Author Archives: Joe Nolan
Lord of the Rings
In the opening of JRR TOLKIEN ’1892-1973′ – A Study Of The Maker Of Middle-earth, Tolkien’s son, Christopher, says that the attraction of Middle Earth and its stories can be found in his dad’s “…extraordinary power of compelling literary belief in an unreal world or what he called a secondary world.” You can say that [...]
Bye Bye, Berger
Art critic, novelist, painter and poet John Berger died on Monday. Berger celebrated his 90th birthday last year and a BBC special and a very good documentary film marked the occasion. Here’s some of my Burnaway review for The Seasons In Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger. It’s followed by a YouTube playlist I made [...]
Party On, People
So the mail wasn’t running yesterday and my girlfriend had the day off so I sort of also had the day off to hang out with her. I managed to post to this blog, hand in a column, edit an article, and meet with an editor, but I also managed to go for a drive, [...]
Antarctica’s Nazi UFOs
Over the long weekend I happened upon a New York Post article talking about a massive anomaly discovered beneath the ice in the Antarctic. It turns out that scientists think it’s a huge asteroid that might change our view of the history of the planet. Here’s a bit… Some researchers believe it is the remains [...]
Hey Joe Strummer
Over the holiday I missed out on posting about the 14th anniversary of Joe Strummer’s death from an un-diagnosed congenital heart defect on December 22, 2002. I celebrated The Clash’s 30th birthday with a slew of posts this last summer and I wanted to revisit this Joe-centric notice to recognize his passing last week. Here’s [...]
Celebrating Spare
Austin Osman Spare was a British artist and chaos magician whose work was all but forgotten before author and occultist Kenneth Grant published Spare’s books like: Zos Speaks! Encounters with Austin Osman Spare, Fulgur Limited, 1998; Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare, Fulgur Limited, 2003; Borough Satyr, The Life and Art of Austin Osman [...]
Paradise Remembered
I’ve posted a lot on these lit-up pages about the Satanic Panic of the 1980′s and 1990′s, and I was reminded of the mass hysteria of those times this weekend when I came across an article that looked back to the classic documentary Paradise Lost. It’s hard to believe that the film is 20 years [...]
Sun Ra Christmas 2016
Well it’s starting to feel like the year is really winding down as we’re swinging into the last days before Christmas. If you are travelling be safe. If you are staying put be grateful and generous. Thanks to everybody who reads these rants and comments and shares them. Every time we interact over these peculiar [...]
WSB VS Nazis
Last night I stumbled across a piece at the ce399 Research Archive which pointed to a piece of William S. Burroughs’ writing from the mid-1980′s, and posited that the author might have predicted the new rise of global fascism. Here’s a look… And what would the future look like if such groups actually exist and [...]
Granted
I suppose it’s just a Halloween hangover, but lately I’ve been a bit obsessed with Kenneth Grant — the British occultist who mixed Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic philosophies with H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos to create his own Typhonian Order. I’m buying presents, and trimming trees, and readying my world for a couple weeks of holiday travel [...]
