Questions from Boston

Okay, my last full day in Boston and I feel like a stranger in a strange land. I think I need to ask some questions to get my orientation again, so let's see...

It seems likely, based on Happy's recollections, that Cate and Grant were two of the main protagonists when it came to the expansion and recruitment drive for Project 31. They were running things across the campuses of North America - tapes, for sure, but most likely people and fabrics too. Costa's songs are known to have appeared on the tapes, so there would seem to be some link between Grant/Cate and Costa. As one of our investigators so perceptively asked - is Cate Costa?

Also, are the instructions presented on the tapes Coasta's own, or is she relaying messages from a more central figure? Kosyra, perhaps, or Regan, or Searly, even. Perhaps the instructions are coming from 'Mr. Crafts', whoever that maybe (likely one of the 3 suspects just mentioned). Or is Grant 'Mr. Crafts' - we know so little about him beyond a connection with Cate and witness statements aligning him with the tape distribution?

Other thoughts - did Kosyra fund/design the guidestone projects? We know he was 'disgustingly rich' and that he works in construction (or runs a front company marketed as being in the industry); was 'R.C. Christian' his public go-between? Could be Regan? Could be Searly?

I wonder now about the mid-nineties disappearance of Regan and Costa, as proposed by the map found by the candian religious studies student when studying in England - where did they go and what were they doing all this time? Is their disappearance in any way related to the later mass-disappearance of all recognised members of the Soft Michigan core group? Which, in turn, makes me wonder about the couple caught on CCTV using Searly's library card - according to Happy, they would seem to have some historical involvement with the Project 31 (having been spotted on campus with infrequent regularity until the disappearances), yet are not recognised as being Cate and Grant. Who are they?

Other questions - how does Sad Sack tie into all of this, and what is the significance of the missing mixtape 'At The Haberdasher's Request'?I shall try to make a breakthrough before leaving Boston. The heat goes on...

In Reply

Your recent diggings in Boston are rich indeed. I would like to believe the young couple are batting on the left side of the crease, but in the back of my mind is the warning – don’t trust the girl in the red dress. Fifties glamour could hide a black suited interior.

I would never have come up with the theory of a Searly hostage situation. I feel it holds some degree of plausibility, but my gut instinct is against it. A third possibility is simply that Searly’s library card ended up in the possession of the young couple (perhaps via members of the Michigan core). A further thought – is it possible that the couple are actually members of the core, eg. Grant and Cate?

To follow my mind’s windmills on their course, given my instinct to beware the hidden interior of the girl in the dress, and earlier thoughts on Costa as a music-scene wolf in sheep’s-wool clothing, perhaps Cate is Costa???

The Melinda Doll?

Interesting crossover of theories. Perhaps the Melanie/Melissa doll are both slight typos for what could be the Melinda doll - something which maybe acted as a benchmark for identity reversal, which was named after the technique developed by Melissa/Belinda, or perhaps it already existed, and they used the underlying principles of it to fake their own disappearances.

Yes, it would seem that stay-in-your-home-with-multi-tv-channels-and-directly-distributed-media-and-sustenance lifestyle is causing individuals to become more isolated from one another on a real-world level, but more connected in the digital-realm. This closely mirrors the idea of a replica world overtaking the 'real' physical world and becoming the place where people primarily exist. Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, online PRGs etc. - all contribute to this, creating a collective mind in cyberspace and leaving the physical realm as some sort of ghost world; an abandoned, largely uninhabited industrial space on the edge of a retail town. Also ties in with the op-art-town-planning-herding/controlling of human movement manifesto.

I think Happy believed Cate n Grant to be a couple (assuming this girl was Cate), but possibly only because he was infatuated with her, so imagined her and her male companion to have romantic links. It is entirely possible that he was erroneous about this and that their connection comes down to being memers of a common group.

Melanie Doll

The Melanie doll is a Melissa Doll??? I suspect the melanie doll was a codeword for some use of the substance melamine. Which I think is a plastic, but I’m not sure of the applications.

The third mind – indeed, just as the human brain is actually viewable as two brains/minds, in part but only part communication with each other through a fairly limited bridgeway between left and right hemispheres, so, two separate brains in communication can certainly be thought to result in a third mind. The theory exists that ‘God’ is simply the composite mind formed by the sum total of all minds. Whether minds have to be in communication with each other to form this composite consciousness is blurry – perhaps they are all communicating at various non-visible levels anyway – even monks in cells can read each others dreams perhaps. Perhaps more so than the hurrying flustered strangers saying words at each other in office blocks and on streets…

Zac’s astute analysis of modern fatpipe culture is certainly apt here. The group mind, with a wholeness of conscious awareness and perhaps an ability to make its own conscious decisions, hence an ability to control the actions of its parts in unison, may perhaps be rendered powerless by the deadening of connections between the individual ‘neurons’ ordering fast food in their settees. However, working against this is the theory that the internet forms a vast connecting network between us, such that the internet itself results in a vast conscious union between us. So the modern world could result in a sharpening of some kinds of connections, and deadening of others. Perhaps the emotional connections are deadened and the pure ‘data’ connections are sharpened. Perhaps we as individual components of the group mind should be concentrating on fixing any area where connections are lacking. For example, by establishing networks of positive emotional connectivity.

People often question ‘why is it of any real worth to fix ones own patch in the giant quilt of the land, if the whole quilt is going to the shit?’ Ie. Rather than growing potatoes and living as a hermit, one should instead be acting politically to influence others. My feeling is that we should follow the notion that inventions in one area ‘magically’ lead to the same inventions occurring elsewhere separately and simultaneously.Perhaps it is the group mind at play. So, fix your own patch, and other people will be more likely to do the same elsewhere.

Cate and Grant… So, did Zac get the impression that Cate and Grant were not a couple in the conventional sense – perhaps just comrades. ??

Further Notes From Boston

Been hanging around the Boston University campus these last 36 hrs looking for leads. Kids of every description hanging out all over the grounds - lone readers on the grass, athletic guys running round the lake in pairs - it's just like it is in the movies, and just like it was back when I was taking Social Theory classes at Ohio. Some things never change, and I guess campus life falls into that bracket. Not knowing whether to focus on the hip kids or the squares, i keep my enquiries vague and loose, so as to not give too much away.

A break comes when I am introduced to a guy called Zac Happy, a PhD student in town planning/transport networks. The guy has lived on campus for seventeen years, so has a better knowledge of the campus' recent history than most people. He's a good natured kid, but pretty serious with it. During our conversation, he recalled a time in the mid-nineties when groups of art students would often take roadtrips north, presumably to Canada or Nova Scotia. Happy mentioned how they would often come back with trunkfulls of fabric samples, citing a lack of availability in the States as the reason for their sourcing from north of the border.

Happy remembers a Canadian couple who used to visit the campus fairly regularly, something like once a fortnight, who would always mingle with the art students. One time, the girl turned up alone and Happy happened to pass by her as she was struggling to lift a box from her car, so he gave her a hand (partly due to philanthropy, partly due to a self-confessed attraction with the girl). He asked girl where her partner was, to which she replied 'Oh, Grant? He couldn't make it down this time'. Happy noticed that the box contained several copies of what appeared to be the same audio casette, boxed with identical handwritten inlay cards.

Sensing an opprtunity to strike up a friendship or possible romance, he tried to pursue a conversation with her, asking what the tapes were of - was she in a band? apparently her reply was 'erm, yeah.... something like that'. Happy asked if he could have a copy of the tape but was told 'Sorry, they are made to order for a certain audience, I can't just give them away'. Hurt, but still intrigued, Happy slyly stuck a copy of one casette into his trouser pocket when the girl was distractedly locking her vehicle. Apparently the tape was full of home recordings which included excerpots from tv adverts, lo-fi acoustic music and spoken word poetry, often with what seemed like knitting or tapestry instructions worked into the lyrics. Happy is convinced that the tape and it's casing still exist somewhere in his dorm room, which he has promised to endeavour to find for me. All he can remember now is that the title of the tape was 'At The Haberdasher's Request'.

Zac Happy would seem to be a useful contact, and unless he is a fantastic actor, I think we can take him to be as innocent and unrelated to the core group as he appears to be on the surface. When i asked him if this sort of thing still went on around campus he claimed it had all died down around the start of the new millenium, presuming the internet to be a decisive factor. As he put it himself; 'Who would bother with a thousand mile round-trip when you can sit at home eating delivered pizzas and order what you need over the fatpipe. No-one has time for that real-world shit any more, being face to face with people is just too big a deal for most folks to handle. People just want to live in their bubbles and work enough to afford what they want, they don't want to experience the world first-hand, just read about it in magazines while they worry about their weight and wait for mail-order goods to arrive from abroad'.

The Invisible Man/Mixtape

The Invisible Man

A strange white A4 ‘window’ style envelope was posted within the UK with dubious postage payment. The contents included a treatise entitled ‘Everybody Looks at the Invisible Man’. It essentially gave examples of the same techniques previously outlined. The notion was that what isn’t seen, or is very barely seen, or is noted by its absence, is picked up on subliminally by the mind, enabling it to gain widespread acceptance in the cultural psyche without anybody realising it overtly. Such a technique perhaps could be employed to spread illusions, such as the relocation of cities, for example. The full content of the treatise is thought still to be in existence, somewhere. However, it is not at present visible to the eye of this investigator.

Note:

31 different shades of merino wool found. That is an interesting numerical coincidence, but probably one to discard in any hunt for meaning.

The connections are suddenly stronger between the Searly affair and the Soft Michigan enigma. A theory: Searly acted as dietician to the soft Michigan core. De Leon and Vandeloon were go-betweens passing communications to and from the South American woolfields, through the Castro regime in Cuba, while based in Florida, but whether they acted for the genuine craft scene contingent of the Michigan core or for the military operatives involved in the same or a similar project, is unclear. Vermott I am still hazy on. Meanwhile Robert Long I assume impersonated Vermott (badly), and was silenced, by the military element? And the Buick? Where was it going? Was it perhaps used then abandoned and destroyed by the handicrafter core of soft Michigan, to hide evidence generally. Was the presence of the phone directory evidence that the handicrafter core silenced Long? I feel I’m trying to polarise everyone into good guys and bad guys with no middle ground. Perhaps really most of it is in the middle. But historically, I think polarisation is genuine. I need to find the third location. The threads are all there, but I just can’t yet get them all to knit together…

Recall in earlier forum excerpts from the Michigan core, the following:

but then again, we looove roadtrips.

see you then!

mostly i just stinking LOVE knitting.

really really happy.

I think we now know the vehicle and the purpose of these road trips. Things are coming together. I see Cate, Grant, Melissa, Belinda and Gert, perhaps with Searly, perhaps with Costa, on the road, hair flying out of open buick windows, speed knitting, sleeping, driving, collecting packages…

The mix tape tracklist recently unearthed from forum excerpts is enlightening (see below). I feel sure from the titles that it is self-recording, possibly by Grant and others, going on the reference to ‘his music’, (also below). I feel we should trace the singer/s behind these songs.

grant and i listened and danced to his music on valentines day

he is the perfect mix to me of blues and folk and funk and feeling

1 make stuff knit

2 april

3 fond of

4 Crochet Stack

5 noon 8

6 layering

7 7mos

8 afternoon

9 sleepy mama

10 waiting for me

11 Theres only one captain on this boat

12 Very Special Scarves

13 Michelle Williams ?

14 new drawing corner

15 the other side

16 Untitled

17 pride and joy

18 steven alan imitation

19 atthestove

20 Untitled

21 film207

22 hi

23 Working

24 Lashes

25 s t i l l morning quiet time

26 anthem for a 17 year-old girl

27 Untitled

28 reasons for staying

29 Untitled

30 book girl

31 Untitled

32 ships ahoy

33 juk box

34 [?]

35 grapefruit & new curtains

36 gams [?]

Zero Carb

The paradox of a marketeer, normally involved in promoting something into the limelight, being a seasoned pro at being elusive, makes sense to me. Know one thing and its opposite becomes natural too. It certainly ties in with project 31 – promotion of the false in order to hide the genuine. One story I feel to be apocryphal is that Costa herself infiltrated the soft core and struck up a personal friendship with Cate and Grant, the Michigan couple responsible for the ‘conception diet’ regime of low to zero carb. Costa took the strictness of this diet more seriously than the others (many of whom talked about it excitedly while also eating Hersheys on the side), and the story goes that this proved too much for her, leading to her abandoning the soft core and returning, one dress size thinner, to Earl Regan.

The adherence to strict diets could itself be a connection to Ronald Searly:

Recall the acquaintance between Searly and Captain Beefheart (a man who we should remember surrounded himself in aliases, and never called a man by his real name). Beefheart legendarily imposed a strictly controlled diet of plain pulses upon his musicians during recording sessions. Perhaps Searly taught this technique to Beefheart, or else learnt it from Beefheart. Either way, Searly may then have had a hand in the dietary impositions years later in Michigan State.

But what is the real purpose of such a regime?