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August 12, 2022
Kevin Sampsell's Playlist for His Book "I Made an Accident"
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, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Kevin Sampsell's book I Made an Accident shares a collection of his collages which inform, amaze, and amuse.
In his own words, here is Kevin Sampsell's Book Notes music playlist for his book I Made an Accident:
There’s a hard division between people who can write with music playing and those who absolutely can’t. Maybe it comes from my habit of multi-tasking, but I’ve always liked writing to music. That aural pleasure of songs coming into your head combined with creating something that spills outside of your head is a double whammy of satisfaction. But still, it’s not always easy to do two things at once, and I admit that I give up writing time to deep dive into iTunes or YouTube all the time.
One of the beauties of collaging for me is listening to music while I do it. Whether I’m cutting out images from old books (I prefer mid-20th century stuff) or generously applying glue stick to paper, I always have music on. My book is divided into seven parts in an attempt to focus on
specific themes and/or styles in each one. Here’s a musical trip through I Made an Accident.
Dedication:
“Candy May” by Alex Cameron
I dedicated this book to my friend, Arthur Franklin, who battled depression and died by suicide in 2019. He was one of my best collage friends and would sometimes come over to my place to collage. We’d always switch off playing DJ for each other, but one of our favorites was the character-driven pop of Alex Cameron. We even went to see Cameron when he played in Portland on Valentine’s Day 2019.
Part One: Hello Transformants
“I’m Gonna Run” by Fiery Furnaces
In the summer of 2014, I started writing a column about collage for The Rumpus (called Paper Trumpets). I was just learning the tricks of the trade and collaging like a wild person almost daily. I jumped into the art form head-first. I started hearing the term “art practice” for the first time. I made some shitty collages. I started seeing collage in everything—ads, album covers, landscapes, breakfast sandwiches. I felt high. I’d bop my head along to what you might call art pop. Listening to a Fiery Furnaces album is almost like reading a postmodern novel from the '70s. I remember making nine or ten collages on late nights when I didn’t want to sleep.
Part Two: Early Works/When Words Collide
“Rammellzee & Shockdell at the Ampitheater” from Wild Style Soundtrack
Some of my first experiments with collaging were actually back in the mid-'90s, when I was influenced by the cut-up text exercises of Brion Gysin and William Burroughs. And even before that, I came of age listening to early rap and hip-hop like Schoolly D, Mantronix, Run-DMC, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Public Enemy, and others. Perhaps my favorite element of those records was the sharp and aggressive scratching and sampling of other records. I sort of lost the thread of hip-hop culture when scratching faded away. But I still listen to old school stuff like the Wild Style soundtrack. The collages in this section are word-heavy, which look as old school and raw as Rammellzee & Shockdell sound here.
Part Three: Welcome to the Cave
“Hands” by Lithics
I like herky-jerky music. It suggests something uncontrollable and yet totally in command of its sound. Collage can feel like that to me too. Sometimes there’s no figuring out where it’s going, but then it all comes together. Bands like Drinks, Devo, and Lithics are good examples of this. It can get downright funky when it locks in. I choose this song from the Portland band for its groove but also because it’s called “Hands” and collage artists are obsessed with hands.
Part Four: All Shook Apart
“Run” by New Order
Maybe I should put an Elvis Presley song here, since part of his body makes an appearance in this section, but I like New Order more. When I hosted in-person collage-making events at Portland’s Independent Publishing Resource Center for a few years, I always had music playing. The crowd was always diverse, especially in age range, so landing on a soundtrack was sometimes a challenge. I found that most people, no matter who they were, had a soft spot for '80s pop or alternative mainstays. The Smiths, The Cure, Prince, Haircut 100, Depeche Mode. Stuff like that. “Run” is one of my favorite songs by New Order on one of my favorite overlooked albums.
Part Five: Book Smog
“Have You Ever Seen Peaches Growing on a Sweet Potato Vine?” by Jake Xerxes Fussell
More recently, I’ve been playing the various albums of Southern folk instrumentalist Jake Xerxes Fussell. His albums are mostly comprised of songs found on field recordings or in the traditional music public domain, which reminds me of how collage artists take images and sometimes whole book covers from the past and recontextualize, rebuild, and refresh them, often while retaining a haunted quality from the original. This song is a cover of a Jimmy Lee Williams song from 1977. It’s stunning and I could listen to Fussell’s chiming guitar all day.
Part Six: How Did This Happen?
“False Jessi Part 2” by Pissed Jeans
The collages in this section feel more pointed and confrontational, like a visual commentary about how messed up the world is—from the first world wars up to now. Though I’ve rarely felt comfortable being overtly political in my writing, I do feel like I have more freedom (and material) to go into messy territories with my collages. It feels good to be defiant without using words. And it feels good to yell about something with just scissors and glue. This Pissed Jeans song has a dark slacker attitude with its refrain of “I don’t bother!” but it also feels like a burst of frustrated rage.
Part Seven: Beauty of the Dance
“Passion Babe” by Aldous Harding
Currently, my summer jams of this year are mostly on the new Aldous Harding album, Warm Chris. I love the odd bounce of her poppier songs, with this tune being the most stickable in my brain. There’s a vibe in her music I’d call elegant and strange, which are two words I often use to describe the collages by some of my favorite collage artists. My favorite sentiment in this Harding song is when she repeats “Passion must play or passion won’t stay.” Collage artists often cite play as one of the reasons they fell in love with the form, and I agree wholeheartedly.
Kevin Sampsell is a bookseller and events coordinator at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon. He runs the small press, Future Tense Books. His books include A Common Pornography, This Is Between Us, and I Made an Accident. In summer of 2020, he started (with Cheryl Chudyk) the international collage art website, sharphandsgallery.com
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