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volume 4, issue ii, 6.21.09
pretend genius presents: glossolalia, inc.
barrie walsh
"Breaking-news: MRI-scans show brain-activity higher daydreaming.
Monday 20th April 2009 announcement Egyptian archaeologists began excavating 3-possible sites for the Lost Tomb of Antony & Cleopatra, has reactivated the 41st-blueprint proposition a Shakespeare play encodes a master-plan."
robert grossmith
"One of the great difficulties in writing about Destructivism, the avant-garde art movement that briefly flourished in 1960s London, lies in the fact that not a single Destructivist work of art exists. There are no primary sources. Not a solitary Destructivist novel, poem, play, story, painting, sculpture, film, dance or piece of music was ever produced or, if produced, allowed to survive."
justin goff
"If life were like fiction, Canterbury would be the end of the line. My (life) story would only make it (just-less-than) halfway there before I petered out in a fit of exhaustion or resignation or some combination of both (that is, before I packed up my quills and inkwells and died of old age). "
miles cimerman
"Five years ago, at the age of 23, Aden Bell published his first novel, City Maps, to a near universal chorus of shrugs and dismissals. It was 2004 and the world had better things to worry about than the suburban malaise of a writer barely old enough to drink. Despite being essentially a work of social realism, City Maps failed to connect with the mainstream literary zeitgeist; a collection of elliptical short stories set in an unnamed Anywhere, USA"
michael larrain
"In the hours before dawn
our bodies are drinking stored-up light
and reassembling it as water
So do all memories begin
Upon awakening "
Introduction to Volume 4, Issue 2
In March of 2009, the scientific-literary quarterly glossolalia.inc began work on its 13th and final issue. Started by a group of academic outsiders dissatisfied with the monopolistic control universities held over intellectual discourse in all fields, from physics to poetry, from psychology to anthropology, from literature to philosophy, the founders sought to recognize the simultaneous absurdity and validity of the sometimes seemingly impenetrable technical jargon employed by quantum physicists, literary theorists, post-modernists, poets, and the like. Thus they chose to name their rebel publication, housed in a dilapidated Victorian building in North Seattle, glossolalia.inc and, in so doing, place the academic work in the context of past literary nonsensists such as Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Gilles Deleuze, and Alfred Jarry as well as within the divine tradition of speaking in tongues ("And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." Acts 2: 4).
As the words spoken by those possessed by the Holy Ghost are the words of God and thus prophesy, the words of Carroll or Lear, for example, may seem like childish meaninglessness but often reveal a greater existential truth; similarly, academics adopt difficult language in order to grasp truths that normally lie beyond the cognitive, that is linguistic, capabilities of humanity. What the university-funded academic discourse lacked, though, was dialogue with the real world and a full understanding of their place inside of the history of nonsense; this the founders of glossolalia.inc set out to rectify with a collusion of diverse published works: articles on neuroscience, interviews with artists, historical pieces, in depth journalism, poetry, photo essays, political analysis, literary theory, short stories, philosophical manifestos, ethnographies, occult theory, and reprints of obscure academic work thought long lost. Packaged and presented as an art book or high concept periodical, glossolalia.inc presented often highly technical and specialized writings to a public that is not typically exposed to such writings. By presenting these complex works within the context of language play or nonsense, the reader was thus allowed to not be embarrassed or turned away by his or her own lack of understanding but instead was invited to revel in that lack of understanding.
Alas, glossolalia.inc could not exist forever, and now, in honor of its death, Pretend Genius presents four pieces culled from the glossolalia.inc archives. Moderate in their difficulty but exceptional in their content, these four pieces, while not representing the entirety of glossolalia.inc's three and a quarter year's output, represent the importance of such an endeavor. All four pieces present a kind of outsider perspective absent from university funded academia, absent because, I surmise, they are incapable of the particular brand of unorthodox thinking epitomized by these pieces and by glossolalia.inc in general.
To send you, dear reader, off on the linguistic odyssey of oddities that this issue of writethis.com offers, I leave you with a few sage words from Edward Lear:
There was an old person of Deal,
Who in walking, used only his heel;
When they said, 'Tell us why?' --
He made no reply;
That mysterious old person of Deal.
-Miles Cimerman, Guest Editor, former contributor to glossolalia.inc.
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long live king ludd, the futurist! - issue 4.4
Opening Date: June 22nd
Closing Date: August 1st
Publication Date: August 21st
Summation: In the early 19th century, a group of British textile workers criticized the Industrial Revolution and the emerging relationship between man and technology, a relationship they felt put the technology before the man. On the other end of the Industrial Revolution, in the early 20th century, the Italian Futurists proclaimed their love for the new speed of the modern world. Finally, human technology had triumphed over nature, and they were proud of this triumph.
Today, as technological advancement progresses exponentially every day, humankind's relationship with the machines we build has grown even more complex. The ghosts of the Luddites and the Futurists live on; they have commingled, cohabited, and reproduced.
Write This represents this fusion but we ourselves cannot make sense of it. We need you! Send us your stories of the intricate, violent, beautiful, destructive and nasty relationship between man and machine. Send us your love songs and laments about those 21st machines.
ghost stories - issue 4.6
Opening Date: August 22nd
Closing Date: October 1st
Publication Date: October 21st
Summation: Filmmaker Jan Svankmajer stated, "Unless we again begin to tell fairy tales and ghost stories before going to sleep and recounting our dreams upon waking, nothing more is to be expected of our Western civilization."
Your mission is simple: the 21st century needs new ghost stories (we'll get to the fairy tales and dreams later). Abandon those stuffy Victorian mansions and tired blanket cliches. Our century needs new tales of haunting. Scare us. Make us scream in ways we've never screamed before.
the blasphemy issue - issue 4.8
Opening Date: October 22nd
Closing Date: December 1st
Publication Date: December 21st
Summation: You love God. You hate God. We won't judge. Come to us to with your devotions, your confessions, or your proclamations. Or come to us with your disdain, your warnings. Bring us your Goddesses and Nymphs. Jesuses. Or your Darwins. Your Hubbardwacks. Your when you're dead you're dead. We don't care. And join together, one and all, in what shall be a heartwarming dialogue of "Fuck God." "Fuck God? No. God is Great. Fuck you." We will choose fairly from the pro god and anti god camps. No agnostics please.
fuck this apocalypse - issue 4.10
Opening Date: December 22nd
Closing Date: February 1st
Publication Date: February 21st
Summation: Every generation thinks that they are living at the cusp of the apocalypse, and we are no different. But that apocalypse is so much more than the mundane end of the world. The word comes from a Greek word meaning the "unveiling" or "revelation." What could be sexier than an unveiling? What is fucking but a divine revelation? As Wikipedia (an always reliable source) states, the apocalypse might more accurately be thought of as, "the disclosure to certain privileged persons of something hidden from the majority of humankind." It is, thus, a revelation of the secret history or unspoken truth of the world, of existence, of the cosmos, or simply of humanity, or even more simply, of the naked human body.
We want to tell the story of the real apocalypse, the erotic apocalypse, and we want your help. Send us your stories of revelation, and hey, we wouldn't mind it if they happened to be apocalyptic in the more common, modern sense of the word as well. And remember, in honor of St. Valentine's Day, make it fucking hot!
disclaimer: write this content does not necessarily reflect the views of all write this contributors. happy flails.
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