some things i had forgotten

[dubdobdee]

sorting through the pile of stuff i need to distil into BSF's footnotes this morning -- a task i am taking very relaxedly, yes! -- i came face to face with the infamous issue of the wire, with michael jackson on the cover: #, june 1991

a: i've always said had nothing to do with this issue, no knowledge of the shock the cover was intended as -- i'm listed as "contributing editor" but had no contribution; was as startled as everyone else when i saw the posters up all over hackney... it was a big relaunch-new-direction push, and i hadn't been consulted
b: the cover is semi-pixellated, JUST LIKE the cover of invincible a decade later, and haha the main coverline is "michael jackson for grownups": given the mag's brief and the issue's brief, this is as tart as it's defensive... yes he is an popstar, yes this is a mag for the discerning adult, WOT OF IT! it is you mr so-called grown-up that is missing the point etc
c: as startled but very pleased -- everything was moving towards my sensibility!
d: anyway, glancing through the issue i find i wrote a WHOLE FEATURE i didn't remember, about david byrne, a critical (kinda) analysis of his instrumental release "the forest", his more or less wordless meditation on the first civilisations, ur, kish, nineveh, etc ; actually i did kinda remember (though not that it was in this issue); i just pretended i forgot and damped it out of my mind bcz the record itself maybe isn't that good, so presumably the piece will be too? but the piece -- while not exactly deep -- is fun, it's all about primitivism, as a technique, and how excited and complicated it all is (obvious byrnish stuff, but basically me juggling my speculations with his Mitey Midbrow Artwork as a walk-on framing pretext now and then) (viz DOIN MY JOB vg tick)
e: the contrast between the ease of this, to read and i suspect to write, and the stuff i have been drilling so laboriously and painfully out of my subconscious in recent weeks is a bit massive (as vick said -- cheerfully -- of the recent stuff, this is a hideous tangled nightmare for me the writer and BY GOD the reader is going to experience every horrible spasm of it, EVERY ONE!) (she read the whole first draft, bless her, and delivered a careful Professonal Academic Reader and Advisor Critique, during possibly the most emotionally horrible two weeks of her year)
f: anyway i think i am going to scan and post it, if i can remember how

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

hee also this issue contains my spiteful review of geoff dyer's "but beautiful" (cf strange dream on friday): which boils down to "the reason this book is actually quite good, and not as rubbish as a brief description makes it sound as if it's gong to be, is that the author is something of a twerp"

IT IS A GOOD REVIEW LOOK I SAID YOUR BOOK WAS GOOD! (Dear me, it is SUCH a mean and cheeky review...)

(This mainly snags in my minds bcz an ex of my sister once met dyer at a party in LA or somewhere, and i somehow came up, and dyer -- so sed this fellow -- SEETHED: so as usual i feel bad for hurting someone's feelings... i should reread the book maybe; see if i was wrong)

[koganbot]

Can we officially say that you have finished BSF so that I can inform you of your next assignment?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

well i have a bit less on that's super-urgent -- except an 1800 word column for FQ for end of week after next, not quite sure the proper deadline as the editor is in california for another week, but i have to actually do some prep work for it

[koganbot]

Good. Then here is the assignment:

It is really, absolutely, truly the time, for real and for certain, for you to WRITE your rockwrite piece. --Not sure if your prospective "Why are the left such CHumps when it comes to the CHarts?" is the same piece or different. In any event, it/they need(s) to get written. Because if such pieces do not get written then we are effectively ceding the topic to those who are ignorant, irrational, and vacuous and who are not shy about putting forth their own misleading and sometimes destructive views on the subject. However, those who have recently published such bad writing provide you with the hook for pitching your good writing, in that you can point to them, say "Here is A** P***** in the L* T**** who recently published this ridiculous thing, and A**** C******* in L***** who wrote this utter botch, and I, Mark Sinker, can redeem your publication/cover your publication with glory by giving you the opportunity to publish my account, one of richness and depth." Except you need to have substantially finished a draft of it before you make the pitch, so that what you pitch will be on your own terms, rather than shoehorned into some pre-set need or expectation of the publication. In draft one of BSF you'd detailed a social map and an area of concern (key word "divide") of Brit crits in the late '80s, so you are already on your way, are you not?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

can do! tho it is a small book not a piece -- will revive and chase up my "time you did a book" contacts over the next two weeks, and begin the synopsis -- will gather my scattered maps of same: chumps is a chapter, bsf was entirely conceived of as working notes towards same...

was just tidying the top of the piano and found a note to self: "rockwrite book to end with greil marcus on [haha no spoilers!!]" -- not that it's more than a momentary inspiration, who knows where it will end; just to observe that my entire house is filled with the begnnings of this little book

[koganbot]

Hurrah!