Letter from the Editor: Stalking suffers and the semantics of sermon

Tim Kasher @ Rewind Video and Dive. // Photo by Brock Wilbur

[This ‘Letter from the Editor’ is the introduction to September’s print issue of The Pitch—found across KC and Lawrence starting today.]

Dearest readers,

Thanks for picking up a copy of the September issue of The Pitch. Virgo season is in full effect and I will be behaving accordingly. What impact will this have on the tone of local journalism? Oh, you’ll know it when you see it.

A few nights ago, I was swept into a very trademark KC nonsense adventure—one that promised simplicity on the surface and quickly trapped me in the undertow. And, like any good blindsiding experience, it left me with scrambled meditations on life, the universe, and everything.

I was at Screenland Armour for the screening of a new indie horror flick, written and directed by Omaha emo icon Tim Kasher.

Kasher’s band Cursive built a multidecade career on aggressively confessional material, with the trademark twist of keeping the genuine pain at arm’s length via a shove of self-deprecating humor. These hymns often start with an external target, then quickly turn that rage or indignation inward, before the very structure of songwriting winds up catching strays.

Kasher is a storyteller who lashes out at the medium’s limitations. There is always so much more story to tell than what fits into the format that we know how to consume. As far back as the 1998 track “Semantics of Sermon,” you can hear him deride the music industry for asking him to take huge ideas and shove them into 3-minute tracks—comparable to scribbling on the limited space afforded by a postcard.

It comes as no surprise that this guy would also be making movies, in search of expression, with a sliding scope and scale for what lives inside his head. Kasher’s new feature film Who’s Watching is a stalker thriller about a weird little guy frustrated by the limitations of the form of movie-making, who also finds cold comfort performing in a rock band on the side.

You get it. You see it. Okay, cool.

Who’s Watching takes some delightfully creepy, meta turns. More importantly for a KC audience, the band Radkey co-stars in the movie as members of misogynist metalheads under the moniker of Toxic Cock Syndrome.

[You’ll remember last month’s issue of The Pitch featured a Radkey interview regarding their new album. We failed to have them defend the period wordplay fake sludge act on the silver screen, but when you catch this flick on VOD, I assure you that you’ll have a fantastic time, as they are eating with these roles.]

Tim Kasher & Radkey @ Rewind Video and Dive. // Photo by Brock Wilbur

After the credits rolled and the Q&A wrapped, Kasher moved the audience into Rewind—Screenland Theater’s subterranean, neon-lit arcade bar. To thank the audience for coming out, he tuned up an acoustic guitar and gave us a full-length set of famous Cursive tracks from across their discography. Just me, 30-ish people on couches, and one of my heroes. A very Kansas City night with a very Kansas City turn of events, which would be impossible to describe to my friends on the coasts. Not that they would understand how thrilled I was to see Tim Kasher and Isaiah Radkey screaming a Toxic Cock Syndrome song from six feet away.

Despite riffing on songs he’s performed since the early 2000s, Kasher noted that a few were arrangements getting tweaked for solo performance. Notably, and perhaps ironically, he closed with “Art is Hard”—pre-apologizing that it was only the latest attempt at making the song work without a full band.

My drive home was spent whirring on that last bit. A song that isn’t just burned into my brain, but encoded in my DNA, is still a work in progress for the guy who wrote it. The idea that nothing creative is truly ever finished continues to ring true, but I’m caught on the idea that stories themselves might constantly be seeping out—a creature seeking shape.

The Pitch has always prided itself for being a platform where stories get told. Especially the ones that would otherwise have never found their shape. It isn’t just the talented staff, freelancers, columnists, interns, designers, and editors in our orbit, but those readers who see a chance to trust us with their tales.

There’s been an influx of late in submissions to our KC Voices column, where community ‘Letter to the Editor’ musings get to share our signal. I like getting those. You seem to like reading them. In fact, if you’ve got anything you want us to hear about this life we share, hit me up at tips@thepitchkc.com and tell the city what you’ve kept inside for too long.

Art is hard, but if your story doesn’t fit on the back of a postcard, bring it our way.

Pitch in and we’ll make it through,