Negentropy

Cat yoga, and the avoidance thereof

Matthew Chrulew — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 05:52:44 +0000

In this twenty-first century, many of the most intriguing deconstructions of human/animal dualism occur in an apartment in the East Village. Here, one half of the infamous radio duo Busso and the Wombat shares meanings, interests and affects (as a friend of ours likes to put it) as part of an experimental multispecies community (comprising, specifically, Homo sapiens and Felis catus). Now, as the internet has taught us, cats are the beginning and end of all things, and they occupy much of the middle space, too. At the Center for Feline Studies of the Avenue B Multi-Studies Center, Busso’s ailourographic investigations chronicle this immanent medium of human-cat interactions with phenomenological mindfulness and Chicago School rigour.

Others have begun to catch on, leading to Busso’s wonderfully camp performance of a nerdy cat expert in a cheeky documentary on “Lil Bub & Friendz”:

Of course, their resistance to performance is demonstrative in itself.

April miscellany

Matthew Chrulew — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:12:52 +0000

Good news for those who prefer pixels to paper:

Twelfth Planet Press have released the ebook version of The Angælien Apocalypse. It is available at the 12PP website and a number of other places. Mondy and the AA judges say it’s good.

And FableCroft have released an ebook of the under-appreciated Canterbury 2100 (originally published in print by Agog!), which includes “The Gnomogist’s Tale”. It is available here. This reviewer says it’s good.

Now playing: The Drones, “Nine Eyes”

This hole in my chest

Matthew Chrulew — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 12:12:53 +0000

First album I ever bought. The one musical love of mine hated by a certain NZ expat music aficionado. Guaranteed to turn the man in his grave, which I’m sure his skeleton would appreciate after this last hampered year.

“Suspicion and Love”

Matthew Chrulew — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:30:40 +0000

Foucault Studies 15 has now been published, a religion themed issue patiently edited by John McSweeney. It includes an interview with James Bernauer, and essays by Jeremy Carrette, Corey McCall, John and myself.

Immanence, spirituality, revolution, love. What more could you want?

Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Chevron Festival Gardens, 11/2/13

Matthew Chrulew — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 02:54:05 +0000

To think I had resigned myself to missing this non-terrorist ensemble, until an injured bird came to my rescue outside a Melville fast food joint. An experience, yet an opening. Do I have to apologise for crying a yawn? The clouds started it with God’s pee on my cheek. Against a looped 16mm backdrop of industrial documents and firesmoke, of skies and roadscapes, a violin led an instrumental collective through quarter hour builds and flourishes, wordless treatises and incantations. I chair-danced, leg-drummed, conducted, blew my hands, bit my finger, mashed my beard, composed spontaneous spoken word. Tapers taped. Hundreds are counted lucky to share.

31/1/13

Matthew Chrulew — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:16:50 +0000

If numbers can cheat, creating significance where there is none;

If dispositives and economies can cheat, producing undeserved obeisance and unnecessary haste;

If deadlines and morals and messages can cheat on me, cheat in me and through me;

Then I can cheat too.

65daysofstatic, The Bakery, 5/1/13

Matthew Chrulew — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 09:36:03 +0000

sleepmakeswaves provided a soundtrack for an ontology oriented to objects. As their band name implies, the mind is unconscious and technologically measured; as their song titles suggest, the world teems with vibrant substances, actants and technical artifacts. They are less in a relationship with their audience than both are nodes in an auditory network. Any lyrics or words were unamplified and subsumed by electronic instruments. Indeed the intransigence of pedals and power supplies proved greater than the musicians’ agency.

Tangled Thoughts of Leaving played with sounds like children with toys. As their band name implies, our bonds are but melancholy lifeslices; as their song titles suggest, nature will survive our indecisive selves. They allow their audience to subsist in their musical playpen, free of contracts or rules for the game. They sent loops into organs and waves into marrow. Keyboards and drum mallets announced a grandiose verdict on pretence, before an orchidic finale finally seduced my buzz.

65daysofstatic assailed us with white noisiness and noisy whiteness. As their band name implies, there are two kinds of experiments, the angelic and the demonic; as their song titles suggest, there are two kinds of stories, the elliptical and the verbatim. None correspond. They seemed to progress from desperately hoping that their audience would one day catch up, to vexedly deciding on a violent mugging. Repeating refrains, they refrained from repetition. Encrypted blueprints built into waves and crested as birds. Calculated and uncompromising, they evoked the churn of industry and exuded a cosmic ascetic calm.

The Mysterious Cities of Gold

Matthew Chrulew — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 04:13:47 +0000

This year’s Boxing Day infusion consisted of that special Franco-Japanese animation from the 80s, The Mysterious Cities of Gold:

Which, in a remarkable piece of evidence against the decline of civilisation, is being remade – hourra!

The Nostalgia Distillery is pleased to serve this remix from master cocktailier Michael Mills:

Annual behavioural assessment

Matthew Chrulew — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 03:51:49 +0000

My sainted middle-namesake continued his undeserved generosity to my book-cravings, this time with a complete series of symposia on the history of zoological knowledge. Ancients, medievals, moderns; domesticates and exotics; science and rhetoric; Babylon and Mesopotamia; Aristotle and Hildegard; dis- and re-appearances; zoo-archaeology and -ethnology. Next year I will write him a letter asking for time to read them.

Farewell to apocalypse, 1999-2012

Matthew Chrulew — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:54:21 +0000

To think both that you will never die, and you could die any minute? On the surface once, burrowed deep now.

To thus put everything off until some illusory time, while every moment is harried and judged? Fuck that shit of a brainworm.

I will die. One day later. So I will work out how to live now.

They should have taught me about the world not ending.