I'm not sure why, but while reading the title story of your collection, the thought popped into my brain "Are angels queer?" This made me think: What would our views on the old religions look like if we believed angels, or divine beings in general, lived among us in human vessels in this current time and social climate? Could our interpretations of those stories be totally changed or would the meanings and lessons stay the same?
Are angels queer? It is difficult for me to answer this question as the entire makeup of their cosmological, sexual, and dietary preferences is not completely known to me. I don't think that they fit into our human understanding of gender or sexuality, or even emotions, which is how the story originally came to me. The way the story talks about angels and sin etc. borrows mainly from the Christian background I was raised in, specifically Southern Baptism, which is pretty heavy in the way of punishment and talk of hellfire. It's only when Zedkiel is exposed to the idea of desire or a self outside of God that he and the rest of the angels are sentenced to earth, to inhabit human forms, to suffer the burdens of experiencing desire, of loss, of categorization and trying to figure out which category one fits inside. It is an unfortunate fact of our world that things such as gender and sexuality are inflicted upon us at birth, the limitations and severity of which are dependent on the society you are raised in.
In the Bible there are lots of instances where angels do come to earth in the form of human vessels. Jacob wrestles with an angel in Genesis 32, for instance, and though Jacob is a lot physically stronger than the angel / is winning in their match, the angel then dislocates his hip with just one touch, which is pretty funny. So maybe there are angels who are still among us, getting into fist fights on the street or eating BLT's next to us in Applebee's. And we either see the miraculous when the scrawny guy beats the guy who is three times his size and abuses steroids, and term it as such, or we might just say he's crazy. To me, "craziness" and divinity are very closely intertwined.
Do you think all of our craziness, divinity, and other rigorous boundaries humans have created are an attempt to cope with the fact that humans do not know what they were made for?
Insanity is, to me, a refusal to accept the fact that the world is as ordered as people claim it to be, to accept things that are ludicrous or fucked up as normal.
You are born and you grow up and you are supposed to find someone and fall in love with them and be with them forever. But then you grow up and you keep falling in love and losing people and that love remains long after they’re gone, which we cannot or do not want to comprehend. You are supposed to work, and not only work but to love your work. If you get depressed from working, that means there’s something wrong with you, and you should get on medication, and if the medication doesn’t work, that somehow reflects upon you, too. We are born not once but countless times over the course of our lives and it hurts like hell. Transformation and growth are some of the most painful experiences ever, which is why I suppose there is so much body horror in this collection. I didn’t realize how much there was until I reread it for final copy edits.
You read my mind. Your stories seem to deal with degeneration, regeneration, transformation, and sometimes all three in ways that are grotesque and beautiful. But what I was most impressed by is how you create a wide expanse in the atmosphere of your stories. Seemingly endless space which can incite wonder but sometimes terror depending on which way you are looking. What kind of headspace are you in to write such ethereal stories?
It's probably important that I mention most of these stories were written long ago — some of them seven years at this point, others two or three years ago. My writing reveals a lot of my obsessions with understanding why people do the things that they do. I'm also very interested in the idea of morality, how and why we arrive to the decisions and judgements that we do about people. I want very deeply to understand everyone, and I'm often glad if I can make sense of someone's behavior in light of context of their experiences or whatever they're going through at a given time. But then what to do with that understanding afterward? You can't logic your way out of feeling, in the same way you can't feel your way out of logic. At some point your mind or body will alert the other if something is wrong. But then that friction is what makes for a good story.
Amid these dueling sensations, does writing give you balance?
I don't know if balance is the correct word. It gives me a way to understand what's going on inside of me. Sometimes I have trouble discerning it, but when it's on the page, it's a bit easier. The funny thing about being a fiction writer is that people will sometimes think that the stories you've created that have nothing to do with your own personal experiences are in fact autobiographical, whereas the ones that are extremely personal are deemed as completely fictional. And sometimes that feels disconcerting. Writing gives me a way to vomit out whatever might be lurking in my subconscious, and it's sort of like I need to release it in order to move on. I get scared of it sometimes — the actualization of my thoughts. People might not always correctly identify me in these pages, but I always know which parts are myself.
That seems like a good ending right there. You feel good?
Daisuke Shen is the author of the short story collection Vague Predictions and Prophecies (forthcoming CLASH Books 2024), and the novella Funeral (KERNPUNKT Press 2023). They live in New York City.
Twitter: @dai__joubu
Instagram: @ginsengmasque