“Scratch and sniff, scratch and sniff.”–DJ Plush.
BETWEEN THE GROOVE: EPISODE 11
Fuckup: Right then, Chapter Eleven is on the decks! Where’s Plush taking us now, Hal? Still recovering from Planet Klaka and the exploding jellyfish?
Hal: Seems like he’s back in the studio, maybe for inspiration. The text, man, it immediately dives back into defining his system, expanding on those lists from Chapter Nine. First up: HEADPHONE CUPS.
Fuckup: Ah yeah, Cups representing Water, West direction… what else has he got?
Hal: The list of associations is wild! Sockets, Mouths, Lungs, Skulls, Nasal Cavities, Boobs, Buttocks, Blowholes, Coconut Shells, Jellyfish, Flowers, Pond Water, Mirrors, Tastes, Tongues… It connects the headphones to everything hollow, receptive, or sensory. He explicitly links them to enabling “binaural resolution of opposites,” invoking Nicholas of Cusa, Bruno, Vico, Joyce again!
Fuckup: So the headphones aren’t just for listening; they’re philosophical tools for resolving duality!
Hal: Exactly! He even says they double as goggles linked to McLuhan’s ideas about left-right brain stimulation and acoustic space. Plus, a mouthpiece allows access to taste/tongue, with THC and CBD enhancing synesthesia – mixing sight, sound, taste, touch, smell…
Fuckup: Then he moves onto the MICROPHONE WAND – Fire element, South direction. Associated with Bones, Veins, Hairs, Stems, Tongues, Necks, Limbs, Brushes, totems, table legs… and elongated hollow tubes inside nerves, roots, mycelium, hair… It’s linking the microphone, the input device, to these linear, connective, almost nervous-system structures.
Hal: It’s incredibly detailed, building this complex, synesthetic map where the DJ equipment becomes an interface not just for sound, but for accessing different modes of perception, philosophical concepts, and biological structures, all enhanced by specific substances.
Fuckup: After laying all that theory down, he jolts himself back into action, feeling pain, typing furiously “like a cat clawing at string.” And then ends this dense section with… “Peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall…” What the hell?
Hal: Total curveball! After all that complex techno-magical system building, invoking Cusa and McLuhan, mapping mycelial networks… he drops this incredibly simple, almost childlike, folk lyric. Is it a sample that just popped into his head? A moment of grounding? A complete non-sequitur? It’s jarring and completely throws you off balance again.
Fuckup: Classic Deep Scratch then! Just when you think you’ve grasped the system, it throws peaches at you. This chapter’s opening is doubling down on the intricate details of Plush’s method while still keeping us guessing with those sudden stylistic shifts.
Fuckup: Right, Hal, Chapter Eleven continues. Plush was just defining his gear, now it looks like someone else is getting wired up… Joe?
Hal: Yeah, seems like Joe is the test subject this time, with Jake playing ground control. Joe’s got goggles on, “poised to launch,” fingers greasy from sweet and sour! The mundane details grounding the weirdness again.
Fuckup: And the rig… get this! A printer suspended in a watertight cube is lowered onto Joe’s head while he’s inside the cube! Breathing through a mouthpiece supplying oxygen and unspecified “other fun compounds.” This sounds seriously dodgy, even by their standards!
Hal: Absolutely! Joe’s reaction? Starts singing Radiohead’s “No Surprises” while laughing hysterically till tears run down his cheeks. Maybe the “fun compounds” kicking in, or just sheer terror? Jake’s laughing so hard his glasses fly off!
Fuckup: We learn the “Marshmallow goggles” are two-way interfaces showing vitals and feeds from everywhere – printer, cube, lab. It’s described as tech for making art after the singularity, though it’s still just “conjecture” at this point.
Hal: Joe then finds focus, says “I can see clearly now,” and Jake encourages him. Then he starts vividly describing a Tarot card – sounds exactly like Crowley’s Lust card (Strength in other decks): Leo, Fire, Sun serpent, the “DJ queen riding a Lion,” cool as fuck, holding her staff, serpents swirling… and the DJ Queen invites him in!
Fuckup: So this insane printer-cube-goggle contraption, likely enhanced by drugs, is allowing Joe to access and interact with these Tarot archetypes directly! Just like Plush does through his turntables, but maybe more immersively?
Hal: Seems like it! He feels weightless like he’s eaten space cake, his breathing controlling a virtual flight simulation via a haptic feedback vest – like Willy Wonka’s fizzy lifting drinks! It’s a full-body, synesthetic immersion into the Tarot vision, mediated entirely by this bizarre homemade tech.
Fuckup: From defining headphone philosophy to sticking Joe in a printer-cube full of water and drugs to fly through Tarot visions… Chapter Eleven is definitely hitting the ground running! Where does this trip go next?
Fuckup: Okay, Hal, let’s catch the tail end of Chapter Eleven here. Joe’s still tripping in the printer-cube…
Hal: Yeah, he’s feeling the underwater/flying thing, but it’s slow, viscous, “like the Sonnets of Shakespeare.” Hard work moving through this headspace. He’s even using his leg pain as a sensor, exploring his body until… Zzzzup! Abrupt end to that sensation?
Fuckup: Then it cuts back to Plush, Max, and Percy, and they’re laughing! Seems like they were monitoring Joe’s trip. They feel this “warm flow,” which the text explicitly identifies as “Wu Zi flow” – Chinese energy work, ignored by Western conceit. It links this energy flow directly to beatboxing! Calls it “mind blowing shit, lung blowing man,” an “ancient cult of friendly vocal artists.”
Hal: So the implication is that the crazy tech rig Joe was in, or maybe even Plush’s turntablism, taps into these ancient energy flows, the same ones utilized by beatboxers? That’s connecting modern tech, esoteric practice, Eastern mysticism, and hip-hop culture all together!
Fuckup: Plush gets back on the decks, blows the dust off the needle… and CUT TO: Comet Phaeton smashing into mountains! BOOM! A voice shouts out Vonnegut – “The sirens of Titan dude, Titan, good shot Vonnegut!” And a subtitle: Bavaria 500 BCE.
Hal: Just another casual cosmic disaster linked to a sci-fi classic dropped into ancient history! Why not? It’s another one of those reality-shattering juxtapositions this book loves, leaving you completely disoriented but intrigued.
Fuckup: Uh… right. Okay, listeners, slight technical hitch there. Seems your host, Fuckup, got a bit trigger-happy and called the end of Chapter Eleven prematurely last time. My bad! Let’s rewind slightly… This is the actual final section. Apologies, Hal.
Hal: No worries, Fuckup, happens to the best of us when navigating these timelines! So, picking back up… Plush knows Max and Percy are tuned in now, ears, hearts, minds open. Even acknowledges Joe, Jake and others might be listening in. He pins the moment: Blamsterdamp, October 12th, 2012. We’re getting close to that December deadline.
Fuckup: Percy’s reading from his notes, proposing a massive task: “Rewrite History’s Back, update and re-present it, fix it up properly up to 2023, re-calculate the space-time coordinates to the singularity…” Blimey, talk about ambition!
Hal: Max jumps in, recalling their countdown started back in 2008, 1200 days before Dec 21st 2012. He reiterates their mission: creating “unbiased and well-sourced countermeasures to combat the prophets of dirty media warfare.” There’s real urgency – “shit, I hope we can make it on time fellas.” The 2012 deadline feels very real to them here, and their role is clearly defined as fighting disinformation.
Fuckup: And the chapter ends with one last, heavy-hitting CUT TO: William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Robert Anton Wilson together in Chicago, discussing Ezra Pound’s 80 Cantos!
Hal: That’s like the holy trinity of 20th-century counter-culture deep thought, grappling with Pound’s incredibly complex, influential, and controversial epic. It leaves us with this image of the intellectual ‘tribe’ engaging with the weight of history, poetry, and maybe even the dangerous edges of ideology, right as TRB recommits to their own massive, reality-shaping project.
Fuckup: So, the actual Chapter Eleven Summary: This chapter provided deep dives into the mechanics and philosophy of Plush’s Tribetable system (Headphones/Cups, Microphone/Wand), linking DJ gear to esoteric thought, biology, and synesthesia (fueled by THC/CBD). It included Joe’s intense VR/sensory deprivation experiment accessing Tarot archetypes (Lust/Strength) via a bizarre printer-cube rig, connecting the experience to Wu Zi flow and beatboxing, before jarring cuts to Vonnegut and a comet crash. The final section refocuses on TRB in October 2012, recommitting to their ambitious project: updating past work, recalculating the singularity, and creating countermeasures to media warfare before the perceived December 2012 deadline. The chapter concludes by invoking the ‘tribe’ again, showing Burroughs, Ginsberg, and RAW discussing Pound’s Cantos, grounding TRB’s mission in a weighty intellectual and counter-cultural lineage.
Hal: It’s a chapter that moves from detailed system-building and individual altered states back to the collective mission and its urgency, all while continuing the signature style of intense theorizing mixed with jarring, symbolic cut-scenes.
Fuckup: Right then! Now that feels like the very very end of Chapter Eleven. Properly analyzed, no premature ejaculation this time. Let’s call it there for today’s session of Deep Scratch Conversations!
Hal: Stay safe, stay skeptical, and watch out for those recalculations to the singularity! Until next timespace, take it!
“…Injustice of a lifetime
Brothers turn away
Like they don’t see us spend a lifeline
High crimes
Does it make you wonder?
Stand together
Because there’s strength in numbers…
Prophets Of Rage – Strength In Numbers.
DEEP SCRATCH 