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September 6, 2019
Janaka Stucky's Playlist for His Poetry Collection "Ascend Ascend"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Heidi Julavits, Hari Kunzru, and many others.
Janaka Stucky's Ascend Ascend is a mesmerizing collection that envelops the reader on a path to divination.
Anne Waldman wrote of the book:
"Ascend Ascend is a passionate trance poem of praise, incantation and divination. It scries into the future with aspiration .."
In his own words, here is Janaka Stucky's Book Notes music playlist for his poetry collection Ascend Ascend:
In June of 2017 I left for my first ever artist residency, to begin writing my next book. Over the years I have developed a practice of trance poetics for myself, which I talked about a bit in my last Book Notes for Largehearted Boy, so I had specifically applied to this very unusual residency for artists who have esoteric or occult influence on their creative process: The Star & Snake, a rehabbed 19th century church turned Art Church. My plan was to write a book length queer elegiac love poem to Jean Genet, but on the eve of my departure I found I had lost my notebook containing two years’ worth of notes and fragments towards that book. Distraught beyond words, I showed up at my residency empty-handed and directionless, with no idea what I’d be writing for the next couple of weeks. What came out of me over that time was the wildest poetry I’ve ever written, the book-length poem: Ascend Ascend.
I spent my days and nights coming in and out of trance states through meditation, intermittent fasting, and somatic rituals, while secluding myself in a 7-foot by 7-foot room at the top of the church’s tower. Rooted in the Jewish mystical tradition of Hekhalot literature, which chronicles an ascent up the Kabbalistic Tree of Life to witness the Merkabah, or “chariot of God,” this book-length poem drafts a surreal, mythological landscape in which maximalist language shreds the natural world. Light becomes rainbowed sex. Intestines tangle into an aria. The sky is gallowed. At the center of this apocalyptic devastation stands the speaker of these poems (a disembodied Me / We), who first sheds the world, then the body, then the “I” … until the loss of everything—including the self and even semantic meaning—allows for the kind of emptiness necessary to finally gain another meaning, which is only found in the immediate and eternal nowness of nonbeing. For me, that state of consciousness is the crux of where art most often succeeds and religion most often fails, that ontological union with the unspeakable—the world that is other than words.
Woe to All (On the Day of My Wrath) – Lingua Ignota
I had been obsessively listening to Lingua Ignota’s debut album, “All Bitches Die,” in the weeks leading up to my residency. She is making some of the most exciting music today, and the deeply lyric and emotional heart of her work elevates personal tragedy to mythological levels that embody a kind of anti-ecstasis. At night, when I would gather with the other artists in the nave of the church after dinner, we would play music for each other through the sound system. Hearing Lingua Ignota at that scale, in that venue, brought the experience to a whole new level.
Sola Gratia (Pt.1) – SQÜRL
While at the residency I received the master mixes of a collaborative recording I made with the music of SQÜRL—the experimental rock band comprised of Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan which provides the soundtrack to many of Jarmusch’s films. I met them when our paths crossed in Nashville and again in Iowa City within the same ten-day period while we were both touring in 2015, and we developed an almost instant kinship and appreciation for each other’s work. I remember being really struck by the soundtrack they did for Only Lover Left Alive, and this is one of my favorite tracks off that album.
Carrion Flowers – Chelsea Wolfe
I had never listened to much Chelsea Wolfe before my residency at the Star & Snake. Much like I turned other artists onto Lingua Ignota there, I was in turn turned on to Chelsea Wolfe. I’m sure listening to this song filling the entire nave of a church, surrounded incredible stained glass windows, had something to do with the impression the music made on me.
666lb. Bongsession – Bongzilla
Between all the meditating and fasting I was doing at Star & Snake, I also needed to take care of my body and so I made a point of taking a break each afternoon to get some exercise in. Stoner metal has been my go-to exercise soundtrack for many years, and this particular track is one of my favorites to sweat to.
Maggot Brain – Funkadelic
Months after I completed my manuscript and had it acquired by Third Man Records & Books, I turned in the final draft to my editor, who had one of the Third Man interns proofread it. After her first pass she just looked up and said: “this is like Walt Whitman and Maggot Brain all in one.” I told my editor we needed to put that into the catalog copy for the book! And here we are …
Marijuanaut’s Theme – Sleep
While my book was in production with Third Man, they signed a record deal with Sleep—who also happen to be one of my favorite bands of all time—which my editors at Third Man know. So when plans started to develop for a secret show to launch Sleep’s new record with Third Man, they generously invited me to come down and perform as an opening act. Getting to perform this new book publicly for the first time before one of my favorite bands took the stage was literally a dream coming true that I never even knew I had.
What Went We – Mark Korven
I’m a big horror movie fan. For years I’ve produced film programming in the Boston area centered on cult classic and contemporary arthouse horror films. When The Vvitch came out a few years ago, I was so excited that I actually organized a private advanced screening for my friends. So, when I started talking with Atlas Obscura about producing a seven-city tour with them—in which I would give hour-long multimedia ritual performances of my book—and they started throwing out suggestions for musicians to collaborate with, Mark Korven (who composed the haunting soundtrack for The Vvitch) was a no brainer. Mark and I got to share the stage at my opening Atlas Obscura performance in New York, and his live set was just stunning. I can’t say too much about it right now, but we are working on another exciting project that will hopefully be realized soon …
Seventh Movement – Lori Goldston
The other musician I’m performing with while on my Atlas Obscura tour is Lori Goldston—best known for her work as a cellist with the bands Nirvana and Earth. Nirvana was a huge band for me in the 90s, and Earth has been a major influence on me over the past decade—whose music I listen to often when I write. Lori and I are doing a show together in Seattle on September 20th, and in the meantime I’ve been playing this soundtrack she did for The Passion of the Joan of Arc, which also happens to be a favorite film of mine.
Talk to God – Goat
The tradition of “ascension literature” that I see my book as an extension of has its roots in 16th century Kabbalistic Jewish mysticism (though some of it dates back much further). During this Renaissance-era interpretation of the Torah, Jewish mystics put forth a proposal that the book in its entirety—beyond any literal or allegorical meaning—is one long name for God, that even the semantic meanings of the words are inconsequential. As my own book spirals first upwards and then downwards into the abyss, and then emerges somewhere both beneath and above the language in it also unravels. I see the book in the same way, as one long crypto-name for God. But not the Biblical God, or even “the divine” as entity—simply as a way to say the unsayable, the mysterium tremendum, that unspeakable dread and awe at being in the inevitable presence of nonbeing. That is the work of art, of which religion is a genre. Goat gets it.
Janaka Stucky and Ascend Ascend links:
the author's website
excerpt from the book
BOMB interview with the author
Largehearted Boy playlist by the author for The Truth Is We Are Perfect
Literary Hub essay by the author
Tupelo Quarterly interview with the author
VICE profile of the author
Vol. 1 Brooklyn interview with the author
also at Largehearted Boy:
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Book Notes (2015 - ) (authors create music playlists for their book)
Book Notes (2012 - 2014) (authors create music playlists for their book)
Book Notes (2005 - 2011) (authors create music playlists for their book)
my 11 favorite Book Notes playlist essays
Antiheroines (interviews with up and coming female comics artists)
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guest book reviews
Librairie Drawn & Quarterly Books of the Week (recommended new books, magazines, and comics)
musician/author interviews
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Soundtracked (composers and directors discuss their film's soundtracks)
weekly music release lists
