My contact with these writers

This blog post is about writers I've had some sort of metaphysical 'contact' with, where I seem to actually make a connection with them despite them being dead or far away.... My mind was pretty fucked up when I had experiences with psychosis, so this partially explains me having contacted them.... Otherwise it might be new age voodooism, I don't know.

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J. G. Ballard

Around November 6th of 2007 I stayed up for three nights in succession and, as a consequence, had very little control over my actions. My mother gave me a highly potent pill which had a strong effect on my brain. I became very anxious to know something, and rubbed my head desperately to reach a conclusion until I shouted out "CRASH, CRASH, CRASH," the title of a Ballard novel. My mother then told me that my English teacher had killed herself after hearing this and that her husband, a mathematician, was willing to receive some sort of answer. I wrote gobledegook until, amazingly, my hand moved without my control and it was Ballard's writing. What is amazing is that it didn't seem like my words; it was something along the lines of "I was trying to show [with 'Crash'] what young people such as Simon are capable of" until I intercepted this movement and wrote my own fucking gobbledegook... After writing this shite relentlessly I kept wanting Ballard's hand movement to return so that I could see what he would say about me, but it never happened... What's strange is that I have another memory of this night, but I don't know how it meshes with this incident, but I also remember that after having taken the potent pill my English teacher and a girl I had a crush on in school came in after I touched my penis. I thought that Ballard was controlling us and that he was going to make us have some sort of depraved sex... They were sat in two chairs in my room and I was in my bed; we remained in silence until the girl suddenly leaped out of the chair, closed her eyes and left the room. I got up to see what this was when the English teacher said "Don't". I felt the urge to piss, but seeing as I couldn't leave the bed I let it all ooze out.
When I was in an intensive care unit in Derby, I got a phone call and I shouted out "Who's there???" and I heard Ballard's voice say "Your long-lost friend." This voice sounded weak, cracked and wearisome... It sounded like someone in his deathbed. Later I found that he had prostrate cancer, so the fact that he was actually ill seemed to confirm that it was him then.

Julio Cortázar

In Cortázar's novel Hopscotch, there is an Argentinean writer called Morelli who carries out correspondence with readers from different parts of the world. One of them is a 'young man from Sheffield'. I am from this city, and I always have a tendency to seek out obscure art... What's more is that one of the main aspects of Cortázar's fiction is that coincidences and unequivocal, arbitrary events; he said that he always had some sort of 'contact' with the reader, too.

Sera cuestión de tiempo. Pero me siento bien, se acabaron los problemas con la portera. Nadietrae correspondencia, ni siquera la de Nueva Zelandia, con sus estampillas tan bonitas. Cuando se ha publicado un libro que nace muerto, el único resultado es un correo pequeno perofiel. La senora de Nueva Zelandia, el muchacho de Sheffield. Francmasoneria delicada, voluptuosidad de ser tan pocos que participan de una adventura. Pero ahora, realmente...

Paul Auster

The next night after the Ballardian incident, I was rushed off to a room in a psychiatric ward. My parents were next to me and I lied on the bed. I felt shattered, there was no hope. Then a person who looked just like Paul Auster and sounded just like Paul Auster came into the room with a woman who looked just like his wife. He handed me a white pill and said "Take this." One of the things I really kick myself in the head now is that I forgot what he said, but my dad said "I don't know much about Paul Auster, but I think he says.." and then Auster quoted somebody else. I was left on my own with an old woman guarding me... but that's another story.

Franz Kafka

I once wrote in a website "The four people I am truly genetically derived from are Mark E. Smith, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar".... Amazingly enough, I was flicking through a Kafka biography in the library and found that he also chose a list of four writers he was genetically derived from... I read this after compiling the list!

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In my episode I also came across William Burroughs and polymath/director Alejandro Jodorowsky, but I should really be going to bed now...