1. It was summer of 2005 and I was travelling the seas of Ballarat in a white 80s model Mazda 626. Around this time I was frequenting libraries, printers and photocopy rooms, trying to crack staff passwords and obtain free printing. I'd see Anthony and Mel regularly on these trips, both were well known slaves these duplication engines. Whilst scoping out the copier at sebastopol library I met an odd little fellow who for the purposes of this rant we'll call "bob". Bob didn't seem to ever really have any feasible reason to be in the library, no books, never used the computers and I don't reckon he played chess. Bob just seemed to like the air conditioning, the hum of the copier and a captive set of eardrums in which to pour his long winded bullshit.
Now Bob had a particular fascination with black and white. And he could argue its significance for hours on end. Bob told me that his grandfather was Chester Carlson, the arthritic patent attorney who invented "xerography". Whats more, he denied that the original intentions of the device were labour driven. Bob explained that the process of photocopying was a spiritual one, a mystical ritual. He said that the authors of many of the things which we copy have died. He said that if we look at an image and the creator is dead, then we can no longer connect with this person. Like trying to call someone who's left their phone off the hook. However Bob felt that the process of electrically charged rollers grunting and chanting, toners melting and bonding, Lamps glowing...Was one which enabled us to communicate with the the dead. He believed that people's very essence was trapped in the electromagnetic vibrations inherent in all visual phenomonem, and that it could be extracted through use of a photocopier. He reasoned that the wavelength of this vibration was not relevant (thus neither was colour), only its presence or absence. In this way, or so Bob reckoned, a black and white copy of an object contained more soul or essence than a coloured original. He said these shades had a magical power over us. He said that this is why ghosts are white. He said we wear black at funerals to keep us separate from the pale white flesh of the departed. He believed that his addiction to tobacco was explainable through a curse which was on him enacted through the whiteness of rolling papers and the blackness of ash. He said that if I wanted my drawing to have any power I should use chalk and charcoal. Chalk, he explained, is built from the skeletons of dead microscopic sea creatures, and charcoal from the dead skin and bones of trees. Second last thing Bob said to me was a quote which he had marked from Melville's "Moby Dick":
"All deified nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, forever remains white or colourless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge-Pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us like a leper; and like wilful travelers in lapland, who refuse to wear coloured and colouring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the albino whale was the symbol."
The last thing Bob said to me was:"Do you have a cigarette?".
I don't know about all that. I do like black and white though. Might just be because I grew up on mashed potato and burnt sausages though.
1. (porcelain cassette)+2. (wooden socket)
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3. ...the fat cutter
//3.1. Lithium incantations//"
2. One year, when I was a boy, I came down with some kind of cold virus. I was sick as a dog. As I got more ill I became quite delirious. I remember I was building an electromagnetic motor one night, using my father's "101 electronics projects kit" which he also used a a boy, so in my disoriented state it felt a little like I had sort of a magical link with my father, through the electricity. I felt I had access to electronics projects which were far beyond me, like that one were you build a transistor radio out of a spud. At one stage I blew my nose into my hanky, and I looked down and it had made the most wonderful pattern; symmetrical and stark...Anyway, that night I went to bed with my head full of snot and circuit designs. And as I was drifting off I had this sort of hynagogic vision.
I saw this contraption. At the top of this structure was this small wooden box which gently swayed, suspended from a ragged white rope. The wood was rotten and gray, it looked like it was once white, however only yellowing, cracked fragments of paint remained. Upon the front of this wooden cube is a scratched sheet of glass held in place by two fairly ordinary looking steel hinges. Looking threw the glass, one could see that within the box is an odd assortment of soft objects. A tangle of white thread, clouds of cotton wool and what I think was the pubic hair of ghosts. Or it may have been the ghosts of pubic hairs. They were all held together by this kind of supernatural static electricity. The rope the box was suspended from leads up to an old rusted pulley, which was in turn supported by a timber frame of similar condition and constitution to the box. I'll describe this shortly, however the thing that really caught my attention was the thing that lay beneath the box. Sitting underneath the bottle was a small oblong bottle, no more than 10cm in height. Within the bottle was exactly 30ml of fresh full cream milk. Two black electrical wires protruded from the bottle of milk and their stripped endings were twisted around two small screw. The screws had wriggled deep into the wooden frame mentioned earlier. The frame itself was thin and frail. The top of the frame was a complex network of wooden beams within which in the afore mentioned pulley. Two long beams jutted out from beneath the frame. The whole thing had the appearance of a thin woman's pelvis and legs. The screws rigged up to the electrical milk were positioned approximately where the woman's knees would be.
Well above the precarious contraption dangled a large funnel sewn from white canvas. Its open end cast a large circular shadow of the scene.
About half a meter in front of this I noticed a small pile of white plaster dust.
Upon waking I clearly realised the importance and beauty of this engine. Since this moment I have spent the majority of my time, resources and passion in its construction, design and decryption.
(Napier's Bones)
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(Al-Jabr/Jazari)+(Battery Chalk) =Joe Henry (Electromagnetic waltz)
3. Last time I saw him he had stopped smoking cigarettes. He explained that astronauts should avoid smoking as their exposure to the Van Allen radiation belt meant they have a disposition towards cancer.
He'd pour me a whiskey in an old tin cup (he'd always be a few ahead though) and he would begin talking incessantly of the spiritual importance of the Soviet space program. He felt that the missions of the early 1960s were of particular significance. Through his fevered speeches cosmonauts would be transmuted into monk like figures, their suits the most sacred of robes. Rockets would become towers and steeples. Animals such as Laika and Belka would be tranformed into sacrificial creatures with old testament gravity. At some point his yarns would inevitably take a more sombre turn.
"God left this town a long time ago" he would mumble "Clutching to the back of a satellite...Like a garbo swinging off the back of a dumpster...Like an old man trying to have intercourse with a printing press".
Invariably he would conclude his night by throwing up on the lawn.
i.Woozy+Rotation receptacle/(6 landings
tin hoist(brine)+chant
cHant
iii.Creaky+ palm+spare
(change copper) =Vibrating drainage
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii. Libido-cardboard-malfunction