Leverhulme Microcastle

"Aiya Luuuv!"

Youtube comment

'don't make me feel like shit with your nostalgia!'

Propiedad Prohibida by Franco Battiato (1974)

Science Center by Emeralds (2010)

Shitfreaks of the Aquatics Centre

'Make the right choice and you'll get a heady melange of both, with more explicit nudity. Bald 'roid hogs stretching and gurning to towel their ankles, winking at you with waxed puckered arseholes.'

Novel Maps

 'Anarres' and 'Urras' from The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin

 'Earthsea' from Tales From Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin

They're strange things, book-maps. They really appeal to me as I too spent a lot of my childhood creating maps of my many imaginary realms. Now when I see one, i'm pulled back to a very cosy  image of myself reading one, tracing the route of some questing hero or further imagining what goes on 'here' or 'there' when the storyteller is looking the other way.

I rediscovered book-maps as an adult in the novels of Ursula Le Guin, which I came to a bit late. She really goes in for them but in a restrained fashion: line-drawn, black and white outlines of continents or whole planets, perhaps the occasional mountain or swamp. There is something a bit joyless and clinical about them which makes me wonder why she bothered, to me they don't invite the curiosity or sense of adventure within her actual novels.

'The End of the World' from Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

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http://www.haruki-murakami.com/murakami_places

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On the other hand, Murakami's map from 'Hard Boiled...' is an total joy to behold. In a flight of postmodernity very typical of Murkami, it's actually an artifact created by one of the characters, presented to the reader before the story has even begun. Double-mystical!

'Land of the Trumpets' from Trouble for Trumpets by Peter Dallas Smith, Illustrated by Peter Cross

 

 images from Hypnerotomachia Poliphili or The Strife of Love in a Dream, 1599

'The City of Truth' , Bartholommeo Del Bene, 1609.

'25 plates are allegorical figures of pilgrimage and the City of Truth: Trophy in the middle of a palace, interior garden of a palace, Palace of vices, Labyrinth of miserliness, Basilica of modesty, Palace of leniency, Domicile of arrogance with augurs, scholars and mathematicians, Nature theatre of urbanity, Themis’ Temple, Vestals’ Temple, …'

THE MONOCHROME SET - He's Frank

'He’s got secular joy
He’s a peculiar boy
But now the lustre has gone
The peculiar boy is no more

Who’ll save him from being a man
Not me...'

 BEAUTIFUL THING (1996) directed by Hettie Macdonald

The 'early 90s''. Soft locks, wet look, football strips, the dirging flanger and 'metal-style' guitar fx. 

Did it sound good then?

As good as this?

 

CHROME 'In a Dream'

Channeling Krautrock/Motorik, so Neu, Cluster, Faust, Amon Duul II ... The Velvet Underground, protopunk, MC5? Incidentally, is that the same Lindrum as heard on Moroder-produced 'No.1 in Heaven' by Sparks, of the same era? 'you can see them crawling on the walls, against the floors...' some thing insect going on here... not much more to be decoded via the lyrics, awash with tape delay, echo, hiss and backward feedback '...some with faces...' camp and glam I hope? 

No info on the video but a pleasing fit, lots of chrome for Chrome. Channeling Scorpio Rising? Or Pink Narcissus? More up Anger's street probably.

Of all these things, Sparks are the most diadactic. Chrome, Anger are hard, impenetrable. God, Chrome sound sexy though. Soundtracking Bobby (Orlando?) 's huge flapping nob.

 

'Haxan' (1922)

Directed by Benjamin Christensen 

...

...

"Det är synd om människorna" (One feels pity for human beings)

"a psychological symphony"

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Gaff: You've done a man's job, sir. I guess you're through, huh?

Deckard: Finished.

[Gaff throws Deckard his gun]

Gaff: It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?

 'Mushi' wolf

 'One Day' South Korean illustrated book by Yo Ju Yeon chronicles a day-in-the-life of a bird

'The condition of the working-class is the real basis and point of departure of all social movements of the present because it is the highest and most unconcealed pinnacle of the social misery existing in our day. French and German working-class Communism are its direct, Fourierism and English Socialism, as well as the Communism of the German educated bourgeoisie, are its indirect products. A knowledge of proletarian conditions is absolutely necessary to be able to provide solid ground for socialist theories, on the one hand, and for judgments about their right to exist, on the other; and to put an end to all sentimental dreams and fancies pro and con. But proletarian conditions exist in their classical form, in their perfection, only in the British Empire, particularly in England proper. Besides, only in England has the necessary material been so completely collected and put on record by official enquiries as is essential for any in the least exhaustive presentation of the subject.'

'Is Murnau's "Nosferatu" scary in the modern sense? Not for me. I admire it more for its artistry and ideas, its atmosphere and images, than for its ability to manipulate my emotions like a skillful modern horror film. It knows none of the later tricks of the trade, like sudden threats that pop in from the side of the screen. But "Nosferatu" remains effective: It doesn’t scare us, but it haunts us...'

RAF Blue Streak test bay, Cumbria, England.

“Long ago, Louis Wu had stood at the void edge of Mount Lookitthat. The Long Fall River, on that world, ends in the tallest waterfall in known space. Louis's eyes had followed it down as far as they could penetrate the void mist. The featureless white of the void itself had grasped at his mind, and Louis Wu, half hypnotized, had sworn to live forever. How else could he see all there was to see?
Now he reaffirmed that decision.”

Eight miles high
And when you touch down
You'll find that it's

Stranger than known.