Madjestic Kasual’s ‘A Mix’ series is considered by geniuses and culture heads to be the “best” music mix series in the world. It’s considered by morons and dunces to be the “worst”. This should speak volumes.
It’s time to do ‘A Mix’, but for interviews. I ask relevant figures and cultural individuals to respond to questions. Some comply. Introducing ‘An Interview’: a new text-centric series featuring only the best artistes in the world.
‘An Interview’ Number 5 is Missouri Williams.
Pictured: Missouri Williams
I read a book recently that left me mouth-gaped, eye-bulged, nostril-flared and splayed. It activated a morbidly voyeuristic sense in me I wasn’t even aware I had, due to being overall pretty non-depraved in heart and mind. Missouri Williams is not non-depraved — she is depraved. Her book The Doloriad is a novel-length testament to this. It luxuriates in misery and torments its really unfortunate cast of characters in a way that’s impossible to wrench yourself away from. It’s queasy and trance-like and wrong-yet-rewarding, like forcing yourself to chunk up barf all over the place for a little surge of post-puke euphoria. It’s really disgusting and bleak. You should read it.
Barf aside, Missouri Williams edits Another Gaze, writes about rabbits and did the most enjoyable reading I have probably ever laid witness to at the Gribs-curated ICA function. She’s in favour of tennis, a quality that is virtuous and bodes well in people. There’s also this short story, which I would describe as vaginal and good.
What’s also good is the interview Missouri Williams did with Madjestic Kasual. It’s below. You should read it.
What are you wearing?
My normal clothes. I hate making decisions, and so a while ago I made the decision to wear basically the same thing every single day. And now I don’t have to make any more decisions.
Most recent piece of non-literary media to capture your attention fully?
I went to see The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum with a friend last Monday. I love anything where someone makes an instant, irrational and absolute decision to die on some kind of hill. Katharina ruins her whole life in order to defend a man she met the night before. Nobody understands her, or at least not until the very end of the film. And then there are all these amazing, almost Lynchian scenes where the police officers interrogating her about her one-time lover dance around drinking in ridiculous costumes; it’s like the department is one endless party. There’s always a crowd. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting to be so taken with the film, but I really was.
Jean Fouquet’s ‘Madonna surrounded by Seraphim and Cherubim’
Most formative show you went to?
I was never allowed to go to anything as a child! And then by the time I started seeing live music, I felt pretty formed already. But I’ve always wanted to see Sisters of Mercy. I’ve listened to them every single day for most of my life. Only that means I’ll probably never see them for fear of being disappointed.
We're doing a prestige 6-part miniseries adaptation of The Doloriad, featuring an original soundtrack. By who?
Ubik MCDXCII. I listened to Echoes Of A Dead Planet a lot when I was writing the Doloriad. Or Philip Glass because of how repetitive his music is. The Doloriad is an incredibly repetitive book, like so looping and obsessive. I’d want something capable of reflecting that.
If you could distill the essence of a single book/text/piece of long-form written media into edible form, which would you most like to eat?
Anna Kavan’s Ice. It would be so cold and disorientating. Like eating something you’d never recover from.
Pictured: Bunny in chainmail
You can resurrect one dead person such that we can benefit from their contribution. Who are you resurrecting?
I think the dead should stay dead.
You can cryogenically preserve one living person such that future generations can benefit from their contribution. Who are you cryogenically preserving?
My best friend and agent John. I think he has so much to give.
I just added you to a group chat with the person you resurrected and the person you cryogenically preserved. What are you sending first?
I’d send John a picture of Captain Tom.
Pieter Bruegel’s ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’
You can make two people perform consensual sex to each other such that they produce offspring. Who?
I’ve been there and done that! In the Doloriad, at least. It would be cruel to do it again.
Wedding song?
Wow, I’ve never thought about this. Either something extremely solemn or extremely dumb. Or maybe something by Cher.
Eulogy song?
I have thought about this. Madonna’s The Power of Goodbye.
3 items you want to be buried with for use in the afterlife.
I truly hope that there is no afterlife. I don’t know if I could bear any more of it.
Celeb crush?
Elon Musk.
Who’s playing you in your biopic?
There will be no biopic. I spend most of my time in my room. There’s literally nothing to make a biopic about.
Pictured: Missouri Williams on some sand
Goated music vid?
I almost never watch music videos! It feels so weird when they contradict your private images of the song and the story. That’s probably so precious of me but it is how it is.
Something people think is good that’s actually fucking shit?
Analysing something until it either dies or becomes infinite. Some analysis is necessary, of course, but I think we’ve become a society of over-readers, of ourselves and of others, and often we prefer a kind of endless process of interpretation over an approximate or makeshift truth, which for the most part is all the truth of any given situation can really be. Sometimes you have to stop talking and stop thinking. I think we’re all drowning in our own subjectivities and have glorified that drowning beyond any reasonable measure.
18th century depiction of the Moloch idol
An Interview Segment: 5-10-15-20-25-30-35-40-45-50-55-60-65, etc.
P4k The Music That Made You question format but it’s Madjestic Kasual. Music from every fifth year of your life that defined your being at that point.
5: Sisters of Mercy - Dominion
This was all my mother ever played and I really imprinted on it. I have to listen to it at least once a day or I feel like everything important is slipping away from me.
10: Sting - Desert Rose
[…] because I thought it was about a tired horse. I used to listen to it while cutting down trees on Runescape.
15:
I have no idea. Probably something really sad. I’ve erased all my memories of being a teenager.
20: The Presets - If I Know You
I fell asleep at a house party once and when I woke up everybody else was gone and this song was playing. And it kept on playing. I lay there for hours just listening to it and that was that.
25: Den Harrow - Future Brain
It’s pure genius.
Missouri Williams: An Interview.
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