christophe thinks out loud

Iain Sinclair is cooler than either one of us

You know that experience of not really understanding a word, or not knowing how it is pronounced, learning it, and then seeing it everywhere, as if all those uses of it were just waiting for your knowledge to expand?

Substitute "cultural reference" for "word," and you have the nonfiction of Iain Sinclair.

I've had Lights out for the Territory sitting in front of the couch for months, now. Every time I dip into it, I find something new that I just learned about, and Sinclair has known about for years. It's as if his moving finger is running ahead, writing things down as I discover them.

Last year, on a whim, I saw a feature of the amazing animated films of Brothers Quay at the Red Vic movie house. Next time I pick up Lights Out, there they are. A flyer for Goldmark Art in Rutland falls out of my copy of RA Magazine. Art galleries? In Rutland? Moo. Sinclair's written up Mark Goldmark, the proprietor, in his own chapter. Read about Rachel Whiteread's House installation? Another chapter. Alan Moore and his From Hell graphic novel? Yeah, he and Sinclair (along with Peter Ackroyd) are old psychogeographic chums.

I've only just started London Orbital, and the references are already starting to pile up like a multi-car M25 crash . . . which, given the subject matter and some of the subjects in the book, seems entirely appropriate.