About Me

I’m Jaime Brooks. I’m in a band called Elite Gymnastics and have also released music under the name Default Genders. I write a column for The New Inquiry about the music industry called “Streaming Services.” I also write this newsletter now.

I took the name “The Seat of Loss” from some X-Men comics. There’s this mutant governing body 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. Each one has particular, unique responsibilities. Three of the seats are tasked with leading the nation in times of peace, and another three are tasked with leading the nation in times of war. The Seat of Loss is one of the latter seats.

When the war is going well, Arakko’s armies are commanded by whoever sits in Seat of Victory. The Seat of Stalemate takes control when it isn’t clear which side is winning. Leadership falls to the Seat of Loss only when hope is gone and defeat is certain. Whoever occupies it spends all their time planning for situations that others find too awful to contemplate, hoping their bleak expertise is never needed. That I would name my newsletter after such a thing probably reveals something about me, but it’s also kind of my duty as a cool musician to incorporate concepts from the world of superhero comics into my practice. This is a tradition that goes back all the way to Elvis’ fixation on Captain Marvel, Jr. and continued on through Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” the image of Galactus on the cover of Can’s Monster Movie album, and MF Doom’s mask.