Metamatic Forums News and Announcements John Foxx news Exclusive reading by John Foxx on Radio 2

Last night (this morning??) John Foxx was a guest on Janice Long's midnight show on Radio 2

He performed an exclusive reading from one of his favourite short stories - The Aleph, by Jorge Luis Borges (1945), as well as chatting about the new album The Shape Of Things

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wr0n

Quite surreal - this is the first time John has broadcast anything like this.

There's more info on the story itself here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aleph_(short_story)

Enjoy - I know I did!!

This is an interesting short piece by one of my Twitter followers who's a fan and knowledgeable source on Borges AND Foxx.

http://linviatonelripostiglio.blogspot.com/2011/10/foxx-borges-in-english.html

It's not difficult to see why John was so inspired by The Aleph

Oh good...another Foxx-fan in Italy, and an eminent sports journalist too.
Very nice piece. Thanks for posting Martin .. .e grazie Luca.

Really surprised to see such little response to John's reading on the radio...

Hey ho. During the interview, he mentioned another favourite story of his "The Man Who Walked Through Walls" by Marcel Aymé.

The text of this is now online, as part of a short blog entry about John's recent gig in Glasgow.

http://douglasthompson.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/john-foxx-in-glasgow

It’s gone now! Sadly didn’t get around to listening to this while it was still available online. Haven’t read any Borges since 1985 and I’m struggling to remember if I’ve ever read The Aleph. I recall owning two books: Book Of Imaginary Beings, and Labyrinths. I was first attracted to reading Borges via Imaginary Beings because of his story ‘A Bao A Qu’ - I’d initially known this title as the name of a Virginia Astley EP and was intrigued to learn what it meant.

I can see why John’s own style has comfortably drawn inspiration from the puzzle-like nature of Borges work, it’s made me feel I should revisit some of those stories. Interestingly, Borges co-authored various collections of stories with Adolfo Bioy Casares who wrote The Invention Of Morel - the story about a man hiding on an apparently deserted island where a mysterious group of people also arrive, the man falls in love with a woman from this group, but inexplicable occurrences interfere with his ability to form a relationship with her – this story is credited as a source of inspiration for John’s favourite film Last Year At Marienbad, and it’s also the subject of a fantastically atmospheric 2005 film called The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes, created and directed by John’s old art school chums The Brothers Quay.



lovely and funny tale, thanks for posting the link… ”through floors of apartments, background dissolves…”

I gave it a listen, but like a lot of listens I make, I was trying to do several other things at the same time, and failing to properly do any of them. I remember some pretty expansive imagery, telescopically microscopic, like hallucinating while zooming and panning with global mapping software, sticking a pin in the map over and over again. Real time. Old light. That kind of caper. I will listen again.