Jazz album of 2019 by the New York Times, featured Lee on flute.
In the following exchange, which took place over several months via a shared Google document, the multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer weighs in on David Bowie, his love of duos, NYC’s experimental music scene of the 1990s, and what it means to be a contemporary composer most comfortable in that liminal space between genres.
Some novels take their cues from history; others, from the author’s own life. For her new novel Ceremonials, Katharine Coldiron opted for a very different muse: in this case, the Florence and the Machine album with the same title. The resulting work is an expansive and constantly-shifting piece of fiction, one in which desire and identity blur together in a world that feels both archetypal and realistic. I spoke with Coldiron about the genesis of her new book and the process of translating music into words.
The guiding principle of Six Ridiculous Questions is that life is filled with ridiculousness. And questions. That only by giving in to these truths may we hope to slip the surly bonds of reality and attain the higher consciousness we all crave. (Eh, not really, but it sounded good there for a minute.) It’s just. Who knows? The ridiculousness and question bits, I guess. Why six? Assonance, baby, assonance.
Judge a book by its title. It’s a good idea. I bought $50,000 because it’s called $50,000 (and because Publishing Genius never lets me down). Since I first opened the book and read it in one sitting, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I read it again. And then a third time. And then I found myself walking to work thinking, Writing poems like invoicing a prior self, and then I stopped walking and whispered to myself, “That’s the best line I ever wrote.” But I didn’t write it. Andrew Weatherhead did.
The guiding principle of Six Ridiculous Questions is that life is filled with ridiculousness. And questions. That only by giving in to these truths may we hope to slip the surly bonds of reality and attain the higher consciousness we all crave. (Eh, not really, but it sounded good there for a minute.) It’s just. Who knows? The ridiculousness and question bits, I guess. Why six? Assonance, baby, assonance.