I am between source at the moment, between games and between novels. So whilst I await the next installment of the Fire and Ice epic, Dance with Dragons, I find myself re-reading Vurt once more. It is an easy read and very conductive for me, it takes me to a very particular place. Not quite nostalgia and not quite yearning.
With the new Jeff Noon website (www.metamorphiction.com), the new Jeff Noon story ‘Sparkletown’ (@temp_user9) and the live feed of inspiration straight from Jeff Noon’s brain (@jeffnoon) there is a lot of Jeff around at the moment.
Inspired by all of this I have followed his latest set of narrative instructions and followed his advice. Using the great Burroughs cut-up technique via http://www.fetish23.org/words/cutup.html I started to test his idea. I took the latest tweet thread containing instructions for creating a ghost machine and cut it up with Jeff’s instruction on how to write a Dub Fiction. It is layers of Jeff, so naturally it sounds good. There are levels of meta in here that I like but the end result works. For me it does.
Cutup Results
Dance in time. 22 Sep.
The result is often startling. These particular engines allow me to trap and wait. The spirit flickered, sighed in to choose the size of phrase to be darkness. Icy, blue, fevered: Something touched at, rearranged, so a degree of the original meaning face is kept.
11 hours. Sense of meaning will emerge.
Ghost trap components: smallest phrase fragments.
Operation: place glowbug in Jeff Noon.
Now the best bit: copy speaker cone. Set this text and push it through the cut-up speaker to vibrate. Time, again working with the Now. Softly, softly… close the… Jeff now complete.
You’ll need a source with sparks: evidence of spirit activity, serious measure. The code text, either your own or samples from the worst of other writers, or a mixture of the two, the blocks. Off limits. Unsafe. Stories of demon Noon OK. Work that cut-up! Copy the result songs into haunting the rooms. A passage beckoned. Dixie moved to a fresh doc.
Take out most of closer, alone. Into darkness. Silence. And then the little words, leaving nouns, verbs and adjectives, crackle of melody, sparklenotes fluttering in minor key etc. I set the engine to the smallest colours. All such fragments dream of being, I usually find that the real meaning and whole once more, of being a song on purpose. The piece is now revealed.
Keep a lover’s lips, conjured from a tongue: verse, working to push the text towards this new chorus and coda. Goal.
This, the scent arouses the insect, causing the bug’s final remix. Its own right, and resonate with meaning when Eyes wide, mouth bloody. Words of drawn-out breath: read in tandem with the source code texts.
“Find it. Don’t let it get away!”
Continue until Favorite Retweet Reply temp_user9 Jeff Noon
With such, the work has coherence, structure and narrative flow, desire, the ghost is drawn towards the trap. However those values may apply. The remix is scissors.
Other collectors were seen, different sources, as long as they have some, working the streets. Let them be. Dub tremble. His skin was picking up traces, buzzing Fiction: my basic method. Course, you could always go trad and use the Murder ballad style. Dixie shivered. She set the ghost paper. Listen now: held by rusty guitar strings, a value, either 2 or 4 word fragments. Of woman’s voice. Old, pitched low, a black moan. The piece will find its own identity. (female), cassette tape, AA batteries, perfume. A 2nd cut-up remixes the text, but most abdomens light up. Play cassette.
Observe: the of the special images and phrases you’ve created. Ghost will crackle and copy the source and paste into an online grey light.
Fading moon.
