A Post On A Topic Selected By My Patreon Backers
I found myself weirdly fascinated in hindsight by the early reviews of Blackstar that praised it while professing a certain bafflement at the meaning of it all, such as a Guardian review of the title video suggesting that it might “just [be] 10 minutes of standard-issue pop promo surrealism.” And then, not long after, Bowie’s death emphatically answered most interpretive questions about the album. It is not merely that the early critics were wrong – the early claim that “Blackstar” itself was about ISIS, for instance, is flagrantly wrong, but not nearly as perversely funny. Rather it is that this particular claim is an almost precise opposite of the truth. Critics claimed the album was a lot of cryptic and meaningless pomposity. In reality, there was a master interpretive key that unlocked almost the entire thing – a simple fact on the level of “it’s about X” that made sense of the entire project.
German sentence structure allows relative freedom of word order; the result are sentences that build towards a climactic revelation as to their meaning, clauses and words carefully piled up in anticipation of an ending that will at last illuminate their purpose. Even in English, writing naturally points towards endings. There’s no such thing as a nonlinear narrative. It always points forward. As Roger Ebert puts it, “Here is how life is supposed to work. We come out of ourselves and unfold into the world. We try to realize our desires. We fold back into ourselves, and then we die.”
Implicit is the existence of a high concept; a grand idea. Everyone is supposed to have a magnum opus. With it, a theme; a clear message to communicate; a subject. But we do not simply communicate the message. We cannot. Instead we half-communicate it, sketching it, alluding to it, gesturing towards it. It is less meaning than direction. We say part of what we mean, and let it stand in for the whole. All writing is foreshadowing.
And nothing is more foreshadowed than death. Strange figures follow us and watch, judging us, recording our deeds and misdeeds, drafting an eventual critical judgment. Dread signs and ominous portents abound. We know, instinctively, constantly, that something is going wrong; some horror is slowly unfolding. It must be, for the alternative – to be directionless – would surely be worse. As Thomas Ligotti puts it, “being somebody is rough, but being nobody is out of the question.”
Ligotti, of course, is an apropos writer to discuss, and not just because he’s ruthlessly trendy. His stories work upon an associative logic, more lyrical than narrative. Things are not said, but alluded to. Niggling illnesses and lost time. In particular, recurrent images of puppets. The faces that look at us are animated by other things. Things we cannot see or know. We recoil in horror.
“Dream logic” is the cliche descriptor of this sort of this. It’s not wrong as such; the unstable identities and shifting locations of dreams to resemble what we’re talking about.…
Let me start by making something as clear as I possibly can.
Jack, as news of Umberto Eco’s death was breaking last night, Tweeted 
Last War in Albion in the afternoon.
A very Marvel-heavy week, which is helpful in comparing some of the more intermittently frustrating titles in my pulls.