A 400-year-old book warns against taking cake from witches and drinking moat water to avoid melancholy.
This short promotional episode centers on the return of the Here Be Monsters Art Exchange for 2022. Host Jeff Emtman explains the simple concept: listeners who make art of any kind sign up through a form at hbmpodcast.com, get matched with another participant, and exchange original works through the mail. The exchange ran previously in 2019, and Devon Sherman, a past participant, reached out asking if it would happen again, offering to handle the administrative work that had previously been too daunting for Jeff to manage alone.
Jeff and Devon record their conversation in a park. Devon describes the Art Exchange as open to anyone who makes things, whether drawings, paintings, sculptures, books, digital art, sound art, or film. Participants will be matched in mid-November, work on their pieces through January, and mail them in early 2023.
The conversation shifts to Devon's personal art project: illustrating Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, a roughly 1,500-page book published in the 17th century. Devon describes it as part medical text, part philosophy, part humor, covering depression, grief, heartbreak, and general sadness about the state of the world. She notes the book contains references to werewolves, witches, and vampires, along with advice like not taking cake from witches and not drinking moat water. Burton's central conclusion, Devon says, is be not solitary, be not idle.
Devon has accepted that at her current pace of two to three illustrations per page, the project will never be finished in her lifetime. She frames it as a perpetual work in progress meant to bring the largely forgotten book back to life.
The episode closes with Jeff sharing a song submitted by listener Robbie Quine called Glitter Rock Werewolf, from the album Glitter Hole. Links to the Art Exchange sign-up, Devon's illustrations, and animator Endless Want's promotional video are provided in the show notes.
