"But there was nothing about the little, low-rambling, more or less identical homes of Northumberland Estates to interest or to haunt, no chance of loot that would be any more than the ordinary, waking-world kind the cops hauled you in for taking; no small immunities, no possibilities for hidden life or otherworldly presence; no trees, secret routes, shortcuts, culverts, thickets that could be made hollow in the middle – everything in the place was right out in the open, everything could be seen at a glance; and behind it, under it, around the corners of its houses and down the safe, gentle curves of its streets, you came back, you kept coming back, to nothing; nothing but the cheerless earth."
Thomas Pynchon, "The Secret Integration"
This is Ian Mathers' Tumblr. I live in Canada. I've written about music and other things for Stylus, PopMatters, Resident Advisor, the Village Voice, and a few other places. Hi.
imathers@gmail.com
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
“I understood that the wolrd was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exisst. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly - as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. I create the whole universe, blink by blink - An ugly god pitifully dying in a tree!”
I really enjoyed this book.
Such a fantastic book. Blew me away in high school. I should read it again with more adult eyes.
I need to reread, but I’ve read it since high school and it held up fantastically. One of my favourite novels ever.
People get the wrong idea when they ask if Pink Floyd meant for Dark Side of the Moon to be synced with The Wizard of Oz. The mysterious thing is that they do sync— they sync inside your head. I have heard complaints about The Shining Forwards and Backwards experiment— for example, that it isn’t conclusive, because it doesn’t take into account the deleted hospital scene or the shorter cut shown internationally. But the most important aspect of superimposition isn’t author’s intention; it’s watching something familiar in a new way— or ways, seeing two points of view simultaneously and continuously. It’s a dance, beautiful and social.
Argentinean sculptor Adrián Villar Rojas creates enormous sculptural works that seem like remnants of a science fiction movie set, or bizarre moments from a surreal dream.
The awesome piece you see here is entitled My Family Dead (2009). Here a life-size blue whale, created by the artist, lies beached in the woods outside Ushuaia, Argentina. The stranded cetacean is pockmarked with tree stumps, which leaves the viewer wondering if it’s being slowly claimed by the forest or perhaps it’s a native resident. Beautiful and utterly awesome.
[via Colossal]
Talk Talk - “Ascension Day” (by ColourOfSpring)
So Spirit of Eden is one of my favourite albums of all time, and Talk Talk one of my absolute favourite bands* - and yet, Laughing Stock hadn’t quite cohered for me yet. I liked it, but I didn’t have a handle on it like I do with Spirit of Eden. I figured the same thing that happened with that album would happen with this one, and while listening to the band’s last two albums while editing something at work last Thursday, sure enough it did. I think it’s possible to respect and even love their later work before it starts to really grab you (for example, I definitely would have said I loved Laughing Stock before this week, but in retrospect it seemed way more forbidding and ‘difficult’ than it does now). But once it does grab you…
Like some great music, maybe most (I’m very way of ‘all’), it’s the kind of thing that makes you forget for a little bit that other types of music exist, or at least that they matter. I got Laughing Stock after I already had Spirit of Eden inside my heart, so it’s not surprising this one took a little longer. Now I just need to turn my attentions to Mark Hollis’ solo album again.
*(still need to track down the first album, but everything else is gold)
