Author: S.T. Lore
Client: Distort Magazine #43
Designer: DX Stewart
Pages: 32 - 38
Format: Interview
... I studied the efficacy of truth serums, a thesis on the memory encoding of human faces, the role of sleep and arousal disorders and the interaction of Bufotenin (Cane Toad Poison) on our neurobiology ... reading psychological and scientific texts ranging from drug toxicity and poisoning, to the scientific basis of dreams and the use of plastics in modern cosmetics. I handled cadavers and looked at the micro and macro anatomy of the human brain. Lots of writers emerge from obscure scientific fields. I would just label Psychology, as more of a fractured pseudo science, than into that kind of role ...
The space I want to convey is not alien so much - not schizophrenic, like dada poetry or a cut-up (though I enjoy cut-up) and certainly not a derivative use of drugs and drug references. I want to create a space that is stranger, lighter and more foreign. There is not much representation of swearing, of profanity, of gratuitous violence or sex in my recent book — all of the elements of society that are plainly ubiquitous. I understand this is a strange point of view. But I find value in things hidden from direct view, like ageing, the elderly, insect plagues or the disappearance of animal species, the gradual decay of memory rather than the things common to advertisements, magazines, image blogs, talkback radio, even casual conversations between ordinary people. By negating those common elements it becomes a lot more difficult, you have to be a little more sophisticated to try and to maintain the attention of the reader. I found that a real challenge. It is also selfishly a space that I create for myself to inhabit, that pushes certain realities far inside my consciousness. When I was in Papua New Guinea recently there was no electricity and I had so much space for my mind I found my mental speed slowed right down. It was a really great feeling. I even was surrounded by a swarm of bees when I was out in the ocean. They were migrating between islands and I had to lie beneath the water and just submerge myself, ignore the fear and the paranoia and just enjoy the collective noise until they passed. I want to re-create that in a text somehow ...
