ABOUT THIS BLOG
All right... no more fooling around...
What started out as sleeve-notes for an e.p. by my Popular Beat Combo The Mekano Set (writing about the influence of Hawkwind and Michael Moorcock's Cornelius stories) ended up as a growing pile of A4 notebooks.
During The Event there was some talk of a Lockdown Cornelius writing project with Michael Moorcock himself and the good folks @ www.michaelmoorcock.net. I carried on with my longhand scriblings as a kind of therapy. Typing some of this up...
I grew up on those Cornelius novels - they were my education: Complex, Modern-Gothic Hypertextual non-linear stories centred around the exploits of a plucky band of diverse Anarcho-Feminist time-travellers who lived to look sharp, challenge stereotypes and smash the fasc.
Shifting through time, styles, scenes, gender and class. Professional Trouble Makers, Movers and shakers, Anarchist Freedom Fighters, Sonic Assassins, Underground Sound musos, little oiks, unlucky in love...
I used to say that I was lucky to have found these books that were so mysterious to me, filled with strange new ideas. But it wasn't luck: They came my way and I made a decision to embrace them.
I feel sympathy for people raised on nostalgia for boarding school (I've met many who went, and none that found it pleasant) or plodding, snobbish pre-industrial whimsy . Of course Neil Gaiman had Queer and Counter-Culture characters in his work - but they were always harmless and cutesy where Moorcock's were revolutionaries, disruptors, sexual (without being On Top).
The Cutesification of Counter-Culture always made me feel uncomfortable - given the amount of violence and hate I've endured over the years. Did Tim Burton's Goth-Disney romanticism (are there ever even any POC or Queers in his world?) and Gaiman's Lords and Ladies of the Netherworld just seems too inspired by Imperialism and The Classics.
There was always going to be a Sandman TV show - we're never gonna get Cornelius or Elric as they're far too anti-authoritarian. It's seems fine to poach their looks though? Typical Hegemonic Recuperation: De-politicize Elric, fatten him up, get him off the drugs and have him fight - not defend - the supernatural.
Headlines are taken from The Guardian / Independent.
M.Taylor 2023
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