This ancient website is in stasis and is being replaced! Please go check out the new hotness at new.mahnamahna.net.
That new site will move here once this old site's content has been completely migrated to the new system. St. Tim taught us in 1998 that Cool URIs Don't Change, and he is still right.
It’s odd to think back on the time — not so long ago — when there were distinct stylistic trends, such as “this season’s colour” or “abstract expressionism” or “psychedelic music.” It seems we don’t think like that any more. There are just too many styles around, and they keep mutating too fast to assume that kind of dominance… . We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.— Brian Eno on The Death of Uncool. I love this idea; I hope he’s right.
A typed note that Wallace left in his papers laid out the novel’s idea: “Bliss — a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious — lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.”more...
© 2016 Matthew Newton, published under a Creative Commons License.