Streaming literature has a very rich history and a plausibly bright future, each for it’s own reason. The former because the price was right; the latter because it fits the contemporary attention span. The great novelists of the 19th century, Dumas, Flaubert, Thackeray, Eliot, and especially the “father” of the form, Charles Dickens, produced their Read More
All posts by jmp
Free Form
“Whoever controls the media controls the mind,” said the poet Jim Morrison, lead singer for the Doors in the late 1960s. “Who are the Brain Police?” asked Frank Zappa of the Mothers of Invention is his 1966 album Freak Out. Those quotes and so many more like them were just part of that drug-addled Read More
Sociometry
YES! There really is an Institute of Sociometry and, yes, it is helmed by two artists, partners Heather Link-Bergman and Peter Miles Bergman, who claim a collective of over 700 special authorized agents in 23 countries join them in their efforts at culture jamming and guerrilla communications. As artists, they take a more adventurous approach Read More
In Montana Manners Matter
In fishing manners matter. It’s true today as it was 40 years ago when this story took place. One thing you never do is cross another fisherman’s line. You also don’t slip in upriver from where a fisherman’s working. Fly-fishers work on upriver after trout and stay out of each other’s way to the greatest degree Read More
Translocal Arts Activism
An interesting discussion with Complex Movements, an artist-activist collective in Detroit, about the intersection of art, technology, and commodification in trying to build “translocal” alliances for change here.
Policing Demonstrations
Interesting statistics on policing demonstrations in the U.S. here
About Love and Tyranny
Anand Giridharadas in conversation with biographer Ann Heberlein about her new book, On Love and Tyranny, The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt, “a thinker with profound relevance to this moment.” https://the.ink/p/arendt?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cta
Insurrection and Sedition
The assault of January 6 on a sitting Congress was an exclamation point at the conclusion of four bizarre years in American democracy. It was the end point of a callous campaign by the nation’s highest elected official to incite insurrection among the lunatic fringe of his core supporters. Like him, it failed, but it Read More
The Oldest Story
By choice I’ve spent most of my life among storytellers. Poets, novelists, playwrights, songwriters, and just sitting around the campfire tellers of tales. I love stories and the people who tell them. Have you ever wondered what might be the oldest story of them all? The one that’s been told longer than any other? One Read More