Every Man For Himself

Every Man For Himself

I’m currently listening to Werner Herzog’s memoir Every Man for Himself and God Against All.

He’s narrating it so from the first 30 seconds it’s found a place on my top 10 audio book of all time list. I’m about half way though and there’s already been some absolute ZINGERS.

This one made me laugh out loud.

“I have a deep aversion to too much introspection, to navel-gazing. I’d rather die than go to an analyst, because it’s my view that something fundamentally wrong happens here. If you harshly light every last corner of a house, the house will become uninhabitable . . . I am convinced that it’s psychoanalysis – along with quite a few other mistakes – that has made the twentieth century so terrible. As far as I’m concerned, the twentieth century, in its entirety, was a mistake.” ― Werner Herzog, Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir

Being a memoir the book can loosely be said to be chronological, but each chapter is so chock full of digressions, ‘I grew up in the mountains, I saw a really strong guy try to life a truck, I named a character after him in X film, and now i’m talking about milking cows and suddenly a meeting with NASA astronauts’. The whole book is written like this and it’s sort of like being inside a dream.

Not being a huge fan of the moving image I’ll admit right now that I’ve only seen a handful of Herzog’s film. But I do love him as an artist and in particular will instantly consumer any conversation he has with New York Public Library’s Paul Holdengraber.

This epic two hour conversation in front of a live audience is a particularly good one:

I saw an interview with him once and he recommended JA Baker’s The Peregrine and in it he said ‘everyone should read this book’ so I did, and I can see why.

The reason I’m reading Herzog’s memoir is because it’s come up in two separate conversations in the last few weeks. And I distinctly remember reading the Peregrine, because someone else had mentioned they were reading it the night before in the pub.

I very rarely read/watch/listen to something just because someone told me to read it. But if someone else brings it up too… Then maybe the universe is trying to tell you that you need to check it out. I am a really strong believer in this kind of synchronicity.

When it happens, when a piece of media, or a symbol is trying to reach you and you should act on it. I feel like this sort of organic, word of mouth, spread is a much better media filter than anything else.

Advertising is of course the opposite – a forced reaching out though ubiquity, other times it can be sheep/crowd stuff – everyone is talking about x because everyone else is talking about x. This sort of self re-enforcing process is a sure fire way of my wanting to develop some strategic indifference about whatever the thing is.

The other route of course is when a singular object calls out to you, in a shop or in the library ‘read me‘ it says. You know you have to given in and do it. Even if you have no idea what it was about Ryu Murakami’s In the Miso Soup was one of those books when I was working at the bookshop.

SSRZ #010

A little reminder that issue #010 of my Zine ‘Start Select Reset’ went out to paid subscribers at the end of June.

If you would like one, do subscribe! I’ve got a couple of issues left in stock. A big thanks recent subscribers too! I really do appreciate the support.

Just 4 more subscribers at any level and I’ll treat myself to a laser printer which will smooth out the production process greatly!

Permanently Moved

First Person Memory

Due to my Aphantasia, I also have SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory), I never remember anything in the first person. This is why I keep a diary.

Full Show Notes: https://zexulo.xyz/2024/07/13/2415-first-person-memory/

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Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Read a great deal about ASL-3 Evaluations for Autonomous Capabilities in AI
• Went back and re-read the Ontological Hardness work from Venkat and Josh Stark and made lots of notes
• Sound check with Ecogradia podcast – interview next week
• Book some expert calls for the worlds book
• Wrote up some notes ready for Wolf Pod next week.
• Set up a Notion for a project that I hope is going ‘to go somewhere’
  • Wrote lots of things in said Notion

Terminal Access

Paul pointed out something interesting after linking to the ‘Culture is an Ecosystem’ Manifesto thats been doing the rounds on the back channels, which I assume everyone that follows me has already read.

you could say that poptimism can be read as the embracing approach to hyperreality, in the Baudrillardean sense of that concept: popular forms are popular not for their innate qualities, but rather for their popularity. Surface over substance.

Dipping the Stacks

Hallucinating sense in the era of infinity-content

we are newly free to renegotiate the metaphysical parameters of our reality. That may sound like hyperbole, but when we consider the degree to which the technology of writing contributed to our linear understanding of time, why wouldn’t this age of neural media enable us to experience time differently?

The Birth of Breaking News

The completion of the US transcontinental railroad in 1869 in Utah was also the birthplace of the newsflash. The news was delivered via telegraph through a clever scheme: the famous golden spike and a silver hammer were each wired to the telegraph so that when hammer struck nail, the circuit completed and the news raced out along telegraph wires to the rest of the nation.

Some People with Insomnia Think They’re Awake when They’re Asleep | Scientific American

He believes those with interrupted REM experience this arousal repeatedly and never reach the typical quiescent state that allows for the processing of troubled emotions.

Evolve or Die: Is this the End for Sword and Sorcery?

The iconography of sword and sorcery is as formalised as that of the Western, with which it shares an interest in mythologised history, rugged individualism and the wild frontier. But an iconography unexamined often falls prey to formula, especially when combined with the narrow demands of adventure fiction.

“Bits of the Mind’s String” – by Julian Simpson

In her essay “On Keeping A Notebook”, Joan Didion refers to “bits of the mind’s string”. These are pieces of who we are set down on a page and back-linked, to borrow terminology from the notebook’s digital cousin, to a vivid snatch of life experience.

Reading

I’m currently re-reading William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. I first read it 15 years ago maybe? It’s such a good book. I’d forgotten. I’ll be on Wolf Podcast talking about it at some point over the summer. We’ll be talking working our way through the books in the trilogy month by month.

I finished the Horus Heresy Anthology book Tallarn. Whilst the book is written by one author John French, the form of the novel is really interesting. A series of progressively longer and longer interconnected short stories, couple with a few vignettes about major events ‘off screen’ so to say. It was good.

I flew though 5,000 Words Per Hour: Write Faster, Write Smarter by Chris Fox. What a waste of time. Here’s my Goodreads review: Let me save you some time. the big trick to writing that much is ‘write that much’

Xiu Xiu – Common Loon

I saw on reddit that the single Common Loon is my fav producer John Congleton’s newest credit. I have heard Xiu Xiu show up on many playlists over the years but I’ve clearly not spent enough time with them. This song is fantastic, I love the beefiness of the guitar distortion and the way that the vocal float inside the riff. Its a really great rock song. Sounds really contemprary too.

The video is … quite something. Staring and directed by Alicia McDaid (Who you might also know as Disgusting Feminist or @mcdazzler)

I’m going to try and make time to go back and listen to Xiu Xiu’s nearly 2 decades of back catalogue. Luckily I have a few train rides to and from central London, should be able to get though it.

Remember Kids: