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.