All The Little Bits In The Carpet

𝔄𝔩𝔩 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔏𝔦𝔱𝔱𝔩𝔢 𝔅𝔦𝔱𝔰 ℑ𝔫 𝔗𝔥𝔢 ℭ𝔞𝔯𝔭𝔢𝔱

Today, dear reader, I am half blind again.

I don’t own any spectacles right now, and I ran out of contact lenses, and the hurricane delayed delivery of new ones, and in my exhaustion after last night’s impromptu midnight live set, I forgot to preserve the last pair of daily disposables I had, so now I am without lenses, and the whole world is a gaussian BLUR which is very trippy.

My uncle first noticed I was half blind when I was around my son’s age, because I couldn’t make out sign posts. They took me for an eye test and confirmed, yes, he’s half blind, and fixed me up with a pair of thick-lensed goggles with a fluorescent yellow elasticated strap attached to them to save them from smashing when they’d inevitably slip off of my little-kid nose. Kids at school mocked my new visage with gleeful savagery, and overnight I was transformed into a “speccy twat”, but I didn’t care too much immediately, as I was exploring my new world.

When I first put the glasses on it was a revelation which I remember clearly to this day. The soft, blurred world I assumed was the sum of reality gave way to a new, hyper-real, almost grotesquely detailed actuality, and nothing was ever the same.  “I can see!” I exclaimed! “I can seeall the little bits in the carpet!”

It was like when Dorothy got to Oz. I knew for certain now what I’d long suspected - the world as it was presented to me was not the world as it was. And as I explored this new terrain, I had a sneaking suspicion that there were levels beyond this, that would be opened up to me if only I could find the right glasses. Less than a decade later I ate some fungus that grew round the back of the science block in my school and discovered my suspicions to be correct. “I can see!” I exclaimed. “I can seeall the little bits in the air!” 

Without my corrective lenses, it turns out I can see bits in the air again. It’s like there’s a gaussian blur on everything, with a heavy film grain on top of that. I think this is why we prefer the look of movies from before the digital age. In their distorted imperfection, they’re a closer representation of that which really is. 

That’s why I put vinyl crackle and tape hiss and field recordings all over my music, and drench my videos in analogue distortion and grain. My aesthetic is partly me trying to recreate the glimpses of the true nature of reality I’ve been privy to in my short life... and what I remember from elsewhere.

Right now, every day, unprecedented numbers of people wake up into hyper-real, grotesquely detailed new worlds, radically different to those they had contentedly existed in for decades. This is the age of discovery. It is shocking to some, but not me. I am accustomed to this place. I have lived here all my life.