Combining instrumental virtuosity, compositional complexity, and lyrical depth, Tool’s Fear Inoculum deserves not just a listen, but repeated listenings.
Channel: Cultural Consumption
Departures (Film, 2008)
A quietly provocative story about a cellist who leaves the musical profession and finds a job preparing dead bodies for burial.
Birth of the Uncool
Will I ever enjoy listening to Kind of Blue again knowing that Miles Davis abused and beat his wife when he was outside the recording studio?
Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Appealing and fast-paced, this novel set in 1950s Mexico is a classic tale of an attractive young woman marrying into family with sinister secrets, who finds her choices taken away, and her life and sanity under threat. True to the gothic genre, the cr …
Party Wall, by Catherine Leroux
Insightful stories peel back the secrets within families, but the dazzling moment comes as you pass the midpoint of the book, and the connections between these universes begin to be revealed.
Cultural Consumption – February / March 2022
Fiction, films and search engines meet indigenous names and the chatter of jays; where does our attention wander when it strays on the dappled path?
CULTURAL CONSUMPTION: What We’re Reading, Watching, Listening to, and Thinking About – Dec 2021 / Jan 2022
Our bodies transform what we eat, and with our minds we re-create and transform culture. Here are some of the works that have gotten our attention recently and feel worth sharing.
“Blood and Rockets: Movement I, Saga of Jack Parsons – Movement II, Too the Moon” by The Claypool Lennon Delirium
The Claypool Lennon Delirium masterfully tells the story of rocket scientist/ occultist Jack Parsons.
Interpreting Darren Aronofsky’s “mother!”Interpreting Darren Aronofsky’s ‘mother!’
A series of writing and conversations exploring the many layers, folds, complexities, and intensities of director Darren Aronofsky’s disturbing tale of home invasion: mother!
Delusions, by Stanisław Kapuściński: A Review
Kapuscinski’s intentions are early implied, to match Dawkins bite for bite and (as honestly) to demonstrate the irreconcilable gulf between intellectual reductionism and emotional religious dogmatism, each flailing towards fundamentalism in trying to flatten one another.