Reminder: Ballardian Home Movies
Author: Simon Sellars • Feb 14th, 2008 •Category: Ballardosphere, gated communities, technology
Just a reminder that there are six days left to submit your entry for our Ballardian Home Movie Competition for 1-minute films shot on mobile phones. The prize, of course, is a copy of Miracles of Life plus five Ballard back titles.
All the details are here.
By the way, if any more piquing of interest is required, here’s a quote from Ballard on mobile phones that I’ve just discovered, courtesy of the invaluable RE/Search volume, J.G. Ballard: Quotes:
The mobile phone can be seen as a fashion accessory and adult toy as well as a break-through in instant communication, though its use in restaurants, shops and public spaces can be irritating to others. This suggests that its real function is to separate its users from the surrounding world and isolate them within the protective cocoon of an intimate electronic space. At the same time phone users can discreetly theatricalize themselves, using a body language that is an anthology of presentation techniques and offers to others a tantalizing glimpse of their private and intimate lives.
J.G. Ballard, ‘Impressions of Speed’, in Speed : visions of an accelerated age / / edited by Jeremy Millar and Michiel Schwarz (1998).
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I’m having that familiar reaction to a quote from the Oracle of Shepperton: “You know, I never thought about it that way before. But he’s absolutely right!”
And an addition: Death comes to us all, but JGB has had a short-but-timely warning. I
believe his final outputs (in whatever media-form) are TERRIBLY important for us to
keep up with DAILY! Whoever was it who said “knowledge that you are sentenced to be
hanged in the near future focuses the mind ENORMOUSLY.”? Ah, Google just steered
me to the man’s actual words - it was Samuel Johnson (through his Boswell), and
Johnson ACTUALLY SAID:
(Popular corruption-gloss)
“The prospect of being hanged focuses the mind wonderfully.”
THE TRUE QUOTE:
‘This is another popular corruption of a famous line of Johnson’s. What Johnson really
said, according to Boswell, was:
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
‘A little clunkier in its original form, even when you drop the first sentence, which is probably why the simpler, corrupted form is more frequently seen.’ (found on http://www.samueljohnson.com/apocryph.html#13 )
Remember, JGB’s MIND is obviously sounder than ever, it’s his BODY that’s letting him down! I feel like a family member is dying - no, worse, my finest intellectual mentor in
ALL modern literature and the insidious intellectual grotesqueness of consumerism and
“Edge City” globalized clone-humanscape-growth for 40 years of my own life is leaving us… But as The Oracle said: (my gloss) “Life is a sort of stage-set, which can be
whisked away and changed completely, instantly.” Possibly, his BEST observations are
yet to come…. (courtesy of Mike Bonsall’s and Simon’s Sellars’ TERRIFICALLY difficult
and CONSTANT work in bringing them to us!) THANK YOU ALL!
My own electronic video tributes to JGB can be seen in my crude melding of his
CRASH-inspired themes (the phallic jetliner loaded with celebrities) with his career as
a pilot (I am also licensed to fly small planes) at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Crashman2
It is a poor tribute, but all I have to give BACK. (I also confess to a fascination with
medical - school dissecting rooms, I have toured 3 different ones with medical-student
friends). JGB, you will be MUCH more appreciated in the FUTURE!
Yes, you HAVE a future, Mr. James G. Ballard - and it will NEVER die! In fact, it
becomes more relevant and prophetic moment by moment. Great writers (like painters)
are rarely appreciated in their own lifetimes - but JGB’s WILL come to be seen as THE
socio-pathological essence of our own times captured in fine literature, by subsequent
generations. Now if only we in the USA would actually read a BOOK (i.e. REAL
Literature, capital L) now and then…. Ah, well…..