I’m just getting stuck into Roy Christopher’s delectable book of media, culture and science interviews, Follow For Now (review pending).
The most exciting thing so far is discovering a word, and perhaps a playful vocation. Howard Bloom, former manager of (among others) Prince and Michael Jackson, and author of the outsider science classics The Lucifer Principle (1995) and Global Brain (2000), has coined a term for the discipline-beyond-disciplines: omnology.
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I rented the documentary DIG! on the strength of it being something about The Dandy Warhols. The Dandys really didn’t make a good first impression back when I surfed into the insufferable video for ‘Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth’. I already thought their name was a bit naff; this video seemed to show them as self-conscious posers with catchy riffs. When their Stones pastiche ‘Bohemian Like You’ came to me via a mobile phone advert, their reputation in my world seemed sealed – down in the depths with the toxic waste.
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From Carl Abrahamsson, musician with White Stains and Cotton Ferox, news of an upcoming exhibition of his photos documenting the Folsom Street Fair of fetishism and sexual flamboyance in San Francisco. The exhibition is at the Museum of Porn In Art in Zurich, and is from 20th April to 17th May 2007. Click on the above flyer for a larger version.
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I’ve just finished reading Andy Letcher’s recent “cultural history of the magic mushroom”, Shroom. It’s a valuable book, despite some general (and quite deep) reservations I have about it if it’s taken as anything like a self-contained “definitive” survey. To a large extent it’s a timely, tactical piece, aiming to shake of some hoary countercultural and academic myths, and establish modern Western mushroom use on a more demonstrably justifiable basis than any of the questionable “foundational myths” of mushrooms in history and prehistory. It loses some very valuable perspective along the way… but more of that in my review.
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Fresh from Jason Louv, editor of Generation Hex, “the most volatile and direct magickal writing currently available in the English language.” Contributors include Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Brion Gysin, Peter-R. Koenig, Ganesh Baba, Mordant Carnival, Joel Biroco & more. Check it out.
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I’m just back from my first visit to the Cube Microplex Cinema here in Bristol. It’s criminal that it’s taken me so long to visit – it’s a great little venue, with warmth and atmosphere. As it was, I couldn’t have chosen a better personal premiere.
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I just had an enquiry about doing an interview on the C-Realm Podcast site. A current wave of research – my enthusiasm for the ideas finding each other before me and transforming as I simmer them – overcame my initial trepidation about doing a spoken interview.
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I’ve finally got round to reading Graham Hancock’s nearly 2 year old tome, Supernatural, and I’ve written a review. I think Heaven’s Mirror is the only Hancock book I’ve previously read, which I found to be fascinating. But the whole “lost civilizations” thing has never wholly done it for me, and Hancock’s name remained as something indicating the more interesting end of a mainstream, often tedious genre.
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After Adam Curtis’ flawed but essential BBC 4 documentary on the neo-cons and Islamic fundamentalists, The Power of Nightmares, I was excited to learn he’d taken a similar approach to tackle the relationships between psychoanalysis, advertising and politics in The Century of the Self. I missed it on TV, but just got round to it on Google Video. I heartily recommend it to everyone:
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I’m just rummaging through my dream journals, collating certain themes and seeing how they’ve built up over the years. I must say, having over a decade’s dreams typed up and searchable is an amazing personal resource!
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