Alan Moore on Dodgem Logic, Counter-Culture and Hipsters

Alan Moore hat bei The Quietus – und eigentlich hatte ich dort überlegt, den Aufruf zur Unterstützung der Indie-Labels weiterzugeben, deren Lager gestern in London abgefackelt wurden und von denen ich nicht wenige Platten besitze, aber ich bin in dem Thema nicht genug drin, hab’ mich nicht wirklich damit beschäftigt und lass es einfach, hier der Link Tanith) – jedenfalls habe ich dort ein Interview mit Alan Moore gefunden: Think Locally: Fuck “Globally” – Alan Moore On Dodgem Logic.

Darin geht es vor allem um sein Indie-Mag Dodgem Logic, das ich seit der ersten Ausgabe lese, und was es mit Hipstern und die wiederum tatsächlich mit Bildung zu tun haben. Letztlich ist das ein großartiges Statement für DIY-Kultur, Autodidakten und – ja! – Hipster. Auch wenn ich über die Shirts mit V-Ausschnitt und die albernen Mützen immer lachen muss.

How much does Dodgem Logic owe to the fact that you’re a child of the counter-culture and reached young adulthood when outsider magazines were thriving?

AM: With Dodgem Logic we are committed to re-establishing – as much as we are capable of – an open psychedelic culture like the one that was around in the 60s. Not in a retroactive sense. We’re not trying to recreate the 60s. We’re just trying to recreate some of the possiblilities that existed then. We had a psychedelic summer issue with John Coulthard doing a beautiful cover and an article about psych culture. And we’re continually trying to reintroduce the idea of hipsterism which was an elitist thing but also useful. If you were a school boy and you went to a party and someone said, ‘Have you read Sartre?’ And you said ‘Huh, of course!’ then you’d run home and you’d read up on Jean Paul Sartre and perhaps read one of his books and then the next time you were at a party you could say ‘Of course Nausea is my favourite!’ Yes, alright, it was introducing a kind of social pressure and it was elitist but it gave you an education.

It’s seen as a purely disparaging, pejorative term now, based solely on the style of one’s glasses, the width of one’s trousers and whether one chooses to wear a V-neck or not.

AM: Yeah. Yeah, that’s probably true. It used to be a fashion statement but it was information as a fashion statement which is probably going to do you more good than the clothing you wear. I got an incredible education from when I was thrown out of school. Starting at that point. Now I could say that I probably hold my own intellectually with most people who have had university or college educations. And indeed some of them will have done courses on my books. So despite the fact my ‘education’ ended at 16, I had hipsterism – wanting to be hip – which led me to read this incredibly diverse array of books on science, mysticism, science fiction, literature, art… And it’s given me a pretty comprehensive education. And now I am an autodidact, which is a great word… I learned it myself. But I think it’s the best way to be and I do think we can educate ourselves if we’ve got the material there, if we’ve got a library card or these days if we’ve got an internet connection. But it’s important to have the impetus to educate ourselves, which for me came from the type of society we were part of in the 1960s. That was the case in those days and I’m not sure if that still applies.