James Joyce, you just can't ignore the bastard

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/james-joyce-you-cant-ignore-the-bastard

Joyce entered your life very differently in rural Ireland in the early 1980s. Back then, he still existed outside the official system. Too difficult, too scandalous for school. It was still possible for teenagers to read Joyce as an act of rebellion against teachers, government, church. You read Joyce the way you listened to late punk, or early rap.

Our generation formed bands, wrote songs and albums, not stories and novels. The Irish heirs to the verbal exuberance of James Joyce are, by and large, not the writers of literary fiction. They are the great, exiled Irish lyricists; Morrissey; early, good Elvis Costello; Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) of the Sex Pistols and PiL; Shane MacGowan of the Pogues (who spent his pre-London childhood on a farm outside Puckane, only a few miles from our house). MacGowan’s “The Old Main Drag” and “Fairytale of New York” are postmodern pop-stories worthy of Joyce; brutal, clear-eyed portraits of hemales and shemales, destroying themselves with drink in London and New York. “How Soon Is Now” and “This Charming Man” by The Smiths ache with youth’s agonies as exquisitely as Joyce’s story “Araby.” I’d say Joyce, as a man who wanted to be a professional tenor himself, would be happy enough with that legacy.

And language was the hero. That, I got from Joyce.

Lakker - "Tundra"

From Ireland, electro and hints of techno? Good stuff to listen to while coding. Even when coding sucks.

When bad behaviour does a good turn

The value of dark traits is a little more nuanced when it comes to humans. While we certainly won’t thrive as a society with rampant rule-breaking, we might have to embrace our dark side from time to time. Perhaps we need not recoil from our own grandiosity or aggression.

http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/when-bad-behaviour-does-a-good-turn/

Reindier - "Porcelain" (2015)

Electropop, the 3voor12 says. Quite right. Curious songs. Nice ones. Some weird.

• "My Man" - it has a Marc Almond feel to it

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

Slow vampire film in Jim Jarmusch style with an amazing soundtrack by Jozef Van Wissem and SQÜRL. Don't be in a hurry to watch it, but if you're in the mood for slow gothic clips and estranged music, this is the film

Gomorra (2008)

The much-hyper well-deserved film about the maffia (Camorra?) and how it works. No soundtrack. No emotional attachments. This film looks, and it, I guess, a documentary. Slightly chilling. The drawback... when you've read enough press releases, you expect the stark cold killing and it would probably be best watched before being exposed to anything..