Stuff They Don't Want You To KnowInterview: Cancellation Island, with John Cameron Mitchell, Part One: The Lost Art of Gnostic Nuance
What does it mean to be 'canceled'? How do we collectively navigate the baffling, complex and contradictory world of an 'always-on' society? In the first part of this week's special two-part interview, Ben, Matt and Noel welcome the legendary writer, actor, playwright and activist, John Cameron Mitchell, creator of Cancellation Island, for a wide-ranging conversation on everything from lizard people to gnosticism, the power of language, Aleister Crowley and everything in between.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Friends, neighbors, fellow conspiracy realists. It is no secret that modern society is diplomatically put complicated. You know, it wasn't too long ago that it seemed almost everyone was getting quote unquote canceled for all manner of things, these concerns, competing interest moving at a rapid pace. What can or cannot be said, what can or cannot be asked? And of course what's up with all those lizard people.
Well yeah, we're also in a time where conspiracy theories are far more mainstream than they have ever been. And you put those things together and you just you got a wacky reality. We're all hanging out in right now.
Right well, when the White House Press briefing room is full of quote unquote influencers who are often peddling the very conspiracy theories that we talk about on this show. It really does sort of put a very bizarre and Orwellian twist on quote unquote the.
News bizarre Orwellian. Also, we still have not received a response from the White House in our addition to join their press room briefly, but hope springs a turtle and we have something very special for you today, fellow listeners. We are diving deep into these questions and more with none other than the award winning creator, the actor, the writer, director, producer, I'll say it, the philosopher create Yes, creator of the hit podcast Cancelation Island, please join us and welcoming none other than the legendary John Cameron Mitchell. John, thank you for joining us today.
Well, thank you. I don't know if I can measure up to you.
Must you must.
Go on.
Can I get something out of the way, guys that is not related to our interview, you must as well. John Cameron Mitchell, I just have to say, Uh, one of my favorite characters on screen in a long time is Gabe Parrish. I freaking love Shrill and Gabe Parish, thank you for making that happen.
You're welcome. That's what happens when an old punk rocker kurdles into a book magazine editor.
It's beautiful, right.
I didn't know you directed several episodes of that show, so I did, you didn't. IMDb is just wrong.
That's conspiracy.
Oh yeah, I mean I have a feeling I might have if it had continued. I wish it well.
Speaking of the Internet being wrong, you and I hung out not too long ago when you were coming through it in Atlanta doing some incredible talks on a kind of a lecture circuit here at Emory, and someone asked you about your pronouns because of what Wikipedia said, I believe it has couched you as being non binary. And you were like, no, that's not true, and I have no control over Wikipedia. I just thought that was a very interesting.
It isn't untrue that I'm non binary. I just don't like the term.
Of course, but to be categorized by that in that way, I just thought it was interesting, right, No, nothing to do with me.
Well, it's interesting.
You know.
Identity is being an actor, being a writer. Identity, which always had good intentions of calling awareness to systems that are unfair. But identity. You know, we Americans love to monetize things, We love to commercialize things, and identity just became felt like another kind of group to sell to, you know, in a way bar code. You know, we're almost selling our own identity to ourselves and all the accessories that go with it, you know, like philosophy and fashion and other things. And to me, it's the opposite of what an artist should be doing, which is just you know, trying on different identities. I you know, imagining yourself as someone you are not. That is the point of fiction, is putting your feet in the shoes of someone you're not and going, wow, I actually have something in common, which is the opposite of identities story, which is stay in your lane, don't tell a story that's not your own. And then you end up going, what is my story? Who am I? You know, are these artificial categories that were being rammed into Well.
I think it's interest. I think that's the show.
Oh no, for sure.
Well, it's also interesting to see that that's almost an issue that you see on both sides of the whether it be politically speaking, left or right. You have people on the left maybe guilty of what you're describing. And then folks on the right this mega pushed towards identity politics and just like you know, ideology overall, but they somehow have a lot in common.
Yeah, and deep censorship. You know, the farther you go to the so called right or left, you end up in the middle. And you know, my there was I had a line in my first podcast series, which was a musical called anthem Homunculus, which is out there now is someone says, you know, the the both the arch conservative and the arch liberal both got shut on by their dad. The only difference was the conservative thought they deserved it.
I like that. I like that.
Unpack.
Wow, there's an our Boro set play for sure.
Yea yeah.
And with this, uh, with this, John, hopefully we're conveying that we are all tremendous fans of your work and we wanted to maybe open up our conversation. Now, speaking a little bit about your podcast, your newest podcast, Cancelation Island. You and your co writer Michael You leverage humor, empathy, and philosophy to take just a genuine, non lectury, non condescending approach to some pretty serious concerns that you've alluded to just a few moments ago. Could you describe Cancelation Island for our audience and maybe give us a bit of a detail about what inspired you to create this show.
So, I had a lot of friends who had been canceled ten or or so years ago when this was coming up as a as a you know, worldwide issue of like you know, in purity being the possibility of shut down, you know, sutting down career lives, livelihood, ways of making money, social presence. And it affected a lot of my friends in a negative way. Of course, it was coming from good intentions, trying to call account to people who hadn't been the legal system failing in some ways, but then in other ways it was not able to see the full spectrum of a person, you know, seeing their face while they're saying it informs the words, you know, it sometimes oftens and mitigates the words. And when we see just the words on a tweet, it's like, you know, the CBD to the full spectrum cannabis. You know, it's just a part of it, and you can't react fully or you overreact because you're not seeing the whole image of a person in front of you. Digital culture has amplify paranoia, misunderstanding, conspiracy theories for sure, and there would be no Trump. Without digital culture, there would be no polarization. We would no longer be in the state of mind that I describe in cancellation as when all news is fake all stories are true.
Wow, yes, you.
Know, when facts are in fact suspect and degraded by the powers that be. You know, of course Trump is saying, you know, if there are no facts, science doesn't really mean anything. It's just what he wants things to believe that those are the facts. But in that situation where we fact a suspect, in effect, all news is fake and all stories are true, and that can mean conspiracy theories, but it can also mean beautifully nuanced fiction in which we can find ourselves in other people's shoes and characters' shoes and suddenly identifying with their emotions people we hadn't seem to have nothing in common with. So it's an opportunity. It's a strange situation when facts are disrespected, but maybe the only tool we have left our stories.
That's brilliant, brilliantly put John. We also, you know, we see we see the weaponization, right of the concept of fake news, this cavalcade of always on culture, everybody being required to have a statement yeah, sometimes to their detriment. Right, would you do us the favor of defining the concept of cancelation and therefore cancel culture as it's understood in the modern West today.
Well, you know, it's a funny term that just seemed to kind of come up maybe ten or you know, twelve years ago, as the you know me too was coming up, as you know, understandings about racism and police brutality. Obviously, I come from AIDS activism and queer rights where we cancelation wasn't really our goal, because it was more like survival. We would make fun of corporations trying to make money on our backs and on our deaths, but we didn't try to get rid of anybody. You know, we wouldn't have mind had getting rid of Bush and Reagan, who kind of left us to die. But it was more about who can we work with? Right during AIDS activism, we worked every angle, we negotiated with big pharma and saying, even if you don't care about us, you could make billions if you save our lives. As well as a two It was a two track thing going on. We were also in the streets making fun of homophobes and hateful capital It's like people put a giant condom on the house of anti gay Senator Jesse Helms, and it was a you know, don't mess with the gays because they will. You know, they know, they know how to take you down with flair and you know, with nuanced.
Yeah, well, I think nuance there is the key, because it seems to me that the kind of black and white sort of I guess division that's created by cancelation isn't particularly helpful or useful towards a larger discourse or towards the idea of individuals being able to have redemption arcs or even I don't know. It makes everybody scared to speak their minds for fear they may be, you know, have that target focused on them, right.
And it comes from again good intentions. We're going to take out the bad guy. But we as outsiders, as oddballs, understand that there is nuance in the world. We understand that when people judge you from how you look or say you have to hide a secret about yourself, like your sexuality, or inner gender. Then you understand there's a surface and then there's a deeper, nuanced truth underneath it. When everything goes your way, when you're part of the ruling class, you get very literal right. Things are what they look like. And when she hits the fan, as it does in life, who has the skills to deal with complexity? But the outsiders, you know, they're the ones who know. Being an outsider can kill you if you don't feel like you belong, but it can also make you an innovator and a hero and a freedom fighter. So cancelation almost goes against what we know as complexity, as nuance, as the possibility of change, of redemption. Like you're saying, I grew up very Catholic, so I still believe that people. Maybe you know, I'm misinformant, but I see people changing, you know, I see people wanting to xpiate their sins and move on, and I want to help that. So cancelation is like black or white, you're in, you're out, And it risks us imitating ro pressors. You know, who are who are more black and white. So cancelation became a weapon when the legal system failed, and it was an imperfect one. It was an blunt instrument and it would beat down people who were just slightly off, you know, message, and it couldn't handle nuance and complexity, and certainly the Internet has problems with that. Headwig, in fact, got canceled during COVID at the height of let's say, political correctness in the Western world or the let's say, the industrial world. And it happened because there was a production, a big production happening with a queer actor who was a big star, and some young people who identified as non binary trans said, well, as a trans role, only trans people can play it, and it destroyed the production. The actor got into DM fights, drunken DM fights with those people who are really just young actors who wanted the role. You know, They're not enough gender non conforming roles, that's for sure, and I always try to write them, but I don't limit who can play things. You know, like Headveig is about drag and rock and roll. It's not about trans. The character is forced into an operation that is not a trans story. That's a story of mutilation by the patriarchy telling us what is male and what is female, and a female is a man without a penis you know it's bullsh and all my trans friends understand that. But when you're nineteen in trans and you're weaned on political correctness, you're like, well, that's roles being stolen from me. And the actor they canceled ended up trying to kill himself twice, you know, and I think one of the accusers has apologized since. But it's like, is Headtig really the enemy here?
You know?
It seems like a waste of time, a lot of let's focus on Yes, let's focus on bigger.
Steve Bonnet's work for him.
Yeah, We're We're that's a great point. We're also we're also looking at a situation where, you know, on this show, John, we often say that life is one non consensual game of long form improv and everybody has to everybody has to understand there are more commonalities, right, and differences are beautiful. They should be celebrated, not weaponized, not leveraged to other u This this is something a thread we could argue that runs through Cancelation Island, because they're is without spoiling too much, there is a fantastic dollop of the conspiratorial thought to which you earlier allude. We're gonna pause for a word from our sponsor and then we'll be back with more from John and we're back. Personally, really enjoy episode four, where things kick off and we get this, uh, we get this download of one of our show's favorite conspiracy theories of all time, which speaks in brilliant metaphor to these questions of identity, the idea that a secret faction of the world's most powerful people are in fact not people at all, but.
Like extra dimensional yeah reptiz. Yeah, Oh sorry, I'm.
Just gonna say, Ben, I was reading up on some of the metaphor of that that you mentioned, and I love I'm really excited to get into this because it becomes when you start to look at it like a metaphor, a way of describing just sort of unseen forces rather than a literal, you know, exterior, you know, interloper from another dimension, and it can often have that effect of what we call or we didn't make this up, but the thought terminating cliche where there's some truth to something or it represents a truth, but by going to all in with the weird thing, you kind of throw the baby out with the bath order for a lot of people, so Here's here's the.
Question, John, When you and Michael are writing this and you chose this long running conspiratorial thought process, right, be it a cliche or not? What drew you to this? What fascinates you about the reptilian concept?
Well, to me, conspiracy theories have always been somewhat interesting. Though part of me goes, where are the conspiracy theories of people secretly trying to help us? You know, we know they're not everyone is evil, and we also know that secret things happen in different ways, and some people actually are. You know, there's a term paranoid, which means the irrational beliefs some is trying to hurt you. But another term, which I've used in an anthem, which is pronoid, which is the irrational belief that someone's trying to help you.
Why are aliens?
I know, why are aliens and lizards always bent on doing evil? You know, who aren't some humans good or seeking good? And why wouldn't you know aliens and lizards follow suit with their complexity. Actually, that's what our second season is all about, is aliens canceling aliens.
Well, you know, John, there is a really interesting movement happening in kind of that UFO UAP space where there is a there's a growing belief that whatever the extraterrestrials are that are being seen, you know in the skies, are here to help humanity at some point, like save ourselves essentially from ourselves. So there is there is some thread of that kind of rolling through right now, but it's certainly not as prominent as you know.
As we know, conspiracy theories, like conceptions of God, exist to explain things we don't like, you know, about our lives, like death. That's why God was invented to explain death, conspiracy. And when God becomes less popular and religion becomes less popular, conspiracy theories and other belief systems come to the fore. And we as Americans are very innovative about all kinds of things, including our conspiracy theories and even our religions. You could say that Latter day Saints and you know, other homemade scientology, you know, homemade religious American religions do the same thing, but they have a you know, explaining why we're unhappy, but also creates very lovely capitalist goals. Mormonism and scientist might the American because they're making money is almost close, you know, you're closer to God when you make money.
We always talk about just how money is a religion and of itself.
Often that something that comes up here.
Catholicism is very close to that prosperity Catholic Catholicism and very far from former Pope, you know, Francis is more let's say.
Socialism benevolent, yes, yeah, yeah, because.
You know, there's nothing more socialist than early Christianity. So in other words, I find all of this really fascinating, and you know, I might just jump back to a very early conspiracy theory in effect in the early Christian Church. You know, in Hedwig Headig in the Angry inch My musical, there's a character named Tommy nosis Gnosa.
The Gnostic Gospels, right.
And he is inspired by the Gnostic Christian Gospels, which were Christian texts that were considered heretical and not allowed to be in the Bible, that had a really interesting non authoritarian view of Christianity and more less sexist and more Buddhist in the way, you know, so we can all be God. And even Aleister Crowley and his spirituality sprang from Gnosticism. You know. I live in a house that.
Used to be a chapter of Aleister Crowley's Church.
What Oto What Oriental Templars, which was an ancient Freemason group that Alistair took over and remade in his image and used Thelma, you know, his philosophy, which the golden rule was do what thou wilt, which was.
Then co opted by Satanism or the Church of States, right.
And they got weaponized by outsiders, right, creating a moral panic rather than a curiosity toward how people were like, toward the motive of why someone would seek to understand the universe through this specific lens. And that's something you know, that's something that we returned to time and time again on the show. You Know you Can, and you returned to it. I would argue time and time again in your work it is devilishly convenient to lack nuance right to make that black and white binary decision. But your work, not just in Cancelation Island, but overall, I would posit your work challenges the audience to exercise empathy and curiosity. And that's why that's why we find it so fascinating that you included one of the one of the primary weaponized conspiracy theories used to other people, right, like, I don't like this guy. Therefore lizards.
Well, to get back to the lizard people.
Which you know, the most complex or let's say, uh, thorough investigation of is by Ike what's his name.
David, You know him, We spoke to him on the show.
He's legendary and he has an Alistair Crowley like aura about him.
But he posits this.
There's been versions of this kind of conspiracy theory throughout the ages, which is hidden people among us, right, hiding their true identities in positions of power, the most popular one of course, being the anti Semitic version of that. Right, right, the diaspora of people who don't at that time have their own land filtering through the world and taking over, Right, that's a big conspiracy thing. It's like they are trying to take over.
Take our land, take our jobs, take our women, whatever it might be, convert our youth exactly.
And that's you know, people have identified, you know, had pushed that to trans people in the recent years, you know, probably the least powerful group we could puzzibly think of. And you know, billionaires like JK. Rowling and Dave Chappelle spending all of their capital on punching down to this group of new group, group of lizard people among us called trans people. Originally it was whoever you didn't like, right, it was foreigners, it was Jews, it was black people, it was versions of queer people. Women, you know, were always considered subhuman and somewhat dangerous. Immigrants going to shadowy immigrant coming to take over, to infiltrate right our purity and the protocols of Zion of course, you know, pushing the alternate reality of invasion, secret invasion. And to me, the lizard people one is such a perfect uh, you know, it seems to also come a little bit from scientology, right, the sort of right, the uh, the perfect undetectable conspiracy theory where because you know, when I was a kid that you know, Donald Sutherland in what was that movie where body auditernactures was the perfect you know, early version of that, right, and sixties and seventies was really the heyday of conspiracy theory in our panic about authority. It tended to come a little bit more from the left at that time, right, because Nixon was ascendant in the Vietnam War, and now it's you know, from all sides politically, you know, conspiracy theories meet in the middle, like past l QAnon, you know, the wellness meeting, meeting, the anti vaxxers meeting, the you know Robert F. Kenady Junior who actually came to head Big weirdly and came backstage. Isn't that strange?
What did he bring? Eryl?
It was back in the you know, the late nineties. No, he was blank faced and lizard like.
All right.
I didn't know, He's like, what are you doing here? Didn't crack is mind, didn't seem to like it. Maybe he was. He was probably dating some model back then. It's like, let's goy, come on this guy.
That was that was that in his drugs period?
Perhaps eight okay, maybe a little past.
I also love how this model is Australia.
For some reason, I just become Australian and I'm John.
Can I do rail for a second and just point out that you were the voice of the dunker use Kangaroo.
How do you do your old dog?
I cannot believe that is true.
It is true.
It was an and you're acting your gig days.
I mean like not you know you girl, always an actor, but incredible, incredible.
Just had to I had to bring that up, and I'm mad that they've changed the design.
They're just little d coins now.
Now and it's the you know, it was the animated kangaroos among us.
Amazing a lizard could never.
This particular you know.
In Cancelation Island. Just to set it up a bit more, we have a Holly Hunter creates or founds a kind of pilot project called Renewal, and it's about taking a curated group of canceled people, bringing them to a desert island which only has a decommissioned CIA Black site on it, which they have remodeled with the help of Michael Core's into a lovely resort. And they've curated a group of gen Z therapists because what they lack in life experience, they make up for uncertainty. And they are going to treat these curated group of canceled people that goes from a slightly windsteining character to someone who just slip of a tongue and really does not belong in limbo in the doghouse. And quickly after a couple episodes, all of our satire about cancel culture is stripped away when mortality, uh you know appears, which means, oh my God, there's a giant, life threatening hurricane, Hurricane Swift.
What do they call it?
Hurricane Taylor? Because it is Swift, they rename it hur Beyonce in the spirit of impending diversity. Then someone else says, Beyonce doesn't really write her own songs. This is for real, let's call it Hurricane Solange. They keep changing the name of But in that madness, people start disappearing from the rehab and we start to realize there is someone still there from the CIA Black Site living in the bunker beneath, and that is a rogue conspiracy adult CI, a linguist you know, who sees himself as a bit of a you know, born identity figure. Now, who is the jont Listen not Jones like the John the Baptist too, K of Kanon, which we've invented as our version of the secret Lizard people conspiracy among us? And K like Q is an unidentified figure who seems to have knowledge and power but is incognito. And Uh Casper All the characters' names begin with K, which makes him suspicious.
Casper with the K.
Is the ghost like rogues CIA agent living beneath monitoring this subsurd rehab above and starting to kidnap members of the rehab because he thinks they might be k and you know, he needs to reconnect their brain so they become Because it's a very complex, as all conspiracy theories are situation, and our case though the uh, the lizards seem to become real. Any woman is impregnated by one of the lizards and gives birth and then they arrive and they're really nice. Okay, you guys are also upset and canceling and this and that. It's like, how can we help?
Right? Right, we come in peace.
As opposed to pieces.
We're gonna take a quick break here, here a word from our sponsor, will be right.
Back, and we're back.
This is something that again I hesitate to overuse the word residence, but this exploration of dare we say truth through fiction? I think it challenges our audience to explore not just metaphor, but to apply that metaphor to lived experience right on an individual level. So I'm with you, John, I'm hoping that there are lizard people. I would love it if one of the many alleged reptilians came out and finally had the press conference and said Hey, you know what, Yes, yeah, it's all true. We're worried about you.
Guys.
You should call your mom. You know what I mean.
Some of our brethren, you know, really I don't want you around anymore. We can't be responsible for all of them. We're as complex as you, Donald Trump. One of our brethren has different plans.
We're sorry about.
Right, right, this guy.
They come out, sorry.
Peez, that's how it happens. There's a public apology. They're like, look, hashtag not all lizards.
Yeah, guys, I want to go down the lizard path more. But I have to sidebar on something that came up a little while ago, just because I cannot stop thinking about it. John, Can you please tell us more about your house, Like, has anything weird happened in there? Any strange spots in the house that have different energy.
Well, my house is one hundred and eighty years old in the middle of the Bywater part of New Orleans, and we bought it, as I said, from a chapter of the Oto the Oortist Templar Orientis, which Crowley did run for many years worldwide. He didn't live in this house, but he spent time in New Orleans and it was his favorite town in the US, and as it's mine. And I came upon it at the time when everyone was buying and it was the one house that was not selling, and I was like, what's wrong? As a curse, you know, what's going on? And I walked in and there's this fifty foot ballroom with a stage. The walls were decorated with kind of you know, planet signs, and there was elements of the Jupiter Square, which is it has to do with Jupiter's xenios aspect, which has to do with hospitality, where you see a square of numbers numerology, every line adds up to thirty four or something, and it had to do with hospitality. And so there's all this imagery here and a cool you know Moroccan arch in my kitchen. And I made friends with the original owner and she sent me some photographs.
It was a.
Funeral home for fifty years, you know. And the brand of arch Druidess of Louisiana will I mean a warden of course, alliteration. And I kept finding out more than it was five different churches after that, the Catholic meeting hall. There was a baptisma font in our floor. There was a pentagram up in our route and our attic.
Thank god they didn't overhaul it, you know. I mean, that's incredible, you know.
And we poured a lot of money into it at the time, and now I can't afford it.
But well, this, John, if of me, this reminds me of uh, what I call a sleeper line. Like the language here in Cancelation Island is we're inherently humorous. We're not again talking down to people. Nobody ever, nobody ever really established rapport via condescension, right, And so one of the sleeper lines that I, uh, that I clung to and listen back in often is the line you can see the spirits in everything. And this sort of reminds me of of Matt's question earlier regarding the Oto house in which you now reside. And it also it reminds me of oh, what's that thing in Japanese folklore where if an inanimate object is or a place is well cared for for a century plus, it acquires its own sort of animism. I'm sorry, this is wait wait.
Wait, was any have you experienced anything in the house?
John, Well, I haven't.
You know.
It's interesting because I I came in it felt good. It felt like a personality, you know. It wasn't like an abode it was it felt like a presence that was control and interested and curious. And a Hurricane Ida hit right after, and there was a lot of trouble and you know, trying to get the house together. We had a house sitter probably was on math and the energy was in the room in the house. And after we extracted him with I had to bribe him to get out and he stole.
Oh.
I didn't prosecute because usually those type of people, their life is their actual sentence. I think he was arrested later. But what I brought in a voodoo priestess, because you know, yes, and in New Orleans you work with bo's here and there's a lot of cultures and you're like, whatever works right. And the voodoo person wanted said I need the house for ninety minutes. I need a pail of water and a single egg.
Whoa.
And this is before eggs were financial flats.
And it was actually a not you know, a my friend's chicken egg. Actually, this is so New Orleans. She's our witchy real estate agent who sold me the house. She has her own chickens, you know, this is how we're you. And so Sally, the priestess, came in. We don't know what happened to the egg. I'm sure no one ate it. But she said, you know, the house feels very good. You don't clear the house of spirits, you work with them, right, and I love you feel it. And she said the only negative energy I had was in this one room, which turned out to be the meth heads room. Wow, interestingly right, and there's a weird crawl space above that, which.
Yeah, it was.
Actually there was a lot of lighting instruments up there for the ballroom, which is interesting. But you know, I was a little scared, but she really cleared it. It felt good people who come in here, So I haven't had any negative I've known when the house is unhappy.
I e.
We haven't been taken care of it. You know, it loves people. It loves events, you know, artistic events. It's becoming a bit of an artist's residency. I'm trying to raise money to.
Keep it local.
People can use it for whatever it can charge.
Yeah, John, if I if I could interject there, and Matt, sorry if I stepped on you when I was setting up the question I wanted to get to you, so John, at least we can confirm at least some people there have felt there is a you know, far be it to call it animism, but felt a presence.
They feel, yes, they feel the presidence of the house. But also, here's my favorite thing that happened. I new Orleans is a place you talk to strangers, You talk to people in the street, you invite them over spontaneously. It's like, that's why I'm here. But I invited this guitarist over and his pregnant wife, and we sat in our ballroom and she's very calm, and.
She said, was this a mortuary?
And it hasn't been a mortuary since in nineteen thirty and there's no I just had found out like the week before that it had been a merched mort and I said, well, yes, how did you know? And she said, I grew up in a mortuary.
And this feels about right.
I'm like, okay, my other friends said people died in your house. I was like, nobody dies in a mortuary.
We're at Disney World, that's true.
Room they just hang out here for a while, y'all.
Can I just say it's super creepy that.
I was just looking something up on the Internet and I got served an ad for Orgone Energy Pyramids. I think that the computer is listening, and I think I will It's only fifty five.
All right for this whole accounting sixty four?
Maybe Okay, there's a company Orgone Pyramids Incorporated.
Don't you have to create Orgon Energy unclear?
Don't ask questions, don't.
As we all know, I love the Orgon box for sure.
Yeah.
I always said scary, but you know, fascinating, queer familiar for me. And I lived his house in Kansas as a kid, but I never part of your story there in Anthem, Yes so Anthem. My composer Brian Weller, and I actually drove around Kansas where it took place and where I lived, and I knocked on William Burrow's door, thinking, what the hell you know in Lawrence, Kansas, where he used to live, and the caretaker came out and said, what as if they'd experienced this before, And I said, I'm writing a musical that might actually take place on this porch. You know, I saw the characters living in William Burrow's old house. And he's like, all right, I haven't heard that one, come on in, you say, some Japanese hipster, you know, And I this tiny house with a huge garden, bullet holes in the ceiling that Bill had shot, and I ended up we ended up writing our first draft at Burrow's house house so cool. Anthemunculus, which has a character based on Bill played by Ben Foster who played them in the film Kill Your Darlings, And so Burrows, you know, Heroin inspired occultism, which was mixed with science, you know, in his particular inimitable way, and you know, perhaps junk sides of the Oregon box. But again whatever works right right, it inspired us as well. And if you think about it, we're all sort of in William Burrow's absurd world now. I mean Trump is a Burrows type character, oh for sure.
Ooh ooh.
Can we talk about the Lavender Scare, like way back in the day when when the you know, the executive branch decided, oh, we have to be afraid, just like with the quote red scare, we have to be afraid of anyone who is quote you're talking about now I'm talking about now. It feels like it feels like we're time traveling a bit or just re experiencing something.
History is always closer than it looks in the rear view mirror.
Oh yes, And as we know back then, gay people and now translated more to trans people are the lizard people among us for the maga type rights. You know that everyone needs a scapegoat, and they're very convenient because in their view they are trans people are alien and unnatural and subverting, you know, God's will or whatever God they feel they I don't know what kind.
Of God that is, but the convenient God for the.
Day exactly which we all do.
As the subject of my new play, Claude Cahun said she was an anti Nazi artist.
We get the God we deserve.
Well, with that in mind, do you mind if we backtrack a little bit you brought up and I'm sorry I had to step away for just a second, so I hopefully I didn't miss this, But you were talking about the Gnostic Gospels and these kind of parts of the Bible that are inconvenient perhaps that were not included for folks that maybe have weaponized that religion, that particular religion, and many others, of course, but inconvenient for them. There's another aspect of that in the book of Enoch, and that is also a great kind of analog I suppose for this idea of lizard people and potentially even where they came from the idea. And I know, Ben, this is a big wheelhouse for you, the nephelum and the idea that these angels bred with humans and created you know, these this other race of you know, human angel hybrids that can be seen as a stand in for this idea of lizard people. But there's also some very interesting kind of queer culture wrapped up in that the idea that Sodom and Gomorrah was actually home to some of these you know, angel human hybrids, and that a lot of that is maybe potentially where some of the anti queer rhetoric comes from. Because the Bible doesn't actually refer to, you know, specifically by name the act of being engaged. I think it's the idea of seeking something about unusual flesh or there's a term that I'm maybe misconstruing, but there's this sense that or there's this theory that perhaps that is referencing these nephelem but it's not actually contained within the Bible because that book was cut out, so I don't know, maybe a bit broad and I'm bringing up maybe multiple points, but maybe something we could touch on real quick. Well.
One of the things about the Gnostics that I mean, having grown up extremely Catholic beyond and you know, as a kid taught by Benedictine monks in Scotland and at that time a little queer boy, I actually considering, you know, monk hood. My mom later was like, you're gay.
That's the that's the place for you.
And I'm like, oh god, Mom, there's problems with that.
She's like, that's just.
Anti Catholic propaganda. There was no abuse. I'm like, okay, I've dodged it by the skin of my teeth and the schools. But what was what I did love about it is of course the Catholic the queerness of it, you know, not not the gayness, but the weird iconography, the cosmology, you know, the Lord of the ringsness of it that, you know, the Jesus on the Cross, which is so gay. And then Mary, who's you know, almost as important as Jesus in many cultures the only way into Christianity for women for centuries.
The religious syncretism.
Of taking gods and making them into saints and making them into Mary. It's a very smart thing to do when you're trying to missionize.
Don't forget the costumes for sure. But also this back back to the nephil and thing. Ben, maybe you can speak on this the giants aspect of it, or I believe their offspring were giants, and this was this notion the giants were kind of gods among men, gods on earth. And that's also inconvenient for the Bible property.
That's right, like how do you fit that? As well as slavery if forget that one. But you know, what the Gnostics talked about was the creator God as the villain, you know.
Yeah, the imperfect god of the lesser universe.
Yes, that's right. And the mother of that god was named Sophia, was in effect a non binary entity, you know, like in the film like the Angels, right, there's really gender there. It was sort of all genders in a way. And Sophia, which means wisdom, came from the Pleroma, which was the higher heavens to give birth in our world, our universe, so to speak, almost illicitly, because you were supposed to give birth with a partner in a way. And she was like, I'm going to do it myself, parthenogenetic reproduction in effect, and in their some Gnostic stories, she was so horrified at what she produced that she wrapped God's face in a cloud and tiptoed away, leaving him to think he was the only thing in existence. So I talk about this in my show The Origin of Love, which talks about how Hedvig came about. And I say, well, kids, to the Gnostics, God was a dumpster baby and his flawedness and it was a male identified thing begat our flawedness. And Adam and Eve, let's say, Adam at first was lifeless, and it took the spark of Sophia, you know, the divine spark coming to give it life. And Eve was a manifestation of Sophia. So in Headgig, Tommy compares Headwig to Eve, the woman who wanted to know shit, the first saint, and even Jesus was a kind of manifestation of Eve to the Gnostics as someone who brought up love, which was not a word used in terms of divinity in the Old Testament. And so this was fascinating to me because even as a kid, I'm like, what is the problem with eating the apple? From the tree of knowledge. She just is a scientist. She wants to know things. The guy was incurious in his man cave watching football while he was trying to make things happen, And I'm like, what is wrong with that? Even as a child, I'm like, this story is being interpreted incorrectly. So when I read the gnost six, I'm like, bingo, this is another way to look at Christianity. Same stories of Christianity. And it talked about the inner spark within all of us, Sophia within all of us, which is where you get that idea of we have our own divinity, which was very threatening to an authoritarian church.
Oh oh, no, kidding, Yeah, and hold the phone, folks, friends and neighbors. We're going deep in this conversation, so much so that we're going to make this interview segment a two parter. Now we're not sure where we're ending it just yet. Full disclosure, So we don't know what we've Singer. We left you right right, but we don't want to leave you again without a dope spell to spit too, So spit too, Spit two. So please joined us in a few days where we'll follow up with part two of our conversation with John Cameron Mitchell and Cancelation Island. In the meantime, you can find us online. You can call us on a telephone. You can always reach us at our good old fashioned email address.
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