Desire Is a Demon

1.

I’ve been thinking about my father's little spiralbound notepads. After my mother died, he would wander through superstores, fixated on tracking down the exact model or color of an item for his apartment. A particular brand of mechanical pencils with white erasers. Non-slip adhesives for the bathtub, the ones like starfish. He carried his notepad in the back pocket of his khakis, and after he died, I found stacks of them, their pages filled with his thin penciled scrawl: Lampshade repair. Talk to neighbor. Screen for bathroom faucet. Eggs are good for protein.

His notebooks were a balm against the howl of the internet. He did not understand how the world had become so interlinked, how all its information could live on a screen. It felt like an optical illusion, a bit of cheap sleight-of-hand. Information was supposed to be earned through effort, luck, and scribbling into your notepad. It required engagement, and my father craved the human contact needed to get it. The sales clerks would check their stock and make calls to other locations for a linen drum lampshade or a pair of loafers with tassels. He'd eventually find the item but would not purchase it, deciding he didn't need it after all.

Only while writing this do I realize I am becoming my father. Last year I started planning my days with index cards. Now they are color-coded. Mondays are definitely blue. Wednesdays feel green, and Thursdays seem pink or purple. Fridays are bright yellow.

Why do I make these cards? They are strategies for handling my obligations, yes, but also evidence of my aspirational self: Finish Chapter 10. Run five miles. Call so-and-so. They reflect my desire for steadiness and structure, and I enjoy the ritual of writing them out each Sunday, much like I’ve come to depend upon the rhythm of putting together a Midnight Radio dispatch twice a month.

2.

Repetition can be beautiful, the steady accretion that comes with committing to the same thing day after day. Ben Ratliff writes wonderfully about this in Run the Song, a meditation on running and listening:

“The ability to stay upright and engaged—as opposed to keeping silent, dying, or otherwise disappearing—deserves attention. Do it over and over again: that’s the idea. ‘Good’ or ‘bad’ as markers of the repetition will fall away after a while. Making art can be boring. Running can be boring. Asking the same questions can be boring. But now is a good time to ask the same impossible question day after day, in order to render the efficient answer inadequate. Whenever ‘boring’ runs hot through intent or repetition, it becomes valuable.”

Yuji Agematsu collected bits of debris in his cigarette packs on his daily walks, and they became a gloriously deranged calendar.

But repetition is also a path to madness. Say the same word several times and it will eventually become drained of meaning. Semantic satiation, they call it.

3.

When I moved to Ohio last year, I didn’t expect to become fascinated by death drives, desire, and demonology. There are several reasons for this trajectory—such as living in the Year of Our Lord 2025—but a primary force is my friend M.

M. rolls heavy. There’s not much small talk with him. Doesn’t matter who you are—interact with him for five minutes and you’ll be reckoning with Lacanian lack or, if there’s a shift in the light, perhaps Deleuzian notions of new inflows of creativity and intensity. He's pushed my thinking into new terrain, and he’s with us tonight to pull hammers, snakes, money, and Samara from The Ring into the zone where desire and demons meet.

Here’s how tonight’s audio came to be: M. asked if I wanted to do a podcast, and I said no because podcasts are annoying and I don’t need more media in my life. He showed up with microphones anyway, and we recorded a conversation, after which I deleted myself and left his side of the discussion intact.

M’s thoughts on the horror of insatiable desire offer some strategies for dealing with the unruly self. It also sounds like an accurate diagnosis of the current American moment.

No matter how many lists I make, there’s something within me that will never be comfortable or understood—and this is how it should be. But here’s a list anyway:

Ghost Dubs - Chemical (18% slower)
Damaged | Pressure, 2024 | Bandcamp
Pole - Berlin
1 | Matador, 1998 | Bandcamp
MMMD - Egoismo
Egoismo | Antifrost, 2019 | Bandcamp
Biosphere - Houses on the Hill
Shenzhou | Touch, 2002 | Bandcamp
Basic Channel - Radiance I (31% slower)
Basic Channel, 1994 | Boomkat
Heathered Pearls - Beach Shelter (Loscil Grind Remix)
Loyal Reworks | Ghostly International, 2013 | Bandcamp
Keith - Flob Gob (Jukebox Mix)
Pernod Parks Productions, 2025 | Bandcamp
Rod Modell - Forester Park
Vibrasound: The Deepchord Years 1999-2004
Civilistjävel! - A2
Järnnätter | Felt, 2022 | Bandcamp
Thomas Brinkmann - Maschine
Totes Rennen | Supposé, 1998 | Bandcamp

Tonight’s episode opens with some heavyweight dub to introduce M., and when he finishes speaking, we’ll test the limits of repetition by listening to Thomas Brinkmann’s intensive loop of a vocal from Blixa Bargeld. And here’s a partial list of the audio files of M. if you'd like a roadmap:

M Saturated Spew.m4a
M Broken Hammer.m4a
M Making a Clearing.m4a
M Demon Mother Desire.m4a
M You Want Your Mother to Feed You.m4a
M Insatiable Serial Killer Desire.m4a
M Desire Itself Is Excessive.m4a
M It Goes On and On.m4a

In the tradition of a proper dub record, the A-side has M’s vocals, while the flip is instrumental with only reverberated traces of M's voice. Listen below, or better yet, right-click+save-as on this desirable mp3 or its demonic instrumental twin.

Thank you for listening, and the request lines are open. With summer upon us, it might be time for another trip to the Death Prom.