This issue, filled to the gills with brilliant stuffs, dedicated to wonder and the magnificence of place features:

Poetry by:

Matina Stamatakis (New York)~
Logan Ryan Smith (San Francisco)~
Beth Lifson (Portland)~
Chris McCreary (Philadelphia)~

Paintings & Poetry by:

Henry Denander (Stockholm)~

Artwork by:

Bruce New (Kentucky)~
Claudio Parentela (Italy)~
Seldon Hunt (New York)~

My pieces on:

Kris Waldherr's The Lover's Path Tarot (New York)~
Strange Attractor Journal, in the company of an interview with its editor, Mark Pilkington (UK)~
The Strange Beautiful, The Wonder of Home (Brooklyn)~

And last, but not ever, least:

The Misanthrope's Guide to a Musical Valentine, by Duncan Harman (Glasgow)~

~Thank you for reading!~

John Callcott Horsley (1817 - 1903)
Oil on canvas, 1865

History of Valentine's Day

St. Valentine's Day was supposedly started in the time of the Roman Empire. In Ancient Rome, the date of February 14 was a holiday to honor the Queen of Roman Goddesses and Gods, Juno. Juno was known as the Goddess of women and marriage. The next day, February 15, was the first day of the Festival known as the Feast of Lupercia.

On February 14, it was said that the young boys and girls of the villages would write down the names of every girl and place these names in a jar, out of which each young man would have to draw a name of a girl and this particular maiden would be their partner for the duration of the festival. Sometimes these pairings would last a year and result in marriage.

These rituals under the laws of Claudius were banned as the Emperor believed that the reasons why men would not go to war were because they did not want to leave their lovers or families. As a result, all marriages and engagements were canceled - and Saint Valentine ,a Roman priest, was said to have married these couples in secret. He was executed for this on the 14th day of February.

While Saint Valentine was in jail, it is said that he fell in love with the jailer's daughter. By a miracle, or some say, by the prayers of Valentine, she gained her sight and, as a last farewell, in a note, he wrote to her, "From Your Valentine".

A variation of the origins of Valentine's Day is that he was a priest who was also a physician and would cure the sick. He was also said to have tried to cure the jailer's blind daughter and was arrested and, on the day of his execution, wrote a note, as a final farewell, saying "From your Valentine," which, some say, is what caused her to gain her sight.

It is also said whilst he was in jail awaiting execution that he was sent little notes and flowers from the children whom he had helped when they were sick. This also may have been one of the reasons why he sent a farewell note to the jailers� daughter and why we send valentines.

St Valentine's Day is celebrated on February 14 of each year; the reason why it is celebrated on this day is because this was the day that the Patron Saint of Lovers "St Valentine" was supposedly executed on. On this day lovers all around the world mark this occasion as a day for sending poems, cards, flowers or candy, etc. They might also be a social gathering or ball to mark the occasion.

Another Interesting origin is that St Valentine was the patron Saint of Epilepsy reason was that he was supposedly a sufferer and took a keen interest in those who suffered from this affliction and also that those who suffered this disease were suffering from Valentine's sickness.

Prints

Photography

Seldon Hunt is an artist/designer/illustrator/photographer/writer and filmmaker. He has designed posters and cover art for many contemporary musical visionaries including Neurosis, Khanate, Jesu, Null, Hydrahead Records, Isis, Kid 606, Lotus Eaters, Troum etc and has written apocalyptic liner notes for sunn0))), khanate and whitehorse. He has made documentaries about ISIS, subculture in Antwerp and, recently, Earth and Dylan Carlson. He has exhibited in Europe and the US and recently collaborated with Stephen O'Malley to create a large mural dedicated to his project sunno))), which was screenprinted by Wes Burlesque and shown at the First Amendment Gallery.

Website: seldonhunt.com

My Funny Valentine

The first flat of my own in Stockholm was
really small but in a nice area on one of
the islands south of the old town.

My girlfriend often stayed with me,
since her own flat was way out
in the suburbs.

The two of us never rang the
doorbell but used
the squeaking mail slot in the door;
when it was opened slowly it made a sound that
could be heard in the flat
and made you rush to the door.
You knew who was there.

Years later, we have been
married for some time,
having dinner in our new flat
listening to a recording of
Miles Davis
playing at Philharmonic Hall in New York
in 1964.

My Funny Valentine

Suddenly, half way into the song,
we both look up and listen,
Miles Davis is improvising and
playing a
long
single
note
the exact
tone
of that
squeaking mail slot

We smile
and feel proud
to share
this small secret
with Miles.

At the racetrack –

On eBay I bought four whisky glasses from
Santa Anita Park; this was Charles Bukowski’s
favorite race track and he spent a lot of time there.

I’ve never betted on the horses myself but there was
a race track close to our summer house in Sweden
and I went there when I was a kid.

I never really liked to watch the horses run but
I came to see my uncle Allan who was a
regular at the track. I liked him a lot and he
always gave me money for ice cream,
so even without betting I came out ahead.

And now, 45 years later, here I am
with my large Santa Anita whisky tumbler
with the engraved horses and jockeys,
a couple of ice cubes and a large splash
of Glenlivet whisky.

Maybe I’m slowly
beginning to understand
the art of horseracing
after all.

Hydra Port Scene

Henry’s view –

Henry Miller passed the island of Poros on his way to
Hydra in 1939 and from the boat he could see straight
into the houses of the Greek families.

Over the years I have always looked at the port of
Poros from the ferryboat trying to catch this view and
today, coming really close to land I suddenly saw the
three story house with the big balcony doors and at
the far end of the big room I saw an old woman on a
chair looking out at the ship.

Here it was at last, the view from The Colossus of
Maroussi: the boat sailing through the streets of
Poros, the old house, the big room and it could be the
same woman now 64 years older.

Maybe she was looking for Henry the same way
I was looking for her.

from Greece paintings

Mr. Gadget –

After four weeks in Greece I have bought:

- eight bottles of the Mythos beer I seldom drink (to get the
Mythos labeled freezer bag for the beach)

- more Nescafe than we can use (to get the baseball cap with
the Nescafe logo)

- Karavaki soap to last one year (to get the white bag with
the logo)

- a twelve-pack of biscuits (to get the sun hat with the
Papadopolous logo)

- a twelve-pack of Scotch-Brite (to get the small kitchen
clock with the Scotch-Brite logo)

When I was holding the two liter bottle of a shampoo we
would never touch, studying the football with the large
logo, my seven-year old son looked at me and told me not
to buy any more “geek stuff”.

I followed his advice but I’ll remember this when he
wants to buy a new box of Cheerios just to get
one more stupid plastic straw.

Mr. J.C.

John William Coltrane died
of liver failure,
on July 17, 1967.

Four days later
Albert Ayler played at
his funeral at St. Peter’s
Lutheran Church in New York.

And in Oslo they
were marching
down Karl Johan,
protesting against
his death.

Henry Denander is a poet and painter living in Stockholm, Sweden.

Website: henrydenander.com

icebox example of heart
claps sideways exhibiting
slender flutings of ice

in hospital gowns
their tiny feet scuttle
anonymous toes

a carpet tenderly stroked
an open-toed heel clamped
tenderly to bones

all rubber, seized up
the summer cathedrals
as sun flies drunk
through naked window
and settles on a space
in the corner

dust factory, flies
in bonnet

a ponderous tendril
slides out to noose
gentle mother
hushing like a wet nurse

do not look just yet

Woundful Electric

satyr of thistles & static
yarn the circuitry of
closer to the mouth
lightning vines

a familiar fleck
of flourescence
flares

little lithe loss
between
the fingers

I've kept you
from sparkling
good-byes

I've kept you
a slender stirring
about my neck

I've kept you
warmest
within taut skin

of my belly
your boldest
silhouettes
still thunder

Coma: Nine Dreams

1. sour fluid eats at breast (1) --acidic tannins

2. damoiselle--black & blue

3. where child now sun--a treacherous yellow--python-galled (2)

4. of sea-self mirrored in chrysalis

5. a boudoir (3) --garden of beds

6. one small nerve meter--ticking

7. books--hand-sewn--have narrowed this spine

8. fingertips--puzzles of skin--secrets inlaid

9. with something inexplicable (4) --spectre-eyed

____________________________________

(1) crests of pink star fruit: sand dollar disks

(2) just the birds are silent with surprise--Blixa Bargeld on Total Eclipse of the Sun

(3) calmly laid--as in her ermine-trimmed coat and German croon

(4) briefly fills skin with the scent of freedom

Matina L. Stamatakis currently resides in upstate New York as a freelance photographer, writer, image manipulator, mother, and frontwoman of Viscera[e], an experiment in noise and auditory discombobulation. Some of her works have appeared, or are forthcoming, in La Petite Zine, Apocryphaltext, Moria, Intercapillary Space, etc.

I’ve nothing against florists or greetings card manufacturers per se (let’s just say that the day presents them with my ill-earned cash, for that socially acceptable window of I WUV YOU outpourings will be the day you’ll find me arguing Meatloaf’s “I’ll Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” is a seminal slice of vinyl). No, virtually any store you care to mention is equally complicit in the peddling of this Valentine’s Day aesthetic. Valentine-themed chocolates and crotchless panties and commodes and coffins and compilation CDs. Especially the CDs. At this time of year, there’s almost an unofficial rule that every gas station, convenience store and pizza parlour has at least one, unavoidably huge display dedicated to “The Best Love Album in the World Ever!!!!!” or “100 Luscious Love Songs for that Chick You’ve Been Stalking Since Halloween!!!!”

It’s just what the world needs, another brainlessly compiled three hours in the company of Celine Dion, Richard Marx, and Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes’ truly hideous “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” (the only occasion in musical history the sound engineer recorded a duo suffering a communal aneurysm, and it won an Academy Award). Where-as heartbreak has a strong and vibrant tradition within popular music (off the top of my head: Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye”; “I Must Have Been Blind” by Tim Buckley; Elvis Costello’s haunting “I Want You”), there appears to be a collective mind-block amongst the songwriting fraternity when attempting to elucidate one of humanity’s greatest – and maybe the purest – emotions. In a world abundant in literary triumphs, visual masterpieces, orchestral zeniths, all liberally flavoured with passion and tenderness and the heart’s rampant urgency, the combination of popular music and I WUV YOU is all too frequently distilled from mawkish sentimentality, sung by some has-been or never-was with the musical legitimacy of a performing nutsack.

But I can kinda see it from your angle. You’ve got that special somebody coming over for that romantic meal. If all goes well, you might even be licking something suitable – oysters perhaps, or Golden Grahams - from each other’s naked flesh, and if you don’t have something on the stereo to delicately garnish the evening – something that isn’t “Happy Together” by the Turtles or Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” – you may have to resort to the Comic Sans teddy bear. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way; lurking amongst the backwaters, the distant shores of the musical spectrum, are enough heartfelt, original and pulse-quickening tunes to simultaneously make you question love, and fall in love all over again. Here’s just a sample of what your stereo should be playing…

Spritualized – “I Think I’m In Love”
- from the album “Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space” (1997)

J Spaceman constantly eschews conventional romance, mining instead a deep, almost metaphysical seam that’s both meditation and triptych. Over symphonic, occasionally atonal yet always beautifully crafted guitar buzz, the love is simultaneously directed at his intended, absolution, and the draw of narcotics; the triple helix of a screwed-up mind. “I Think I’m In Love” begins as a paean to a wasted day, before evolving into a counter-pointed statement of intent. “Think I can be your man – probably just think I can”.

The Ronettes – “Be My Baby”
- from the album “Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica” (1964)

Ignore all that earlier tosh about lyrical sentimentality; here’s an example of light and fluffy that acts as a perfect accompaniment to Phil Spector’s immense soundscape.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “There She Goes, My Beautiful World”
- from the album “Abattoir Blues” (2004)

Cave is a man who could invest the acme of passion into the most debased of advertising jingles. That he also invests his lyrics in rich literary, folk-tale and Old Testament imagery, has one of the finest backing bands in contemporary music, and goes about the whole caboodle as if building to an orgasm, a hellfire sermon or a ritualistic slaying, it results in a large canon from which to choose a potential Valentine song. That I’ve selected this particular single obviously has nothing to do with his throwaway mention of Johnny Thunders.

Joy Division – “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
- Single (1980)

Much has been written about what has become Ian Curtis’ obituary, but even time and ubiquity haven’t stripped away the energy from the dark failings of suburban love. From the understated instrumentation to Curtis’ flailing lyrics, this remains one of the richest records released in the entire decade.

Dusty Springfield – “Son of a Preacher Man”
- from the album “Dusty in Memphis” (1969)

Not so much a conventional love song than a (resigned? knowing?) wink on how love can sneak up and unexpectedly grab you by the balls (or the female equivalent there-of), performed by an indefatigable Dusty with a glint in her eye.

Ed Harcourt – “She Fell Into My Arms”
- from the album “Here Be Monsters” (2001)

Try to combine heartfelt lyrics with a simple yet catchy piano-based melody, and chances are, you’re going to end up with a nauseous mess that appeals to the aged and the dribbling. Get it right, however, as British singer/songwriter Ed Harcourt does here, and the result is a merry ditty that sweeps and slides over your emotional machinery with a yearning grace.

REM – “At My Most Beautiful”
- from the album “Up” (1998)

Winner of the “God Only Knows” of the Year award ten years ago, it may be, but if anyone tells me that they “count your eyelashes, secretly, with every one whisper I love you”, the chances are I’d stay for breakfast.

Mint Royale – Don’t Falter
- from the album “On The Ropes” (1999)

“Hey, I saw ya, I knew that we should be together”. Another sun-tinged record whose lyrics are never going to trouble the Pulitzer panel, yet its unpretentious, almost child-like optimism of what a relationship should be is enough to melt the heart of any misanthrope. Well, almost.

***

Duncan Harman is based in Glasgow, Scotland, and didn’t get any Valentine's cards this year. d70g@hotmail.com. A selection of the above tracks can be found at misanthropesforjesus.blogspot.com.

I.

Many of you may have heard the story about the origin of Phil Collins’s song “In the Air Tonight,” popularized by the hit television program "Miami Vice." Legend has it that a young Collins witnessed the drowning of a close friend. Details vary, but Collins is often portrayed as being too far away to help; for instance, in one version he is on a cliff looking down on the incident. However, another man – almost always thought to be a stranger, although he is occasionally portrayed as an acquaintance – is close enough to offer help but does not, most likely out of fear for his own safety. This incident traumatized the young Collins and led him to eventually write the song in question.

Years later, Collins launched a successful solo career after his stint in the early and ultimately more critically acclaimed (but less financially successful) incarnation of the band Genesis; his career would eventually spawn hits such as “Against All Odds,” “Take Me Home,” and “Sussudio.” In the midst of a successful tour, Collins somehow tracked down the stranger who had witnessed the drowning and anonymously sent prime concert tickets to the man; the man, not realizing that Collins had witnessed his act of cowardice years earlier, snapped up the concert tickets without a second thought. As Collins premiered “In the Air Tonight” midway through the set, a spotlight was shown directly on the stranger, and Collins sang while staring into his eyes, thereby using the songs embittered lyrics to publicly indict the man’s youthful act of cowardice. In some versions of the tale, the man has a heart attack and dies as Collins looks on impassively. In others, he rises, pale and shaken, to exit, with the spotlight trailing him and his wife, who is reported to leave him shortly thereafter. In my favorite version, though, the crowd rises, at the bidding of Collins, and flays the man alive.

II.

Mojo Nixon is perhaps best known for his mention in “Punk Rock Girl,” a tongue-in-cheek anthem of disaffected youth performed by The Dead Milkmen. However, Nixon has had a 20-year career as a cult musician that peaked sometime in the 80s, when he penned notorious pop culture parodies such as “Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child” and “Stuffin’ Martha’s Muffin,” an off-color ode to then-MTV VJ Martha Quinn. His most scathing track is surely “Don Henley Must Die,” which finds fault with the Eagles singer and part-time environmentalist for infractions ranging from angst-laden lyrics to an ill-advised ponytail hairstyle.

One evening, Nixon was performing that very song in an Austin, Texas nightclub when Henley himself strode on to the tiny stage, grabbed a spare microphone, and belted out the tune alongside a flabbergasted Nixon. From that day forth, a chastened Nixon swore he would change the lyrics of the song to “Rick Astley Must Die.” Who Astley is (or was) is not the issue; it is simply worth noting that the ease with which Nixon chose to change the lyrics indicates that the sentiment could not have possibly been sincere in the first place. That said, recalling this incident years after the fact, I feel warmly toward both Henley and Nixon for reasons that are somewhat unclear to me, especially since I am not particularly interested in the music of either man.

III.

For many of his fans and even his more casual listeners, the fact that Rod Stewart has been romantically linked to a series of progressively younger women, including his current fiancé, model Penny Lancaster, who is more than 25 years his junior, clearly invalidates the sordid tales of homosexual tomfoolery that dogged Stewart earlier in his career. Any memories of rumors involving trips to the hospital for emergency stomach pumping after a supposed same-sex romp, for instance, are likely invalidated by his wooing and impregnating of supermodel Rachel Hunter in the early 1990s.

The issue of Stewart’s sexual orientation is not of interest to me per se. However, it is worth pondering how the same man who gave us such hormonal classics as “Hot Legs” and “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” is currently offering up banal versions of selections from the Great American Songbook. Granted, these men share the same name, the same raspy, whiskey-soaked voice, and even the same carefully disheveled locks, but little else seems to connect the two entities. The best explanation I can offer is that, as part of the human body’s constant process of regeneration, our cells are, in essence, completely replaced every seven years. Therefore, the man butchering “Time After Time” on Oprah Winfrey’s couch and the man who once boozed and whored alongside soon-to-be Rolling Stone Ron Wood are, quite literally, not the same person at all.

IV.

I remember once hearing a radio DJ complain that Bryan Adams could not have been old enough to be in a band in 1969, despite claims to the contrary in his first-person narrative “Summer of ’69,” as if a fictional tale could not possibly contain true emotion or sincerity. The fact that we have such high expectations of the popular music we consume reminds me, somehow, of a moment in U2’s self-indulgent documentary Rattle And Hum. As the band launches into a credible if unremarkable version of “Helter Skelter,” Bono announces to the audience, “Charles Manson stole this song from the Beatles, and we’re stealing it back!” “Helter Skelter” has long been a live staple of a wide range of bands, ranging from Mötley Crüe to Siouxsie & the Banshees, so it is curious that Bono — or anyone else, for that matter — could “steal” the song in the first place.

While we may never truly “own” another person’s song or even completely understand its complexities, it doesn’t stop us from trying. Indeed, Canadian songstress Alanis Morrissete still refuses to reveal the identity of the older lover who inspired her vitriolic, decade-old anthem “You Oughta Know,” but at a recent charity event Carly Simon actually auctioned off the name of the man who was the subject of her 1972 hit “You’re So Vain,” a fact that Simon has always guarded in a coy fashion not unlike Morrissete’s current stance. The auction’s winner was provided with the name in question on the condition that he, the high bidder, never tell another living soul what he had learned. Imagine, for a moment, the intoxication of having such wealth that you can essentially bribe the writer to take you into her confidence and whisper her secrets in your ear, naïvely trusting that what she’s telling you is, in the end, something that approximates the truth.

Chris McCreary is the author of two books of poems, Dismembers and The Effacements. Current work can be found online at e.ratio and Tool. He co-edits ixnay press with Jenn McCreary.

Fire #1

You thought you knew
the old stories of something stolen;
it never occurred to you
it was something so small.
A spark, that’s it.
Something small and stolen
and significant
of much more than itself.
You wonder
if those in the building
know; you wonder
about his skin but never
think to touch it
hardened and lined
like the veins in your own arms.
You hope you never
touch what was stolen,
or that it never touches you.
You never think
to stop looking
at the stories
that engulf
the significant.
You fear looking out a dark window.
You are only a girl.

Fire #3

You waited until it was too late, again.
You waited to hear quiet, asking yourself
how one could hear what makes no sound.
Silence trapped in a row boat is not silence
at all. The weight of a tangerine feels heavy.
Too late to ask where to go, too quiet to hear the answer:
Don’t go, Don’t go, Don’t go, Don’t go.

Wedding Poem

I dreamt a wedding silky as a night
at the opera. The groom, an old lover
who had found someone else long ago.
I left to write a poem in abundant simile

a poem that held regret in its small hand
like a pearl, lifted from drapes and
placed firmly at the gates of vocabulary
beautiful on the page of the dream.

I woke relieved to find my husband beside me
the satin of ceremony replaced by flannel
and the quiet of my real and beautiful life
on my lips, but not the poem of the dream.

That poem was lost in darkness like love
left, never to be found again with precision
but discovered again in each new day,
a poem lost so this one could be found.

Beth Lifson received her MA and MFA in Poetics from New College of California. Her poetry has been published in the journals Paragraph, Shampoo, and Crosscurrents, and is forthcoming in the Arabesques Literary Review. She is an adjunct instructor at Clark College in Vancouver, WA and at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, CA.

Tarot

The High Priestess

The Chariot

The Lovers

Paintings

Collages

Illustrations

Claudio Parentela is an Italian artist who serves up contemporary art with a freakish taste. He was born in Catanzaro, Italy in 1962. An illustrator, painter, photographer, mail artist, cartoonist, collagist and freelance journalist, he has been active for many years in the international underground scene. He has collaborated with zines, contemporary art and literary magazines, and comics in Italy and around the world. A new book of his Tarot images, put together by Hermatena Edizion, is out now.

Website: claudioparentela.net

—You’re young, a gap, a fortuitous void.

If the world were to stop we’d all fly off.

Don’t look at me. I may, or may not, catch you.

[How pretty (definable) are you?—More importantly,
how heavy are my feet?]

You are no more meaning than mine!

…I meant:
Moonlight is sentimental, and radio songs
came at me in the dark when I was young:

“The lights are on but you’re not home.”

I’ve come to this place by truck, from the sun.

On Apollo’s rays I’ve been given back to find my place.

To trap you on a piece of tape. To put you on the right track.

And kiss your face with dewy lips and panic set in. Balanced. Backing
out from the way in. Crudely finding love on sheets of music,
unsung. Undone by your hands.That’s why I’ve come back to get you.

You have only to remember the lines you’ve yet to make up!

This is for the ghost in your chest that makes that whisper. Murmur.
This is for the ghost in your breath that makes your heart turn over.
This is for the song the ghosts sing over your head and below your belly, by the night,
the grapevine growth. Creek water run. Crickets legs breaking.
Ways the waves of light wash over the horizon from the East the Sound
Crickets sleep like I do.

My word
on a napkin
the note slipped
between your lips

on accident

~~~

The married couple is divorced by now I’m sure you’re sure of that.

The end is in and begun again. The cycle. The moon
is retro. Apollo the sun is the original. We’ll bring it all back
unable to let a thing go but unable to really grasp
anything, so we’ll keep the crickets in the jar until they starve
and finding some more
convinced you know
how to make it work this time.

Only Apollo’s chariots will be sent to the glass
when,
distracted, you caught the last act of 1977. That’s when I
was born
in The Sound
of reverb, flange and chorus with Echo’s belly
full and round. As the moon.
Back again.
In style.

~~~

Angels in the bell tower are ringing! ringing!

From the ground you can tell them by their shadows.
By their easy gate and swing.

the bells are for singing. They are to continue this All that is.

Angels floating above the Sangrail!

I wish I could have been there around the Round Table.
I could have saved so many lives
in the Christmas light
and been the Hero of a new era:

I could have said: Before this Round Table where we all speak equally, gentlemen and fair women, listen now to all I say for I am from the future and have seen all the things past what you have seen. I know things impossible to yourselves and this time. This is all I have to say for I’ve read of the plights of your Knights and your ways about adventure. I know you wish to complete the most righteous quests and reach the highest peaks of worshipfulness. But let me tell you now. This is simple. Don’t begin what you already will. What you believe in: Don’t seek it out.”

~~~

Back to the choir in the bleacher seats. Sitting under sunshine,
bellowing. Crying. Magnifying the sunlight on their skin, and burning.

Moonlight is taken, but often taking
too much

THE LIGHTS ARE ON BUT YOU’RE NOT HOME

Placement of each foot is a sick adjustment.

Water splitting scenes/ seams, wading. Seems water

is spitting water and gathering, amiss now. Gathered.
Fog rolls over the bridge. Disappears. Appears, disappears and
reappears. No magic trick. Organic. The way the weather changes
from time to time
can make you sick. It all comes back again. Againandagain.

Like the bean to the beanstalk and Jack to Jill’s backside.

The water.

Into a cup. Drink.

the way the lights
turn off when the building’s done.

~~~

Before the waves
stands the line
the ghost of its presence
always in its existence, left
after its exit.

The hour of decay. A rusty sentence.

My penance for a tune, attuned and on a wire.
Balancing the ghosts, the angels, the shadow and my
own
very
fitting
attire. Adjusted. Measured.My atonement
for a choir. How I burned.

For a song.

Logan Ryan Smith lives in San Francisco where he publishes Transmission Press chapbooks, and the poetry mag, small town. He is the author of THE SINGERS (Dusie Press Books) and STUPID BIRDS
(TRANSMISSION PRESS). His poetry can be found in New American Writing, the tiny, Bombay Gin, string of small machines, Sorry for Snake, detumescence.com, dusie.org, Spell, Hot Whiskey Magazine, and
elsewhere, as well as in the anthologies Bay Poetics (Faux Press) and The Meat Book (Hot Whiskey Press).

Strange Attractor Journal is strange and attractive. Like a personal ad for disenfranchised monuments, exotics, mammals and amphibians, alchemies and thoughts: Available – unexpected daze and bliss, cured with salt and a hypothesis.

Begun in London in 2001 by John Lundberg, documentary filmmaker, and Mark Pilkington, Editor Maximus, on the embers of eclectic events featuring and collecting lecturers, films, and occultists, SAJ has created a tangible curio box of printed matter that extends beyond itself into the known universe. SAJ celebrates the strangeness and magnificence of human beings roaming around on the earth, dreaming about the sky, conceiving machines and contraptions, putting their natural resources to good use - exploration, definition, redefinition, and not knowing anything about anything so deeply that knowledge is imagined into being.

~~~~~~~~~~

Following is the nonlive transcript of questions posed to Pilkington February 13 & answered February 14.

AG: What did the first issue look like, preproduction and totally raw? What were your first ideas for the magazine?

MOP: When John Lundberg and I first started doing the Strange Attractor events at London's Horse Hospital, I was already thinking about collating the talks and presentations into a more permanent form, either on our web site or in a publication. The live events were wonderful and I still meet people who talk about enjoying them six years later, but memories (and perhaps a few minor injuries!) are all that's left of them.

The Journal was intended to crystallise the nascent SA aesthetic and ideosphere into a tangible and pleasing form. I'd always loved journals from the late 19th century and had previously found a stash of 'The Idler's, edited first by Jerome K. Jerome and then by one of my favourite illustrators, Sidney Sime, amongst a pile of junk on Kingsland Rd in East London. I wanted the Journal to pick up the spirit of those publications, which would feature an article about Queen Victoria's menagerie alongside fiction and early ethnographic writing, and a bit of their visual flavour, without aping them entirely, of course. In my formative years, I was also influenced by numerous occult and esoteric books, and counter culture anthologies like Rapid Eye, Apocalypse Culture, Re/Search, that kind of thing.

Designer Ali Hutchinson and I went through a couple of permutations, but actually arrived at the style of SAJ1 fairly early on. It hasn't really changed much since, though I'd like to think we've refined it by SAJ3. We've been very lucky in that we had no experience of book publishing when we started – although I'd worked on the editorial side of a couple of magazines – it really was a very DIY endeavour. Now we're doing it semi-profesisonally for commissioned work, which is great and will pay for future Strange Attractor Press publications.

AG: What kind of music do you listen to? What music are you listening to right now?

MOP: Right now (10.56am), I'm listening to Mitternacht by Kraftwerk, from AutoBahn. I listen to music most of the time when I'm working, though I tend to prefer atmospheric / instrumental music and always have. My first music purchases as a young teen in the later 1980s were horror and SF film soundtracks. Then I got into Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, Coil/Current 93/ Nurse With Wound, Throbbing Gristle, Can, Kraftwerk and started expanding out from there. That was about 17 years go, though, so I've been all over the place since, as you might expect from a sonically curious sort of person.

I've always been a big krautrock/kosmische fan and still DJ for the Kosmishce club and radio show (myspace.com/kosmischemusik and www.resonancefm.com) - I recently got to meet and write about two of my musical heores, Dieter Moebius and Hans Joachim Roedelius of Cluster/Kluster/Harmonia for Plan B magazine here in the UK. I'll put it online sometime soon.

Other things I listen to a lot these days - Brian Eno's Discreet Music, Terry Riley, (early) Klaus Schulze, Popul Vuh, Heldon, Philip Bescombes, Franco Battiato, Alice Coltrane, Gaupo, Robbie Basho, High Tide, Mount Vernon Arts Lab, Giorgio Moroder, Erik Satie, Fela Kuti, C.O.B., Cyclobe,Trees, Circle, the Harry Smith athologies, Joe Meek, Tristram Carey, a lot of Ghost Box stuff, William Basinski, lots of 60s psych, various early electronic composers and exoticists. For some reason about 75% of what I listen to was made between about 1967 and 1975, but I love all kinds of music and go to quite a few live shows in London, though more often than not, it's to see friends who are playing small gigs.

[As a hobby I also play in some underground kosmische-style bands like Raagnagrok, Stella Maris Drone Orchestra and The Stargazer's Assistant. I fiddle with synthesisers though I have no musical training, just my ears. My girlfriend Alyssa recently taught me to play some scales though, which helped. So music is a big part of my life.]

AG: What are you reading now?

MOP: I don't get to read a lot of fiction anymore as most of my reading is work-related, though I did recently read Tim Power's time travel romp The Anubis Gates (from 1982 I think), which is a lot of fun. Built by Animals, about animal architecture, has been sitting on my desk for months crying for my attention too, but I'm doing a lot of research for a book I'm preparing to write about disinformation, intelligence and the creation of the UFO mythology and its attendant culture. So a lot of my current reading is on those subjects. The book, called Mirage Men, is an expansion of a documentary film that John Lundberg and I have been working on for some years now. I've had a waxing and waning fascination for the UFO subject most of my life and am finally getting to write something about it. John and I have thrown ourselves somewhat head first into the lion's den with it to the extent that I've been accused of being a British Intelligence Agent, which made me laugh.

I'm currently wading through a huge 600-page book called Body of Secrets by James Bamford. It's about the National Security Agency, previously so secretive that until the mid 1970s most US congressmen didn't even know it existed. It's responsible for international communications monitoring and intelligence, which may not sound very exciting, but the book is packed with incredible data – for example, did you know that long-range communications signals were being bounced off the Moon in the early 1960s? They're effectively capable of eavesdropping on any form of electronic information exchange - which is pretty much everything these days. I'm also about to tuck into Carl Jung's highly prescient book on flying saucers, written in the 1950s. There's a few disinformation and intelligence- related books cued up to be read, as well as plenty more UFO books and hopefully a few necessary diversions.

I'm also always going through manuscripts for future Strange Attractor books, so there's a lot of information passing through my mind at any one time, probably why I don't listen to much vocal music...

AG: What would it be like to build a time machine?

MOP: Ask me again in two thousand years. I have a pretty good itinerary worked out for when I get mine working though.

AG: What is the fourth dimension?

MOP: According to the scientists, it's time, but I suspect that it – or at least Dimension Five or Six – is actually mind.

AG: How should one read SAJ? What music should one listen to while reading?

Some of the material is a little rich to be read in any long sitting, so I'd like to think that it's something you dip in and out of over time. While they are intended to be readers' books, they are meant to be enjoyed as artifacts as much as assemblages of words and images, so I hope they will sit on peoples' shelves for many years to come and be pulled down for a taste every once in a while. Really I expect that people read them like they do other books, in bed, on the loo, while travelling. Not as many people sit in a chair and read with intent these days, there are too many other distractions, but I hope SAJ and our other books will inspire people to do so.

You can listen to what you like while reading them, though the thought of a companion CD has crossed my mind a number of times. We'll hopefully be putting out a short run CD of music with Ken Hollings' book Welcome to Mars, which I'm putting out in May. Last year I also put out a very short (33) run CD of squirming, shimmering music by Drew Mulholland/Mount Vernon Arts Lab which would make a great accompaniment to SAJ reading, and am preparing a release by mysterious entities known only as Spectral and The Asterism.

I'm also hoping to publish a couple of music books in the future, though until I get that time machine working it could be a long while yet!

~~~~~~~~

Courtesy of Katie Owens

Science Fraction: Where Nonsense Meets Reality

The most wondrous of dreams are those with a feathered foothold in reality. Or what we become fond of calling reality. In reality, reality is a rare thing and makes its appearance like an endangered species, among peculiar fauna and strange weather. In an article entitled, “Adventures in the Fourth Dimension,” writer Mike Jay brings together a cast of characters that includes H.G. Wells, Robert W. Paul, technician and illusionist, and time itself to weave a tale of the Time Machine that never was. But in that never being, and the plans and patents for such a machine, circuses were planned with projectionists, magic lanterns, and illusions such as the world had never seen.

Whenever there is some great invention or discovery, we are moved to think even beyond that great accomplishment to a wider range of experience. We always dream the future. In expanding the view of the world as a four-pointed place, of three physical dimensions, to a fourth dimension, scientists and laypeople alike have been moved to peek behind the veil. The ensuing story of Wells, Paul and the Time Machine is told brilliantly by Jay and pulls the reader into a history filled with possibility and special implements – Paul’s microscopes and old-time projectors tell a story of flickers, movement forward and backward through a time that had just learned of four-dimensional geometry.

In another piece, “Kandinsky’s Thought Forms,” Gary Lachman explores occultism and Theosophy at the roots of modern art, specifically in the art and life of Wassily Kandinsky. From thought photography to the Epoch of the Great Spiritual, a new age in human evolution, Lachman does an amazing job of calling up Kandinsky himself to import the significance of the spiritual at this time of history – which, for Kandinsky, was the early part of the 20th century.

Artists tend to live with one foot in the seen, physical world and the other in the unseen or hidden, spiritual world. This article lays out the paradoxical hope and hopelessness felt by many contemporary artists with a life in the outside world. The work of the artist then becomes to go inward and, even if desire is strong to stay inwardly focused, the impulse of the artist is outward and can be expressed in art or in experiments in bringing the inner, invisible world out. There are auras and buddhic bodies, and trying to capture the uncapturable verbally or aurally, on film or on canvas. All in service of and longing for the soul and the soul embodied. The soul is in everything. Everything we touch, taste, hear, smell, say, eat. Secrets are in everything. There is a secret in every known truth. Lachman's rendering of this struggle and revelation in Kandinsky is powerful and transformative.

SAJ is a gorgeous compendium of alchemical wonderment. The production is slick and modern yet the book still has the feel of an old-fashioned, illuminated text. Imagine pressed flowers in a century-old book, whose cover changes with every viewing. Sleep, magic, and the pursuit of wonder. You just have to pick it up and read it.

- Arielle Guy

Website:

www.strangeattractor.co.uk

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