“Expelled as commander to be integrated as connector, the human is transformed by its own works from a brain legislating life to a ligament binding machine cycles.” Brian Massumi, quoted by Pierre Joris in “Nomad Poetics” I stayed in a Mercure Hotel last night (the picture’s the view from my room), and was struck byContinue reading “machine cycle upgrade”
Category Archives: Humanism
James Cameron meets Masaccio in Santa Maria Novella downtown
I saw James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ over Christmas. It’s a remarkable technical achievement, injecting new possibilities for the creation of wholly artificial, wholly convincing dramatic worlds into cinema. In that, it reminded me of Masaccio’s masterpiece ‘The Holy Trinity with the Virgin, St John and Two Donors’, in Florence’s Santa Maria Novella church: Masaccio’s work wasContinue reading “James Cameron meets Masaccio in Santa Maria Novella downtown”
Lovecraft, Olson and ‘The Mayan Letters’
Well, it’s been a fascinating morning of pondering Lovecraft’s roots in Ovid. Don’t believe me? Well, I’m not going to go into detail here – still working out exactly what I think – but in brief I think the link builds on Ovid’s status as the great poet of transformation in ‘Metamorphosis’, and the chroniclerContinue reading “Lovecraft, Olson and ‘The Mayan Letters’”
We’re the Shoggoths now
Well, there hasn’t been much weird pondering for a bit – but now, I’m back, and thanks to China Mieville’s excellent introduction to the Modern Library edition of ‘At the Mountains of Madness’, once again I’ve been a-pondering H. P. Lovecraft. China sees him as a kind of crazed pulp modernist, breaking out of traditionContinue reading “We’re the Shoggoths now”
On becoming an optimist
Well, I wasn’t going to blog tonight (sleeping being very preferable), but while reading in the bath I’ve just had a fascinating collision between three interesting writers, so I thought I’d do a quick post. So – I’d been planning to start on a novel, but couldn’t be bothered, so took Adorno’s ‘Minimalia Moralia’ inContinue reading “On becoming an optimist”
Martians kill Humanism
I finished off a collection of Leigh Brackett’s Martian romances over the weekend – ‘The Coming of the Terrans’. Some great stories in there, but there’s more going on than just pulp mayhem. Brackett’s Martian stories are set on an exotic, faded Mars. In her world, humans arrived there to find an aeon-shadowed (thanks, HPL)Continue reading “Martians kill Humanism”