Something I wrote in the early hours.
Author Archives: CJGriffin
On Failure
There are no days, anymore. Not the horizonless maw of ‘days’. No. Just the hours. Hours. Hours I count down quietly (very quietly). When I am counting down, I don’t always remember if and when I reach zero. But I must do. Because, at some point, I do leave the hours and the days. Not …
Stately Homes and Serial Killers
A slap-dash and semi-lucid consideration of the parallels between the popularity of true crime and of stately homes.
We Live In Lysergia
‘We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secrets sits in the middle and knows’ Robert Frost, ‘The Secret Sits’ Robert Frost’s ‘The Secret Sits’ expresses the expansive economy characteristic of the very best poetry. For the best poems are those that accomplish much more in their evocation than appears quantitatively possible. The …
I’m Not a ‘Literary Critic’
Recently, I’ve been re-reading Aimé Césaire’s A Notebook of A Return to the Native Land (1947). André Breton’s introduction to the 1947 edition, ‘A Great Black Poet’, has been of particular interest (as well as nauseous reading). Despite being almost crowded out by the condescension of Breton’s voyeurism, his introduction does demonstrate a persistently instrumentalist …
AuDHD (Autism and ADHD) Resources
Précis I’m compiling resources I’ve found helpful and instructive on the subject of Autism and ADHD or AuDHD. Each item comes with a gloss that highlights what was most germane to me, which, admittedly, isn’t necessarily what will be of most interest to you. Consider this a list of prompts that you can investigate further, …
Exhaustion Economy: Capitalepsy and Restorative Passivity
If capitalepsy is to be a viable, functional term in the way I think it can be — as a shorthand for the psychosocial condition of 21C cultural production and working life — it needs to be situated correctly in the cultural and political history of Britain and New Labour.
Diagnostic Digressions, or The Tyranny of the Imagined Normie.
The final passage of my Autism-ADHD diagnostic report. Alexithymia has some benefits. Or, at least one. When I say I don’t know how something makes me feel, I know that I’m telling the truth. I don’t have uncomplicated access to my feelings. If I ‘know’ how I feel, it’s through hindsight and the analysis of …
Continue reading “Diagnostic Digressions, or The Tyranny of the Imagined Normie.”
Joy Division and the Northern Imaginary: The Diagrammatic Iconicity of ‘Disorder’
Introduction During the fin de siècle of the twentieth century, the North of England took on immense significance in global popular culture, with Manchester in particular providing the likes of The Fall, The Smiths, The Durutti Column, Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses and, the focus of this essay, Joy Division. The perceived relationship between Joy …
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A Footnote on Freedom: Camus and Fisher in a Paradise Lost
A response to a colleague’s question ‘What is freedom to you?’ It started as a tweet and ended up becoming a rambling engagement with the deserts of freedom in the work of John Milton, Mark Fisher, and Albert Camus.
No Gods, No Masters 