In this keenly-observed graphic novel, Odette has been hiding a problem: an inky black jellyfish that floats perpetually in her field of view.
Category: Reviews
Interview with Tracy Fessenden, Author of Religion Around Billie Holiday
Religion Around Billie Holiday focuses not on Holiday’s religious practice or expression but rather on the environing religious conditions to which her genius responded, and in which her life and sound took form.
Songs of Gratitude and Fields of Wonder: A Review of Maía’s Portraits
In Maía’s poems, there are worlds inside of worlds, the metaphysical hidden in the physical, the mythic hidden in the mundane, the political hidden in the personal.
On the Poems of Lauren Rhiannon Lockhart
What are we to make of a poem that begins “None of this happened:” except to see where the author takes us, what other tricks she has in store, what detours we must take?
The Unseen, by Roy Jacobsen
Despite scenes of peril on the ocean, the book moves slow, full of details about everyday survival in this harsh environment. By the end, the reader has witnessed great changes reflected the microcosm of the characters’ lives.
Film Review: Decision to Leave (2022)
A thrilling yet understated crime drama focused on the relationship between a police detective and a woman whose husband has died in a suspicious climbing accident, distinguished by the complexity of its characters.
Embrace the Overtone: momentarily records Cassette Drone Releases
These three inaugural releases from a label that “focuses on quality and works out subtle differences in each work” offer a range of sounds, textures, and objects to explore.
A Modern Fable: “I Never Liked You Anyway,” by Jordan Kurella
Jordan Kurella’s novella is a modern fable that bounces back and forth between a modern day university, a music department, and the nether world of Hades, the Greek version of Hell.
A Shake of Salt—Review of Plenum: The First Book of Deo
In Geoffreyjen Edwards’ science fiction novel Plenum: The First Book of Deo, the Prologue tells us that we are about to experience the first act of young “gender-neutral” Vanu Francoeur’s triple-volume story. Which is also the first act of a 15-volume …
Tool de Force
Combining instrumental virtuosity, compositional complexity, and lyrical depth, Tool’s Fear Inoculum deserves not just a listen, but repeated listenings.
Departures (Film, 2008)
A quietly provocative story about a cellist who leaves the musical profession and finds a job preparing dead bodies for burial.
Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Appealing and fast-paced, this novel set in 1950s Mexico is a classic tale of an attractive young woman marrying into family with sinister secrets, who finds her choices taken away, and her life and sanity under threat. True to the gothic genre, the cr …
Party Wall, by Catherine Leroux
Insightful stories peel back the secrets within families, but the dazzling moment comes as you pass the midpoint of the book, and the connections between these universes begin to be revealed.
Masks of Origin: Regression in the Service of Omnipotence – A Review
Each chapter of Masks of Origin—a book of what perhaps can only be called “visionary” essays, by Brian George—reads like an individual novel. Divided into personal and universal experiences, each informs the other. Descriptions of events in childhood and adulthood provide a wormhole into the cosmos.
Masks of Origin—an attempted Review
I opened Brian George’s physically beautiful Masks of Origin—adorned with three-and-a-fraction of his own electric geometric red-green gargoyles, to find myself “reading,” if one might call it that, the whole book nearly straight-through that day, and the next…
The Self, As Ensemble, The Prose, Like Jazz—On Albert Murray’s South to a Very Old Place
A paean to Albert Murray and his hybrid memoir/literary criticism masterpiece of 1971, South to a Very Old Place.
Cultural Consumption – February / March 2022
Fiction, films and search engines meet indigenous names and the chatter of jays; where does our attention wander when it strays on the dappled path?
CULTURAL CONSUMPTION: Stuff We’re Reading, Watching, and Listening to—Dec 2021 / Jan 2022
Our bodies transform what we eat, and with our minds we re-create and transform culture. Here are some of the works that have gotten our attention recently and feel worth sharing.
A Few Notes on “Making Mystery: An Interview with Andrew Antoniou”
Above all, Antoniou’s compressed, theatrical space could perhaps be read as a kind of ritual confrontation, in which the known and unknown, the diurnal and nocturnal, are forced to meet and mix on a stage that allows for no casual avoidance or escape.
Review: Medb, by Brigid Burke
Medb is a novel that draws the reader incrementally toward the mysteries of the human psyche, on its way touching on gender roles, the power of the occult, and the pathologization of difference. It’s a winding, inward journey that begins, fittingly, at …
Out of the Furnace: A Film Review and Analysis
The movie proves to be, rather than glitchy and fragmentary, a deliberate and careful unfolding of the more perplexing and realistic struggle ensnaring us in the contemporary world.
An introduction to Jodo’s movies: “Who Is Alejandro Jodorowsky?”
How to decipher Alejandro Jodorowsky’s symbolic film world? Here’s an introduction.
Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness (Book Review)
Jeremy Johnson, current president of the International Jean Gebser Society, long-time Gebser student, and accomplished expositor, presents a thoughtful look at a key – and difficult – idea, the nature of the integral structure of consciousness.
Body/Cut: In Conversation with Stephanie Cortazzo
It is about the trials and tribulations of lovers who are set in a dismal, bleak universe—much like our current reality in NYC one could even argue. They are challenged to come to terms with each other and deal with various issues such as ego, conflicting decisions, and insecurities.
“Blood and Rockets: Movement I, Saga of Jack Parsons – Movement II, Too the Moon” by The Claypool Lennon Delirium
The Claypool Lennon Delirium masterfully tells the story of rocket scientist/ occultist Jack Parsons.
The Marvelous Mythos of Black Panther
We warmly welcome Darrell Hester (Mythos Collective) and Zachary Feder to Metapsychosis. Zachary, a writer and interlocutor on our forum at Infinite Conversations, contacted Darrell after seeing one of YouTube videos. In this talk, they cover everything from the cultural and psychological significance of the film to the esoteric meaning of vibranium. This is their first talk—with more to come, we hope!
Sustain/Decay: A Philosophical Investigation of Drone Music and Mysticism (Review)
Floating from time period to time period amid spiritual and religious observances and contemporary soundscapes the drone remains consistently omnipresent, like the angel of death, hovering just out of reach yet connecting all things living and dead…
Delusions, by Stanisław Kapuściński: A Review
Kapuscinski’s intentions are early implied, to match Dawkins bite for bite and (as honestly) to demonstrate the irreconcilable gulf between intellectual reductionism and emotional religious dogmatism, each flailing towards fundamentalism in trying to flatten one another.
Reading Albert Murray in the Age of Trump
In his near-century of life, Murray confronted race by re-constructing American identity as omni-American—that out of many, we are one.
HyperNormalisation (Review)
“We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie. They know we know they lie. They don’t care. We say we care but we do nothing. And nothing ever changes.” BBC documentary by Adam Curtis.