For those of you with a big appetite, we’ve got a special sweet hidden away. Check out this great little recitation of Poe’s “The Red Death” — also read by William S. Burroughs — at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia.

Read and watch more at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia

I grabbed the package, closed the door and locked it. The new Black Swan DVD had arrived.

Darren Aronofsky’s tale-within-a-tale, Black Swan was one of last year’s best films. Many are familiar with the Oscar-nominated flick’s re-telling of the Swan Lake ballet to create a psychological horror flick that explores the perils of artistic perfection.

The movie has rightly earned it’s place among genre classics like Rosemary’s Baby and Carrie and — like the former — Black Swan is rife with occult symbolism and references that add weight to the scary-movie-cliches, making this bloody ballet one of those unique films that define a genre at the same time that it transcends the limits of that genre’s conventions.

Twins/Double

Of course, the central symbol of the film is the heroine’s (Nina — played by Natalie Portman) gradual crack-up into two separate personalities. This mental breakdown reflects the ballet’s protagonist/antagonist duality embodied by the White Swan and the Black Swan. Traditionally, these characters are portrayed by the same dancer and while Nina is the right dancer for the White Swan her attempts to embody the Black Swan are where her troubles begin.

In ancient Egypt, the twin rivals Horus and Set embodied primal duality, and twin symbolism has long been associated with all occurrences of opposites  sun and moon, night and day, summer and winter etc.  The good folks at hermetic.com offer this list of contrasts between Egypt’s Terrible Twins:

Horus	Set
Day	Night
Life	Death
Fire	Water
Slayer	Slain
Bursting-forth of life	Withdrawal of life and its reappearance later
Openly active	Secretive
Conqueror & King	Victim & Rebel
Hawk, Lion, & Ram	Serpent, Antelope, Hippo
Rises into the sky	Descends into the Earth
Steals Set’s virility	Throws filth in face of Horus

Often, another kind of twin symbolism emphasizes the balancing aspect of opposites. The caduceus staff with its entwining snakes has come to represent both the Greek god Hermes and the Roman god Mercury, but it is thought by some to have originally been a representation — in and of itself — of a more ancient deity. Borrowed by alchemy, the symbol of the crucified serpent became synonymous with the Philosopher’s Stone and poet John Donne referred to Jesus Christ as the crucified serpent.

In Black Swan, the twin symbolism is strictly played antagonistically between the White Swan/Black Swan, Good Nina/Evil Nina, between Nina and a newly-added rival dancer in the company who lacks Nina’s expertise but oozes the sexuality and liberation that Nina cannot seem to summon.

Mirrors

Throughout the film, Aronofsky uses mirrors and reflections to further emphasize Nina’s gradual splitting into two distinct personalities. In some ways this is a technique that simply reinforces the twins theme, but the symbolism of mirrors and reflections has its own specific implications.

Mirrors have long been used in the occult for magical work and the twin-creating power of mirrors is reinforced when one considers that mercury was once the preferred backing used to make glass reflective. Mirror magic has been used to divine the future, contact otherworldly beings/dimensions and — more to the point regarding Black Swan – to peer directly into the chaos of the subconscious mind. From the Prophetic Mystic site:

The purpose of a magical mirror, contrary to popular belief, is not to summon ghosts and have them give you answers, magical spells, or even to place a curse. In psychological terms, it can best be described as a form of psychoanalysis whereby an individual attempts to create a direct connection with the subconscious by suppressing the Id and Ego. Rather than restricting the unconscious to the confines within the mind, a seer is able to visually project the unconscious within the mirror. By projecting the unconscious visually, the desired subject of analysis becomes tangible and not so abstract.

In terms of mysticism, the unconscious is direct link to our psychic interpretation and divine inspiration. In psychological terms, it would best be associated to what Carl Jung described as the ‘Collective Unconscious.’ Specific cultural archetypes, as Jung described, are able to be found universally through this Collective Unconscious, or that common inner experience that we all share. The projections of these archetypes, such as angelic beings or demons, are simple representations of one’s inner self that can be projected within the mirror and confronted.

The mirror, as a tool for this psychoanalytical purpose, functions solely through the individual. What an individual perceives through the mirror is solely based upon their perception and the very limits of their own subconscious which becomes reflected in the mirror. In other words, what you are opening up to subconsciously plays out virtually on the mirror.

Check out this exhaustive examination of the the film and its symbols at Vigilant Citizen.

If you’re already confused, this book isn’t for you. This is not a biography of John Dee or an in-depth examination of the events that found the 16th-century mathematician, scientist, occultist, and the astrologer of Queen Elizabeth I seemingly contacting angels and receiving what may be the most important divinely-channeled communication of all time.  If you are interested in finding out more about Enochian Magic, start with Benjamin Woolley’s excellent tome The Queen’s Conjurer: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, Adviser to Queen Elizabeth I. This new volume is no place for newbies.

On the other hand, if you’ve found yourself intrigued with Dee’s accomplishments, there is much to explore here. And if you’re fluent in the Enochian tongue, this volume promises to put a private collection of Dee’s writings in your conjuring little hands.

The book’s strength lies in DeSalvo’s contextualizing of the magical writings that Dee’s efforts with assistant Edward Kelley produced. DeSalvo’s short, sharp chapters at the beginning of the book pull Dee and Kelley’s pursuits out of a vacuum and place them in a Biblical/historical framework that reads like a mystery novel.

DeSalvo goes into detail about the apocryphal Book of Enoch and the titular Biblical character the book is attributed to. While many attracted to DeSalvo’s book are undoubtedly familiar with these controversial Old Testament writings, DeSalvo’s parsing of the book, its author, its legend and lore are a welcome surprise and the fascinating parallels he draws between the Book of Enoch and the transmissions that Dee and Kelley received are the highlight of the volume.

Along the way, DeSalvo also reveals what he claims to be the missing 49th Table of Enoch, and his step-by-step reconstruction of the rows and columns of various tables almost remind us of an episode of C.S.I. However, despite the forensic intrigue of the first half of the book, the centerpiece is something of a disappointment.

While one’s own set of Dee’s complete tables and writings would be a great addition to any occultist’s library, the offerings here come up short. The last section of the book offers digital reproductions of the actual leaves that Dee and Kelley transcribed from the angels. The problem is that they are so small and lacking in sharpness that it’s difficult to know what to do with them. One can’t really appreciate their details and idiosyncrasies as one might with a work of art. The downright hard to read reproductions will also be of little use to the mage who might have hoped to solve the mysteries of the tables on  his/her own.  We would’ve loved to have seen this released in a coffee table edition that would’ve given readers the real sensation of flipping through Dee’s scrawlings and slipping into one of magic’s greatest mysteries.

While the book’s central offering is a letdown, DeSalvo’s commentary and criticism is enjoying near-universal praise andDecoding the Enochian Secrets is an important book for anyone serious about the study of Dee, his angels, and their magic.

Visit Joe Nolan’s Insomnia to see Terence McKenna play John Dee in the one hour documentary The Alchemical Dream: Rebirth of the Great Work.

Lost Knowledge of the Ancients: A Graham Hancock Reader is a collection of essays curated by Graham Hancock at his website. This volume gathers these contributions together in print for the first time and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

A book of essays by various authors certainly encourages grazing more than cover-to-cover reading, but no matter where one begins or ends this exploration of possible histories, one finds unexpected connections.

Lost includes essays by Robert Bauval, Mark Booth, Richard Hoagland, Robert Schoch, John Anthony West and Hancock himself. While the book is wide-ranging, covering topics from pole shifts to quantum philosophy to antediluvian history, its real strength lies in the themes that run throughout the book:

* The human race is much older than we think.

* There was a highly advanced human civilization that pre-dated ancient Egypt.

* Until we understand this ancient history, we will never understand who we really are.

Read more at JoeNolan.com.

Cyberpunk is a 60-minute documentary from 1990 that serves as a charming bookend to the William Gibson documentary No Maps for These Territories. While Gibson is featured prominently in this doc, it also expands out to illuminate an entire slice of the late ’80s/early ’90s culture that used to be featured in the late, great Mondo 2000 magazine.

Cyberpunk Review offers these insights:

Cyberpunk is a documentary that looks back at the 80s cyberpunk movement, and more specifically, how this has led to a trend in the “real” world where people were starting to refer to themselves as “cyberpunk.” The documentary sees “cyberpunks” as being synonymous with hackers. A number of writers, artists, musicians and scientists are interviewed to provide context to this movement. The guiding meme, as told by Gibson, is that information “wants” to be free. 60s counter-culture drug philosopher, Timothy Leary, provides a prediction that cyberpunks will “decentralize knowledge,” which will serve to remove power from those “in power” and bring it back to the masses. Many different potential technologies are discussed, including “smart drugs,” sentient machines, advanced prosthetics — all of which serve to give context to the idea of post-humanity and its imminent arrival on the world stage.

As an added bonus, visit the Insomnia page for a contemporary interview with Mr. Gibson in which he discusses the current state of Cyberspace!

The man who was born into this world as Don Van Vliet died on December 17th from complications resulting from his long battle with MS.

Vliet’s music combined an elemental distillation of American Blues with the psychedelic sensibilities of the ’60’s and a fervor for avant garde composition. The result was captivating, invigorating and infuriating at turns – and sometimes all at once. Along with various incarnations of his Magic Band, the Captain cut a path that few have followed, though many –  including Tom Waits – owe large debts to his influence. For the last several decades the Captain hung up his harmonica to concentrate on visual art, becoming a respected abstract painter.

Having sifted through a number of eulogies and tributes, here are some of the best memento mori we could find. Check out the Insomnia page for links to articles and galleries of band photos as well as images of the Captain’s great paintings. Watch this full BBC documentary - The Artist Formerly Known as Captain Beefheart - courtesy of our YouTube Channel.

Chapter 16

Can you hear a buzzing sound? No, it’s not Rudolph’s nose on the fritz. This is a holiday surprise that finds two book creators with Nashville connections giving Santa a run for his sleigh with what looks to be one of the season’s hit holiday gifts.

Although their celebrated new book takes place in a fantastical world, Jim McCann and Janet Lee both trace their roots to Nashville. McCann, a native Nashvillian, moved to New York in 2004 to become a successful comic book author, penning pages for X-Men, New Avengers and other Marvel Comics titles. Lee lives in Music City where her art shows in local galleries and coffeehouses. Together, this dynamic duo has taken the winter shopping season by storm with one of the most sought-after titles to hit the holiday shelves.

Having been hailed as an “instant classic” by USA Today, Return of the Dapper Men has also been added to the Holiday Gift Guides of both The New York Times and Publisher’s Weekly. The first 10,000 book run of the handsome, hardcover, graphic novel was sold-out by distributors in twenty-four hours and if anything is working against the book during the year’s busiest shopping season it’s that demand is outstripping production.

Return of the Dapper Men is set in a world called Anorev, a place where time has stopped, children never grow old, and bedtime never comes. However, everything changes one day when a multitude of well-dressed gentlemen fall from the sky to set things right. What follows is a tale of destiny shared by a young boy named Ayden, a robot girl called Zoe and a wily, wise Dapper Man who seems to know more than he’s letting on.

Chapter 16: You’re story begins at the very beginning of all things — The Big Bang. It’s a real knockout opening sequence. What inspired it?

McCann: We actually begin just as time is about to start up again, and then we go back to the beginning. I wanted to give a sense of history. Janet’s art is perfect to really sell a lot of those images with minimal words. We also sort of ease the reader not only into the world of Anorev, but into the world of sequential storytelling. Those first sixteeen pages or so read more like an illustrated children’s book than anything, which was a very deliberate choice. It’s all about beginnings, in a way.

Chapter 16: Speaking of beginnings, ‘Dapper Men is introduced by Project Runway’s Tim Gunn. How did that dapper man get involved?

McCann: I had the pleasure of meeting Tim when Marvel was putting together a comic book miniseries set in the world of high fashion and modeling called Models, Inc. Tim graciously allowed Marvel to write and draw him into a story where the best dressed man in a suit donned the best suit in super hero comics — Iron Man — to “fight crimes against fashion.” I was in PR at the time for Marvel, so Tim and I did a number of events and signings together. He lives in the same neighborhood as me here in Manhattan, so we would ride the subway home together, talking and laughing and bonding. We have developed a very special and close friendship for which I am incredibly thankful. He’s one of the most genuine men I know…

Read more at Chapter16.org

Inside the dust jacket of his new book, Keith Richards has left an inscription:

“This is the Life. Believe it or not, I haven’t forgotten any of it. Thanks and praises, Keith Richards.”

Perhaps the most highly-anticipated rock autobiography ever, Life is the most detailed account we have yet of the legendary guitarist/songwriter.

Richards has lived his life in public since his early 20s and he’s always lived it in the full-glare of the media — bad publicity be damned. That said, this book is not a confessional reassessment in which a public figure offers explanations — or excuses — for past sins. Richards greatest music and worst behavior are a matter of public record and Life doesn’t offer a new version of events so much as it delivers his version, and it’s full of crazy wisdom, smirking sarcasm, raspy rambles, heart and soul.

While other volumes — like Victor Bockris’ excellent Keith — have revealed the man through the eyes of friends, family and Rolling Stones insiders, it’s Life’s first-person candor that sets it apart. Not only does Richards give us the straight-dope on Keith, he also illuminates the rise of rock ‘n’ roll and the ’60’s counter-culture from inside the eye of the hurricane. Life is also about the creative life of one of rock’s most important guitarists and songwriters, and the book’s rich detail is at least partly due to a life lived on the look-out for the next song, the next riff.

Read the full review at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia.

Art Czar: Tell me about “Duck and Cover”

MacDowell: “Duck and Cover” was painted for a group show at Crewest Gallery in LA. I wanted an urban graffiti vibe to fit with the gallery, so I constructed the spray can out of cardboard and glued it to the canvas. The theme comments on human nature’s natural ability to lift up heros, only to knock them down. How anyone who has an original thought or idea outside of the status quo, usually gets silenced and sacrificed. People in power fear the power of the people.

Amen.

Check out more great posts from the Art Czar!

Anita Pallenberg with Cammell on the set of 'Performance.'

Even if you are a die-hard fan of outre, counter-cultural cinema, you might not leap to attention at the mention of the name Donald Cammell.

A painting prodigy as a young man, Cammell was making a living with his brushes by the age of 19. Having built the foundations of a lucrative portrait painting career, Cammell moved to Paris in search of a more inspired path in art. This shunning of commercial opportunity for artistic possibility marked Cammell’s pursuits in the years to come. It’s both the reason why he’s not more widely known and why he continues to be re-discovered by lovers of cinema on the fringes.

Returning to Swinging London in the 1960’s, Cammell decided that painting was dead and that he needed to turn his talents towards cinema. He lived a bohemian lifestyle and became the embodiment of the era’s libertine ideals. He befriended the Rolling Stones and teamed up with Nicolas Roeg to co-direct the classic Performance. Although Roeg is usually associated with the film, its troubled production saw Roeg disconnecting from the post-production process and the film’s final cut, with its revolutionary editing style really belongs to Cammell.

A man of wealth and taste.

After Performance, Cammell maintained an uneasy relationship with the Hollywood studios. Holding his creative integerity in the highest regard, he made ends meet selling treatments and scripts while trying to develop projects and find funding independently. He wrote a script for William Burroughs that found the author playing a Supreme Court Justice who is kidnapped to North Africa. Cammell also starred as Osiris in his friend Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising.

Mr. Mojo, rising.

In addition to his friendship with Anger, Cammell had deeper links to the occult. His father was a friend of Aleister Crowley’s and he even wrote a book about the Great Beast. Cammell told Anger that he’d sat on Crowley’s lap when he was a little boy. Anger promptly sat on Cammell’s lap in an effort to complete the circle!

In the family.

While Cammell would never secure a star turn in the Hollywood system, his place among experimental filmmakers is beyond dispute as this amazing portrait, which was probably taken sometime in the early ’70’s, demonstrates:

Find out more about Donald Cammell in this fascinating documentary at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia.

Joel Greenberg of The Washington Post explains:

The joint project is the latest stage of gradually widening access to the 2,000-year-old documents, once available to only a restricted group of scholars but made more accessible in recent decades through facsimile editions and published studies. Organizers say the first images will be online in a few months.

The project marries “one of the most important finds of the previous century with the most advanced technology of the next century,” said Pnina Shor, the director of the project at the Antiquities Authority. “We are putting together the past with the future in order to share it.”

The scrolls were discovered in the late 1940s and the 1950s in caves east of Jerusalem, near the ruins of Qumran on the Dead Sea. Scholars say the manuscripts, written between the second century B.C. and the first century A.D., provide important insights into the history of Judaism and early Christianity. They include the earliest known copies of books of the Hebrew Bible.

Shor said the approximately 30,000 scroll fragments, making up 900 documents, would be digitally photographed using infrared and multi-spectral imaging, producing high-resolution, enlargeable images of the original scrolls whose clarity would make it possible to better decipher them.

The multi-spectral photography, based on techniques developed at NASA, was intended to detect physical changes in the scrolls – which are mostly made of parchment, though some are papyrus – and to track their deterioration for preservation purposes, Shor said. But it has also revealed or improved the legibility of parts of the text that have faded and discolored with age and are not visible to the naked eye…

Read more here. Visit Joe Nolan’s Insomnia for a super-spooky and intriguing episode of the vintage TV show In Search Of. In this episode Leonard Nimoy illuminates the mysteries of the scrolls while relating the fascinating tale of their discovery. It’s like something out of Indiana Jones! Caves and scholars and Bedouin raiders, Oh my!

I can't talk any more.

The internet has become an eternal shore for moving images of all kinds. A nimble search with creative keywords will almost always reveal compelling films and television episodes washing up in the hightidewhitenoise. Recently, we’ve been turning up a number of great art videos as well.

Quite by accident we just stumbled across this gem by Paul McCarthy. Here’s what Frieze Magazine has to say about “Painter”:

The Painter (1995) is a brilliant interrogation of the senility and late paintings of Willem de Kooning, complete with collectors and dealers puppet-mastering around him. It’s a video deploying, as so many of his videos do, the mise-en-scène of instructional television (from the Galloping Gourmet to Martha Stewart), but one in which the painter mumbles and cries: ‘You can’t do it anymore you can’t do it anymore.’ And later: ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ He means painting, he means art-making, he may mean life. At the end of The Painter the artist gets up on a table, pulls down his pants and a collector with a protuberant fake nose sniffs at his bare arse, McCarthy’s own.

Next to David Lynch’s own words on the subject, I don’t know if I’ve seen a more compelling externalization of the artist’s interior process than McCarthy’s.

Here’s a preview! Enjoy!

Visit Joe Nolan’s Insomnia to watch the entire video.

London Calling is a great record in a great looking package, but Marcus Gray’s new book  Route 19 Revisited: The Clash and London Calling is a different story. While the book’s cover – and its title – implies that this volume is an examination of the band’s 1979 release, and a critical analysis that would argue it’s place among rock’s best records, covers can be misleading.

This is actually much, much more.

Route is easily the most exhaustive volume ever produced on The Clash, let alone an almost-omniscient examination of the London Calling record. Before Gray even alludes to the project, he sets the stage for it and the entire career of the band. With colorful language and textured, layered details,  Gray takes the time to tell the story of every member of the band and thoroughly describe the world that London Calling came crashing into.

Like other volumes, Gray exposes the Clash’s contradictions: Joe Strummer was a diplomat’s son who had to learn to be a working-class-hero; Mick Jones cared more about fashion than politics. He also brings clear-minded analysis to the band’s myth, effectively interjecting likely-truth into threadbare “official stories”. Gray’s commitment to the truth about his subjects and their masterpiece more than pays off, and this book puts you on the street, at the club and in the recording studio with the band in a way that few rock books even attempt.

This is far more than just the making-of one of rock’s best records. This is a passionate work of scholarship by a gifted, loving writer and it’s the book that this record – and this band – deserves.

Visit Joe Nolan’s Insomnia for a 90-minute, London Calling era Clash performance in New Jersey (1979).

Hicks was a favorite comedian on Letterman’s old Late Night show and the television venue was Hicks’ most consistent national audience. After a routine taping, Hicks left New York expecting to see himself on television that night. He didn’t. Letterman decided to censor Hicks, pulling the performance. The decision was made all the more tragic by Hicks’ untimely death in February, 1994.

In 2009, Letterman showed a lot of class by inviting Hicks’ mother to his new show, taking responsibility for the censorship and apologizing to her and his audience for his decision. He then aired Hicks’ censored performance for the first time.

Hicks has said that the performance had been pulled because he made fun of Pro-Life groups who supported the show. Letterman doesn’t get specific, but what is amazing about the content is that – despite the dated references – the power of the man’s imagery and delivery remains undiminished more than a decade later.

Here is the entire Letterman apology episode brought to you by our YouTube Channel.

Visit Joe Nolan’s Insomnia to watch one of Hicks’ last television appearances on Austin Public Access television.

I spy with my little i...

Nothing is True. Everything is Permitted.

The wonderful Brion Gysin was a writer, painter, filmmaker and restaurateur. He was a friend and collaborator to William S. Burroughs. Burroughs said of Gysin, “He was the only man I have ever respected.”

If you are a frequent reader of these posts, you are no doubt already familiar with Gysin. However, despite several recent publications and a new tour of his visual art, the man remains elusive.

We were really excited to find this footage of the master at work. This video is from a late ’80’s pirate TV show out of London, England called Network 21. This is a rare chance to see Gysin’s paintings come to life as he rolls out patterns and grids before piling on layers of text and calligraphy.

The man has a way with a line…

This Network 21 episode also features: Kenny Morris talking about dreams and Genet; a Mayakovski film; a photoshoot with the Rolling Stones in drag; footage from a tattoo convention in 1985; an excerpt from Warhol’s “Trash” with Joe Dallessandro and The Sex Pistols’ famous appearance on the Bill Gundy show.

See the whole shebang at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia.

I woke early to a cloudy Sunday in the Old South, however, this dark little gem has polished my resolve. Wrap yourself in melancholy and join Terence McKenna for this trip through the history of The Great Work.

Terence McKenna’s The Alchemical Dream: Rebirth of the Great Work is a 2008 film produced by the good people at Sacred Mysteries.

Here’s the propaganda from the website:

In the mid-1990’s Terence McKenna and Mystic Fire’s Sheldon Rocklin teamed up to make this rich and exciting film. Little did they know that this would be their last film. Originally titled Coincidencia Oppositorum: The Unity of Opposites and filmed in Prague with Terence portraying his usual erudite rendition of the Irish Bard, this filmed classic takes us on a journey into the alchemical renaissance of King Frederick V and his wife Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia. Playing the role of John Dee, court magician for Queen Elizabeth of England, Terence McKenna shows us how the promise of a return to the tradition of alchemy was almost instituted in Europe. He also shows us that this early attempt at the creation of an alchemical kingdom actually lead to the European Renaissance and the institution of Cartesian science and the beginnings of rationalism within the western mindset. This incredible film is not only beautifully filmed but is Terence McKenna’s finest performance and a worthy eulogy to his genius.

Ladies and gentlemen, The Sleepless Film Festival presents The Alchemical Dream…

The story of alchemy is a fairy tale – maybe more of an angel tale? – of sorts and, like any great fairy tale, this one comes with pictures:

Find a gallery of alchemical engravings at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia.

My latest find is a film called KORDAVISION: The Man Who Shot Che Guevara.

Having read a number of books about and by Mr. Guevara, I’ve been compelled to watch a number of films about the man as well. Of course, I thought this flick would be a doc that focused specifically on Guevara’s last days in Bolivia and his subsequent execution.

I was totally wrong.

Millions of posters and T-shirts all over the world have been adorned with the same iconic image of Che Guevara, but it remains a footnote that this ubiquitous image was based on a photograph taken by famous Cuban photographer Alberto ‘Korda’ Diaz. This film profiles Diaz, telling the story of his life, his career, and the infamous photograph known as ‘Guerillero heroico.’

~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide

Here is the trailer…

This is a really interesting take on the Cuban Revolution, the mythologizing of Guevara and the power of images.

Watch the entire film at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia.

Hector Hernandez does a great series of super-short artist-interviews on the Czar site.

This is a micro-chat with Heavy Metal quilter extraordinaire, Ben Venom:

Question: Tell me about “Bang Your Head”

I’m interested in juxtaposing traditional handmade crafts with one of the more extreme musical genres, Heavy Metal. My work can be described as a collision of Iron Maiden Metal ballads with the outrageous stage antics of Ozzy Osbourne. Serious, yet attempting to take on a B movie Horror film style where even the beasts of Metal need a warm blanket to sleep with. The question remains…Can I play with madness?

Listen to Heavy Metal While You Sleep!

Handmade Quilt, Vintage Heavy Metal Shirts, Batting, Thread, Fabric

Iron Fist

Vintage Heavy Metal T-Shirts, Fabric, Thread

Hello friends. This weekend I discovered an entertaining and eye-opening pirate radio documentary online: Pirate Radio USA.

Given the post-Clinton legalization of media monopolies, the subject of pirate radio has once again become a hot-button topic. Pirate radio broadcasters use homemade technologies to take over radio frequencies, broadcasting without licenses, outside of FCC rules and regulations.

Pirate radio has become a form of civil disobedience. The various subjects of the documentary fight directly against the corporate media by simply “stealing” FM bandwidth to broadcast their radical, rocking messages. Of course, the irony is that the airwaves above the United States are owned exclusively by the public.

How can you steal what you already own?

More about the film at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia.

The first kick I took was when I hit the ground.

This just in…

So it seems that it sometimes takes a number of arty types to explain something as fundamentally proletariat as  humble, timeless blue jeans.

I’d love to go off on this subject, but I couldn’t do a better job than The Vancouver Sun:

Workaday staple and fashion favourite, blue jeans have conquered the planet. But were they born in the textile mills of New Hampshire, on France’s southern coast or the looms of north Italy?

Art historians believe they have found a piece of the centuries-old puzzle in the work of a newly discovered 17th-century north Italian artist, dubbed the “Master of the Blue Jeans”, whose paintings went on show in Paris this week.

Nothing comes between me and my...oh well...you know...

Running through his works like a leitmotif is an indigo blue fabric threaded with white, with rips revealing its structure, in the skirts of a peasant woman or the jacket of a beggar boy.

“The works are very attached to the detail of clothing – it was very rare for a painter to characterise the poor with such detail,” said curator Gerlinde Gruber, who helped to identify the anonymous artist’s works.

“And there is blue jean in every painting except one,” she said.

Other details in his work, such as a knotted white kerchief in a painting entitled “Mother Sewing”, enabled curators to locate the scenes in northern Italy, in the region of Venice.

Historians have long traced jeans’ ancestry to two sources outside the United States: a sturdy fabric from the French city of Nimes – “de Nimes”, hence “denim” – on the one hand, and a cotton fustian from Genoa in Italy – “Genes” in French, becoming “Jeans” in English – on the other.

But unlike the finery worn by the upper classes, the clothes of the peasant classes were used until shredded through, leaving no trace.

Until now there were only fragmented written records to rely on to document the shipments of low-cost fabric that flooded from Genoa into northern Europe – and especially England – in the mid-17th century.

It's not easy wearing jeans...

“We have accounts from an English tailor saying that his fabric came from Genoa, and that is the origin of jeans,” said Gruber. “But this gives us new documentary proof of a historical reality that has been forgotten.”

In a further quirk, the blue tint of the fabric was painted with the exact same indigo as that used to dye today’s denim, according to curators.

Centuries later, husband and wife design team Francois and Marithe Girbaud earned a reputation as modern-day masters of the jeans world – as pioneers of the baggy hip-hop look, of stonewashing or stretch denim.

“This calls into question the entire history we have been telling up until now,” said Francois Girbaud, who partnered with the Paris exhibition. “And that’s what’s fun.”

Find out more at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia.

In Histories Are Mirrors, Hicks, a Pulitzer-winning New York Times staff photographer, documents the wreckage of the World Trade Center and the early years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, through 2004. Many of the wall labels offer only dates and locations, but the exhibit isn’t merely a timeline. Hicks’ best photographs capture the eternal features that crop up in the emotional landscape of wars everywhere: fear, pain, pride, rage, hubris, hope and hopelessness.

The show’s first images of the twin towers immediately recall the mute powerlessness of shocked Americans, resigned to observe the destruction as passive participants. Even photos of New York City emergency crews raise a paralyzing question: What do rescue workers do when there is no one to rescue?

Hicks then leaps into images and suites of photographs from a world away: A family in an open truck stares passively at an overturned vehicle in the bottom of a bomb crater; soldiers crouch and run in the violent confusion of a battle; an Afghan soldier firing an automatic weapon from a trench sets a rat-tat-tat pace for the succession of pictures on the wall.

In one image, an Afghan soldier dressed in modern camouflage gives orders to his men while wielding what looks like a medieval sword with a curved blade. Afghanistan’s geographic location has made it a region in conflict since antiquity, and Hicks’ photo implies that the country’s young men will be eternal soldiers.

In a photo titled “Mahawil, Iraq. May 14, 2003,” bodies wrapped in plastic dot the desert in a location where 3,000 corpses were recovered from a mass grave. This ghostly image resonates with another photo, “Nejaf, Iraq. August 21, 2004,” in which a number of Iraqi detainees are lying face-down in the desert, their hands cinched behind them with zip-ties. Both photographs recall the famous 1789 woodblock prints of the slave ship Brookes, its rows and columns of human ballast neatly accounted for if barely accommodated. In these compositions, Hicks’ subjects, like the slaves, are reduced to inert numbers before a rush of power, money and war.

Read more at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia

(Joy Division cover the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray”.)

With Joy Division, writer Jon Savage and director Grant Gee show how to do rockumentary the right way. Thorough but personal, affectionate yet lucid, Savage and Gee weave their subject into the very fabric of Manchester itself, claiming that the seminal post-punk band, Joy Division, were instrumental in the renaissance of an at-the-time spent industrial force.

Savage and Gee have done so much work with this documentary. There are numerous talking heads – including all the surviving band members, the now deceased Wilson, producer Martin Hannett, designer Peter Saville, photographer Anton Corbijn (who directed his own film about Ian Curtis and Joy Division with 2007’s Control), underground filmmaker Malcolm Whitehead, infamous agent provocateur Genesis P Orridge and, interestingly, Curtis’s girlfriend at the time Annik Honoré – as well as reel upon reel of archived footage

- Matt Shea, 20/20 Filmsight

Watch the film at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia.

Simon Reynolds’ acclaimed first volume of post-punk memory sifting — Rip it Up and Start Again — went a long way toward exploring and explaining the various flowerings that bloomed from the bruised and bloodied blossom that was ’70s punk rock. If you thought one volume of exhaustive, evocative reconstructing of the period would suffice, you would be wrong, and Reynolds proves this point with Totally Wired: Postpunk Interviews and Overviews. The project is a bookend to the first volume and it completes an impressive cartography of that time and that music.

Totally Wired is largely an oral biography; the story of a place, a time and a music told by the people who listened to it, created it and lived through it. Serving up 32 interviews with everyone from David Byrne to Jah Wobble to James Chance, Totally’ (Along with Rip’) must certainly qualify Reynolds as the definitive chronicler of the period.  The later chapters of the book practically constitute a project unto themselves, allowing Totally’ to deliver an even clearer, deeper explanation of just what came after punk.

The interviews begin with Ari Up, the lead singer of The Slits. The delightful miss Up is a fantastic storyteller and her remembrances of being the only dread-headed white girl step-dancing at Reggae parties are spellbinding — as are her recollections of a time when Punks, Rastas, Sticksmen, John-Travolta-disco-sadists and neo-Teddy Boys all collided on the street and on the stage as a new music attempted to rise from the ashes of punk.

Factory Records co-founder Tony Wilson is just as enthusiastic on the page as he was during the heyday of the Manchester music scene or as his on-screen persona (played by Steve Coogan) in 24 Hour Party People (Wilson died shortly after his interview). Wilson’s chat with Reynolds is hilarious, but sweet and filled with been-there-done-that witticisms. Asked about what made Manchester music special, Wilson replies:

…Manchester is a great immigrant city … Dave Ambrose, a great A&R man, said that Manchester kids have the best record collections. That’s true. When he said that, I flashed onto a Hulme squat in the mid-eighties. Ranged against the wall  would be 300 records: an entire collection of samba records, a load of German noise bands, the entire Parliament Funkadelic…

Read more at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia

The crown jewel  is an almost-too-good-to-be-true comic/zine starring buff icons Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig – as gay lovers.

When we first saw this book among Microcosm’s up-coming releases, we anticipated a kind of tongue-in-cheek fan-fiction romance in which the macho-rockers put their tongues in one another’s cheeks – oral or otherwise.

While Henry and Glenn’ wasn’t what we’d expected, we’ve fallen in love with this warm wonder of sweet insanity.

Henry and Glenn’ consists of a number of barely connected cartoons, comic strips and journal entries created by the Igloo Tornado art collective. Rollins is clearly “The Man” in their relationship and some of the book’s best bits find Danzig decked out in various accoutrements, inquiring whether a given get-up makes “my butt look fat?”.

While the book certainly has a blast with too-easy-gay-jokes and plenty of raunchy humor, it also does a great job of keeping a straight face in a cartoon that finds Henry and Glenn watching a flock of birds circling in the sky while Rollins observes “When angels get tired they sit and rest on soft pillows of clouds…” It’s the little details that make this book more than just a clever joke. The photocopied images of handwritten journal entries bring an unexpected level of tangible reality to the crazy cartoons and a drawing of a message on a postcard from one of Henry’s spoken-word tours is so sincere you almost forget to laugh.

Read More at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia.

The brainchild of the South Korean sculptor, “New Urban Species” is an art show disguised as a natural history exhibit from the future, and it’s one of the most engaging displays on tour this year.

U-Ram Choe builds art that comes from a not-to-distant-tomorrow, where organic life and mechanized objects have become one. His kinetic sculptures are not only creepy-fun marvels, they also create a compelling dialog about machine consciousness and the coming Singularity.

In his book Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology, brain researcher Valentino Braitenberg demonstrates how human beings invest the increasingly complex behaviors of mechanical devices with a range of values and abilities including aggression, creative thinking, personality and free will, and how we project ourselves into these moving forms. Chou plays on this tendency so expertly that his illusion holds up to repeated viewings – visitors even whisper in the galleries so as not to disturb the “sleeping” pieces on display.

Read more at Joe Nolan’s Insomnia

U-Ram Choe – bitforms gallery solo exhibition (2006) from bitforms gallery nyc on Vimeo.

Since his suicide at his Colorado ranch, Thompson seems more present than ever. A number of competing biographies have filled the stores, several new films about the man have flickered into the theaters, DVD shelves and bit torrent sites, and nary a week goes by that we don’t stumble across some bit of news regarding the troubled production of the Johnny Depp film of Hunter’s first novel,  The Rum Diary.

In the midst of all the hubbub, I overlooked a grimy little treasure: The Crazy Never Die. Crazy’ is an odd film with a strange provenance that gives the viewer a front-row seat at a rather lucid 80’s-era university lecture by Thompson.

The Crazy Never Die was produced by the Mitchell Brothers. The Mitchell’s owned the infamous O’Farrell Theatre strip club in San Fransisco. They also produced the revolutionary, mainstream-porn hit Behind the Green Door. Thompson was a sometimes-doorman at the O’Farrell while he was researching his still-unpublished book, The Night Manager.

Read more here

Jodorowsky giving a speech on spirituality. Photo: Ana Bolívar (www.anabolivar.com)

Psychomagic is the newest book by the legendary surrealist filmmaker, comics author, Tarot expert and therapist, Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy is the brand new English translation of Jodorowsky’s poetic-action therapy techniques. The book  first appeared in Spanish in 2008.  It’s published by Inner Traditions and was released on June 18, 2010.

The book is separated into 3 sections, keeping Jodorowsky’s wide-ranging ramblings carefully collected.  Writer Gilles Farcet interacts with the author in the book’s first chapters which are written in a Q&A format.

An introductory essay by Farcet makes it clear that their “interview” consisted of his enduring an expansive, multi-layered monologue from Jodorowsky which was only later recast in the Q&A structure. The “knowing teacher vs. baffled student” feel of this section is absolutely delightful, and the disarming approach allows the deeper implications of Jodorowsky’s ideas to take the reader by surprise. In the second section, the author is matched more evenly with another interviewer – Javie Esteban. The pair interact as peers with Esteban teasing and tugging Jodorowsky into more-deeply-illuminating his ideas and techniques. This interview format was surprising at first, but the conversational progression, covering many complex artistic, magical and therapeutic ideas, never gets confusing or frustrating. One feels privileged to join in on such a lively, engaging discussion.

Read more here…

The next time your good times are more boring than blaring, why not introduce an Exquisite Corpse?

Wikipedia explains:

Exquisite corpse (also known as exquisite cadaver or rotating corpse) is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. “The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun”) or by being allowed to see the end of what the previous person contributed.

The technique was invented by Surrealists and is similar to an old parlour game called Consequences in which players write in turn on a sheet of paper, fold it to conceal part of the writing, and then pass it to the next player for a further contribution. Surrealism principal founder André Breton reported that it started in fun, but became playful and eventually enriching. Breton said the diversion started about 1925, but Pierre Reverdy wrote that it started much earlier, at least before 1918.

Here are the ground rules my tong has adopted for our diabolical creations:

1. Open your third eye and seek out a nearby text. Any book, magazine, flyer, poster, website — perhaps this luminous scroll? — will do.

2. Find a random passage and copy a found sentence onto a piece of paper.

3. Pass the paper from comrade to comrade in any way that seems to fit the mood.

4. Each person generally writes one sentence. Feel free to write sentence fragments, letting your co-conspirators finish your thoughts.

Read more here…

Since the death of Dennis Hopper, I’ve been searching and scratching in the lesser known spots of his career trying to get a better feel for the man. YouTube is currently home to a couple of beautiful treasures that have had me reading and viewing for weeks now.I finally got around to creating a new Sleepless Film Festival to showcase this bizarre double-feature.

The Last Movie is Hopper’s follow-up to Easy Rider. It won him the Golden Lion in Venice and promptly ended his career as a director when he got back to America. The other film is a documentary called The American Dreamer. ‘Dreamer archives the strange days that Hopper lived through as he tried to edit The Last Movie in the midst of an ongoing, hedonistic orgy at his New Mexico ranch.

With this episode, we are looking back on the career of the late, great Dennis Hopper. While we can’t resist re-visiting highlights from the maverick’s oeuvre, we are primarily cranking out these letters in the ether to shine a spotlight on a lesser known period that may represent Hopper’s creative peak as a director. Here’s a hint, I’m not talking about Easy Rider…

Read more and watch The Last Movie and The American Dreamer here.