An Interview With Jamie Curcio

Jamie Curcio wears a lot of hats. He’s a novelist, illustrator, musician, podcaster, essayist, and a number of other things as well. He also contributed to an issue of Burn Before Reading back in July of 2020. He’s currently running a Kickstarter for his new project, Tales From When I Had a Face, which exceeded its goal within one day. We took the opportunity to talk with him about his work, his process, and some of his thoughts on being a creator in 2021.

I want to start by asking about your current project, Tales from When I Had a Face. It’s an illustrated novel which has been over seven years in the making, but it’s also part of a much larger universe called the Fallen Cycle, which you’ve been working on even longer than that. For those who aren’t familiar with it, how would you describe the Fallen Cycle, and how do you see Tales from When I Had a Face fitting into it?

The Fallen Cycle is a mythos. That is, a series of different stories that share and expand a common mythic pantheon, and in our case, a common timeline. The events in one story are happening in the same "world" as another, although they may be hundreds of years apart or told from vantage points of characters with very different views of the world. 

So far they've taken the form of novels, an experimental webcomic, podcasts with original musical soundtracks, or some hybrid fusion of the three. I don't write all of them, by the way, although I play a primary role in the production of everything we do. 

Part of the challenge has been to keep each installment something that can stand on its own feet, because... especially as we continue to expand the mythology, it will allow for each person to have a different experience based on what their entrance point is to the Fallen Cycle world. Or what they happen to not get to. 

I suppose you could say all of those projects also share a dystopian or apocalyptic vibe in some way. They might have apocalypse in the background — apocalypse soon! — the way our lives these days seem to. But it's there. 

I like to also approach apocalypse in its more spiritual sense: as a revelation, along with the more common definition. The often painful awakening that results from our illusions being removed. Satire is one method, tragedy is the other. 

It seems to be a reoccurring motif that in the process of unlocking their unique powers, the characters involved wind up destroying themselves, or even the world. Some of the gist is on the mythos page on our site. 

The Tales From When I Had A Face Kickstarter has gone very well so far — so I think it's safely assured now that its story will join the others. Limited editions will be available through September.

Your visual artwork and illustrations have a very striking mixed-media style, both dream-like and photographic. Can you tell us a bit about your process and techniques?

Collage is probably a core component of my approach, when it comes to writing, illustration or sound... juxtaposing seemingly disparate styles, techniques, approaches, characters or what have you, and seeing what happens when you put them in a room together, or change their composition. 

It doesn't always work, of course — I think I've gotten "better" as an artist to the extent that I've become a better editor. That is, if getting "better" is a real thing, I suppose. Hopefully you learn to make new, more interesting mistakes. But, whatever I do with it afterwards, collage is where I like to start. 

“The standard working process for comics, where it’s a team effort, is very natural to me... I would rather ink someone’s pencils or ink and color them than do it all myself... I like having material to rework, rather than a blank page. ”

I used to do a lot of what's called photobashing, on the digital end of things — that's where you take a bunch of different source images and work them together in photoshop. However, these days I usually take it several steps further by using that as the underpainting... building up layers of oil, graphite, colored pencil, ink, you name it atop that... in some cases the underpainting disappears entirely by the end, in others, it remains to give weight and texture, but either way, my contribution needs to change it somehow substantially, or it's just reproduction... which doesn't interests me very much.

The standard working process for comics, where it's a team effort, is very natural to me for that reason. I would rather ink someone's pencils or ink and color them than do it all myself... that always feels sterile to me, and the results aren't very satisfying for me even if they look alright. I like having material to rework, rather than a blank page. 

Unsurprisingly, I got a lot of mileage out of variations of the cut-up techniques popularized by Gysin, Burroughs, and Bowie... at least on certain projects. You are meant to use those unexpected combinations to begin the creative process, not as the end of it.

There’s a clear theme in your work involving the juxtaposition of folklore/occult imagery and themes with the modern/technological. Fallen Cycle and Tales from When I Had a Face are no exception. What draws you to that juxtaposition?

Yeah... I think that's true with the Fallen Cycle for sure, and is probably the backbone of the web journal I've kept for about 15 years now, Modern Mythology. 

I suppose the easy answer is that this is the world we live in, or at least that I do.  And there's this popular idea that the one replaces the other, or that they're mutually incompatible... or that "myth is dead" Because Modernity. To me, that shows a lack of understanding of what mythos is. It isn't dead, it's everywhere. 

A substantial amount of my nonfiction work in particular has been aimed at demonstrating just how wrong that assumption is, and exploring the ramifications of that.

For the more complicated, and probably more accurate answer to that question, I'm afraid I'll have to refer to my work itself...

Fallen Cycle also has an adaptation as a tabletop RPG in the works. As a creator, I’m curious how you think the RPG offers something different from other media. Did you get what you expected from it, or has it surprised you?

Well, let me explain what we're doing, or attempting to do currently... 

RPGs offer a form of interaction, of course, both with one another and with the material, but also — when it's with a group who are on the same page, it can add the right amount of the unexpected to a narrative. It's a way of gamifying the "riffing" stage of a writing room, though the nature of those games certainly affects what you come up with together, structurally, it's even more determined by your collective intent. 

I've been especially blessed so far with the playtest group I've been working with for the Fallen Cycle because, despite how crazy the world is now, they've stuck in there, every other Tuesday with one or two exceptions, for nearly 2 years now. 

“You won’t get a fully fleshed out novel outline out of an RPG. ...But when it comes to world- and character- building, I can’t think of a better way to go about it. I love it.”

Having the particular group on the same page is everything, because even with such a long running and "game"-centered RPG such as Dungeons and Dragons, (rather than systems with more emphasis on "story"), I have found that if you really pay attention to what's happening at each table, you'll discover multiple games going on rather than one, and also, that the role that those games play within each particular interaction varies wildly from group to group. 

That's probably a complicated way to say "it matters who you play with as much as it matters what you're playing", but I think spelling it out is useful, from a game design perspective. If that's the case, buy-in is essential.

You won't get a fully fleshed out novel outline out of an RPG, I think that's far too high a demand to put on most people interacting in real time... especially over Discord and Roll20. But when it comes to world- and character- building, I can't think of a better way to go about it. I love it. Just as with the other artforms I engage in, I find it so much more interesting when it's being done in collaboration with others, or at least with outside input... 

So that's part of what we're utilizing roleplaying for right now — establishing more of the world and some of the characters and forces within it. 

We have our sights on transitioning from what we're doing now — using homebrew / modified Chronicles of Darkness as the resolution engine, to play within the Fallen Cycle world — to fleshing out a complete, unique system to go along with the setting.

I'm trying to take that as a long term goal that, if it happens, will be driven by necessity. The fact is, there are such a phenomenal number of indie RPGs being developed these days that simply having an extensively detailed setting and some game systems to keep the interactive storytelling moving probably isn't enough. 

When we have something that's worth getting out there, I imagine we'll be bringing it to Kickstarter. So I hope to keep it going and would love to see it through to market, but want to be sure there's a substantial demand to do so. Until then, we'll keep fine-tuning, playing, and taking notes...

In your Kickstarter videos, you mention that your experiences with disability and ADHD have effected your work, both practically and thematically. I’m wondering if you can expand on that a bit.

The first is probably obvious. I tend to have a lot to say about what interests me and very little to say about anything else. 

More cerebrally, a lot of my novels utilize "metafiction" techniques, and a lot of the characters in previous novels were kind of alternate personas, even if they were also considerably fictionalized. 

That's probably less true of Tales in most obvious ways, but one theme that persists through all of them is the connection between society and mental illness — how our society effectively breeds it, it's like a trauma-machine — and yet puts the results on the individual. The "madness" that ensues is often a burden, but it can also let us see beyond the limits of that society. 

“I don’t think any of this material would have come about if it wasn’t for the hyperfocus of ADHD, or that fundamental need to communicate this sense of alienation with others, in an attempt to feel a bit less alone.”

That's a recurring theme in most every Fallen Cycle story, certainly, along with the perceived ambiguity between the occult and insanity, and obviously it's informed by my own experience. The process of discovering and then forgetting an occult reality that is obstructed by the physical is gnostic, potentially, it's also potentially psychotic, if you want to check the DSM. 

But also, I don't think any of this material would have come about if it wasn't for the hyperfocus of ADHD, or that fundamental need to communicate this sense of alienation with others, in an attempt to feel a bit less alone. Through the mouths and minds of characters who are often mostly or wholly invented, maybe, but it's still a kind of message in a bottle... a message put out there in a desire to find a sort of community that our "society" doesn't offer — which is more or less just 5 corporations in a trench coat pretending to be a person at this point.

I think that's why I started writing, anyway, with an intent to publish. Since then, it's become habit... which no longer entirely requires a reason. Maybe not coincidentally, I'm thinking of taking a break from novel writing for a while after Tales, to focus on... everything else in the world.

In addition to your fiction work, you’ve written in a more philosophical/artistic theory mode, notably your book from last year, MASKS: Bowie & Artists of Artifice. MASKS uses David Bowie as a lens through which to explore the tension between an artist’s public presentation of themselves and their reality. Can you tell us a bit about what you find fascinating about David Bowie in particular?

There are a number of ways that Bowie's creative process is almost unnervingly familiar to me. The first I've already mentioned a bit: collage. 

Now, everyone thinks of Bowie as some kind of "true original" but the truth is he lifted everything his eyes touched. Good artists steal — but that obviously doesn't mean if you "steal" you're a good artist. Every story has been told... fine. How are you going to tell it? 

Also, "Bowie" is a construction. Obviously a lot of artists use stage names, but he was one of that certain breed of artist that had a... well at least in the first half of his career... a claustrophobic, uncomfortable relationship with identity and persona when it comes to the requirements and demands that are put on an artist, both to become famous, and then to sustain that notoriety. Bowie also goaded this on, don't get me wrong — it wasn't like a Kurt Cobain discomfort with fame, he had more of a love / hate relationship with it, and maybe didn't initially realize how alienating it can be. That last bit is conjecture, the rest is pretty easy to establish. 

It was a very clear intention to being as "big" as possible, and then the act nearly swallowed him whole... more than once. But unlike others, he managed to eventually strike a balance or... more like a truce. You can hear a ton of allusions to this in his final album by the way. 

"You're a flash in the pan 

I'm the great I Am"

““Bowie” is a construction. Obviously a lot of artists use stage names, but he was one of that certain breed of artist that had a ... claustrophobic, uncomfortable relationship with identity and persona”

It isn't "David Jones" who is speaking here. There's almost a Faustian vibe, or maybe Prospero. And, incidentally, although he was also afflicted with a sort of creative ADHD, and could never stick with one thing very long, he was quite familiar with the occult overtones of a Faustian bargain or of Prospero's art. So I wanted to explore that as well.

Anyhow, I wanted to find out the full history of his relationship with this, as I knew that it quite literally nearly killed him in the 70s, and contrast it with other artists who dealt with this in their work, or struggled with it. There are honestly a lot of other more modern artists I would have liked to explore (Lady Gaga, Bo Burnham, Poppy all come to mind immediately) but... at least for a book based around Bowie's image, it seemed best to focus on 19th-20th century artists. He performed the magic trick of presaging the future quite well, but his time is also the past, now. 
Nevertheless, I felt pretty satisfied with how deeply I was able to explore the concept, and with some of the answers I discovered. The first part of my section on Bowie in MASKS is available on Modern Mythology for those who are interested in reading it but aren't sure about jumping into the 320 page deep end with the book.

Which is your favorite Bowie album?

I don't know if I could give a favorite. Like anything else, it depends on my mood and when you ask. But I will say that if someone hasn't listened closely, and more than once, to Outside, Low, Station to Station, Heathen, Aladdin Sane and Blackstar, they haven't really gotten what Bowie was on about all those years. 

I'm not saying an artist's most obscure work is their best, that's oftentimes not true. But it's very rare that their most popular is also their best. ...Appetite For Destruction might be the sole exception I can think of.

Finally, a more general question: you’ve been working as a writer / artist / musician / art critic for more than 15 years. Do you think that the process of engaging with your audience(s) has changed dramatically in that time? How so?

We will see how things progress from here, but I feel like I had much more direct interaction with my audience 10 years ago than now. My blogs used to get tens of thousands of unique visitors on good days, and, for better and worse, that led to quite a lot of direct contact. Now, it's less than half that and the contact outside my immediate bubble is like and heart reacts and the occasional incredibly bizarre email that is best just deleted and forgotten about. Some books sell. I imagine someone is reading them. Who they are, I couldn't tell you. 

Social media company's businesses have changed, and that's maybe the subject for an entire conversation in itself... but the upshot is that they've effectively throttled direct access to the audiences we build on their platforms, and they created algorithmic mechanisms that boost what is most popular. 

That might sound like a good idea, and it probably is from their vantage point. At least until you understand how survivorship bias works, or for that matter, the fact that independent artists aren't shooting for the biggest audience. Ideally, we need enough to eat and keep a roof over our heads, but if a mansion and sports cars is in your agenda, writing books or making comics or albums was really always a stupid way to go about it. So it's gotten harder, if you aren't willing, or able, to play the game as it's set up (and which they change on the fly, all the time, in private). It isn't a meritocracy, and it certainly isn't a measure of aesthetic value — it's a popularity amplifier. 

That said, if you do catch a wave, it can surge in a way that really couldn't happen when I was younger. But it's fickle, and I tend to be a "color everywhere except inside the lines" type, so I tend to be somewhat pessimistic in this regard. 

And many others, if I'm being honest. Pessimistic but hopeful.