There’s a story about William Gibson’s jacket. In his book Pattern Recognition he confabulates a jacket for the protagonist, Cayce, in a colourway that never existed.
The manufacturer, getting requests from fans for this fictional jacket, approaches Gibson, and together they create the jacket for real. Gibson himself has a custom version. Here’s his telling from 2005:
I received a very puzzled letter from the folks at Buzz Rickson’s, who had been getting requests for black MA-1’s. Once I had explained what was happening, they amazed and delighted me by asking my permission to make a repro of *Cayce’s* jacket, to market as their Pattern Recognition model. Yes indeed, I said, and while you’re at it, cut me one with an extra four inches in the back, please. Which they did, and it’s over the back of a chair nearby as I write this. I love this jacket. It reminds me of the title of a Surrealist sculpture, “An Object From The Other Side Of The Bridge”. It’s real, but it emerged from a work of fiction.
So I’d forgotten this story. Then read it again this week in Pfeil Magazine 12 which I received as part of my Stack magazines subscription (I’ve signed up to get a different magazine each month, their choice).
That piece in the magazine (for completeness here’s a pic) also used that phrase an object from the other side of the bridge
and
it totally
ate my brain.
What I hadn’t realised, before looking up Gibson’s telling of the story, is that the phrase is taken from the name of a sculpture. Which I would now like to see.
Here’s the sculpture: De l’autre c?té du pont, “From the Other Side of the Bridge,” Yves Tanguy, 1936.
Now, I’ve written before about fiction and inner and outer realities but this feels… different, somehow? More ouroboros. More like magick: speaking as a way of forming the universe.
A crossing between the fictional realm and our world! I mean, an invention in fiction is also an invention in our world, of course.
But there’s something special, here, about the way the object can only be reached via first constructing the ENTIRE FICTIVE UNIVERSE, thus writing it into being, and that process has to be conducted from our side of course; like projecting a hologram from a laser-engraved lens, but once inscribed you can step into the hologram and – grab it.
Like searching for a particular item in a dream, and waking with it in your hands.
Both the molecular structure of benzene and the molecular structure of DNA were brought back from dreams.
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
ENTER NUMBET 0016jijjrj.com.cn www.eotsge.com.cn www.lxdsfzc.com.cn www.heuicw.com.cn www.fszckm.com.cn www.sogkx.com.cn www.mxtrmc.com.cn www.mtllgk.com.cn ooxwdn.com.cn wyzwck.com.cn
There’s a story about William Gibson’s jacket. In his book Pattern Recognition he confabulates a jacket for the protagonist, Cayce, in a colourway that never existed.
The manufacturer, getting requests from fans for this fictional jacket, approaches Gibson, and together they create the jacket for real. Gibson himself has a custom version. Here’s his telling from 2005:
So I’d forgotten this story. Then read it again this week in Pfeil Magazine 12 which I received as part of my Stack magazines subscription (I’ve signed up to get a different magazine each month, their choice).
That piece in the magazine (for completeness here’s a pic) also used that phrase
and
it totally
ate my brain.
What I hadn’t realised, before looking up Gibson’s telling of the story, is that the phrase is taken from the name of a sculpture. Which I would now like to see.
Here’s the sculpture: De l’autre c?té du pont, “From the Other Side of the Bridge,” Yves Tanguy, 1936.
Now, I’ve written before about fiction and inner and outer realities but this feels… different, somehow? More ouroboros. More like magick: speaking as a way of forming the universe.
A crossing between the fictional realm and our world! I mean, an invention in fiction is also an invention in our world, of course.
But there’s something special, here, about the way the object can only be reached via first constructing the ENTIRE FICTIVE UNIVERSE, thus writing it into being, and that process has to be conducted from our side of course; like projecting a hologram from a laser-engraved lens, but once inscribed you can step into the hologram and – grab it.
Like searching for a particular item in a dream, and waking with it in your hands.
Both the molecular structure of benzene and the molecular structure of DNA were brought back from dreams.