Exploring 2,000 feet below the sea’s surface is something only professionals—or billionaires—are able to do. However, the writer Matthew Gavin Frank found Karl Stanley, an eccentric submariner, to take him to the depths in a DIY sub off the coast of Honduras. Frank dived to the bottom of the sea against his own anxieties and explored not only bioluminescence and sharks, but also the sublimity of being “completely quieted” as a writer.
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“Submersion Journalism,” Matthew Gavin Frank’s essay in the July issue of Harper’s
Alberto Río’s poem, “Some Extensions on the Sovereignty of Science”
Leslie Jamison’s Make It Scream, Make It Burn
[4:30] Karl being a renegade, likes the lack of regulations of a place like Honduras
[11:20] Despite its danger, it’s also the only way to reach the “unattainable”
[18:28] The “largeness and mystery” of writing can calm his anxieties
[23:50] “Art for me is the product of obsession, I don’t know how to do it without it.”
[25:06] “I felt if not invisible then just gone. Like completely quieted.”
[36:15] Despite almost “calling the whole thing off,” he went through with it
[40:10] On Aristotle, the first marine biologist
[41:55] The thin line between mythology and domination
[52:15] “I think about it every day, if not all the time”
The DIY Submariner