The Unlimited Dream Company
1994-1995
After college, I went up to Leeds as my good friend Adam was living there, and I had vague hopes of following up my film & drama course with study at the Northern School of Film & Television there. These soon faded as the psychic fall-out from my student daze led me closer to the things that had lurked in the wings as I tried to carve my own niche in the academic world: dreams, synchronicity, magick, and a deeper understanding of altered states than my haphazard experiences had so far given me.
At the same time, there was a coming-together in Leeds, a swift and inexorable meeting of minds that became known as Godhaven. From Merrick I quickly picked up enthusiasm for zines, cut-and-pasted (like, with scissors and glue, not Ctrl-X and Ctrl-V) little photocopied creations rife in and around punk culture. Fuelled by my gleeful post-academia studies ("I can read what I want now!") of William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Arthur Koestler and Surrealism, by contact with thee soon-to-implode Temple Ov Psychick Youth in London and Sheffield, and by the burdgeoning anti-Criminal Justice Bill activist movement, this zine was a brief but fun ‘n’ fascinating experiment in postal collaboration. The title, in case you’re wondering, is from the title of a wonderful novel by J.G. Ballard (that I didn’t actually read until the late 90’s).
Various dream documents in art, cut-ups, poetry and writing sat alongside interspersed quotes and items such as:
- ‘The Physiology of Sleep‘, ‘Rediscovering Cut-ups’ & ‘Synchronicity: Notes towards the abolition of the concept of chance’ by me
- Matt Conner’s interview with Paul McFatrick, recently released from a psychiatric hospital, talking about his UFO experiences
- ‘Coping With Nightmares’ & ‘Notes on Thaumiel’ by Mykeul J. Bates (an occult perspective)
- ‘Inbetweener’ & ‘Aleksandar Zograf’s Hypnagogic Visions’ by Sasha Rakezic (a Yugoslavian cartoonist)
- ‘Still Fighting: The SAFF and the Satanic Abuse Myth’ (my interview with Mike from the Sub-Culture Alternatives Freedom Foundation, an off-shoot from the local Leeds 6 occult shop The Sorceror’s Apprentice that got firebombed after a scare-mongering TV programme)
- ‘Some Notes on Surrealism and Dream’ by Stuart Inman
- ‘Dreamaze’ (an anonymous psychic journal)
- Visionary art by Matt and Indigo, then together as the seminal Bristol post-rock band Third Eye Foundation
- Hivixxies Art Guild propaganda
- My interview with Alan Worsley, the subject in Keith Hearne’s experiement that first proved the empirical reality of lucid dreaming in the early 70’s
- Other art by Andy C, Jim Davies, M. Kemp & Steve Andrews
- Other contributions by Danny Lowe, Graeme Reekie, Jake Kirkwood & Harper
The final issue included a transcript of Terence McKenna’s Alien Dreamtime talk, heralding my far more ambitious project, Towards 2012.
