The Brooklyn Rail

SEPT 2022

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SEPT 2022 Issue
The Miraculous The Miraculous: Music

16. 1977/1978, Somewhere in England

A 19-year-old British musician whose band has just released their first single, explains to a journalist, “All I write about is youth and hate.” When someone else interviews him at the age of 20, he confesses to feeling so much older that he can no longer write “kids’ anthems.” His musical tastes, which are grounded in 1960s pop, haven’t changed but his sense of his own authenticity has: “I really like youth songs, really old classic youth songs, but I mean, it’s just a lie to carry on writin’ ’em.”

(Paul Weller, The Jam, Barry Cain, Harry Doherty)

Contributor

Raphael Rubinstein

Raphael Rubinstein is the New York-based author of The Miraculous (Paper Monument, 2014) and A Geniza (Granary Books, 2015). Excerpts from his recently completed book Libraries of Sand about the Jewish-Egyptian writer Edmond Jabès have appeared in BombThe Fortnightly Review and 3:AM Magazine. In January 2023, Bloomsbury Academic will publish a collection of his writing titled Negative Work: The Turn to Provisionality in Contemporary Art. Since 2008 he has been Professor of Critical Studies at the University of Houston School of Art.

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The Brooklyn Rail

SEPT 2022

All Issues