End of the World Issue - November 2012 by Relapse Magazine

$9.99

RELAPSE IAN FRISCH Editor in Chief

TYLER MITCHELL Creative Director

MAX LOUIS MILLER Art Director

ISE WHITE Fashion Director

KELSEY PAINE AMINA SRNA MEGHAN HILLIARD

On the Cover

Staff Writers

JESSICA LEHRMAN MICHAEL TESSIER COLE BARASH ADAM HRIBAR Staff Photographers

ABBY KRON ALEXANDER TIRPACK JAMIE LEE BISHOP Contributing Writers

DAYMION MARDEL PETE THOMPSON PATRICK POSTLE CAROLINE KNOPF JASON FITZGERALD MOLLY GOLDRICK DARIO CALMESE ERIC FERNANDEZ

PHOTOGRAPHS DAYMION MARDEL STYLING ISE WHITE HAIR LUIS GUILLERMO for ORIBE MAKE UP BOBBY BUJISIC MODEL ALYONA at MC2 ShoBlack Feather Turtleneck STIJLUS

On the Back

Contributing Photographers

CURT EVERITT Contributing Artist

ART CURT EVERITT/DEAD FOREST

Contents. 8

The Face Behind the Monster

Beneath the Black Robe

Post-Apocalyptic Princess

Picture the End

The Girl Who Fell to Earth

One After the Other

The Wait

Evacuate

Never Let Me Go

Forest of Broken Shadows

Together

Hogâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Tooth

100

The Day After

110

Ready to Burn

114

The Vehemence of God

118

The Concrete Jungle

EDITOR’S LETTER

Welcome to The End

he apocalypse has loomed in front of humans forever, like a thousand-foot cliff, barely visible in the foggy distance, instilling a sliver of fear into the hearts and minds of the entire species. Ever since we had the ability to interpret our own existence within the universe, the fascination with how this will all end has embedded itself into every form of expression that we use to categorize ourselves: religion, music, art, literature, and fashion. Being obsessed with the end is a frustrating thing, though, because of the bleak uncertainty that overpowers it. We know nothing about it, yet we continue to try and understand it. Countless prophecies, predictions, and premonitions have circled our heads like a swarm of bees, our eyes wide, never-blinking, waiting in fear and intrigue as to when that first sting will come. With the Mayan 2012 prophecy quickly approaching, I wanted to explore the apocalypse in this issue of Relapse, delving into designers, musicians, photographers, and writers who use this concept’s uncertainty as fuel for their fire. From Meghan Hilliard’s religious exploration of The Book of Revelation; Alexander Tirpack’s coverage of the “Survival” exhibition chock-full of post-apocalyptic art; my look into David Quammen’s new book about the next viral pandemic; Daymion Mardel’s dark, texture-driven cover editorial; and within Jamie Lee Bishop’s hauntingly graphic fiction story of post-apocalyptic New York City, this issue explores how people are coping with the fact that we have no idea when and how the end will come. To some, the bees have already started stinging—the human race being on a slow but obvious decline. War, disease, overpopuation, and conflict seem to be normalcy on Earth now-a-days, with something horrible happening at any given time. It seems as though, too, that people are at least moderately alright with that, accepting our current stance and choosing to embrace it and try to understand it rather than deny it. To realize that it’s something you can’t avoid. That, above anything else, the end of the world is as intrinsic to the human race as existing in general. Everyone you know will meet their end some day. Including yourself. They are one with each other. Existence eventually equals demise. What is will eventually cease to be. It’s unavoidable. So, let me pull the curtain aside for you. We are here. Welcome to The End. Ian Frisch, Editor in Chief

The Machine. Abby Kron Currently studying Media, Culture and Communications at NYU, Abby Kron has appeared a couple of times in Relapse before interviewing Derrick Cruz of Occulter for the End of the World Issue. A voracious traveler (the 19-year-old has already scratched London, Paris, Nice, Rome, and St. Petersburg, among others, off her bucket list), Abby has written for BULLETT and is currently interning at Cornerstone Promotion as she chips away at her undergraduate studies. She also has a furry spot in her heart. “I love cats,” she admits. And she’s not kidding. Ever see her Instagram?

Curt Everitt Curt Everitt, also known as Mount Everitt, is a self-proclaimed scientist, artist, metalhead, wizard, astronaut, musician, historian, occultist, and designer. Born in Houston, raised in southern Ohio, and currently residing in Brooklyn, Everitt currently designs for one of the largest lingerie brands in fashion (who requested anonymity for legal reasons), designing cute and fluffy logos, and store presentations while tackling numerous art projects such as BozWreck Snowboards and Dead Forest Clothing. His art on the back cover and for “The Concrete Jungle” showcases his darker side. You can stalk him through www.mteveritt.com.

Sarah Gentillon Sarah Gentillon, who appears in Relapse for the first time, styling Michael Tessier’s editorial “Together,” is a freelance fashion stylist originally from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She began her career in fashion as a blogger, garnering attention from the big-wigs in the industry. After landing an internship at Vogue, she began assisting fashion editors from Vogue, The London Telegraph, and Wonderland, among other publications.

Daymion Mardel Born in England, Daymion was withdrawn from primary school by his parents at the age of ten. Traveling by Volkswagen bus, he spent the following year exploring the humanities and arts in galleries and museums of Western Europe. In 1999, Daymion was invited to join the Studio of American Icon, under Richard Avedon, where he served as first assistant and studio manager until Avedon’s passing in 2004. Presently, Daymion resides in New York City where he is a freelance photographer and film maker with a client list that stretches from Coach to Vogue.

The Face Behind the Monster Asher Levine Talks About His Mutant, ExtraterrestrialInspired Spring/Summer 2013 Line WORDS AMINA SRNA PHOTOGRAPHS PATRICK POSTLE

estled in a corner on the southwest coast of Florida is the town of Port Charlotte, a meeting point for the Peace River and the Gulf of Mexico. This nook is known as the Charlotte Harbor Estuary, a transition between the river’s freshwater and the Gulf ’s saltwater, the inflow of which has spawned one of the most productive natural habitats in the world. This habitat also produced inspiration for designer Asher Levine, who grew up making sense of the diverse, and sometimes strange, wildlife. This is still evident in Levine’s Spring/ Summer 2013 line, the sixth to show at New York Fashion Week back in September, which oscillates between aquatic and extraterrestrial influences coming to life on both natural and manmade fabrics, the latter of which is Levine’s newest venture. “We’re literally making all of these materials in the studio. We’re creating all of these new processes to fabricate our clothes which gives us the freedom in terms of what it’s made out of,” Levine told me backstage after the show. Marking the label’s newfound focus on mens’ suiting, the runway exhibited these synthetic creations by accessorizing the garb in the form of plastic-meets-plaster-like chokers, and arm and ankle wraps. One model had the textured, firm-butwet looking material seemingly adhered to the jawline, wrapping around the nape of his neck and mouth. Custom headwear created a paramount spectacle, with a few models wearing translucent, hard-hat caps that resembled gills, and all were rounded up by a stalking figure, reportedly the designer himself, who was outfitted in a black jumpsuit and ominous black cape, wearing an amorphous, extraterrestrial mask which Levine refers to as “The Monster.” Acid green and blaze orange, the vibrant shade of safety signs, were contrasted with denim blue and stark white ensembles. Even at first blush the pieces were meticulously considered, featuring a raw hem on a pair of shorts made of neoprene mesh (the material used most commonly for wetsuits), contrast stitching on a jean jacket, and dramatic shoulder pads tucked into a black cape and orange blazer. The progressive take on menswear was paired with an eight-minute customized track by LE1F, who writhed and squealed into a microphone, his voice reverberating down the long corridor of seated spectators. But beyond the theatrics, the pieces exuded wearability and relevance in a time when the future of fashion, and the world, is tense with the need for fresh blood—for a new beginning. “These are totally wearable looks. For shows we really take it to the next level, but when we’ve styled the clothes in the past we create an image of that powerful, progressive guy,” Levine reflected. Arguably the most wearable part of the show was on the feet of the gaunt, pale male models, who stomped down the runway in Caterpillar work boots—the creative direction of the boots now headed by Levine himself—their eyes narrowed and

A MODEL WALKING AT ASHER LEVINE’S FASHION WEEK SHOW

intimidating. Collaborations like these, Levine states, are how the line exists and grows. “That’s how we find new silhouettes and develop new techniques,” he explained. “That fusion helps us figure out the next step.” And his repertoire partnerships range from footwear with Doc Martens and Converse, to costume design for artists like will.i.am, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars and a recent gig as costumer designer for Nutcracked, the off-Broadway musical written by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. Yet through all of his creative endeavors, Levine notes that he still brings the same aesthetic to each new outlet, letting his instincts put him at the forefront of innovation within the fashion industry. “The inspiration is almost the same as from day one, you know, constant mutations, infections, things that distort the body,” he confided. “Things that really have no reference. It’s more about subjectivity.” Always looking ahead, governed by the cyclical timetable of seasons, Levine told me that he thinks the end of the world is a mindset rather than a physical reality. “Our worlds will end one day but I’m really looking forward to a new beginning. As soon as it ends it simultaneously begins. What does it looks like? I don’t know. I guess I’ll leave it to you to interpret.” The Asher Levine Collection is available at BAUHAUS in Hong Kong, Traffic in L.A. and I Don’t Like Mondays in New York.

Beneath the Black Robe A Talk with Derrick Cruz, the Man Behind Occulter WORDS ABBY KRON PORTRAIT ADAM HRIBAR Tell me about Occulter.

cculter was always meant to be a collective idea; essentially it started with me and a bunch of friends. A lot of these people wanted to promote their lines or collections or their work—pretty concept-heavy work—on their own, outside the sort of the mercantile fashion systems we have. As an experiment, we started showing in Paris by just renting an apartment and showing as a group. I called it Occulter. Johannes Kepler was an astronomer hundreds of years ago. He was very intent on the cosmos being this perfect machine, because he was both a scientist and very devout, so, he wanted everything to be reflective of where he thought God was. He wanted everything to be a perfect circle and when he found out it wasn’t, it kind of drove him crazy. It was perfect in a different way than he had expected. It got me to thinking and looking more into extrasolar planet research. Somehow that got me to what an occulter is— which has nothing to do with the occult as everyone assumes

that right away. The logo itself is a drawing by Johannes Kepler of concentric platonic solids, which are the basic building-blocks of geometry. An occulter is this thing that NASA was building in order to put out in space in front of really large in-orbit telescopes; so, [an occulter] would hide the brightness of a large body and you’d be able to see everything around it. Say, it would hide Jupiter and you could see the moons around it. I thought, that’s perfect, we never want to be giant brands, it is not the mission. The goal isn’t to be Jupiter. Occulter became the shield that hides the big brands so you can see the little ones. Now, the collective consists of three visual artists: Nadav Benjamin, Jeremy Dyer, and Gabriel Shuldiner. The accessories designers are Jonathon, who does Bevel, Moratorium, my stuff, and Gabriel also does accessories that resemble his paintings. We sit around here, we’re all very close.

Your own line, Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons, seems to be heavily influenced by mythology and nature. What specifically about those areas speak to you? When I started doing Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons, it was like 7 years ago, it was really different back then. Before you know it—and I’m not saying it was my doing, but perhaps I was just in the stream of the zeitgeist in a way—it became the thing to do, to be dark, and occult-y. I find it super interesting. In my head, I’m sort of an anthropologist, a sociologist. I’m always trying to figure out why is it that this is appealing to folks. I think, for me, it had to do with personal meaning and the idea that mythology is what creates meaning in life, and conviction, and substance. Growing up in Puerto Rico, there was a lot of really intuitive interpolation of mythology from our background, which is African and Indian, and a little bit of European. It turns into something very emotional for Latin American people. It just seems very natural. I don’t know why; maybe because the cultures are really young so they just allow themselves to be influenced by everything. Whereas, when I moved to the United States to come to school, everything was very puritanical and reserved, which I noticed right away and I was like, “Interesting. So, what is the mythology of the American?” And it’s pop culture. That’s the mythology. Nobody wants to admit it.

Exactly. The gods are missing. We don’t know who they are or what they look like, but we worship the stuff they are doing. That’s interesting. As a media student, we discuss advent of public relations and the ethics of using psychoanalytic theories to facilitate consumerism. It’s about creating an insatiable desire. “I want it and I have to have it and I’m going to get another one, too. And the moment I get it, it’s old, it’s done, I need another one.” I think that speaks to the way we consume information these days, as well. We have very shallow understandings of lots of things.

“An occulter would hide the brightness of a large body and you’d be able to see everything around it. I thought, ‘That’s perfect.’”

I think it will be for the people who think more deeply about mythology, but not for the trend followers who just latch on and a beat it to death. As for what you said about pop culture as our mythology, I feel like—whereas mythology is more deeply-rooted—pop culture is always changing and fleeting. We are constantly being overexposed to media. Yeah, we love to put it in our mouths, chew it, spit it out, and never absorb the nutrients. Next. What’s that one taste like? It’s not about processing any of it; it’s about tasting it. It’s all about the instant gratification of the taste but not what it takes to make it part of you. It’s a habit of following and trying to find substance in acquisition of things. So, I think we do have one except for the gods at be are very far removed from us. We don’t have communion with the gods like a Native American would in a Shamanic ritual. Our gods are so far from us and everything we are consuming is thrown from the clouds, and we just kind of eat it and don’t question it. That’s the only dangerous part for me. Yes, there is mythology and yes, it is affecting us every single day because we are worshipping these ways of consuming to the point of almost creating a religion out of them. We have very religious attitudes, but the god is missing. I guess the gods would have to be the ad men and PR professionals.

Everybody knows everything. [Laughs] But not that much about it. I don’t know if I’m any different…

I think we are all part of it, but we have a choice. We just have to figure out whether or not we can handle the repercussions of making the choice, which are potentially being shunned. The moment you express a very convicted opinion, you don’t get as many likes. If you’re too convicted, you’re choosing sides and that takes a lot of effort. People love to be neutral. Cool is the mass. Anyway, I’ve forgotten what the original question was. These are the kind of discussions everyone here [at Occulter] talks about—always trying to find that balance between commerce and authenticity. I feel like Occulter has a lot of integrity behind it. From speaking with you, looking at the pieces, and even the branding, I sense it. You know what’s funny about the branding—I did all the logos, I designed it all myself. I was trying to get to a place where it felt like it always existed to me. I made the stuff and later I realized why I chose those fonts and why I chose those details. It wasn’t as contrived as branding usually is for me—I used to work in advertising for a while. That is kind of ironic. Yeah, I was in advertising. But when it’s personal, I don’t want to be as contrived about branding, doing what I know will get a reaction. So, I tried to work from instinct, kind of work backwards. I realized later that the Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons font—the reason I thought it felt so right and established is because it’s the headline font for the New York Times. We associate that with legitimacy, authenticity, and truth. I was like, “Weird.” It

me, that I will always remember: “This is not a democracy, Derrick. This is my company.” I was like, “Oh yeah! I get it. Sorry, I was trying to change it, but I can’t change it.” I felt I needed to be doing something else. It was too much and it was not my thing. I went home, quit cold turkey. I started sculpting stuff because I didn’t have much room to paint, and then jewelry making started coming about. I wanted to make things that you could carry with you, not art that you always had to have a show for. So, jewelry seemed like the right thing. How do you distinguish your work from that of these other brands that pop up and latch onto the trend?

BRACELET BY JONATHON BEVEL

just came together. The other font, Baskerville, which I used for the Occulter logo, was one of the first fonts used in print, ever. No wonder this stuff feels like it’s set in stone. I think branding is very important. I was wondering about your artistic background. I went to a really great school that no one knows about, East Carolina University, in North Carolina. It’s known better for nursing than art. It’s a state school. I was the first of my family to graduate from college. I just picked what we could afford and was available nearby, what I could drive to. I think I got a lot out of it. I also had an art gallery for a little bit, while I was in school. It was called Cruz Gallery, in North Carolina. I was mostly painting. At the time, I would say, it was a—not politically, but aesthetically—more socialist, surrealist take on things. Not necessarily politics though. You weren’t painting Stalin? [Laughs.] There were some references. But just the aesthetic of it, a public art sort of feel. When did you get into making jewelry? When I started Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons. That was in 2005. That’s when I was getting sick of advertising. Somehow, as soon as I graduated from school, I ended up in an advertising agency. I was an art director, but it was hell the whole time through. It wasn’t for me because I always wanted to make something that wasn’t what they wanted me to make. I always took it as being “the man.” Now that I’m a little older, I’ve realized it’s not a democracy. An ad agency is not America, it’s a private company and they want you to do something and they’re paying you for it so you need to do it. That’s one of the best things that one boss told

I think the way the work of the collective differentiates itself is that we have some tenants we ascribe to that we will not waiver from, including quality of materials, flexibility for experimentation, and, like I said before, authenticity. Always maintaining a very personal connection to who they are to the point that you may not like it. I may not be the right time for it. It may be ugly. [Laughs] We run a lot of risk a lot of times. I think that’s probably a good description of it. What separates it from a lot of other things is the lack of fear for risk. We don’t fear risk. That’s a good approach. It gives people the opportunity to discover new ideas and interests and potentially grow from them. It’s fun to share knowledge. The opportunity that we have, that a big organization doesn’t have, is to teach. Big organizations don’t have the opportunity to teach because they have too many things to protect. They have patents to protect and proprietary information to protect and things that are coming out to protect. And there’s just too much, too much investment and too much risk involved. So, they’re not going to tell you how to do it, they’re not going to tell you every piece about it, they’re not going to start selling it the minute that you made it because they have to PR. It’s a big system. So, for us, we can teach. We can be like, “Let me tell you more about how this is made or more about where the design came from.” I’ve even brought people in here and been like, “If you want to learn how to do this, I’ll show you how to do it.” You don’t feel threatened. It’s the Bobby Flay approach, I call it. Because you’re going to show them how to cook it, but they’re still going to go to your restaurant. It never stops people from going to Mesa, just because he had a TV show where he showed you how to cook. What does the Occulter collective strive to communicate through their work? To create a sense of wonder or marvel. Like, “This is crazy!” or “What is that?” It’s that childlikeness that we try so hard to push back. So, here is the childlikeness with a black robe on. It’s a child on stilts with a black robe on. That is what this is. I want to appeal to that repressed desire for wonder and marvel. I think

everyone else here does, too, through the materials they use, the way they sculpt things, the detail they put in. Does Bevel and his art come off that way? He’s a super gentle person. He doesn’t actually come off as anything in particular; he only comes off as Jonathon. He’s a very individual person. My point is that what he did for the Ball Game collection was try to explore his own vision of Mayan myth from where he came from, from his perspective. One particular myth is about these heroes that go to the underworld to try to recover control over the earth. What he did was, he sort of sculpted the characters for the story, abstractly, and so, he could understand what it was about. How he came out the other end was understanding that his culture was very much one of resilience. I thought, that’s obviously a study on the human condition and very personal to come out with something so abstract. Tell me a little bit about Bevel’s new collection. His new collection has to do with psychology. It’s called “The Anima” because he’s going to do Anima and Animus. The feminine and the masculine and how the two intertwine. He’s been reading a lot about it and is just like, “I have to understand women! I’m finding the woman in myself.” He get’s so into it and it comes out in his work. This ring is called the “Tooth Fairy.” It looks like something you’d knock someone’s teeth out with. It’s like the extreme of male aggression, but then there is this flowery cuff that’s very feminine. It’s a strange combination of delicate and hard. What are some of your musical, literary, and artistic inspirations? I love music. I was thinking about it today, because I was listening to something that got me so emotional. I was like, “God, music is insane.” Music can do so many crazy things. It can really move you. And it’s just sound. It’s so weird. It’s just pulling at you from every place. It helps to make things click, which I think, right now, is really useful, because there’s just too much shit. Technology is affecting the way we live our lives. So, it is important to understand the way it affects our creative pursuits. Any article or discourse on technology and culture is super interesting to me right now. Do you believe in the end of the world? First, you have to decide, what is the world? Is the world people or is that world nature or is it the planet? Is it culture or the way we see things? If it’s the way we see things, I think it ended. It ended, actually, a few years ago. It’s over. It already ended. The apocalypse happened the moment that nostalgia was obliterated, the moment that documentation became more important than

the object itself, the moment that we couldn’t place anything in time. The moment that everything just exploded and you couldn’t say, “What were the 2000s like?” We can say what the 90s were like, but we can’t say what 2000 to 2010 was like. It ended, it’s over. It’s more important to think about how we rebuild. I think it’s about rebuilding. How do we? I think rebuilding now is about, shit, I don’t know, man. It’s a daunting task, but I think a lot of the things we talked about are related. I think it’s about community, mostly. It’s about striking the right balance between the tools that are offered to you and making real personal connections, and never letting one replace the other and letting that influence you instead of everything. You learn more about yourself from the experience. By taking the shortcut, you lose the journey. It’s funny. Every philosophy that you go into deeply, the journey is the valuable thing. It’s not the answer. The journey is the answer. We sort of skip that. We tend to think the answer is the answer, but there is no answer. What you find in New York, you—especially at your age—will evolve really quickly and change really fast. And from every couple years, you’ll change again. I heard you become a new person every 7 years. Here it happens, quicker sometimes. Your peers that are not here are going to have a little bit of a hard time with that. They’re going to look at you and judge you and they’re going to be like, “Who the fuck do you think you are?” It seems a lot of people are okay with being complacent and not challenging themselves. Okay with good enough. The amount of things you can do in a year here is crazy. It makes life seem longer because you’re experiencing a lot more. Everyday your brain is opened up to new things. One of the reasons I called the company Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons is because I was reading a book about the West Village called Kafka Was the Rage. It was set in the 1940s. This guy moved from Brooklyn after coming back from the war, moved to West Village. He met all these weird people. There was this building full of old ladies, drug addicts, and all these people. He was like, “They were black sheep and prodigal sons or a paradoxical kind.” They were either shunned by family or shunned family and came here to redeem themselves or remake themselves. I was like, “That’s it.” That’s the name, because that’s most of the people I know. They come to this place looking to bloom out. They either were thrown out of the house or they left. It was really New York. It was really about New York particularly.

PHOTO ELIOT LEE HAZEL

Post-Apocalyptic Princess A Look into Natasha Khan’s latest album The Haunted Man WORDS KELSEY PAINE

hat would the end of the world sound like? Better yet, what would be the last thing you’d ever want to hear? Something sad, beautiful, haunting, mysterious, oddly joyful? Natasha Khan, under her moniker Bat For Lashes, is making a case for the quintessential post-apocalyptic theme music, if ever there was such a thing, with her new album The Haunted Man. Everything about Khan and her craft is strikingly elegant, teetering on the brink between utter sadness and a type of blissful peace found in between each piano tinkling and choral

overtone. Khan is the post-apocalyptic princess we’d dream of, if, you know, we dreamed about gorgeous British chicks crawling around a blackened earth, writhing among charred branches and smoldering ruins. A new kind of prophetic wet dream. And on the polarizing cover of her third studio album The Haunted Man, Kahn brings us there—disrobed, bare of any fanfare, startled and startling, as she stands unafraid with a defenseless and equally naked man strewn about her shoulders. A Joan of Arc for the new age. Finding inspiration in the unlikeliest of places, Khan commissioned photographer Ryan McGinley to shoot the seem-

ingly supremely sexy concept in a fresh way. “I love Beyonce, but I saw a video of her [for ‘The Best Thing I Never Had’] and she’s just in white lingerie and nothing else,” she told NME. “It’s really sexual and really suggestive and there’s loads of front covers where it’s photoshopped, glossy skin, lip gloss, boobs out, really sexual pose. And so I’m surprised people think this is controversial.” A new kind of feminist inspiration, Khan admits she became a bit fed up with the media’s representation of women. “I got into the idea of not shaving my legs and being a bit raw and wild about it,” she said again to NME. “And celebrating that side of women, and all the complex things you can be except for just being sexy.” Controversial or not, Khan knows how to create unnervingly gorgeous music (take Bat for Lashes’ 2009 stunner Two Suns for example, on which her award-winning single “Daniel” can be found). But this time, after suffering writer’s block and questioning her very existence as an artist, Khan casts off her old musical personalities in favor of a rawer sound and equally raw emotion. Khan has been writing music since she was 11 years old, but found herself thrown into a tailspin when her prolific gift for expression dried up in 2010. “I was ready to give up music entirely,” she told Pitchfork in October. “I felt blocked in all sorts of areas. It was about being broody for either children or new creative ideas or an epiphany. I was just lying in a hot room with no-one coming, nothing happening, no ideas.” So Khan took up drawing classes and dancing lessons, immersing herself in other areas of her art. And finally, out came the music. The album’s effort is apparent, but that’s not to say anything sounds forced. The Haunted Man’s opener “Lillies” is the album in microcosm, according to Khan herself during her Pitchfork interview, written after a viewing of the 1970 film Ryan’s Daughter. The song itself is exquisite in its splendor; a light dubstep reverb and snare is craftily hidden behind Khan’s tender soprano and strings, before bursting forward with a simply surprising vocal climax: “Thank God I’m alive.” The inspiration for the outburst is straightforward, Khan tells Pitchfork. It’s “this bolt of joy, the rawness of what it’s like to be a human being. To have this massively sweet, glorious feeling that accompanies the realization that you’re just a fucking piece of dirt on an earth spinning in space.” Could this be philosophy for the new age? Even if Khan may seem a bit subversive in her inspiration and presentation, that’s not to say her music is obscure or even that it follows the old adage: It takes a few listens to get into. Some songs hit you straight away; the sensual and groovy, “All Your Gold” comes to mind. And “Oh Yeah” is a shadily sexy

combination of cacophony, deliciously blending electric guitar, synths, and male choral overtures as Khan croons about being “in bloom”—again proving that overt sexiness is overrated. The album’s first single “Laura” feels like the record’s stripped down centerpiece, a piano-driven ballad, complete with understated horns and cello—a heartbreaking ode to a spiraling showgirl. “Laura” is Khan’s first ever co-written number; she independently tapped Justin Parker, who wrote “Video Games” with Lana Del Rey. Khan reveals the hauntingly beautiful song’s origin to Pitchfork: “My housemate and I had had an extremely debauched house party, like nothing I’d ever experienced before—it was so bad!” Khan said. “The next day, I had the biggest hangover ever, and I had to go and write this song.” “Laura” is staggering in its simplicity, reminiscent of another time when a charming melody and sparse instrumentals are all a singer needed to really shine. Yet Khan can still add in all the fanfare (the foreboding electronic beat on the titular track is both sinister and beautiful). There’s even a marching band build up and another male choral refrain—the call to arms of our postapocalyptic future. Boasting instrumental additions from friend and former collaborator Beck, “Marilyn” adopts the 1950s movie star narrative that’s become ever-so-popular in our nostalgia championed lives these days, but does it better than anyone else, with an understated lush chorus and electronic breakdown that sounds like machines malfunctioning in glorious unison. On “A Wall,” a pop chorus explodes with optimistic candor, Khan sings,“Where you see a wall, I see a door, you’ll get through, you’ll be alright.” A swirling choral vocal refrain brings it all together, but doesn’t overdo anything. Khan reels you in, and spits you back out before you get too comfortable. She finds pop euphoria in nearly every song, but never lets it develop into the type of banal repetitiveness most Top 40 hits do, which lends the listener to even more repeated playings. So while Khan’s previous work invoked more of the supernatural, a duality found in herself and nature, The Haunted Man is an exploration of the personal. Kahn finds a way to imbue intimacy within every note she sings, drawing you into a seemingly specific theme and making you feel like you live it—a theme that, with every song on The Haunted Man, poses internal hope from a spectacular singer, lyricist, writer, and thinker for our new post-apocalyptic pop age.

“It’s this bolt of joy, the rawness of what it’s like to be a human being. To have this massively sweet, glorious feeling that accompanies the realization that you’re just a fucking piece of dirt on an earth spinning in space.”

“STIFF, STILTED, STUDIED & SUPERFICIAL” BY MIA TYLER AT THE “SURVIVAL” EXHIBIT

Picture the End

“Survival” Channels the Post-Apocalypse at Lambert Fine Arts WORDS ALEXANDER TIRPACK PHOTOGRAPHS ERIC FERNANDEZ

estled away on a gallery-centric block in the Lower East Side, in an area many ascribe as the last bastion of New York City’s nitty, gritty roots, the Lambert Fine Arts gallery recently played host to a post-apocalyptic-themed exhibition titled “Survival.” While the outside appearance of the gallery itself—its purple-walled exterior and pencil-gray painted gates composed of metallic wheels, rods, haphazardly placed wrenches, engines, toy boats, propeller fans, electrical boxes, springs and other items seemingly culled from a study on Tesla as a child—evoke the lighter side of art, the paintings, sculptures and photography of the “Survival” exhibition offered a more macabre vision of what survives when human life meets its finale. From zombies to climate change, nuclear war to earthquakes, and disease to rapture, the end of the human existence is a hot subject across all mediums and one uncomfortably close to home for many, so it only made sense for four of the city’s notable artists and one uniquely unrestrictive curator to come together to offer their own interpretation of survival in a post-apocalyptic world. Whether it is the unsettlingly familiar icons in the paintings of Joseph Grazi; the sexually-charged, gothic photography of Mia Tyler; David Erwin’s multi-layered, patchwork-style pieces depicting American obsession with pop culture, attention and selfgratification; or the intricate, yet largerthan-life metal working sculptures of Harris Diamant; the “Survival” exhibition offered a deliciously strange combination of each artist’s vision of the not-so-distant future but also a collaborative effort not normally seen in the fiercely competitive New York City art world, and that’s exactly what curator Marc Lambert was after. “I love when shows evolve. It’s not just some curator putting it together—it’s personal,” Lambert said of the creation of the “Survival” exhibition. “Joseph [Grazi] approached me with the idea of doing a small group show with a kind of postapocalyptic, steam-punk feel to it. As soon as he mentioned the term ‘steam-punk’ I immediately thought of Harris [Diamant], who is a 75-year-old sculptor. I find Harris’s work to be kind of like an alternate future, so we don’t necessarily have to focus on the negative aspect of post-apocalypse, but more of an openended feel. So we have survival. What would survive us? Artifacts survive us. Decayed industrial items, cars and stuff like that; our logos and other cultural artifacts. Harris’s work is a combination of all of that. Once the other artists saw his work, they got inspired. It gave the show purpose and direction.” It’s no wonder Diamant’s work acted as the inspirational catalyst for the other three artists. His pieces range from twisted, hyper-realistic Americana like the “91810,” a silver-plated metallic head topped with a bowler hat and eyes encased in an antique device once used to determine the strength of one’s eyesight, to

the near-abstract, like “The Couple,” two stand-alone hermaphroditic torsos sculpted in such a way that it’s purposely unclear which carries more or less gender than the other. Diamant’s work tends to stem from a single central object—many of his pieces begin with some sort of antique, eye-related item—and then grows from there. To Diamant, an old pair of wire-rimmed glasses is easily transformed into a futuristic robotic hand with corrected vision. He is often referred to as a master-tinkerer, an inventor of sorts. He works while wearing the telescopic glasses now typically worn by medical professionals and jewelers, and builds anew from the old. In other words, the man’s work embodies the notion of creating art from the discarded and forgotten. That broad range, unconscious attention to alternate realities, and a love of tinkering played right into the creative minds of Grazi, Erwin and Tyler—three people of the rare breed of artists who not only know and appreciate each other’s work, but are good friends as well. Their personal relationships with one another was an important role in building the foundation of the show. “That’s what excited me the most and why I wanted to work with them. I knew them so well and was fascinated by them individually and fascinated by what their output would be,” Grazi said of his “Survival” collaborators. “It wasn’t really one of those group shows where it was like, ‘Alright, let’s all make our art. This is the deadline, show up, put the art together.’ This was more meeting up a lot, checking in and seeing what everyone is putting together, talking and having conversation.” They couldn’t have had much time for conversation. The concept for “Survival” was born during the first few weeks of July; the show itself opened in mid-September. For many, that’s not enough time to read a novel, let alone create enough art to contribute to a show. And yet it was the crunch time that helped them accomplish a more authentic approach to the overall theme. “Survival is something that’s rushed,” said Grazi. “When you have that apocalypse, it’s not casually working toward survival, it’s more like, ‘Shit, we better board up these windows and get going.’ I think that had we had seven months to do this show we would not have been as true to the cause as it became.” If a looming deadline was a source of inspiration, it also tied in nicely with the litany of parallels between creation and survival. “Once we all got together and got a sense of that urgency, we all kind of got a bit of a high off of that,” said Erwin. “And, of course, another part of survival is working together.” With the arguable exception of Diamant, Joseph Grazi was the most exhibited artist involved with “Survival.” He has pieces in the Chelsea Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum

The “Survival” exhibition offered a deliciously strange combination of each artist’s vision of the apocalypse.

“91810” and “MEMBER,” FROM LEFT, BY HARRIS DIAMANT

GRAZI, ERWIN AND TYLER, FROM LEFT, WITH CURATOR MARC LAMBERT

“CHEVY” BY JOESEPH GRAZI

DAVID ERWIN

JOESEPH GRAZI

of Art, and has held solo and group shows at myriad of galleries in New York City—and he is under 30 years old. His art stretches across various mediums and often beckons both an emotional and physical response from show-goers. (In a previous solo show titled “Fountain of Youth,” Grazi filled a room with colored plastic balls a’la McDonald’s ball pit with the intent to encourage people to interact with his creation, no matter their age. In another, he created a translucent chair with militant rows of syringes set inside the plastic, daring onlookers to take a seat.) For “Survival,” Grazi’s work consisted primarily of drawings of transportation-related objects such as planes, trains, and automobiles set against colorful or near-colorless backgrounds. These images of relics destined to outlive humanity were a literal translation of what Grazi expects the landscape to hold once people are no longer around. His art for “Survival” posed a question: If aliens landed on earth years after humans were gone and saw a three-story church next to a hundred-story MetLife building, which would assume more significance? But Grazi was more than just the man who gave birth to the concept of “Survival,” and he was also more than an artist in the show. By tagging along on her shoots, Grazi acted as the motivator for friend Mia Tyler, whose now-flowered photography skills added the darker side of post-apocalypse to the show. Tyler, daughter of rocker Steven Tyler, has just recently dipped her toe into the art world. Prior to “Survival,” Tyler has had only one other public show. Titled “Through the Looking Glass,” the show featured photos cherry-picked from her collection of portraits of friends and family—pretty much the exact opposite of the photography she displayed for “Survival.” Keeping with her vocal appreciation for “finding beauty in decay,” Tyler’s pieces for “Survival” consisted of photos of abandoned buildings and portraits, though this time around the subjects wore gas masks, bore nipples, and in some cases, were uncannily realistic sex dolls

MIA TYLER

with shaved heads. “I like the darker, sexual side to art and I think there’s something sexy in gas masks, and masks in general,” said Tyler. “I love to be scared, and I love putting fright in with sexuality. I’m obsessed with dolls and with the decay of abandoned buildings. I love urban exploration, going out and breaking into old places just try to find the beauty in what most people think is something that should be demolished.” A study of David Erwin’s work also displayed a sexual aspect of “Survival.” At quick glance, the large canvasses awash with color splotches, hard-lined drawings and familiar pop-culture logos all sewn together like a Frankenstein looked like abstract commentaries. But a closer inspection of the tiny patched holes within each piece awarded the viewer with pornographic stills, images of vaginas, and even snippets of iconic fictional characters such as Spiderman. Erwin, a creative director at DC Comics, tried to envision the rebirth of art after the apocalypse. “After all the museums are destroyed, imagine Mad Max out there trying to figure out ‘What is art?’ and trying to salvage it but without any real reference,” said Erwin of his self-described “art as art” pieces. “To be void of any history of art and to sit down and try to bring it back, that’s why I sew the pieces together.” Through a combination of collaboration, friendship, personal vision and an urge to create, the “Survival” exhibition achieved an eclectic yet cohesive display of humanity’s worst fear. Like many art shows, “Survival” stirred emotions and forced critical thought on our future, and be it fear or hope or sex or rebirth, it was an inner honesty that shined the brightest despite a theme generally steeped in loss and despair.

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Ready to Burn David Quammen Explores The Next Big Virus to Hit Humans in His New Book, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic WORDS IAN FRISCH

iruses are everywhere: A bustling meat market in downtown Hong Kong, chopped meats and severed pork shanks plopped on tables for the public; the depths of Cameroon amongst a colony of chimpanzees, trickling down to villagers; in the claws and teeth of bats nestled in caves of Africa and dangling in trees on horse farms in Australia; in an ejected sneeze from the aisle seat of a plane on its way to Toronto from Hong Kong; at the tip of a mosquito’s feeding tube amongst the flame-colored foliage of New England; and even in caterpillars clung to leaves of trees surrounding author and biojournalist David Quammen’s house in Bozeman, Montana, a soft flurry of snow falling at the beginning of October, signalling the start of another winter and, this year, the debut of Quammen’s newest book, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. Quammen has spanned the globe, following virologists into the darkest and most intricate catacombs of the ecosystem to understand zoonotic viruses, the hidden killers transmitted to humans from animals. These viruses, sneaky and silent, are waiting to rear their ugly heads more drastically than they already have, poised to give humans a run for their money. “[Humans are] like a very, very dense, very old and very dry forest,” Quammen explained, “and what happens with very old, very dry forests is that eventually they burn. And we can assume that one of these bugs is going get into the human population and we are going to burn.” Throughout Spillover, Quammen skillfully knits scientific banter in plain English within juicy narrative and first-person accounts, shipping himself from the Congo to Bangladesh, Australia to Singapore, trying to understand already prevalent and much-feared viruses and, along the way, predict where, when and how The Next Big One will emerge. That’s the Catch 22 that all of the scientists Quammen followed struggle with concerning zoonotic diseases: You cannot understand, gain control over, and accurately predict a virus until it has already started killing people. “If somebody suddenly gets very sick, if that person has a virus that is already known, we can screen for that and say, he’s got Swine Flu, or Eastern Equine Encephalitis, or another virus,” Quammen said. “If it’s a new virus that hasn’t be isolated in a lab, never been identified, then it’s very hard to detect that. You have to start from scratch and take samples. Somebody has to do the lab work to isolate that new virus, grow it, sequence the genome and identify it so it can be detectable.” That has been the case for every single catastrophic pandemic that humans have encountered, from Ebola in Africa, to SARS in Asia (and Toronto, which traveled by plane from Hong Kong within 48 hours of infecting the first human), and even HIV right here in the United States. “Sometimes the crucial factor is whether people become infectious before or after they feel really sick. If they have symptoms before they are shedding the

virus, then they will probably be in a medical situation and won’t be in contact with many people,” Quammen explained, branching off of the fact that usually, with the most severe viruses, symptoms don’t usually precursor contagion. “But if they are shedding the virus before they feel really bad, maybe they are sneezing a little bit and they think they have a cold, when in fact they have a lethal virus that they are sneezing around. And then they get on a plane.” Although Quammen dives deep into many zoonotic viruses throughout the book, he spends a good portion of its pages talking about the two viruses that have made the biggest impact on the human species: HIV and influenza. Tracing the extremely elusive HIV virus (it took scientists over 20 years to find out where it came from) to a remote section of Cameroon, Quammen essentially finds Patient Zero—a pseudonym for the first person to acquire HIV from a chimpanzee—and traces its course from this incident roughly 100 years ago to the United States in recent past, where it made its large-scale introduction into the public spotlight. Truth be told, HIV shook Quammen the most. “One of the scariest things that I learned in the course of researching this book is the fact that the Simian virus that is the precursor to HIV has spilled over into humans from chimps 12 independent times that we know of, and only one of those times has accounted for the AIDS pandemic,” he explained. “The other 11 cases have either been moderately serious or have not gone anywhere at all. That tells us that those types of spillovers are still happening. Not only do we need to find ways of controlling and defeating the AIDS pandemic, but also that we need to be aware that an entirely independent AIDS-like pandemic could get started.” Unlike HIV, which can only be transmitted through bodily fluids, influenza is an airborne virus and can travel much faster and be much more destructive on a larger scale in a shorter amount of time. It also has one of the fastest mutation rates of any zoonotic viruses, making it extremely elusive and hard to predict. It’s always changing. Influenza killed 50 million people in 1918, one million in 1968, and continues to kill tens of thousands of people each year, including the H5N1, H1N1, and SARS outbreaks of the previous decade. “If you get a really bad and particularly lethal strain of influenza coming out of southeast Asia, it could kill tens of millions of people again. Then it becomes a bigger death threat than the chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer,” confided Quammen, highlighting the potential impact of a disease that bases itself on its ability to be unpredictable coupled with the sheer lack of knowledge by scientists and humans in general. “There’s a strong random element there, a lot of genetic components that can mix together inside of a wild bird, inside of a pig, inside of a human when you get a couple different strains

“We can assume that one of these bugs is going to get into the human population and we are going to burn.”

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infecting one victim,” explained Quammen. “The influenza genome can pop apart and reassemble itself in a lot of different ways very easily. The bottom line is that influenza are constantly changing and coming out in new forms. You can’t predict that. You can only detect that and respond to it quickly.” But, in the end, as Quammen bluntly states in Spillover, we have no one to blame except for ourselves. Overpopulation and disruption of the ecosystem, according to Quammen, is the root for the majority of the pandemics we deal with today. “When we go into the ecosystem and eat [animals] and move them around we get exposed to these new viruses, and they spill over into us and become lethal,” admitted Quammen. “We travel everywhere and travel quickly, and we live in dense congregations like Beijing and New York City. Those represent opportunities for these viruses to spread much more rapidly and broadly throughout the human population.” Merely our presence as the largest group of vertebrate the planet has ever seen has its side effects in terms of pandemics, but our actions on the planet may have much more serious

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PHOTO LYNN DONALDSON

implications. “We are so abundant, the human species, that it means that these viruses, that if they are pushed towards extinction because the species they naturally inhabit is being pushed towards extinction, if they manage to spill over into humans, they have just traded a losing situation for a highly, highly promising situation,” he explained. “They can achieve great Darwinian success by adapting to humans and spreading through this wonderfully abundant hosts they have just colonized.” To be frank, the more we screw with the ecosystem, the more it is able to screw with us. Quammen reminds us in his book that just being here keeps the ball rolling, reassuring us that these viruses aren’t in our world, we are in theirs. We have to play by their rules. New York City, like any major metropolitan congregation of humans, is just another piece on the ecological gameboard. Although perhaps not as strict as, say, Singapore in its hold on the public, the city has a 266-page-long concrete outline if an influenza outbreak did occur. The pamphlet states that the city is organized enough, and with enough resources, to respond to an outbreak in an efficient and controlled manner, giving med-

ical personnel a to-do list in case of a large-scale outbreak with a bit of wiggle room—space and time to chat it over with the Department of Health; and rightfully so, as each outbreak can have various and unpredicted elements that can skew or change decision making or execution processes (they even detail out procedures for specific viruses, such as H5N1, the bird flu). It acts as a guide for the civilian population, too, so New York City can not reach the level of a massive and lethal pandemic, with undertones of preparedness and acute understanding of these dangerous viruses (“Because of widespread susceptibility to a pandemic influenza strain, the attack rate in NYC is anticipated to be high”), and what can and should be done given a drastic situation. They even have refrigerated trucks stored away in case of mass fatalities. It’s merely a reassurance saying, “Hey, we got this.” And that organization is extremely beneficial for New York City’s ability to control an outbreak, a graceful privilege that many areas in Africa or Asia don’t have, where, ironically, most of the viruses sprout from. “I don’t want to get Mayor Bloomberg mad at me and I don’t want to give him too much credit either,” Quammen started, speculating on our city, “but my guess is that the resources for dealing with this in terms of the scientific [and] medical resources and the public health measures—if subways have to be closed, or if the airports have to be regulated in certain ways—I would guess New York would be pretty capable of doing that.” So, although SARS or H5N1 skipping over the Big Apple reminds us how lucky we are, it also brings up the fact that our turn is quickly approaching. And being prepared is all New York City can really do at this point. In the boxing match between humans and viruses, there won’t be a true victor, one that topples the other, just back and forth rounds with one side having the upper-hand. “These viruses can hurt us pretty badly,” admitted Quammen. “The question is not a black and white question of who is going to win, the

question is how badly are they going to hurt us before we manage to get a handle on them. And that’s a case by case question as these new viruses emerge.” And according to Quammen, eradication of these viruses isn’t a logical option. They will always be there. “This is a great lesson that all living creatures in the world, including viruses, are interconnected. In the larger ecosystem of the earth there will always be viruses, there will always be bacteria, there will always be, I hope, humans.” Humans, even with their downfalls, have Darwinian selection on their side, making extinction extremely unlikely. A crack to the jaw, a head-ringing concussion, a swollen eye and bloody nose, sure, but we’ll always avoid a full-on knock-out. “We are very resilient. If something hits us hard, that Darwinian selection will be in operation, so it might take down a catastrophic number of people, but those who remain, at least some of them, will have been exposed to it and will have had enough natural genetic resistance to have weathered it,” Quammen explained. “So, we will continue to adapt, we will continue to evolve. The only real question is how many of our friends and loved ones and fellow citizens will be lost in the process. And that is the issue and that is what we are trying to limit.” Spillover avoids being a pro-germophobic piece of literature and instead relies on the concept of information to allow its reader to be more aware and more well-versed in how these zoonotic viruses operate and how, hopefully, we can cope with them. But don’t get caught up in the mindset that The Next Big One isn’t out there, isn’t creeping in through the natural evolution of our ecosystem, isn’t mutating to find its way into the human population, isn’t, perhaps, scurrying around the subway platform in the blood of a rat, waiting for its opportunity to board the train and make its way from one end of New York City to the other.

Quammen reminds us in his book that these viruses aren’t in our world, we are in theirs.

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THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE BY ALBRECHT DÜRER

SAINT MICHAEL FIGHTING THE DRAGON BY ALBRECHT DÜRER

The Vehemence of God An Objective Exploration of The Book of Revelation WORDS MEGHAN HILLIARD

“Verily I say unto you, that there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.” Revelation 9:1

he rampant dark and dooming fog that introduces us to the frigid winter months has a more ominous presence this year than winters of New York City’s past: The biting wind howling frantically across the East River, whipping violently at the faces at those who step foot into the maniacal elements. Are the tears that form on their faces from the savage winter chill, or the thought of their forthcoming end of days on the brink of materializing? Created in 3372 B.C., the Mayan calendar predicts that humanity will meet its apocalyptic end the first day of winter in 2012, causing not just New Yorkers, but inhabitants all over the earth, to shudder at the thought that their five thousand year doomsday waiting period is expiring.

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Preparing for judgment day reaches far beyond overstocking Y2K bunkers, Nostradamus’ collection of prophecies, and politely passing on Jim Jones’ kool-aid. Those of Christian and Jewish faith have long awaited their violent salvation since John, a disciple of Jesus, penned the Book of Revelation—the last and arguably most brutal book of the Bible—telling the tale of God’s vehement earthly apocalypse. Written while exiled on the island of Patmos off the coast of Asia Minor around 90 A.D., the events of the narrative John authors are shown to him while he was in a deep, metaphysical trance. A divine being appeared to John believed to be Jesus Christ, not in human form, but rather a terrifying, illumi-

nated figure. The being told John that God is about to embark on a cataclysmic cosmic war with the world and will ultimately destroy the entire universe. God will succeed in condemning and slaughtering the sinners of the world and banish their souls into an eternal pit of fire. With angels sounding trumpets, four horsemen of the apocalypse appear in front of John—the first two wielding swords “so that people would slaughter one another,” the third betokening famine and the fourth bringing ultimate death by sword, wild animals, and sickness. Not all on earth were doomed, John was informed. Four chosen angels took stand on the four corners of the earth and placed seals on the foreheads of 144,000 men, God’s chosen virginal elite, to keep them safe during “the great day of the wrath of God.” John’s vision starts to shift and he’s now looking at the shaft of a bottomless pit. Giant locusts with the faces of humans emerge by the thousands, surrounding him with their long, tangled human hair while being led by the angel of the dark abyss, Abad’don. The locusts are instructed to not harm any green growth, but only mankind, stinging them with their scorpion-like tails causing five months of tortuous pain. As rapidly as the beasts appear, they disperse from his sight, and John’s attention is grasped by the wailing of a woman in child labor, birthing God’s messiah. A colossal red seven headed dragon waits in anticipation to eat the in womb infant, pacing impatiently in front of him. Infamous archangel Michael appears abruptly and begins to battle the dragon, who has now taken its rage from the sky down to earth along with its two beast allies. The first has seven heads with ten horns, and emerges from the depths of the world’s seas. The second, whose name is signified by the number 666 “makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, and cause all those who would not worship the image of the beast to be killed.” As the war on earth gets progressively worse, John witnesses seven of God’s chosen angels pour golden bowls of God’s wrath into the sky. The very last bowl ignites the most destructive and violent earthquake to ever happen on earth, and ultimately causes Babylon to fall while its inhabitants cry and defy God as they die in misery. The city of Babylon is transformed in front of John’s eyes into a human figure—a prostitute—sitting on the same red seven headed beast enjoying a cup of the blood of God’s people. It is estimated about three billion people on earth are dead by the time Jesus appears on a white horse, leading armies of angels into war. John watches as an angel tells those still alive to join them after Jesus’ great battle to avenge the deaths of the righteous to “eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the

flesh of the mighty, the flesh of the horses and their riders—the flesh of all, both free and slave, small and great.” At the end of the war when Jesus is victorious, the red, seven-headed dragon and its allies are thrown into a lake of fire, Satan is thrown into the bottomless pit and all those who died in faith to God are resurrected. Finally, John witnesses Jesus condemn sinners of murder, worshipping multiple gods and deviant sexual acts and they are tossed into the lake of fire while all those righteous and good are welcomed into the new city of Jerusalem and Christ and his followers will reign in sovereignty for a thousand years. Who was John of Patmos and did the violent and extreme visions he writes of actually happen in front of him? Scholars believe not. “Because John offers his Revelation in the language of dreams and nightmares, language that is ‘multivalent,’ countless people for thousands of years have been able to see their own conflicts, fears and hopes reflected in his prophecies,” said Elaine Pagels, the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. “And because he speaks from his convictions about divine justice, many readers have found assurance in his conviction that there is meaning in history—even when he does not say exactly what that meaning is—and that there is hope.” John’s visions most likely were not intended to be read as literal, but rather figurative. He recently fled his homeland of Judea after Rome sent thousands of troops to attack Jerusalem, defeat the Jews and take down the Great Temple. The massacre John witnessed in his own country could have transcended in his own violent writing, with each image ultimately symbolizing something that devastated Judea—for example, the red, sevenheaded dragon represents Rome while the beast who is indicated by the number 666 is Nero, the Roman Emperor and persecutor of Christians. “Most people used to think John and his country people were oppressed. They most likely weren’t,” Episcopalian priest John Merz of the Church of the Ascension said in his Greenpoint, Brooklyn rectory while his dog Lola napped by his feet. “The best way to think about this is to think about the Tea Party movement and the Occupy movement in the U.S. Both are not oppressed people. Ultimately, both groups are making their way in society. This isn’t a group of indentured slaves in a factory in some South Asian country under a dictatorship. What you have in John’s book are people who are dissatisfied with the accommodations Christians are making with the larger society—the Grecco Roman culture and the Roman political structures.” In the almost two thousand years since the Book of

A human figure sits on a seven-headed beast enjoying a cup of blood.

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Revelation was written, the Christian millenarianism belief (that Christ will reign for 1,000 years prior to the final judgment, and he will save the most righteous and condemn sinners) still remains strong today. The belief that when good comes to head with evil, good will reign and be triumphant, wrongs will be rectified and those benefiting from injustice will get what they ultimately deserve. The reasoning why this idea is so widely taken from John’s writing is largely due to the fact that most people feel like at some point in their lives, they have faced oppression or injustice. “You have people who have been told that they are God’s favorite people—which is the basic thing that happens in monotheistic religion, you are God’s people—when they perceive themselves being shit upon they say, ‘How can this be, because we are God’s chosen people? We’re the light to enlighten all nations,’” Merz said. “The more they’re getting shit upon, the more this apocalyptic moment, this reversal is about to happen—and that’s key in apocalyptic literature, there’s always a great reversal.” Is that indeed what John authored? A piece of apocalyptic literature? If this Book is just an imaginative tale that was intended to be read figuratively, then why is it still so alive during a time when modern day Christians can watch a Michael Bay film for the same stories of crazy plot twists and turns? “What’s odd about people’s fascination with Revelation—there is stuff in it that’s beautiful—it’s a bizarre, enchanting in certain respects book that would speak to people that are oppressed in certain respects because it talks about things changing,” Merz said. It seems Christians have adapted the visions of John and are reading them into their own social conflicts. Readers of the last book have been looking for moral explanation during personal times of suffering through the Book of Revelation. Great world leaders, authors, and pop culture personalities have laced the Book of Revelation references into their teachings and public works, whether they’re cognizant of it or not. The Book of Revelation and apocalyptic ideas represented in the book have been embedded in the American psyche for as long as the book has been alive. From the poems of T.S. Eliot to Martin Luther King Jr.’s infamous speech stating “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” cultural tastemakers have believed that the prophecies John speaks of to be of promise. Although many believe the book is open to interpretation, there are many religious fanatics and fundamentalist Christians that believe that John’s tale is true to its word, and the signs

of God’s impending wrath have already started to appear. Numerous websites and online discussion boards have sprung over the years directly relating physical, worldly disasters to versus from the Book of Revelation. The Black Plague of the mid-14th century was a pandemic responsible for killing a third of Europe population. “By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed, by the fire and the smoke and sulphur issuing from their mouths.” Revelation 9:18. The terrorist attacks specifically on the World Trade Center towers in New York City on September 11th, 2001 happened right in front of the Statue of Liberty’s eyes. “Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven... He had a little scroll open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land... lifted up his right hand to heaven and swore by him who lives forever.” Revelation 10: 1-6. The earthquake that devastated Haiti in January, 2010 killed an estimated 220,000, injured 300,000 and ultimately affected 3.5 million Haitians. “...And a great earthquake such had never been since men were on the earth, so great was that earthquake. The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered the great Babylon, to make her drain the cup of the fury of his wrath.” Revelation 16:18. While cleaning off his glasses with his shirt tail, Father Merz reflected on those who take the Book’s literal meaning as truth. “Because of that way of thinking, in situations where we’re in a crisis, there’s a tendency to think time is more ripe. When the shit is hitting the fan more so, you tend to think this must be sign that things are about to happen,” he said. “People who are biblically literate and imaginative, which is not an oxymoron, are so few and far between. I’m an Episcopalian priest, and do I take any of this stuff literally? Absolutely not. If Jesus’ bones were discovered tomorrow, would I no longer be able to function as an Episcopalian priest? Not at all. So is the mythology of believing in, say, the market. It’s the same thing. All of these things bring you to some view of life.” Regardless if humanity reaches its end of days by the force of God, the termination of the Mayan calendar or by its own destructive hands, the Book of Revelation has been indirectly telling its readers for thousands of years to seek personal truths within themselves. Feared by many, and practiced literally by few, it’s ultimately a tale of hope—a little something we New Yorkers can use while awaiting December 21st.

“When shit is hitting the fan more so, you tend to think this must be a sign that things are about to happen.”

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LAST JUDGEMENT BY MICHELANGELO

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The Concrete Jungle Fiction

WORDS JAMIE LEE BISHOP ART CURT EVERITT/DEAD FOREST

e ran a calloused thumb over the stitching on the front of his tan rucksack, the only thing he had from his past. He remembered being a young boy sitting in the kitchen, intently watching his mother stitch the letters of his name into the bag’s stiff canvas. She made it through “D. Mis” before pricking her finger on the last letter, “e.” The smudge of her dried blood had long since been lost in a haze of dirt and wear. Daniel was worn now, too. Scruff crept up his neck and dusted his jawline, surrounding an ever-grimacing mouth. His lips were dry and cracked. There was no one around to keep up appearances for. He tucked in his grizzly chin and coughed onto the breast of his dust-colored jacket, quickly wiping away the blood that scattered from his lungs and smearing it inevitably into a scarlet badge. He looked down at his watch, mumbling something incoherent about time. It wouldn’t be long now. He fastened the

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rusted buckle on his pack and stood, bracing himself against the concrete wall of the alley. He lifted the black bandanna slung around his neck and secured it to rest at the middle of his sloped nose. Before emerging onto the street, he found comfort in touching his hip, feeling the etched handle of his father’s Bowie knife still in place. The once booming streets of Times Square were now desolate and barren, as was everything after the day the fire came. The lights of the giant advertising screens had long gone out, and all that remained was the faded image of a particularly attractive woman on a charred billboard. With her silk-blonde hair and flawless smile she could have been selling anything, but for Daniel Mise, she was only selling a cruel memory. He thought of the woman he loved, but as always, her laughter turned to screams in his head and he was forced to look away. The fire had taken everything.

The thing that Daniel was waiting for would be here soon enough, so he slipped silently into a lonely corner shop. A bell chimed as he pushed the door forward, the only welcome left in the world. Planks of rotten wood covered the windows in a feeble attempt to shut out the certainty of death. He planted his boots and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness before heading to the back storage room. Empty boxes were strewn on the ground from the ransacking that took place after the man on the television announced that the city was under attack. He kicked them aside and felt his hands grasp the cold steel of a faucet. Running water was a thing of the past, but Daniel had discovered a rooftop water tank connected to this store a few weeks after the attack. His tongue tingled with desire, but he would wait. It had been easy with the others, but this one was different. The boy, no older than twenty, was a frightened creature, but a clever one. Daniel had watched him numerous times sneak around the buildings and tiptoe with his canteen slung around his shoulder. His features were indistinct. He was covered from head to toe in dust and used it to his advantage, a desert-colored chameleon blending in with the destruction. Daniel didn’t like preying on the weak or the young, but this new world wasn’t meant for survivors of any kind. It was his job to make sure there were none. After studying the boy for a few weeks, Daniel knew the only way to get rid of him was to beat him at his own game, so he took his place behind the door, wrapped himself in a blanket of darkness and waited. The familiar chiming of the bells quieted his breath as his hand clenched around the blade’s handle. Just as he expected, the boy’s careful footsteps made no noise, but Daniel could sense his approach. A slight wisp of wind through the crack in the door stroked the back of Daniel’s neck as the boy entered. He stumbled over a box that Daniel had kicked aside and paused to listen for anything else that might be out of place. Daniel held his breath and became the only statue left standing in New York City. Moving more hurriedly now, the boy unhinged his canteen and let the sound of liquid salvation fill the room. Seeing the boy made Daniel think back to the first time he ever murdered something innocent. He was thirteen years old and living on his family’s farm. His father, a burly and tough man with only the best of intentions, handed him a heavy .22 rifle and explained that it was his job to put down one of their horses. “It’s for the best,” his father said. The taffy-colored mare had been given to Daniel as a birthday present years before, but her fur was greying now and she was far too weak to stand, much less gallop. She had fallen ill one morning in early autumn and never recovered. The sickness progressed rapidly and the stable became her tomb. She would not be able to produce a healthy

calf and it wouldn’t be long before another one of the horses contracted the infection from her. Before he pulled the trigger, Daniel lay down beside her quivering body and stroked her mane to put her at ease. He raised the rifle aiming it at her skull and shut his eyes. “For the best,” he whispered. Those three words flashed in his mind. The time was now. Slinking from behind the door, Daniel could make out the silhouette of the boy arched over the sink, still completely unaware of his dangerous company. His hand reached into the darkness, grasping the boy’s unruly hair and yanked him close. The boy cried out and thrust his foot backwards, kicking Daniel’s already weak knee and bringing them both down to the cold tile. His screams stirred Daniel’s nightmares and soon he clamped his hand over the boy’s thirsty mouth, drowning out the pain as he dragged the knife across his thin throat. The screams didn’t stop, but they were no longer that of the boy’s. It was only her screams now. He could see the waves of flame drawing nearer to her and he opened his mouth to plead but the words weren’t there. She ran up the stairs yelling about something she couldn’t leave behind. He could almost feel the heat now. He wanted to run to her, but his feet wouldn’t budge. Her footsteps sounded like a stampede as she raced towards him, her arms outstretched, crying his name. He tried to reach back, but the fire engulfed her. As the door slammed shut in front of him, the last thing he saw was her swollen belly, ripe with his child. Blood trickled down Daniel’s hand as he kept the other firmly over the boy’s mouth. He took a breath and leaned his head against the shelf behind him, listening now only to the sound of running water. The bells at the storefront chimed again. Daniel froze. He had followed the boy the first time he’d noticed him to see if there were any other survivors he didn’t know about, but the boy took shelter in an abandoned home and it was clear that he was alone. There would be no one to worry if the boy didn’t return from filling his canteen, and Daniel had never seen anyone else go into the store. But now there were heavy footsteps of an unknown and unexpected visitor lumbering towards him, and the running water sung out like a siren. Daniel cursed the boy as he rolled away his slender, lifeless body. The footsteps stopped and Daniel quickly stood up. Full of adrenaline, he wrenched the door open, but all he found was an empty room. The bells had not rung again, so he knew that his victim must still be in the room. A coward in hiding, he thought. As he turned his back, a giant shadow leapt atop him from behind the counter, the heavy weight bringing Daniel to his knees. The blow had sent his knife sliding across the slick floor. Pain surged through his knee as he mustered his strength and

He clamped his hand over the boy’s thirsty mouth, drowning out the pain as he dragged the knife across his thin throat.

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began to wrestle with the beast. His hands tore at exposed flesh, but the man was too strong to overcome. The slivers of daylight coming in through the cracks in the boarded windows showed Daniel his competitor: a fierce man with scraggly golden hair and a shaggy beard. The man’s eyes were full of rage as his hand raised, his bulky muscles threatening Daniel’s life. Daniel caught a wink of steel raised above him and rolled away only seconds before the sword hit the floor. The man snarled in disgust as he watched Daniel scamper to his knife. He raised the sword again and swung, ripping open the sleeve of Daniel’s jacket and sliced into his left bicep. Shock masked the pain as Daniel made a swift run for the door, knowing he would not be able to rally with his wound. The man yelled something Daniel could not make out as the door shut behind him. His days of playing high school football flashed through his mind…running the ball for victory, hearing the roar of the crowd as he crossed the touchdown line and seeing the smile of the girl he cherished on the sidelines. Now he was running for his life and praying only for the threshold of his hideaway. The man didn’t seem to be following him, but he ran a crooked course anyways, hoping to lose anyone trailing behind. He zigged up Broadway and zagged down 52nd Street. Sweat dripped into the slit of his wound, sending a sting throughout his arm, but his legs kept pumping. He stopped only to look around once he reached Central Park. When he was as sure as he could be that no one was watching, he raced down 61st Street and up the steps to a place he would never again call home. His arm throbbed as he slammed the large oak door shut. He lumbered through a dark hallway; his shoulder banged into the wall and family photos came crashing down as he tried to steady himself. He stumbled into the kitchen and jerked open a cabinet under the sink, his trembling hands knocking over glass bottles until he found the one he was looking for. His teeth gripped the cap as he slid onto the floor, twisting it open and spitting it across the room. Turning the bottle upside down, the liquid stung his suffering throat and was soon coughed up in a puddle of blood at his feet. He howled in agony as he slung off his jacket. Clenching his shirt in his mouth and locking his jaws as tightly as he could, he poured the remnants of the liquor on his open wound. The bottle dropped from his hand and shattered as his head hit the floor and eyes shut. She was screaming again. Her arms were outstretched and she was screaming his name. He was stuck motionless, only able to look. Just before the fire took her, a small gaping mouth protruded from her stomach and let out a piercing cry. He awoke with a gasp, his body drenched in sweat and vodka. His eyes darted from the glass sprinkled around him to the gash on his arm as he remembered the man in the store. Taking a deep breath, he steadied himself, using the kitchen counter

for support. His head swam and the floor spun as he walked to a closet in what used to be he and his wife’s living room. He took an old woven basket from the shelf and dug around until he found a needle and thread. He’d learned to sow from watching his mother and reasoned that stitching fabric couldn’t be much different from stitching flesh. He heated the needle in the flame of a candle sitting on the coffee table. He bit down on his bandanna as it pierced his skin and pulled the thin thread through, lacing himself up like a combat boot. He winced each time he pulled the string taut, determined to seal it tight. After the excruciating task was done, he sat upright on the couch and took a small ashen leather-bound notebook from his pants pocket. With a pen, he scratched out the word “Chameleon,” leaving only one. “Panther.” But now, after his unexpected encounter this morning, he knew another name would need to be added to his list. He wasn’t sure what to call that one yet, so he scrawled a line underneath “Panther” and, after it, a question mark. He liked to think of himself as a hunter, killing the things that didn’t belong. Daniel had witnessed the slow death of humanity over the past two years, watching people resort to cannibalism and where murdering someone over a can of food wasn’t uncommon. He refused to accept that the world might have a chance to live on after the devastation. In this new world, the world that was left after an atom bomb and its companions dropped into the heart of New York City and all other major cities in the US, Daniel no longer considered murder to be the worst thing he could do. This world had changed everyone and Daniel was no exception. He thought the worst thing he could do now would be to let anyone live in a world corrupted past the point of no return. Like the horse, he thought, it was for the best. The barbarism he encountered slowly stripped him of any hope that humanity was still alive and he turned his victims into nothing but wild animals. Radiation soon poisoned his body, and he vowed to spend the last bits of his life hunting and exterminating those who tried to defy the end. He reached into a rickety drawer that barely hung on to the charred coffee table and revealed one of the last photos he had left of his wife. She was standing in a patch of sunflowers at the university they attended together. A strand of honey blonde hair was swept gently underneath her chestnut eyes, her lips frozen in a permanent smile. Those were the finer times. He looked at his watch and grunted as he realized that he had slept into the night. The unexpected man had messed up his hunting schedule, but if he left now, he could still catch her. He could still catch the Panther. He looked one last time at the photo before stuffing it into his back pocket along with the notebook. He picked his knife up from the kitchen floor and used

She turned to reveal a crimson mouth, tendons dangling from her lips like tusks.

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it to cut a strip of his cotton t-shirt away, recoiling slightly as he tied it over the cut. The weight of his rucksack was too much for his injured arm to carry, so he tucked the blade in his belt and headed for the door. He stepped into the darkness, still not quite used to a silent New York night. The streets that were once ablaze with movement and sound now sat eerily still. The fire had taken even the crickets. He stayed off of the main roads and instead walked down alleyways and back roads for over an hour until reaching his destination. He jumped in the air, his hands gripping rusted metal and slung down a fire escape ladder. His heart leapt as its gears gnarled and screeched, echoing down the block. She would be gone by now, but he knew that she’d be back soon. He pulled the ladder up behind him, knowing that she would notice if he didn’t, and quickly he climbed up four stories and slid into the window she’d left open for herself. Her apartment reeked of rotten meat, and maggots writhed on every surface. Daniel fastened the bandana around his nose, coughed blood into the folds, and sat down in a wooden rocking chair facing the window. He’d saved her for last for a reason. Before he made the decision to become the poacher of this concrete jungle, Daniel had been walking home one night from trying to find food, his belly empty and emaciated, growling with defeat. He came upon a woman squatting in an alley, huddled over and shaking her head vigorously. Thinking she might have been in need of help, he approached her cautiously. She turned upon hearing the clank of his boot to reveal a crimson mouth, tendons dangling from her lips like tusks. In her hands she clutched a small leg with a sparkling pink tennis shoe still attached. She ran when she saw him, knowing she was no match for a person of his size. After his body unfroze from the horror, Daniel crept forward, afraid of what he knew he would find. The owner of the leg, a child of no more than five, lay motionless in a pool of blood. His trembling hands reached into his pocket for the notebook he had once used to jot down ideas and notes for his novel. In it, he etched the woman’s location and any features he could remember. He rocked back and forth, gripping his knife, waiting while images of the young girl’s face flashed through his mind. He was certain that the Panther wouldn’t get away from him this time. The noise of the ladder colliding with the pavement jolted him from the memory and the heel of his boot caught the floor as he halted the creaking chair. He listened intently as she clambered up the fire escape while his hand holding the knife throbbed with revenge. She snuck through the window, paying attention only to the human remnants swaddled in her arms, never noticing the dark intruder that sat still behind her. He lifted his heel and let the chair creak to life. She dropped her bloody meal to the floor as she turned to face him, screeching as his black eyes came into view. She remembered his face. In her attempt to flee, her screams turned to whimpers as Daniel dug the blade through her chest.

The night had grown darker as he started back to his old home. He heard a trash can rattle a few blocks away and picked up his pace. The clink of metal chimed closer to him this time and his feet moved faster, worrying that someone might be following. He raced through the street and again thought of the football games, imagining the smile from the girl on the sidelines. Before he was able see her face, he turned his head to make sure no one was gaining on him, and the ground gave way beneath him as he began tumbling down stone steps. He found himself sprawled out on a concrete floor, his head pounding from the fall and the gash on his arm ripped back open. He struggled to stand and soon realized he was in a very unfamiliar place. He turned to walk up the stairs and continue home, but something about the place intrigued him. He knew every inch of the city, but never about this place, so he instead turned to take a closer look. His hand grazed along a damp stone wall in the darkness and shivering, he thought of the jacket he wasn’t able to wear tonight. He stopped as the stone turned to wood and traced his hand along the carving, his fingertips finding a cold steel doorknob. He reached his other hand to his blade and quietly turned the knob. Lanterns scattered bits of light through the dim room. Three dark green cots were pressed against the wall. In one lied a young sleeping boy with golden hair down to his shoulders. In another was a petite woman with frizzy brown hair, also in a deep slumber, with her blanket peeled back just far enough to reveal a pregnant stomach. Daniel’s insides churned. The third bed was empty. As Daniel prepared to add two more victims to his list, something caught his eye, something he recognized in this otherwise foreign place. Propped up against one of the walls was the sword that gave him that wound. He knew now what the man was. He gulped as he swallowed the realization. He was standing in the lion’s den. A hand gripped him from behind, the same way he’d snuck up on the young boy filling his canteen. Daniel reached for his knife but was thrust into the wall, hearing only the snap of his collarbone shattering. He lay helpless as he watched the man walk into the lantern lit room where his wife and child still lay sleeping and take hold of his sword. Daniel had awoken the beast only to find that he wasn’t a beast at all. He was a father and a husband. Reaching into his pocket with the last bit of strength he had left, he unfolded the photo with the sunflowers. He closed his eyes and prayed for her to turn her head so that he could see her smile one more time. The man walked forward, weapon in hand. Daniel raised his chin and looked upon him, a lone tear rolling down his cheek. He gazed upward into the man’s piercing blue eyes, the eyes of humanity, and muttered the words, “for the best” before closing his own. He could see her clearly now, standing on the sidelines, back still turned to him. Her hair whipped around, and as the blade drove through his chest, the last thing he saw was her smile.

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