Audioccult Vol. 49: A photo of someone smiling at New York Fashion Week

Light a candle. Draw the required sigils. Now, raise your arms above your head and slowly, gently, exhale your soul. You won’t need it here. This is Audioccult, and it’s time to get low. Illustration: SHALTMIRA

Preparing for death and serving our God. Living that lifestyle. All of the little bros who live inside me (as they do everyone, true fact on Snopes) rack up lines with fearful symmetry, pumping their fists in military precision to an incessant yet inaudible set of club bangers. “WOOOO!! Dude! DUUUUUDE!” Backs get wallloped by a rain of friendly fists. “Let’s hear it for ceasing to exist in thought and functionnnnnnnn!” booms the DJ from the booth, fervently clutching several pairs of headphones to a single ear. I wonder what sex is like, and I imagine it is like this.

Pain is out. Prep is in. All songs of any genre begin with, “Ay, this ya boy Soulja Boy, I got a new dance for y’all.” Light-absorbing New Eras and duct tape strapped tightly about the mouth becomes new clubwear. Teens get tense, tight tendons from calfskin MAC social coverup. Embarrassing personality voids covered thanks to unisex, full-body concealer that compresses skin in the fashion of tinned meat. Shark teeth everything. Sharkdazzle your friends whose faces you can’t remember thanks to MAC and their incredible product. Snoop Lion does the commercial theme, a rework of the video for “Snoop’s Upside Ya Head” (Tha Doggfather, 1996 Death Row Records) which features the 41 year old musician getting visibly aroused by the amount of money waiting for him just offscreen.

The only way I am able to function between assignments and promotional events in this new reality is with an unwise spree of beguiling and increasingly unlikely ebay purchases. Miranda July’s real death certificate. A sombre and incredibly realistic portrait of a young Keanu Reeves on a single piece of 10′ x 12′ quarried shale. A photo of someone smiling at New York Fashion Week. “That’s cool,” I think. Then I think it again, and soon it becomes a chant I say as my finger clicks ‘reblog’ and ‘buy’, and a thousand tiny fists pump in time to the rhythm. I tap myself on the shoulder and lean in real close, kind of sexual in a way that makes us both uncomfortable. “Complex individual,” I whisper in my ear.

Published April 05, 2013. Words by Daniel Jones.