It’s that lethal book again. A sample of wallpaper impregnated with arsenic, one of many such pages in Shadows from the Walls of Death: Facts and Inferences Prefacing a Book of Specimens of Arsenical Wall Papers (1874) by RC Kedzie.
• “I like to spend time in the now because there I can create something new but in the past I cannot.” Damo Suzuki, former vocalist in Can, on creativity and his resilience in the face of long-term illness. Related: a trailer for Energy: A Documentary about Damo Suzuki.
• “I enjoy Carnival of Souls, but it is a dark form of enjoyment, with high stakes, because the enjoyment is predicated on me being able to shake myself free of the film after it is over, and that can be a struggle.” Colin Fleming on fear as entertainment.
• “Some people like fantasy epics or Regency romance or Sudoku or science-fiction world-building or the gentle challenge of cozy mysteries; I like the undead.” Sadie Stein on encounters with ghosts.
• “You’re now standing on the blocks of the Great Pyramid at Giza. For the first time ever you can explore the entire pyramid interior.” The Giza Project.
• “What do we think about when we watch films set in vanished decades that many of us experienced at first hand?” asks Anne Billson.
• At Bandcamp: Touch celebrates forty years of not being a record label.
• “Why scientists are sending radio signals to the Moon and Jupiter.”
• At DJ Food’s: Retinal Circus gig posters 1966–68.
• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Feneon.
• The Pyramid Spell (1978) by Nik Turner | I Am Damo Suzuki (1985) by The Fall | Carnival Of Souls Goes To Rio (2001) by Pram
I know I am not the only one utterly wearied of 1980s-inspired media, or, indeed, anything that panders to nostalgia. Of course, it is easy for me to say this, as I was not alive in the 80s, and it makes me wonder if there is any difference between nostalgia for an era within living memory and nostalgia for an even older time (i.e., like Lovecraft’s love for the eighteenth century, and Aickman’s devotion to Edwardian England). Nine years ago, I was, like M.R. James, fascinated by the Victorian period, and held rather abhorrent (but also partly in jest) classist views that I am ashamed of now, but I am now of the opinion that no era of mankind is worth living in. One reason why the 1980-set adaptation of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN works is because the period is not the focus, and, outside some certain details, one would be forgiven for thinking it was set in 2007. Now, occasionally, I do experience nostalgia, especially for the mid-late 2000s, but I experienced that time through young eyes, and, in truth, was not a truly remarkable period for human living. Then again, in ten years’ time, we will see a wave of nostalgia for the 1990s, then the 2000s, followed by the 2010s, and, if we are still around, the masked 20s. The human drama runs in a circle!
Yes, nostalgia is an odd thing, and comes in different forms, from nostalgia for the time when you were young to nostalgia for a period you never lived in. In the late 1960s and early 70s there was a lot of nostalgia for the Roaring Twenties, at the same time as there being nostalgia for the 1950s, ie: the time when the Baby Boomers were in their teens. I always find it suspect, however it manifests, there’s usually a suggestion somewhere that “things were better then”.