This post probably won’t help me worm my way into the generally cliquey world of British Science Fiction, but confound it. Ballard, Moorcock et al lost it with the preceding generation to them, so I’m carrying on the tradition. 1
I hadn’t seen this photo before today, via a random Google derive… It illustrates rather neatly some of my general disquiet about a number of things. This includes the dinosaur-like sexist attitudes underlying the more cerebral end of what must clumsily but aptly be called the Geek Culture, which persist to this day, and - shamefully - with the full participation of self-promoting, recently-empowered young women.
Regular readers have endured my sniping at alt porn, so it’s time to have a go at some Almost-dead White Males this time!
It’s from the cover of the literary magazine Ambit 50, Spring 1972. In the centre are Eduardo Paolozzi, sculptor and contributing editor to Ambit, and J G Ballard. Michael Foreman, art editor of Ambit and illustrator for the Doubleday edition of Ballard’s ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’ is on the far right. Martin Bax, editor of Ambit in there too with A N Other.
The partially dressed woman is “stripper” Euphoria Bliss. The record shows that she spent a while in the early 70s taking her clothes off while giving readings of scientific papers and Ballard’s work. Spicy! 2
(And, Clapton knows, Ballard could do with spicing up, sometimes…)
If you Google her, she only exists in relation to Ballard. If anyone out there in internet land knows who she was, and where she is, I would dearly love to know what happened next.
The walk-on actors in Fellini films are always more intriguing than the main players, to me. They have no depth to their characters besides a “look”, so in real life must eventually escape from artifice and the tyranny of an artist’s “vision” to cope with reality, age, parenting, failure, success, re-imagining themselves, coping. And always as an echo of an eternal, ghostly form of themselves trapped in fragile photographic film and the fading amber magic lantern light of collective memory.
Back when I was hanging out with lovely old Tantra students from the 60s, I met some former Warhol starlets. It was fascinating to hear how they had reconstructed their lives after their fifteen seconds of fame was up.
According to Michael Foreman, the photo itself was taken at the Royal Academy of Art in front of a Paolozzi sculpture being exhibited at the time by the Sunday Times, to commemorate an Ambit anniversary.
To which I say:
Continue reading ‘Always crashing in the same car’
- Michael Moorcock: ”John Brunner and I (this would have been about 1960) decided to call a conference of SF writers, with a view to starting some kind of association. The meeting was very disappointing to me, Barry Bayley and Jimmy. We’d hoped to hear some stimulating stuff about, as it were, a new literature for the space age. Instead all these guys were interested in was ‘how to break into new markets — how to sell to TV’ and so on. United in our disappointment, we started meeting regularly once or twice a week, mostly at the White Swan in Knightsbridge, near where Jimmy was working”
Mike Holliday, 19th July 2007 ‘Angry Old Men: Michael Moorcock on J.G. Ballard‘ ballardian.com. http://www.ballardian.com/angry-old-men-michael-moorcock-on-jg-ballard ↩
- I can’t imagine that without seeing grainy 16mm film in my head… Euphoria is reading aloud at a 70s “happening”, and I hear Adam Buxton’s voiceover - ala ‘Shock Video’ - describing the significance of the gathering to the emergence of a proto-Punk zeitgeist. As the camera pans past a worse for wear Tony Bilbow talking to a visibly zoned-out Salman Rushdie, Euphoria starts describing the properties of the Beryllium atom which are alien to organic life (because it’s not formed in conventional stellar nucleosynthesis, chemistry fans). She slips out of her bra, and Adam says… “Rufty!”
Speaking of Adam Buxton… his BBC Three pilot ‘MeeBOX’ finally aired… in graveyard slots where no one will see it. Music to the ears of ardent Adam - and, indeed, Joe - fans like me, who don’t want everyone else to work out that they are the funniest men in the country. This is in case they turn shit. But probably quite annoying for Adam, whom I expect would like some money and recognition besides a richly deserved award for their 6Music radio show. Luckily ‘MeeBOX’ was very much a pilot: the shit bits were shit enough to keep fame and fortune from Adam’s immediate grasp, while the funny bits were very funny indeed, which kept me happy. We are cruel and unreasoning children, ultimately, fans.
If you’re in the UK and reading this in the next 4 days - yes both of you - for heaven’s sake go and download ‘MeeBOX’ on iPlayer, now, so BBC Three commissions a proper series and there’s something else I want to watch on it besides the Mighty Boosh. ↩
