Giants of Cinema

I sense the giants of cinema encountering a soundscape problem.
A carrier bag of fresh prawns from my man sustains me for two days.
Returning now to forage more case material.
Recent theories posted were truly noteworthy, unfortunately I can't remember anything about them.
There was something about a simultaneous transmission; a meeting of waves in the mid atlantic.
Yes, that's it. I will get my falafel contact to dig up the gossip behind scenes.

Open university beards on aged hippies, wearing cotton. It is 3 am.
BBC 2 is transmitting early whiteboard flipchart scenes.
Venn Graphs and Vanderrgraffs and vandeloos and vent gaffs.
Gotta do a pratfall when they've vanned all the graffs.
I wonder which continent Ellena Costa is in now.

Perhaps when all this is done we can go travel in a van over the plains, maybe grow some beens.
jump in a pool under a waterfall or something.
I feel that at least one of the michigan cotton pickers may be with us in the U of K.
My eyes are open. There is a girl wwoofing nearby who looks a little like melody nelson but I don't think for a minute it is her.

It's a while since I was last on the protest or festival circuit.
there are channels of communication there - easy to pick up scents.
falafels are on the menu. and veggie-meat burgers.

A consignment of out of date ginger beer, and canada dry, note, has just reached me by car boot.
It kicks like it is fermenting or something.
Sam Ting says that the centre point of a magna-ring is a potential for strangeness.
He points out the example of the inside of a racing track.
How easy it would be, he says, to hide out in there...

Turbulence

Your last missive gives me the impression that things are beginning to unravel. Are you working from a new base now? A change in situation often allows things to be seen viewpoints hitherto unviewed. Maybe your move will provide you with a different view of the case.Thunder and lightning is filling the sky as I type. Low pressure. Electricity. Turbulence. eight young tomato plants are currently being rained on.

So, the beards are coming to town. It seems our guitar-slinging cowboys are will be active in the UK at a similar time to Costa's Broken Social Scene hitting the Candian road. Is this coincidence? Not if Bob Palindrome's maxim is anything to go by; 'there's no such thing as coincidences; there's only incidences, and they all go in the casefile'. He also used to say 'a casefile is like a good stew; you chuck everything in there, keep a low heat on it and see what rises to the surface'. I always took this as a good metaphor but once I got to know the man I realised that he also meant it literally.

Once I had visted his apartment I soon realised that he would destroy old closed casfiles by boiling them up in a pan of water in his kitchen. This explained the scald marks on his hands I'd previously wondered about. The man, resourceful as ever, used this method of data erasion as it provided him with the raw material for his hobby of making lifesize paper mache sculptures of his favourite birds of prey. The man had these things, hand painted, all over his house. A bald eagle hung above the main doorway, neck craned down and beak out so as to almost peck your left eye out while you waited for the door to open. A pereguin falcon, wings hunched back in a dive pose sat on his bureau acting as a mail holder, envelopes stuffed between the two raised wings. I digress...

Although the dates of BSS and the beard troupe's performance are not the same, they are only a couple of weeks apart. There is the possibility of using winds, possibly the trade winds one of our investigators mentioned earlier, to allow the sound to travel over large distances. This obviously takes time. I am consulting Dr. Epstein on this and am waiting for confirmation, but rough calculations show that it is fairly likely the soundwaves from both touring circuits will collide and interact at some point around the start of august. Perhaps there is some underlying plan for the two soundwaves to mesh in a certain area, interfering with one another in a way similiar to that you tried to achieve with the dual spin sources.

This could be another Black Cat style experiment, done in reverse fashion to the dual particle example. This time, they are starting with two sources, which are intended to meet up in one location. causing some kind of effect or outcome.Due to the butterfly effect, turbulence, it is hard to predict with certainty the when and where or even if of what may happen, but Epstein did say 'it could be possible'. Of course, I may be looking in the wrong direction and this could just be nothing. If, on the other hand, it is the case, then we are dealing with some advanced Obfuscation techniques.

In Reply

Neil Young, CSN and Bruce Springsteen will all be in the same area of the UK over the same weekend, in about a fortnight’s time. I don’t have a ticket. It should be a good focal point for various forces, with an ancient Somerset tor and a pyramid-shaped stage increasing the transmission potential of energies from the locality. Meanwhile, today for me is a day of great strangeness and great liability for changes. I met and lingered with my old Australian soulmate last night, and the air seems ripe for a thunderstorm of sorts. I hope this will not be my last transmission, although it may be my last from this station. In the wee wee hours my mind gets hazy, radio relay towers lead me to my baby, the radio’s jammed up with talk show stations, it’s just talk talk talk talk till I lose my patience.

No liquid storage in Detroit, no gasoline in Minnesota, no fleece in Duluth. Just a big hole in a ground floor window of a Minneapolis cold water flat, and a three storey sub-ground parking lot empty of cars.

My man in Somerset may have more to report in 10 days time. My insider is doing the falafel scene on the festival circuit. He may recognise other regular faces from show to show – loitering by the jester hat stand; lingering on the edge of the jazz tent; hiding in bushes when famous people walk by…

The Detroit Wick

Droitwich could be some kind of conflation of Detroit and something else. I suspect this purely because the location of Detroit is within the geogrphical boundaries of the heart of the investigation.

The Detroit witch? The Detroit Wick ('wick' being how i believe 'wich' is pronounced) could be some sort of device for draining a great lake by wicking away its water content to somewhere else (in Detroit?), thus allowing the water level to remain at the same height even as large scale habituations are sunk beneath the surface, combatting the physically obvious sign of water displacement which would otherwise surely give the game away.

But then, Lone Wolf, our UK-based agent, has mentioned esoteric drawings and scans of some nature, which may perhaps explain the role of Droitwich better than we could imagine.

Why Droitwich?

Why Droitwitch, I have been wondering? Is it at all related to the UK location? Is it an allusion to an equivalent location in the US? Why the Droit Witch? Could it be related to salt, or transmitters?

The town is situated on massive deposits of salt, and salt has been extracted there since ancient times. The natural Droitwich brine contains 2 1/2 lb of salt per gallon - ten times stronger than sea water and only rivalled by the Dead Sea[1].

Near Droitwich there is the central longwave broadcasting facility of the UK (Wychbold BBC transmitter), which is also used for transmissions in the medium wave range, Droitwich transmitting station. It was sited near Droitwich because the huge block of underground salt provided a good ground earth and increased signal strength (as related by Mr. Humphreys, Chief Engineer for many years).

In which case, it is reasonable to assume that the US homologue of Droitwich is in Utah – Salt Lake City. But what does this tell us?

Droitwich Fix

Enlightening wool knowledge there. I now wonder how wool knows which way is inside and which way is outside, and thus which way its heat transferring properties are to be implemented.One thing I forgot to mention - my initial suspicion regarding the girl you came across singing about 'Boston Mass' was that she was Costa, possibly on a recreuitment drive in the UK, or else meeting a connection there and filling in time playing solo spots as some kind of coded call to arms to any UK followers she may have.

However, in light of the BSS Ca-nad/lafon-ian tour, it seems unlikely she would be in the UK sans band, unless she was undertaking some low-key gig practice to work on her solo performance skills prior to the tour dates. It is entirely possible that she is no longer in the band, having trained them to function autonomously, though possbly still receiving her instruction from afar.

Another explanation as to the identity of the Boston Mass singer is that she is the religious studies student who had assocations with Costa in the '90s. She was known to be UK-based (at least during her studies) so would no doubt have acquaintances there- people who could provide her with shelter and find her work if needed. The fact she sings of some kind of 'mass' suggests that she is/was religiously minded, possibly abandoning Christianity or whatever her denomination was, in favour of some more fringe-based belief system. I certainly don't think she is connected to the religious right dogsquad, but I may be wrong.

Perhaps she is in the UK to locate contacts in the Droitwich reason (the theory was mentioned to this investigator that the 'Droitwich Fix' is a specialist stitching method used for heavy-duty repair work when a woven object's lifespan seems othewise at an end. A variation of this theory is that the term 'Droitwich Fix' refers to using an otherwise impaired object to serve a function different to that it was originally designed for - ie. using an old hat which no longer fits the owner's head as a tea-cosy, or fashioning a steel-bodied guitar from a broken oil drum (something this investigator has personally seen evidence of). Such things could be examples of the Droitwich Fix.

Either way, this theory, as put to this investigator, identifies the Droitwich Fix as a method of extreme object salvage when all other hope seems lost - something out on the edge of the repair/reuse/recycle culture which has been subordinated and marginalised by modern capitalism and its constant promise of shiny new goods to those who subscribe to its culture.

Timeline

Timeline has now been produced, ranging from formation of the earth through the pre-cambrian, the cambrian, the pleistocene, the age of atlantis, into the dawning of the age of aquarius, to current modern times, taking in the construction of the water-weathered sphinx and the great pyramids, calanais and stonehenge, the guidestones, and the assumed beginning of construction of soft Michigan. Also taking in Ronald Searly’s poetry competition and the often forgotten ‘bin-fire’ incident, of 1982, at which the probably teenage Searly claimed no involvement in said bin-fire. An incident in which I have great interest.

The main new lead I have from laying out known knowns upon an axis of time, is as follows:
In the mid nineties, a Canadian Religious Studies student went from North America to the UK, and there left a map of the great lakes seemingly questioning the location of ‘Keegan and Rosta’ (Regan and Costa). Previously we had surmised that this implied a disappearance of Regan and Costa at that time (in advance of the main soft core disappearance around 2005).

However, it was not until 2004 that material was released by Broken Social Scene, which we know to have been penned by Costa. Three theories could explain this. Either, Costa disappeared in the 90’s, but her material was in the hands of the Toronto music scene before then, later being released by BSS, or Costa disappeared in the 90’s but nonetheless disseminated material to BSS after her disappearance, OR Costa did not ‘disappear’ in the nineties at all. On this third theory, which I favour, the following scenario is possible:

The Canadian RS student, possibly already acquainted with Costa (and Regan) directly or indirectly, is seeking out Costa and Regan, in the UK. She travels there specifically to find them. Whether she succeeds or not is unclear. Costa, possibly with Regan, possibly also with the Canadian RS student, returns to Michigan, and is involved in ensuing road trip activity as part of the beginnings of the soft Michigan project. Costa is also involved with the Toronto music scene directly or indirectly, in years/months directly leading up to the 2004 release of her material by BSS. It is then not until 2005 that Costa becomes untraceable, either from retreating into Soft Michigan, or else from going ‘underground’ to evade various groups, eg. military Project 31 operatives.

I must however check dates suggested by recent Boston contacts including Zac Happy. Did anybody disappear in the 90’s? Melody? When did Zac say the travelling mix-tape couple stopped coming by? When did he say the road trip activity began?

From Kojak asa400

The attached image is from Harry Delacroix. The reference to Keegan and Rosta is clearly either an accidental or deliberate misnaming of Regan and Costa. Harry claims the map is from the personal belongings of a Canadian-born Religious Studies student who spent a few semesters in one of the new ‘prefab’ universities in the UK, in the late 1990s. A contact of Harry’s got the map from the R.S. undergraduate’s washbag while canvassing her halls of residence for an RPG club. He also claims to have seen an abundance of knitting paraphernalia in the room, and a Joni Mitchell album sleeve pinned to the wall, with ‘joni for ever’ written in the bottom corner in biro. Apparently, the undergrad was forced to abandon one course unit because some of her theories were too far out for the professors. She reportedly told them: ‘I can prove this’…
The ‘where have they gone?’ question on the map possibly refers to Regan and Costa rather than the larger disappearance circa 2005, if the dating to the late 90’s for this artefact is correct. Unless it refers to something else altogether.

Pan-Euro Operation: Preliminary Report

INVESTIGATIONS into the Michigan Flotilla have progressed to England, UK. The whereabouts of the mysterious 'Ike' as at this time unknown, though one of our agents has heard word of a loyalty group known as 'The Ikettes'; individual members of which are still unidentified as of this writing. However, this branch of investigation led us to make contact with a freelance photojournalist whom we can only refer to in this text as 'Safelight'. Safelight recounted to us a project he undertook a few years back, documenting the foot and mouth outbreak of 2001, a project which took him all over the UK for a period of 14 months.

One of the main methods of combatting and containing the outbreak was extensive culling of livestock, notably of sheep, and particularly of breeds which were farmed for their wool as opposed to their meat. Safelight's reportage made no attempt to hide the horror and inhumanity of this method of risk-management and in the text he wrote to accompany his images he continually expressed his digust at the government for forcing the farmers to bear the economic burden of their preferred solution, something which won him the trust of the rural communities.

This trust meant that legions of farm workers were prepared to confide their suspicions of the culling program to Safelight. Many farmers insisted that the structure of their farms meant that contamination was impossible unless intentionally carried out. There were signs of deliberate foul play at many of the infected sites, but most of the media reports centred around speculation from supposedly un-named locals that UFOs were seen in the area, with the hypothesis that biological studies of cattle were the ET's prime motivation for interfering with the livestock.

However, both Safelight and our own investigators could find nobody in these small, close-linked communities who ever claimed to have spoken to the media about such suspected UFO activity. Several individuals, however, told us of a group of Americans who had visited various farming regions of the UK in the previous year - they were intially believed to be tourists but were later understood to have been enquiring about a large-scale transatlantic wool purchase program.

Safelight, based on evidence offered by several senior agriculturists, has proposed that the foot and mouth epidemic was a government-sponsored program carried out to provide a seemingly legitimate pretext to destroy a large proportion of its wool-bearing livestock. Threading such strands of evidence into a theory, it would seem likely that the UK government had become aware of the Soft Michigan Project (31) and was attempting to minimize the raw materials available in the Western hemisphere for the group to exploit, in order to reduce their effectiveness and level of activity. It is obvious that there would not be enough wool in the USA alone for a life-size replica to be reproduced in the country itself, and the project would sooner or later have to buy wool from abroad. Given the UK farmers' dire economic situation, it seems likely that the government was worried that the farmer's would accept the Michigan group's demands and so a pre-emptive strike was taken to undermine the available wool surplus for the next few years.

The Stitcher

Note to 'The Stitcher':

It is believed that Jose de Leon was involved in the research wing of Project 31; his reason for attending the Michigan boating trade fair being investigations into principles of buoyancy and large-scale cargo transportation. A sales rep who was present at the fair spoke to one of our investigators under condition of anonymity. He recalled a man of short stature with an out of town accent inquiring about large-scale inflation methods who referred to something possibly called the 'Michigan Flotilla'. The short man apparently displayed a physical nervousness which betrayed his calm eyes and wanted to know how to 'float something the size of a city'.

Whether he was an active member of the project or the suspected inside man working for the feds is as yet undetermined but the theory has been raised that he may have been the link between Pinsk, James Long and/or Vermott. The current leading theory is that 'Vermott' may be a codename for de Leon, who was assigned the task of silencing Pinsk by executing a staged crash in Maine for which James Long was made to look responsible. However, it could be that this theory is flawed and de Leon and Vermott are separate entities, either of which could have been an insider or an outsider with regard to Project 31.

Note from 'The Stitcher':

On 15 June 05 (before the disappearance of the soft Michigan core group), a mysterious letter was sent to a part-time Maryland woodland ranger by the name of Phipps. This letter was passed to a friend of Phipps, who herself was acquainted with the sister of a Baltimore man. This Baltimore man heard of our investigations after researching the subject of the letter online, and obtained a transcript of the letter for our researchers. It contains anonymous allegations claiming to be from a military source, that pertain to an alleged conversation between a military man and an Englishman known only as ‘Ike’. The military man, in some excitation, suggested that a city on a lake could be bettered by putting a city under a lake. He outlined a plan of individual vats which he called suspension chambers. The other man (‘Ike’) declared: ‘It is happening again…’ The military man, it is claimed, had a map on his wall of the US, with rings around 4 of the Great Lakes. A photocopied photographic image of this map accompanied the letter.