retreat
29/03/26 18:51
I haven't updated this website for many months, and so much has happened since last August.
There were some cool and fun events that I should have posted about on here. One back in November celebrating the 20th anniversary of Kate Bush's Aerial, in January there was a number of Bowie-themed celebrations (since it was 10 years since his death, and the release of Blackstar), radio interviews, talks and panels, including the 'David Bowie in Time' day at the British Library. I got to contribute to the annual Dublin Bowie Fest, too, and most recently joined a panel of fellow 33 1/3 authors at a special event at Libreria bookshop in London. I did an interview with John Maggiore, and published a video essay about "No Plan" on YouTube, and appeared in an ARTE/Sky Arts documentary about Kate Bush, wrote the foreword to the 'remastered' edition of Karl Bartos's remarkable autobiography, and signed on to edit a forthcoming Bloomsbury Handbook of David Bowie. I've been working some more with Elizabeth Price on the follow-up to Here We Are which will be showing at Manifesta 16 Ruhr later this year. Work at Kingston University has been full on; I got to help redesign the suite of MA Music courses with a great team of academics in the Dept of Performing Arts, and I'm co-hosting a conference with my excellent colleague Dr Matt Melia in September, 'Late Bowie: Legacy, Mortality and the Archival Impulse'. That same month I'll be delivering a keynote at another Bowie-themed conference in Kristiansand, Norway ('Sensation: The Sounds, Visions, and Words of David Bowie') alongside designer Jonathan Barnbrook and journalist Sigbjørn Nedland. Oh, and in late January I broke my foot, and am only now getting back to something resembling normal mobility.
And something has been gnawing at me. I'm sick of the internet. My brain feels rotted by all the targeted advertising and toxic discourses, alternate facts and scams and the scourge of slop content, sinister actors, the thorough enshittification of everything I used to enjoy about it. I'm not going to get into how I feel about AI, the or what the hectic tempo of bad news and grim info is doing for my general wellbeing. But more than feel simply exhausted and disheartened and disappointed by it, I'm feeling creatively stunted, too, by the amount of headroom I have devoted to being in these spaces. My attention is fractured, my deeper intentions aren't surfacing anymore. We had a guest over for dinner recently who asked "so what have you been doing lately?" … and I struggled to answer them. Even though I've been so busy and doing so much stuff, nothing is really sticking. I'm going to see if being offline more will help. I've deleted my social accounts, and I came very close to deleting this website (… if I'm honest something in my gut wants to, still. Maybe that something is just laziness, since I realise I need to redesign this thing - much of the site as it is now won't work because of missing content embedded from platforms I've left or deactivated).
Maybe you're here reading this because we were once connected on socials and you're wondering where I've gone. Or maybe you've encountered some of my work and you're looking for more information about me. For now I'll still be here, and I'm keeping my accounts on YouTube and SoundCloud.
There were some cool and fun events that I should have posted about on here. One back in November celebrating the 20th anniversary of Kate Bush's Aerial, in January there was a number of Bowie-themed celebrations (since it was 10 years since his death, and the release of Blackstar), radio interviews, talks and panels, including the 'David Bowie in Time' day at the British Library. I got to contribute to the annual Dublin Bowie Fest, too, and most recently joined a panel of fellow 33 1/3 authors at a special event at Libreria bookshop in London. I did an interview with John Maggiore, and published a video essay about "No Plan" on YouTube, and appeared in an ARTE/Sky Arts documentary about Kate Bush, wrote the foreword to the 'remastered' edition of Karl Bartos's remarkable autobiography, and signed on to edit a forthcoming Bloomsbury Handbook of David Bowie. I've been working some more with Elizabeth Price on the follow-up to Here We Are which will be showing at Manifesta 16 Ruhr later this year. Work at Kingston University has been full on; I got to help redesign the suite of MA Music courses with a great team of academics in the Dept of Performing Arts, and I'm co-hosting a conference with my excellent colleague Dr Matt Melia in September, 'Late Bowie: Legacy, Mortality and the Archival Impulse'. That same month I'll be delivering a keynote at another Bowie-themed conference in Kristiansand, Norway ('Sensation: The Sounds, Visions, and Words of David Bowie') alongside designer Jonathan Barnbrook and journalist Sigbjørn Nedland. Oh, and in late January I broke my foot, and am only now getting back to something resembling normal mobility.
And something has been gnawing at me. I'm sick of the internet. My brain feels rotted by all the targeted advertising and toxic discourses, alternate facts and scams and the scourge of slop content, sinister actors, the thorough enshittification of everything I used to enjoy about it. I'm not going to get into how I feel about AI, the or what the hectic tempo of bad news and grim info is doing for my general wellbeing. But more than feel simply exhausted and disheartened and disappointed by it, I'm feeling creatively stunted, too, by the amount of headroom I have devoted to being in these spaces. My attention is fractured, my deeper intentions aren't surfacing anymore. We had a guest over for dinner recently who asked "so what have you been doing lately?" … and I struggled to answer them. Even though I've been so busy and doing so much stuff, nothing is really sticking. I'm going to see if being offline more will help. I've deleted my social accounts, and I came very close to deleting this website (… if I'm honest something in my gut wants to, still. Maybe that something is just laziness, since I realise I need to redesign this thing - much of the site as it is now won't work because of missing content embedded from platforms I've left or deactivated).
Maybe you're here reading this because we were once connected on socials and you're wondering where I've gone. Or maybe you've encountered some of my work and you're looking for more information about me. For now I'll still be here, and I'm keeping my accounts on YouTube and SoundCloud.