space for machines #2

Audite o vos in terra habitandes

Hanc, fabulam, audite de oceano
Et quo modo petiverint id quod desiderant
Quoque modo eos tandem consumpserit
Loquimini, o machinae, de libertate
Loquimini, o machinae, per aerem temporis nostri.
 Listen, O people of the land
To this story of the ocean
And how they looked for what they wanted
And how it ate them in the end
Speak, machines of liberty
Speak through the air of our time.
--Laurie Anderson
space for machines #2
adolescent geography
The last week of July, I found myself driving a
particular stretch of I-74 that I have subsequently
resolved to avoid. Now, I fidget with a GPS apparatus
and complicated topographic maps of the midwestern
locations I need to navigate via the backroads. I was
unprepared for I-74 that day, rising early to pack my
gear for the Underground Publishing Conference in Ohio.
Fearing academia and my own tendency to quit in the
middle of large projects, I hit the road, specifically
I-74. I estimate that I’ve probably travelled that
particular stretch of highway 500 times. When I was
young, the road was the way to college and the future
and a really cool town to hang out in. Later it became
the distance of a commute, the frightening drive to
receive devastating news, the way to and from the
marriages which are slowly absorbing my childhood
friends. That July morning, it was 40 miles of hysteria.
Following the car crash deaths of some teenagers in
construction zones, the state had clamped down. From
the bodies of fallen comrades came a disturbing
expression of surveillance. Traffic patrolled by
Welcome to Twin Peaks. My
name is Margaret Lanterman. I
live in Twin Peaks. I am known
as the Log Lady. There is a story
behind that. There are many
stories in Twin Peaks--some of
them are sad, some funny. Some
of them are stories of madness,
of violence. Some are ordinary.
Yet they all have about them a
sense of mystery--the mystery of
life. Sometimes, the mystery of
death. The mystery of the woods.
The woods surrounding Twin
Peaks. To introduce this story,
let me just say it encompasses
the all-- it is beyond the “fire,”
though few would know that
meaning. It is a story of many,
but begins with one. (Pilot
episode/1:0)

aircraft, tallies of tickets given to drivers, machines

which flash your speed at you, and lurking cops surround
the peaceful drive. I just wanted to go, to pass
through this display of power, to drive past my hometown
and continue to a place that seemed to still hold the
promise of the future.
doors

that

let

you

in
Were you there my muse?
That night we were
traveling the roads between
the crops? The crops are
always the same, soybeans
and corn, alternating
yearly in fields that
stretch farther than you
can see, a steady
oscillation between two
types of produce. We were
always happiest the years
when corn grew behind the
cemetery, when it grew so
tall that it became more
interesting than the place
we were, when the space
between the stalks was so
welcoming and mysterious.
It was in times like those
that we wandered in between
the stalks, closing our
eyes and turning in circles
to purposely lose ourselves
in the long rows of stalks
cluttered with other
people’s beer cans and
cigarette butts. Close
your eyes, spin in a circle
until you forget where the
axis lies, then open them
again only to find yourself
looking at the same scene.
The goal was to find our
way out of the corn, but
that was never really our
desire. We wanted to be
lost in it, consumed by the
infinite flatness of the
Illinois landscape. We
always found our way out
of it, of course, ambling
back to the car to listen
to OK Computer. The car
in the cemetery by the
cornfield next to the
church of 13 sides. You
used to be able to drive
around the church 13 times,
at which point you would
be greeted with some sort
of apparition, but that’s
not possible anymore.
Security cameras and
floodlights and sirens
attached to motion
detectors reduce all
tourists to just one or two
trips around the church
before freaking out about
security and privacy. The
renovations to the church,
made necessary by the lure
of urban legend, made
possible by technology and
Columbine.

That night though, there

were soybeans where we’d
hoped to find corn, and the
drive through the quiet
empty back roads was what
we really were seeking.
Starting at the cemetery,
proceeding down a road that
was known to most only as
a number and a cardinal
direction, past the sad
white cross marking the
spot where that girl was
killed by a drunk driver.
Maybe she played the same
games or was looking for
the same things as us. We
never really discussed it,
except to point out the
 and out but never open

creepiness of that white left. Though we were never due to the lack of
cross with her photograph really quite sure of our enthusiasm for off-track
affixed to the telephone navigation abilities, we betting in the car. Though
pole. That night we sped were confident in the we’d traveled those roads
past it, feeling the summer perpendicular geometry of hundreds of times, our
wind in the car and the Midwest, that four navigation failed us,
Radiohead on the stereo. turns in the same direction leaving us in a search for
In the dark of the night, would bring us back to muses, wondering if it was
the lights from the nearby where we started. Driving a lesson in crop circle
airport’s landing strip geography or some kind of
shine with the stars, event that exists in order
outlining the fields and to throw all subsequent
roads with a strange forms of logic into
phosphorescence. All question.
that’s left is us, driving
in a car, our headlights a Could that have been the
part of this mysterious moment in which it all
illumination. We were changed? The point from
going to State Line, a town which adulthood would
between two states that
look like each other. that night though, we were
fairly positive we were
Once we got there we played m o v i n g t o w a r d s h o m e .
in the park, I guess it Instead we came out at
was cool because that town South end, that weird quiet
was always so small and part of town populated by
foreign to us, like we hotels and a jail, the Off-
discovered it ourselves Track Betting facility and
amidst the grain silos and the big church which the
genetically engineered skaters seemed to worship.
cornfields. We sat on the We were at the completely
playground and talked about wrong place, one which we
Real World 5, and then we hadn’t planned on visiting
inevitably careen toward
us, taking in its momentum
the paths through the
landscape that seemed
unequivocally ours? I
can’t drive those roads
anymore without thinking
about that time which could
have been 100%
inconsequential, wondering
when it was that I started
to doubt my own sense of
navigation. Perhaps after
that night, the possibility
entered my mind that I
could be lost and never
know it, that even geometry
can trick you into places
you didn’t want to go.
Proper crop circles -- that
is the ones not created by
hoaxers -- are always
growing, the mashed down
wheat somehow bent in such
a perfect way that no
stalks are broken, only
subsumed by the curve of a
circle or the angle of some
sort of agroglyph. It is
said that the formation of
crop circles only takes a
few minutes or so, during
which a wave of mist or a
cloud of dust seems to
descend on the crops,
leaving perfectly designed
patterns in its wake.
These patterns can only be
fully glimpsed from above.
Like the aliens are somehow
aware of the way we mediate
all experience with
television and satellites
and that the only way we’d
really get the point was
to build something that was
more amazing when
photographed than seen
firsthand. Many people who
enter crop circles claim
that later, when they tried
to leave the circle, they
were in foreign territory,
sometimes occupied by
strange figures. In these
scenarios, it is thought
that the individual
actually traveled back in
time, as if the
electromagnetic fields on
which the circles are
constructed somehow bent
space and time so that the
innocent bystander could
see what the Druids were
up to. Very rarely do
people think that they were
transported to the future.
Legitimate crop circles
appear all over the world,
but mostly in the UK, near
Stonehenge and other
monuments of the Upper
Paleolithic. Some think
this is because there are
magnetic forces at work
under the ground or odd
water accumulations that
are best easily understood
through dowsing.
Additionally, there is some
reason to believe that crop
circles may affect brain
wave frequency, altering
the consciousness of the
person in the circle.
Water and the elements of
electricity, conflicting
protagonists usually, are
cited most often as the
source of the circles.
Perhaps the circles are a
sort of subterranean
e l e c t r o c u t i o n ,
reconfiguring wheat into
the shape of shock.
 There are clues everywhere -- all around us. But the I discovered Twin Peaks in
puzzle maker is clever. The clues, although sur- the midst of discovering
rounding us, are somehow mistaken for something all of the other
else. And the something else -- the wrong interpreta- intensities of
tion of the clues -- we call our world. Our world is a adolescence. Its sprawling
magical smoke screen. How should we interpret the landscape of metaphysics
happy song of the meadowlark, or the robust flavor of and terror was solace and
a wild strawberry? (Episode 27/2:20) contemplation when the
world more frequently
seemed only to provide the
banal. It was structure
too, hours a day were
required to watch the show
on tape, reviewing subtle
VHS moments and testing out
hypotheses. Twin Peaks was
science and that which is
beyond knowing, an active
 With Radiohead providing
the soundtrack to the Twin
Peaks perspective in our
heads, we drove cars
through the flat cornfields
of Illinois. Driving while
the town sleeps quietly,
visiting empty midnight
schoolyards, trying to find
exactly where on the
outskirts of town it is
that the Satanists were
supposed to live, juiced
on coffee and the
intoxicating high of
exploration. It’s hard for
me and my high school chums
to figure out exactly where
most of our time went.
Going back to town for a
visit always involves at
least one night retracing
our tracks, but it’s
different. We seem to find
the best ways to hit all
our destinations in an
efficient manner, reducing
the time of our trip and
our vehicular flanerie.
tension among dichotomies t e m p e s t u o u s lease-
Eventually we resort to new
that wound through the breaking, the confusion and
territories, trying to
spaces of individual lives lingering of a last college
explore what are now only
and a whispering wood. semester. What’s more, as
half-remembered stories of
the albums (beginning with
mysterious places just on
Somehow Radiohead would OK Computer) were released,
the edges of town.
become entangled with my they coalesced into a sort
adolescent experience as of trilogy that started by
well. T h e s e a l b u m s charting an unexplored land
differed from watching the and ended by embracing the
collected video of Twin schizophrenia it provided.
Peaks in that they entered Like Twin Peaks, there are
the world in a rhythm out striking juxtapositions of
of my control, yet this an elusive spirituality
rhythm seemed to mirror my w i t h the confused
life, affirming moments of imagination of a machine
intense transition: high age steeped in metaphor.
school graduation, a
 taking off and landing,
Illinois Summer Youth Music
camp has been going on in
Champaign, such that every
now and then you’ll hear
the roar of children
walking to camp out of no
where. Summer camps of
various missions have been
going on all summer, but
ISYM seems to be different.
I remember in grade school
and junior high, ISYM
stickers on instrument
cases signified that the
owners were part of some
sort of hardcore musical
elite outside of school.
This group of campers seems
to have cheers they sing
on the way from their dorms
to their morning and
evening activities. It’s
kind of loud and
disturbing, not to mention
weird when they just bust
out with “Boom-Chikaboom”
or another favorite from
Camp Drake Boy Scout get-
aways. One of their teams
must be called the lions
or something because for
the past two days now, my
television viewing and
sleeping has been startled
by children screaming about
lions, spelling out the
word so their competitors
don’t forget who they are.
I think about Clamor
magazine’s slogan, “until
lions have their
historians, tales of
hunting will always glorify
the hunter.”
The other morning when I
was walking home from work.
I saw this group of ISYM
kids coming out of the
coffee shop. I couldn’t
believe that these young
kids had worked going to
the coffee shop into their
camp schedule, entailing as
it did, probably waking up
at 6 AM. Most of the kids
probably did so just to
have something to do. One
girl though was walking out
sleepy with a large coffee,
a ballsy move that I only
make when I’m either
determined to race through
a day or planning on
passing out early in the
afternoon. Even then, I
rarely drink the whole
thing, hopefully the girl
the emptiest of feelings
didn’t end up with an
arrhythmia. But then I
thought that maybe she was
already in some high stakes
control binge, practicing
incessantly at her music,
trying to be some sort of
child music prodigy. & No-Doz intake.
Unfortunately, she was not
I remember my first tastes being Saved By the Bell.
of caffeine came in the “There’s no time . .
early years of high school, there’s never any time!”
coinciding with Jesse S h e c o u l d n ’ t j u g g l e
Spano’s control problems G e o m e t r y , Harvard
applications and Hot
Sundaes, a weird girl group
she was forming with Kelly
and Lisa. In between
popping pills and studying
theorems, she was wired,
singing “I’m So Excited”
in that great frenetic
junky way. I wasn’t that
extended: band practice
and academics and the
creation of a zine called
vision. I think I was more
enthralled with the
intensity of it, the jolts
and surges of energy coming
from a Mountain Dew on an
empty stomach or a 200 mg
pill chased with glasses
of water. There was
something almost purifying
about that ritual, staying
up until 3 AM staring at
pages of chemistry notes
and zine ideas. Caffeine
then kept me perfectly
hydrated, the only drawback
being a ravenous appetite
a few hours after the dose.
I remember I wore baggy
pants and t-shirts wearing
deodorant only -- no
antiperspirant -- because
I liked the feeling of
sweat. Maybe the caffeine
and sweat was all a way to
establish a physical
feeling within the
monotonous school day, to
straddle the pernicious

mind/body split, or make I remember copying notes elaborate schemes I would

physical the processes that late at night to get them construct myself in the
were happening in my head. just right, forming perfect jittery haze of caffeine.
study references. Part of These wonder-filed nights
I sat wired in Latin and this was because I could seemed like sprawling
Geometry, ready to pounce never decide on a note masses of hours which were
on the questions asked of taking strategy, bouncing mine for the taking if I
us, not physically by back and forth between could just stay awake long
actually participating in spiral notebooks and three- enough and apply my mind,
the class, b u t ring binders, looseleaf find my will.
technologically, shaping f o l d e r s a n d t r a p p e r
the answers in my notebook. keepers, Ms. Wieland’s “T
Note taking System” and
The adolescence of every free human being
is a war, a struggle with those who came
before; it is this war that maintains vitality, that
fashions destiny—a deadly war one must
wage against the very factors and influences
which gave birth to oneself.
–Brutus to Julius Caesar
David Lynch’s last few
films -- Mulholland Drive,
Lost Highway, and to a
certain extent even the
frivolously Disney
Straight Story -- have all
started with the road as
the point of departure from
which Lynch begins his
meditations on identity,
dreaming, and evil. A man
recklessly drives on a hazy
interstate, able to focus
only upon the Doppler blur
of the yellow lines
dividing the road in Lost
Highway. In Mulholland
Drive, the action begins
once a woman survives a car
wreck, walking away only
with a purse full of money
and the persistent urge to
recreate or destroy
herself. Generally
speaking, road as metaphor
is usually stupid or trite
-- a lame management
strategy, a vague allusion
to a Robert Frost poem --
but with Lynch the concept
is seductive, a sort of
perverse, Rushdie-like
appreciation for The Wizard
of Oz. The nihilist would
be right to point out that
frequently for Lynch, the
road goes nowhere or ends
only in despair or
destruction. However, to
focus only upon the road’s
end is to too easily
embrace the cheesy road
metaphor and ignore the
ways Lynch invokes the
Oedipal drama, crafts a
complete symbolic
language, or builds a
visual experience out of
imagery that seems derived
from the unconscious.
I find driving especially
fun after going to the
movies, speeding around in
that half-haze where you’re
still reacquainting
yourself with reality but
feeling the rhythm of a
movie. Driving in general
elicits a kind of ambient
state, guided by music on
the radio and the pulsating
landscape you’re moving
through at speeds only
machines can achieve.
Driving is thinking and
moving and place all at
once. It’s both the
perfect coping mechanism as
it gives you time to think
and perhaps cool down and
i used to think there was
the best escape, for more
often than not solitary
drivers -- even in the most
mundane subdivision cul de
sacs -- are elsewhere, lost
in thoughts and fantasies
and reverie. This
incongruous melding of
thought to machine is so
fresh and modern, decades
after the invention of the
automobile. It is also
compellingly American,
everyone allowed to feel
like navigator and explorer
of vast terrains, mired in
both technology and the
thinking-through ofidealistic and innocent
identity. Lynch of course character. Betty does not
knows this, and though he own a car, is never seen
too frequently tweaks driving, and is transported
driving for the sake of theto the dream world of Los
disturbing, it does explainAngeles via commercial jet.
his quintessential Unfortunately, it is there
American demeanor. He says where she must actually
“golly” and wears unlayeredencounter dreaming in life:
flannel shirts, yet you symbolic power struggles
can’t help but think that writ large, a slight
his freaky movies aren’t recurring terror, the
enough to exorcise a dissolution and
tormented mind. reintegration of self and
identity. In putting
In Mulholland Drive, Lynch together this hackneyed
writes perhaps his most tribute to adolescent
wonder I’ve been perhaps
most delayed by commercial
jets, the terror they’ve
instilled in the country,
and the paralyzing
compulsion for information
about war events that
they’ve led to. Since I
was a kid I always imagined
in an innocent way that I
would die young, thus
staving off adult
responsibilities or
college or learning to
drive or any other
possibility that was remote
or far away or nerve-
no future
racking. It wasn’t that I
was a morbid child, it’s
actually more similar
probably to self-help
ideologies of “living for
today!” or savoring the
moment. Now, in moments
of Anthrax, I find myself
more confused, thinking I’d
adapted to long range
planning enough to stop
thinking my demise is an
adequate excuse for not
doing anything. I try to
think of terror’s
significance at this point
in my life, how maybe we’re

so susceptible to it
because of an alchemical
imbalance, the foundations
of the sublime lying
equally upon terror and
wonder. Positioned between
leaving the cushy college
life and embarking on
anarchist utopian
pursuits, I find myself
searching more directly for
the sublime, hoping it will
win out over biological
terrorism or a nihilist
excitement for death.
Extension provides a sort
of comfort. This is a
concept Lynch has grasped
all too well. Lost Highway
and Mulholland Drive, both
grapple with identity in
similar ways, laying bare
its schizophrenic subtext
and fracturing it among
different characters and
bizarre Mobius morphings of really just voice what
time, place and person. everyone doing zines was
Josie Packard’s the really up to: making
hermeneutic for this one. extravagant gifts for
Recall in Twin Peaks how strangers, tapping into the
when faced with such world from the periphery
extreme loss and despair and sprucing it up while
and complete entrapment, you try. I have found
Josie morphs into the wisdom in bathrooms and
drawer pull on a dresser parking garages, the sage
in a hotel fraught with words of postmodern
mystery. The drawer handle prophets banged out on that
literally takes the shape stupid typewriter every
of Josie’s face howling in hipster seems to have, and
agony. It is as if Lynch’s at times this has been the
surreal lesson to everyone only knowledge that
is to realize that mattered. It consoles me
everywhere is imbued with now, when war has driven
hidden meanings and lives people who mispronounce
that at some point actually zine to Sharpie their own
threaten to overtake manifestoes and distribute
whatever counts as reality them, hoping that each
at a given moment. sloppily stapled missive
does something or connects
I think about all the people. It’s enough to
beautiful zinesters at the make one remember the
UPC and how the best future, not as a suite of
solution anyone could come new technologies, but as
up with at one of the t h e expanse of
seminars was to leave zines possibilities which have
in bathrooms, which was to not yet happened.
 2

1
1 3 4
2

3
1 from Gray’s Anatomy 1 The comic fellow is from “Summer Job” in Optic
Nerve #2 by Adrian Tomine (Drawn & Quarterly
2 from Flinch #14, Vertigo Comics Publications)

3 screenshot from Twin Peaks 2-3 Original photographs

The Laurie Anderson quote (in Latin on the Cover)
comes from Songs and Stories from Moby Dick (1999)
Cover: Diagram from Crop Circles by Lucy Pringle
(1999)
4 from the liner notes to Amnesiac by Radiohead
Headline is quoted from “Pull Pulk Revolving Doors”
on Amnesiac.

The use of images and texts within space for machines

falls within the fair use clause of US Copyright
law. space for machines #2 is copyright 2001.

3
1

2
4
1

2 5 3 4
1 original photograph 1, 3-4 original photograph/work

2 from Rising Stars #1 by J. Michael Straczynski 2 from the Danville Off-Track Betting facility,
located in the Ramada (south side)
3 from Crop Circles: A Beginner’s Guide by Hugh
Manistre (Hodder & Stoughton press), p. 46.

4 from the liner notes to Amnesiac, Radiohead

5 from Rising Stars #3 by J. Michael Straczynski

 5
1 2 3
1
6
2 4

3
5 4
1 from Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth by 1 from liner notes to Kid A, Radiohead
Chris Ware, (Pantheon, 2000) 2 screen shot of Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks
3 sculpture located outside of Krannert Art Museum,
2 sculpture located outside of Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL. FE (artist’s initials
Champaign, IL. FE (artist’s initials 4 from Rising Stars #4 by J. Michael Straczynski
5 Columbine, AP photo
3-4 original photographs 6 from Astro City #1 by Busiek, Anderson, Ross

5 from The Schwa Sound by Nate Powell, 7205 Geronimo, Headline quoted from “Let Down” on OK Computer,
N Little Rock, AR 72116, soophiebones@hotmail.com Radiohead

1 5 1
6

4 3
2 3
2
4
5

1 the chemical structure of caffeine 1-4 original photographs

2 from the liner notes to OK Computer, Radiohead 5 screen shot from Twin Peaks

3-4 original photographs

5 from The Schwa Sound by Nate Powell, 7205 Geronimo,

N Little Rock, AR 72116, soophiebones@hotmail.com

6 from Crop Circles by Lucy Pringle (Thorsons, 1999),

p. 130
 space for machines
PO Box 635
Urbana IL 61803
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