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00:00:11.920witches deck of oracles find everything you need to know at missingwitches.com0.67
00:00:17.680you aren't being a proper woman therefore you must be a witch1.00
00:00:20.400Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! You must be a witch!1.00
00:00:27.180Chibi Jones is a Canadian artist, filmmaker, musician, publisher of zines, known for her vast contributions to both queer and punk media.0.82
00:00:38.160She initially gained recognition for her work in the fanzine JDs, which she co-founded and co-published with Bruce LaBruce.
00:00:46.320Gibi also co-founded and performed with the experimental post-punk band Fifth Column,
00:15:33.060But, you see, you have to not let those kind of forces defeat you.
00:15:41.160And I think that's the rebellion right there, just existing, keeping going, not giving up, not submitting to their authority, and accepting their condemnation.
00:19:32.520And I think, like, at that time, a lot of people thought, oh, my God, they're ruining their careers, like, at that time.
00:19:39.360This is pre-Ellen, pre-Joan Jack coming out.
00:19:42.660Like, there were no public figures except for experimental filmmakers like Jack Smith and Ed Warhol and who else can I think of?0.54
00:19:54.500Well, you have before said that the history of experimental cinema is a history of queer cinema.
00:20:01.420Yeah. Do you want to elaborate on that a bit? I mean, from the very beginning, so many of the filmmakers were careers. James Boughton, I'm not going to remember all the names right now.
00:20:15.980Greg Araki, John Waters, we could name 100. Those are more recent people, but I would think James Boughton started in the 1940s. Kenneth Anger started in the 1940s.
00:20:25.100And so there was an amazing experimental film theater in Toronto called The Funnel, and I constantly went every single weekend to see films, and I thought, well, it's like queer people can exist in the experimental film world.0.98
00:20:43.380why can't they exist in the music world in the you know zine world it just doesn't make any sense
00:20:49.620that we would have to pretend and hide and just to be able to have a music career and because it
00:20:57.700didn't make any sense to me i just went ahead and did it regardless of the consequences i just kind
00:21:04.020of didn't care at that point do you feel like that was an act of courage or just you didn't
00:21:10.660even think about it you just this is what I want to do and I'm gonna go. I more thought that I needed
00:21:16.580to do it yes like in the sense of having a certain responsibility once the idea occurred to me I
00:21:22.180thought I kind of have to follow through with this there's no kind of turning back when you
00:21:29.140realize a potential I think like I could see the potential in this this idea like because there's
00:21:36.580already been a few scenes and I'd already kind of formed a little bit of a network with different
00:21:41.620kind of anarchist scenes and like other kinds of punk scenes and pop people were doing kind of
00:21:48.020pop culture scenes and um they touch on gay things queer things but um
00:21:57.780when I could see the potential for this kind of networking
00:22:00.660to evolve i just felt like i had to go forward with it yeah and um
00:22:07.920like it was scarier not to do it yeah to do it yeah i think the same thing is true with fifth
00:22:15.140column like we had this cassette scene and we started like really like every time we go to a
00:22:20.840town we play with different bands we'd always try to play with other um bands with women in them and
00:22:26.120so it became really interesting to kind of like put out cassette tapes that featured all bands1.00
00:22:30.320with women and we began to form these networks of women in different cities in
00:22:35.660Montreal in London Ontario and just like ASF were in Colorado and that made life
00:22:46.700when you have that kind of a network it just makes life so much easier and it
00:22:54.080helps I think it helps a culture to evolve you know I told you that I'm
00:23:03.700staying with my sister I'm here in Toronto I don't live here so I'm staying
00:23:06.800with my sister and she had been going through old boxes and pulling all of
00:23:12.020these letters that I had written her and things I had sent her through the post
00:23:16.520and I we were talking about what a lost art that is but back when you were
00:23:21.260creating these networks that was the only we didn't have the internet so no
00:23:25.820you were putting things in the post you were putting posters on a wall and
00:23:29.780hoping that somebody would see it yeah yeah how how hard was that or did you
00:23:35.240didn't we hadn't even conceived of the internet so it didn't you know we didn't
00:23:39.440know that it could even be easy right I wrote thousands and thousands of letters
00:23:47.820I'd be writing every single day I wrote letters to a huge network of people by
00:23:53.700the end of JD you know all across North America in the UK and some other
00:24:01.680countries Italy I can't remember all the different countries at this point but
00:24:12.540yeah it was kind of insane at a certain point I was it was kind of
00:24:17.040overwhelming because i couldn't keep up with the letters that kept coming in because yeah people
00:24:21.960would all of these letters that you sent you would get responses yeah and we would decorate
00:24:28.080young listeners i'll tell you we would decorate the envelopes we would show stuff inside it was
00:24:33.420a real art form yes it was correspondence art yes it really it was very similar to the correspondence
00:24:41.440art that had started in the 50s and you know people would be sending posters and postcards
00:25:28.700So I might just, I mean, it's like early October now.
00:25:31.840Maybe I'll send them out now and hope for the best.
00:25:35.420I want to talk about, there's this, like, for me anyway,
00:25:39.320this amazing point of intersection between punk and queer and witch and I
00:25:47.080think you sort of exist at that intersection like what have you found
00:25:51.360there what have you seen there what what do you think about the sort of
00:25:55.680overlapping ethos of witch and queer and punk
00:26:01.040that's a really good question thank you I wrote it myself and I haven't really
00:26:10.940thought about that before and it's something I should think about in my own
00:26:16.080life I have not had those different aspects all meet up and sort of
00:26:22.220compartmentalized yeah up until this book yeah well but of course there have0.78
00:26:29.180and lots of queer people involved in in the occult world and in witchcraft for0.73
00:26:33.360like why do you think that is forever because it's more except it's not you0.76
00:26:41.540know it's not the it's outside of the realm of judeo-christian like morality
00:26:50.400Yes. Which is not really a morality. Dogma. Dogma, thank you. Which makes it possible to embrace different kinds of living experiences and sexualities, gender expressions that just are not accepted in the so-called conventional norms of society.
00:27:18.220and yeah I think so like I think you know my friend Scott Trelevin he's been
00:27:31.000working in that area for quite a long time where he has been able to meld the
00:27:37.500two together in a really successful way and you know I'm sure there's other
00:27:43.960people too that I don't know of it's just me personally I haven't been able to do
00:27:49.300that until now yeah but I have been involved in lots of different kind of
00:27:56.320pagan enterprises and it's just that the people that followed my work
00:28:05.520scenes and art weren't didn't cross over into that world really so I have to kind
00:28:13.060make an effort to make them all meet in one place and what does your pagan practice look like i mean
00:28:20.340i again have been following you for many years so i know about the queer part and i know about the
00:28:25.940the punk part but what i didn't know about was the witch part so what does your practice of
00:28:31.380magic or witchcraft or paganism look like oh gee do you dance naked under the moon no i don't dance
00:28:40.980anymore because i'll be a i'll be a wreck um you know i've gone through many incarnations of
00:28:52.320different kinds of practices in my life like when i was young i was
00:28:56.060you know uh in the church choir and singing is a great spiritual activity i think i agree that
00:29:06.320kind of transcends whatever ideology is being trying to impose on it so that was
00:29:12.620where I found something of value in the church I didn't find much of value in the church although
00:29:24.740I have to say at the time when I was young my models for Christianity were the priests and
00:29:31.820ministers who were marching with Martin Luther King and people involved in the
00:29:35.960civil rights struggle and protesting Vietnam because I come from like so
00:29:41.380ancient, far back history. So at least I have models that weren't like, that's not to
00:29:52.260say that pretty soon the world became aware of all the horrors going on in the
00:29:56.500church and what they're they've been responsible for um but because i was so religious and i was
00:30:03.900young the first thing i encountered that kind of um helped me break away from that was i became
00:30:10.780friends with people from the process church when i was young and so that's a whole different um
00:30:17.340they have a whole different pantheon which is includes christianity but also includes
00:30:24.100you could say satanism but it's actually based in psychology so it's not a literal representation
00:30:32.140like they're not actually satanist it's an archetype it is an archetype yeah so it helps
00:30:38.220but it helped me move beyond the limited ideas of christianity that i've been born into basically
00:30:45.660And then from there, I think I just started exploring, doing tons of research.
00:30:55.660This has been an interest of mine for such a long time.
00:30:59.660I've been researching the history of the Celtic people and their religious expressions
00:31:09.660as limited the amount of knowledge as is available to us, unfortunately,
00:31:14.660because there's no written records, really,
00:32:41.960And so then I just continued my own research and readings because I didn't, I don't think I ever was aware that there might be covens like in Toronto or even Ontario that were operative at that time.
00:42:38.620subversive and transgressive ideas we want to get out there through the
00:42:44.860medium of print. I think I was talking to somebody the other day and wondering
00:42:49.840like are we moving into a period of time where we're post-literary like are
00:42:58.960people going to be able to read in the future? Now they talk into their phones
00:43:02.500they don't type and I you know they're gonna get AI to write all their essays
00:43:09.460for them when they go to school because will they be able to write I think that
00:43:16.480we're but at the same time I think we are entering a really exciting period
00:43:20.440where I have so many friends and acquaintances who have little publishing
00:43:25.780houses like heretic house like midnight mass I have another friend D who has
00:43:32.080their own publishing enterprise for science fiction you know there's there's0.88
00:43:40.640Pilot Press in the UK Richard Porter who's got an amazing queer stuff and I
00:43:50.080almost see that as being the new you know independent record label of the0.97
00:43:56.32090s now it's like the independent publishing house and they're putting
00:44:02.020on all the new ideas and all the new artists and writers and I think it's
00:44:09.380actually really like just to veer away from the past I think what's happening
00:44:13.900right now but that's really exciting and zine makers as well people are still
00:44:17.440doing zines and journals and I think that's really kind of where the
00:44:25.460alternative underground culture is right now in that space.
00:44:30.340Yeah, a lot of people talk about how the internet has sort of demolished almost like a mainstream idea because we're not all watching the same show at the same time. We're not all reading the same story at the same time. Do you think that's a good thing or a bad thing?
00:44:50.340because there's some I mean there's some benefits to a monoculture right that we have all these
00:44:58.240shared experiences but even just saying the term monoculture kind of leaves a bad taste
00:45:03.120I know I know and was there really ever a monoculture because a different culture exists
00:45:09.340in the U.S. then it did in England then it did in India then it did in Japan so there was never
00:45:14.200really a monoculture it was just very specific to different physical locations
00:45:19.920so that's kind of what's interesting about the internet opens up the
00:45:24.600possibilities to go beyond borders and I think that's part of the thing that
00:45:29.380people were really excited about the internet in in the early days there's a
00:45:35.140lot of obviously a lot of the speculation and promise of the early
00:45:43.140people working on the internet have not come to pass at all and we've ended up
00:45:48.360with something kind of much worse. And I think in a lot of ways internet has
00:45:55.020destroyed the underground. Things can't be underground anymore but the only, I
00:46:01.100think the place that they can be underground is in the literary world
00:46:04.700because it can't be posted onto the internet. You can't post, well you could
00:46:08.800post a whole book but the people that look at the internet all the time are
00:46:11.880not going to read it, right? So, and there's such a beauty and pleasure in having a piece of paper
00:46:21.060in your hands and be able to look at the images and read, not staring at a screen, and you keep
00:46:28.800it in your home. I mean, the internet's in your home, but it's not, once you turn it off, it's not
00:46:34.180there anymore. You can't turn off a book and have it disappear. I think in the
00:46:45.580literary world, in the publishing world, that's where there's so much potential
00:46:48.920right now. This is a quote from you that I think is a good follow-up. There's a
00:46:56.800phenomenon in mainstream media where they can make a lot of money out of
00:47:00.940marginalized people different subcultures they just kind of suck them up use them for what they're
00:47:07.300worth and toss them out and say that trend's finished can you talk about this this vampirism
00:47:15.560of marginalized people and their work and that kind of stuff oh yeah i mean that's uh i feel like0.66
00:47:22.660That's been my experience going through different kinds of, you know, the queer scene was trendy for like, you know, a couple of years and it was on MTV and then the next trend came along.
00:47:41.720And then, you know, and the grunge scene was popular for a couple of years, and then that's gone.
00:47:50.060And so it's just all about capitalism's desperate need for novelty to, you know, convince people,
00:48:01.780well, here's a new product that you haven't had before that you're really going to want to buy.
00:48:06.200And now that you've got it, you need to move on to the next thing that you'll really need to want to buy.
00:48:10.740So really it's just a trap that is inevitable in a consumer culture, and you have to, I think as a creator, kind of be aware of that, and I mean, you can kind of make use of it in a sense, because you might need to, to make a living, which is totally valid, I think.
00:48:36.980Like we can't be like, you know, I've been through so many periods like where people were like absolute, like the punk culture, like you're never punk enough.
00:48:48.220You know, you can't do this and you can't do that.
00:55:11.940Yeah. And you were instructed not to play the song when you played live on Much Music, which listeners is like the Toronto MTV, Canadian MTV.