Matt Colquhoun's Blog, page 70

Stiegler, Lost by the Species

Until man, life rests on the combination of two systems of memory: genetic memory, DNA, and on the other hand, the memory of the individual, in the nervous system, the brain, etc. These two memories, which exist in all superior, sexed, vertebrate beings endowed with a nervous system… these two memories do not communicate with each other. They are completely autonomous, and consequently when an animal acquires an individual experience, something vital to it, the experience can’t be tr...

“Meet Me Behind the Mall”: Notes on the Heavenly Storekeeper and His Stock

In the afternoon he sat in the compound breaking ore samples with a hammer, the feldspar rich in red oxide of copper and native nuggets in whose organic lobations he purported to read news of the earth’s origins, holding an extemporary lecture in geology to a small gathering who nodded and spat. A few would quote scripture to confound his ordering up of eons out of the ancient chaos and other apostate supposings. The judge smiled.

Books lie, he said.

God dont lie.

No, said the judge. He does not. A...

Two Men in Love with IT

Yesterday’s post was written, like most, on the fly. I was intrigued to learn, after a little more digging, that Stephen King is openly a big fan of D.H. Lawrence, having mentioned him in a few interviews.

Suddenly King’s dramatising of Lawrence’s “IT” doesn’t seem like a moment of literary serendipity — but of course it isn’t. King’s fingers have long been on the pulse of the American psyche. He feels its rhythms more deeply than his reputation for pulp suggests, and it is precisely his rep...

“The Pilgrim Fathers … driven by IT.”

Beginning his Studies in Classic American Literature, D.H. Lawrence questions the perceived “childishness” of the old American classics.

The old American art-speech contains an alien quality, which belongs to the American continent and to nowhere else. But, of course, so long as we insist on reading the books as children’s tales, we miss all that.

American literature requires — deserves even — a reappraisal, because it is we who are missing out when we patronise those writers of the new w...

Dream Meridian II: The Irish Connection

To add another thread to the fraying tapestry, I wonder if anyone has any recommendations regarding the Irish-American imagination? I don’t mean how Americans love to draw on their Irish heritage — St. Paddy’s Day parades and all that — but rather how Ireland is influenced by its American cousins.

This is a vague thought that similarly emerged from that ol’ folk revival in the mid- to late 2000s. Fionn Regan comes to mind, and his intriguingly named 2006 album The End of History. I’ll r...

Dream Meridian

Yesterday’s post has sent me into a fit. The line drawn from that mid-2000s folk revival to the weirdness of Taylor Swift in 2020 has suddenly connected a great many dots in my head and I have been writing feverishly all night.

A vague book idea that I have been throwing ideas at over the last few months, initially called Frontier Psychiatry, has a new focus. It has become increasingly apparent that this Yorkshireman who doesn’t know America at all beyond a screen or page can hardly be e...

After the End of the Myth: On American Interiors and the Rotten Western

My previous post on Taylor Swift was long and meandering — a sign that I had something to say that I couldn’t get out in a single (succinct) argument. This is going to be long and meandering too, but in a way that I hope fills in the gaps between recent postings.

Essentially, what I want to do here is connection my Taylor Swift post to my The Last of Us Part 2 posts via Ed Berger’s recent Western posts… And of course it was Ed Berger who was able to clarify my Swiftian concerns better than I...

Birds in Botany Bay

Invisible Strings: Notes on Folkloric Pop in Postmodernity

Folklore is, by definition, homogeneous. It speaks to experiences, values, ideas that are shared. The best pop music over the last ten years has always been folkloric in this regard — more specifically, stories told by the young about youth — and I find it hard not to admire those young singers and songwriters who manage to excavate something oddly universal out of the inherent narcissism of adolescence.

(This is also why I think the Taylor Swift record cover meme embedded above is excel...

Real Simulations: Notes on the Matrix Trilogy

I spent my Friday / Saturday watching the Matrix trilogy for the first time in many, many years. The first one was still good! The second and third ones weren’t so much…

Invited to talk about simulations for “Simulations Like Us”, a conversation of sorts hosted by Enrico Monacelli as part of Turn Us Alias, an online music festival organised by Saturnalia, I wanted to read the films via Ray Brassier’s critique of the philosophy of Alain Badiou.

Neo, to me, is Badiou. They both proclaim to s...