Recent events have conspired against me occupying the Space Jockey's chair for a while. They have ranged from the trauma of exposure to Tom Clancy- type masculine object relations (I plan to write this up on Acheron) to more positive personal stuff I won't talk about here yet, to hopefully getting an update this coming Wednesday on the publishability (or not) of my article on English nationalism and the Barmy Army (fingers crossed). Yep, my fascination (love/hate) for the United Kingdom continues unabated!! Having trouble processing the emotional relationships between all this stuff, have tried using music, particularly Mark Hollis, Marc Almond and Gary Numan's The Pleasure Principle. An eclectic assemblage to be sure, but it seems to be working. I never doubt the healing power of music during a personal crisis, especially anything from the Golden Era, personified by the aforementioned artists. Afterall, this was the music I grew up with, and continue to grow with.
What is unbeatable to me is hybridisation before forms have crystallised into new orthodoxies. For example, who the fuck wants to politely listen to John Cage, who is only an avant garde formalism, when you could be hearing The Human League's Reproduction? The sheer wonder of experimentation, importing underground electronic forms into a pop song. Likewise, I still feel that "United" is Throbbing Gristle's best work....BTW, I appreciate Simon Reynolds writing Rip It Up & Start Again, but does anyone know if he's ever written anything about Talk Talk/Mark Hollis? I think he has an archive site so I must remember to follow this up.
Anyhow, I'm starting to ramble incoherently (again). But this howl into the void is therapeutic to me....One of the more noteworthy items I've come across in recent times though is The Liberator. I hesitate here regarding the appropriateness of the metaphors I've used thus far, hybridisation, in that context. Others such as creolisation come to mind, and have received theorisation from, if memory serves correctly, the likes of Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall. I stand by the inclusiveness of the "experimental"tag though. Witness the range of film and music coverage, in combination with the shrewd social analysis:
Briefly, in other news, a prediction. Haven't checked out ballardian.com for a while, but what are the chances that, given its interest in micronations, this might lead to a turn towards a new journal, Island Studies?:
Meanwhile, The Guardian is generally good value, but this piece on why philosophy grads are coming into vogue in the employment market really took me surprise. Could it be a confirmation of the complexity and contingency marking the social sciences, that this is coming about during an increasingly bioglobal, neoliberal era? As markers of certainty start to disappear, bioethicists start to sit at the same table as economists.........:
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