I went to see Typewriter Jim about some vintage paper he might have that I could buy. The first thing he showed me was this Dreamachine which he got from a friend who's friend had it built as a project. "Over-engineered," Jim said. I wouldn't have noticed. The outer shell is also the wrong colour. It should be dark, to increase the 'strobe' light effect. Yes, that made sense. He turned it on. I watched it rotating for a while, but looked away for fear of entering a hypnagogic state.
I have a fear of any mind-altering experience, perhaps because I consider my mind already 'altered' since birth and further changes could be distressing. So I have never dabbled in mind-altering drugs. The nearest I've been to that kind of 'high' was when smoking a joint given to me whilst staying at my then girlfriend's flat. I smoked it on the balcony and didn't enjoy the feeling of my mind floating free from it's natural home..
These days I get high from buying books. There are several kinds of high involved, of course. The surprise bargain find in a charity shop, the online hunt and capture, the high street hunt and capture, the book fair find and the unexpected online find, such as the one pictured below. It's a box containing facsimiles of every issue of the Archigram magazine. I didn't know of its existence until a couple of weeks ago. It was published in November of last year. The high experienced when opening the package was just about the greatest possible when it comes to buying books, or in this case, magazines.
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I've always had an aversion to adverts. I'm not saying they shouldn't exist, just that they have always irritated me. From way back in the days of watching television I would do anything but endure adverts - look away, get up, close my eyes etc. It's as if, from a young age, I had an inkling that I would never be a great customer, a person susceptible to the seductive art of the advertising 'creatives'. Why? Because I would never be materialistic enough? Because I've never liked being told what to do either with my money or, to be honest, anything else.
All attempts to sell anything from a brand of baked beans to the latest car were wasted on me. That said, adverts of old now have a charm, don't they? Of course they do, being snapshots of what feels like an ancient civilisation; relics of consumerism past. At least those adverts from British TV were just that, British. Today, on YouTube, for instance, I'm plagued by American female voiceovers. I don't know why I find the chosen voices so irritating. It's not as if I have anything against Americans. But..."Grammarly" - ugh!
Most adverts today supposedly aimed at the British look as if they portray another country. They always have to me, in a way. Those homes, those lifestyles...yes, I was raised in a normal council house environment but upon leaving home I went in a different direction, one which did not take the supposedly 'normal' route known commonly as 'progress' from bedsit to house and family etc.
You'll know if you're a regular reader that I'm certainly not 'anti-consumerism' in the classic sense. Look at all the books I buy, some of which are quite expensive. The Archigram box was not cheap. One of the things I like about Archigram's collective ethos is a celebration of the material Pop world and even it's disposability. That is not fashionable nowadays nor, one could say, is it responsible regarding the welfare of the planet. But that was the 60s and working out of the epicentre of the Swinging world, London, who could blame them for celebrating the products of that golden age?
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| Psychological Compromise, RTomens 2026 |
More work with ink pens. I'm enjoying drawing the lines which dictate the course of the typing, perhaps because it means I have one decision less to make, namely where to begin with a blank canvas.
TTFN!
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