Archive for the ‘Links’ Category

Magick, Moore and more

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Posted 04 Aug 2011 — by Jonathan
Category Books, General, Links

A quick run-through of some of the things I’ve been reading over the last week or two;

First off, I’ve been reading – in the offline world – the latest installment in Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentleman comic series; Century 1969 is a fascinating, intoxicating romp through beatnik fashion, free love, occult experimentalism and the criminal underworld of ‘Performance’-era London (if you’ve not seen that, seek it out). It strikes me as a nice, centuries-out counterbalance to Damon Albarn’s Dr Dee, which has the same preoccupation with sex and magick, and which was conceived, incidentally, with assistance from Alan Moore. So far I’m reading Century 1969 as slowly as possible, with the pleasure of knowing there are a bunch more books in this series which I’ve not yet read.

Here’s the always engaging Moore in conversation with The Guardian, and here, with Wired.

Elsewhere, staying with comics, this is worth a look, I think – “The creation of a polite word always signifies a major fucking.” – a fascinating comic recommendation from @peteashton, who is consistently reliable on this stuff. The book is Kyle Baker’s Why I Hate Saturn, and the post was inspired by his frustration with collective terms for groups of people.

And staying with Pete, he’s always worth reading on blogging and social media, and this post is very thought-provoking for those of us earnestly and fruitlessly carving our time between a multitude of social platforms (in my case, Twitter, obsessively, Google+, enthusiastically, WordPress, neglectfully, and Facebook, resentfully). He’s rightly wanting to seek control of all the various bits of content he’s slicing and dicing, and has started a new blog which will serve as the control centre for all his activity. The blog is called FYPA.net and started out as a reference to the fact that 95% – as any fool knows – of everything is shit. FYPA is a kind of bastardisation of FivePer, the 5% left which is worth reading. It also stands, of course, for Fuck Yeah Pete Ashton. Bookmark it and use often.

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Things to share, June 1 2011

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Posted 01 Jun 2011 — by Jonathan
Category Links

Regular readers of Assistant Blog might know that I tweet a fair bit, too, under the username @jonathas; I’ve just added a link to the sidebar over there (—->) which makes following me nice and easy. For those who don’t follow, and probably have no interest in following, here’s a potted guide to the various bits and bobs I’ve been flagging up on twitter recently.

A couple of nature related things worth reading; first off, this is really lovely – over at the Springwatch blog, Chris Watson, a BBC sound recordist has written a lovely account of his recording of the dawn chorus. What a truly lovely job he has. Here’s the entry; short extract below:

0401h A robin is the first bird to sing near the mics and others answer quickly. This burst of songs seems to awaken a song thrush into replying, its two note repeating phrases are a register lower than the robins. The chorus has begun to take shape. Within a few minutes it’s becoming difficult to indentify individuals as the accumulating notes melt and merge.

On a similarly rustic note, Nina Walsh is chronicling the upkeep of her alottment over at Caught By The River, and here she unveils a nice recipe for Nettle Soup. I’m really quite curious to try this. She says:

“I can’t let the spring pass without including a recipe for nettle soup. Lurking in the shadier areas you can probably catch the last of the young, tender nettles before they begin to flower. Nettles are a great way to rid the body of toxins, not only do they cleanse the blood, restore the digestive system and are a powerful all round tonic but without them many butterfly species would have nowhere to lay their eggs. Nettles can be used in any recipe to replace spinach but my personal favourite is nettle soup.”

Next for your reading pleasure, Ian Leslie, over at his Marbury blog, pulls out an interesting excerpt from an interview with Brian Christian, who has written a book about what it means to be human in an age of technology and artificial intelligence. His comments on mobiles’ lag-time, and the consequences for conversation, are really interesting. Click here to read them.

Lastly, while we’re talking of mobiles, my friend Claire, who runs the lovely Get Dancey blog, has created this great Venn diagram, which shows what we really use our mobiles for… take a look.

That is all.

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Packing for Mars

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Posted 25 Aug 2010 — by Jonathan
Category Books, Links

This article, in Seed Magazine, is really amazing; an examination of “irrational antagonism”, the many tensions which interfere in the personal relationships between astronauts when isolated, out in space, together for anything more than about six weeks. It’s a terrifically well written piece, and gets at some unavoidable truths about humanity, isolation, and rootlessness.

“The bottom line is that space is a frustrating, unforgiving environment and you are trapped in it. If you’re trapped long enough, frustration metastasizes to anger. Anger wants an outlet and a victim. An astronaut has three from which to choose: a crewmate, mission control, and himself.”

The article is an extract from Mary Roach’s terrific looking book, Packing For Mars, a study of space exploration which is really an exploration of “what it means to be human”. Her writing is beautiful and her conclusions – if this extract is anything to go by – could well be profound. Even for those not looking for recondite insights, there is much to enjoy in her description of the Russian cosmonauts she spends time with.

Laveikin looks little changed from his official portrait, where he conveys an impression of guileless good cheer. He kisses our hands as though we’re royalty. It’s neither affectation nor flirtation, just something that Russian men of his era were taught to do. He wears beige linen pants, an exuberant splash of cologne, and the cream-colored summer footwear I’ve been seeing all week on the feet of the men across from me in the Metro.

Laveikin waves hello to a narrow-girdled, suntanned man in jeans, with sunglasses hooked in the vee of his shirt collar. It’s Romanenko. He is cordial, but not a hand kisser. Cigarette smoke has roughed up his vocal cords. The two embrace. I count the seconds. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three. Whatever happened between them, it’s forgotten or forgiven.

Someone needs to buy the movie rights to this book – as the likes of Solaris and Moon have demonstrated, there is much that can be said about humanity through the fiction of space. In Packing For Mars, Mary Loach seems to be composing a journalistic response no less elegant or thought-provoking. I’m pre-ordering a copy.

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On Basil Kirchin

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Posted 02 Jul 2010 — by Jonathan
Category Links, Music

Sometimes an artist being brilliant is not enough to raise his or her profile high enough for the average person to have the slightest chance of encountering their work. Thank heavens for record labels like Trunk, Finders Keepers and Disposable Music, which do an incredibly valuable service in tracking down and publicising some of this wonderful, undervalued art. And thank heavens for shows like Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone, which provide these labels a chance to show what they do. I discovered Trunk via Maconie, but I think it was actually some random browsing on Spotify which first exposed me to the work of Basil Kirchin, one of the UK’s most innovative and courageous avant-garde musicians.

Describing Kirchin is not easy; it rarely is with the artists that Jonny Trunk promotes. His music sits somewhere ambient experiments, esoteric library music, manipulated found sounds and free-jazz. It’s really really amazing (although not easy). Kirchin – who was born in 1927 – died five years ago, and Jonny has written a nice, short piece about him for the excellent Bearded Magazine. Here’s the link; below are some spotify links to his extraordinary output.

There’s something wonderful about the way his music shows an equal appreciation of the beauty of nature (there are repeated snatches of birdsong, sometimes manipulated, sometimes not) and the excitement of chaos. His music is challenging one moment, deeply restful the next. Amazing.

Basil Kirchin – Particles
Basil Kirchin – Charcoal Sketches
Basil Kirchin – Quantum

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working from home

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Posted 21 Jan 2010 — by Jonathan
Category Links

Read more of Siobhán’s ace comics here.

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the consolation of town planning

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Posted 17 Jan 2010 — by Jonathan
Category Books, General, Links

Sometimes a whimsical observation you read stays with you for days; this was the case with one of Wendy’s recent posts over at her Wendy House blog. It was only a light-hearted quip on her part, but it struck me as the kind of playful, sudden thought that shouldn’t be mistaken for a hackneyed one. I’ve heard the phrase ‘relief road’ a million times, but somehow never quite noticed it’s charming quality. Wendy writes:

Here in the UK we have roads who’s whole purpose is to provide relief, relief Roads.

The pleasingly named Rose Kiln Lane is a Berkshire relief road. Roads that provide relief. A very pleasing idea.

Having a stressful day at work? Then visit Rose Kiln Lane to find relief.

Nothing more to it than that. But the phrase has stayed with me. If only the government really did build infrastructure designed solely to console.

Incidentally, I just bought Anna Minton’s ‘Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty First Century City’, which I think will be an interesting read, and I hope to blog about it in the future. The Guardian review of the book, which alerted me to its existence, begins:

The important thing about a castle is not that it is comfortable, but that it is secure, which makes the Englishman’s proverbial urge to live in one rather bleak. Against whom are we fortifying our homes, if not one another? We pretend that our property obsession is a lifestyle choice, but it could just be misanthropy: worshipping the private retreat out of distaste for being in public. If so, the problem stems from bad policy as much as national character. The British approach to managing urban space is utterly wrong, according to Anna Minton in Ground Control. Successive governments have conspired, Minton argues, to create environments that make people suspicious of one another. That makes them miserable. We are one of the saddest, loneliest peoples of Europe.

Sounds like it might be fascinating.

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running from camera

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Posted 17 Jan 2010 — by Jonathan
Category Links

A nice little link from the ever reliable GromBlog; this is the Running From Camera blog.

“The rules are simple: I put the self-timer on 2 seconds, push the button and try to get as far from the camera as I can.”

(via)

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taking heart

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Posted 16 Dec 2009 — by Jonathan
Category General, Links

This week lots of the bloggers I read regularly seem to be preoccupied with relationships, ineractions; how we get on, and why. It would be nice to report that everyone is filing success stories – but original thoughts, confidential whisperings and admissions of failure are just as welcome. Wendy is dredging up the past over at her Wendy House; I don’t think she’s the only person with a story like this in her past:

We laughed together at his assertion. It was one of the most honest expressions of closeness I’d heard then or since.

After two weeks of dating that involved lots of

  • laughter,
  • sleeplessness,
  • loud singing after dark,
  • passionate debating of the relative efficacies of pychological theories,
  • burning of incence, nicotene and canabis

He dumped me.

Easing the suprise with the phrase ‘you’re the only girl for me’ and explaining that he preferred boys. With hindsight, this explained the dearth in exchanges of bodily fluids.

20 years later. He’s still passionate, humourful, debating, smoking, prefering boys and I’m still the only girl for him. Only now there is even less excahniging of bodily fluids because the boy’s grown into a christian priest.

Over at his Potentially Eventually Funny blog, our eponymous author has been told he is a good listener. Instead of taking heart, he is coming to terms with some home truths. Honesty compels me to admit that I know exactly the instinct that he describes in this passage, and the truthfulness of it makes me feel ashamed. Still, it’s good to know that I’m not the only one (and – disclaimer – it isn’t all the time).

Anyway, my point is that I’m not a good listener – whether to females or males – I am simply quite good at finding something with which to agree on about their position and focusing on it. Or, alternatively, I am good at finding a positive in a situation and exploiting it to make it seem that the overall impression that the person I’m speaking to has is that ‘everything is, or will be, alright’. I caught myself doing it automatically the other day. A friend (not you) started to tell me about an issue that he/she had in a work relationship the other day. Immediately I discovered that I was scouring his/her testimony for anything to alight upon as a positive or as a signal misinterpreted. I was simply looking for the most simple way of getting from A to B; from concerned / depressed / upset, to at ease / positive / happy. That is not being a good listening: at best it’s prostituting my ability to rationalise interpersonal dilemmas in return for friendship, and at worst it’s a technique to change the topic of conversation from something boring – other people’s problems – to something interesting – my problems.

Perhaps because I’ve just been reading about the slow train crash which is the Copenhagen summit – a meeting beset by the failure of disperate communities to find a compromise for the greater good, Matt’s observation over at his Zen Bullets Blog rings true today. Why Can’t We Just Get Along, he asks?

Atoms work together to make cells. Cells work together to form organisms. Organisms work together to form societies, and societies work together to make cultures.

Getting cultures to work together seems to be the tricky one.

Agh. Yep.

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