Issue One relaunched
After a year out of print, Issue One of New Escapologist is now once again available.
With our new higher production values and Tim Eyre’s sensational typography, the relaunch is a highly improved version of the original.
The relaunch features our classic articles by Lord Whimsy, Judith Levine, Neil Scott and Robert Wringham and is illustrated throughout with new work by Samara Leibner.
Buy it now at the magazine shop for the limited special offer price of £3.
Glasgow event. 7th October.
The Idler and New Escapologist have teamed up for “The Great Escape”: an evening of discussion, music and freewheeling anarchy.
Tom Hodgkinson (How to be Free, The Idler) and Robert Wringham (The New Escapologist) discuss practical ways to escape the banalities of modern life. This will be followed by a light hearted war-time type sing-a-long, with the audience invited to join in with the hosts on idler-themed songs.
For more information, see the official microsite or the Facebook event page.
Come along. Bring your friends.
New Escapologist at Urban Dictionary
“Escapologist” has been honoured with an official definition at Urban Dictionary.
Noun. (pronounced: es’cap·ol’o·gist). One who seeks to escape the imaginary manacles of modern life: work, debt, government, leisure industries, status and anxiety.
Derived from the stage magic of Escapology. Used metaphorically.
Coined by the satirical publication, New Escapologist.
You can give this definition a ‘thumbs up’ at Urban Dictionary, though I don’t think that makes us any money or saves the world or anything.
An Escapologist's Diary. Part 4.
I’m a month into my mini-retirement in Montreal. So far, so good. A typical day consists of a late rise, breakfast, bread-baking, writing, exploration of this new city and night-time festivity with new chums. I’ll write more about the joys of not working in New Escapologist Issue Three, which should be available early in the new year.
A few days ago, I enjoyed Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times at a local cafe-theatre with live piano accompaniment from Roman Zavada.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B3HGY_zLKk]
It’s an entertaining film for Escapologists in that it sympathises with the modern escape fantasy. Chaplin’s character attempts to escape humiliating work in factories, ship yards and department stores. He also ensures a brief spell in prison where he is taken after being mistaken for a the leader of a Communist demonstration. Tellingly, Chaplin begs the jailer to keep him locked up when the subject of his future employment is raised. Prison incarceration is preferable, it seems, to the world of work!
It’s fun that the film begins with the rapidly-spinning hands of a clock. To any worker, it prompts instant identification: a watched clock is surely the truest motif of modern division-of-labour-type work. Read the rest of this entry »
School of Life
Alain de Botton and friends recently set up the School of Life on Marchmont Street in London. They offer philosophy-lead courses and secular sermons. Looks like fun. If you’re interested, there’s a free-entry open day on September 5th.
An Escapologist’s Diary. Part 3.
Ready to scarper on Wednesday evening, I’ve managed to reduce my entire personal junkstash to a ten-square-foot locker at a Glasgow SafeStore and a single suitcase of functional stuff, which is coming with me for the escape. H
Here are ten immediate thoughts about mobility and “stuff”:
Mobility versus “stuff”
1. I think I value mobility above all else. Mobility is freedom. Anything that compromises your mobility–a house, a grounded job, a possession, an expectation–is another nail in the coffin of your freedom.
2. Most of my “stuff” is in the form of books. It’s telling that my final vice is probably one that most people would overcome before, say, cooking utensils or clothes. I don’t own much of anything. Just a modest number of books. With libraries and broadband almost wherever you go, there’s no reasonable argument for a huge personal book collection so I’m forced to admit to object fetishism. I look forward to the day I’m unsentimental enough to cut loose my ten square-feet, settling to own but two suits, a laptop and a library card.
3. Mobility and “stuff” don’t mix. When people flee the cities in disaster movies, they always fill their cars with as much junk as possible. I love that the image of a killer alien tripod in pursuit of a Vauxhall Astra with a houseplant and a grandfather clock strapped to the roof.
Read the rest of this entry »
A stockist in Meatworld
Rejoice! Issue 2 of New Escapologist is now in stock at Aye-Aye Books in Glasgow.
Stockists in other cities will follow, but you will always be able to appease the ghost in the machine by buying online.
New Escapologist launch party
A wonderful gathering of escapologists, skivers, artists, poets, thinkin’ types and office monkeys descended upon the Glasgow CCA this week for the SugarApe New Escapologist launch party. Thanks to everyone who came along.
Especial thanks go out to our DJs: Olivia Fitton, Bobby B and Neil Scott. Also to photographic legend Stuart Crawford, who sportingly attended in a floor-length skirt.
As if to give you a feel of the event or something, we’ve uploaded:
Some celebrity appearances included Kate Wozza (Suck My Left One Radio), David Malone (GOMA), Laura Gonzalez (Glasgow School of Art), Pat Kane (Hue and Cry, The Play Ethic) and our very own typographic guru, Timothy Eyre.
Will there be more parties? I don’t see why not. I have an idea about a New Escapologist seminar and spoken word night in a library somewhere instead. Maybe to be followed by a party.
The ultimate political goal
Back in 2002, the Adam Curtis film Century of the Self opened my eyes to the horrible world of PR brought about by Edward Bernays’ application of Freud.
Today I finally got around to watching Curtis’ 2007 documentary, The Trap and found that it’s devastatingly applicable to us as escapologists.
The series details “how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today’s idea of freedom.”
I’ll probably write something based around its tenets for the magazine but in the meantime, here’s the first part of the documentary (with the rest available for free at Google video):
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=404227395387111085]
An Escapologist's Diary. Part 2.
A trivial thought occurs. When I leave Glasgow in a few weeks, I will have no keys.
I’ll surrender my house keys to the letting agent and return my drinking club key to the proprietor. All I’ll have left is a pocketful of fluff.
No keys! No security. No commitments. Nothing worth locking up.
