Happy autumn equinox! It might not seem like it looking out of the window, but officially autumn is here. Here’s a bag of miscellany for this strange, thoughtful season…
LYNCHIANO
Here’s the excellent cover for the Italian translation of Lynchian - which is being published by Nottetempo on 2 October. I’m honoured that the Italian director Alex Infascelli has written a new foreword for this. More details are here.
WIREHEADS EVENT
I’m not planning on doing many public events for the next year or so but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to interview Mike Jay about his latest book Wireheads - a history of the idea of connecting mind to machines, complete with all the madness and delusion that entails. Mike Jay’s stuff is always great - The Influencing Machine is a particular favourite - and Wireheads is no exception. We’ll be at Gower Street Waterstones in London on 22 October, tickets are available here.
WATLING STREET BLUES
Those of you who have read my book Watling Street, or just fans of the A2 in general, might be interested in Watling Street Blues, an upcoming art exhibition by Freddie Darke. It runs from the 29 September to 5 October at the GPS gallery in Soho and I am hoping to visit because it looks excellent - see what you think
TAROT DMS
This was fun - I was a guest on Tarot DMs with Finbarre Snarey. It was an interview conducted over voice notes during which he drew three tarot cards for me, and we generally tried to make sense of it all. You can have a read and/or listen to it here.
FELLED
I’ve just read this forthcoming book by Andrew Hankinson about the men who chopped down the Sycamore Gap tree, and thought it was excellent. In particular, it has made me compare this nihilistic act of destruction with the burning of the million pounds by the KLF. The money burning is often excused by framing it as art, but there is no such defence here, or indeed, any attempt to understand why these two men did what they did. It is written by someone openly in a bad place who seems to resent having to write the book, and who increasingly becomes more appalled by the reaction to the chopping down of the tree than he is by the act itself.
It’s only a short book, largely consisting of courtroom transcripts, but it has really stuck with me. A background theme to many non-fiction books this year has been how men are coping in the modern world - how to make sense of our lives now that the post-war social contract, in which working hard should get you a reasonable place to live and the ability to raise a family, is no more. Jon Ronson’s The Castle touches on this, as does Michael Smith’s excellent Strangers on the Shore. The general conclusion seems to be that we are not coping well. Felled is out on 22 October.
ESP-FC
It’s autumn, which means that the East Sussex Psychedelic Film Club (ESP-FC) is returning to the Westgate Chapel in Lewes. Our first screening is a newly restored print of Olivia Newton-John’s none-more groovy 1970 sci-fi oddity Toomorrow, directed by Val ‘Quatermass’ Guest. It’s very nearly sold out so if you want to come along, grab the remaining tickets now.
AND FINALLY…
Readers of this newsletter, I suspect, are fond of taxidermy puppets, alchemical masks and folk horror in broad daylight. As such I suspect you will get along well with the new video from Erotic Secrets of Pompeii - enjoy!
Until next time,
jhx