Mycelium Parish News

The Mycelium Parish News

Earlier this year, on a walk with James Burt, he proposed that the two of us produce a “parish newsletter”, to let our friends know what our other friends have been up to.

James and I first met on the Cerne to CERN pilgrimage. Between us and the other 69 pilgrims exist fecund networks of creative folks. But none of those folks has a full picture of what all the others have been up to.

James suggested we publish a newsletter, listing as much of the good stuff as we could track down. The result is The Mycelium Parish News. It features 2022's books, podcasts, radio, TV, exhibitions, theatre, videos, newsletters and more.  Here's James's introduction: 

WTF is a mycelium?

The mycelium refers to a network of countercultural groups and events, and it’s a term we first heard through theatre-maker Daisy Campbell. In nature, a mycelial network is the inter-connections that grow between fungi. Also known as the wood-wide web, these networks allow communication between different plants in a forest. It is a brilliant metaphor for culture: the fungal threads are often hidden underground, but when they cross, then a mushroom can appear.

Our particular mycelium includes a whole jumble of things, including arts labs, Festival 23 and the Cosmic Trigger crew, as well as various fellow travellers. Common touchstones include the KLF, Robert Anton Wilson, and Discordianism (which is either a joke disguised as a religion or a religion disguised as a joke). 

That explanation may not make you any the wiser. Regardless, this zine lists the work of many amazing people over the last year, and you will definitely find something of value inside that you didn’t know about before.

 

Somewhat wonderfully, we managed to keep the price of the magazine to £2.30, including UK postage (or £5 if you're outside the UK). So there's no excuse for not buying one now.

If you want a downloadable version, you'll have to wait; this zine was designed to be a thing, a thing to hold, to read, and to love, and to attract tea-stains.

Here are some spreads from the 44-page zine:

Introduction and editorial

Feature on The Lost Doctor

Some miscellaneous podcast appearances

Some books published this year

Some videos published this year

Advertising Shits In Your Head

The Mycoleum

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...

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.