Guest: Lia Friedman of UC San Diego.
First broadcast September 30 2016.
“We wanted to support the protesters.”
Guest: Lia Friedman of UC San Diego.
First broadcast September 30 2016.
“We wanted to support the protesters.”
Every year science fiction writer and futurist Bruce Sterling gives a “state of the world” presentation at SXSW Interactive. We consider his remarks from this year and what they mean for politics, social media, and surveillance.
Guest: Gregory Walker of Houser-Walker Architecture.
First broadcast on September 23 2016.
“How do we take back pieces of the public realm?”
We go to the vault in this episode, pulling out our take on True Detective’s second season. Is “it all” Nic Pizzolatto? And if so, do both the blame and accolades lay at his feet?
This entry was sent in my September 10th TinyLetter.
I have done a poor job of maintaining a creative outlet in my midlife. I produce all kinds of audio projects, certainly, but they serve multiple masters: documenting my professional work, fulfilling my collaborators’ needs, hopes of exposure, even chasing the elusive high of meeting your heroes. What I have lost is the straight-up artistic expression of my internal life.
I used to write novels and short stories, in my more lubricated days (that’s a drinking joke), and while most of them were incomplete, I did finish a single novel and three short stories that I felt were worth showing to other people. My rejection slip collection is not big but it’s too thick to slip between the pages of a notebook.
But I don’t write fiction anymore. Until recently, the idea of starting to write again felt huge and ungainly; writing seemed like an unending, unsatisfying endeavor that I should be glad to be rid of.
Working on Supercontext with Chris, however, has helped me find my way back to the desire to write and even to the sources of that desire, most notably in the episode on Nick Cave that we produced in anticipation of the release of Skeleton Tree and the accompanying film One More Time With Feeling. We discussed Nick Cave’s notebooks and I connected that discussion to my vague memory of Nick Cave’s interview on Marc Maron’s WTF and to “Assumptions,” a chapter in Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town, which contains the line “Whenever I see a town that triggers whatever it is inside me that wants to write a poem, I assume at least one of the following:” which introduces 78 contradictory and deceptively simple qualities to these potential triggering towns.
So dumping all that stuff into my brain barrel — Nick Cave, notebooks, artistic assumptions, Richard Hugo, triggering towns, fantasy life, Skeleton Tree, death, life, children, collaboration, and music — and shaking it around brought me to an artistic decision.
Trying to write a book, or a story, or even, God help me, a poem feels like taking on an undue burden. But trying to fill notebooks with notations and aphorisms about an alternate artistic universe (that any potential Charlie-Bennett-composed fiction might describe) feels like a romp, like therapy, like a puzzle, like drawing a map, like useful work.
So I’m going to start filling notebooks. The first assumption that struck me and stuck is this one: “Houses burn down when someone decides to change who they are.”
Guests: Adam Spring, Research Associate in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, Duke University
First broadcast September 16, 2016.
Playlist at https://www.wrek.org/2016/09/playlist-for-lost-in-the-stacks-from-september-16th-2016-talking-to-each-other-about-technology-episode-318/
“Info-tension is the right way to describe it.”
While talking about the dark fantasy comic “Locke and Key,” we get drawn into the complicated media world surrounding adaptations and monetization. Are comics the best engine for creative, collaborative storytelling? We look at Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s partnership to find out.
Guest: Amanda Pellerin of the Georgia Tech Library.
First broadcast September 9 2016
Playlist at https://www.wrek.org/2016/09/playlist-for-lost-in-the-stacks-from-september-9th-2016-episode-317/
“I read dead people’s letters.”
Looking back on the television series HANNIBAL, we’re enamored with its attention to detail. But how did this gruesome slash fiction make its way to network television? Charlie thinks it’s because this is a “wet” show. Christian thinks it’s Bryan Fuller performing a miracle.
Guest: Joshua Hammer, author of The Bad-ass Librarians of Timbuktu.
First broadcast September 2 2016.
“Is this going to get all Steven Spielberg-y?”