Steve Finbow - The Mindshaft

Every city has that motel. The motel on the edge of town, the mythical place you dare not go. Logan Berry goes there. In this episode, we calibrate a magical framework for understanding the world through a seance Logan conducted at the Skylark Motel. We get into cutting off spectral appendages, invoking chaos, exploring hoarder homes, practicing automatic writing, and Ultratheater.   Additionally, we discuss if relentless exposure to depravity makes us evil, and why occult commerce lacks the courage of its own convictions. We also explore the possibility that these are the best times, or at least the only times we'll ever live in Logan Berry is the author of Casket Flare (Inside the Castle), Run-off Sugar Crystal Lake (11:11 Press), and Transmissions to Artaud (Selffuck). He’s a playwright and theatre director. He lives in Chicago. Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius SOCIAL: David's site: raviddice.com Wake Island Twitter: @WakeIslandPod  Wake Island Instagram: @wakeislandpod David's Twitter: @raviddice Logan's Twitter: @lgnbrry

25 Okt 20231h 14min

“The omnicidal will to constitute an infinite decision implies one of two things: either to kill the unfinished, or to let the unfinished kill.” In the second part of our conversation with Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, we delve deep into the realm of unreality. We explore topics such as the labor associated with maintaining the criminal enterprise of the dream, the suffering and expenditure associated with visionary figures like Joyce Monsuer, the allure of totalitarian seduction during times marked by the predatory and sadistic behavior of those in authority, the phenomenon of NPC culture and the detachment /neutrality it brings, the banality of repressed nerds and the enduring shittiness of the metaverse.  Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh⁠ is a philosopher, literary theorist, and professor of comparative literature at Babson College. His work tracks currents of experimental thought across the so-called East and the West, with particular attention to concepts of chaos, violence, illusion, silence, extremism, mania, disappearance, night, evil, secrecy, and apocalyptic writing. He has published nine books to date, including: ⁠⁠⁠Night: A Philosophy of the After-Dark⁠⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠⁠Night: A Philosophy of the Last World⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠Omnicide: Mania, Fatality, and the Future-in-Delirium⁠⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠⁠Omnicide II: Mania, Doom, and the Future-in-Deception⁠⁠⁠, The Chaotic Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Inflictions (Continuum, 2012); The Radical Unspoken (Routledge, 2013); Insurgent, Poet, Mystic, Sectarian (SUNY, 2015); He is also the founding director of the Future Studies Program (www.futurestudiesprogram.com), Programmer of Transdisciplinary Studies for the New Centre for Research & Practice, and co-editor of the "Futures Theory" and "Suspensions" book series (Bloomsbury). Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius SOCIAL: David's site: raviddice.com Wake Island Twitter: @WakeIslandPod  Wake Island Instagram: @wakeislandpod David's Twitter: @raviddice

11 Okt 20231h 19min

"Every storyteller harbours a secret desire to be the one who tells the last story, just as every maniac wishes to inscribe the last fateful madness on earth." In this episode with Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh we walk with vertigo to summon the authors who play at the borders of insanity and intoxication. We get into the territories of the night and mania, both of which are the premise of Jason's most recent books: Night: A Philosophy of the After-Dark & Night: A Philosophy of the Last World and Omnicide: Mania, Fatality, and the Future-in-Delirium & Omnicide II: Mania, Doom, and the Future-in-Deception. Topics discussed include: exploring the dark poetics of the avant-garde, forbidden literature, and the final words of poets that lean into the dark and speak in apocalyptic tones, manic obsession, cosmic intoxication, opium dreams, mania redeeming nihilism, standing on the threshold of the abyss, embracing relentlessness as an aesthetic to achieve undeniability, and shunning sanity in favor of embracing madness. Omnicide is “A captivating fractal of conceptual prisms in half-storytelling, half-theoretical prose, a rhythmic, poetic, insidious work that commands submission, Omnicide absorbs the reader into unfamiliar and estranging landscapes whose every subtle euphoric aspect threatens to become an irresistible invitation to the end of all things.” Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh's Omnicide offers readers a view into a unique philosophy of delirium, mania, and vitalist annihilation: the startling revelation that everything that is, should not be. Omnicide is a singular kind of taxonomy, a teratology of thought-creatures that dovetails around his chosen writers, from the revelatory self-abnegation of Forugh Farrokhzad to Sadeq Hedayat, the poète maudite of modern Iran. These and other “poets of the lost cause” come together in a compelling book that is a strange hybrid of Aristotle's Categories, Borges's Book of Imaginary Beings, and the Necronomicon. ―Eugene Thacker, author of Infinite Resignation and In the Dust of This Planet Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh is a philosopher, literary theorist, and professor of comparative literature at Babson College. His work tracks currents of experimental thought across the so-called East and the West, with particular attention to concepts of chaos, violence, illusion, silence, extremism, mania, disappearance, night, evil, secrecy, and apocalyptic writing. He has published nine books to date, including: The Chaotic Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Inflictions (Continuum, 2012); The Radical Unspoken (Routledge, 2013); Insurgent, Poet, Mystic, Sectarian (SUNY, 2015); Omnicide: Mania, Fatality, and the Future-In-Delirium (MIT/ Urbanomic/ Sequence, 2019); and, Night: A Philosophy of the After-Dark (Zero Books, 2019); Omnicide II: Mania, Doom, and the Future-In-Deception (MIT/Urbanomic/Sequence, 2022); and Night II: A Philosophy of the Last World (Zero Books, 2022). He is also the founding director of the Future Studies Program (www.futurestudiesprogram.com), Programmer of Transdisciplinary Studies for the New Centre for Research & Practice, and co-editor of the "Futures Theory" and "Suspensions" book series (Bloomsbury). Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius SOCIAL: David's site: raviddice.com Wake Island Twitter: @WakeIslandPod  Wake Island Instagram: @wakeislandpod David's Twitter: @raviddice

4 Okt 202357min

Enter the Amity-verse with Wake Island. In this episode we get into channeling dark energy from the media vortex surrounding America’s most infamous haunted house in Amityville, Long Island. In addition we also talk about: Hauntings as a manifestation of trauma, the mythology-making behind the nearly 50-year Amityville horror house phenomenon, demonic media spectacles, the allure and menace of the suburbs, and the reality and fantasy of demonic possession. Jack Riccobono’s new series, Amityville: An Origin Story, is now streaming on MGM+. Riccobono has written & directed a wide range of narrative, documentary and commercial work across the five boroughs of his native New York City and around the world, from Moscow to Shanghai to Freetown, often exploring hidden subcultures and the complexities of the human soul. His critically acclaimed feature documentary The Seventh Fire, from executive producers Terrence Malick, Natalie Portman and Chris Eyre, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and received a New York Times Critic’s Pick. Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius SOCIAL: Jack's site: All Rites Reserved David's site: raviddice.com Wake Island Twitter: @WakeIslandPod  Wake Island Instagram: @wakeislandpod David's Twitter: @raviddice

22 Jun 20232h 22min

Jarett Kobek is a Turkish-American writer living in California. His novel I HATE THE INTERNET was an international bestseller, translated into nine languages, and published in twelve countries. His other books include: ATTA, Do Every Thing Wrong!: XXXTentacion Against the World, Only Americans Burn in Hell and The Future Won't Be Long. Motor Spirit: The Long Hunt for the Zodiac It’s 1969. Evil lurks in California. From a Napa County hippie child murder to Haight Street gang bangs to methamphetamine psychosis to the killing of Sharon Tate. Here and now, in this place and this time, it’s all gone wrong. And there’s something else, too. How to Find Zodiac Dear Reader, This is not the Zodiac speaking. The one thing that I ask of you is this, please read this book. It is called How to Find Zodiac. Being that this book is about the Zodiac, it offers a new suspect. The theory is probably correct. At the moment the theory is unproven. But the idea is a bomb waiting to go massive. Can you see the flaws in the hunting method or will you just agree and say case closed. Either way one thing is true. Zodiac can never look and seem the same after you read this book. "A scruffy masterpiece of criminology. It seems to me that either Kobek's painstaking deductions are correct, or we must urgently revise the laws of probability." -Alan Moore, author of From Hell SOCIAL: Twitter: @WakeIslandPod Instagram: @wakeislandpod David's Twitter: @raviddice

9 Jun 20222h 33min

James Pogue is a journalist and essayist. His first book is called Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West. James recently wrote an article for Vanity Fair called Inside the New Right and it’s not only a great piece of journalism but it struck a cultural nerve. Not only did it go viral but it even got a shout out on Twitter from the likes of Jeff Bezos and Glenn Greenwald. In this conversation we discuss everything from MMA’s connection to the right, to diagnosing what is happening at the margins of our flailing empire. We also get into: the Dillon Danis controversy, bro science/Rogan’s appeal, being skeptical of liberalism, how the left loses dynamic & questioning men, constantly beating back the devils at the gate, alienation leading to chaos, the system spinning out of control, reading the tea leaves of history and seeing techno fascism, Curtis Yarvin as a historian analyst of the left, social revolution, the aesthetics of the new right, and cool kids adopting a religious pose. SOCIAL: Twitter: @WakeIslandPod Instagram: @wakeislandpod David's Twitter: @raviddice James Twitter: @jhensonpogue James Instagram: @jhensonpogue

26 Mai 20221h 25min

Lindsay Lerman is a writer and translator. Her new novel, WHAT ARE YOU (CLASH Books) is out now. Her first book I'm From Nowhere was published in 2019. Her essays, short stories, and poetry have been published in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Entropy, Hobart, Southwest Review, and elsewhere. She is currently adapting her short story Real Love—which first appeared in NY Tyrant Magazine—for the screen. She is represented by Abby Walters at CAA. In the intro David and I talk about Pascal Laugier's MARTYRS (2008). The interview with Lindsay starts at 27:42. In this conversation we get into: locating and living through the cusp of our time, the interconnection between nuance and chaos, dissolution, the unspoken rules of commodification, giving into the productivity of terror, giving yourself up to the universe, barfing into the void, celebrating the irrational, and the importance of play in the face of utility. We also talk about Bataille’s philosophy around expenditure and waste as a way to explore Lindsey’s outlook and work as an author. WHAT ARE YOU: Hypnotic, dreamlike, lyrical essays tell the story of a woman trapped in a destructive love affair with the universe. Her understanding of power, desire, and complicity must be transformed again and again. Addressed to an amorphous you, Lerman wrestles with the forces of birth and death, creation and destruction—going deep into the subterranean strata of consciousness and back. PRAISE: “An incantatory and hypnotic work of voice, What Are You exists at the apex of creation and destruction, desire and shame, innocence and experience, violence and tenderness, rapture and suffering, hunger and the denial of flesh. To read it is to feel the terror of falling from a great height—but wanting to; maybe even choosing to jump.” - SARAH GERARD, AUTHOR OF SUNSHINE STATE AND TRUE LOVE "Passionate, dispassionate, hypnotic, deadpan, ecstatic, Lindsay Lerman's What Are You, read it now. Now." - KATHE KOJA, AUTHOR OF THE CIPHER SOCIAL: Twitter: @WakeIslandPod Instagram: @wakeislandpod David's Twitter: @raviddice Lindsay's Twitter: @lindsaylerman Lindsay's Instagram: @lindsay.lerman

28 Apr 20221h 20min

Adam Lehrer is a writer and an artist living in New York. He is the founder and co-host of the System of Systems podcast, and the founder and curator of the Safety Propaganda collaborative media platform. Communions is Adam's debut book - out now from Hyperidean Press. Communions: Channeling hallucinated versions of dead artists and junkies, these fragments access the uncanny allure of shared experience. Elements of speculative fiction, criticism and encrypted auto-biography merge to form a disconcerting portrait of the artist as addict. Neither denunciation nor valorization, Communions is an attempt to probe the haunting singularity of opiate addiction and its ineradicable influence on art and culture. As a writer, Lehrer covers topics such as contemporary art, horror fiction, noise and experimental music, cinema, and left politics. David and I talk about the Truman Show in the intro. Interview starts at 19:25. Follow us on social at: Twitter: @WakeIslandPod Instagram: @wakeislandpod David's Twitter: @raviddice System of System Twitter: @SystemofSystem3 Safety Propaganda Twitter: @SafetyPropagan1 Safety Propaganda Instagram: @safetypropaganda Adam's Instagram: @adamlehreruptown

14 Apr 20221h 29min