Sleep Has No House

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Hello from out here on the Thames Delta. I got my new passport. I hate it. The photo makes me look like I died last year and my corpse was left out in the rain. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in a month, and I have felt permanently half-drunk for the last week. How are you?

In this letter:

• operations

• The News

• Collide

• Deliberate Disconnection

• Graveyard Gallery

• some stuff in my office

OPERATIONS

• I appear to have closed a deal for a TV Thing - no project codename, as it involves one of my earlier works, and in success I’ll just be a producer.

• TV Thing agreements come in two stage. The Deal is basically a memo listing the terms of the thing. “Closing the deal” means that all parties have agreed to the terms outlined in that memo, and everyone can go forward. Most announcements you see in the press about options and the like happen after the deal is closed, and there is NO guarantee the show will ever be made. The intent is there, everyone will try really hard and apply a great deal of skill and invention, but Shit Will Happen. Second stage: The Contract, which can come up to a year later, and involves everyone arguing about the details surrounding each of the terms in the memo until nobody is happy but everyone can live with it. I am lucky enough to have an excellent lawyer, Joel VanderKloot, and the world’s greatest manager, Angela Cheng Caplan. In many, many cases, the show may have been sold and production is already underway before the contract is done.

• I just received some design work for my piece with Kody Chamberlain for the LIGHTS OUT anthology book, which you can still preorder.

Find more Lordess Foudre work at her Instagram and Substack.

Coming to Orbital Operations soon.

Jerome Eyquem is an artist and writer: here are his releases on GlobalComix.

ORBITAL

Julian Simpson has set up a Backerkit page for his next audio drama production, the next in the LOVECRAFT INVESTIGATIONS series. He is a terrific writer and he always works with the best actors.

And! Here’s the launch trailer!

Here’s an odd thing: apparently there was a graphic novel biography of Valerie Solanas published in France five years ago, and now there’s a Kickstarter for an English-language version.

Artist, writer and educator Rain DeGrey moved to the wilderness after a lifetime in California and this is the record of her discovery of the land and the seasons. This is her newsletter.

Todd Blackwood is the creator of NOSFERATU: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL. See more of his art on his IG.

If you want to work together this year, or if you’re doing something creative you want more people to know about, or if you think there’s something Orbital Operations should be covering, hit reply to this newsletter to shoot a note to the office.

OPS

Mia Wolff very kindly gifted me a stack of her books, which are fantastic.

This is her website. And this is her page at Fantagraphics, who published these. And this is her IG.

I met the Kazakh-Turkish-Swiss vocal artist Saadet Turkoz last weekend, at a local performance, and her voice is something else. Here’s one of her records. Sometimes sweet, sometimes ancient, sometimes the full Diamanda Galas. I bought two of her records (neither of which was the one I just linked, they’re not on Bandcamp), but her performance with the women of ONe_Orchestra New was a hell of a thing.

The other voice that really jumped out at me that night was Shama Rahman, and when I tracked down that website, here’s the first line I found:

I am the first Sitar player to perform on the ice in Antarctica where I was invited to be an explorer on an expedition with the first Antarctic Biennale.

That’s kind of an impressive thing to lead out with, right?

For something more soothing, here’s the first released track from the new album by avant-folk genius Alison Cotton.

Just discovered this:

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Arnold Schwarzenegger has a newsletter.

Yeah. That Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So do Codie Sanchez, Scott Galloway, Colin & Samir, Shaan Puri, and Jay Shetty. And none of them are doing it for fun. They're doing it because a list you own compounds in ways that social media never will.

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SERIAL

COLLAPSAR, Warren Ellis (1)

"Don’t flush," I called out, standing with my back to the wall beside the bathroom door and listening to Stanton’s stream.  "Please.”

Stanton’s low bearish chuckle, as I heard the last yellow pearls shaken into the bowl: “You Brits.  So polite even when you need to rush to the can.”

I dropped my voice into a tone that sounded more rough and manly to my ears.  “I know you all have issues with water conservation out here.”

The door yanked open.  Stanton did everything with violence.  He was the kind of artist who, deep down, thought art was for women, and needed to assert male energy on everything around him. He also didn’t wash unless he deemed it necessary, which I reminded myself I needed to remember at handshake time.  I turned my knuckles outward like George W. Bush and tried, once again, to do that muscle-fanning thing in my neck to make me look more dominant in my space.  I read about it in a Tom Wolfe book.

“Yeah,” Stanton said, striding off into his studio space.  “Drier than my grandmother’s snatch out here at this time of year.  All yours.”

I strode into the bathroom and closed and locked the door.  There it was, filling the bowl.  That which geniuses leave in their wake for the rest of us.  

I was never a genius.  I will never be a genius.  I will never be a great artist.  I am Erik Byron, and I am the connectome of the planetary artistic hive mind.  But I have always wanted to taste genius.  To feel it in my blood and tissues, the way cannibal tribes ate their shamen to gain their wisdom.

I knelt, worshipful, before the toilet bowl, carefully scooped out a palmful of urine, and drank it.

I’m going to bed. I hope you sleep well, when you sleep. See you next week.

W