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 (https://www.imablackstar.com)
Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (https://archive.org/details/bodiesthatmatter00butl)
Poppy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poppy_(entertainer)), American singer
Anatta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatta), the Buddhist concept of no-self
Nagarjuna (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna), Indian philosopher
Yukio Mishima (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima), Japanese writer
Hunter S. Thompson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_S._Thompson), American writer
Lewis A. Sass, [Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought](https://books.google.ca/books/about/MadnessandModernism.html?id=fCddtAEACAAJ&rediresc=y)_
Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Use and Abuse of History for Life" in Untimely Meditations (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/nietzsche-untimely-meditations/4AF50CD140CAB4EA8D249422BF60D5E5)
Ornette Coleman, [Change of the Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChangeoftheCentury)_
Thomas Merton, [The Way of Chuang Tzu](https://books.google.ca/books/about/TheWayofChuangTzu.html?id=Odh47AxzR4C&rediresc=y)
Vladimir Nabokov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov), Russian novelist
Nicholas Roeg (director), The Man Who Fell to Earth (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074851/)
Raphael Bob-Waksberg (creator), [BoJack Horseman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BoJackHorseman)_
Richard Dyer, [Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society](https://books.google.ca/books/about/HeavenlyBodies.html?id=oUJ0Qbse7lYC&rediresc=y)
Euripides, [The Bacchae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheBacchae)_ Special Guest: James Curcio.