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imomusYesterday I received a curious email. "Dear Momus," it began, "as of today, I will no longer be updating Twit Opera. Please feel free to do whatever you want with the account [details supplied]. Delete it, leave it be, or become Twit Opera yourself. I also offer you an essay to post on Click Opera should you so wish." The mail was signed "Joseph Capgras".
When I googled the name, I discovered a Wikipedia article which began: "The Capgras delusion (or Capgras syndrome) is a disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that a friend, spouse or other close family member, has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor." In the knowledge that many will not believe the extraordinary tale that here unfolds -- for, like the boy who cried wolf, I have tried your credibility once too often -- I reproduce below the essay which accompanied the mail. I myself am satisfied that this is the truth, although the identity of the author of this document remains a mystery.
Momus & Me: Inside Twit Opera
Twit Opera is dead. Momus was slightly ahead of the curve in announcing his demise earlier this week, but fundamentally he was not wrong. And now that I’ve finally killed him off, liberating myself from the Oulipo-like constraints of the 140-character summary, I thought I’d write a little essay about Momus, me, and the Twit Opera “experiment”.
When did I first hear of Momus? Not in 1987, back when he was an ambitious wannabe and I was young music obsessive, reading The Face, living not far from Momus, even frequenting the same Chelsea haunts as him (The Dôme, Bar Escobar). At that time I was probably listening to rare groove or Eric B. & Rakim, and going out to “warehouse parties” (proto-raves). But Scottish balladeers weren’t on my radar. The hip London-centric world had by then moved on from the homegrown quirky chanteurs of the early eighties, towards a sort of Americana in both music and appearance, what with the slicked-back hair and bomber jackets the “trendies” (ancestors of today’s hipsters) were buying at King’s Road shops like Flip. In a sense, right from the start Momus wanted to be part of a club that wasn’t so interested in having him as a member.
The name must have popped up in the mid-nineties, when I was investigating who (apart from Scott Walker) had done Brel covers in English. But the first time Momus really appeared on my horizon would have been in 2003 or 2004, when I briefly lurked at the banally named I Love Music message board. Momus was there too, posting regularly, daily, hourly, in such voluminous quantities that made me wonder how it was he had nothing better to do with his time. ILM was a good enough resource for gossip about indie music, but its atmosphere of moronic locker-room banter never appealed to me. Momus made something of a splash there as House Provocateur, and copped phenomenal amounts of abuse – and yet there was his kittenish desire to be loved and accepted by these mostly boring people. Why? It was as if Momus was the school nerd trying desperately to be liked by the dumb jocks. In any case, it was yet another example of wanting to be a member of a club that was ambivalent and ultimately indifferent towards him. But how hard he tried!
Momus was almost the only interesting thing on ILM, so I stopped reading it after he jumped ship to populate his own little island on Livejournal. And there he has remained, churning out a relentless blizzard of critique, observation, social theory, own-trumpetry. More or less from the start I was reading Click Opera with a mix of fascination and irritation – a seductive combination. For all that I found Momus’s ideas interesting, I also found them incredibly self-serving. For all that I found similarities between the Momus persona and myself, I also found irreconcilable differences. Momus was “me” (an artist, an intellectual, endlessly curious about art and ideas, not very successful and yet successful enough); but he was also “not me” (an extrovert, a performer, a tell-all, a tireless self-promoter with a boundless fascination with himself and every last mention of himself, no matter how small.) Momus and I share a cultural background and way of thinking. We both grew up on Bowie and Kafka. But he’s a Classicist-Modernist; I’m a Romantic-Modernist. I’m sure Momus is a very warm and friendly person to meet, and yet I have a feeling that deep down there’s something quite disengaged within him – no doubt that “sliver of ice” that every artist needs. (And yes, I’m perfectly aware of my own petty self-aggrandisement in my characterisations of him and me.)
I had a Pessoa-ish idea for a blog. It would be by someone not unlike Momus’s Barry Greaves. Some Pooter-ish 40-year-old living in his parents’ attic, who is secretly writing Click Opera. He’s created the personae of Momus and Nick Currie, who live the glamorous life he has denied himself. His days pass photoshopping Berlin backgrounds to images of himself in his “Momus” get-up, dreaming up new ideas and “plots” for Click Opera. But increasingly, “Momus” is becoming a burden to him. When it all gets too much he sends “Momus” off on trips around the world, where he can plausibly post less often. He toys with getting rid of Momus, but doesn’t know how. He realises that giving Momus an eye infection and having him lose an eye – making him suffer – represents a desire to punish Momus, and therefore himself. In his darker moments, he wonders how he’ll eventually destroy Momus. Perhaps strangled by the elastic knicker-band he uses for his eyepatch, in some absurd Isadora Duncan-type accident. Or perhaps Japan will ungratefully rise up against him – he’ll die of a post-orgasmic heart attack, straddled over the body of a bukkake pornstar…
Of course, I was never going to author such a blog; it would have required far too much time and energy, and unlike Barry Greaves, I do actually have a life to be getting on with. But the idea sort of stayed with me, and when for a brief moment a fake Momus appeared on Twitter, I hit on the idea of a “twittered” Click Opera. It would take me no time, and what’s more it was “right” because it was “wrong” (to borrow a Momus aperçu): the genuine Momus is far too prolix to ever be able to sum himself up in 140 characters. So I thought I’d just start it, and see how long it took for Momus to notice it. I was in no hurry for him to do so, although I was surprised it took a whole two months. In the meantime my Twit Momus took shape, developed his own character. He was dumber and coarser than the real Momus, Caliban instead of Prospero. He was an atrophied monster, stripped of sophistication and sophistry until all that is left is self-aggrandisement, nippophiliac lust and tribal hipsterism.
Twit Opera’s decline started when Momus noticed it. And boy, did he notice it! Momus devoted an entire Click Opera post to his discovery of Twit Opera; mentioned it often in later posts; offered his own Twit Opera summaries on occasion; coyly hinted that he himself was the author (and perhaps he wished he were). Then, after spending a few days sans Internet in the country this week, I returned to both Click & Twit Operas to discover that Momus had devoted yet another entire post to Twit Opera, concocting an elaborate satire of the satire.
Right from the start I’d known how Momus would respond to Twit Opera. Many, if not most people would be pissed off or creeped out by the concept but I knew Momus would be pleased that someone thought he was worthy of satire. Ironically, that certainty had allowed me to do Twit Opera in the first place, since if I’d thought he’d be uncomfortable with it, I never would have done it. Of course, now we get into tangled territory. Am I satirising him not because I dislike him, but because I want him to like me? And was Momus’s Barry Greaves satire actually a bid for my sympathy? Were we both becoming too complicit in our respective satires for them to mean anything at all? And there was an added problem, one that Momus perceptively skewered in his Barry Greaves post. I’d only started Twit Opera because I thought a tweet a day would take up no time at all. But instead, like Barry Greaves, I found myself “reloading the Click Opera homepage over and over murmuring 'Come on, come on, post, you bastard!'” Twit Opera hadn’t taken over my life, but it was taking over a bit more of it than I’d bargained for.
I thought of various ways of disposing of Twit Opera. I thought of contacting one of Momus’s commenters and asking if he wanted to take over. I thought that Twit Opera might evolve into someone else. I thought of various “performance art” type ideas. But in the end I decided to get in touch with Momus himself, and ask him whether he’d give me a guest post on Click Opera. If you’re seeing this, then Momus has assented, as I know he will. It’s what Twit Opera always craved, of course.
Joseph Capgras (aka Twit Opera)
With Joseph's permission I reproduce our follow-up correspondence below the cut.
Hello Joseph,
WOW, what a wonderful story!
And what a splendid twist to the tale!
I'd love to run this tomorrow. Just a couple of questions, before I attempt to answer yours. Firstly, do you mind me using your "real" name, or the one attached to this email, Joseph Capgras? Secondly, do you have a photo of yourself (or "yourself") I could use? A brief bio outlining what you do in "real life"? Of course, you're free to fabricate if you don't want that information out there.
Also I'll correct the spelling of Barry Greaves' name (you brought him closer to "grief", which of course is a deliberate proximity).
Now, your questions (I hope they weren't rhetorical).
I knew Momus would be pleased that someone thought he was worthy of satire.
Oh yes, I loved that angle of it. Of course, I was also somewhat wounded by the critique of my "self-serving" nature, because I
a) knew there was something in it but
b) thought it was getting blown out of proportion; you'd pick, for instance, a link to a mention of a Dexter Sinister article I'd done and completely ignore that I was blowing someone else's trumpet in the piece you were satirising. But I guess being "fair" isn't the point of satire.
The whole Humperson thing -- which I'm glad you gave me the opportunity to ponder -- came about because I thought it a bit rich that you'd complain, for instance, that I'd give away how much money someone in Athens was paying in rent, but then you'd actually google their full name and publish that on the internet. So if I was invading someone's privacy, you were doing it in spades. That became Humperson's Third Law.
Am I satirising him not because I dislike him, but because I want him to like me?
I can't answer that, but I'm sure we would get on well in person, and I'd be delighted to meet for a coffee at the Dome if I'm in London. We could relive the 80s! Ha!
And was Momus’s Barry Greaves satire actually a bid for my sympathy?
Well, not really, I just thought you'd stopped and I wanted to have the last word, like a kid in an argument. And I thought I was making you look as pathetic as you'd made me look, so it was revenge, obviously!
But I'm happy to let you have the last word, as it turns out! My main concern now is to have a good picture, because every Click Opera piece needs a photo.
Were we both becoming too complicit in our respective satires for them to mean anything at all?
I think the points had been made. I'd taken your critique on board, really. I was prepared to ponder some of the issues you raised in my own way, but not change, really. I mean, can we change? Could I cease to be delighted when people mention me in the press, and cease to want to tell people about it? I doubt it; I see it in my father too. It's genetic. We have the trumpet-blowing gene.
And there was an added problem, one that Momus perceptively skewered in his Barry Greaves post. I’d only started Twit Opera because I thought a tweet a day would take up no time at all. But instead, like Barry Greaves, I found myself “reloading the Click Opera homepage over and over murmuring 'Come on, come on, post, you bastard!'” Twit Opera hadn’t taken over my life, but it was taking over a bit more of it than I’d bargained for.
Ha ha ha! GOTCHA! as Barry Greaves would say.
I think I'll leave Twit Opera as it is, it wouldn't feel right to add to your work. At the same time, I think it's nice if it remains online -- it gathered a lot of fans, and earthed the lightning of their wrath against me rather usefully, I think.
I enjoyed the wit of your essay -- dying astride a bukkake star, indeed! -- and look forward to the reactions it'll get on Click Opera. I wonder if anyone will STILL think I'm behind the whole thing? I mean, there's bound to be a Boy Who Cried Wolf effect now, after the Barry Greaves piece. But your text has the ring of authenticity to it. I think people will believe it.
Oh, one more question -- the three stars when Pina Bausch died? Was it a Wittgenstein moment? Were you a fan of hers?
Oh, and we've interacted online before, haven't we -- I remember you mentioned seeing me in the Dome!
And... and... what was your ILM screenname?
Nick
To which Joseph replied:
Nick, thanks for your generous response. As for your questions: yes, please use the name Joseph Capgras. No, I don't have a photo of myself or "myself", but please feel free to post one purporting to be me if you like. My ILM screenname: I mainly lurked there, and only posted occasionally - even I can't remember my screenname. As for a bio, I'll give you some very general indications, since for various reasons I don't want to be exposed as Twit Opera. In some ways, my situation is roughly analogous to yours. I'm in my early forties, and I'm a novelist (under a different name, obviously). Not a very successful one, and yet just successful enough that my publisher continues to publish my novels. I've done some occasional cultural journalism, including for a publication that you yourself have written for.
A few other comments. You're right, it was unethical of me to google a full name for the tweet about Athens rents, I got too carried away there. It certainly is philosophically interesting that the satirist ends up caught in the very same web as the object of satire. On the other hand, the three asterisks for the Pina Bausch entry was my ethical moment. I saw no way to satirise a heartfelt entry about someone's death, coupled with reminiscences about the terror of an upcoming surgical operation.
I'd like to add that despite the very real differences I have with you in matters of opinion and taste, and my heartless satire of your worse instincts, I feel the world is a better place with people like you in it.
my very best wishes
Joseph
When I googled the name, I discovered a Wikipedia article which began: "The Capgras delusion (or Capgras syndrome) is a disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that a friend, spouse or other close family member, has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor." In the knowledge that many will not believe the extraordinary tale that here unfolds -- for, like the boy who cried wolf, I have tried your credibility once too often -- I reproduce below the essay which accompanied the mail. I myself am satisfied that this is the truth, although the identity of the author of this document remains a mystery.
Momus & Me: Inside Twit Opera
Twit Opera is dead. Momus was slightly ahead of the curve in announcing his demise earlier this week, but fundamentally he was not wrong. And now that I’ve finally killed him off, liberating myself from the Oulipo-like constraints of the 140-character summary, I thought I’d write a little essay about Momus, me, and the Twit Opera “experiment”.
When did I first hear of Momus? Not in 1987, back when he was an ambitious wannabe and I was young music obsessive, reading The Face, living not far from Momus, even frequenting the same Chelsea haunts as him (The Dôme, Bar Escobar). At that time I was probably listening to rare groove or Eric B. & Rakim, and going out to “warehouse parties” (proto-raves). But Scottish balladeers weren’t on my radar. The hip London-centric world had by then moved on from the homegrown quirky chanteurs of the early eighties, towards a sort of Americana in both music and appearance, what with the slicked-back hair and bomber jackets the “trendies” (ancestors of today’s hipsters) were buying at King’s Road shops like Flip. In a sense, right from the start Momus wanted to be part of a club that wasn’t so interested in having him as a member.The name must have popped up in the mid-nineties, when I was investigating who (apart from Scott Walker) had done Brel covers in English. But the first time Momus really appeared on my horizon would have been in 2003 or 2004, when I briefly lurked at the banally named I Love Music message board. Momus was there too, posting regularly, daily, hourly, in such voluminous quantities that made me wonder how it was he had nothing better to do with his time. ILM was a good enough resource for gossip about indie music, but its atmosphere of moronic locker-room banter never appealed to me. Momus made something of a splash there as House Provocateur, and copped phenomenal amounts of abuse – and yet there was his kittenish desire to be loved and accepted by these mostly boring people. Why? It was as if Momus was the school nerd trying desperately to be liked by the dumb jocks. In any case, it was yet another example of wanting to be a member of a club that was ambivalent and ultimately indifferent towards him. But how hard he tried!
Momus was almost the only interesting thing on ILM, so I stopped reading it after he jumped ship to populate his own little island on Livejournal. And there he has remained, churning out a relentless blizzard of critique, observation, social theory, own-trumpetry. More or less from the start I was reading Click Opera with a mix of fascination and irritation – a seductive combination. For all that I found Momus’s ideas interesting, I also found them incredibly self-serving. For all that I found similarities between the Momus persona and myself, I also found irreconcilable differences. Momus was “me” (an artist, an intellectual, endlessly curious about art and ideas, not very successful and yet successful enough); but he was also “not me” (an extrovert, a performer, a tell-all, a tireless self-promoter with a boundless fascination with himself and every last mention of himself, no matter how small.) Momus and I share a cultural background and way of thinking. We both grew up on Bowie and Kafka. But he’s a Classicist-Modernist; I’m a Romantic-Modernist. I’m sure Momus is a very warm and friendly person to meet, and yet I have a feeling that deep down there’s something quite disengaged within him – no doubt that “sliver of ice” that every artist needs. (And yes, I’m perfectly aware of my own petty self-aggrandisement in my characterisations of him and me.)I had a Pessoa-ish idea for a blog. It would be by someone not unlike Momus’s Barry Greaves. Some Pooter-ish 40-year-old living in his parents’ attic, who is secretly writing Click Opera. He’s created the personae of Momus and Nick Currie, who live the glamorous life he has denied himself. His days pass photoshopping Berlin backgrounds to images of himself in his “Momus” get-up, dreaming up new ideas and “plots” for Click Opera. But increasingly, “Momus” is becoming a burden to him. When it all gets too much he sends “Momus” off on trips around the world, where he can plausibly post less often. He toys with getting rid of Momus, but doesn’t know how. He realises that giving Momus an eye infection and having him lose an eye – making him suffer – represents a desire to punish Momus, and therefore himself. In his darker moments, he wonders how he’ll eventually destroy Momus. Perhaps strangled by the elastic knicker-band he uses for his eyepatch, in some absurd Isadora Duncan-type accident. Or perhaps Japan will ungratefully rise up against him – he’ll die of a post-orgasmic heart attack, straddled over the body of a bukkake pornstar…
Of course, I was never going to author such a blog; it would have required far too much time and energy, and unlike Barry Greaves, I do actually have a life to be getting on with. But the idea sort of stayed with me, and when for a brief moment a fake Momus appeared on Twitter, I hit on the idea of a “twittered” Click Opera. It would take me no time, and what’s more it was “right” because it was “wrong” (to borrow a Momus aperçu): the genuine Momus is far too prolix to ever be able to sum himself up in 140 characters. So I thought I’d just start it, and see how long it took for Momus to notice it. I was in no hurry for him to do so, although I was surprised it took a whole two months. In the meantime my Twit Momus took shape, developed his own character. He was dumber and coarser than the real Momus, Caliban instead of Prospero. He was an atrophied monster, stripped of sophistication and sophistry until all that is left is self-aggrandisement, nippophiliac lust and tribal hipsterism.
Twit Opera’s decline started when Momus noticed it. And boy, did he notice it! Momus devoted an entire Click Opera post to his discovery of Twit Opera; mentioned it often in later posts; offered his own Twit Opera summaries on occasion; coyly hinted that he himself was the author (and perhaps he wished he were). Then, after spending a few days sans Internet in the country this week, I returned to both Click & Twit Operas to discover that Momus had devoted yet another entire post to Twit Opera, concocting an elaborate satire of the satire.Right from the start I’d known how Momus would respond to Twit Opera. Many, if not most people would be pissed off or creeped out by the concept but I knew Momus would be pleased that someone thought he was worthy of satire. Ironically, that certainty had allowed me to do Twit Opera in the first place, since if I’d thought he’d be uncomfortable with it, I never would have done it. Of course, now we get into tangled territory. Am I satirising him not because I dislike him, but because I want him to like me? And was Momus’s Barry Greaves satire actually a bid for my sympathy? Were we both becoming too complicit in our respective satires for them to mean anything at all? And there was an added problem, one that Momus perceptively skewered in his Barry Greaves post. I’d only started Twit Opera because I thought a tweet a day would take up no time at all. But instead, like Barry Greaves, I found myself “reloading the Click Opera homepage over and over murmuring 'Come on, come on, post, you bastard!'” Twit Opera hadn’t taken over my life, but it was taking over a bit more of it than I’d bargained for.
I thought of various ways of disposing of Twit Opera. I thought of contacting one of Momus’s commenters and asking if he wanted to take over. I thought that Twit Opera might evolve into someone else. I thought of various “performance art” type ideas. But in the end I decided to get in touch with Momus himself, and ask him whether he’d give me a guest post on Click Opera. If you’re seeing this, then Momus has assented, as I know he will. It’s what Twit Opera always craved, of course.
Joseph Capgras (aka Twit Opera)
With Joseph's permission I reproduce our follow-up correspondence below the cut.
Hello Joseph,
WOW, what a wonderful story!
And what a splendid twist to the tale!
I'd love to run this tomorrow. Just a couple of questions, before I attempt to answer yours. Firstly, do you mind me using your "real" name, or the one attached to this email, Joseph Capgras? Secondly, do you have a photo of yourself (or "yourself") I could use? A brief bio outlining what you do in "real life"? Of course, you're free to fabricate if you don't want that information out there.
Also I'll correct the spelling of Barry Greaves' name (you brought him closer to "grief", which of course is a deliberate proximity).
Now, your questions (I hope they weren't rhetorical).
I knew Momus would be pleased that someone thought he was worthy of satire.
Oh yes, I loved that angle of it. Of course, I was also somewhat wounded by the critique of my "self-serving" nature, because I
a) knew there was something in it but
b) thought it was getting blown out of proportion; you'd pick, for instance, a link to a mention of a Dexter Sinister article I'd done and completely ignore that I was blowing someone else's trumpet in the piece you were satirising. But I guess being "fair" isn't the point of satire.
The whole Humperson thing -- which I'm glad you gave me the opportunity to ponder -- came about because I thought it a bit rich that you'd complain, for instance, that I'd give away how much money someone in Athens was paying in rent, but then you'd actually google their full name and publish that on the internet. So if I was invading someone's privacy, you were doing it in spades. That became Humperson's Third Law.Am I satirising him not because I dislike him, but because I want him to like me?
I can't answer that, but I'm sure we would get on well in person, and I'd be delighted to meet for a coffee at the Dome if I'm in London. We could relive the 80s! Ha!
And was Momus’s Barry Greaves satire actually a bid for my sympathy?
Well, not really, I just thought you'd stopped and I wanted to have the last word, like a kid in an argument. And I thought I was making you look as pathetic as you'd made me look, so it was revenge, obviously!
But I'm happy to let you have the last word, as it turns out! My main concern now is to have a good picture, because every Click Opera piece needs a photo.
Were we both becoming too complicit in our respective satires for them to mean anything at all?
I think the points had been made. I'd taken your critique on board, really. I was prepared to ponder some of the issues you raised in my own way, but not change, really. I mean, can we change? Could I cease to be delighted when people mention me in the press, and cease to want to tell people about it? I doubt it; I see it in my father too. It's genetic. We have the trumpet-blowing gene.
And there was an added problem, one that Momus perceptively skewered in his Barry Greaves post. I’d only started Twit Opera because I thought a tweet a day would take up no time at all. But instead, like Barry Greaves, I found myself “reloading the Click Opera homepage over and over murmuring 'Come on, come on, post, you bastard!'” Twit Opera hadn’t taken over my life, but it was taking over a bit more of it than I’d bargained for.
Ha ha ha! GOTCHA! as Barry Greaves would say.
I think I'll leave Twit Opera as it is, it wouldn't feel right to add to your work. At the same time, I think it's nice if it remains online -- it gathered a lot of fans, and earthed the lightning of their wrath against me rather usefully, I think.
I enjoyed the wit of your essay -- dying astride a bukkake star, indeed! -- and look forward to the reactions it'll get on Click Opera. I wonder if anyone will STILL think I'm behind the whole thing? I mean, there's bound to be a Boy Who Cried Wolf effect now, after the Barry Greaves piece. But your text has the ring of authenticity to it. I think people will believe it.
Oh, one more question -- the three stars when Pina Bausch died? Was it a Wittgenstein moment? Were you a fan of hers?
Oh, and we've interacted online before, haven't we -- I remember you mentioned seeing me in the Dome!
And... and... what was your ILM screenname?
Nick
To which Joseph replied:
Nick, thanks for your generous response. As for your questions: yes, please use the name Joseph Capgras. No, I don't have a photo of myself or "myself", but please feel free to post one purporting to be me if you like. My ILM screenname: I mainly lurked there, and only posted occasionally - even I can't remember my screenname. As for a bio, I'll give you some very general indications, since for various reasons I don't want to be exposed as Twit Opera. In some ways, my situation is roughly analogous to yours. I'm in my early forties, and I'm a novelist (under a different name, obviously). Not a very successful one, and yet just successful enough that my publisher continues to publish my novels. I've done some occasional cultural journalism, including for a publication that you yourself have written for.
A few other comments. You're right, it was unethical of me to google a full name for the tweet about Athens rents, I got too carried away there. It certainly is philosophically interesting that the satirist ends up caught in the very same web as the object of satire. On the other hand, the three asterisks for the Pina Bausch entry was my ethical moment. I saw no way to satirise a heartfelt entry about someone's death, coupled with reminiscences about the terror of an upcoming surgical operation.
I'd like to add that despite the very real differences I have with you in matters of opinion and taste, and my heartless satire of your worse instincts, I feel the world is a better place with people like you in it.
my very best wishes
Joseph
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-23 10:26 pm (UTC)TwitOpera was extremely funny. You took it well, Nick.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-23 10:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-23 10:38 pm (UTC)that was a great essay though! a superb twist.
Come away, O human Momus
Date: 2009-07-23 10:47 pm (UTC)"A latter-day prophet or an irredeemable hobo – what would you call a man who has lived without money since the turn of the century? That's the debate that's going on around Daniel Suelo, an American man who claims not to have touched a dime in almost nine years."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/blog/2009/jul/23/daniel-suelo-caveman
Re: Come away, O human Momus
Date: 2009-07-24 09:49 am (UTC)I'd say I basically do already live in this way -- without money -- but not quite to the extreme of asceticism that Daniel does. And I'm obviously addicted to the internet and to culture, and need electricity and a phone line more than he does. But basically I live without a job, without dole, without debt, without savings, without visible means of support, sustained by occasional projects which bring in a bare minimum. My apartment isn't a cave, but it's rather dark. I have a city outside my door, but Suelo also requires a town to forage in (Moab, Utah, quite a pretty little town, if you look at Streetview (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=moab+utah&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=63.856965,104.326172&ie=UTF8&ll=38.573334,-109.550772&spn=0.062809,0.101881&z=14&iwloc=A&layer=c&cbll=38.573211,-109.550771&panoid=TRj-N5qh0N0Qv6tn-TgV8A&cbp=12,2.35,,0,5)).
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-23 10:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-23 10:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-23 11:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-23 11:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-23 11:23 pm (UTC)"You do not need to see Lars von Trier's Antichrist (which is released later this week) to know how revolting it is.
I haven't seen it myself, nor shall I - and I speak as a broad-minded arts critic, strongly libertarian in tendency... The husband and wife go to stay in a log cabin to recover from their grief. There, horrors the likes of which I have never witnessed unfold in graphic detail."
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-23 11:29 pm (UTC)More than a little Pessoa-esque though, don't you think?
Now thoroughly confused, but Twit Opera was a marvellous, pithy, spiteful little thing while it lasted (assuming it has ended now), and I'd like to know who wrote it for that reason.
All best wishes
Simon
hair-raised and ego-humbled
Date: 2009-07-23 11:46 pm (UTC)And I am reminded of something Nabokov said after a chance meeting with Joyce (N. was giving tennis lessons at the time) -- "my work is verbal pat-ball compared to his championship game."
http://books.google.com/books?id=A171LVf0WSoC&pg=PP1&dq=pnin
Re: hair-raised and ego-humbled
Date: 2009-07-23 11:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-23 11:57 pm (UTC)We could relive the 80s!
Date: 2009-07-24 12:02 am (UTC)What will today's Twit Opera be?
Date: 2009-07-24 12:09 am (UTC)"I comfort someone obsessed with me and tell them that its understandable."
"I interview myself about a fake me who has been satirising me."
Re: What will today's Twit Opera be?
Date: 2009-07-24 11:44 am (UTC)"PS I manage to spin the copy out to a whopper 3000 words!"
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-24 01:14 am (UTC)i reckon youve been reading some Sherlock Holms books. reliving your Edinburgh childhood . the prose has obviously inspired you in a kinda hazy ,cozy autosuggestion like fuzzy glow .picked up your cyber quill and twittered. the whole thing reeks of authenticity... and this my dearest momus is your raison d'etra is it not. to celebrate the "almost but not quite".
by the way what do you think of f the our-hour live art experience curated by artist Marina Abramovic at the Whitworth Gallery. ? shades of your thing earlier this year me thinks but not as inventive.
spelling correction
Date: 2009-07-24 01:39 am (UTC)no idea...
Date: 2009-07-24 02:15 am (UTC)So, I do like the images, and find them to really color the piece.
The cool thing is... I really can not tell if this is a 'joke' or not. And either way, it is just as equally a joke and quite genius and funny.
I really dont know how you find the time to wrap these little conundrums up daily but once again cheers.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-24 02:37 am (UTC)note from joseph capgras
Date: 2009-07-24 02:46 am (UTC)An essay on my friend Momus by Nick Currie
Date: 2009-07-24 04:39 am (UTC)Re: An essay on my friend Momus by Nick Currie
Date: 2009-07-24 06:11 am (UTC)It's like pondering whether or not Tom Cruise is gay...
Of course he is... but the battle is too much fun to end it with a simple straight forward 'yes'...
Re: An essay on my friend Momus by Nick Currie
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2009-07-24 06:03 pm (UTC) - ExpandRe: An essay on my friend Momus by Nick Currie
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From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2009-07-26 03:10 am (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-24 07:07 am (UTC)my life as a fake
Date: 2009-07-24 07:16 am (UTC)As James Macaulay, Harold Stewart, and Victor Frankenstein have discovered, be careful with parodies; they have a way of producing parallel worlds in which they are real.
-BC
Re: my fake as alive
Date: 2009-07-24 07:20 am (UTC)Re: my life as a fake
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2009-07-24 08:32 am (UTC) - ExpandRe: my life as a fake
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Date: 2009-07-24 08:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-07-24 11:07 am (UTC)Nor will I "come up" to speak to you.
(no subject)
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