The grandeur of ancient ruins

[imomus]

Above, you see Silk Scarves With Tartan Plaids and Led Zeppelin Lyrics by Jerome Jerome. It's one of the works in an online exhibition called Heraldic Pomp held by Repellent, a magazine and 'gallery on paper' based in Brooklyn, with strong Japanese connections. The pieces in the show are somewhere between graphic design and fine art (a colourful, modestly pretentious grey area I like a lot) and contain exactly the kind of era and genre-splicing I tend to get up to in my music -- in this case, making wry observations on the contrasts and parallels between European royal crests and street-turf tagging, or between Classicism and classic rock (interesting in the light of yesterday's entry). (Link courtesy of Shift Blog.)

Speaking of the links between a certain kind of graphic design and a certain kind of pop music, I've just prepared a shortened and slightly re-written version of my essay Metaphysical Masochism of the Capitalist Creative for the excellent design / visual culture magazine Dot Dot Dot. It'll appear in Issue 8. (Thanks to James Goggin of Practise for the introduction to Dot Dot Dot.)

I wish I could post the latest track for the 2005 Momus album, The Artist Overwhelmed, but I really can't. Suffice to say that it's chilling, grand, ruined, spooky and beautiful, and that there's an incredible moment when the ultra-prolonged word 'death' leads into a Purcell-like instrumental passage overlaid with a text from an early Edison phonograph demonstration record. The phonograph itself is speaking, boasting its qualities -- how it connects you with loved ones, records and plays back your voice, etc -- but in the context of the song it becomes the voice of death, and the extraordinary insight that opens up (and I didn't intend this, but I love it) is that for artists, death is the ultimate recording medium. Death remembers and plays back only the important stuff, the durable stuff. Don't choose Memorex, choose death!

Speaking of preservation, and Memorex, I've just been made aware of The Momus Museum, an interweb institution entirely dedicated to shards, stones, ruins and fragments from my own recording history. Like all good museums it has shopping (or at least the track of that name I recorded with Bran Van 3000) and memories (aha, here's Mnemorex, the track I made with Kreidler in 2000!). I have nothing to do with this site, and I can't vouch for the legality of its displays. But that's true of The British Museum too; after all, who really owns the Elgin Marbles?

Comments

Re: Human Diversity

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Mincing about the house to "Human Diversity". I'll likely be humming this all week as I ride by the paddocks. Sheer delight!

Regarding busts: the full-sized bronze bust of my person is almost complete. Now I just need that trireme...

Enjoyed your AIGA article. I'm a bit weary of my older illustrator colleagues' insisting that they're artists with a capital "A". I beg them to stop caring, but the poor things are inconsolable; I do so fear for their health.

W

Re: Human Diversity

[imomus.livejournal.com]

When your bust is completed, Whimsy, try to ensure that it falls into a ruin as quickly as possible! Nothing better conveys the idea of eternity.

Re: Human Diversity

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Quite right, my dear Momus. I would sooner strut out of my house wearing only my hat before allowing my bust to be seen without patina, looking like some parvenu's golf trophy! I'm pondering over suitable ruins to have constructed on the grounds for the bust's setting: I am leaning towards modeling the tableau after the ruins of Delphi--or Poussin's Et In Arcadia Ego--with the bust presiding over a fountain festooned with weeping fauns, holding aloft my epitaph: "Not Dead: Extinct". One should mourn oneself before one expires, no?

(Perhaps Andres Serrano might aid me in the oxidation? No--"Piss Whimsy" might be a bit much.)

W

Re: Human Diversity

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

"Perhaps Andres Serrano might aid me in the oxidation? No--"Piss Whimsy" might be a bit much..."

...or redundant.