« Home | Denny Crane » | Odd environments » | Errors and distortions » | Rail God » | Fantastically exciting » | The name not of the solution but of the challenge » | Realisation » | I'd like to see that » | Counterintuitive? » | Incredibly exciting » 

Tuesday, January 17, 2006 

I've been missing out/Hauntology

Wow. Mark K-Punk has, in one post, turned "Hauntology" from something I'd dimly heard and wondered about to something I feel I might get obsessed with fairly quickly. His work over the past few days has been generally exemplary, but in this one he sets out what it actually is ("all recordings are ghosts" isn't a bad starting point), some resonances and references, and enough fascinating material to last anyone for a career or a life. The posts he links to through images are particularly interesting, especially the two on Sapphire & Steel - although I've read enough about The Stone Tape to never, ever watch it, and I recall in connection with it reading about some BBC fake-real ghost "documentary" whose name I can't place but that reading about alone shook me so badly I couldn't bear to be alone for hours.

I'm particularly susceptible to that sort of ghost story, which explains part of my interest, but not all. When you look at the Weird* that I like, not all of it connects directly to hauntology (Dick, The Invisibles and thus Illuminatus!, The Prisoner), but even that stuff carries some of the feel of the stuff that does (Lovecraft, Dr. Who, the Sapphire & Steel stuff, Borges ("Borges & I" is all about the hauntology, and he was one of the best at bringing it explicitly to the page as opposed to screen or speaker), that Caretaker "record", even old doo wop). I can't explain why this stuff is so fascinating, at least not right now, but if you read the post complete with all of the picture links and at least some of the text, you'll hopefully agree with me.

*(placeholder term because I can't think of an actually accurate descriptor)

I actually just rescued a bunch of Lovecraft anthologies I had as a kid from my mom's garage, where my brother had left them - I don't think I got around to reading all of them the first time.

Where is your brother getting published?

Post a Comment


Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

About me

Ian Mathers is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Stylus, the Village Voice, Resident Advisor, PopMatters, and elsewhere. He does stuff and it magically appears here.

Contact Me:
imathers at gmail dot com

My profile
Powered by Blogger
and Blogger Templates