Month: August 2024

There’s a definite sense that summer is coming to an end. It’s feeling cooler in the mornings and grey clouds and rain have dominated many of the days this week. Come to that late-summer point where I’m genuinely uncertain about which day of the week it is.

Doing (or should that be Done?)

Another “summer holiday” week. We spent time at the start of the week at the beach and visited the Turner Contemporary to see the Ed Clark exhibition (which was lovely). My car’s been out of action for over a month with engine failure and I finally got our local garage to fix it (something something ignition). Also have been doing a deep de-cluttering of the house.

Have been slowly working on my 40k combat patrol. Visited the Warhammer shop and picked up the Core Book as I’m going to learn how to play and take part in local games before next summer. While I was there someone was talking about how long they were taking to paint masses of miniatures – which made me feel even more of a slowcoach. But there’s no rush and I am going to get there.

Reading (fiction)

I finished The Blacktongue Thief which I enjoyed (though thought the ending was less epic than I expected) and I will read The Daughter’s War soon.

Still reading:

• Nicholas Nickleby (about 40% through)
• Gorky Park (about 20% through)

Reading (non-fiction)

Started reading Uniquely Human: A Different Way of Seeing Autism by Barry M. Prizant.

Reading (comics)

• 2000AD prog 9396 – A bumper issue with a couple of extra stories. I didn’t enjoy either: a cartoonish alien comedy called All Aboard the Nova Express and a slightly better Future Shock, Just Stop Evil which has a thinly-veiled environmental message. The rest of the issue – Dredd, Rogue Trooper, Brink, Herne & Shuck and Silver – is excellent.
• Saga #67 – bit late with this one. Definite sense that the comic is treading water for a while now.

Reading (online)

Should we think of our children as strangers? – Thoughtful New Yorker piece by Joshua Rothman about the relationship between parents and their children. Rothman examines differing approaches to the role of parenting (largely finding that it falls into two main camps: seeing children as property and children as separate individuals). He refers most approvingly of “Family Values: The Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships,” by philosopher Harry Brighouse and political theorist Adam Swift:

Good parents, therefore, insure that their children have “the cognitive skills and information needed for autonomy,” while restraining themselves from adding too much to “the emotional costs borne by their children should they decide to reject the parents’ views.” It’s all right to raise your children to be progressive or conservative, religious or secular, athletic or bookish. But it’s wrong to make it too hard for them to renounce your way of life. “For parents to raise their children successfully they must establish themselves as loving authorities,” the authors write. A loving authority isn’t an ultimate one.

“The basic point is simple,” they write. “Children are separate people, with their own lives to lead, and the right to make, and act on, their own judgments about how they are to live those lives. They are not the property of their parents.”

What Lasts and (Mostly) Doesn’t Last – absolutely fascinating consideration by Lincoln Michel why certain acclaimed literature from the past continues to be read or, as is more likely, forgotten:

I think what lasts is almost always what has a dedicated following among one or more of the following: artists, geeks, academics, critics, and editors. “Gatekeepers” of various types, if you like. Artists play the most important role in what art endures because artists are the ones making new art. Indirectly, they popularize styles and genres and make new fans seek out older influences. Directly, artists tend to tout their influences and encourage their fans to explore them. In literature that takes the form of essays, introductions to reissues, and so forth. In music, it might be something like cover albums as in the way Nirvana’s Unplugged introduced a new generation to older bands and musicians. Academics is pretty obvious. The older books with the best sales are mostly ones that appear on syllabi. And geeks and critics are the ones who extensively explore a genre or category’s history and proselytize their favorites. Editors are the ones who actually chose the older books to republish and can champion obscure books back into the public eye.

And:

Still, if you want to predict what will last I think you should look to what has partisans among dedicated readers—scholars, critics, genre nerds, etc.—rather than what merely sells well with casual readers. Specialists not popularists. And then what work seems influential among younger artists, such as work that seems foundational in a certain style or subgenre. That’s might get you in the ballpark, even if you will strike out more with most swings.

And:

Another way for a work to endure is through the randomness of popularity in another medium. Many books last simply because a film or TV adaptation is popular, although often the books are simply eclipsed.

And considers that “super franchises” like James Bond and Harry Potter might last indefinitely. What I find compelling about Michel’s argument is that literary quality isn’t really what causes books to last (though, to be fair, Michel does say “I would like to think that quality helps determine what lasts yet it is obviously more than that.”).

Viewing:

• Started Season 1 of Dark. I’d seen this in a “top 20 tv shows since 2000” list. Three episodes in and it’s starting to drag. Not sure that I’ll manage to watch much more unless it picks up. Neither plot or characters engage me much.

Listening (music):

• The Rituals of Hildegard Reimagined – Laura Cannell. Found this unsettling (and probably wasn’t in the right frame of mind when I listened).
• Jefferson Airplane Takes Off and Collector’s Item – Jefferson Airplane and The Great Society. The Great Society is another band I hadn’t heard of until this week. I had no idea that Grace Slick wasn’t the original singer and that the most well-known Jefferson Airplane songs were actually written and first performed by her band, The Great Society.
• Real Life – Magazine. I’m giving Magazine a careful listen at the moment. I’m surprised how many songs I recognise.

Listening (podcasts):

• The Department of Midnight – first episod of a short SF drama by Warren Ellis.
• Word in Your Ear – interview with Melody Maker journalist, Chris Charlesworth. Stories about his encounters with rock stars in the 1970s.
• This is Hell! – interview wth economist Rob Larson about obscene wealth of billionaires.

This is the first of my attempt at maintaining a weekly “weeknotes” used to intentionally review and reflect on the last seven days. I know that the format of this weeknotes isn’t quite right and will undoubtedly undergo changes. I’ve enjoyed reading the weeknotes and, after some recent posts by bloggers talking about why they produce them, I’m now convinced it is something I’d find worthwhile. My plan is to publish weeknotes on a Sunday night.

Doing

Summer holidays with children are a difficult balancing act of doing things (often dragging the kids out to places they don’t really want to go) and doing stuff at home. This week has been one of trying to encourage the boys to do longer walks or hang out at home (which they’re more than happy to do). There’s always the guilt of not doing enough with them as well as keeping an eye on the costs. I’m looking for a job at the moment so money is tight which only adds to the guilt of not doing enough. Aside from that, I am writing a little, deliberately listening to new music and started painting my Warhammer combat patrol with the longer-term intention of properly playing 40k as a hobby. Summer holidays also means I get little time on my own which I need for thinking in any sense of creative or connected way.

Alice and I are both more or less over the (suspiciously Covid-like) illness that laid us low last week. I’m still unusually exhausted in the evenings but feeling much humaner.

Intentionality. Somewhere during the first half of the year, I lost the focus I wanted to keep on intentionality (a post by Warren Ellis at the start of the year) helped to crystalise my thinking about being more intentional). I’ve been keeping a form of log or journal in Obsidian for a couple of years as daily notes. One of the things that it does is physically show when I’m being more intentional and personally productive. From about June onwards my daily notes became almost non-existent which coincided with a new short-lived job and, looking back over that time, I realise that my intentionality had been knocked aside by the job. So, I’ve deliberately started to keep a handwritten log of what I’m doing, reading, feeling as an attempt to reassert some sense of intentionality. I’m hoping that it’ll overcome the dreadful feeling I have in the evenings that I’ve just wasted the day doing… what?

On Saturday my Synology NAS sent me an email that it was overheating (aside from the strangeness of a machine sending a “help me!” email). This led to a hours of taking the NAS to pieces and cleaning out the dust and then to backing up data. I’ve been gradually withdrawing my data from the domains of the tech behemoths which means I have to self-host and self-maintain everything. Making sure that I keep multiple back-ups of everything is a chore but I know from hard experience what happens if you aren’t rigorous enough. Trying to maintain backups without buying ever-bigger storage drives also means that I have to be intentional about what data (and versions of the data) I actually keep. That’s probably a good thing.

Reading (fiction)

Still reading:

• The Blacktongue Thief (70%)
• Nicholas Nickleby (30%)

Started:

• Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith.

Reading (comics)

Feel like I’m in the doldrums with comic-reading. I’m just not feeling into them at the moment and hoping it’s one of those cyclical swings.

• The Power Fantasy #1. As with all Gillen’s comics, I’m hooked from the start.
• Uncanny X-Men #1. Not sure that I’m as invested in this post-Krakoa reboot.
• X-Men #2. Better than the first issue.
• 2000AD prog 9395. Excellent. I’m enjoying 2000AD at the moment. I’m a little on the fence about Silver, the new (futuristic vampire?) story but the art has an interesting Mobius-like style.

Reading (online)

Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker magazine, Should We Abolish Prisons? Gopknik writes about incaceration in the US being greater than in the gulags during Stalinism and the abolitionist movement that has developed in contrast to prison reform. We’re having similar debates in the UK – though not on the scale of the US – and shifting resources from keeping people locked up towards community support and rehabilitation seems much more sensible.

Jay Springett on how to read a lot of books – Neat explanation about how to read a lot. You just have to read. Springett sees it as prioritising reading over other activities. It’s intentionality that’s the key:

30 pages is about half an hour of reading. You can find the time if you want? A TV show is about 40mins? (I have no idea). So reading 50 books a year is one less TV show a day or 1/3 less movies over the whole year. The thing I hate about social media apps and the attention sucking design UI they have – particularly short form video – is that they suck my attention away on things that aren’t a priority – I resent it. But if you actively choose to spend time watching TikTok, or choose to watch films, or don’t read because you are doing something else that you have actively chosen to do. Then I don’t don’t feel bad about not reading. It’s a question of priorities.

The Coming of the Unconscious: JG Ballard’s Guide To Surrealism In Science Fiction – Account by Paul Sorene of an article by J.G. Ballard in issue 164 of New Worlds magazine (1966) where the author writes about the surrealist paintings that influenced him. Ballard: “What uniquely characterises this fusion of the outer world of reality and the inner world of the psyche (which I have termed “inner space”) is its redemptive and therapeutic power. To move through these landscapes is a journey of return to one’s innermost being.” The piece then presents a series of works of surrealist art and the corresponding commentary by Ballard. Ballard:

The techniques of surrealism have a particular relevance at this moment, when the fictional elements in the world around us are multiplying to the point where it is almost impossible to distinguish between the “real” and the “false” — the terms no longer have any meaning. The faces of public figures are projected at us as if out of some endless global pantomime, they and the events in the world at large have the conviction and reality of those depicted on giant advertisement hoardings. The task of the arts seems more and more to be that of isolating the few elements of reality from this melange of fictions, not some metaphorical “reality,” but simply the basic elements of cognition and posture that are the jigs and props of our consciousness.

Viewed

• Finished Season 2 of From. American horror show where people are trapped in a strange town where monsters come out after dark. Most of the character relationship stuff is pretty meh – but when the show engages with the weirdness, it’s gripping. The third season is airs in September.
• Still watching the Time Bandits tv show. As enjoyable as it is, the show suffers from not engaging with the surreal, anarchic elements of Terry Gilliam’s 1981 move. It’s much too tame and erratic (though not in an interesting way). Must re-watch the original.
• Watched the penultimate episode of the Evil tv show. It’s turned into a very odd – though thoroughly enjoyable – supernatural series. Maybe the reason it’s not going to get another season is because it would be hard for anyone new to get to grips with what on earth is happening. The character of the demon-fighting Sister Andrea has stolen the show.

• Watched Maya Deren’s short 1943 movie, The Meshes of the Afternoon (twice!). Hypnotic and disturbing. Very modern.
• Watchmen Part I animated adaptation. It’s faithful to the comics (so far) and there’s an atmospheric Vangelis-like noir soundtrack. But I’m not sure what the point of it is. Surely, you’d read the original comics if you were coming to it fresh. Or watch the live-action Snyder version (which I like a great deal EXCEPT for the unnecessary change at the end). What does work very well in this animated version is the way in which the Tales of the Black Freighter comic is integrated into the main narrative.

Listened (Music)

• Speak Thou Vast and Venerable Head – Loula Yorke. Smaller that Yorke’s earlier release this year, Volta and gives primacy to field recordings over synthesisers. I really like the way that Yorke writes in detail about how and why she works: notes on Spek Thou Vast and Venerable Head.
• Surrealistic Pillow – Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 second album and first featuring Grace Slick.

Listened (Podcasts)

• The Wind Theved Hat – episode 33 with John Higgs. Interesting to hear Higgs’ talking about his writing career.
• Tin Foil Hat – episode 805 with Chris Knowles. Knowles explains his interpretation of the symbolism of the Olympics opening and closing ceremonies. Knowles is always very thought-provoking.
• William Ramsey Investigates – 2020 interview with Larry O’Hara about the British far-right and their involvement in terrorism. All gets very occultish at the end. Considering recent events in the UK, it made me realise that the broad label “far-right” is actually a number of small pretty much neo-nazi groups with some vile and peculiar beliefs.