Author Archives: Joe Nolan
Moore’s Mages
Earlier this week I came across a cool post on the Confidentials site that featured comic book legend/sorcerer supreme Alan Moore talking about the history of Western esoteric traditions and giving a list of his top five mystics and magicians. Here’s a bit about the poet/artist/gnostic prophet William Blake… Blake summed up the artistic, anarchic [...]
New Wave Michigan Cannibals
Antonia recently turned me on to Cecelia Condit’s amazing New Wave cannibal opera from 1983. Here’s some information I found at Metro Times about Possibly in Michigan … Possibly In Michigan is an operatic fairytale about cannibalism in Middle America. A masked man stalks a woman through a shopping mall and follows her home. In [...]
Remembering Rosaleen
This year we commemorate 60 years of Rosaleen Norton’s art and pioneering occultism. Norton was an Australian witch and a visionary painter born on October 2, 1917. We’re jumping the gun by remembering Norton’s contributions to art and magick at the beginning of spring, but maybe we’ll plan multiple posts counting down to Norton’s autumn [...]
Shock Now
Following John Berger’s January death there’s been a resurgence of interest in his 1972 BBC television series Ways of Seeing. The series addresses the various modes of representation that Berger observed in visual art along with an exploration of what I would call the psychology of observation. It’s deep, interesting stuff, and even rather revolutionary [...]
Overlooking The Shining
Every now and then I try to make my list of the ten best films of all time, but the best I’ve been able to do is to come up with my favorite films by my favorite directors. Stanley Kubrick has lots of great movies, and they’re all worth watching over and over again. That [...]
Celebrating Pop
Iggy Pop released Post Pop Depression last year, claiming that it would be his last album. Next month, Pop celebrates his 70th birthday. Unlike with his buddy Bowie, we have a chance to celebrate Pop’s music while the man himself is still here to enjoy it. Yesterday I found this fun rundown of Pop’s 18 [...]
Sunshine Supermen
I just watched the The Sunshine Makers documentary. The 2015 flick tells the story of two idealistic young men in the 1960′s. The pair couldn’t be more different, but they both shared a common goal: to manufacture and distribute a massive amount of LSD, thoroughly convinced that the insights provided by the drug would create [...]
Not Sham Rock
Lately I post a From The Archives selection to my social media on Fridays, but this Friday is St. Patrick’s Day and I wanted to share this great doc about Irish rock music. I originally discovered the BBC gem The Irish Rock Story: A Tale of Two Cities at the Nashville Public Library. It’s a [...]
Kinski’s Beast
I saw a preview screening of Disney’s new live-action Beauty and the Beast film based on their classic 1991 animated adaptation of the 18th century fairy tale. Fans of the Disney cartoon will find a lot to like here. It’s not as good or as groundbreaking as the animated movie, but it does justice to [...]
