Interview With the Creator of the “Backbone” Zine

New Martyr Press sits down with the author of the Orthodox cultural theorism zine “Backbone” upon the release of issue 2.

NMP: Describe your zine for us. What are you doing, what are your goals for this publication?

I’m not really sure that it’s a “publication” exactly, because that implies that I have faith in what constitutes as copyright and property in an environment where the writing’s on the wall about the extent to which we will live in deception about what we consume.

Ok, who exactly are you trying to reach?

I started out not really caring exactly what demographic my zine fell into the hands of. I still don’t, to an extent. There are Orthodox people who have supported the zine, but I actually have found that the most interest has been generated by people from outside of the faith, which is of interest to me. It’s worthwhile to be exposed to an Orthodox person who’s dealing with the ins and outs of these subcultures inside their own head in an accessible way. There are so many Orthodox people involved in the worlds of philosophy, debate, education, etc and not enough willing to write from a religious standpoint on movements like the revival of interest in “Hauntology”. They may be addressing it from the outward book-smart standpoint, like quoting Derrida because he was mentioned in some philosophy course, but not really as someone who has watched the concept come in and out of culture constantly on a personal level. I want to address things from the specific perspective of people who have seen subjects like Hauntology become pivotal in sort of the ambient library music side of the world, but have also dealt with the ramifications of culture being influenced by the spiritual warfare surrounding the concept of “memory”. It has cost us lives and souls as hauntological developments have become more solidified and normalized.

Elaborate on this zine being a cultural theorism zine.

Obviously I’m really inspired by K-Punk, even though my priorities are different now and I try not to read anything Mark Fisher has put out anymore. I’m an absolute idiot and I want to look at the work of people who have achieved what I wish for my life. I want the resolution of people who are dipped into cauldrons of tar, and it feels like a warm bath to them.

 I loved Fisher’s writing style, and how he could somehow make academia unpretentious and have a “human” element to it, instead of a “hot air and missing the point” dissonance that a lot of academic work has. Things just too often feel like it was some stupid thing the CIA thought up and then hired someone to put into a 50 page piece of writing with 20 sources to give it enough legitimacy to disseminate into policy, or a distant relative of it. It’s rare that when someone can talk about pretentious subjects in a way that’s fluid, accessible, and not abrasive. I wish Mark Fisher had used his writing style in a similar way to Fr. Seraphim Rose. The book “Nihilism”, with its art critique angle, really changed everything for me in a way. I was most affected by the fact Fr Seraphim Rose, an Orthodox monkpriest, knew about and insulted Futurism in a way that was humorous to me, at a time where I was significantly interested in Futurist photography. You could always tell he was always looking at material from the inside, rather than having always been Orthodox and trying to discern things from a distance.

My zines are only 12 pages each, largely mix-media based, and have elements of poetry to them, but I also really try to focus on them containing certain points I want to communicate.

What does it mean, that you consider your zine to be “anti-accelerationist”?

The reason that accelerationism, people attempting to speed up the destruction of society in order to reorganize it, is something this zine is against, is because not only are the proposed methods of destruction typically amoral, but also because I have yet to hear an impressive outline of what society should look like after its fall.

Scenes heavily invested in the organization of society carry sort of a bankrupt feeling to them, as if they were a bunch of people trying to carry out a vision as if they were casually playing minecraft. I'm not saying that there are more optimal situations than others, but ultimately the goal is refinement of the soul and to live in this world as a stranger.

I consider a large amount of people that live in this world to be accelerationists. Every day you see the establishment encouraging more people to become dependent on AI and pursue immortality. It’ll destroy us.

Accelerationism is not just nerds posting on their substack about how they want the singularity to occur. It’s everyone not just blindly living in society, but everyone who actively thinks nuerolink, chips in the body, etc. is “cool” and thirsts for more.

Tell us about Issue 2.

So Issue 2 of Backbone is for anarcho-primitivists, even though I thoroughly expect them to hate it. To be an Anarcho-primitivist in 2019 is very different from being one in 2024. There’s a completely different context. I felt like Backbone Issue 2 needed to address that gap. Why is nobody talking about the fact that there are anprims that haven’t ideologically progressed into a resolution? I genuinely fear for them. The ideological wave can be likened to a mouse caught under a glass dome. The ideology is based around understanding some of the entrapment taking place, as well as rebellion, and as time goes on, it becomes less and less an active rebellion. Decades ago, it was violent, in the late 2010’s, it was memeposting and amateur foraging behind the local grocery store, now it’s somewhat deflated and futile, especially as technology and societal control becomes worse. There’s not a clear direction for them. I don’t want them to have to stay there ruminating on their own entrapment if they don’t want to or need to.

What’s planned for Issue 3?

In issue 3, I take a break from exploring the world around me and retreat inwards. It’s a one-off issue. It discusses my relationship with music politics, and the stages I went through during the first few years of giving up secular music. It’s kind of a taboo thing to do in culture. Everyone is very reliant on music. When you’ve done something like that, it’s difficult for others not to associate it with Protestants switching to only listening to Hillsong or something.

How deeply do you think you follow secular culture in order to feed your interest in cultural theorism?

Not at all, as well as totally. Every time you interact with the world, you’re being exposed to so many nuances and layers. I typically know some of what’s circulating the internet based on how people around me act. Culture has always morbidly fascinated me. As a child, I loved how I could travel four hours north in a car, and fads would be about a year or two behind. You would see it in the interests people had, in their consumption patterns, what they had to go through in life, etc. Delayed fads felt like a time lag, even though there was no time difference at all. I would look at the girls in middle school around me, where their collective gestalt trajectory was heading, and predict what color nail polish would be in style soon. It was the late 2000’s. I got the navy blue era and the burnt orange era correct before losing interest. Speculation about all of these things is in vain though.

The goal is to get out of life alive.

The last time we seriously saw Orthodox content with a heavily saturated connection to subculture was Death to the World. I remember opening up an issue and them presenting their POV on what happened with the band Dissection. I was never into Dissection, but you know what I mean? Willing to access things smaller than celebrities and Geo-politics. Things that still affect others.

Death to the World still has value, but in a slightly different context. It’s really difficult to navigate “punk” these days when it just used to mean something completely different. Do you remember when people used to mistake the Misfits [band] logo on merch for a clothing brand logo a decade ago? I remember my parents having me listen to Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicous in grade school, it really truly may as well have been Barney for me, in terms of the way I was exposed to it. I actually genuinely remember being in my early teens, and making a conscious decision to avoid identifying with the 70’s punk revival scene because I felt like I couldn’t pretend the socio-economic nostalgia was still applicable or that the political gymnastics of it could be applied to me. I think when Death to the World started, it was reaching out to people who were really struggling with “punk” sentiments. Now it’s become sort of a breath of relief and a haven for people inquiring about Orthodoxy that are used to going to hxc shows, or have been involved in a fair amount of music subcultures. It’s almost evolved into something more powerful because it’s aged well.

That zine also is a lesson in discernment. It started from such a raw place of pain for others, and from a monastery on top of a forest mountain. You don’t have to be in the world or submit to it at all in order to impact it.

Are you going to ever let us publish the zines as ebooks?

When I started this, I told you “absolutely not, this is going to be as analog as possible”, but I’m not sure if that was from a place of angst and trying to make a point rather than actually caring about communicating with others. I’m also not sure if it was rooted in my past of appreciating niche inaccessibility and collector’s avarice. I despise the push to digitize everything, but we’ll see. I’d rather someone read the PDF, and it affect them similarly to how Fr Seraphim’s Futurism comments affected me, than not at all. We’ll continue this conversation later.

Issue 2: Which Way, Anprim? and Issue 3: Auditory Ascesis will both be released in late July/early August