Episode 70: Masks All the Way Down, with James Curcio

Episode 70: Masks All the Way Down, with James Curcio

Author: SpectreVision Radio April 1, 2020 Duration: 1:17:19
James Curcio is an American multidisciplinary artist and nonfiction writer whose works include the novels Join My Cult, The Party at the World's End, and the upcoming Tales from When I Had a Face. Recently, Curcio edited Masks: Bowie and Artists of Artifice, an anthology of essays by various thinkers and artists on the complex interplay of fact and fiction, self and other, in the life of the modern creator of artistic works. David Bowie's career, from the early experimentations to the great working that was his final album Blackstar, provides the book's gravitational field. In his effort to better plumb the mysteries of the aesthetic universe, Curcio penned the anthology's opening essay, "Masks All the Way Down," and it is on that piece that this conversation focuses. Join James, Phil and JF as they discuss the terrifying and liberating idea of an aesthetic cosmos as seen from the vantage point of the artist who learns that with new each work comes a new face, an amalgam of symbols and forces drawn from a depth of surfaces, a paper-thin dream that goes ever so deep... REFERENCES James Curcio (editor), [Masks: Bowie and Artists of Artifice](www.intellectbooks/masks) James Curcio's website: https://www.jamescurcio.com James Curcio's new novel, [Tales from When I Had a Face](www.TalesFromWhenIHadAFace.com) David Bowie, Blackstar Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex Poppy, American singer Anatta, the Buddhist concept of no-self Nagarjuna, Indian philosopher Yukio Mishima, Japanese writer Hunter S. Thompson, American writer Lewis A. Sass, Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life" in Untimely Meditations Ornette Coleman, Change of the Century Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu Vladimir Nabokov, Russian novelist Nicholas Roeg (director), The Man Who Fell to Earth Raphael Bob-Waksberg (creator), BoJack Horseman Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society Euripides, The Bacchae Special Guest: James Curcio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the heart of Weird Studies, a podcast from SpectreVision Radio, you’ll find long-form conversations between Professor Phil Ford and writer J. F. Martel. Their discussions aren’t simple reviews or straightforward analyses; instead, they wander through the tangled undergrowth where art and philosophy meet, giving generous time to concepts that resist easy understanding and to creative works that fracture our ordinary sense of the world. This podcast deliberately lingers in that ambiguous space, treating the “weird” not as a genre but as a particular mode of experience-one that reveals the cracks in what we comfortably assume is real. Each episode feels like joining a deep, meandering dialogue between two friends who are both deeply knowledgeable and endlessly curious, covering a vast terrain that includes literature, film, music, and esoteric thought. It’s a show for anyone who suspects that the most profound truths are often found in the shadows, the anomalies, and the strangely beautiful. As part of the SpectreVision Radio network, which specializes in content that explores the uncanny edges of creativity, Weird Studies builds a unique community of listeners who are eager to think differently. You won’t find pat answers here, but you will encounter compelling questions and a shared sense of exploration that makes each installment a distinctive journey.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 230

Weird Studies
Podcast Episodes
Episode 186: Meeting at the Center: The Wedge, Part Two [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:29:19
In this episode, JF and Phil continue their conversation on the wedge, their figure for the epistemological divide between approaching reality from the heart and exploring it with the mind. As the discussion unfolds, the…
Episode 185: Intuition and Reality: The Wedge, Part One [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:17:08
"The Wedge" is a key concept for Phil and JF. When exploring weird phenomena—from artworks to ghosts, and everything in between—one tends to emphasize one or the other "end" of the event. At the thin end of the Wedge, th…
Episode 184: On David Lynch [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:42:21
David Lynch passed away on January 15th, 2025, leaving behind a body of work that reshaped the landscape of cinema and television. Few artists have delved as deeply into the strange, the beautiful, and the terrifying as…
Episode 183: On Hermann Hesse's 'Siddhartha' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:21:47
Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha is one of the great novels of the twentieth century and a prime example of literature that transforms the deeply personal into something universal. For Phil and JF in this episode, the novel se…
Episode 182: Providence of Evil: On Robert Eggers' 'Nosferatu' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:20:50
In this episode, JF and Phil examine the myth of the vampire through the lens of Robert Eggers' latest film, Nosferatu, a reimagining of F. W. Murnau's German Expressionist masterpiece. Topics covered include the nature…
Holiday Bonus: Waiting for the Next Sentence [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 45:13
With the next flagship show set to drop on January 8, 2025, we thought we'd tide you over with this conversation on the art and craft and writing, originally recorded for Listener's Tier patrons on the Weird Studies Patr…
Episode 181: On 'The X Files,' with Meredith Michael [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:18:03
Chris Carter's The X-Files is weird on its face: a dramatic series that, from the start, presented itself as more than drama, an exploration of the reality of the paranormal using the tools of fiction, a fantasy posing a…
Episode 180: The Player: On the Magician Card in the Tarot [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:22:27
The Magician card likely graces more front covers of books on the tarot than any of the other major arcana. In many ways, it symbolizes the tarot itself, or the individual who has mastered the art of manipulating the car…
Episode 179: The Final Frontier, with Lionel Snell [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:18:14
One of the great rewards of "weirding" the world is learning that boredom may be a kind of ethical transgression—the world is simply too strange to allow for it, and if you're bored, you're at least partly to blame. Few…