Sometimes you just have to sit through a back-to-the-roots-heavy Paris fashion week schedule fueled by wearability alone, just to get your imagination going at the very end. Although Ghesquière’s collection was far from wearable, it was still rooted. Rooted in Louis Vuitton’s (the actual human behind the name) own backyard, high up in the Jura Mountains where France meets Switzerland. The set design was, at least. The clothes weren’t exactly French.
“When we started the collection, we wanted to work on architectural clothing that could express different cultures around the globe. I think clothes are bringing us together, and it’s kind of a form of anthropology—to think about how people can find things in common in different parts of the world in their way of dressing. I wanted to highlight that Nature is the greatest designer, and folklore is an attempt to explain the forces of Nature and the elements,” Ghesquière explained to the gaggle of press once the show wrapped.
Before you knew it, Turkish, Mongolian, Nepali, and Peruvian touches (and that’s just scratching the surface) had claimed the “neo-landscape”. And the grass was finally greener, literally, thanks to Severance production designer Jeremy Hindle. The show opened with an unmissable quartet of looks that were suspiciously reminiscent of Turkish kepenek, basically what shepherds wore when the mountains weren’t very friendly, just stylishly exaggerated for our viewing pleasure.
What followed were shearling hats that could be distant cousins of the paper sailor ones we made as kids, just with a little curve and a bit Ghesquière. Sheep made their appearance on mini skirts, courtesy of Ukrainian artist Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko. Now picture ruffled collars, fur, feathers, florals, and a whole lot of mix-and-match. At some point I saw a model carry her bag on a stick, like she was done and headed home, while another seemed to carry her home, or at least a convincing bag version of it. Either way, the front row did some traveling too, mostly in their heads, but hey, that’s the kind of trip Paris serves up when your name’s literally on the seat.
Netflix dark comedy-drama Vladimir has all ingredients of a hit. The story is based on a best-selling book, the solid cast is led by Rachel Weisz, and the premise is too tantalising to resist, especially once you’ve binged the latest Bridgerton.
Thankfully, succeed it did. With 4.2 million views amassed in its first week on the platform, Vladimir became a top 10 show in 74 countries where Netflix is available. Does that mean fans should gear up for season 2?
Vladimir Season 2 Release Date
At the time of writing, there’s no official news about a potential Vladimir season 2. Additionally, the story is pretty self-contained. The novel of the same time by Julia May Jonas doesn’t have a sequel.
Finally, the title is listed as a limited series on Netflix. It looks like the episodes currently streaming are all we’ll get.
Vladimir Cast
Rachel Weisz as M
Leo Woodall as Vladimir
Jessica Henwick as Cynthia
Ellen Robertson as Sid
John Slattery as John
What Is Vladimir About?
Vladimir follows a middle-aged literature professor whose life unravels following her husband’s scandal and the arrival of a charismatic younger writer, Vladimir.
As she becomes increasingly smitten with Vladimir, she spirals into complete chaos. The show explores desire and power dynamics, as well as the blurred line between fantasy and reality.
See, the protagonist is an unreliable narrator, and the series unfolds as a slow psychological descent. She begins to project fantasies onto Vladimir, convincing herself their connection is deeper than it really is. With her marriage and career in jeopardy, her obsession escalates, and she loses her grip on reality.
By the time the finale rolls around, the narrative reaches a fiery climax, and things are left somewhat ambiguous. No spoilers, but suffice to say that you might be left scratching your hear and wondering, not for the first time, whether the main character can be trusted.
Vladimir season 2 seems unlikely at this point, yet not impossible. If the series blows up, a sequel is never out of the question. Even without it, the show is odd in an appealing way, with a memorable performance from Weisz. Bottom line, it’s worth the hype.
Are There Other Shows Like Vladimir?
If you enjoyed Vladimir, we recommend checking out Prime Video’s 56 Days, an erotic thriller series that came out earlier this year. Similarly steamy titles include The Affair, Sex/Life, Dirty John, andTell Me Lies.
The leading title track from MUNA’s upcoming album Dancing on the Wall made our list of the best songs of February. Today, they’re back with the second single, ‘So What’, which is more contemplative. Check it out below.
“We’re at the point in our career where we’ve been to a lot fancy parties in beautiful rooms with important people and we know the particular sadness of realizing it doesn’t make you feel better,” the group shared in a statement. “We’ve learned the hard way that validation is hollow and we actually just want connection. This is a song about going to one of those parties and leaving worse off than when we got there.”
Dancing on the Wall is out May 8 via Saddest Factory/Secretly Group.
Widowspeak have announced Roses, their first album in four years. Following The Jacket, the band’s seventh LP lands on June 5 via Captured Tracks. Listen to the jangly lead single ‘If You Change’ below, and scroll down for the album cover and tracklist.
Opening up about ‘If You Change’, vocalist Molly Hamilton says she “thought about the fear of change, and when things (situations, objects) feel stuck in time because of a fear of ruining them. You always hear ‘mint condition’ as though it is as an asset, but it also means that thing hasn’t been used, lived with, loved. It never gets to fulfill its destiny.”
“Incidentally one of my favorite childhood books is The Velveteen Rabbit and growing up we had this VHS copy of Meryl Streep reading it over Ken Burns-esque slow-panned illustrations,” Hamilton shared of the accompanying video. “It’s sort of burned into my mind. Even now, I can hear her voice saying ‘I am real!’ My sister ended up getting me a copy of it on vinyl, which is incredible. Maybe I’ve also been thinking about it more now because we have a board book version we read to the baby. But, the point of the story is that only through being loved can something become ‘real’… and that’s sort of how the video came to be what it is.”
The duo of Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas is now a married couple. They recorded the new album at the Old Carpet Factory on the Greek island Hydra, which you can read a bit about in our recent interview with Westerman. It was mixed by Alex Farrar at Drop of Sun Studios and mastered by Greg Obis at Chicago Mastering.
Roses Cover Artwork:
Roses Tracklist:
1. The Hook
2. No Driver
3. Roses
4. If You Change
5. Wondering
6. Angel Number
7. Soft Cover
8. Heaven is Waiting
9. Actor
10. Hourglass
U is shorthand for underscores, but it’s also how, at least 50 times on her sort-of-self-titled album, April Harper Grey spells her object of desire. U has a compressed, equalizing power, leveling the playing field when it comes to mathematizing its relationship to I, which gets a typical definition early on: “I get what I want and then find out right after I get it, I don’t even want it.” It’s a reductive way of looking at underscores’ own trajectory, as U abandons the complex conceptual framework of 2023’s Wallsocket for a concise, escapist psychodrama, which is a way of understating that it’s an early contender for the most irresistible pop album of the year. In truth, you get what you want and then you find out right after you want it all over again: that’s U in a capsule.
1. Tell Me (U Want It)
U’s final single offers a proper introduction: “Hey!” A glimmer of music, and then a fragmented voice: “It’s U.” A wobbly beat and ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ breathing launch us into the headspace of a protagonist whose precarious behaviour becomes the subject of concern for those in her periphery. “You’ll hate looking back,” Amanda tells her, and the singer’s awareness of the fact acts as no deterrent. In true dubstep style, the track zips around to the rhythm of her lust, at once unshakable and volatile. As it fakes an ending only to resume with a laugh, the presumed Duran Duran reference gains further validity, only to be darkened by the outro’s gnarly form. It’s the eerie face of desperation, and it’s definitely doing something.
2. Music
Grey has described U as “music for my iPhone spy movie,” but ‘Music’ allows a bit of technological regression: “my iPod stuck on replay” is more like it. A sultrier take on the ‘Tribute’-type song, it turns the wet dream of a perfect tune into a metaphor for a relationship, and – at the risk of veering into therapy speak, the very thing the singer can’t stand – brings the self higher up the surface, feeling the I as desire is converted into pleasure, harmony, muuusiic. The videos for U’s other singles have more of a plot, but all that ‘Music’ needed was to approximate the feeling of it exploding out of the tiniest headphones, transforming U.
3. Hollywood Forever
A side-by-side listen of ‘Hollywood Baby’ and ‘Hollywood Forever’ is enough to underline the latter’s lack of abrasion, which says something considering that’s arguably the most straightforward song by 100 gecs, one of the first acts to bring underscores out on tour. Grey resists the impulse to fry the edges of the song even when it must have been enticingly tongue-in-cheek, like in response to “the fury in your eyes, staring at my broken electronics.” Its bounce remains slick and impeccably controlled rather than blown-out, even as the inevitable drop packs a punch. “Don’t you wanna come be famous with me?” she sings, sounding well on her way.
4. The Peace
A map of longing with smoking at its axis, ‘The Peace’ strips back to little more than sharply harmonized vocals, which isn’t to say it wafts into the ambient pop of something like her oklou collaboration. As she takes us from Brooklyn to Coachella and all the way to Europe, Grey sings with a fiery intensity, letting out a grunt before “I couldn’t escape the vibe sleeping on the couch” like she could moonwalk her way out of it. She traces a knotty intimacy that almost exists in the spaces outside music, then makes it pop.
5. Innuendo (I Get U)
In a just world, ‘Innuendo (I Get U)’ would be playing in clubs all across the world this summer. The fact that it’s not even a single speaks to the strength of the opening one, which it most resembles. But ‘Innuendo’ bops and glides and glitches in ways that are even more satisfying, leaning the unspoken tension of the previous track in an explicitly sensual direction. When it slinks low, you just know it’s going to deliver the most euphoric dance break of the album so far. It’s closing the gap between want and get, U and I, like lips shutting to reveal more than the words that could’ve have escaped them.
6. Lovefield
Here’s a song that could actually feature oklou, though underscores doesn’t hold back her maximalist urges even on the song that opens with her pleading for a heart-to-heart. It might be the album’s most forced moment of catharsis, but it’s precisely this straining that tugs at the heartstrings, dancing at the intersection of romantic fantasy (“It’ll be winter soon and I’ll be Twilight pale/ I’ll get my license and we’ll go to Florida”) and sincerity (“It hurts for me to wait on U/ I bet you’re waiting on me too”). ‘Lovefield’ feels like more than the obligatory ballad thanks not just to its unconventional progression, but the way it builds off the dynamic of ‘The Peace’ and finds the perfect hook for it.
7. Do It
Recency bias led me to include ‘Do It’ in our list of the best songs of 2025, albeit at the very bottom. Its sugar rush of a chorus might be underscores’ best, honouring her love of late 2000s pop with an extra bit of snark. By the time of the album’s release, I thought the excitement might wear off. If anything, recency bias had me underestimating the song, which hasn’t lost any of its infectiousness, probably because underscores’ maximalism is infused with texture, not just bombast or nostalgia. “It’s all on the line for me, you could ruin everything/ Or you could make me somebody new,” she sings on the pre-chorus, and that mutability is the thrill. With the run of songs leading up to ‘Lovefield’, she’s just proven she can offer you the real thing; it doesn’t mean she can’t have fun shrugging it off for a moment.
8. Bodyfeeling
Grey doesn’t end the album without letting guitars do the talking, probably anticipating some criticism towards U. It’s effective because it gets the feeling across, of course – what gets the body reverberating more than the sound of a live band? The singer may be dancing around this visceral sensation, but the solid groove hints at a foundation deeper than at least one end of the equation is ready to admit. The new Robyn album is coming out the week after U, but who said the younger generation doesn’t get sexistentialism?
9. Wish U Well
Props to this song for leading me to a Reddit post titled ‘Can I, as a Christian, listen to Post Malone?’. While the last two tracks do feel suspiciously more aligned with underscores’ last album than the self-titled era, with ‘Wish U Well’ indulging in a bit of bro-country, thematically it does bring resolution to the table. The ending is as anticlimactic as that of the love story at its heart: “This ain’t what I had imagined/ That’s just how it happened.” That doesn’t stop Grey from feeling everything in it; not closure, as she puts it, but “the gravity of losing you.” By that point, the song is all lightness, and it’s in that airy space that you can imagine the story of underscores growing bigger than U.
World of Warcraft has been running since 2004. Eleven expansions deep. Midnight just dropped, Season 1 is live, and the endgame grind is as real as ever. Some players love that. Others just want the loot without the 47th wipe on a boss their PUG refuses to learn.
That is where boosting comes in. A booster is a skilled player (or group) who carries you through content you cannot or do not want to grind yourself. Boosting culture has existed since Molten Core was endgame. But the market grew up. Platforms now vet players, offer self-play options, and let you compare prices.
What Boosting Actually Covers
WoW boosting is not one service. It is an umbrella term for a bunch of different carries, and each one solves a specific problem. Here is the short version.
Raid carries get you Normal, Heroic, or Mythic boss kills for gear and achievements like Ahead of the Curve
Mythic+ carries push your keystone level for rating, vault slots, and seasonal mount rewards
PvP boosting covers arena rating, Battleground Blitz, and title pushes like Gladiator or Elite
Leveling boosts take a fresh character from 1 to 90 so you skip the story you have seen eight times
Gear funneling runs stack armor-type priority so every relevant drop goes straight to your bags
Most platforms offer piloted mode (someone plays your account) or self-play (you stay logged in alongside the booster). Self-play is slower but safer.
The Midnight Season 1 Meta and Why It Matters for Boosting
Midnight Season 1 kicked off March 17, 2026. Three raids, three locations, nine bosses. The Voidspire has six encounters, the Dreamrift has one (Chimaerus), and March on Quel’Danas closes the tier with two fights including the final boss Midnight Falls. Want Ahead of the Curve? Kill Midnight Falls on Heroic before next tier. Clock is ticking.
The Mythic+ pool runs eight dungeons. Four are new Midnight instances (Magister’s Terrace remake, Windrunner Spire, Nexus Point Xenas, and one from Eversong), four are returning classics like Pit of Saron, Seat of the Triumvirate, Algeth’ar Academy, and Skyreach. Each has a fixed timer, and beating it earns your key upgrade and rating.
PUGs, MDT Routes, and Why Groups Fall Apart
If you have ever queued into a PUG for a +10, you know the pain. The tank pulls three packs with no plan. The healer is out of mana. Nobody kicks the Void Emissary cast that one-shots the group. Key depleted. Thirty minutes gone.
Good Mythic+ runs live and die on routing. MDT (Mythic Dungeon Tools) lets you pre-plan every pull. A solid route hits enemy forces percentage without a single extra mob. It factors in instance dungeon timer thresholds, cooldown windows, and skip opportunities. In PUGs, nobody checks the route. In a boosted run, the team already has it mapped.
Interrupts are the other silent killer. Midnight dungeons are cast-heavy. Mobs in Magister’s Terrace chain shadow bolts that melt health bars if left unchecked. Seat of the Triumvirate punishes sloppy kick rotations. A coordinated group assigns kick orders. A PUG just hopes someone presses the button. Meta right now means tight interrupt rotations, proper defensive cooldown usage, and knowing which trash packs to burn hero on.
What Boosting Costs in Midnight Season 1
Prices shift constantly. Early season is always more expensive because demand is insane and supply of geared boosters is low. The table below shows typical 2026 market ranges in USD. For live price comparisons, check WoW boosting listings on platforms that aggregate multiple providers.
Gold-based runs exist too. The WoW token floats above 400k gold, so in-game currency can cover most casual carries without spending real money.
Seasonal Milestones Worth Boosting
Midnight Season 1 has time-limited rewards. Miss the window and they vanish. Here are the ones most players chase through boost services.
Keystone Master at 2,000 M+ rating rewards the Calamitous Carrion mount
Ahead of the Curve requires a Heroic Midnight Falls kill before the next raid tier
Cutting Edge demands Mythic Midnight Falls and vanishes the moment next tier drops
Gladiator title needs sustained high arena rating across dozens of games in 3v3
Keystone Hero at 2,500 rating unlocks the Gleaming Sunmote for bonus tier armor visuals
Each of those rewards is a flex. And each one disappears when the season rotates. That is why boosting demand spikes mid-season when players realize they are running out of time.
How to Pick a Platform That Will Not Get You Banned
Not all boosting platforms are equal. Good ones vet their roster, use region-matched VPNs, and offer escrow payment. Bad ones take your login and vanish. Look for self-play options, live chat support, and published refund policies.
Blizzard’s stance is simple. Real-money boosts through third-party sites break ToS. Gold-based community runs sit in a gray area Blizzard tolerates but occasionally cracks down on. Know the risk.
Bottom Line
WoW boosting exists because the game demands more time than most adults have. Raids need 20 coordinated players. Mythic+ needs five people who know the MDT route, kick on rotation, and play at a high level. PvP needs hundreds of games against people who treat arena like a job. Boosting does not replace skill. It replaces the time you do not have.
Whether you are chasing Keystone Master, Ahead of the Curve, or just trying to fill vault slots before Tuesday reset, the boost market covers every goal and budget. Shop around, check the platform, and never hand over more than you are comfortable losing.
Ed O’Brien has announced his second solo album, Blue Morpho. The follow-up to 2020’s Earth will arrive on May 22 via his new label home, Transgressive. It’s led by the title track, which you can hear below.
The Radiohead guitarist worked with producer Paul Epworth on the new album following a chance meeting through their children’s school. In Wales, engineer Riley MacIntyre helped lay the album’s foundations while composer Shabaka Hutchings contributed flutes. In Estonia, O’Brien collaborated with composer Tõnu Kõrvits, who arranged strings performed by the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra. The record was completed between O’Brien’s studio in Wales and the Church Studios in London. Flood, known for his work with U2, PJ Harvey, and Nine Inch Nails, provided sequencing assistance, and Ben Baptie handled mixing.
After releasing Earth in April 2020, O’Brien entered “the deepest depression of his life,” according to a press release. “Encouraged by his wife to sit in the fire of his emotions, he began a daily ritual, immersing himself in the breathing and cold-exposure teachings of Wim Hof, then retreating into his small London studio, playing guitar for hours until his brain began to fray. ” The resulting record is framed as his first “fully detached from past regrets.”
An accompanying short film, Blue Morpho: The Three Act Play, premiered at SXSW yesterday and will be released alongside the album.
Backstage at Paris fashion week, the script is rarely the same. Some designers smile. Some talk a great deal without revealing much. And every now and then, someone reaches for a Coco Chanel quote from a 1950s Le Figaro interview. Matthieu Blazy, at least, did. “Fashion is both caterpillar and butterfly. Be a caterpillar by day and a butterfly by night. There is nothing more comfortable than a caterpillar and nothing more made for love than a butterfly. We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly. The butterfly doesn’t go to the market, and the caterpillar doesn’t go to the ball.”
We’ve been to Mars, the New York subway, and a mushroom patch, all in Matthieu Blazy’s world (although Karl Lagerfeld does come to mind). For Fall 2026, the stop was a construction zone, lit up by red, green, blue, and yellow industrial skeletons scattered across an iridescent runway. “I was interested in the idea of building a dream…” Blazy told Vogue. Of course, I immediately pictured the front row. All the people who might nod along while imagining lending a hand to the maintenance crew of the Eiffel Tower in their dreams. “…a work in progress,” he continued, and I quickly snapped out of it. Gabrielle Chanel was the one to take inspiration from the working class and build a luxury empire on it, after all.
Naturally, a caterpillar was the first to walk out, a black skirt suit in a ribbed merino-silk knit, dotted with gold buttons. Second came Bhavitha Mandava in a long zip-up in beige, which instantly transported us to her Métiers d’Art opening. At some point, the butterflies started to appear in what Blazy likes to call “the central canvas,” the classic tweed suits, of course, though not so classic anymore. What followed were drop-waist skirts, slip dresses, 3D floral appliqués, a clash of patterns and sparkle.
Blazy’s first collection for the maison dropped in stores only days ago, yet many of them have already been emptied. The ones that haven’t are now dealing with fashion fanatics willing to wait hours outside just to get their hands on pairs, plural, of shoes, at the very least. If anyone is stressed about this collection, it’s probably a Chanel sales assistant at Rue Cambon, who has surely had a front-row seat to the madness.
After a very noisy first showing at Paris Fashion Week, Duran Lantink made sure nobody left indifferent. A few were horrified, most screamed into the void of the internet, and the brave few clapped in peace. One of them being Jean Paul Gaultier himself, who got misty-eyed, seeing his enfant terrible younger self staring back at him. JPG has always stitched his provocative spirit into his work. Lantink just seems to have a louder concept of that spirit, carrying the torch, or maybe two.
What’s a strong starting point for Lantink’s second collection for the maison? An image of Marlene Dietrich. What’s an even stronger one? An image of Marlene Dietrich with a whip in hand. And just like that, the concept of ‘Madame Masculinity’ was born, a mix of gender fluidity, creative tailoring, Wild-West references, sportswear nods, and a dash of intimates.
The show opened with pitch black tailoring, cinched waists, bombers that met skirts halfway, only to reveal they were some gentleman’s coat all along. Then came pleats, exaggerated volumes, and some conic shapes here and there, alongside cowboy hats that sometimes doubled as hoods. Somewhere between the ski-gear of it all, came a lineup of wooden playthings, mannequins perhaps, wearing really sporty-looking waist garters. It might’ve been last season’s full-body ‘hairy bits’ illusions, that made this nod to Gaultier’s Marionette collection as easily digestible as a grape. A few basques, prints, and confused looks later, Alex Consani walked out fuming, literally. She wore a dress with Marlene Dietrich puffing on a cigarette across the fabric, and somehow, the smoke continued straight out of Consani’s own hair. See it through reason, and you might hit a wall. See it as it comes, and it might take you anywhere.
When an unnamed, out of work actor gets offered a job to walk around a campus in a black bag, he shrugs and accepts. It’s not the most humiliating thing he’s done, the pay is good, and it would be good to get out of dinner theater after a while—but he doesn’t expect that the anonymity of the bag grants him a new relationship with a woman who prefers his powerless, a friend who clamors to obtain a way to monetize the “art project,” and a renewed sense of self. Irreverent and honest, Black Bag is an answer to the ‘masculinity crisis’ that suggests the solution is a lot easier than it appears.
Luke Kennard sat down with Our Culture to talk about the real black bag study, sublimation and self-help.
Tell me about the real black bag psychological study, which took place in 1967, and why you gravitated toward it.
I chanced upon it as a study; I was looking for various theories around attraction, social psychology. I came across the mere exposure effect, which is partly used in advertising and politics, but originally it was about why we come to like each other—we just get used to each other. The black bag experiment took place at the University of Oregon, by a professor named Goetzinger. The black bag would sit in silence in a lecture theater in classes and not say anything, not interact with anyone, not respond when anyone spoke to him. At first the students found his presence unpleasant, really abject, they didn’t like this ominous, unresponsive figure. They reacted with hostility and complained about it. But as the weeks went by, they became defensive of the black bag. If anyone criticized him, they’d stick up for him: “Leave him alone, let him do what he wants to do.” And became quite affectionate towards him, invited him for a drink at the end of the term. And he never said a thing. Very visible, but a semi-erased figure. To Goetzinger, this proved the mere exposure effect. I’m more interested in the person who was the black bag. I liked the idea of him being a struggling actor—for this to be a role, but one they find they like, and want to carry on wearing the black bag.
The juxtaposition between this person who lives to be on stage accepting a role in which he’s anonymous is so funny. Why does he feel like he’s closer to his true self in the bag?
Actors are sort of a canary in a coalmine for the arts, in a way. If things are going badly for actors, then they’re about to be really bad for anyone who does anything creative. They’re out there all day every day, auditioning, whereas a lot of the other arts are much slower. There’s maybe something in that sense of egolessness. You want people to enjoy your work, want to be known for it, have people say nice things about it—that’s not a good impulse or instinct. The narrator is in his late thirties, he’s been trying and failing to make much of a living, he’s jaded and embittered, yet still believes in his talent. There’s not that much time left for him to prove himself. That, for me, is quite close to writing. A lot of the writers I love maybe had a modest high point in their careers and then just carried on doing it in obscurity for the rest of their life. I was obsessed with Gilbert Sorrentino, the Brooklyn novelist, a couple years ago, and collected all of his books. They’re not even printed in the UK, so I was ordering copies online, arriving from the Wyoming Public Library or something. I devoured everything he’d written; a lot of his work is about being an angry, slightly failed writer. But he was a genius, and did deserve a reputation.
At the same time, the narrator feels the need to conceal the black bag from his parents. Is there a hidden shame he’s not letting us in on?
He also refuses to describe his parents—he just says they’re two stone columns. Writers are awful, and the moment a writer describes somebody, they come across as horrendous. So he didn’t want to subject them to that. I think this was around the time the discourse was all around ‘likable characters.’ If you describe someone for the length of a novel, that’s gonna include their flaws. Sometimes there’s an arrogance that goes with writing and narration. You’re just trying to make yourself look as good as possible and everyone else is kind of a jerk. I think that’s one of the worst impulses in writing, especially in the age of autofiction. There’s such a profound responsibility to do right by the people you’re writing about, so you won’t mention them at all. And it is a shame! The narrator doesn’t want his parents to know what he’s doing, which may be like publishing as well. You work on it so privately, then it turns into this life separate from. You don’t necessarily want your family involved.
He is quite a cheeky guy, upfront about being a narrator in a novel.
Yeah, he knows he’s the narrator, but he’s also quite real. It’s a book he’s writing in his head. He’s quite pedantic, and snobbish about a lot of things, but he’s also honest about how much of a person he feels like, or how weird his attitude toward his own maleness is. Part of it’s how he tries to deal with being a certain kind of man, and the discomfort he feels about that, which comes into his desire to disappear into the black bag. He says to his friend, ‘Maybe this is the only way of being a man,’ like, trying to apologize for it.
His friend, Claudio, is desperate to monetize the study, whether it’s through crypto, art, or gesturing at some commentary. Do you think the narrator goes along with it because he’s unsure of what the black bag means himself?
I think he just likes Claudio, who is sort of a Twitch streamer. I have a lot of respect for that form, I think it’s quite difficult and punishing. I wanted it to be a contrast with someone who wants to be an old-school stage actor, wants to be in Chekhov. There’s the line of thinking of, well, turn your skills to what is actually available in your age. He has a conversation with a tech bro later who says, “If Dostoyevsky were alive now, what would he be doing? He wouldn’t be writing novels.” The narrator’s desperate, and wants to make money as well. If Claudio can make something out of this, then fine; he’s cynical enough to see where it goes.
He gets into a strange but fulfilling relationship with another professor, Justine, whose kink involves his anonymity and powerlessness. Why does this situation work?
He’s had a string of mutually unsatisfying relationships. He feels he’s been doing something wrong his entire life. But this is something completely different—this anonymity and submissiveness is something he really likes, and he enjoys her telling him stories about her escapades, her being sexually and domestically dominant. Towards the end, he tries to break up with her, and she refuses—it can’t go the other way. He finds a kind of pleasure and meaning in that. It takes any pressure off him to be any particular kind of man in the relationship. I don’t think he knows why he likes it, but he enjoys the passivity, and relinquishing his responsibilities.
In your fiction, you seem to offer solutions for a way out for helpless people. In Black Bag, it’s a new identity, and in The Transition, it’s a housing experiment. What do you think interests you about these themes?
We’re just so replete with that as a culture. There’s so many people who will tell you why you’re unhappy, what you can do to change that, and for the most part, it’s snake oil. But there’s always going to be a massive market for that. We’re always going to feel insecure about how we’re doing and what we’re doing wrong. It’s part of the contemporary mode of being spoken or sold to. “You’re fucking up, but here’s how to do better.” My knee-jerk reaction to that is, “Absolutely shut the hell up. How dare you!” [laughs] What the focus-on-the-self stuff does is deny the potential for community and collective action—it turns the focus purely onto the individual. It makes us self-absorbed. In Black Bag, there’s a crisis of meaning. There’s not a crisis of masculinity, there’s a horrible, regressive version of masculinity that’s in its death throes, and is particularly violent and visible at the moment. But it’s more about the ancient question of how to live a meaningful life. The solutions we’re offered are either bogus or self-serving.
Finally, what are you working on next?
I’m going to do a selected poems collection, which is the opposite of writing, sort of like a palette cleanser. It’s twenty years of work, and there’s a lot to get rid of, but it’s nice to go back to things from 2005 and ask what I want to keep. I’m working on a novel that’s vaguely about that Robert W. Chambers [story], “The King in Yellow,” where there’s a cursed play script and everyone reads it and loses their mind and it ruins their lives. I love the idea of a cursed manuscript. I’m making it into a PhD thesis, and when you try to examine it, it gets destroyed.
I’m working on a new novel, it’s early-stages, but I have it outlined and it’s gonna be different. I’m trying to create a continuity between the works. I’ve written like four other manuscripts that I have no intention of publishing, so I now have a pretty good sense of how to approach writing books in a professional way. I don’t want to say too much, because I get more freedom out of it when I don’t tell you much, but yes, I am going to write more novels.
