Stray Cats and Samurai
The bigger influence in terms of current writing is undoubtedly my experiences in Japan, mostly because I have quite a natural affinity for the place as well as having very close friends there who are like family. Japan is a place full of wild contradictions and, for me, was a liberating space to be in. Without the overarching influences of Christianity, Freud and Descartes, it was an enormously stimulating experience and this feeds into my sense of creativity. It helped me chuck out a lot of Western influences that I sometimes find quite stifling.
Jayne Joso interviewed by Kerry Ryan.
Three Poems
I am four years old, I am not a boy,
I am my father’s only child, and he is coaching me to kill.
Coffee cans perched on a fence in the desert.
More than anything they look like wingless rusted birds.
“They are bad guys,” he says, pointing at our targets,
“and you are home alone.”
No, I think,
those are coffee cans.
“The one in the middle,” he insists,
“that one is a killer.”
And I am turning coffee cans
into wingless birds…
By Lauren Henley.
Radio, Live Transmission
In ‘Tintin and the Death Drive’ Jacob Mikanowski reads Tom McCarthy‘s C (3:AM Novel of Year 2010) alongside Tintin and the Secret of Literature: Serge Carrefax, the protagonist of Tom McCarthy’s new novel C, has a problem with perspective. A Mr. Clair comes to his parents’ country estate to tutor him and his sister in […]
Artist Formerly Known As Captain Beefheart
John Peel presents a 1997 one-hour documentary on Don Van Vliet, with contributions from The Magic Band, Frank Zappa, Ry Cooder & Matt Groening: [via Ubu Web / Dangerous Minds]
3:AM Top 5: Against resolutions
It may well be the month for self-improvement, and though Virginia Woolf’s New Year resolutions are quite charming, we prefer to take a leaf out of Mark Twain‘s book (no, not that one): “Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it […]