The Ghosts of Ash and the Nuclear Spectre (Part Two)
If Hiroshima haunts through absence, the Titanic haunts through overexposure. The Titanic has been replayed, retold, reconstructed, and reanimated so many times that it barely qualifies as an event anymore. It … Continue reading
The Ghosts of Ash and the Nuclear Spectre (Part One)
Disasters have a habit of lingering long after everyone has agreed that they are finished. The rubble gets cleared. The plaques get installed. The anniversary documentaries get commissioned. The calendar … Continue reading
Namaste, or: What Keeps Coming Back (in a Slightly Worse Mood) (Part Three)
On the way down, the sound followed for a while, then thinned, then vanished. It didn’t echo. That was the strangest part. For all its droning insistence, it left … Continue reading
Namaste, or: What Keeps Coming Back (in a Slightly Worse Mood) (Part Two)
Someone nearby pointed something out; a holy thorn, maybe, or a story attached to a stone. Delivered with the bright certainty of a fact that has never been forced to … Continue reading
Namaste, or: What Keeps Coming Back (in a Slightly Worse Mood) (Part 1)
We were almost at the top when we heard it. Not music exactly, more a pressure system. A low drone with delusions of grandeur, stretching itself between notes like a … Continue reading
A Dance in the Labyrinth (II): Heroes, Games, and the Supermarket as Mythic Space
We are fond of saying that we live in a mythless age. What we usually mean is that we no longer believe in gods. But belief was never the engine. … Continue reading
The Gentle Violence of Obsolescence Vs the Thingness of Stuff (Part Three)
What built in obsolescence ultimately produces is not progress, but permanent provisionality. Nothing is allowed to settle. Systems are designed to be replaced before they become fully known. Objects arrive … Continue reading
The Gentle Violence of Obsolescence Vs the Thingness of Stuff (Part Two)
Digital obsolescence exposes the lie at the heart of planned decay. The problem is not entropy. It is compatibility. The object has not failed. The system has moved. This produces … Continue reading
The Gentle Violence of Obsolescence Vs the Thingness of Stuff (Part One)
Nostalgia is often described as a feeling, which flatters it enormously. Feelings are flighty. They arrive late, leave early, and can usually be distracted with a cup of tea. … Continue reading
The Treachery of Doors
Doorways are where time goes to hesitate. Not dramatically. Not with any particular flair. A small, almost polite pause, like a sentence without its verb, your inattention assumed. A doorway … Continue reading
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