Simon Sellars on pandemic paranoia, self-eradication, and a taxonomy of writers: Propped inside the plague’s dimensions, Twitter is a sinkhole. Nothing escapes. Under isolation pressure, the mirror is polished and archetypes revealed. Older writers with ailing, vulnerable bodies set fire to their life’s work in the service of staring at death. Younger writers lament their…
Where Am I, and How Can I Leave?
FIRE WALK WITH ME, deleted scenes
Pandemic Inventory
Seems like a lot of people are taking inventory of their pandemic experiences, so I will too. (As someone on Twitter recently joked, citing Garrison Keillor: Nothing happened to me, and now I’m going to tell you about it.) Like millions of others, I spend a lot of time alone these days. Don’t my lonely…
Perpendicular to Eternity
“Now is perpendicular to eternity” — Ken Nordine — тцпдяапацт (@tundranaut) February 9, 2015 This is what they whispered to me in the quiet desert air…
“Lying to yourself about who you are is no less evil than lying to a friend about something important.”
An intellectual does not become unproductive because of some mysterious ailment called “writer’s block.” An unproductive intellectual is an intellectual lost in Evil. Many people think “writer’s block” is a real phenomenon and Evil is only a mystical superstition. In fact, “writer’s block” is the superstition, and Evil the real phenomenon. To escape the sin…
“You were my best friend outside of Paris in 1918. You were wounded in the Ardennes and you died in my arms there. I’m glad you’re back in the world. You have a different face, a different name, but the soul shining out of your face is the same as my friend. Welcome back.”
The best ending to any writer’s interview ever? Paris Review asks Ray Bradbury about the origins of a character named Mr Electrico. His answer starts in our world, opens a trapdoor in the fabric of reality itself, and surges into an elemental realm of cosmic myth. Genuine magic pic.twitter.com/ZKXJan44qQ — Colin Walsh (@Clnwlsh) April 15,…
“A luxury cruiseliner quarantined in San Francisco bay, its well-heeled passengers confined to their cabins for weeks on end. Holidaymakers on lockdown at a quarantined hotel in Tenerife after an Italian doctor comes down with coronavirus. A world of isolated individuals rarely leaving their homes, keeping a wary distance from one another in public, communicating with their friends and loved ones via exclusively technological means. These situations are so Ballardian as to be in the realm of copyright infringement.”
“Twenty-first century life was already Ballardian. The rapid transition, under the new viral order, into further extremes of technological alienation has only made it more so.” https://t.co/IDnD49NXWA — тцпдяапацт (@tundranaut) April 1, 2020 SOURCE: Mark O’Connell, New Statesman
Hiding Songs
Nick Cave on Leonard Cohen and “hiding songs”: …not only are these songs sacred, they are ‘hiding songs’ that deal exclusively in darkness, obfuscation, concealment and secrecy…the purpose of these songs was to shut off the sun, to draw a long shadow down and protect…from the corrosive glare of the world.
STEREOSCOPIC URBANISM
‘In Ballard, trends (and flaws) in architectural design are pursued to their logical extremes…the unspoken tension and psychopathology engendered by such scenarios is recycled, reheated and allowed free rein to play itself out to the bitterest of ends.’https://t.co/IbcFM5dpfU — тцпдяапацт (@tundranaut) March 20, 2020 SOURCE: Ballardian.com: “In a sense, Ballard’s work is about nothing but…
“I’m gonna buy me a house up in the hills with a tear-shaped pool and a gun that kills.”
corona time capsule pic.twitter.com/IBiABBCK05 — тцпдяапацт (@tundranaut) March 17, 2020 pertinent ephemera from Daniel Kalder’s latest newsletter + recommended listening for an apocalypse #IannisXenakis https://t.co/huqMytX1lm pic.twitter.com/2K0nJl6AiK — тцпдяапацт (@tundranaut) March 15, 2020 As a former threat analyst, if you live in Seattle, SF, LA, or any other major city, you should be prepared for looting,…