Surrounds Game
As you walk speak into a voice recorder, incorporating things around you, wherever you happen to be, into a freewheeling improvisational text. This suggests the interplay of objects broken free from their utilitarian functions and reveals the hidden life of our surroundings.
– JF, DS, HC, SC
I spend much of my time daydreaming, gazing up at the ceiling, thinking of nothing or almost-nothing. Sometimes these absences lead somewhere interesting. Sometimes they don’t. But today, as I vacantly stared at the ceiling, a hazy childhood memory floated in, breaking through the veil of pleasant nothingness. A very early memory. The kind of vague, dreamlike memory that you are never even quite sure was the memory of a real event, or merely a mislabeled dream.
It was a fairly simple one – a memory of an architectural space I had spent an hour or two in with my mother once, somewhere in Atlanta. But something about the way the interior was constructed had fascinated me then. It had a large open space in the middle, and at one end, it seemed as though there was a building inside another building. Hanging plants descended from the sides of this interior building, and there were odd little terraces. Something about it felt unreal to me then and now, like the architecture of dreams, or science fiction. I thought of space colonies, and of the internet “Backrooms” series, with its irrational remixing and reshuffling of architectural spaces.
I also thought of that bizarre Italian horror film The Visitor from 1979, which had struck me most at the time for its bizarre ice skating battle(?) scene. I had noticed then that it was filmed in the very same building as my ancient memory, and had fairly successfully captured the uncanny atmosphere of that early childhood experience. Up until that point, I had never really been sure that the memory had been a real one. From this detail, I began researching online, and I finally found the name of the building. It had been called The Omni Complex, then later The CNN Center, and finally, The Center. I realized I’d passed the entrance to my childhood marvel a hundred times in recent memory, on stickering walks, protests, and other excursions, and had never even realized.
Digging further, I uncovered a (to me) fresh kaleidoscopic gem of Atlanta history. Apparently, when the center opened in 1976, it was host to “The World of Sid and Marty Krofft,” an indoor amusement park based on the various children’s shows of the Kroffts, such as the wonderfully bizarre H.R. Pufnstuf. A prime example of popular surrealism, if ever there was one. In the Krofftian imagination, everything is sentient, everything is alive. Castles have faces, and so do flutes, and even hats. It is the animism of childhood…a kind of live-action Max Fleischer world. And this park in Atlanta took it one step further, too—because a person could travel up that absurdly long escalator, and find oneself arriving in this very material realm of Unreals. A person could become a part of the Krofft’s world in real time, the inner melting towards the outer. A Cartoon-World, infecting the skin of the Real. One could ride crystal carousels, become a pinball in a massive pinball machine, and much more besides. In this place, puppets lived and puppets breathed. Unfortunately, after six months the entire place closed down. It had been barely attended, and was a total financial catastrophe, like most everything else decent in this world.
No choice then, but to hop on a train and make a pilgrimage to this building—like a salmon returning upstream, thirty-something years later. Back to my hazy past. I walked inside, and the first thing I noticed was its utter emptiness. CNN having vacated years ago, the place was now peopled primarily by the dead – by memories. In the central area, the entire escalator was wrapped in white fabric and unusable. An unseasonal Halloween ghost. At the top of it, a giant earth waited awkwardly, a weird relic from the gaudy CNN days. It reminded me of the Krofft park’s distortion of size inside of their pinball machine ride, yet in reverse. Instead of pinballs, we were now giants, observing that troubled human planet from the sidelines. Gods of empty space.
We found a forgotten stairway in a corner and followed it up to yet another desolate atrium. Empty chairs waited for dwellers who never appeared. Strangely interior hotel windows looked out onto the corpse-like space, a few with their curtains open and their lights turned on. Hinting at occupants, yet no movement was ever seen. I thought of the best of those “Backrooms” episodes again, the ones in which the monster never actually appears. Because the true star, and the real horror, is always the atmosphere of the place itself. Which is the atmosphere of the ghost, of the absence which becomes a presence. Felt, never seen. As much as I’d love to suddenly see a demented H.R. Pufnstuf peeking out from around the corner of this hotel hallway, it’s enough just to feel as though he’s waiting there around the corner. Some spaces help one realize the very real truth that anything can happen in reality, at any time. This is one of those spaces.
Indeed, I realized suddenly that this building had turned into a totally new kind of amusement park, one consisting of nothing-presences and carousels of stillness. Everything in it was simultaneously dead, yet alive, like an inverted shadow version of all those talking houses and flutes of the H.R. Pufnstuf show. I was struck by how well my present experience of the place, in this distant future world of 2025, was a match for the dreamlike feel of an early memory, and of the particular memory which spawned this exploration. It was as if this building, along with others like it, had been molded under the dark gravity of our collective memories—a kind of architectural possession. The building itself became a Krofft puppet, pulled by unseen strings. Perhaps we humans exude a peculiar virus to infect our material surroundings over time. A virus called Haunting.
All this then, from a passing daydream. A kind of lesson there, perhaps: a reminder to keep the door of your mind open, or at least cracked, whenever possible. For who knows what unexpected guest might appear – maybe even H.R. Pufnstuf himself – to guide you down that magic path towards the Marvelous…
Combination of the silhouette game + diagram game with a UFO focus.
– JF, DS, SC, HC, AM, RC, E
Magic afoot.
We were told to take a walk through the city, and to hunt for these two things:
a mole
&
a rose
I wrote the words on my feet. “Mole” was repeated on the right. “Rose” was repeated on the left. A spell, an attractor. An irrational idea, that I knew somehow would work. The feet shall know with a certainty all occult secrets which the mind shall merely intuit. So I listened to the guidance of the toe, and was not deceived.
We discovered the mole’s burrow on North Avenue. It was cold, crystalline. Dripping water had created intense stalactites, some perhaps seven or eight feet tall. We walked deeper in, and deeper. Concrete archways grew at the center of the tunnel, wise and menacing. My friend was overtaken with a sense of the grave, with the idea of a graveyard underground. The empty spaces created by the arches were like gravestones, they said, and these invisible gravestones had a corresponding material gravestone elsewhere, too. Perhaps in Decatur Cemetery, where the werewolves rein. We thought of our own deaths too, here in the underground. Looking above at the stalactites, one thought of little else. What kind of unwholesome, sick beauty might our bodies display, impaled through by these translucent spears of ice? Cars rushed by, wrapping us in a soft cocoon of sound. Ahead, a strange and slow figure creeped. Hunched over, with head and body covered in thick brown winter clothes. A fairly short human, even by our standards. We watched as they made their way to the burrow’s open mouth. We tried to hang back and avoid them, but eventually we had to pass. The brown figure cried gibberish at our backs, half in song. Gibberish, or lost mole language? Meaning felt nearby, at the tip of our conscious minds. But not quite there, not quite. We never looked back. And as we left behind this burrow, we became convinced that the strange figure was the mole. A mole spirit, in human clothes.
A few hours passed.
To be honest? At this point in our walk, we’d forgotten the search for the rose. Too many aches and pains, too much hunger. We came across a small park, and, quite relieved, searched for the nearest bench. The first was broken, so we walked on to the second. And there she waited–the tiny rose. We couldn’t believe our eyes. Not a solitary rose, either. No, she waited for us on the top of a strange little offering, an assemblage. Beautiful in its irrationality. Something had sat here and slowly built this pyre. Had collected bits of twigs, bits of grass, bits of tree. And combined them in this very special way. For who? For us? For what reason? We tried to imagine the kind of entity which would do such a thing. A spirit perhaps, or a bower bird, or a child. We tried to imagine the state of mind that would cause this mound to come into being, and to make this state our own. For a long time we sat mutely in the stillness. Listening to the distant birdsong, letting the wind nuzzle kindly at our eardrums…
City trash men walked past us, breaking the spell. Asked us both “how y’all doing?”
Pretty well, sir. Pretty well.
Any sudden end of “business as usual” ushers in possibilities for everything that is neither business nor usual. Every interruption in the “normal functioning” of government and commerce reveals glimpses of a new society that is the very negation of such sorry afflictions. Momentarily freed of the stultifying routine of “making a living,” people find themselves confronted with a rare opportunity to live. – A River’s Revenge, Chicago Surrealist Group, 1992
We took a walk before dawn. The snow had already started falling. Falling from the moon itself, perhaps. The world was a quiet pocket of calm, emptied of all people. A soft apocalypse. In the mystery of early morning, everything felt like an extension of our dreams. We walked to the center of the crossroads, amusing ourselves by drawing a pentagram in the snow with our footprints. Summoning revolution, summoning the total reinvention of everyday life. No, it is not snow which flakes down from that silvery moon. It is the great goddess Poetry herself…
In Atlanta, a minor snow collapses everything. The cars retreat to their burrows. Businesses close down, and schools all shut their doors. It is as though capitalism itself freezes. Turning finally into an white empty mannequin, into a puppet unstrung. And these snow days happen so very rarely that they barely seem real. Distant memories of a half remembered dream.
The Great Blizzard of ‘93 arrived on the morning of my 6th birthday. I like to think that my childhood self dreamed it into existence in the night – as the absolute perfect gift. I like to think it, well perhaps I did. I ran through the snow in my puffy red jacket, and with my friends, brought several great white monsters into being. Ephemeral snow golems, marvelous beasts. Childhood’s most treasured tulpas. Eventually we all came back inside, to open presents and eat cake by the fire.
The Chicago Surrealist Group once wrote the following lines about the Great Flood of ‘92:
“The majesty and fertility of the river is as irrepressible as the desire for freedom. Dreamers of the world, dream like the flood!”
Dreamers of the world, let’s dream like a snowday, too.
–
CODA
by NIMOZ
what should i call you, night
besides night
whose feathers
thick, soft, black
have turned white?
what should i call you
at sunrise
when the night turns golden?
may i call you friend
when you hold me
in the heat
and the cold
and the rain?
i hope i will die
in your arms
with the stars
looking on
Initial Concept: Mountain Stairway as Words
Chosen Stairway: Amicalola Falls
Walk the path to the waterfall. Let each step in your journey become one word in an automatic story. Let the ceaseless rhythm of walking upwards deny any attempt at backtracking, pausing or rethinking. Mutter it under your breath as you climb, record or remember it. The automatic muse will walk alongside you, invisible yet potent…
Participant 1’s story:
In the darkness was a voice. And the voice spoke into the darkness. The voice spoke the darkness into something larger than it had been. The voice spoke the darkness into becoming a giant. The giant was very beautiful, and the giant was the world. From the giant’s mouth came time or light, and from the giant’s eyes came birth, and from the giant’s ears came death. From the giant’s navel came a great rushing waterfall. In the waters dwelled silver fish and rainbow fish and golden fish. From the waters arose a thick and roiling mist. Some of the mist became clouds. Within the mist was also dust, and over time, particles of dust clumped together and formed the dry lands. Some particles of dust crawled across the land on their bellies, some grew legs and walked, some grew wings and flew. Some particles of dust grew roots and stayed still and had leaves, some grew petals, and some crawled along the ground yet also had roots and leaves, and tendrils which clung.
Participant 2’s story:
Crystal clear object. This is a foot. A foot with toes, devoured by the Dog. Spit out one toe, little doggie. Wet and slimy now, they transform at our feet. Become a diamond necklace, marvelous. This diamond necklace does Everything, it does Nothing. Depending on one’s point, and one’s view. Necklace becomes a white bird, Necklace flies into earth’s greatest sandstorm. Below this sandstorm is the Great Pyramid of Giza, and a pharaoh. A banquet is set for him, a feast. A special duck is served. The Triangle Headed Duck. When devoured, each devourer’s head is remade as triangle, too. Is triangulated. And out from each of its three points, there seep Spirits. Spirits dark, and translucent. They become Faceless Walkers, fading into Horizon. As they walk, they are joined by one loyal friend and companion: sweet “Jacket”, black and warm. But at the turn of the earth, Jacket grows two raven wings, and departs. He follows the wind, he reaches the ocean storm. And flies into it. Alexander the Great sails in this storm, he rides it, and then, he fails. Once consumed by the waves, our earth stops spinning. And all humankind leaves at last, for darkest Jupiter. Settling deep on her beckoning clouds. Our sun weeps quite freely then, and repents.
The streets are filled with an abundance of tactile experience we seldom avail ourselves of. And the tactile-imaginary is the most underused inner organ of them all. Even in our dreams, touch often plays second fiddle to visuals, to narrative and emotion. In the following experiment, I decided to explore this tactile-imaginary. To stretch that underused muscle, and see what strange new worlds might open at my fingertips.
INITIAL CONCEPT: Petting Zoo
Our world is a petting zoo. If only we’d let it be. Stretch out thy skeletal fingers (tentacles?) and stroke firm at this, the ever-changing zoo. Be not afraid of the skin-staining dirt, fear not at the bite of the traveling germ. Embrace all possibilities. Swim in the dank, marvelous Unknown of your city street’s offal.
First, choose thy desired, desiring animals. Be they goat, be they donkey, or lamb?
For myself, on this first of finger excursions, I chose the four following creatures: Elephant, Salamander, Gila Monster, Slug.
I now set out to find these tactile entities. Hidden among the highway cast offs, masked behind a thousand layers of visual camouflage…
[…that trash bag is no trash bag, friend. It is a dung beetle!]
My framing in hand, I depart.
–
The Gila Monster
I touch one hidden animal after another, looking for my chosen. Yet nothing feels quite right when I interrogate it with my fingers. Instead, I am finding other half-guessed animals, shy little creatures which skitter away at the touch. Still, the experience is quite disorienting overall. An unseen universe is opening up for me, I am reading and interacting with the landscape in an entirely new way.
Finally, on the corner of Moreland and Ponce De Leon, I find my first animal. My Gila Monster! Cars speed by as I gaze lovingly at him. A hundred eyes watch transfixed, as I reach out my trembling hand. And then I pet him. I touch Gila, and am amazed. A total tactile confirmation; this could be nothing else. My gila monster reacts very little to this caress. Merely gazes up slyly, and returns to a very long sleep.
Elephant
I find a herd of elephants in Little 5 Points. No head, no legs, no tail, but I can feel the truth. Rough, wrinkled, old. Heading towards god knows where, in the slowest, most imperceptible of motions. Covered in stickers and graffiti, tricking all with their silence. Hiding in plain sight. I touch them, and they respond to my touch. A current passes between us, and we give each other a sort of inner wink. We’re in on the secret now–are you?
Salamander
Truly a salamander is the most common creature in Atlanta at this time, for I think I have cataloged at least 5 or 6 of these odd little creatures. Many are colored orange or yellow, and can be heard screaming out a warning of some kind, things like “CAUTION”, or “CALL BEFORE YOU DIG”. A defense mechanism, perhaps? Others are blankly white or transparent and have moister skin, yet are somehow more disturbing to me, despite their lack of any scream.
Slug
Signs of him are everywhere. One sloppy slug trail after another, crossing my path. Behind dumpsters, in driveways and across streets. All is lubricated. And yet? No slugboy in sight. No final boss. My first three chosen, they were found quite quick. And yet with this guy? It’s all just hints, all just whispers. Little microscopic teases. After about an hour of walking, I get the strong and unmistakable sense that he is close by. I rush behind an Italian restaurant, knowing I’ll catch him at last. Unfortunately? It seems I’ve been left in the lurch again, because it’s just another slug trail. A trail, leading up to a drain pipe. Leading up to a roof. Seeing no safe way to follow the villain to his final hideout, I decide to give up the chase. Not every surrealist hunter bags his game, I guess. Unfortunately.
I speed home now, ready to catalog my finds. And non-finds. I burst through the door, resisting the temptation to immediately wash potentially pestilential hands. Hands that have touched a hundred strange creatures of unknown pedigrees…
No, I let the holy germs seep deep inside the keyboard, impregnating all my wandering words…
ZOO TREK
There are places that create through you. Find those places and become a vessel. Your best creations are not your own.
There is one such place we have taken to visiting over the past year or more, a kind of weekly ritual which we undertake. It is a tunnel under a road, next to an indigenous site of invisible mounds. Invisible, because the mounds were destroyed when a road was built next to it in the 1940s. Dismantled, and turned into road fill.
It started as a whim. I saw a trail called “Leake Mounds Interpretive Trail” on a map. My partner and I had an hour to spare, and so we decided to walk it. We were struck by the place immediately. Decaying historical markers everywhere dotted the overgrown trail, explaining the history of a people long gone. Explaining an absence. As a 1-star Google reviewer commented, “Interpretive is a euphemism for imaginary…This is a gravel path through an industrial complex that leads to a flooded tunnel running under a highway…The “trail” ends up in an equally depressing empty field on the other side of the thoroughfare…” In my book, quite a lovely recommendation. Because sometimes an absence becomes a presence. A mold has been created, a hollow space waiting to be filled with Something. So take the shadow road. Tall grasses will reach out to take your hand, as the door to Elsewhere swings wide open.
I heard a story once of a man who saw a UFO very near here. Late one night, while driving home with his newly born grandchild. A little future Atlanta Surrealist Group member, in point of fact. And I’m not in the least bit surprised.
Each time we come here to this tunnel, my partner sings. And me? I draw along the walls. Each of us creates automatically, letting the tunnel use our fingers, use our mouths. I don’t know how this pattern first started. Really, we just came to this place, and this is what the place wanted of us. And we certainly weren’t about to say no.
I think that this must be what prehistoric man felt like, way back in Chauvet Cave. Strange figures drawing themselves alongside cave walls, unknown gods speaking through uncomprehending flesh. A poetry lit by firelight and by shadow. The original poetry. Perhaps an outbreak of song accompanied these events, too. If it came naturally to us, then…
Our visit began with the usual activities. My partner sang, and I drew a figure of a sun in birth.
We had a bit more time than usual on this day, and decided to play a surrealist game. In it, the first player wrote down a question on the walls, which the other did not look at. Meanwhile, the second player formed an answer to the unknown question in their head and told it to the other, who proceeded to write it below the initial question.
We were both feeling pleasantly unsettled after all this, as though we had fallen into a new, more magical world. We exited the tunnel then, and headed towards the empty field on the other side. On the hill next to the road we saw an unexpected sight. A collection of “ice flowers” had somehow expectorated from the foot of plants, a phenomenon never before witnessed by either of us. Some kind of fairy enchantment at work, perhaps? We thought of JG Ballard’s novel “The Crystal World” almost immediately, a story of a world overtaken and transformed by an outbreak of just such frozen sculptures. The delicate and beautiful harbingers of a delightful science fiction apocalypse. We picked up a few of these translucent flowers, and they shattered in our hands.
After a time studying these, we made our way to leave. Yet we ran into more white marvels on the other side, too: a field composed of dead leaves gone ghostly-white. We’d somehow missed this field on the way in. Or perhaps it had just appeared? Perhaps these, and those ice flowers, too, had been coaxed into being by the tunnel-spirit? A response of sorts, to our surrealist magic? Or maybe this was merely a lesson in seeing with eyes unclouded, of proper perspective? Either – both – who knows…
Surrounds Game
As you walk speak into a voice recorder, incorporating things around you, wherever you happen to be, into a freewheeling improvisational text. This suggests the interplay of objects broken free from their utilitarian functions and reveals the hidden life of our surroundings.
