Dream Life

Hello from out here on the Thames Delta. We’re halfway through 2025, and:

I mean, seriously. What are you supposed to do with that information on a Sunday morning? An “AI” dream diary device, now. It was probably around a hundred years ago when Walter Benjamin complained that new media technologies had made our dreams banal: “Dream Kitsch,” he called it.

It’s only a toy: it’s just a prompt being spoken into an AI video generator, nothing mystical or fancy. The studio encourages you to build your own, provides the code and the 3D printing instructions.

I guess it’s up to you if you want to live in a world where nothing really happened unless it’s on a screen. Including your own dreams.

Someone has hacked a pair of AR glasses so that they block actual physical ads like billboards in the real world while wearing them.

Here’s a weird thing that happened to me this week.

The brown card envelope was inside the magazine. What the hell is this? I thought. An extra? So I unzip it, open it - and it MAKES THE SOUND OF AN EXPLOSION. I literally dropped it. There’s a little piece of electronics in it, and when the card pulls away from a contact - boom.

It’s part of an ongoing art project by Dani Ploeger called Destructive Circuits:

So buy issue 76 of NEURAL and you too can experience a letterbomb, I guess. A dream of a letterbomb.

2025: order a dream of a letterbomb over the internet.

I’m told this little thing is now out in shops. I am amazed it hasn’t been completely forgotten, and it’s a really interesting thing to see it at that 6×9 size. Take a look at it in a comics shop or bookshop this week if you can.

CURRENTLY READING:

…the technique of dispersio, already present in Arabic alchemical writings, whereby necessary information is provided across a series of writings rather than being concentrated in a single book.

• THE EXPERIMENTAL FIRE: INVENTING ENGLISH ALCHEMY, 1300-1700, Jennifer M Rampling. I keep picking this up and putting it down again, because it is extraordinarily dense. One chapter takes ages, partly because I’m taking notes and making highlights and following up all the weird facts and histories and notions and phrases. It’s a difficult subject to cover - not least because of dispersio - and it does it very well, but it’s hard work! (UK) (US)

The telegram, addressed to the man who had hired me to investigate the case, said briefly and somewhat obliquely that they were never coming back: “WHAT ARE WE LETTING IN WHEN WE SAY GOODBYE?”

• THE TAIGA SYNDROME, Cristina Rivera Garza: a short, weird detective novel about a retired investigator hired, against her better instincts, to find a missing couple. Part mystery story, part folk tale, it’s a strange and brilliant piece about forests, legends and the lost. (UK) (US)

No, don’t open your eyes. I’m going to put my hand inside your forehead – yes, go ahead and wrinkle it – and now you can watch it entering over the square, pale grey like a monster’s claw in the ghostly glow from the street lights and the moon over the church.

• CODEX 1962, Sjon: I love Sjon. He’s another of those mythopoetic writers who seem to define the first quarter of the century so much. You may know him better as co-writer of the Robert Eggers film THE NORTHMAN, or perhaps even the 2021 film LAMB with Noomi Rapace. (UK) (US)

Some notes on Sjon’s THE WHISPERING MUSE I wrote a few years back.

Also, an article I tripped over: not sure I agree but it’s interesting for anyone making art online:

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Now: THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT audio drama podcast, DESOLATION JONES: THE BIOHZARD EDITION, THE STORMWATCH COMPENDIUM. 2025: FELL: FERAL CITY new printing, THE AUTHORITY Compact Edition, the LIGHTS OUT Anthology.

CURRENTLY LISTENING:

I heard India Galley do a cello interpretation of koʻu inoa by Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti and decided I needed to own the record. It is sea and greeting and joy.

Cannell’s music is an antidote to the noisy chaos of 2025. A Compendium of Beasts Volume 3 is a strengthening and embracing of the wildness of life.

Link to stream the whole thing and get lost.

This got a terrible review on The Quietus but it had me from the start. Stephen O’Malley of SUNN O))) doing electroacoustic music. Reminded me of Yoshi Wada doing “Earth Horns” until the guitars come in like a martial summoning. Listen to it here.

And that was my week out here on the Thames Delta. I’m off outside. Take care of yourself. Put your feet up and dream a little.

W