Readers of The Teeming Brain will find something of more than passing interest in the just-released nonfiction anthology Exploring the Edge Realms of Consciousness: Liminal Zones, Psychic Science, and the Hidden Dimensions of the Mind. This is indicated not only by the book’s heady subtitle, and not only by fact that it is co-edited by…
Category: Arts & Entertainment
The daemonic discipline of Vincent van Gogh
The mythic potency of a life that is veritably (or literally) possessed by a daemonic creative force is beautifully and terrifyingly illustrated by the life, work, death, and legacy of Vincent van Gogh. So is the fact that a deliberate dedication to channeling this force through a discipline of strict technical training can result in…
Resist Dystopia: Learn to Enjoy Reading Shakespeare
At the conclusion of Technopoly, Neil Postman lays out his concept of the “loving resistance fighter,” someone who keeps an open heart and a strong hold on the symbols and narratives of liberty, honor, intelligence, etc., that made America (and, by extension, other modern democracies) great, while deliberately resisting the coarsening, dumbing, soul-killing influence of…
Writing, money, art, society, and copyright: A tangled web
Recently in his blog for The New York Review of Books, Tim Parks — novelist, nonfiction writer, translator — has offered some strikingly interesting and cogent reflections on the relationships among and between art, authorship, law, money, ownership, individuals, and twentieth-to-twenty-first century sociocultural realities. Their background is, first, the rise of writing as “a well-defined…
Seven minutes of improvisational genius from Vangelis
A major part of my life’s soundtrack has been provided by Vangelis, and if you, like me, have found your soul resonating with his beautiful, dark, lush, deep, futuristic, exquisite, transcendent music, then you’ll surely find this video to be as gripping as I do. It presents “Rare footage of Vangelis performing an improvisation on…
Facebook, ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ and the crossing of a cultural threshold
One of the most subtle and subversive pieces of social criticism in Fahrenheit 451comes early in the book when Montag, a fireman (i.e., book burner) who eventually wakes up to a recognition of his society’s essential character as a fascist-totalitarian dark age, chats with a teenaged girl named Clarisse. Or rather, it’s she who chats…
Teeming Brain columnist T. E. Grau in “Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities”
May saw the publication of the horror anthology Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities, edited by Henrik Sanbek Harksen and featuring a story by Teeming Brain columnist T. E. Grau. As you’ll recall, T. E. writes The Extinction Papers for us, and as you’ll see if you read his bio on our Teem page or check out…
Simon Strantzas: “There are no boundaries in horror”
Weird Fiction Review has just published an interview with Simon Strantzas that anybody interested in supernatural horror will surely find worthwhile. Here’s a taste: WFR: In his introduction to your collection Nightingale Songs, John Langan mentions your shared affection for Ramsey Campbell and Robert Aickman. What in particular do you think draws you to their…
Morris Berman reviews “Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?”
Morris Berman — author of The Twilight of American Culture, Dark Ages America, and Why America Failed, and a frequently mentioned source of trenchant (and apocalyptic) cultural criticism here at The Teeming Brain — has offered a characteristically perceptive and incisive review/critique of the new documentary Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? by filmmakers Frances Causey…
The rise and fall (and rise) of artist and magician Austin Osman Spare
If you haven’t heard of Austin Osman Spare — or even if you have — the video below makes for fascinating and revelatory viewing. It features author and magician Alan Moore, as well as other knowledgeable figures, discussing “the virtually unknown but enormously talented Edwardian artist and magician Austin Osman Spare on The Culture Show…