ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a story that begins in the back room of a Chicago skate shop in the summer of 2014. It focuses on ethnographic research conducted in Oklahoma City’s do-it-yourself punk scene to examine the relationship between the scene’s sonic aesthetics and the affective experience of living in the American Bible Belt. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s adoption of the term from Spinoza, Brian Massumi calls affects ‘virtual synaesthetic perspectives anchored in the actually existing, particular things that embody them’. Subtly interweaving material and historical processes, affects, and creative expression, Williams’ concept functions as a powerful theoretical tool for trying to identify the proverbial something in the water without resorting to linear causal relations. One of the best examples of the utopian affect of Freak City was Cherry Death, the psychedelic quasi-supergroup led by Tim and featuring a rotating cast of musicians from in and around the city’s scene, including Nora and Taylor.
