My friend James Burt and I are producing a “Mycelium Parish Newsletter”, a round-up of what’s been going on in our corner of the UK counterculture over the last year (James explains in a little more detail here).
Our underground network of threads has birthed some fairly significant mushrooms recently, including the books What Remains? Life, Death and the Human Art of Undertaking by Ru Callendar, and John Higgs' Love and Let Die: Bond, the Beatles and the British Psyche, while the goetic sitcom Damned Andrew, by Andrew O’Neill, was commissioned by BBC Radio 4.
But there are other edible treats deeper in the woods, such as the ongoing Lost Doctor audio dramas (set in an alternate Doctor Who universe), the F23 podcast (who scooped interviews with Grant Morrison, Douglas Rushkoff, and - an incredible coup - the first ever interview with The Economy in its several-thousand-year history), Tim Arnold’s Superconnected album and accompanying feature-length film, plus a host of books, blogs, podcasts, events, email newsletters, and much, much more. In The Mycelium, we attempt to bring together all the threads, and to raise up all of the mushrooms.
James and I started with the notion of a regular parish newsletter, amateurish and hastily thrown together. I thought we ought to have an equivalent of the church photo which often appears at the top of such newsletters and, having no budget or appreciable skills, I turned to AI to see what could be done...
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| The Mycoleum |
Blimey, that was a rabbit-hole and a half! I now have far more pictures than I know what to do with, as well as a much more image-heavy newsletter. I will be posting further details of the newsletter when it's complete, but meantime... I put some pictures onto clothes:
Yes, I have a new online shop! Please visit... The Mycoleum!
(Above is just a very limited selection both of the images I want to stick on things, and the things on which I want to stick them. If you have a need for any of the above on other items, from g-strings to facemasks, iPhone cases to ice-buckets, please let me know).
I should add that, despite my adventures with AI, I remain committed to providing work for real flesh-and-blood illustrators whenever I can. Maximillian Hartley is hard at work on the pictures for King Arthur vs Devil Kitteh, and I have Rich Tingley on standby for when I finally get to writing Nanodeities.
But on those low-budget/no-budget occasions where, in the past, I would have headed straight for oldbookillustrations, I now have another, very fun tool at my disposal.
This is really cool! I'm interested to check out that Doctor Who podcast and the Grant Morrison interview!
ReplyDeleteDoes it still count as Counter-cultural if it gets a review in the Speccie?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.spectator.co.uk/article/james-bond-and-the-beatles-at-war-for-britain-s-soul/
Still, interesting material.
It counts as mycelial if it comes from John Higgs. The "counterculture" label is just a handy label, but not really what this thing is about. Another book that emerged from the Mycelium, Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden, won at both the People's Book Prize and the Indie Book Awards this year, as well as being reviewed by every publication of note. But it's a book that was birthed via the Book of Horkos, and so very much part of the network.
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