The Uncomformity

I have located an apparent anomaly in the geotemporal record. If Searly really had a close acquaintance with Captain Beefheart during the timeof pulse diet adherence, this could not be the same searly as the teenage poet who released Octopiithagoas in 82.
Or could it?
Two possibilities occur to me, which could maintain the supposition that both events occured and involved the same man, without upsetting the timeline with anachronicity.
The first is that a much older Searly entered the poem in thecompetition. If so, the psychological profile of Searly would change - a 25+ yr old writing such a poem, or just entering such a poem that hemay have written while teenage, would be a very different person fromthat envisaged before, perhaps a late developer, or an individual havingthe syndrome which results in childlike (or in this case teenage) tendencies and mentality into adult life.
(Or alternatively, the poem may have been written by a teenage Searly and entered by someone else who had acquired the poem. I personally dismiss this for now.)
The second possibility is that a teenage Searly did write the poem in 82, and an infant Searly spent time with Beefheart in say 69-72. I imagine a 2 year old Searly telling the captain 'no, captain, don't do it that way...'. The influence of a 2 year old Searly could explain much of Beefheart's output during that period.

In Reply

You forget one vital thing. With a poetry competition, I supposed that release of material was immediately subsequent to penning/recording. However, not so with basement tapes. They were indeed recorded in 68. Release occurred years later.

Grandma death, grandma time, old laughing lady. Yes – many names but I think one person. I managed to avoid running down a sweet highschool girl called Jena though. If such a sweet highschool there had been standing nearby, I would maybe have hit grandma death…

In answer to your earlier question – she didn’t stitch the bag herself. I believe it was purchased in a shop owned by a middle agent who imported goods from a producer, possibly with one or more further middle agent handler/importer between the shop owner and the producer. As with branching drug dealerships, this can make the producer very hard to trace… Perhaps it was made in Boston or, as Lone Wolf has suggested to me, Droitwich itself.

Nb. I assume the monk was toying with the French resistance roots of much dance music. A great comparison there. 68 both.

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?

Age of Searly

I think a fresh time map is essential for this case. I shall prepare one as soon as I have the time. A quick calculation of Searly’s age, based on teenage poetry from 1982, is as follows: Octopiithagoas – analysis: leanings towards science/metaphysics suggesting the construction of a personal ontology, peaking around age 15 in most cases (cf. Freud: ‘Sex and Science – the making of man, lecture, 1903’), however the poem’s more fantastical wordplay suggests a later stage of poetic development, re-entering the imaginery period, constructing the unreal following the initial construction of the supposed real.

From this I put his age at 16-17 at the writing of Octopiithagoas, and assume date of writing same as date of publication/competition entering - the stage of self-doubt over ones juvenilia not having been reached; ie. publication very soon after writing.

This puts Searly’s age in 2005 at 39/40, I believe. Older than average if a member of the soft Michigan core. Many older males can be associated with hip younger circles, so this is not impossible.

Appendix 1.a. poetry transcriptions

Octopiithagoas

Behold the
Eight
tentacled
plane vision of the
architects of night

they dwell here
among us dreamers
they construct our dream
from eight eyes
one for each hue
the eighth eye is the eye of dark light

the rods thread us
through the eye
of the needle hurricane
we are one

behold
this creature has no name


From the Sun

Stript down t’ carburettor
Burnished sun eyes
From the sun

Spectral displays
Boreal lights
Flee the catastrophe

Youth seeks its own answer
Under t’ hood
Clouds parted by some Moses in corduroy
Beaming smile gracefully descends and then ascends
From the sun

Who Is Ron Searly?

ALL THINGS EXIST in spacetime, including Mr. Searly. He's on someone's paper round, someone's Christmas Card List. A Ron Searly is registered at the Jonestown library. A car registered to a Ron Searly was photographed by a traffic safety camera as it ran a red light on some Main St. in Massachusetts (it is unknown as to whether Mr. Searly was present in the car at the time). A Ron Searly paid the cheque for a birthday lunch enjoyed by three unknown white females at a Steak-n-Cake in Reno. He never said a word - they only discovered his deed when they asked the mousey waitress for the cheque. A Ron Searley collected $18.71 winnings from a bookmakers in Brooklyn for a bet he placed on a dodgers game, April 27th 1998. A Ron Searley was there when Beefheart formed his first band. He is reported to have told the captain 'don't do it that way - there's no coming back'.

Note from an interested party:
Find the tokens for Saturday bowling sessions with the mysterious ‘jimmy’. Find the empty tins of dogfood in his long island beach pad, with no other signs of pet ownership. Recount the strange notes found scribbled in his phone directory on the page of a certain Xavier Rheiner, coworker in the Bentley Cane Refinery, Florida.I want the FULL STORY of this guy…

My sources tell me: A Ron Searly has $3.51 of outstanding fines on his account at the North Carolina State Library and two overdue books - one on alternate food sources and an almanac of sewing techniques. Archival clippings from an April edition of the 1982 Pennsylvania Herald confirm that a teenage Ron Searley won second prize in the town's annual poetry contest, coming second to an R. J. Beasley, with poems titled 'Octopiithagoas' and 'From the Sun' respectively. Clippings from an edition of the Milwaukee Tribune, dated September of the same year, indicate that a Ronald Searley was cautioned after being found in a parking lot standing next to a bin fire with ash-tipped fingers and ashen face. He claimed it was like that when he found it. Without witnesses, the prosecution could not proceed with the case and all charges were later dropped. There is a bungalow in a southwestern suburb of Boston, the deeds of which bear the name 'Ron Searly'. No-one has ever seen anyone enter or leave the building, but delivery trucks are observed arriving regularly, sawing and hammering are often heard punctuating the afternoon calm, and the silhouette of a man was seen pacing between the two largest trees in the back yard after dusk a couple of weeks back. Neighbours have been known to ask 'what's he building in there?'