About Me

Hi, I’m Jaime Brooks. My music projects are called Elite Gymnastics and Default Genders. I have written about music and the music industry for The New Inquiry, as well as a few other publications. This is my own independent thing.

“The Seat of Loss” is a reference to some X-Men comics I liked. At one point, Earth’s mutants terraformed Mars and renamed it “Arakko.” The mutant governing body on that planet was called the “Great Ring of Arakko,” which consists of twelve seats that are each kind of like a cabinet position in the executive branch of the U.S. government. Three of the seats are tasked with leading Arakko in times of peace, and another three are tasked with leading Arakko in times of war. There’s the Seat of Victory, which leads when the war is going well, the Seat of Stalemate, and the Seat of Loss. Whoever occupies the Seat of Loss spends all their time planning for situations that others find too awful to contemplate, hoping their expertise will never be needed.

I chose the name because it reflects something about my perspective, but also because I think it’s kind of my duty as a musician to name things after comic books. This is a proud and storied tradition that goes all the way back to Elvis Presley’s fixation on Captain Marvel Junior, Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” the image of Galactus on the cover of Can’s Monster Movie, and MF Doom’s Doctor Doom mask.