Times New Viking is an Ohio rock trio that delivers raw rock ‘n’ roll. Jumping from different labels over the years including Matador and Merge, the band has released five proper albums in a little more than five years. On its last album, Dance Equired (Merge), Times New Viking dropped the lo-fi fuzz in favor of more melodious songs. These art-school grads from Columbus, Ohio, are still making music, and the band’s Elizabeth Murphy will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with her.
Murphy: Not sure who is plugging who, but the moon and James Cameron were in the news a few months ago as April marked the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. What is the centennial celebration of a major disaster without some revisionist scientific finger pointing (moon!) and Hollywood meddling squared? Or cubed rather, as James “I’m the king of the world!” Cameron’s blockbuster of ’97 was re-released in theaters with Avatar treatment. Although I have never been to a proper 3D movie and the moon isn’t even real, I am going to jump on the caboose of this buzz to tell you the real reason behind the sinking of the Titanic.
The story of the Titanic was more or less written 14 years before it happened. In a novella by Morgan Robertson, published in 1898, Futility features an “unsinkable” ship known as the Titan that suffers an iceberg … on its starboard side, in the north Atlantic ocean, in April, causing the deaths of over half of the ship’s 2,500 passengers, partially due to a shortage of lifeboats. Other than a difference of 300 on board passengers, all of these details line up with the sinking of the Titanic.
Pretty freaky, huh? No, this is chilling and not for the reasons you may think. It is not terrifying because we don’t understand synchronicity or because Robertson had a proclivity for clairvoyance, but because everyone knew some devastation was due and could not help themselves to stop it. In America, at the fin de siecle, the expectation was decadence. This conscious flex toward all things bigger and better was sided with a non-conscious release that an end was near. This is what Roberston picked up on for the backbone of his book and why the Titanic actually came to be, to then sink into its arranged plot and rest as a symbol, in a prepared grave two and a half miles under the sea.
Be assured I am not pushing any heavy-handed morality here, just sharing the burden of mind-blowing concepts. Following this, consider that it may be especially an avoidance of fate that makes it manifest. Below is the “appointment in Samarra” from Somerset Maugham’s play Sheppy, as cited in Slavoj Zizek’s The Sublime Object Of Ideology. Seek this book out for an intense unfolding of the concepts I have skirted over here, as this is basically a summation of a certain passage, and, excuse the seemingly unavoidable bastard word play, the tip of the iceberg…
DEATH: There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market-place, I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
Video after the jump.
