There is a kind of synergy between the different forms of work, you’ll learn things from one sort of work that will have tremendous application in an… - Alan Moore

MEMORY'S SO
TREACHEROUS.
ONE MOMENT YOU'RE LOST IN A
CARNIVAL
OF
DELIGHTS,
WITH POIGNANT CHILDHOOD
AROMAS
, THE FLASHING NEON OF
PUBERTY,
ALL THAT SENTIMENTAL
CANDY-FLOSS
...

THE
NEXT
, IT LEADS YOU SOMEWHERE YOU DON'T WANT TO GO...

...SOMEWHERE
DARK
AND
COLD,
FILLED WITH THE DAMP, AMBIGUOUS SHAPES OF THINKS YOU'D HOPED WERE
FORGOTTEN.



MEMORIES
CAN BE
VILE, REPULSIVE
LITTLE
BRUTES.
LIKE
CHILDREN,
I SUPPOSE.
HAHA.


BUT CAN WE LIVE
WITHOUT
THEM?
MEMORIES
ARE WHAT OUR
REASON
IS BASED UPON. IF WE CAN'T
FACE
THEM, WE DENY REASON ITSELF!

ALGHOUGH, WHY
NOT?
WE AREN'T
CONTRACTUALLY TIED DOWN
TO
RATIONALITY!


THERE
IS
NO
SANITY CLAUSE!


SO WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF LOCKED ONTO AN UNPLEASANT TRAIN OF THOUGHT, HEADING FOR THE PLACES IN YOUR PAST WHERE THE SCREAMING IS
UNBEARABLE,
REMEMBER THERE'S ALWAYS
MADNESS.



MADNESS
IS THE
EMERGENCY EXIT...


YOU CAN JUST STEP
OUTSIDE,
AND CLOSE THE DOOR ON ALL THOSE DREADFUL THINGS THAT HAPPENED. YOU CAN LOCK THEM
AWAY...


FOREVER.

In terms of almost everything, things are getting more vaporous, more fluid. National boundaries are being eroded by technology and economics. Most of us work for companies that, if you trace it back, exist within another country. You are paid in an abstract swarm of bytes. Consequently, the line on a map means less and less. The territorial imperatives that until very recently have been the main reason for war start to make way. As the physical and material world gives way to this infosphere, these things become less and less important. The nationalists then go into a kind of death spasm, where they realise where the map is evaporating, and there is only response to that is to dig their hooves in. To stick with nationalism at its most primitive, brutal form. The same thing happens with religion, and that is the reasons behind the Fundamentalist Christians. If you look at the power of the Church, starting from the end of the Dark Ages up until the end of the Nineteenth century, you can see a solid power base there with a guaranteed influence over the development of society. If you look at this century, it is a third division team facing relegation. Fundamentalism in religion is the same as the political fundamentalism represented by various nationalist groups, or in science.

I suppose any form of art can be said to be propaganda for a state of mind. Inevitably, if you are creating a painting, or writing a story, you are making propaganda, in a sense, for the way that you feel, the way that you think, the way that you see the world. You are trying to express your own view of reality and existence, and that is inevitably going to be a political action—especially if your view of existence is too far removed from the mainstream view of existence. Which is how an awful lot of writers have gotten into terrible trouble in the past.