Rockhaunter — Hauntiquarianism, Dubjectivity & Fictive Counter-Intelligence
Tomorrow’s the start of Rockhaunter. Your No. 1 Guide to Hauntiquarianism, Sound and Vision.
I’ve suppressed Rockhunter. I did so on the last day of August — symbolically, the end of summer, which has become a time of musical replay for those intending to become culturally colder in the sunshine. I decided not to become evidence for a cultural-historical trend. It became clear that, without my saying otherwise, the fictivities, soundings, silent screaming and auto-arguments in Rockhunter could be taken for a drift towards the sort of repetition that elides simultaneity and absence. That is not so. I’ve pressed the constant play button on my cassette player; I made the CD replay over and over again; and iTunes is only going through all my fave tracks again because I issued it instructions to do so.
In case there’s any residual doubt, I am doing this on purpose.
On reading various blogs and things, mainly ones dealing with hauntology — the past/present — in popular sound and vision, and noting some convergency or cultural consensus in the fields, streams and spaceways, I have become more and more convinced of the power of divergency, immanent or otherwise. There’s also a growing tendency to regard hidden histories and forgotten acts as prototypes, powerful potential emetics that, if injected into culture, would blast it to pieces. There’s a sense in which regarding old radicalisms might help societies choose, in retrospect, which divergent path their cultures preferred!
Hidden histories and forgotten acts are currently doing their work, both now and then; they are neither revivable ganglia nor spent shells. Like travel writing generally — especially psychogeography — time travel writing tells us nothing, except whether the writer approves of how things turned out. Adducing historical acts and activisms is a notary’s game. It’s not for we poets.
In case you were wondering, I am happy to create false music, unnatural fictions and to field dubjective responses, and to make it funny.
To be a hauntiquary — a divergent amateur civilian — in an age of academic professionalism and convergency is as exciting as it is valueless, and perhaps even worthless. Rest assured I won’t shirk or dodge the task at hand. Hauntiquarian sounds won’t make themselves.
I’m starting again. It begins again tomorrow, from Issue 1, as Rockhaunter. Your No. 1 Guide to Hauntiquarianism, Sound and Vision.
Posted by Neil
on September 5, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Tags: Music, hauntiquarianism, hauntology