Dream machine iii

So …. as we say in Hiberno…  from my question yesterday about whether a reading of a particularly particular prose might produce the same flickering as Gysin’s invented Dream Machine I had an incidental experience.

The evening unwound with a three hour reading of Sandor Ferenczi’s Clinical Diary — luvly bit of light Sat night reading (!).  Rather than requested entranced flickering I found myself thrust into a more potent variety. I read the word matricide early on and it induced the feeling of being repeatedly dropped off the back off a moving train and from then on, whilst it was certainly deeply engaging and entrancing, it was consistently like bouncing along an iron railroad on a bungee cord.

Rather than the flicker of light through a tree, it was a full faced open-mouthed wolf snarling between the trees.

And it reminded me never to wish for any such thing again from prose.  Such an experience might be better sought in a vat of gin! It’s why we have psychedelic drugs!

But on a last note: it’s Beckett’s How it is? that was the text that didn’t come to mind when I was trying to think of them yesterday.

His output is wildly uneven and spread across painting, drawing, film, sound poetry, fiction and performance. Despite this, he emerges as a substantial figure, not merely a satellite of William Burroughs and the other denizens of the Beat Hotel.

Hari Kunzu on Brion Gysin in this month’s Frieze Magazine.

***

A visit to the dream machine plans booklet and reading the above article makes me think of how the experience of looking into the dream machine in action (trance) might possibly be replicated in the reading of prose. Could prose be written in a density and rhythm (pedantic ?)  that permits flashes to come through (that create flickering,) and offer what this unit did. There must be examples of this out and about there. But likely more of a 45rpm than a 33rpm. Gertrude Stein, Beckett’s Worstwood Ho (a better example no doubt abounds, but this springs obviously to mind). It could be fun to construct a Dream Machine and then in parallel create a reading of some writings and record both and see whether a parallel can be drawn. Can we be intoxicated aurally — akin to this visual?

Je ne sais pas.

Dream Machine

In case you find yourself dissatisfied with your lighting arrangements: Brion Gysin had a nifty idea that should have made him rich. Iggy Pop swears by it.

Consult http://ubu.com/papers/Gysin-Brion_DreamMachine-Plans.pdf