It has been a funny few months. I started this new faze of my life writing my Inaugural Address (such a grand title) albeit five years later than I should have. But today - yes a Sunday, academics never sleep - I dotted the last "j" and crossed the last bridge in turning it into a paper for the highly creditable TEXT Journal and it will go online this month (I will post the link). The editors have been great in teasing it out and knocking it into shape and I can now say, with a certain smugness, I am rather pleased with it, them and myself - yay, as they might say. And this is the preamble: Jesus, Judas, Jimi and John: culture, communication, media and art in delightful chaos.
Abstract: This is a paper about a storytelling journey and a journey in storytelling, through a labyrinth of loose affiliates in culture, communication, media and art, which should be seen as a critically creative and creatively critical adventure that tries to make sense of the delightful chaos that is life in representation.
Keywords: culture; communication; media; art; modernism; postmodernism; story
And smug as it feels now, it has been a wonderful journey. For as Don DeLillo reminds me, I write to find out what I know. Some may think that is fuck nothing though it may be fuck all (to paraphrase Michael Curtiz - I think). And so I celebrated by going into town and buying myself three books, one by Noam Chomsky, Problems of Knowledge and Freedom; one by Adam Phillips, Terrors and Experts, which I had before but lost and and Italian cookery book by Aldo Zilli - got them in Sandpiper Books in Brighton - £15 the lot - always great bargains in there. And now I am thinking, what tune would I like to celebrate by showing you this Robert Juniper image and to play it out (and I know I have posted this before, but it gets me every time). Exercise that mind - and stay forever young - yay!
