Tag: Christopher Pankhurst

Brussels today: Fighting terrorism with moral signalling, grandiose self-abasement, and wishful thinking

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After the attacks on Charlie Hebdo last year I wrote about the puerile immaturity of the response in some quarters. Later in the year, after the even more deadly attacks in Paris, I wrote about the empty sentimentality of the response in some quarters. These two responses are in fact facets of the same mindset; a bipolar condition that simultaneously laughs and cries at our collective suicide whilst refusing to admit that anything is fundamentally wrong. It is an adolescent sensibility that combines impotent cynicism with ostentatious mawkishness.

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Why did I agree to become involved? As I look back now I can see no clear decision or conscious choice, just a hapless falling into circumstance. If I had refused to entertain the stupid idea from the beginning would that have absolved me from the knowledge that was to come to me? Or was I already destined to find it no matter what I willed or thought? (more…)

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David Bowie
Blackstar
Columbia, 2016

Blackstar will inevitably serve as Bowie’s last will and testament whether he meant it to or not. Certainly the writing of much of the material would have preceded his awareness of his terminal illness and his confrontation with imminent death. (more…)

Jean Sibelius, 1865–1957

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English original here

Tapiola est la dernière œuvre majeure composée par Jean Sibelius. Elle fut  commandée par le chef d’orchestre de New York, Walter Damrosch, au début de 1926, et fut jouée pour la première fois le lendemain de Noël de la même année. Damrosch avait demandé un poème symphonique, le choix du sujet étant laissé au compositeur. Pour trouver l’inspiration, Sibelius se tourna, comme il le fit si souvent,  vers le Kalevala, le recueil de folklore finnois qui transparaît si souvent dans son œuvre.  (more…)

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Katherine Beem and Andy Paciorek, eds.
Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies
Wyrd Harvest Press, 2015

The term “folk horror” is a relatively recent invention that can be applied to a wide range of artistic creations, not all of them belonging to the horror genre. It was popularized by the 2010 BBC TV documentary A History of Horror where the term was used to describe three horror films: Witchfinder General, The Blood on Satan’s Claw, and The Wicker Man. (more…)

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Übersetzt von Deep Roots

English original here

Am 14. November, dem Tag nach den tödlichen Anschlägen moslemischer Terroristen in Paris, stellte der Pianist Davide Martello sein großes tragbares Piano nahe dem Bataclan-Theater auf, wo 89 der Opfer ermordet wurden. (more…)

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German translation here

On November 14th, the day after the deadly attacks in Paris by Muslim terrorists, pianist Davide Martello set up his portable grand piano close to the Bataclan Theatre where 89 of the victims were murdered. (more…)

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Carolyne Larrington
The Land of the Green Man: A Journey Through the Supernatural Landscapes of the British Isles
London: I. B. Tauris, 2015

Is Britain the most mystical of all countries? It certainly seems that way to me, but then I’m irreparably biased. Whilst every human culture has its own folklore, the magic seems more potent, more alive, when it’s our own. “The myth is not my own, I had it from my mother,” as Coomaraswamy (quoting Euripides) would have it. (more…)

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Jacqueline Yallop
Dreamstreets: A Journey Through Britain’s Village Utopias
London: Jonathan Cape, 2015

Dreamstreets tells the story of various ‘model villages’ that were built during the industrial revolution and beyond but it also tells a wider history of Britain through the nineteenth century. (more…)

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Penda’s Fen was first broadcast in 1974 as part of the BBC’s long-running Play for Today series. Since then it has only been broadcast on TV once, in 1990 on Channel 4. It has never been released on video, DVD or BluRay but it has cropped up at various film festivals through the years. (more…)

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Watching Carol Morley’s new film, The Falling, I found myself wondering, slightly obsessively, exactly which year it was set in. I settled on 1970 because the visual cues in the home of the main character, Lydia, suggested that strange point in time where hallucinatory sixties psychedelia ossified into lurid home furnishings. Subsequent googling revealed that it was set in 1969. (more…)

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Savitri Devi
The Lightning and the Sun
Third Edition, Complete and Unabridged
Ed. R. G. Fowler
San Francisco: Counter-Currents Publishing, 2015

If Savitri Devi’s The Lightning and the Sun isn’t the most controversial book of the twentieth century then it must surely come close. (more…)

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In the summer of 1969 the members of Fairport Convention were gathered together at a country house in Farley Chamberlayne in picturesque Hampshire. There they were to record their most celebrated album, Liege & Lief, the definitive statement in English folk-rock. The country retreat setting was partly therapeutic as the band had earlier that year been involved in a tragic road accident whilst on their way back from a gig in Birmingham. The drummer, Martin Lamble, and guitarist Richard Thompson’s girlfriend, Jeannie Taylor, were both killed. Clearly, the remaining members of Fairport were looking for a new musical direction as they sought to put the past behind them.  (more…)