.jpg)
15 Miles into the Earth (1944) by Hendrik Wijdeveld.
• “He realized that there were individuals around him who had never appeared in the great altarpieces and frescoes, individuals who had been marginalized by the cultural ideology of the previous two centuries. And there were hours of the day—transient, yet unequivocal in their lighting—which had never been reproduced, and which were pushed so far from habit and use that they had become scandalous, and therefore repressed.” Pasolini on Caravaggio.
• “Reading Albert Camus and Mikhail Bulgakov by day, by night, crucially, they were listening to Chic, Kraftwerk, Donna Summer, Michael Rother and Grace Jones in the clubs.” Graeme Thomson on the atmosphere and influences that helped create my favourite album by Simple Minds, Empires And Dance. Borges was also a minor influence, apparently, which wasn’t something I knew until this week. I like it when your favourite things join up this way.
• “This being England, a ‘tea shop’ is not a shop that sells tea. That would be a tea merchant. A tea shop serves tea.” Mark Valentine on the perennial connections between rambling and tea-drinking.
Talking about generations as if they really existed and had sway over people is much more respectable and widespread than the belief that events and personalities are governed by the movements of the planets. But is there really much more substance and reality to “generations”? If not “a bunch of bullshit”, the discourse of generations is certainly generative of bullshit: tenuously grounded overviews and opinion pieces, specious analysis and analogies, platitudes and truisms. And yet, like astrology, it is a fun game to play along with. And far more than astrology, it’s a mode of talk that partially constitutes its object: generalizing about a generation actually brings it into semi-existence, shaping how people perceive themselves and how they are perceived by earlier or later generations. What may just be an illusion, a shaky set of alleged affinities, becomes a social fact.
Simon Reynolds analyses the generation game
• More Milton Glaser: PDFs of the Glaser Gazette, a memorial publication in three parts: Vol 1 | Vol 2 | Vol 3
• New music: Tractatus Lyra-Organismus by Lyonel Bauchet, and Grounded Rectangle by Ambidextrous.
• “A digital archive of graphic design related items that are available on the Internet Archives.”
• DJ Food found a handful of psychedelic posters by Nicole Claveloux.
• “Rights to Jorge Luis Borges’s work go to his wife’s nephews.”
• “Is this the earliest known phallic art?”
• Young Generation Dub (1976) by Augustus Pablo | Chile Of The Bass Generation (1990) by Mental Cube | Invisible Generation (1992) by Cabaret Voltaire
Kodama’s reign of terror persists from beyond the grave. Do you think her nephews have any literary consciousness or will they spend the next decades squabbling over the cash cow? I had rather the entire estate been turned over to Argentina.
Yeah, I don’t know where this will lead. They could be the stereotypical greedy relatives or not. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.
Agree re Simple Minds – started with Reel to Reel Cacophony, loved Empires and Dance, adored Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call (soundtrack to teen Inter-railing) and New Gold Dream. Enjoyed the article, was good to read in such detail about that album. Tried hard not to feel too nostalgic about my increasingly distant past.
“Soto said he was “surprised to find out she had nephews”, adding that “it was a big relief, because I didn’t want the state to keep everything”.” Unbelievable. Kodama did enough damage and now this.