X CONTENT

 

The longest and possibly most compelling conversation, I've listened in

AND

Royalty turned up here and there
it's over 7EVEN hours
extraordinary https://t.co/Axm3DIkLas

— CFX (@SEEFFFX) October 2, 2023

Update: There were many powerful and articulate voices in this X Space that I didn't know. The most articulate was a woman called Mia Khalifa. She's a big deal and I had no idea she was famous or indeed why she was famous?

I will write a post about her and link to it from here. This is her X account, this is her Instagram account and her heavily censored and biased Wikipedia entry

Sing Street

Sing Street is a recommended movie. Despite the plot cliches (growing up, escape from boredom, bullying, teenage romance etc) it still delivers on being a delightful movie that should appeal to all Gen X who grew in 80's Britain.

Flat Earthers will note there's a scene in the 52nd minute where our hero peers East across the water from Ireland and declares that from 30 miles away, on a clear day, just after the rain, when there's no dust in air "you actually see the mainland of Britain".

According to this calculator the mainland is 486 feet below the horizon because of the curvature of the earth.

 

Alexander McQueen, Gen-X, Post Futurism & Star Wars (Help me Obi Wan Kenobi)

One of my probably duller-than-I-think, and self important (dinner party) pieces I'm prone to doing now and again (usually if there's a good red to hand) is how surreal it is to be a Gen X'er. 

Don't misunderstand me. I know Baby Boomers and older who have more life in them, than many Millennials and so on and so forth but allow me a Gen X tale.

Below is the first taste of hologram technology I witnessed at the age of 8, living in West Germany watching Star Wars.

I don't remember the opening sequence being so special that I had to duck my head but that doesn't mean Star Wars didn't leave a massive impression on me; lots of things did at that age. However the Princess Leia hologram scene was unforgettable. The idea of not writing down a plea-for-help-message on a piece of paper (this was pre-internet) and instead using a plenipotentiary (of sorts) droid to project an hologram was sensational and yet plausible. The tonality projected through this medium imploring help, felt so much richer than any typewriter or pencil could achieve.

Here it is:

Yet Victor & Rolf's work in the Dutch Pavillion at the Shanghai Expo is just as, if not more seductive; and yet somehow while my experience of it is no more or less than any other person's enjoyment, there's just something delicious about the uniquely Gen X experience of overtaking the future. It happens a fair bit and I haven't even gone into the how amazing it is to juxtapose pre and post internet cultures alongside each other, though I will attempt to some day.

Hopefully here.

It was of course the late (and truly great) Alexander McQueen who did it best with Kate Moss. It's a pity that so much incredible creativity in the fashion industry get's ignored, I guess because, by and large, the egos in fashion leave advertising standing in the dust.

That doesn't mean advertising doesn't plunder fashion's inexhaustible creativity time and again. Above is my favourite piece by Alexander McQueen in 1999. 

Anybody know which brand ripped this idea off? It might be creativity but it is also definitely art. Something our lot could learn something from.