An unspooled cassette tape. 3D art by Jeff Emtman

Searching for something to do during government-mandated social distancing, Here Be Monsters host Jeff Emtman recently digitized his cassette collection, and re-edited them into blackout poems and proverbs.

Content Note: Language

While in the process of doing this, Jeff re-discovered a mixtape he made in 1999, the product of endless hours of waiting by the boombox in the basement with a hand hovering over the 🔴 button. And on this old mixtape, a 10 year Jeff attempted to make a fancy edit: swapping out the intro of one song for another’s. It didn’t sound good at all, but it may have actually been Jeff’s first ever audio cut, predating the start of HBM by over a decade.

On this episode, Jeff shares a couple dozen of his recent blackout proverbs and short poems, made from a variety of bootlegged self-help audiobooks found in the thrift stores of New England.

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Editor: Bethany Denton
Music: The Black Spot, August Blicher Friis

Jeff’s author headshot from a short book about aardvarks that he wrote for an assignment in third grade, circa 1997.

For thousands of years, Western Medicine thought it had itself figured out. Everything came in fours. There were four sensations, four fluids in the body, four kinds of people, and four elements making up the world. They were all related. There wasn’t one without the other. Everything was a balancing act, and it was called Humorism.

In recent history, vaccines, sterilization, and other modern treatments have pushed Humorism out of the picture. But traditions ingrained in culture, science, and religion for thousands of years don’t just vanish. While few people still eat lemons to balance their yellow bile, or willingly drain their blood at the barber shop, elements of Humorism still play into modern society. They can be hard to see, but trust us, they’re here.

Music from: Lucky Dragons ||| Nym ||| The Black Spot

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