Hauntology vesus Nostalgia

Thomas Sheridan

well good morning everybody

because of the emerging evolutionary

nature of Hocus Focus myself and Sarah

have been kind what we started at was a

pure 40 in show and still is at its

heart is somehow kind of migrating to a

kind of Osmosis towards a Honda logical

team

ontology is something myself and Sarah

have both have an enormous interest in

and it's not surprising it has become a

central part of Hocus Focus

now as a result people have been asking

me particularly in America

can you explain what hauntological

culture is and what ontology is and how

it differs from childhood or growing up

nostalgia

well that's that's the question right

there

Nostalgia would be looking back at a

photo album

a listening to a record you had as a

teenager
or an old video or footage of your

neighborhood

and having a sense of

Pleasant

recognition of what you're watching

thinking about people you knew uh Happy

Times and so on

in ontology the feeling that you're

having in the in the now experience in

these things is exactly the same

as what you felt at the time you were

experiencing them

and ontology rather than

Nostalgia or reminiscing is the

Sensation that has an almost

otherworldly

energetic resonance within you

that has you nostalgic

for something that never was in many

ways

an example would be

that you were raised in what you wanted

to be a Utopia or what you were told

could be a Utopia this be very common

for people who grew up in the post-war

period you know people who are on the

cusp of the Boomer Gen X age you know

demographic like myself

and this unfulfilled

sense of purpose

is encapsulated by the cultural pop

cultural tropes of the time

now ontology is not necessarily rooted

in happy memories it can be rooted in

memories that are kind of dark but

they're also

Pleasant in the way that they give you a

reassurance

that your life is on a certain

trajectory

and it makes you understand not only the

evolution of culture when you were

growing up but the evolution of yourself

looking back

it's a I'll give you an example in of

how when I was growing up

a Honda logical experience that entered

into my life

that kind of encapsulates what I'm

talking about

when I was a young kid

there was a series of movies on TV or

documentaries or a series of film

festival kind of thing on the TV

of World War II propaganda movies

and it started by this it started

because there's someone that found some

Irish World War II propaganda movies

that were made by the Germans that were

supposed to inspire the Irish well some

of them were quite good actually but

they're well made films by the UFA thing

and I found it remarkable that that

there was people made films that were

openly propaganda so I watched the

series and then they showed one called

The Silent Village

the silent Village was a British World

War II documentary drama like we call a

mockumentary today

and it was about if then if the Battle

of Britain had been lost what a Third

Reich occupation of Britain would be

like

and there's a few of these there was one

of them called when when the day well

but the silent Villages is a short film

basically and it sets it takes place in

a Welsh mining Village in The Valleys so

even the characters in the background

are often speaking Welsh

in a kind of like middle Wales kind of

way and

it would the director and the writers

were inspired by what happened to

I think it's ladies and the name of the

town in Czechoslovakia which everyone

was exterminated by the SS over

the uh the murder of a top Nazi official

it was Reinhard

um

my name his name will come to me

but uh

so they said this could happen here

now what makes the silent Village

remarkable

is that

the own the only presence of the power

that's shown is a black van type car

that drives into the town every day and

blasts

music and propaganda from the

occupational Nazi government through a

gigantic loudspeaker on the top

now

this was the first time as a child I

watched something and said you can tell

a story without telling a story

and you can also I began to understand

that in early age you can tell the story

more effectively than if it's overt so

the

the simple Act of a black car pulling

into the valleys and whales stopping and

orders being issued by the Nazi

occupational government to a gigantic

speaker on the roof

had more of a psychological impact than

if they showed

SS officers goo stepping around the town

and Wales or anywhere in the UK

it made me realize you could tell a

story without actually directly telling

it

true the kind of the the concept of

you know what they call them poetry

assonance where the the term doesn't

actually rhyme with the with the the

word it's supposed to rhyme with

it's a kind of it's basically not you

know it's a way of playing with the

Rhymes but you could do it in a film

making sense as well

Annie and literature and everything else

now what's interesting about that

speaker on that that speaker van in the

the silent Village is it came into

reality

after World War II when some orwellian

bright spark in the BBC decided that

they could create a thing called a TV

detector van

that could be used to enforce payment of

the TV license

in the UK Ireland and quite a few other

countries like Germany and the Czech

Republic they still have the TV license

but the BBC being what it is

when it's you know it's it's

eternally embedded MI5 mindset

they Big Brother mindset Room 101

mindset created a concept of the

detector van having all this Machinery

on the roof like the Ghostbusters

ambulance that there was they said was

capable of detecting

a television set in your house if you

weren't paying your license

so they would have ads on the TV saying

TV detector bands are operating in your

region

if you don't have a license you could

face a severe fine or a prison sentence

and then in Summit initial Heavies

jumping out of the van while this

antenna spun around on the roof

now while there was equipment in there

in the van that work was capable

of

detecting a television it had no more

ability to detect a television from a

northern an electric oven or an electric

twin bar heater It could only pick up

electromagnetic signals

so a cathode ray tube a radio switched

on

and I let a record player stereo system

a twin bar electric heater or an

electric cooker hob would set off a

similar signal so they couldn't tell for

sure the thing was purely smoke and

mirrors was a ruse

they didn't really have the ability to

detect the TV in your home but that

didn't matter in the same way that the

loudspeaker of iron in the silent

Village

imposed psychological Terror upon the

population in this rural Welsh village

the same thing happened with the TV

detector van and it went right on until

very recent times

and even in the early 2000s they said

they could now had a machine that could

detect

a widescreen TV if the thing was even

Switched Off

and

the orti in Ireland having no

originality of their own also copied the

TV detector ban thing

and I can honestly tell you people lived

in Terror of this like back then in the

70s there wasn't much money around so

it's not like now where you know people

have more disposable income compared to

then if you couldn't afford a TV license

it was because you literally had to eat

you didn't have the money

or and so when the TV detector fan came

around you would literally have comical

scenes of the dad or the older brother

jumping into the Wardrobe holding the

television set in case the Heavies which

legally weren't able to enter the house

anyway would come in

and so people who didn't pay their

license lived in the license fee lived

in Terror of TV detector vans in the

same way the Welsh village did of the

Nazi loudspeaker van obviously the same

people were not in the BBC had said

that's a great idea let's bring it into

the TV detector van

now not only that

you have memories as a child watching

these Public Service ads saying you know

pay a TV license or you go to prison TV

detective bands are operating in your

area

The Sensation that we had as kids

watching Those ads on the television

is exactly the same as what we have now

thinking about him

it's not Nostalgia it created a certain

energetic

you know sympathetic resonance within

you that remains with you it remains

with you

and it becomes part of your culture like

for instance I had I think there were

dinky and Corgi made these were an

English die-cast model car maker made

beautiful model toys in diecast and they

made a TV detector van and I had it and

they also made a loud speaker van you

know

now

this stays with your life this this this

stays this thing stays with you all your

life

you remembered us

thank you someone just dropped me a few

quid there thanks very much that'll come

in very handy the phones are tight at

the moment God bless you whoever you are

I don't have my glasses but there thank

you very much that's a nice surprise for

a Wednesday afternoon but uh

you don't have

a nostalgic feeling now people say well

the 70s was really about [ __ ] Fashions

and I totally get that but we don't

remember that part of it we're not

looking back and saying the [ __ ]

Fashions of the 70s were good

or the The Muse the pop music of the 70s

which was excellent was great it's not

that it's the entire

encapsulation of the entire feeling of

the entire sensation and this carries

this is why so much of it is connected

to what we would call dark TV shows if

you're coming to the

if you're coming to the event in Preston

the mysterious air conference you'll

hear Greg mothad Deliver us a talk about

this but it it's that's it you know it

we had children of the Stones The

Tomorrow People

all these other shows that had Joe 90

even the puppet show quite as

unbelievably dark have you ever watched

Joe 90 he's a mortar's assassin on top

of the fact that his father uses him as

a lab rat

but we grew up with all this the Mr arms

and Captain Scarlet and then it kind of

all finished with at the end of the 70s

weird damn

Blake seven we had the Golden Age of

Doctor Who during this period and at the

same like you could watch the TV show

and then go to the shop with your pocket

money buy the dinky or Corgi model of

the element that was in the show whether

it was a tardis or a TV detector van or

the space the the transporter from space

1999 or anything like that and then go

back home or at the airfix kit of

something and then go back home and and

build it then you could read your Marvel

Comics your 2000 ID comment your Action

Comics uh your warlord comics and your

American Comics like Warren creepy Erie

and Vampirella and it was all at the

same time Young Americans by David Bowie

is playing on the radio

it may have been cold you may have been

dumb you may have been part of the power

being switched off three nights a week

but I can remember during the oil crisis

in Ireland they had blackouts rolling

blackouts as a little kid well I can

tell you the sensation of walking around

ballymun at nine o'clock in the evening

as a young kid in Pitch Blackness was

magical

was magical don't ask me why

don't ask me why now was it magical in

the beautiful sort of Wizard of Oz you

know click click your Hill Street time

no it wasn't like that at all

it was uh it was hauntological

and that and then you would go to the

you know I can remember taking the

number 16 bus from ballymount an

enormous Journey right across Dublin to

up in the Dublin mountains Massey's

Mansion past rad Farnam and walking up

to the hellfire club a real place of the

occult stopping by the megaliths in

Massey's mansion and you know looking at

the city from the top of a mountain and

then going back in the afternoon after

getting to the bus stop was getting

darker these deep Ancient Forest and

then back home across you know European

capital city and into your house gosh

that was I feel very privileged to

experience that and I'm sure those of

you who group in Manchester Liverpool

and London you know Edinburgh Edinburgh

Glasgow Belfast wherever Leeds

Nottingham you all felt the same you you

know all went through that same

experience

and you know the ones who are on the

same age as me and

I think

the hauntological experience was part of

the the intensity of being alive

the thrill of being although it was a

terrible time in many ways it was

terrorism there was terrible sectarian

war in Ireland there was um

bombs going off all of not just in the

IRA and Britain and Ireland and uvf but

it was also like part of meinhoff in

Germany and you had bragata Rossi in

Italy you had like awful terrorist

attacks all over the place

you had Black September in groups like

this you know Boeing of train stations

and the News was filled with horrible

stuff every night but even that that

program I spoke about like World in

action with that that that music from

Nantucket sleigh ride that that organ

sound that all that that was

that it was depressing

it was lonely

but it was beautiful at the same time

it was almost like a specific kind of

cultural Melancholy but you were feeling

The Melancholy and the onthological

nature of it back then

and also now so it's not like I would

look back in those days oh those were

the days it's not like that again you

know I will look I will go on and

YouTube have played a huge part in

researching a lot of this stuff because

all these programs and tv ads and

everything I'm talking about started

appearing on YouTube

and you'll be watching them and you will

be watching them going oh that was what

the day is we watched them going hmm

I I I am literally back when I was 10.

I'm I'm here I'm in the same 10 year old

so I think the hauntological thing

rather than what say Nostalgia is the

hauntological thing targets the the

lower poles of cognition the deepest

subconscious feelings that you were

feeling at those days are very raw

and you're not traumatized by them in

fact of anything you get a sense of not

pleasure but satisfaction from them

because you realize that the decisions

that you've made in your life ever since

those days

has been affected by it that's why I am

who I am
that's why I took an interest in serial

killers because I can remember hearing

about the serial killers in

in England like the Yorkshire Ripper and

my mother telling me about the Moors

mortars I was too young to remember that

but my mother my mother telling about

like you know Amara Henley and did the

tape recordings that were played in in

school and what was on TV at the same

time well Jimmy Savile was everywhere

not just in he was all over Irish TV as

well non-stop he was always visiting

here so Jimmy Savile was in your face so

there and then so that was when it came

to me doing my work on Jimmy Savile

being the accomplice of

of sort Cliff the Yorkshire Ripper

and now that's been validated is almost

certainly true that was because of that

heartological continuum

and so that's what it is now from an

American point of view what would

ontology really be there was a TV show

in the 60s and 70s called Dark Shadows

which was about vampires in Collins town

and Maine
and still if you roll back and watch

them if you start not so much the early

ones but the 67 Series on with the

Vampire Barnabas Collins comes in it's

that's actually I could only imagine the

effect that that had on people kids

coming home from school and seeing that

no wonder the ratings were true the roof

it was the nearest it was one that was

American ontology and that's where the

likes of Stephen King and everything

came from in fact my video on this

channel of booksport Maine Book Sports

serves as the real life inspiration for

collinsport in the Dark Shadows TV show

and there was things like I was talking

to someone there about last night and

it's true Green Eggs and Ham the great

what the hell doctors what the hell is

that all about

and then there's a softer elements of it

like that the Great Pumpkin Charlie

Brown are definitely be American

ontology

and it it does not as much to the same

depth

as we had
in Britain and Ireland because life was

darker here the life was darker here we

were living in we were poorer we had

lots of industrial Spirit strikes

brawling blackouts terrible terrorism

problem in Ireland we had a war and uh

so the depth of the cultural tropes

the cultural influences on the TV

were generally darker but embedded very

very deeply

very deeply

and I think one of the things that is

wave function collapse that's happening

is that world will come back now for

people in a different way in fact I'd

like to think Hocus Focus is part of

that Revival

and I think this is why you're going to

have more people talking about it Greg

method on legalized Freedom has brought

up quite a lot

and I think definitely we're going back

into what does that world mean is it a

better world in that sense no is it a

happier more content no

but it's a richer World by experience

and that experiential feeling

is worth everything when you want to

make something of your life

so

that's ontology versus Nostalgia I hope

I cleared it up a bit better and write

up the comments and tell me your

memories your feelings and I'd like to

know more about not only Americans with

a deeper level of ontology but also

Europeans because you don't hear a lot I

do remember there's a series called

Adventure on the Danube Delta from

Eastern Europe that was kind of like

kind of like a a European version of I

don't know 100 I think it was Austrian

or something like that originally but uh

go for it because I can tell you

something it's it's a beautiful thing in

its own

mysterious Indescribable way ontology

and uh

yeah that's it take care look after

yourselves