184 - Suburban Transpondency

Is nostalgic sentimentality the condition of a self which in its distance has grown indifferent to things & is therefore only capable of the most superficial kind of emotion, only capable of being moved in the instant, only capable of cheap, theatrical sentimentality? ~ from Technology as symptom and dream by Robert Donald Romanyshyn

• New Year 2012, Nostalgic for Past Fantasies of the 19A0s
• Blouse: “Time Travel” & “Videotapes”
• Grimes: “Oblivion”, “Vanessa”, “Fragments of the Future”
• SLEEP ∞ OVER: “World is Night” & “Romantic Streams”
• Puro Instinct: “Stilyagi (Feat. Ariel Pink)” & “Silky Eyes”
• Public Transport: “Strangely Free” 
• McLuhan on Nostalgia, Rearview Mirror
• Fran Lebowitz on Artists and Nostalgia
• Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti: “Round and Round”

“Every age creates as an Utopian image a nostalgic rear-view mirror image of itself, which puts it thoroughly out of touch with the present. The present is the enemy. The present is the—and this will delight you Norman—the present is only faced in any generation by the artist. The artist is prepared to study the present as his material because it is the area of challenge to the whole sensory life, and therefore it is anti-Utopian, it is a world of anti-values. And the artist who comes into contact with the present produces an avant-garde image that is terrifying to his contemporaries.” ~ Marshall McLuhan

from Mixtape of the Lost Decade by Rob Beschizza, University of Rockall

The Phantom Time Hypothesis, developed by Heribert Illig, proposes that error and falsification have radically distorted the historical record. In his analysis, we have dilated the course of true events, so that they appear to cover far greater lengths of time than in fact passed. The so-called dark ages, for example, only appear that way because those centuries were mere decades.

Respectable historians give this idea no credence. Rightly so, because the truth is even stranger. It is not the case that we have invented historical periods that do not exist. In truth, there are ages which we have so completely forgotten that modern textbooks exclude them entirely. In our research, we have identified at least three such periods.

Firstly, there appear to be several decades unaccounted for during the fifth century A.D., which may reveal the true circumstances of the Western Empire’s final decline. Secondly, it is clear to us that the Mongols invaded northern Europe and conquered the Holy Roman Empire in the 13th century. The astounding deathtoll, and that of the crusades that subsequently dislodged the invaders, is now attributed to the plague.

Finally, evidence is mounting that points to a “lost decade” between what we now remember as the 1970s and 1980s, a time whose full cultural trauma and resulting suppression from memory was so complete as to effect itself even on the living.

Some of those who have recovered seek to reveal the secret history through unusual media such as fashionable tumblogs and private filesharing forums. By sharing elements of an intricate and rigorous symbology drawn from this interstitial history, this cabal works quietly to prepare us to learn the truth and its astonishing consequences…

1. The terminus ad quem of the interstitial history is identified by the earliest-dated reference to it the esoterica: footage broadcast in the early hours of the morning on an obscure television station to commemorate (in the ‘new’ timeline) the date that the “lost decade” was brought to an end.

2. Finally revealed, terms such as “19A0s” can now be searched for and uncovered in countless seemingly innocuous documents archived online, exposing them as critical ciphertexts of the movement.

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183 - Suburban Transpondency

A Xmas Special Mashup Ecollage

• Special Ed: “The Story of the Naivete”
• People Like Us and Ergo Phizmiz Xmas Special
• Eddie Lawrence: The Merry Old Philosopher
• Jonathan Mitchell presents Kurt Andersen’s Human Intelligence 

“The night of December 25, to which date the Nativity of Christ was ultimately assigned, was exactly that of the birth of the Persian savior Mithra, who, as an incarnation of eternal light, was born the night of the winter solstice (then dated December 25) at midnight, the instant of the turn of the year from increasing darkness to light.” ~ Joseph Campbell

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182 - Suburban Transpondency

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

• Marcelo Ohara: “Travessia”
• David Lynch: “Pinky’s Dream (ft. Karen O)
• Alfred Hitchcock Interview
• Shigeto: “Self-Compassion”
• Dr. Dog: “That Old Black Hole”
• Da Zool: “Letronew”
• An Evening with Quentin Crisp
• Of Montreal: “Wintered Debts”
• Abraham Hicks on Hilter
• Blind Physics: “Harp listenmix” & “practice+drumloop”
• Philip K Dick on his inspiration for Valis
• Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller: “C.G. Jung’s Prophecy of the New Aeon”
• The Skull Defekts: “Fragrant Nimbus”

“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.” ~ Carl Jung

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181 - Suburban Transpondency

Remystifying McLuhan

• CBC’s Demystifying McLuhan Mashup Contest
• McLuhan and Parker At The Vanishing Point 
• Damien Jurado: “Nothing Is The News”
• DATAcloud: “The Future Leaks Out”
• Pictureplane: “Real Is A Feeling”
• micehal: “Marshall McRemix”
• Pictureplane: “Post-Physical”
• Jordan Mandel: “Buzz-Saw”
• Matt.ch4: “Nude descending a staircase Op.2”
• [Video] McLuhan - commercial vs public media 

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180 - Suburban Transpondency

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” — Edgar Allan Poe

• Nevermore Eleanor: “Invitation”
• Decomentarium: “Dementia”
• treeface0905: “Caffeine”
• Boris Karloff: “Mirror of Death”
• Navid: “Physical Modelling”
• Sonic Youth: “Halloween”
• Mr Shadowchaser: “dunwich mash”
• Viraeson: “The Birds… Scream the… Birds Scream”
• The Fugs: “Exorcising The Evil Spirits From The Pentagon”
• The Secret Music of China: “Ghosts of the Great Wall”
• Percy Bysshe Shelly vs. Vincent Price: “Ode To The West Wind”
• Epoxia: “Soberbia Espiritual (Remix)”
• Glass Prism: “The Raven”
• James Mason: “The Tell-Tale Heart”
• DJ Pad: “Magical Nights”
• Lou Reed: “Edgar Allan Poe”
• mARKYbOY: “The Killing Mash”

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179 - Suburban Transpondency

The point is to make something new, something that doesn’t even remotely remind you of culture.

• Allan Kaprow: “How To Make A Happening”
• Zapnspark: “Quiet City”
• Maren Parusel: “Don’t Take Your Eyes Away” 
• Einzelganger: “West End Collected”
• Mattt: “Thunderstorm, Rain, Wind”
• Broken Poets: “Singularity”
• Mark Ty-Wharton: “Spoken Speakers Corner Hyde Park”
  
• iscape: “Wake Up!”

Forget all the standard art forms—don’t paint pictures, don’t make poetry, don’t build architecture, don’t arrange dances, don’t write plays, don’t compose music, don’t make movies, and above all don’t think you’ll get a happening by putting all these together.

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178 - Suburban Transpondency

“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.” — Alan Watts

• DanQ: “sur le toit de la cité industriel de la Jarry” & “à la Villette Sonique”
• St. LaRok: “Time/Leap”
• PHYZX: “Paradoxical Conspiracies”
• Bertrand Russell: “The Velocity of Light” [from ABC of Relativity: Understanding Einstein]
• Epstein Y El Conjunto (feat Matt Crum): “Timeless Form, Formless Time”
• Michael Kimaid: “Toward a Resistance of Commodified Time and Space”
• Alan Watts: “Time in the Future”
• The Beets: “Time Brought Age”

Marshall McLuhan discusses Harold Innis’s idea of time and space…

“Industrialism implies technology and the cutting of time into precise fragments suited to the needs of the engineer and the accountant.” — Harold Innis

“To the philosophers of India, however, Relativity is no new discovery, just as the concept of light years is no matter for astonishment to people used to thinking of time in millions of kalpas, (A kalpa is about 4,320,000 years). The fact that the wise men of India have not been concerned with technological applications of this knowledge arises from the circumstance that technology is but one of innumerable ways of applying it.” — Alan Watts

“Time is a measure of energy, a measure of motion. And we have agreed internationally on the speed of the clock. And I want you to think about clocks and watches for a moment. We are of course slaves to them. And you will notice that your watch is a circle, and that it is calibrated, and that each minute, or second, is marked by a hairline which is made as narrow as possible, as yet to be consistent with being visible.

And when we think of a moment of time, when we think what we mean by the word “now”; we think of the shortest possible instant that is here and gone, because that corresponds with the hairline on the watch. And as a result of this fabulous idea, we are a people who feel that we don’t have any present, because the present is instantly vanishing - it goes so quickly. It is always becoming past. And we have the sensation, therefore, of our lives as something that is constantly flowing away from us. We are constantly losing time. And so we have a sense of urgency. Time is not to be wasted. Time is money. And so, because of the tyranny of this thing, we feel that we have a past, and we know who we are in terms of our past. Nobody can ever tell you who they are, they can only tell you who they were.

And we think we also have a future. And that is terribly important, because we have a naive hope that the future is somehow going to supply what we are looking for. You see, if you live in a present that is so short that it is not really here at all, you will always feel vaguely frustrated.”

— Alan Watts, British philosopher, writer, and speaker (1915-1973)

“At instant speeds, everybody begins to live inside a 360-degree module in which every event echoes every other event back and forth at electric speeds, and all events bounce off each other creating patterns. There is one optimistic feature. The mind moves very much faster than light. Light travels to Mars in minutes. The mind can go and come back from Mars in an instant many times. The mind can actually recognize all these electric patterns as easily as it can alphabetic letters. It’s very much faster than the computer.”

— Marshall McLuhan in McLuhan Dissects the Executive,
Business Week Magazine, p.118, June 24, 1972.

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177 - Suburban Transpondency

R.E.M. call it quits

• Reflecting on my favourite band
• Awkward teenage moments
• Influencing & inspiring my creativity

R.E.M.’s “It happened today” (Khmer Linga mix) revisioned by Ethnomite Pux

R.E.M.’s “It Happened Today” (Lucid Dreamer Remix) by J.D. Casten

• Reading short story, “Chronic Town” written in high school
• A weird blend of poetry & prose, fragments of real life & song lyrics
• L’OraStrana: “Le città sottili” & “Via Pisana Minidub”

You Say Party! We Say Die! covering R.E.M.’s “Nightswimming”

R.E.M. playing “Living Well Is The Best Revenge” while driving around Athens, GA

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