Ask the Author: Luke Geddes

Invasion, by Luke Geddes appears in the August issue and he talks with us about doing the watusi, plural archetypes and other such matters.

1. What music would you prevent your children from listening to?

I put headphones blasting the New York Dolls on my crotch before fornication so that I’ll never have children. It’s both a form of birth control and a sexual stimulant.

2. What kind of watusi do you dance?

Few people know this, but the watusi’s origins lie in an apocryphal page of the Kama Sutra, which scholars argue was deleted from the original manuscript because of its uncharacteristically onanistic nature. It was rediscovered on a scrap of rice paper in a crypt outside Calcutta in the mid-twentieth century, cleaned up and clothed for the sensitive mainstream audiences of the time, and reinvented as a wholesome teen-age dance craze.

However, within the phylum of watusi-related dances, there is one that stands above all others, even the spectacularly naked and sloppy original. I’m speaking, of course, of the Batusi, as originated by Adam West. This dance is not just the paragon of watusi derivations but of human movement in general.

3. Why did you choose plural archetypes (fathers, daughters)? Was it safe to say during that time period that every daughter enjoyed the same kind of music?

Because I tried writing the story in first-person plural from the fathers’ point of view, a kind of horror story in which teenagers were the monster, but it didn’t work. Or maybe I suck at first-person plural. For some reason, it ended up working better as all action and no thought. I was aiming for a cinematic quality, like in a heavily choreographed movie musical number: all the characters spontaneously, illogically moving in graceful synchronicity.

It’s probably not safe to say that every teenage girl during that time period enjoyed the same kind of music, but that’s largely how it’s portrayed in history: kids loved Elvis and then they loved the Beatles, and then Woodstock happened somewhere down the line. Part of the impetus for “Invasion” was the ludicrousness of such a narrow view of popular music history. The truth is I don’t even like Elvis or the Beatles all that much. I prefer a lot of the artists that filled the gap between Elvis’s being drafted and Beatlemania, like the girl groups produced by Phil Spector and his imitators, as well as those that were too idiosyncratic to fit comfortably with the British Invasion, the Kinks and the Zombies.

4. What is in your celebratory nightcap?

An entire bottle of Triple Sec on ice.

5. How would one organize a record burning today?

That is a good question. I guess the burning part would have to be symbolic. You could have a fire, but it was mostly entail a bunch of outraged parents with laptops standing in a circle and dragging the offending tunes from the My Music folder to the Recycle Bin. The idea of that reminds me of the International Adult Conspiracy from the classic Nickelodeon show The Adventures of Pete & Pete, which was maybe a subconscious influence on “Invasion.”

6. How would you have assassinated Elvis?

First he’d love me to death, physically, emotionally, and psychically. The guilt of it would send him spiraling into depression, and he’d self-medicate on pills and fried peanut butter, banana, and bacon sandwiches, eventually succumbing to a heart attack or overdose while sitting on the toilet.