Arthur Russell update
[Last updated: 25.01.2007 23:58]
It is possible to blame Italy for many things, but my recent absence
from the Blogging sphere is not one of them given that we returned from
Rome over a fortnight ago. No, I've been steering clear of Blogland
because I've been trying to wrap up a "good draft" of my Arthur Russell
biography. In this regard I am clearly quite unlike the prolific and
brilliant Simon Reynolds, who notoriously wrote more words in his Blog
than he did for Rip It Up and Start Again as he entered the home
stretch of that particular project.
I'm pretty confident that all of the words for the Arthur biography have now been written ⎯ the only problem is that many of them appear in the wrong order. It would be entirely reasonable to say that I am an obsessive and compulsive editor, which perhaps explains why Donald Murk (one of Arthur's ex-boyfriends who for a short time worked as his unofficial manager) suggested that I was a good match for my subject. To paraphrase Sasha Frere-Jones, Arthur could see infinity in an inch of tape, and he ended up becoming a notorious procrastinor, such was his fondness for splicing tape. As things stand, the biography of his life is, rather appropriately, forty thousand words longer than it was supposed to be, and even that earlier target was considerably higher than the figure I had set myself when I started my research back in June 2003. Anyhow, if the book takes longer to finish than expected, please blame Arthur. It's his fault there's so much to write about.
Aside from trying to out sort order the word the for biography over the last few months, I've also written a couple of sleeve note essays that I'll post as soon as they're out. One is for Roger Sanchez's Choice compilation on Azuli, the other a Paradise Garage compilation that is coming out on Gut. Earlier on this evening I also posted an interview that I just gave to an Italian magazine called "Blow Up" about Arthur Russell. I was happy to oblige and ended doing the interview via email. The good thing about writing my answers was I was able to choose my words carefully. The bad thing is that I ended up writing longer answers than I intended and had to restrain myself from writing 160,000 words. Unfortunately I only found time to give the interview one quick edit, so some slips might have crept in, and on re-reading I was tempted to embellish every single answer. But I resisted. After all, I've got a book to finish.
I'm pretty confident that all of the words for the Arthur biography have now been written ⎯ the only problem is that many of them appear in the wrong order. It would be entirely reasonable to say that I am an obsessive and compulsive editor, which perhaps explains why Donald Murk (one of Arthur's ex-boyfriends who for a short time worked as his unofficial manager) suggested that I was a good match for my subject. To paraphrase Sasha Frere-Jones, Arthur could see infinity in an inch of tape, and he ended up becoming a notorious procrastinor, such was his fondness for splicing tape. As things stand, the biography of his life is, rather appropriately, forty thousand words longer than it was supposed to be, and even that earlier target was considerably higher than the figure I had set myself when I started my research back in June 2003. Anyhow, if the book takes longer to finish than expected, please blame Arthur. It's his fault there's so much to write about.
Aside from trying to out sort order the word the for biography over the last few months, I've also written a couple of sleeve note essays that I'll post as soon as they're out. One is for Roger Sanchez's Choice compilation on Azuli, the other a Paradise Garage compilation that is coming out on Gut. Earlier on this evening I also posted an interview that I just gave to an Italian magazine called "Blow Up" about Arthur Russell. I was happy to oblige and ended doing the interview via email. The good thing about writing my answers was I was able to choose my words carefully. The bad thing is that I ended up writing longer answers than I intended and had to restrain myself from writing 160,000 words. Unfortunately I only found time to give the interview one quick edit, so some slips might have crept in, and on re-reading I was tempted to embellish every single answer. But I resisted. After all, I've got a book to finish.