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Excavations in Substation

by Nigel Ayers

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1.
“No,” I said. A stream burbled away, twenty metres of moving, swirling speckles of scarlet, topaz, azure and violet, flickered and vanished flinging off swirling clouds of real books. Hot hair curled into tight ringlets and tangled clumps; curved gracefully running down alleyways, and now weighed fifty pounds, twenty times as much as it should have . In fact, I saw on her screen an image of huge hidden reservoirs that fell and fell. Next I saw some representations chosen at a car park thirty yards to the left. He shook his head: no. I pointed the remote control at the television and pressed the button in the corner repeatedly. The screen brightened , and rotated around and around , a flat black and white image appeared. It was soft and pliable, abruptly changing through ninety degrees, smudging and dripping. Without proper contrast, for a few seconds, then back to one shade of white and grey static and then it slid out of sight. Under my feet, three simple forty metre screens and two complex ones. Twenty metres from the ground, all these rain-scoured images that are treated with a light-reflecting paint, flapping around overhead, there’s no one looking. Such long, dark images filled the floors, unable to focus with a series of parts that when put together form a language. One by one, I peeled out the pictures, dripping rainwater, trailing a thick film of saliva behind scattered in huge, concave triangles.
2.
In the beginning, my journey unfolded with a series of false starts and misguided directions. I encountered numerous setbacks that tested my resilience and determination. It was far from a flawless entrance onto the scene, unlike the divine arrival spending seven days in creation, as the concept of time itself was still in its embryonic stages. The sun had not yet graced the cosmos with its radiant presence, and the days stretched out over an indeterminate span, taking millions of years to complete. These early stages of my adventure were marked by a constant ebb and flow, a dance between progress and stumbling blocks. I didn't emerge as a god-like figure, perfectly poised and omnipotent. Instead, I found myself navigating through a chaotic landscape where every step forward was met with unforeseen challenges, a stark contrast to the divine creation stories whispered through the cosmic winds. In the nascent phases of existence, beginnings took on the role of an assimilation point, a convergence of possibilities and uncertainties. It was a juncture where the fabric of reality seemed to weave itself together, each thread representing a potential path. Yet, like caution signs around an excavation site, warning of hidden pitfalls, my journey was fraught with moments of hesitation and reflection. "Whoa! Caution: excavations in substation," the signs proclaimed, echoing through the corridors of my mind. These words served as a reminder that the path ahead was not always clear, and I needed to tread carefully through the uncharted territories of my own creation. But that was only the beginning. Determined to unravel the mysteries of my existence, I ran my experiences through the computer of introspection. The digital machinery of self-reflection whirred to life, processing the raw data of my journey. It dissected the false starts, wrong turns, and setbacks, transforming them into lines of code that held the essence of my growth. As the lines of code scrolled across the screen, a narrative emerged. It was a tale of resilience, of learning from mistakes, and of forging ahead despite the uncertainty that shrouded the path. The assimilation point of beginnings began to take shape as a canvas, painted with the vibrant hues of triumphs and tribulations. The computer became my companion in this journey of self-discovery, a silent confidant that translated the chaos into a coherent story. It was a tool that allowed me to see beyond the surface, to understand the intricacies of the narrative etched into the fabric of my existence. In the grand tapestry of life, my beginnings were not a mere prologue but a pivotal chapter. The caution signs served as guideposts, urging me to explore the depths of my being with a mindful heart. As I moved forward, the excavation of my own soul continued, revealing layers of complexity and depth that mirrored the vastness of the cosmos itself. And so, with each keystroke and reflection, my story unfolded—a testament to the resilience found in the face of uncertainty, a symphony composed from the cacophony of beginnings. Or so the computer told me.
3.
She Pointed 02:47
She pointed to an open area, high up inside the closed off room, brilliantly lit along the walls. As a truck drove through the gate, a voice suddenly echoed in the air. Imagine the birches, think about the mathematics. Two warehouses full of big-wheel solar cycles, elaborately painted in shades of light, and thousands of coins, intricately carved frames, hooped over stout crown mouldings. The room was over twenty feet high, wide as a chateau. If someone tried to enter, powerful magnetic clips holding large bottles of shampoo detect the faintest chemical signatures and toxins. What does this mean? In a minute, you'll find just about the smallest of small things you can find. The food in this cupboard here, in plain sight, along the same fault line face, the spirals in the dark. He'd hardly hung his coat and booted up the application. His arms and legs were screaming before his eyes, because they're just into the place, out and through the only doorway, with an actual door in it. Ah, the one and only sweat shaker. She approached, carefully, she wheeled closer, to the weak, grey and flat shreds of nothing, and two professionals broke into a fit of coughing.
4.
Then, the ring of water will sweep the world. It snakes until it dissolves hidden meaning, substitutions, new phrases and even anagrams. Keep it to yourself. Something slithered away. I sat in a smoke-shrouded bar, down a cold wet passage, with paintings for sale at fancy prices. The sensation of being drugged faded, I stopped and squinted. The pictures were of letters, six feet high. The artists, all on special commission, under contract. And you know, they were obsolete. They were past it. Then I walked over to the woman, I said, I said, get out. Oh, nobody could work in an area like this. In the background, the gas-meter made some kind of a mysterious signal. Twelve thousand miles away, black smoke boiled with a sense of decay. My carbine over my shoulder, I walked briskly, looking for reality, but finding only heavy objects. She interrupted me with a little moan. Words tumbled and slashed at the car. Leaves pressed like hands against her shoulder. It seemed that she was a regular here. Spooling through, keeping the tape under control, gripping the warm, taut machine shaft at the top, and looking out at the heather and bracken and gorse. She started hallucinating, and the shafts looked steep. And it was at least a thousand hours until dusk. A summer of excitement and adventure forced him from her hard drives. He's down there in the dark. He could feel her searching his eyes for clues. He kept his eye on the digital. She found nothing interesting. She contemplated how she would like to watch the ceremony. It was tricky work to refine the random images in the right order. Put their spoils on display. Let them speak for themselves. Allowing several seconds until her eyes shook with the madness of it. Perfectly splashing all the sensitive vertical and horizontal surfaces of her sex. Computer searches only worked when you had shaken the place down. Three in the afternoon, she said, the guy had grabbed the mic and dropped it in the dead man's pocket. And hitched his tom-toms closer into the hollows of the mortars. The music built up into a thundering, followed by one of those recorded chimes. And leftist revolutionaries rolled the prepared log onto herbs, garlic, with quick glances to their standard roadmaps of the local area. Trying to fit them into coherent order to dig out historic adventures from almost indecipherable typing. That's right, I agreed. Everyone's a writer, and we will make a pleasurable hobby into a lucrative way of earning. That, at least, was the theory. But a very long time later, I sat looking at ninety-two pages of random, muddy, melted mush. Broad stripes of sunshine on the wall beside the washing machine. The man was listening hard, and very faintly, he spotted the red record light. He'd never grasped the subtleties of the machine, so he froze alone, his head bent. He scratched at his scrotum, he began to jive around, his hands slapping down, his eyes closed. He was repeating softly to himself: the trick is to pretend that the work has an elusive ring of authenticity. The whisper of the ancient oaks, whitish silhouettes against the velvet of night, noises of bladderwrack and crusting mud, of the morning's high tide. You can come with me, yeah, come on.
5.
It seems to get heavier and heavier. Think it’ll do any good? His senses swam, for twenty minutes there was no movement. The photo lab spotlights swung in arcs, focused on me. With each breath I take my left hand seems to get lighter. I visualise it rising off my lap. Pulsing flesh, scraping, biting, saturated credit card numbers, cracked glass, her right leg a serial port. Bright, flashing colours splashed each wall, avalanche of hot juices, poetic justice and seismic waves for the soul. The drop-outs, the weirdies, the bauble, bangle and bead brigade on the books and records and.. “Let us go upstairs and sample those delights we enjoyed so long ago.” “Groovy,” said the girl, and she smiled, the flame’s reflection glistening in her eyes. “Give us a kiss.” He brings out the lukewarm bucket and places it in the centre of the room. I now concentrate on my left hand. I see it in my mind’s eye with my eyes closed, in a deep state of relaxation. Now my left hand touches my left cheek. Step 9 Step 8 can be repeated. Some may wish to watch instead of participate. Others who start may wish to drop back to the sidelines. Fine. Fine for the first three thousand miles Step 5 A mesmerised monochrome system flashed through my brain. The hum the piercing twang and boom - stark tendrils of life, that’s all. It just didn’t look right. My thoughts were running naked and hell, baby, I was involved. You know, I was handsome, young , dynamic, a fighter, a swinger. Branches smacking, deep deep sadness bellowed wordlessly Step 4 Walk. That’s’ what the little piece of paper says. That’s the whole point. “I’ll put it as plainly as I can,” she said, The station was empty. His telephone rang. He stepped on to the platform. He looked at his watch hopefully. He sat on a bench and smacked his lips many times as though not knowing what to expect. Savouring outdoor noises, nooks and crannies with quick-jigsaw warmth. The thin wail of sirens. A sucking sensation, clear plastic bubbles. Inclement weather stroked the windows, burning, shifting, A hundred deer, a hundred boar, feathery hair, imminent climax A hundred empty nights Gleams of a fugitive humour “Can I keep this?” there was a long silence. Step 7 It was Imbolc, the happy time. They squatted on the floor and nothing on underneath the dress she wore. I continued to look at the floor for sixty seconds. Step 8 At first it tickled. Half-opened eyes fluttered. Dead eyes in the living figment. In twenty years’ time, two people would be looking curiously at the tattoo. There was a transparent wall facing the ocean, The rounded form of a circular building. There was an awkward silence The voice in a little squawkbox. Memorising each feature. Feeding, cleaning, working. And in one hour, without a single shot, surrounded by green hills and fronted by a sweeping promenade and wide sandy beach, our tour bus drove off a viaduct. With its dramatic coastal views. Will blood flow in the streets? Three days later, we’ll have time to further explore watch the ground crew below moving like bees and watch the dial jump. I grinned at him and hoisted the beer. He pulled a manila envelope out from the van, The train began to slow down, and made appropriate noises then it stopped in the open somewhere … And the smoke drifted thick. I grinned at him and shook my head. “No.” An hour went by, and before you know it, night is fallen and another day is done.
6.
Marked by a small rectangle which was completely empty., the second item was a hand drawn map, cable-tied to the edges of the ether. Chemical-smelling paper responded to his vision. It was tricky. It was laden with rotting leaves, The smell enveloped him He wore a single black leather glove. He appeared to come from nothing, come out of the air, out of the void – a face, a room. a black crescent-shaped crack all year round but every time they’d draw a blank. She sniffed and turned her back on him. “No way.” Another shake of the head, another wave flooded in, a change in the quality of the air. A bank of television sets, strobe lights. The lights everywhere were so bright. No time for work or thought any more. The brightness was harsh and didn’t fade overnight. I didn’t get any sleep. At that moment the strange cave-painting designs drop to the bottom to form a pool of one long word no one will ever read. The document scrolls continuously, its pages ooze letters of plastic rain. But she could hear the thunder and see the electronic storm. The sky looked beaten, bruised, and swollen. These days with a whoosh and a roar special programs induced dangerous ideas and acted like a hammer Break through firewalls.
7.
A Fast Mover 02:28
He's a fast mover Within the circular enclosure. An oversized tongue squatted absurdly naked. Put his eyes back in place, so the eyelids could get over the pulpy mess. The bowl he was drinking from spilled borrowed armour. Naked she cringed, Piece of paper in the dark. A powerful throbbing mounted up, up her dress and scurrying out of the room. He was seeing someone else, that's how it was. He was still struggling with it, as they saw on his Facebook page. The streets will be littered with the cold shiver of feet bellowing in pain. For a few seconds his legs trembled, and filthy degenerate capitalist running dog damnation. What about your boys? He had to squeeze the words out between lips, through his legs. Some lusting voyeur, he felt a thousand little interior rhythms. She was giggling. He's a wise runt, beyond the level of the ape. Pencilling in the ladies pubes, from the darker corners, there came muffled squeals. It was so carefully painted out. Sometimes the door closed all the way to the crevice. Not for the first time, she had approached the open windows.
8.
In The Event 04:25
In the event we're out of stock of any of the unbreakable codes, please send me the name and contact numbers listed below. Order by Dreamcatcher number only. Please print. He hated the computer screen. His eyes had swivelled, swirled, aching across an endless swish, swish. A car rolling backwards, with the dreamer gently chafing her fanny against my shoulder. His forefinger was stiff from taking parallel tracks, front gates and porches, horns and squealing brakes, doorbells, pneumatic doors, hissing, oil, asphalt, old weeds, rags. Something just nudged. Dreams too, dreams speak to him. In fairy tales and parables, theirs is a language of symbol and analogy. Dark and slick, almost too dark to see. But people seem addicted to retail. Throbbing basslines, just a good noise. Wouldn't that be fab? What's all this? Better by far to put it down While others lag behind in a slow lane. It was used by priests in ancient times. It was known to most Neolithic people. It was the human voice. It matters in his life. It protects against negative thoughts, can yield a cure. But pick it up, turn up the volume another few centimetres. Do it, develop a glitch, do not waste it. Express inner forces and prompt a change in habits as well. There was a long silence. The hum of the generators. A cluster of carbon dancers. Then a naughty little hand teased my prick again. Oh my gosh. With glowing photocopied and printed eyes. The armoured television, black with grease. Strung out on carbon. The leads, wires and cabling. The black dot at its tip powdering into tiny crystals. The name of the programme, said Jackman, is Whore, Blow, Minorities. When an even layer of grease had been applied to a set of studios, offices interlinked by closed circuit TV, a supporting timber is removed from under each end of the lovely 48-track desk. I turned up the volume again. Remember, it is gas volume. And I mean gas, not gasoline in the mixing room.
9.
The blinding spray of reddish dust from the spidery veins of sharks, suckerfish, and octopoid tadpoles, each at some stage of tumescence. At last, he inserted the tape, and the black and white photos slid down the surface, and a small group of spidery symbols glinted in the light. The gears began turning against one another. She could hear the stacks of blonde hair and grey hair plunging into the bottles of red and black ink, grinding through the machine. Of course, he said, the community have folded up something for you, in two pieces of metal, plywood boards, wood, brick, and concrete. He hit fast forward for just a few seconds, and the nerve tube started to project images of hands, elbows, shoulders, toes, heels, and knees up onto the four foot long wood frame. He then clicked one of the controls, and used the tape deck as a lever. He saw the light inside gradually intensify, as the slowly turning television monitor stopped again, and waited for someone, anyone. He started huffing and puffing. The heat rising from the tape made the beams and the logs waver and bend. What's going on? The shafts and gears slowly begin to merge, all the sheets, no matter if they're scattered all over the place. We thought the ever-deepening pool of dirt and oil would be a good place to do things thought impossible.
10.
It Isn't Me 06:25
It isn’t me he’s talking about, me and a dark-haired, dark-eyed man – there’s no way. She had discovered one thing. Looking around and feeling very small. One of the large windows came into view, two hundred feet above the abyss below. I need everyone’s undivided attention in order to duplicate the dark green surface reflectance. I’ll do so much walking in this town, tomorrow, it would give her prefrontal cortex some small satisfaction. Smiling, blushing, vinyl-tile floors, and the walls were painted with naked, white noodles, like worms. He minds his own business and doesn’t look for hats and plastic swords obviously intended for tourists. Meanwhile, the superior tech seemed to magnify the brightness a hundredfold but also focused on the words. She’d have to have clung to the glowing pillars, rising two hundred feet into the darkness. She still didn’t even know if the lighter effect was like a single candle burning in that area responsible for language. Her stomach tightened and it was gratifying to see. “Look at this.” He had examined her legs, ambling around her, taking a seat and setting his laptop down, the way he did things made it all smooth. They have surprisingly good glowing translucent pillars, with years of history, before that eventual flash of neurological stimulation took place. The surface would not support her in the dim light and it was definitely frustrating. The spaghetti came sliding onto the funnel at the apex high above. There were his voodoo kits and a variety of crystals and some pirate grime pressed deep into cracked tile floors. For one thing, her roots and herbs place had been ancient, dreary, in need of paint, she reminded herself. The left lobe processes definitely smelled greasy. She crept out of the bathroom and poured herself a pale yellow glass so naturally and deftly, she did that all the time. Like this sequence of images seemed to be made of lead, but lighter and in different categories. Something raw thwanged inside her mind: a microscope composed of knotted rags exploded in her head. She heaved a deep sigh and pointed towards the spotlessly clean room. She weighed them and clutched the greyish-brown tissue in her forearms. And she always knew what was wrong. She provided an injection of adrenaline to his system that gave way at times to fearful depressions. He threw his head back as far as it would go as he kissed and sucked. He moved his wheelchair to avoid being sliced in a ball of simmering desire, as mind wrecking and body shredding as it was in their current location. Every time she looked at him, a memory of scattering and shattering descended, dismayed, half-grins on their faces, a soaring, airy quality. She ran her hands down the muddy green wall of water, but there was no sound. All these experiences allowed him to stop the alarm just long enough to give attention to the twelve-hundred-square-foot space.
11.
Most days like today, the parking space between the building was visible from the road, but there appeared to be nobody at the end of the corridor. A shot sounded only a couple of streets away. Running feet could be heard. Then an attacking force of plate glass windows seemed to burst open. Instantly discovering that a skanky songwriter and an anonymous team of engineers never liked hearing new material. But there was something else doing my head in, shrivelling slowly in memory, tumbling to its knees on the ground. Somewhat vexed that had happened. Where there really isn't such a place left anymore. Everywhere where to hear rather than to feel. And fell to the ground, shuddering together, weakly lit by a light from the first floor. She enabled cryptographers to leave her their pop anthems with over two dozen files. Having correctly guessed the difference between many bridges for a hypothesized model of interaction, Jack pressed a key on his laptop. Music filled the room, the engine immediately turning, pushing between them, firing bursts not known consciously by the dreamer. The speakerphone behind the locked front door exploded outwards a split second before he fell through several hundred dermatological orifices like hair follicles across the street. Beneath the row of buttons the tape played like the rest of them. They then understood that the sheer force of her conviction had looped and was marked down into the open doorway of another chamber as well as being held up by the platforms beneath them and closed it. I pointed this out and bent ears and proved it. No doubt they have already forgotten to watch him transform the last lingering busload down the romantic lines of the main vertical shaft beyond it. The passengers climbed on to relish the bus's engines in wild flurries of sexual titillation and laughter. We can spread this into a more bilateral look at the wide concrete chasm in front of the ring of blue stones on the clitoris bundle. It's all there, you know you must join us to think of something square, no gimmicks, no time to lose. The sooner we get moving before the sprawling engine directs itself right out of the middle lane and into the romantic area of the red, white and blue front entrance, the better. Right, reaching under his seat, the driver pushed, folded, clicked, adjusted, humming, using his smile and his eyes and with his hands straight up, batten twirled a screwdriver. Meanwhile the beaker folk climbed into the vehicle and threw down buckets of grease. The engine was reassembled and the device was levered from one side and then back, dropped down the vertical shaft on the driver's side, back inside the cross vent first, then rocking back and forth out of the loop to a sudden halt in the correct position over the supporting columns, down, up and down in its distinctive socket.
12.
New Material 07:01
A blurred mass of hair and muscle claws and struggles with his zipper and tries to knock him out of his chair. I made a list of the order of the photos I picked from the pile, and for a little while there, I had shaken loose the screws holding the scrap of memory in place. Crash into the charcoal, jagged peaks dribble something old and brittle, a capsule of nothing but emptiness. After this came three pages of wiggling, wormy lines. Before they were swallowed up by the mist, I was meeting a meeting of minds. I started jabbering on about the busy village, little dogs and hieroglyphs. And within minutes, we agreed a single paragraph that seemed to sum up the video project. And within a week, after further exchanges on the phone, produced a 24-page photocopy document. He listened and studied, and thought he heard chimes, but the sound turned out to be a low whistling howl. Can anybody hear me? I know you've got the world's best equipment, helping to check out a rippling reflection in water, reflected twice. Shaggy and stained with the impression of people and their real-life stories. There was no response, only indifferent silence, crackling the air of the Cornish coast. Then he realized they were eyes, the eyes of his own self-hatred, all dripping off the edge of the sill. A gleaming metallic object hovered the documents were what you were looking for, you found the diagrams didn't you? I rolled off the couch and cradling the aerosol cans a dozen pairs of glowing green eyes were clinking like glass. To stare a slice of wildness. He could spend an eternity studying this fascinating backwash, Taking notes in his notebook which was full of fine watercolours of tear gas packages, short-haired German men and French women. Every day, requited love, lifelong love, and the wrong love. A wave of revolution lifted him. He took the photograph of frothing waves from me, scanned it, and turned the TV off. Then at 10 o’clock I stopped looking at the photograph and pushed lightly, I thought this might help Northeast, southeast, southwest, northwest, a large work table separated the largest part of the main room from the tacked-on cable and wireless technology just inside the doors. And a small canister of liquid from a tiny administrative centre across the grass The master tapes from last night were blanked out and lost in a parking lot As the helicopter slowly rose up into the air they stopped at the end of the tunnel and filled the shopping cart But what was it the guy had said on the phone? Focus your thoughts by not thinking, he grinned They found off scraps of ventilation duct coming out of the soft-edged bulletin board She asked if she could sleep The only power came from batteries Rattling the recorded tapes They got out of the pick-up and pushed their way through a dense thicket that blasted out windows the opening was covered with a dull silver windshield she spun around on the toes of her low heeled shoes Outside night had fallen in inky finality, as if it never thought you were interested. The blinds of the windows were pulled shut, giving the crumbling office complete privacy. Of course, her gaze, through the slats on the closet door raise the hair that had flashed on the screen. Holding her breath and crouched behind some boxes she watched it go down, slowly, as far as the eye could see. She slid her gaze to the sculpture, her sculpture revealed in her headlights. The original idea of mixing backtalk from the two old gals and up to twenty peculiar habits of the American young.

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released February 2, 2024

Words and music by Nigel Ayers

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Nocturnal Emissions Cornwall, UK

Nocturnal Emissions' Nigel Ayers has continued to work with a strong underground of cult support, avoiding music industry fashions, and following his own creative path he concentrated on creating a strong sense of a wilderness identity through sound.

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