Summary of Anachrome, by Leslie Helpert: [email protected]
The writing of Anachrome relied on numerous interviews with specialists and saturated research in areas of genetics, astrophysics, microbiology, statistics and anthropology, all to simply describe the kind of head-fuck that is contemporary heterosexual culture.
Taking place between date two and three on the app Bumble, the feminist-futurist literature debunks female objectification, media, masturbation, shoe shopping, Google Adwords and even internet-famed lifestylists through the wide lens of geological and cosmological epochs. Where Anachrome leans heavily on hard science, it runs rebelliously from typical linearity in form. Moving sequentially forwards and backwards, the book works to dismantle time through the philosophies of Einstein, Heidegger, Buckminster Fuller, and other historic philanderers, all the while trying to craft a "female language" out of words created by men. In one moment drawing on theories of physics, by the next Anachrome has bounced like an electron, landing on abstractive contemplations about human digestion rituals and the laser hair removal of intimate nether-regions.
The book's title alludes to the anachronistic fallout between the XX and XY chromosome circa the year 2020, an unsteady period in biological human design when X and Y no longer genetically respond to the idea of together forever. Ana, the story's sole character, remains purposefully underdeveloped, to avoid donning either the antiquated or modernized female archetype. The book works hard to ensure Ana's ever-after ends outside of the current woman-centric narrative options, she neither a. gets the guy b. gets the job c. gets the guy and the job or d. goes crazy/becomes an artist. A prototypical woman in cosmopolitan Manhattan, Ana is, additionally, a VR protagonist and partly written as "you", to provide the reader with immersive user-experience mid-read.
While less fixated on one character's trajectory, Anachrome achieves telling the overarching story of "The Halfsies", humans living through the newly-coined Anthropocene epoch, an awkward evolutionary moment, equally propelled by ancestral primitivity and the inevitable nano-bot-cyborg future. Referred to as "around the year 2020", the time of the Halfsies necessitates a culture-wide grappling with (factual) science, biological alteration , viral hierarchies. When the Y chromosome has shrunk to 1/5th of its original size and lust is more commonly applied to individual professional ambitions than sustained intimate connections, how do we do romantic love in a world nearly 100% virtually operable?
Anachrome is complex literature, and it’s difficult to describe. Its theme is etched in the adaptive nature of female vernacular, which has long-striven to annunciate its progressive shape through the building blocks of a man-constructed language, It’s easier to name what it’s not. While fictional and heavily laden with science, it is definitely not science-fiction. Though narratively centered around a Bumble app date in New York City, it is not chic-lit (however much it strived). It contemplates exponential technologies and the bionic tomorrow, but is not exclusively futurist nor a dystopian conspiracy theory. And while Ana is literally transmutable and submits to advanced spa treatments designed to reconstruct the female gut microbiome after direct exposure to the hetero male, the book is not avant-garde nor magical realism. Ironically, Anachrome is filled with the academese historically limited to medical journals but in this case reads more like a song, which makes sense since the author is known most for her work as a musical composer. One might conceive that Anachrome's pages even encourage the reader to slip dreamily in and out of a theta state, surrendering intellectual hyper-focus.
The writing of Anachrome relied on numerous interviews with specialists and saturated research in areas of genetics, astrophysics, microbiology, statistics and anthropology, all to simply describe the kind of head-fuck that is contemporary heterosexual culture.
Taking place between date two and three on the app Bumble, the feminist-futurist literature debunks female objectification, media, masturbation, shoe shopping, Google Adwords and even internet-famed lifestylists through the wide lens of geological and cosmological epochs. Where Anachrome leans heavily on hard science, it runs rebelliously from typical linearity in form. Moving sequentially forwards and backwards, the book works to dismantle time through the philosophies of Einstein, Heidegger, Buckminster Fuller, and other historic philanderers, all the while trying to craft a "female language" out of words created by men. In one moment drawing on theories of physics, by the next Anachrome has bounced like an electron, landing on abstractive contemplations about human digestion rituals and the laser hair removal of intimate nether-regions.
The book's title alludes to the anachronistic fallout between the XX and XY chromosome circa the year 2020, an unsteady period in biological human design when X and Y no longer genetically respond to the idea of together forever. Ana, the story's sole character, remains purposefully underdeveloped, to avoid donning either the antiquated or modernized female archetype. The book works hard to ensure Ana's ever-after ends outside of the current woman-centric narrative options, she neither a. gets the guy b. gets the job c. gets the guy and the job or d. goes crazy/becomes an artist. A prototypical woman in cosmopolitan Manhattan, Ana is, additionally, a VR protagonist and partly written as "you", to provide the reader with immersive user-experience mid-read.
While less fixated on one character's trajectory, Anachrome achieves telling the overarching story of "The Halfsies", humans living through the newly-coined Anthropocene epoch, an awkward evolutionary moment, equally propelled by ancestral primitivity and the inevitable nano-bot-cyborg future. Referred to as "around the year 2020", the time of the Halfsies necessitates a culture-wide grappling with (factual) science, biological alteration , viral hierarchies. When the Y chromosome has shrunk to 1/5th of its original size and lust is more commonly applied to individual professional ambitions than sustained intimate connections, how do we do romantic love in a world nearly 100% virtually operable?
Anachrome is complex literature, and it’s difficult to describe. Its theme is etched in the adaptive nature of female vernacular, which has long-striven to annunciate its progressive shape through the building blocks of a man-constructed language, It’s easier to name what it’s not. While fictional and heavily laden with science, it is definitely not science-fiction. Though narratively centered around a Bumble app date in New York City, it is not chic-lit (however much it strived). It contemplates exponential technologies and the bionic tomorrow, but is not exclusively futurist nor a dystopian conspiracy theory. And while Ana is literally transmutable and submits to advanced spa treatments designed to reconstruct the female gut microbiome after direct exposure to the hetero male, the book is not avant-garde nor magical realism. Ironically, Anachrome is filled with the academese historically limited to medical journals but in this case reads more like a song, which makes sense since the author is known most for her work as a musical composer. One might conceive that Anachrome's pages even encourage the reader to slip dreamily in and out of a theta state, surrendering intellectual hyper-focus.
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About Leslie Helpert:
Helpert (42) entered the world singing, started on piano and found the guitar by age 11, on which she fixated. She began musically performing and recording in her early teens; studied Jazz at The Berklee College of Music in Boston and later Indigenous Music at The Naropa University in Colorado. She holds a Master's in Music from The Berklee College of Music, has released 6 records of original scores internationally and is on the Barcelona-based label Whatabout Music. Helpert has performed in over 300 Venues from France to Morocco, San Francisco to Montreal, and written one thousand compositions, collaborating with Motown, Universal and Sony artists. Passionate about interdisciplinary arts, she's received multiple government grants for worldwide projects in Bermuda and Denmark, as well as held residencies in Montreal, Marrakech and throughout France. Home-based in Manhattan, Helpert shares her 20+ years developed modality of voice-work called Therapeutic Vocal Performance Technique cross-globally. She supports all voices, from high functioning executives, TED speakers and Eurovision Winners, to high-security prisoners. She is equally an avid illustrator as she is a musical writer, and considers black ink her largest inspiration/neurotic dependency. Besides having composed 1,000 lyrical songs, Helpert has written multiple (unpublished) novels, volumes of poetry and filled hundreds of illustrated journals. She has been endorsed by Strathmore and Taylor guitars for her musical and visual contributions. Anachrome, her novel-in-the-works, speaks to her desire to present a female-principled science, taking a unique spin on the law of relativity from the neck down. websites: www.dynamicvoicetraining.com www.HelpertTheAgency.com www.music.lesliehelpert.com |