"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.
We paid you to deliver a certain number of episodes for a certain budget in a certain number of days. Nowhere in your contract does it say the show has to be good. If you believe it has to be good, then that’s on you. You can’t get mad at us for getting in your way.
A Shot of Jamieson, Episode 5 - Ian Mathers (imathers)
Episode 5! It’s Soundcloud time!
My guest tonight is Ian Mathers, a wonderfully friendly man about Tumblr whose work can be found on (sadly defunct) Stylus Magazine, the Village Voice, Resident Advisor, and PopMatters. He contributed two great essays to PopMatters’ recent massive Joss Whedon tome, titled Joss Whedon: The Complete Companion. It’s too bad we couldn’t record this podcast over platters of naan and curry at Kismet in Waterloo, but we did our best over my shoddy wi-fi connection.
Speaking of that shoddy wi-fi, I have two exciting technical announcements! The first involves my move to a wired connection - I finally spun my room around and plugged in, meaning the shows should have much better audio quality. Secondly, I don’t have to worry about cutting my guests off in the middle of a point anymore, because I’ve moved the shows to SoundCloud! They’ll be available for streaming there and for download as MP3 files from now on. I can only host two hours of audio free, but when I need to remove an older show I’ll update the Tumblr post with a link to a public Dropbox folder where they can be downloaded. (Well, that’s the tentative plan.) I have another show (and honestly, it’s awesome) on the crappy wi-fi queued up for Saturday, but after that all guests will be speaking to me on a sweet, sweet wired connection.
On that note, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or want to appear on an episode, please get at me somehow: Twitter, Tumblr, email, whatever. I really want to hear from you. I’ll be sending out an email for another round of guests soon, and I want to include YOU - yes, you! So drop me a line and we can start planning something.
Thanks everyone! Have a great night!
(And yep, that’s the album artwork until I find/make something better, which is unlikely.)
So yeah, Jamieson and I talked for a while last night. It was a lot of fun, and hopefully it’s as enjoyable as the other episodes of his excellent series.
Every time I remember the ninety-first fragment of Heraclitus, “You shall not go down twice to the same river,” I admire its dialectical dexterity, because the ease with which we accept the first meaning (“The river is different”) clandestinely imposes on us the second (“I am different”) and grants us the illusion of having invented it.
Jorge Luis Borges, “A New Refutation of Time”
