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Critical Hauntology

@highway62.bsky.social

3.9K followers 650 following 39K posts

Feral writer. Intergenre. Opstmodern. Hedorahgroove. Smogwave. The Hazeland books. Horror fantasy crime on the streets of 80s LA. No rep. Bad reputation. California · highway62press.com

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Mike Duquette @mikeduquette.bsky.social · 1h

Heartbroken that, per his social media accounts, Drew Struzan has left us. His poster and album art was quite simply shorthand for imagination for countless young people.

E.T. Adventure poster, 1990. I still have one of these hanging in my childhood bedroom.

Star Wars Special edition triptych, 1997. I remember seeing all of these in the paper as each film was re-released and just felt a burst of energy those mornings.

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Reposted by Critical Hauntology

Baron von Agitpop @agitpopblog.bsky.social · 1h

I watched this a few days ago and I'm still absolutely radiant that somebody was able to make this. There is an art to all of this a humanity in those nightmares and a level of love in the stop-motion you cannot replicate with AI, no matter what you're being told.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPSc...

Phil Tippett's Mad God - Official Teaser Trailer (2021)

YouTube video by IGN Movie Trailers

www.youtube.com

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Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

Last one for the morning.

Victory Bl
Burbank CA 2025

View of a sidewalk and street in early morning, hard sunlight bright on the different textures of concrete, paint, asphalt and utility markings, a whole hidden language.

Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

Palm trees and refineries

Carson CA 2025

View through a car's passenger window. A line of palm trees ahead of some low industrial buildings with the pipes and towers of a refinery in the background. Black and white.

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Reposted by Critical Hauntology

DOKI DOKI CRT PANIC @crtpixel.bsky.social · 1h

ZOMBIES ATE MY NEIGHBORS
LUCASARTS 1993
SNES

(L to R) Tommy the Evil Doll, Vlad Belmont(!) the Vampire, Mummy, and Frankenstein's Monster

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Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

Looks a lot like the style that used to appear on Atari cartridge box art, but no names jumping out right now (might give you a place to start looking, though.)

Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

Found where G-d buys his stars wholesale.

Ventura Blvd, LA CA 2025

Chandeliers of varying color temperature and size, all dazzling, behind a showroom window.

Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

Mmmmm... Maybe? I thought it worked. 'Cept for the last second turn. Needed to be changed by about ten degrees or so.

He should also never ever have appeared again.

Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

Anyways, more people will see this series of posts than have read any book I've put out so maybe I'm doing the wrong thing in the first place.

Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

Dude what the fuck.

Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

Wait. @jamiedelano.bsky.social picked up on it. But he's about the only one so far. Maybe I should've expected that.

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Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

Khatzad-Dum is unspeakably angry at me for allowing it to rain yesterday and today and tomorrow, even. Basically any time it rains.

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Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

Fun fact, I've never heard from a reader that they figured out the story I thought I was telling in The Queen of No Tomorrows, with regards to creation and audience and maybe that's just for me? I dunno. Maybe I suck. Maybe the hidden lesson isn't very important.

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Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

Oooof.

Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

This isn't meant as a dig but a recognition of a tradition.

Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

It's an important (though unprofitable) lesson.

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Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

@abyssradio.bsky.social playing Hampton Grease Band and it's funny to see them doing Firehose nearly 20 years before Firehose.

Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

I spent an awful long time being told that the value of written work in particular was how could you make it do what you wanted to do in terms of analysis. Which was backwards (but did give me some tools useful in the writing of books, even if nobody picks up on those things I put down.)

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Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

It's all true. Unfortunately we live in a world where art is only successful if it makes money and licenses reproductions and commands wings of museums.

Ideally, we could come to all art on a cold open and just have it hit us or not.

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Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 1h

Well, that's what got us Quentin Quire, so... Kinda.

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Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 2h

If the work is any good, it's not trying to prove anything, but be something. Maybe this is a naive read on my part, but I'd rather be naive than an asshole.

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Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 2h

I keep coming back to the art being co-created by the participant/reader and the work itself (not the author/s, because they're not present, only the work is.) And if half of that equation/parentage is... addled or confrontational at basis, the real art being made will be lacking.

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Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 2h

Yep. Can't disagree.

It also leads to sort of clannish behavior and identity adoption by way of relationship to the work and to the personality behind the work.

Not that the genie is going away anytime soon, mind you.

Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 2h

"I'm smarter than this work I'm reading" is a hell of a basis for engagement with a piece of art.

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Critical Hauntology @highway62.bsky.social · 2h

It's the relationships that matter. Not the pieces.

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