Ho Chi Minh City, 2015 “In the 20th century, the number of ‘past times’ that are simultaneously available is so vast as to create cultural anarchy. When all the cultures of the world are simultaneously present, the work of the artist in the elucidation of form takes on new scope and new urgency.” Marshall McLuhan,ContinueContinue reading “The Most Sought-After Lifestyle Hub”
Author Archives: Paul Dunbar
THE PLAGUE PANOPTIC
Originally posted on the lethal text:
“First, a strict spatial partitioning: the closing of the town and its outlying districts, a prohibition to leave the town on pain of death, the killing of all stray animals; the division of the town into distinct quarters, each governed by an intendant. Each street is placed under the…
Double-Headed Snake
Malayopython Reticulatus moved very, very slowly, and completely silently, getting itself into position. It took a hundred years to form a great circle around the man’s prostrate form. It watched the man intently as it moved. It knew from his breathing that he was deep asleep.
Red
The boys had gone swimming and Red wanted to go too, but her mother wouldn’t let her. She was too young and didn’t know how to swim. So she waited for a while and then sneaked away, following the path to the pond. As she approached through the trees, she could see their backs, fiveContinueContinue reading “Red”
Baudrillard in Bangkok
Magritte, La Trahison des Images (The Treachery of Images), 1929 A simulacrum is a likeness, image or effigy; bearing a superficial similarity to its original, it is a placeholder or sign for the real thing, a representation rather than a replication. The instrumental suffix -crum signifies something which might be used in a simulation, likeContinueContinue reading “Baudrillard in Bangkok”
Kite
∆ Lion Rock is set on a rugged coastal hillside, facing the setting sun, the whole hillside like an amphitheatre for the nightly show. Up on the road is the bar shaped like a boat, guarded by geese, loud with reggae and roosters and the roar of improbable vehicles. Down a steep path, just aboutContinueContinue reading “Kite”
Deckard’s Unicorn
Rachel, by Paul X Johnson REPLICANT EPIPHANIES ∆ “I have seen myself backward.” Philip K Dick, A Scanner Darkly In Hampton’s Fancher’s screen adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick, Rick Deckard is a ‘blade-runner’, a police assassin hired to hunt down rogue ‘replicants’ or androids. He is instructed toContinueContinue reading “Deckard’s Unicorn”
Familiar Games
The first three conversations I had with strangers all went the same way. They’d ask me what I thought of the place so far, and I’d say great, really chilled, I liked it; and then they’d give me the dark warning. It would go something like this: ‘Well, just be careful. You know, Amsterdam is a place where you can get anything you want. And I mean, anything you want. So – be careful.’
HANUMAN
There was jamming at the Rock on Sunday nights, with some talented musicians turning up to play, and, sometimes, a Ukrainian girl who lit up flaming torches and danced around the deck to our music. I liked to join in on the djembe, and we all played faster when Anna spontaneously combusted like that. drums, sax, bass and didge — at times the music had a sparse weirdness that was completely right for the treetops, the rhythms of crickets and frogs, and the moon peering over the top of the hill.
BOHEMIA
There are only two ways out of Bohemia: fame or death; apotheosis or self-destruction. And there were so many ways to take the latter road: drink, drugs, disease, starvation, madness. Although unknown at the time of his death, the young poet Thomas Chatterton, who killed himself in 1779 at the age of seventeen, became a Romantic icon when the Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis immortalised him in his painting of 1856; which inspired a rash of copycat suicides by other would-be Parisian artists jealous of his posthumous fame. Others were less rash. Henri Murger rewrote his character-sketches as a novel and his novel as a play, moved out of the city and spent the rest of his life re-cycling stories of people he’d known in the far-off country of Bohemia.
BOHEMIA 