Jay Basu bleeds the neon ink of story. He is a screenwriter, he is a novelist, he is a producer. He is a husband, he is a father, he is the curious and creative successor of his own father’s Advaita Vedanta lineage. Spun tightly in the gossamer web of hereditary spiritual exegesis and existential stickiness, Jay invariably found himself gazing up at the many-tentacled and fanged phenomena of film monsters. It was this mutual devotion which truly connected us: our shared love of monsters, yes, but especially of the cosmic horror monster. And this makes sense: the bleeding horizon of sanity chafes against the bleeding horizon of space. Where the edges melt and weep, we find the ecstasy of creation in sticky, mutating mass with nothingness – like the teeming chimera of llamas in 2019’s Color Out of Space.
Nothingness is a special interest of Jay’s, and I have been fortunate enough for him to have shared with me some of the ways in which he has complemented the spiritual philosophy of his ancestors with the spiritual philosophy of monstrosity. “I’ve been thinking”, Basu wrote to me, “about the idea that by going into the monstrous, right into and through it, you find an escape from its fearfulness, so to speak. Same as the tantric idea that by going deep into the heart of the fullness (including suffering, fear, horror), you find Emptiness.” In a previous correspondence, he posited that: “ there’s something maybe to be said about cosmic horror (the separate self contemplating the vast void, the totally Outside, the unthinkable); and the Monster-as-fullness; and the connection of the Other to the self, and how the two might ultimately be the same thing.” These observations from Jay, these cunning yet earnest inquiries into the ontologies of monstrosity, make me very grateful to know him, and especially grateful to know he is out there writing the monsters of the margins into the forefront of the silver screen.
Jay loves monsters. Jay loves otherness. Jay loves Nothing and Everything. And we are, as devourers of story, lucky to witness his love-in-action. And those Monsters – those devourers of flesh and the doubly ionized oxygen of stars – are lucky to have him as their steward.
This episode has a little bit of everything, including discussions of:
H.P. Lovecraft
John Carpenter’s The Thing
Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow
Stanley’s Color Out of Space
Buddhism, Nothingness, and No-Self
Paranoia, Isolation, the Death of the Ego
Cosmic Horror as Spiritual Tract
Writing Cosmic Horror vs Watching Cosmic Horror
The Lacanian Real, Languageless-ness
The Necessity of the Other for the Monster
Attempting to Comprehend Horrors Beyond Comprehension
Human Monster (slasher/psychopath) vs Supernatural Monster (cosmic horror)
Distinctions between Psychological, Thriller Monster and the Inhuman, Otherworldly Monster
The World of the Cosmic Horror Monster as the Sacred, the Psychopathic/Human Monster as the Sacred Profaned
Material, Terrestrial Monsters as the Triumph of the Material, Terrestrial World over the Cosmic, Gnostic, or Spiritual World
Cinematic Psychopath as the Anti-Self, Cosmic Horror Monster as the No-Self
Is the Writing of Monstrosity a Contagion? Can You Infect Yourself with Your Art?
Extraterrestrial Doppelganger vs the Hyperreal Human (Psychopath) Doppelganger
Good Genre Art vs Not So Good Genre Art
Being Fastidious Stewards to Storytelling & Translating Realities (being good translators of story)
Cosmic Horror as Antidote to Apathy
Most importantly: which monster would you rather be trapped in a room with, supernatural or human monster?
In addition to all of these juicy morsels of midnight madness, we discuss the book Notes on Nothing: The Joy of Being Nobody, by Anonymous, now out through As Is Press. Jay had a hand in publishing this concise “spell which makes you want to disappear for a little while”, an exploration of Nothing from inside of Nothing. I found myself truly enjoying this exploration of self-struggle as the self struggles to understand its un-thing-ness. But this is a Nothing that is pregnant with wonder, even in moments of terror; it is not the Nothingness which leaves us bereft as is often shown through the nihilism of Western philosophical and metaphysical milieus. What does Nothingness have to do with The Thing? Listen to our interview to find out, and then pick up a copy of Notes on Nothing to go deeper!
I hope you enjoy this conversation. It was such a pleasure to spend time picking Jay Basu’s brilliant brain – I was consistently inspired, delighted, and devastated by his eloquence and empathy.
With Love from a Place of Non-Euclidean Geometry,
Sasha
P.S. We experienced some significant technical difficulties with the usual software I use to record, and so we were relegated to Zoom where some technical difficulties remained, though still better than before. I apologize for some of the glitchy moments and feedback; I am hopeful they do not detract too much from the quality of the conversation. I will not even begin to pretend I have any idea how to do any sound-editing.
P.P.S. For those who prefer, you can listen to the interview HERE, on YouTube.
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