The Mumpsimus

This essay originally appeared in t he Spring 2012 issue of Rain Taxi . Elements were also used in my video essay "Profane Love: Derek Jarman & Caravaggio " , which I began work on shortly after writing this piece. Derek Jarman and the Memory Palace Of Life by Matthew Cheney Smiling in Slow Motion Derek Jarman University of Minnesota Press ($18.95) Jubilee: Six Film Scripts Derek Jarman University of Minnesota Press ($18.95) Derek Jarman: A Biography Tony Peake University of Minnesota Press ($24.95) Derek Jarman died in 1994, leaving behind him one of the most important bodies of work of any artist or filmmaker of his generation, an oeuvre that challenged orthodoxies of sexuality, politics, and aesthetics. Though best remembered for such films as Jubilee , Caravaggio , and Blue , Jarman was also a prolific writer, particularly as a diarist. The University of Minnesota Press has been reissuing many of his p...

The latest print issue of Rain Taxi includes an essay I wrote, "Derek Jarman and The Memory Palace Of Life", about Derek Jarman's books, particularly the ones re-released by the University of Minnesota Press . I incorporated a few sentences from the piece in my video essay on Jarman and Caravaggio  a few months back, but to read the whole thing you'll need to pick up a copy of Rain Taxi . Here, to tempt you (or dissuade you), are the first two paragraphs: Derek Jarman died in 1994, leaving behind him one of the most important bodies of work of any artist or filmmaker of his generation, an oeuvre that challenged orthodoxies of sexuality, politics, and aesthetics. Though best remembered for such films as Jubilee, Caravaggio, The Last of England, Edward II , and Blue , Jarman was also a prolific writer, particularly as a diarist, and The University of Minnesota Press has now brought all of these books back into print in uniform paperback editions. Additionally, th...

I created the above video after failing at writing about Caravaggio  for The House Next Door and the Summer of '86 series. I had a pile of fragments, quotes, scenes I wanted to somehow refer to, but couldn't make any of it cohere. A month or two ago, I thought about trying again by creating a sort of collage, and figured if it was too weird or unfinished for The House, I could at least post it here and be done with it. But as I looked over the collage, it felt more like some sort of script to me. "Wouldn't it be nice," I thought, "to make a film about Caravaggio? " In all my copious spare time. But the idea nagged at me, and finally I sat down to see what such a thing might look like. I transformed the essay-collage into a script-blueprint, recorded the narration, and then tried to fit images to it. I thought it would take an afternoon. It took substantially longer, and involved various software failures, lots of thinking and rethinking, a willingnes...

Google has done gone and broke Google Reader , removing the sharing function to encourage people to use Google Plus instead. This means the "Fresh Links" section over on the sidebar is no longer able to be refreshed, and I'll probably go back to occasionally doing linkdump posts. Here, for instance, are some links: My latest Strange Horizons column, "Reading Systems" , has been posted, as has my latest Sandman Meditations piece. (The Sandman pieces are going to be biweekly for the rest of the year rather than the regular weekly schedule because I'm just too busy to keep up with a weekly schedule right now, and I was getting really frazzled.) Team VanderMeer has launched The Weird Fiction Review , an online journal about kumquats. Famed kumquat collected Neil Gaiman is interviewed , and there's an interesting selection of nonfiction, art, and fiction about kumquats. Don't believe me? Well, go over there and see for yourself! In publishing new...