Newsletter #2.1

motivations and intentions- part one of two

Winter can be a very strange time, especially in those more seasonal countries like my own, England. The cold and the dark push most of us inside, under electric lights huddled around expensive heating. The landscape alieniates itself from its human inhabitants and we don't see as clearly, rain and cold pressing heavy on our bones as we concentrate entirely on where we need to be. The known becomes the unknown (or maybe just MORE unknown). And of course, Winter brings the big moments- Halloween, Bonfire Night, Christmas and New Year. The cold, the dark, the rain creep through Autumn as the trees contrarily get naked and magik is everywhere as we invoke the spirits of the dead, then paint the sky with light and sound, then decorate our homes, then celebrate the birth of new time. And whatever links to the murky god of capitalism may stand, the relentless disruption (across a mere 61 days) can still infect (protect) if you look listen feel carefully...

So we rely on our media even more than normal and generally, as one would expect, our media generally spew turgid crap at us- profiteering uninspired lazy bullshit- hateful garbage and so much lost potential... People often wonder why I get so angry about the TV and Radio, why I rant and rave. Well these are collective mediums. MEDIUMS. Dormant magik, under-nourished possibilities, so much potentiality. Freud never had a collective sensation, never gained access to the oceanic but then Freud means nothing until Ballard anyway...

What TV and Radio might offer us is the collective experience. This collective experience is different to the one that was hardwired into my body in the early to mid 90's with the advent of hardcore music genres like rave and jungle. This was a collective experience where your entire being becomes confused and enmeshed with sound, light, bass, dancers, architecture, nature and well, everything around you. Not necessarily a new thing certainly, but as with every portal, the cultural components of the time make it singularly unique. The way that I experienced culture was changed forever in those moments and has since been physically impossible to revert back from- hardwired- there's no unbuilding Robocop regardless of the movement of the times. This obsession with the social, the group experience of culture remains eternally embedded within.

TV and Radio have a power that whilst different need not be any less powerful. The broadcast offers a collective sensation, a psychic bond. Orson Welles does H G Wells and sends America running for the hills. The Prisoner bewitches an entire country eventually driving the majority of viewers furious with its gloriously crackers conclusion. I remember the uncontrollable expectation of waiting for the next episode of arch-satirist Chris Morris' Brass Eye. Despite watching on your own, the sheer thrill of not even knowing whether it would be broadcast until the very last minute, the knowledge that others out there were sharing the same feelings as you as Morris swept through the small screen, a lone horseman of the media apocolypse, destroying everyone in his wake whilst making you laugh so hard you felt like you were going to throw. Resonance 104.4 FM, the host body for Weird Tales itself is nothing short of wonderous, a lonely satellite committed to radio as art, radio as medium, radio as a channel of voices and sounds- what should be the norm existing as the freakish in isolation.

anyway, Walk back to Winter.... when i was younger I remembered being scared half to death, late at night in the cold dark by a one-off television drama which I later discovered to be entiteld A Warning to The Curious. Understated and slowly paced, this adaptation of the classic M R James story forefronted all the genuine strangeness that lurked in his fictions- eerie, violent, vengeful and unforgiving- strangely contemporary despite James' antiquarian leanings. Produced by the BBC, this was one of many James tales that were filmed over the decade. The impression struck. You could call it a ghost story as it most certainly is but there's more to it than that. James' stories represent an intervention into normality, this disruption of the real. And the broadcast itself doubles this- the strangeness programme rupturing the mundanity of the broadcast schedule. And finally, the television, the Ghost Box disturbs the reality of your surroundings, transmits a message about reality, infests the safety of your home and outside, the dark and the colder just got more dark, more cold. There's nowhere to run to baby, there's nowhere to hide. We forget the power of these boxes. At the conclusion of Valis, Horselover Fat is not roaming around antiquated churches looking for a sign from God. No, he's sat in the dark staring at the snow of the TV screen waiting, waiting, waiting...

And that seems as good a place as any to take a break and I don't want to bore you after all. I promise i'll conclude with my motivations tomorrow and then we can get on to the Tales themselves and believe me, the wait will be worth every minute....

jonny mugwump