Error Honored

One of the nice things about being at a geographical remove from another culture is that you can come to most of its luminaries unburdened by the prejudices proximity engenders. For instance, when I hear something about Simon Armitage, I think, “Oh, I like his poems” or “Gee, All Points North was a really enjoyable book,” rather than, say, “Cor blimey, that insufferable twat again?” which is how I imagine British people might express it (if indeed they consider him an insufferable twat, which I have no evidence about either way; the point is just that he’s so much less prominent in these parts that I haven’t developed the distaste for him that I have for celebrities with a considerably more local presence. Also, I don’t really think British people say “Cor blimey” a lot, but it was the easiest signifier I had handy at the time of writing). In any event, here’s a half-hour radio program in which Armitage discusses Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategy cards. I have to imagine at this point you will have a fairly good idea of whether or not this is something you’d be interested in listening to, so I will leave it here.