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Underground > Comic Books >

Grant morrison to bare all

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15:17 / 03.12.02

hahahah, that was great, Lord of Flowers!

15:32 / 03.12.02

Since you've all been so patient... Barbelith Interviews

The interview itself is up and available for you all to play with - but quite a lot about that part of the site, and some of the navigation across the site as a whole, still needs to be fixed.

I figured you'd rather jump right in though...

15:46 / 03.12.02

Wow, it's gorgeous...

16:40 / 03.12.02

Thankya' Captain. The bloody backgrund looks nice.

17:25 / 03.12.02

Okay, what's the Moore story?

17:44 / 03.12.02

fuck... I wanted to be the first to ask. Close second...

18:17 / 03.12.02

Wow.

That was great. Looked good, smelled good.

Read well too.

Thanks again, guys.

19:39 / 03.12.02

A great read with some very interesting questions. Well done yawn. Thanks also to Tom for slaving away and getting it online. Could have been a bit longer tho

I'm glad GM confirmed that bit about the Crack site being updated previously because I thought I was losing my mind there for a bit, but I couldn't find any of that Paperverse stuff on Barbelith.

Anyway, lots of interesting stuff in there which will take a while to seep in.....

21:34 / 03.12.02

Shhhhhhhh! Watch what you say...he's *watching* us!
Apparently...

00:18 / 04.12.02

Uh.

Right.

For those of us not fluent in Glasweedjan, UK Telly, and whatever else you madmen are talking about...

Can we get some annotations going?

I mean, it took me ten minutes on google to establish you guys weren't kidding and Uri Geller really WAS on a TV show where he was forced to eat worms.

I was so sure that that was utter fabrication. I mean... it's just so...

Yeah. Please, someone: Annotate and translate some of this for the americans?

The Natural Way

09:31 / 04.12.02

Thanks, yawn.

I'm not glassonion, though (but we are good pals IRL).

15:16 / 04.12.02

I think it's important for those of us here at barbelith to take the not-so-subtle hint from grant that it's time to mature out of the larval stage of this thing. I agree that the same things need to stop being rehashed ad infinitum. Which is partly why I stopped posting regularly a couple years ago. I think it's a major cultural issue in general to get past this whole 'talk everything into circles until we forget what we're talking for mentality'

15:38 / 04.12.02

Oh, there it goes, another fella who made the evolutionary leap and left the board.

16:55 / 04.12.02

Iconoplast, if you've any questions about the dialect and so on, I'll be happy to help you. Not so good on Glasgow geography - but the stuff about the city being surrounded by fiction is pretty true. Or as my dad says, "People from the west coast think they're living in a film."

Our Lady of The Two Towers

17:37 / 04.12.02

Vajramukti- Leave if you want, but this stop being an Invisibles fan board a long time ago.

Just read the entire thing, pretty good stuff. I liked the point being made about X-Men being more political than the Filth, which I'd thought for a while. I'd have liked him to be called on the thing about saying things about rape and that being 'just words', although I agree to him a certain extent I think it needed justifying. But otherwise a good piece. And considering how long it took me just to transcribe twenty minutes of him on Disinfo Nation I can't believe you got it done so quickly in the end.

yawn - thing's buddy

14:01 / 05.12.02

tom, that's a very nice job you've done.

cheers man.

The Natural Way

14:04 / 05.12.02

Yeah, that Interview page is really nice. Lovely 'n' red.

yawn - thing's buddy

14:18 / 05.12.02

juicy fruit

Dan Fish - @Fish1k

14:23 / 05.12.02

It's worth remembering that some people still haven't read all of the Invisibles - So if they need to discuss it or ask questions, in my opinion, they shouldn't feel they can't.

Just because some of us may have moved on to something else, it would be sad if there weren't new people discovering the series throught the reprints.

Excellent interview, by the way!!

Dan
comics 4 sale @
www.fish1000.freeserve.co.uk

15:43 / 05.12.02

I loved reading this interview,and just thought I'd say thanks!

Murray Hamhandler

21:54 / 05.12.02

Yeah. Excellent interview there, yawn. Indeed.

I wonder how much the region comes into play in Grant's work? Boy, that was a vague and half-assed question. What I mean is...I wonder how much Grant's being Scottish affects his writing (and how it affects the interpretations of his readers)?

Insofar as the "rape" thing is concerned... I've stayed out of this controversial argument in the past, but Grant's commented on his stance now, so I guess I'll toss in my two cents. You can tell someone outright that you're going to kill them and nary an eyebrow is raised. It is assumed to be a joke. However, if you make a joke about rape, you're immediately assumed to be a filthy degenerate. Both acts are horrible and dehumanizing, but the one that is the more final and (arguably) more extreme of the two is readily accepted as a source of humor (and not even necessarily dark humor) while the other isn't at all acceptable. Not dictating what's right and what's wrong here (and definitely not in any way condoning acts of murder and/or rape, of course), but there does seem to be something of a double standard going on. But, yes, Grant could have 'splained his own position a bit more in detail, I suppose.

22:48 / 05.12.02

Thats a helluva good interview you've got there! Nice casual tone, and a lot of interesting stuff to think about!

Thanks a lot to both Tom and Yawn!

As to Scotland and how it relates to Morrison's writing, well thats something I've never really thought of before. He's not overbearingly "Scottish" or anything, but I think there's obviously something there. Away to give it some thought...

23:53 / 05.12.02

I've never noticed anything particularly Scottish about GM's work, but Cameron Spector comes across as very authentic indeed....

01:37 / 06.12.02

Have we informed everyone it's here? Disinfo and memepool and so on?

Murray Hamhandler

15:10 / 06.12.02

I don't necessarily mean that Scottishness itself seeps from Grant's writing. What I was wondering was more along the lines of how writing from that perspective obfuscates things slightly for those of us who, for instance, live in the midwestern U.S. I "get" most of what he writes, but I always feel like I'm missing out a bit on some things. That may just be my own ignorance, of course...

Murray Hamhandler

15:13 / 06.12.02

Oh, and, w/r/t the "rape" thing: I had forgotten about the context of one of the jokes in question. That he joked about it in an arena that was probably going to be read by a lot of teenaged boys. Quite a different thing, that...

10:02 / 07.12.02

I'm quite surprised by how few people have read it so far - I still maintain it's a bit longer than it should be...

I'm a bit disappointed by Grant's position on the board to be honest - I think a lot of us are beginning to feel that it's time to take it in a new direction, but there's a bit of a sense that we don't know where to go - that we're uncomfortable letting it go and can't really think of the next major direction to take it...

In my opinion, Grant (who still remains one half of the only two people I can claim as a 'hero' along with Steve Jobs from Apple) hasn't really helped us with that - he's never really added his input (joined the conversation) into what we could do with this place, which I've always found slightly surprising considering his futurist work. I should think we'd ALL like to be involved with something like that...

In the meantime, we've all basically found our own ways - dealing with problems in the only ways we can think of - generating our own ways of dealing with trouble and talking about stuff. It hasn't always worked, but it's worked ok... And even if we are reaching the end, I think we've done really well...

The other thing I'd say is that if anyone ever thought this would become a clean and clear Grant-worshipping cult site, then they don't know the barbelites very well! The people I've met here admire people because they're bright, imaginative and think in exciting and transformative new ways. But they're not scared to take anyone (not even Grant) to task if they think he's trivialising rape or mischaracterising / stereotyping the black community or transvestites / transexuals... This is - i think - one of the least fanboy communities I"ve been a part of - people discuss intelligently and often quite brilliantly, but never uncritically... And I think we should be proud of that too...

13:56 / 07.12.02

See your point, and agree heartedly. Anyway, point is, BARBELITH-The Board sprouted out of a comic book, the author of which did not intend or even dreamt it would eventually happen. It was and continues to be a nice, unprecedented thing, that also exceded its initial premises, talk about evolving.

No need to develop whatever the name Barbelith means or refers to, the author may have digged it out of a dream, but it also appears in other sources. But in any of all cases, BARBELITH The Board was never intended to be either pro Grant or anti Grant, as far as I can tell, remember, it is not named Morrison-lith, thanks God, because most of us wouldn't be here if that were the case, and correct me if I am wrong, it started as a living, ongoing, keen and sparky commentary to a comic book, a comic book that continues to be read and talk about. Beyond that, the board, and all of us here, are pretty much on our own, and I don't see any end in the proximity.

I still like The Invisibles, the book, but I am beginning to find interviews to Grant a bit stale. And this board... is an ever refreshing splash of novelty.

yawn - thing's buddy

17:38 / 07.12.02

tom - having formatted the fucker you're always going to think it's longer than it should be - that said, can you imagine how long it took me to transcrible the beast?

regarding it's length (and girth): I set the tape running and we started talking. I was always conscious of using up the man's time but he was keen to keep on chatting - he even missed his sacred 'Celebrities' so's we could carry on the interview/chat in another pub.

So, what you read is what was said - I thought the 'whole thing' would be more enjoyable than any edited, sanitised text. Its nice to know that Grant, despite his eloquence, says things like,

'whatsisname....baldie....Ken Wilber....'

and that he's always giggling, exclaiming, laughing, taking the piss - hopefully, the mirth directions (laughter brackets to the rest o' ye) help put some of Grant's comments in context.

He's a very witty guy, who plays the 'fool' a lot. A serious joker who works bloody hard.

But he didn't laugh or smirk or miss a beat when he recounted his 'Alien Abduction' tale....

I didn't either.

That was a strange experience - scoring my own hit of Morrsion's abduction tale. It was interesting to reread his previous retellings of the account to see how he has developed his understanding of it.

The unearthing of the word, 'biota' being a particular thrill for me.

p. thanks for the compliments and glad you enjoyed the read.

When I listened back forst time I realised there was loads I didn't ask - bummer.

'Oh yeah, see in Zenith, was Vertex gay?'

next time, eh?!

00:19 / 08.12.02

Interesting comments surrounding the purpose of Barbelith and Grant's involvement in it.

I'd certainly like to see him interacting with people on this site, but I don't have a problem with it if he doesn't care to either. Then again, yawn did a brilliant job in asking perhaps a lot of the questions that the regulars here would ask anyway.

As for Barbelith, I find the quality of a lot of the postings to be outstanding and can be both entertaining and informative. If it continues on that basis I'll be more than happy.

01:34 / 08.12.02

good work yawn, interesting stuff.

05:11 / 08.12.02

Thank you Tom. Sorry we got a bit impatient there. Good job. And nice interview, Yawn.

05:17 / 08.12.02

Oh, and regarding the advancemet of Barbelith. We did put a stop to the American snipers. Not too shabby.

05:38 / 08.12.02

Yeah, in a way it seems the most honest Morrison interview I've read.

Parochialism wins again!

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