Over the course of 2020, Brad Phillips and Gideon Jacobs are writing a 12-chapter "serial novella" for Autre. It will be written Exquisite Corpse style — they will alternate who writes each month's chapter, and won’t have access to the previous chapter until it has been published. Brad and Gideon have not discussed plot, structure, format, themes, characters, etc, and promise not to do so even once the project is underway. The idea is to react to each other's work, and hope the final Frankensteinian product is something that deserves to exist. If the authors like what they've made when it's done, the editors might publish it as a "zine." Installments will go up on the 15th of every month. Click here to read Chapter 1: G and B.

text by Brad Phillips (and Gideon Jacobs)

Hi Summer and Oliver,

Thanks for this. I don’t like when people ‘break the fourth wall,’ but maybe Gideon and I have done that already?

It’s ironic, because when you sent me this document, before I even opened it I said I didn’t know if I'd be able to get my part done in time because I’ve been so mentally fragile lately. And then you wrote that you were worried about our mental health. So this is, really... I can’t imagine a sign of better editors, in that you seem to have predicted my current state of mind. I don’t know how Gideon is doing, he hasn’t responded to my texts for a few weeks, but I do see that he looks at my stories on Instagram. 

The book that I published last year dealt a lot with suicide and mental illness etcetera, and it was ‘autofiction,’ but really, that was just a sort of way to cover my ass if people didn’t like certain content—ultimately none of it was fictional. I ended up in the psych ward of the hospital twice after it came out, and if my new book wasn’t science fiction/incest based, then it would probably be about the story of an aging man who published a successful book, hoping it would ameliorate his mental suffering, only to find out that in fact not only was it unhelpful, it actually made his (my) mental health worse.

When I was thirty-three I had a solo show at Liste, a satellite fair for younger artists attached to Art Basel in Switzerland. I’d had a really bad year, my marriage was in the toilet, a lot of other things were going on. So I did this thing I often did (and, knowing what I know from the past should not still do, still do), where I put all my hopes for mental recovery into the success of my show. My ex-wife and I went to Basel, my dealers were billionaires and flew us both there first class, put us in a hotel room larger than my current apartment, gave me a daily stipend of five hundred Swiss francs, etcetera. That first day, I had to go to the building where the fair was taking place and help hang my paintings. Before we patched all the holes in the wall, Ivan Wirth and Manuela Hauser, who own Hauser & Wirth Gallery (which all my life I dreamed of showing with, and still do to this day) came and bought the entire show, seventeen paintings, hours before the fair even opened. This should have been good news...I mean objectively it was. I made close to sixty-thousand Swiss francs. My dealers put their Christian Louboutin shoes up on the table, smoked Marlboro Reds and drank Veuve Clicquot. They looked triumphant, and also a bit like they’d won the fair—like they were better than everyone else. And I performed ‘thrilled’ as long as I could then went down to the bar with my ex and ordered a beer. Once it arrived, I just started bawling my fucking eyes out, in full view of dealers I wanted to work with and artists that, back then, I felt intimidated by. Because what I’d wanted had happened, but I didn’t feel any better. I’d stupidly put all my hopes into the idea that selling out my show (or even having it go well) would fix my depression. When it didn’t fix my depression, I felt even worse. Because then it became, what’s it going to fucking take? That day I understood success was nothing more than a big shiny balloon. It looks pretty and floats around, but when you pop it, it’s just hot air and cheap plastic that settles on the ground like dead skin from a colourful animal. 

Worse still, was that I now had a lot of money, and back then having lots of money was very bad for me. I didn’t save money like I now do with my wife Cristine, using it intelligently to invest in the stock market or get closer to buying a home—I just spent it on dope, and Prada shoes, and similar bullshit. So while I want this to be good, what Gideon and I are doing, I know that whether it turns out well or not, it’s not going to make me ‘feel better.’ Mental illness isn’t contingent on outside factors like success or failure (although failure can certainly exacerbate it). I’m working on my first novel right now, and if I’m lucky, I write a paragraph a day. I don’t know if it’s procrastination or self-destruction. I know that, but maybe I’m wrong and think ‘I’m worse off than him,’ that Gideon is more mentally sound than me. Maybe he isn’t, though. I mean, I worry about him not having texted me in weeks. I’d reach out to him but don’t have much to say, like words of comfort or platitudes that mean nothing, and that to intelligent people usually read as insults rather than expressions of concern. 

When I buy a house I’ll be happy. But then there’s the renovations. When I have 50k in the bank I’ll be happy. But, then there's the taxes. When I show with David Zwirner, I’ll be happy. But then I’ll have to churn out paintings. 

I’m not even sure I know what happiness is. I know what relief is, and sometimes confuse it with happiness. What I know, I guess, is the absence of fear, and the absence of anxiety, and the absence of depression, and those things register to me as happiness. I suspect though that happiness is something different, like bubbling joy and delight at the world. I don’t know those feelings. Joy is just a name from the ‘70s, and delight is the second work in a candy I enjoy that it seems no one else does—Turkish Delight.

You can print this, add it to our project. It’s honest and real, and maybe this is the only honest and real thing I’ve contributed to this project so far. 

If you reach Gideon, tell him I love him, and I hope he’s okay, and that he can call me any time if he wants, but that if I don’t pick up, please don’t try calling again five minutes later.

I hope you’re both okay. Today they said Trump caught the coronavirus, so my face muscles moved into that expression people called ‘smile.’ This must be an improvement of some kind, no? 

XOB

For more from Brad Phillips, follow  @brad___phillips on Instagram.