As the year winds down, and the darkness reaches its peak, I search for strange reading. This week we consider a human art project, an art thief, Sigmund Freud’s cigars.

Strange Notebooks

Andrew W.K.’s Vision Mission Journal | By Andrew W.K. | Self-Published | 2021

A friend pointed me toward Andrew W.K.’s weird vision journal. Remember Andrew W.K.? The 2000s pop-rock act about partying? I loved him as a teenager. He just married Kat Dennings. Congrats, you two!

Andrew is also allegedly an Illuminati clone, music industry plant, and Satanic magician. Who alleges this? Andrew, allegedly.

Stereogum published a deep, long expose in 9/2018.

Reading between the lines here, Andrew W.K. created a persona named Steev Mike to add mystique and magical ritual to his music. Steev Mike is Andrew, but the side of him that networked into the music industry shaped the music into accessible pop-hits and got a Cartoon Network reality show, Destroy Build Destroy! A career as a motivational speaker. Steev Mike is a David Lynchian character like the Mystery Man from Lost Highway.

To promote his 2021 album, God Is Partying, the one with Satanic overtones, Andrew self-published his mission journal. And I found it fascinating, like looking directly into an artist’s brain.

Let’s take a look at a few pages. Here’s Andrew willing himself to create a mythos larger than the music.

Here, we see Andrew considering the idea of manufacturing a life crisis, pivoting to life coaching, and hiring bodydoubles to impersonate himself.

He explains what he envisions for the ultimate Andrew W.K. experience. 

If D.L. = David Lynch, and M.D. = Mulholland Drive, then basically thinking about Andrew W.K. is meant to evoke the uncanny, Lynch-esque feeling of weirdness, that something deep, dark, and demented is going on below the surface.

Is this journal genuine? Maybe, but probably not. Certain pages are. I think other pages were written to unite the artist’s career into one cohesive statement. Like, is he a mastermind that planned this epic, behind the scenes story from the beginning? Or is he a performer able to incorporate the world into his art? Or a magician? Is this notebook all one big ritual, a blueprint sent to himself in the past? Perhaps.

It might even be a eulogy to the idea of Andrew W.K. The tracklist of W.K.’s 2021 album hints that the act is complete. He created it; he destroyed it. I’m excited to see whatever he builds with the ashes.

Books

The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession | By Michael Finkel | Knopf | 2023

I ask myself, what is the purpose of art? What is its value? Stéphane Breitwieser tried to answer this by stealing three hundred European art pieces. He would walk into museums, unscrew frames off the wall, use a razor blade to cut canvasses from their frames or pickpocket priceless heirlooms. He loved Renaissance art, copper, silver, ivory, and oil paintings. Truly cultured taste! He kept all the art in his attic, never selling any of it, trouncing across the contingent with his lovers like Bonnie and Clyde. Then, it all comes to a tragic end. I don’t want to spoil exactly how sad this story gets, but I found this portrait of a thief to be a sublime biography.

Comics

Through Clouds of Smoke: Freud’s Final Days | Words By Suzanne Leclair | Illustrations by William Roy | Humanoids | 2023

This graphic biography considers Freud narrowly through his love of cigars. I love this premise. As Freud famously said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” But don’t you want to know what was up with the doctor’s cigars?

Briefly, it’s mentioned that the doctor saw smoking as a substitute for masturbation; smoking cigars kept him productive. Yet it’s also what killed him. The doctor seemed to know that the tobacco was giving him cancer. The illustrations show his near-torturous commitment to smoking.

Freud’s cancer got worse as he fled Austria and Nazi persecution; the cancer in his mouth contrasts with the cancer in Europe. I found this biographical comic to be fascinatingly told and perfectly illustrated. There are even endnotes and a bibliography for a rigorously researched comic. If you’re interested in Freud or philosophy, you’ll enjoy this short read. One can always expect a quality from Humanoids. 

Pile of the Week

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with TRPGs as writing prompts. Hope to show you some soon on NickyWebsite.com

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