Don’t judge a book by its cover. That’s what we’re told. This applies to comics as well, as the cover artist is often not the illustrator. But while visiting the Comicshop in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighborhood last weekend I judged a book by it’s cover. Covers. Digging through boxes of deeply-discounted books (the Comicshop is moving after 30+ years in their current location, so a big sale) I found singles of Jack Katz’s The First Kingdom. Not being familiar with this book, I was blown away by one cover after another. Flipping through some of the richest art I’ve ever seen I knew my judgment was sound, that this surely would be a rewarding read. And so it is.
Jack Katz’s The First Kingdom Book 12, published by Bud Plant, Inc., 1980.
“Just feel that good clean power surging in from the dark…Ah, but listen to her! She’s driving in, she knows what she wants, there’s no hero or devil on earth that can talk back to her…Come on in, girl!” The man talks over his beloved sea to “The Voice”; both having isolated themselves out there, away from the City and its people. This is one of my favorite lines from “The city wears a slouch hat”, a radio play written by Kenneth Patchen with a score by John Cage. It was broadcast on May 31, 1942 by WBBM radio station (Columbia Broadcasting System in Chicago) and is the Voice’s surreal journey through the City, culminating in a message for humanity in a time of World War.
“The city wears a slouch hat”, a radio play written by Kenneth Patchen with a score by John Cage. Cover art by Patchen.
There was an electric spirit in San Francisco’s City Hall the day I got married. Mayor Gavin Newsom had recently legalized same-sex marriage and I will never forget how moved I was to be getting married alongside same-sex couples. The news today that a federal judge has struck down Prop 8 makes me deeply happy.
From the SF Chronicle: Stuart Gaffney (left) and his husband John Lewis wait at the Philip Burton Federal Building for Chief U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker to issue his ruling on the constitutionality of Proposition 8 in San Francisco on Wednesday.
It is becoming more frequent that I hit roadblocks in my reading. I want to read things that haven’t been translated into English, and, at this moment, it’s Dmitry Galkovsky’s The Infinite Deadlock . I want to read his thoughts on V. V. Rozanov, and it looks like I’m not the only one looking for an English translation. Can minds be sophisticated if they’re chained to one language? Looks like I can’t read The Infinite Deadlock, but I can read Waggish. Good stuff.
Bumped into a great interview with writer Alan Moore (but aren’t they all, though?) on The Quietus, which is coincidental because I am currently swimming upstream through Moore’s Dodgem Logic #3. It arrived by slow boat two days ago:
Wraparound cover art for Dodgem Logic #3 (April/May 2010), drawn by Moore himself.
My reaction to The Quietus article’s title - referring to Moore as a hipster - was knee-jerkishly negative until I read through the interview and now understand the connotation: Moore as autodidact and not Fauxhemian (I prefer “Doucheoisie”):
[Hipsterism] used to be a fashion statement, but it was information as a fashion statement which is probably going to do you more good than the clothing you wear. I got an incredible education starting from the point at which I was thrown out of school. Now, I could probably hold my own intellectually with most people who have had university or college educations. And indeed some of them will have done courses on my books. So, despite the fact my ‘education’ ended at 16, I had hipsterism, which was wanting to be hip, and that led me to read this incredibly diverse array of books on science, mysticism, science fiction, literature, art… I would find out about these movements that I had heard about, and it’s given me a pretty comprehensive education. Now I am an autodidact, which is a great word… I learned it myself.
“Information as a fashion statement”? Can self-education be fashionable if it can’t be commodified; if it can’t be worn, drunk or tattooed on? (Interestingly, Moore is listed as a “Notable Autodidact” in the Wikipedia entry for “Autodidacticism”.)
Look at THIS fucking hipster. Photo of Alan Moore from “Hipster Priest: A Quietus Interview With Alan Moore”.
Have been stalking Coco Sumner for a couple of years now, and love this acoustic performance of I Blame Coco’s “Selfmachine”. I feel that what I’ve heard of her band’s new material is pop-heavy and less endearing than her earlier work. Coco is magic with just her voice and guitar, extracted from the pop template:
Fernanda Yamamoto’s Summer 2011 collection is sweet to both mind and eye. Her debut at São Paulo Fashion Week earlier this month is an interpretation of aerial photos of the city. “I was inspired by the city of São Paulo but looked at it from a different point of view. The clouds played an important role in the inspiration, specifically because I looked at some images of clouds reflected in buildings.”
I love this line. It’s from Aldous Huxley’s Ape and Essence, which I’m reading now:
Ape and Essence, Aldous Huxley’s lesser-known dystopian sci-fi novel published in 1948.
In Ape and Essence Huxley anticipates the central theme (or rather the central warning) of a book I just finished called, The Dying Self by Charles M. Fair. The Dying Self (1969) is as uplifting as the title suggests and is a loud reaction to the spirit of the times. However, Fair’s hypothesis is interesting, his references are encyclopedic and he uses some creative language. Some choice phrases: “gray intermediate mass”, “Man the Anxious Amorph” and “formal time zero”. Good stuff.
