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. ??

Note From Lone Wolf

Invaluable find there. Happy must be kept on file and on the quick dial.

Just re-read earlier message from me... didn't qualify why i re-iterated the Regan thing... Melissa Parrish rang a bell with the Melissa Doll. Some elements are recurrent in the research and have been highlighted by recent findings here. It's hard to step back from it right now, but here's my potted thoughts for the moment...

Dreams and dreamers. Was put onto some something Freud said about the dreams being the 'royal road to the unconscious mind'. Been in discussion with doctor of art, conceptual artist and thinker - some good stuff coming through, and it all lands right in the middle of what were looking at. Also. Concept of the Third Mind. Specifically in relation to the collaboration between two people. There is the idea that a Third Mind is in play whenever this occurs. Have some research to type up about Bill Burroughs and a contemporary working in cut up and how they stated this third mind idea. Also that 'cut up can predict the future'. Regan and Costa worked independantly but collaboratively. Kozyra as a physical and facilitatory 'third mind'? i have some interesting visual evidence from the Wolds to further add to this.

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'.

Wet Run

In the back of my mind, partly due to pouring over maps of Canada in my youth (or is that ‘pawing’? – I hear the expression but not seen it written down – just what exactly do they mean?) – anyway, in the back of my mind… has been the possible involvement of the two north Canadian great lakes – great slave and great bear. I have an inkling that they may have served as ‘wet run’ practise grounds for the project. My only Canadian contact is a peacenik based between the Yukon and Quebec. (If not including my recently formed contacts A & B, now both based in the UK.)I’m going to investigate further.

Note From Lone Wolf

Earl Regan created the 'Melissa Doll' as part of his Standardised Model for Creating a False Idol.

hmmm.

lost in the Wolds currently. trying to unravel the web... liking your work overseas...

at some point we need a meeting to go over this. not sure how we'd co-ordinate.

In Reply

Certainly, the historic link dates from the highland clearances – a mass migration caused solely and completely by… yes, you’ve guessed… the wool trade.Huge swathes of Scotland, and in a different manner, England too, were cleared of indigenous resident sustainable populations by an elite with political and military power, in order to occupy the cleared lands with huge sheep farms. The wool trade was partly, I believe, serving to fuel the Napoleonic wars, though I forget what the English army used wool for. Today’s residual contingent of struggling UK sheepfarmers is largely a hangover from this not-too-distant example of ethnic cleansing – the previous sustainable populations kept cattle, pigs, grew oats… were foresters… coppiced… Now the hills are bare and the soil has no nitrogen content – the nitrogen went into the wool. Taken from the land and not put back… Fertility was lost. A culture was shifted, by sea, to New Scotland (nova scotia); to New Zealand (Dunedin, NZ city, named after the original Gaelic name for Edinburgh), to Australia, to Canada. With the exodus went knowledge. There is a theory that the grail is now in Nova Scotia.