Burial, Hauntology, Etc.

Six years since a blog entry called “Phonograph Blues” introduced me to Derrida’s concept of hauntology, not directly through Spectres of Marx but through Burial’s records. My grasp of the concept (not too strong) and my love of the artist’s gray wisps of electronica’s echoes (very strong) really owes a lot to Mark Fisher’s blog entry and the “unedited transcript” of his 2007 interview with Burial himself.

Other interviews with Burial include this one from The Guardian that begins with him referring to himself as “a rubbish super-hero,” the one from Fact magazine where he mentions that “his favourite sound in the world is the motion-tracker from Aliens,” and the Cyclic Defrost feature-interview that calls the Burial track “Archangel” a pop song that hasn’t been invented yet.

As for hauntology in general, Fisher has been discussing it since at least the start of 2006. Here are three I like, though I’m sure there are many others worth reading:

After Fisher, I guess Xaven Taner’s “Hauntology: A Primer – The Absent Present Resonates” is a pretty good round-up, too. After all, I love Taner’s special section on Nurse with Wound and his “Reflections on David Lynch’s Inland Empire is a short but interesting read.

Somewhere on Taner’s site is a review of Inception. I like Christopher Nolan a lot, but he always gets accidentally bumped off my mind by David Lynch. Here, Inland Empire beats Inception. It’s just like how, a few years ago, my first viewing and enjoyment of Memento was derailed by my viewing of Mulholland Drive a day later. Coincidence kills!

The Spoils: May 2012

Slowing down, slowing down, this blog is slowing down. I have a Tumblr account, so why do I keep reblogging here? (Answer: Because there are a lot of good entries being posted on WordPress by other people.)

So May saw me double the purchases I made in April; instead of one book last month, I bought two. In a couple of months, my book acquisitions will make a huge comeback, but I’d like to uphold quality over quantity once again:

My Not-Quite-Blunden Nearly-But-Not-Complete Edition

To be honest, that Keats is just a “placeholder” until I can get a more definitive and complete edition. (I’m considering the Stillinger.)

Here’s my other book purchase for May:

This is my third book by Muldoon. The first one I bought was the Oxford lectures collected as The End of the Poem, and the second was Madoc: A Mystery. I’m not sure I like Muldoon as much as I do Ciaran Carson, but I do love what little I’ve read of Muldoon. He’s definitely someone I’m interested in exploring further.