dream 004: bod [包家巷] on antiselytism, the diddification of the underground, and dreams.
One Sunday in March I walked to a cemetery where I had agreed to meet the artist and musician bod [包家巷]. The sun was shining, and a local community group were doing a tour of the graves, which I observed from a nearby bench. In the midst of my listening in, I got a call from a sleepy bod [包家巷], having taken a midday nap to recover from the previous night’s performance. Running late, they later tell me, is very un-bod like of them.
As the sun began to set, they call me again to make their presence known, circling the chapel at the back of the cemetery. I began to approach, yet no one was in sight. Suddenly, a black-clad figure carrying a military-grade backpack dashed between the trees, like an assassin soot-sprite moving straight towards me with open arms. Although we have been internet friends for a while, this was our first time meeting in person, and so after a warm embrace, I asked them about upcoming projects and the state of the underground music scene, as we journeyed through the undergrowths and vaped next to the dead.
alisha: I vaguely know what I want to talk to you about, but I don't know what direction it's going to go in.
bod [包家巷]: What if I derail entirely? Are you going to force it back? You should, probably.
a: I won't answer that. I’ll do the questions.
b: I can continuously ask questions in response to questions.
a: Sure.
b: It's a Derrida saying, we could have conversations composed entirely of questions or statements, it'd be the same, meaning-wise.
a: First question then, why is context so important to you?
b: I had a saying for a while that was like, discard categories in favour of context.
a: Explain
b: If you think about it visually, it's easier to take any amount of information and put it into box categories, compared with if you let it sit in like this post-structuralist fluid pool that continuously melds with each other. The idea is that the contexts are a structure that doesn't cut knowledge into discrete pieces, but instead, one context will point to different areas of the pool and you'll say, perspective one, and another context will point to different areas for perspective two. When you look at how contexts intersect with each other, I think that is where you find more and more truth.
a: So it’s about your truth?
b: It’s a hotly debated idea of what truth actually is, but for me, truth would be the intersection of all perspectives. And because perspective is often contradictory, the truth would essentially be the supreme annihilation point of nothing. The ultimate context is nothing.
a: When you were making your first projects 10 years ago, do you think the context in which they sit in is different to the context that it sits in now?
b: There are two perspectives on how you can look at this. The first one is that the way that the lore has been constructed, hopefully if it works, if I organize it properly, is that there is a very large puzzle and it's constructed backwards in time so that the answer to the puzzle is the last thing that I release. And the beginning of the puzzle was the first thing that it did.
a: Right
b: The other perspective, is the thing that I said earlier when we weren't recording, that art doesn't exist, there's only artifacts of an artist's life.
a: I think that is true to an extent.
b: The artist and art are impossible to distinguish from each other. I have this strange delusion that I can listen to a piece of music and just be like ‘Oh, I think this’ or ‘I don't like it’. Even if it's objectively good, and then later I'll find out that the person is a shitty person, I'll be like, that's why I didn't like it.
a: How do you feel like world-building is seen now compared to when you started building your lore? Because I feel like now it's become so commodified.
b: People finally became critical of world-building because we have tools in which we can construct entire unbreakable delusions just around ourselves. But the Adam Curtis thing, people have been doing that for a while.
a: Yeah!
b: I think my goal is to build a critical world. A world critical of world building.
a: What’s the next step with this then?
b: What's the next step of the operation? The new album is called Antiselytism and it's the antonym of proselytise.
a: Tell me more.
b: It's an archaic English word. So I'm gonna mansplain it.
a: I’ll allow it.
b: So a proselyte is someone who has converted to a faith. To proselytise is to attempt to convert someone to a faith. So the opposite of that would be to do something that instead of collating the Bible into a tool of power, what you do is you take all the things that were not included in the Bible and bury them into a cave by a sea in which nothing grows. This is the anti-selyte.
a: Ok I’m following, and are you collaborating with other people for the album?
b: I mean I don't make the music, I didn't do it. I sit down on a computer. I make sure I'm in the right state of mind. If I'm not, then I can't make the music or the music doesn't happen. And then God presses the buttons. Then at some point I'm back in my body and I have to organise these files and call it music.
a: Oh yeah, because you don't make music. I saw that.
b: We all make music. If music is defined as the organisation of sound scientists, particularly by human beings, or anything, then it's the very existence of the person moving around is music. When we listen to the sounds, like we're in a city, this entire environment is constructed by people. Music. Even where the birds are positioned is pretty much determined by human activity at this point, so.
a: How is your practice evolving with your performances, because they’re a big part of you as well?
b: It started with me just being on a computer, I want to sing, I play piano, I like machines, I’m in the machine. Now it's like, technical preparation for an event that must be contained. It's like drawing a salt circle, the salt and the salt circle aren't enough. It’s analogous to making sure that all the batteries are charged. The setup itself is as minimal as possible and can't be fucked with.
a: Are you the salt?
b: I'm the person who puts the salt in the circle, I lay the salt circle. What happens inside the circle categorically, spatiotemporally, is the performance.
a: When someone listens to your work in silo compared to when they see your work in context and performance, do you want them to feel similar things or do you aim for different feelings?
b: There can't be a specific objective. I've long moved past ideas of like, art can have a specific object that it accomplishes.
a: Ok.
b: I hope that when people listen to my music they feel emotions that they need to feel, but I always think about this in terms of devices. I assemble the files and I deliver them to the platform and then the platform is where people can access it. Even the people who possess their devices have a limited sort of capacity to control what devices they're listening to the music from, like a phone speaker or computer or car. These are completely different things.
a: I see.
b: At that point what is the music? What can actually push through all these different interfaces to accomplish anything? So then the answer is, what if you just retreated from pushing through entirely? But then you enter the realm of inaccessibility and you have like things like, the John Cage 433 thing.
a: Yeah.
b: So then we can add another perspective. The psychiatric answer to this question is that what I'm really doing is unlocking a subconscious part of my nature. That truth is the thing that's encrypted, but somehow remains within all the machine sounds and noise sounds that gets pushed through the interfaces.
a: Thank you. What part are you in the process then?
b: An operator of the machine. I'm the one who opens the door. My role is to constantly degrade the material plane's importance.
a: When did you figure out that was your role, or have you always felt that?
b: It's more like I was already doing it, and then I had to recognise that I was doing it and maybe I wasn't doing it the right way.
a: What made you realise that?
b: Pissing people off all the time, I didn't want to do that so much.
a: I'm interested in what you were saying earlier as well in your comparison to the pond. Can you talk about that again?
b: The pond is just a metaphor, it's like a Buddhist metaphor for meditation. The mind is a pond when you meditate the surface of the water becomes more still you can see deeper into the pond.
a: I want to show you that pond that I found over here actually.
[Walks through the graveyard]
b: You have to tell the records what I just did.
a: You blew blue vape into a grave vessel.
b: Now it looks like it's vaping. I'm not vaping, the vessel's vaping.
a: The dead are vaping.
b: You're welcome.
a: If they were alive, they would love vaping.
b: I hope you enjoyed your nicotine.
[Finds pond behind graves]
b: It actually might be verging on puddle.
a: I feel like most English bodies of water are just puddles. It's a pretty poor pond.
b: This is a puddle. Is it a deep puddle? Is that why it's gated off?
a: Maybe it's a sinkhole that someone put a fence around and then it collected water. There's definitely something in there.
b: There’s definitely a body in there.
a: That's what I was thinking.
b: Give [the pond] a coin. Before you give money to the dead, you have to make a really loud noise to get their attention.
a: What kind of noise would you make?
b: Usually it's a firecracker, that’s the Chinese thing to do.
a: Ok we don’t have that.
b: But since we don't know this person, maybe it's disrespectful to wake them up. So you just give them the coin.
a: I’m happy to give them money. Should I just throw this in the water then?
b: Yeah, give an intention, you know?
a: What would be the intention you would give it? Before I give it my intention as well.
b: To release any sense of my own intention from the coin and to offer it in its entirety to what it is such that I would never even remember that I had the coin to begin with.
a: That’s not fair I can’t follow that, that’s too good.
[Continues walking through graveyard]
b: I love the veil on a goblet.
a: A veil on a goblet for a gravestone.
b: Wow, these are World War I deaths. Oh shit. No, almost. This was right after World War 1. You know what I love? One of my favourite English things is this song called In Flanders Fields.
a: What do you like about it?
b: First of all, it has that beautiful English quality with the way English people talk. It’s just the same as writing things down. The song is like that, it starts as a poem. I was thinking about the century cycle on the centennial anniversary of World War I, and that song, I think really captures the senselessness of mass killing. It’s sort of the perfect, impossible task to describe the emotional response. The collective emotional response to senseless collective mass killing. I think that song does it, and it does it through the metaphor of flowers, which is beautiful.
a: What would be your top three music tracks?
b: We can't do that. That's too hierarchical.
a: What would be just three in that list then, three goated songs?
b: I don't like by Chief Keef. God this is already so hard. I hate doing this.This is a non-hierarchical list. This just an in-the-moment vibes thing.
a: You've got in Flander’s Fields, I don't like and…
b: We have this we have this Daria edit. I just have to get the name right so people can find it and hear it. It’s called ‘the greatest anime lover versus average hyperflip enjoyer.’
a: That is an amazing song title. Who is it by?
b: I don't have the artist's name, but I can look it up on SoundCloud and I'll find you the artist name. [searches] It’s by Fuluca. In Flanders Fields for sure is still my vibe right now, especially here in the graveyard. Chief Keef I Don't Like is always my vibe. I'm just kind of like a professional hater. Yeah, so that specific Dariacore song is like a very specific vibe for me right now.
a: In this context though, if the theme of our conversation is context, what's the one thing that you hate right now?
b: Oh fuck, are we spitting hatred? I have so many things to pick from. I'm hating on the diddification of the underground and how it's sort of like an ever-present problem.
a: It's like it doesn't matter.
b: It doesn't even fucking matter, it doesn't matter how decentralised the community is and how aware everyone is, someone's gonna come around and try to fucking identify everything and they'll get away with it for a while and they won't. The person behind Trauma Unit said something important last night, everyone already knows this but it’s like cancellation doesn't even matter because it always returns to capital. So it's like, you're not actually cancelled unless you become a liability for profits.
a: That is so true.
b: Can we go find a veil on a goblet again?
a: What's up with Veil on a Goblet? We've seen four, no five! There's another one. There are loads of veils and goblets, but why are they only half covered as well?
b: [Speaking to Chat GPT] I'm in a cemetery in London, and I keep seeing statues of a goblet half covered in a veil. Could you just give a quick history of the meaning of this image? [Reading from phone] The veiled cup or veiled chalice motif is associated with death after life and the idea of mysteries beyond human understanding. The cup or chalice symbolises the soul or even the eucharist or the self. The veil represents the separation between life and death. So, unknowing. Oh, that's why it's half-covered. Also can signify mourning, a mystery, and a separation between the spiritual and the known. So together, what the veil of God symbolises, is a passage. It's a liminal thing. It's literally a liminal sculpture. It might even hint at themes of sacrifice.
a: This is why I love this place.
b: I'm going to start putting veils on goblets.
a: That should be your next album cover.
b: Or at least maybe the veil on top of the prayer.
a: Yeah!
b: The anti-selytism album art has not been decided yet. Do you want credit?
a: I'm just happy to have had this conversation with you. When do you think it will come out?
b: I'm in this administrative process right now, the shirt is ready though, look at this shirt. [Takes shirt out of backpak] Maybe you can describe the shirt for the record.
a: Ooh, okay, it's all black, embroidered text with the album title on it. That is good quality as well.
b: I’ll show you the website mockup too. You should describe for the record what's going on.
a: Do I have to read this? Ok, so the description of the t-shirt as seen on the website. This is the description of antiselytism, the act of becoming or condition of being an anti-selyte aversion diversion para version description to the act or process of anti-selytising from pro-selytism pro-selyties. The t-shirt, fabric 100% cotton, neckline 95% cotton 5% elastane, sewing thread, Polyester. Overlock thread, 100% polyester, fluffy type thread. Output product specifications. I'm doing the whole thing. Yeah. Embroidery thread, 100% polymide. Polymide? Polymede. Interfacing brackets padding, 100%, polyester. Are we back at the chapel? Oh yeah. Fabric manufactured and dyed in Poland. According to OEKO, produced through personal networks by a family-owned business, ships from Germany. Price $35 USD, shipping $15 USD. Local pickups can be arranged via Instagram.
b: Thank you for that.
a: This is why I don't do podcasts.
b: It's the first time I've done merch in six years. Last time I did merch was I did a hoodie. No, I did scarf, but that one never actually released due to some political issues. But I did hoodie, sorry, I did a beanie. I did a beanie, that was the last time. The beanie sold out way too fast.
a: Does it have your artist name on the t-shirt as well or is it just the album title on the front?
b: It's just anti-selytism. You can't see it from far away. Maybe if your vision's bad or you're thinking about certain things too much, it might look like it says anti-semitism, but it doesn't. It says anti-selytism. That's the reason I couldn't get it produced in Germany, German producers were very skeptical. It looks a lot like the word anti-semitism, but it's not. This was before the Kanye shirt came out.
a: It's a crazy time to be alive. There's no normal. The new normal, but it's not normal.
b: A constantly updated normal that's both conditioning things that are not ok, and also finding ways to be ok.
a: What would your definition of normal be?
b: I mean, normal is for the past. The past normal depended on your context geographically or culturally or social status or something like what other people tell you it is, that's what normal was. Now it's like everyone's just arguing about what normal is. So maybe what's normal now is arguing about what normal is.
a: What was the last dream you had?
b: My dream last night was that my group of friends and I were on a bus they had decided to steal. It's a school bus, a yellow school bus. They were joyriding it. I was on the bus, on my computer, and then the bus got pulled over by the cops. So everyone ditches, and we all scatter, and I'm like, fuck, I left my laptop. I go back, and the police are there, they have my laptop, and they say we've gone through your laptop, we know everything, and we're gonna find out everyone who was here, so you could also just sit here and give a confession. Right before I woke up, I remember distinctly telling the officer, sure, but the problem is that we don't talk and also we don't commit acts of violence.
a: Do you think there'll be a sequel tonight?
b: No, my dreams don't usually do that.
a: Do you usually have vivid dreams?
b: I usually have dreams. I usually have three types of dreams. First is this one, a sort of psychoanalytic-based, direct representation of how I feel, what my life is like and emotional things, psychological things I need to confront, stuff like that. Another type of dream I have is also within a psychoanalytical realm, but very abstract. Often it's not even me dreaming but rather I'm observing a dream occurring and sometimes there are interactions with that dream where it's like I can rewind the dream and it becomes so lucid that I embody the dream. And then some dreams are me experiencing life but they are they are super vivid, familiar and realistic. Very often those are dreams I experience in the past or as things that just happen.
a: I get that.
b: I dream of things that don't happen. They're often very mundane, you know, I'll be standing in an apartment with a red couch on the left with a certain friend, the walls look a certain way, and then I'll be in that apartment later like fuck, I dreamt about this.
