MATT KEYTER
Naarm/Melbourne / Tutor
Working from home mainly. Seeing friends still.
Has interests in modes of affect.
A DREAM FOR MAX
The boob
I stayed at Soph's place last night. Was awake or at least stirred around 8am. Decided to snooze as is my wont if given the chance. And in this snoozing I found myself on the northwest coast of Tasmania. I was down there looking for a cheap plot of land. I was in some sleepy seaside town. I think this was based in some relation to Sisters Beach. A place where I've been with my family on a couple of summer holidays. The realtor was helpful. Something like a bogan mum. I couldn't say if she was appallingly ugly. She certainly wasn't hot. Nor was she disgusting. Something typically 'single mother' that's lived a hard life. Anyway. My eyes drifted toward her breasts. One in particular. It would've been her right breast. Her slinky top had fallen down. Her 'nipple' was out. But it was discombobulating. I don't know the anatomical specifics of breasts so I'll put it this way: the round flat part, and the raised bit; the egg white and the yoke as it were. I simply couldn't tell what was what. My eyes were darting all over this tit trying to understand its strange manifestation. I think i was turned on by this anomalous boob. I was also trying to be polite. The dream moved on.
Driving around
If you care to google any vistas of the northwest coast of Tasmania, -- from rolling farmland to temperate rainforest to beach images -- this is how the next phase of the dream went. Moving from plot to plot, we drove and drove, but there was no sense of time here. I was being shown around by this bogan lady (the boob element now something in the past). We came to some kind of township, away from the smell of damp bush undergrowth, the sensorial realities of non-urban environments, the stuff that animated that now just past phase of the dream. This township was different to the one the dream started in. I think I asked the bogan (I don't know why I keep calling her the bogan) to consult some local realtor in this town. She obliged. And I trundled around. I came to be in this vast bookshop. An old house I guess, dusty, smelling of how ancient books should smell. Empty. The supreme indifference of this lack of humanity seemed appropriate as I surveyed the shelves. There were literary treasures everywhere. I can't remember any titles now. And it was at this point that I thought of you and Merl. Somehow this bookshop indicated that perhaps this township and its near locale was the place I was perhaps now interested in. As if you guys would approve of this venture on this basis. This desire for land or place.
Architecture
After leaving the bookshop (I never left per se, was just transported as it were...) I came to be at a beach. The beach was sadly nothing remarkable. It had that air of a car park nearby. A rocky outcrop, possibly manmade framed the nature of the waves and sand. This rocky outcrop started morphing and doing its dream-like thing. Citizens were milling about. I started to talk to a young boy. It became apparent that he lived here (or is it there?). He proceeded to explain how this rocky outcrop, this pile of boulders in the ocean, was indeed his family home. I was stunned. How? It's hard to describe now, Max, so I don' think I'll try. It came across as a bunker of some kind, built into the sand. His brother lived beneath a concrete slab that was redolent of a grave. Flummoxed, I moved on. And as I turned back for one last glance at this bizarre dwelling, an overwhelming structure had birthed itself. Again, hard to describe Max, but try and imagine 1000's of wooden chairs fused together. These so-called chairs weren't chairs, but they were. And the only reason they weren't chairs that actually were chairs was because the architecture simply wouldn't let it be so. Some form of design refused this reality.
The single mum
From a carpark. Then a park. I began walking through a reserve filled with families. This reserve of cricketing banality, bbq's, uncle's drinking beer, was I think, a composite of all the parks I'd been to as a child. That's the best way to put it. A fuzzy, grainy image of childhood times. A tennis ball may have been hit my way which I threw back cordially. Or, I asked to play cricket with some kids. And now, after putting this much of the dream down, the rest is starting to get drowned out, but I'll persist, because the bit to come is the relevant bit. This befriended child, the cricketer, introduced not only me, but you and Merl as well to his mum. We were in a log cabin. It was part of this reserve. Maybe now that I think of it, it was more of a holiday yard. A holiday yard. What the fuck is that? It wasn't a caravan park at least... Anyway, the mother was from Melbourne. Some academic. She and I spoke as to why I was there. I explained. And soon we were chatting warmly. You and Merl at this point were chatting with her friend(s). Can't really say what was occupying you guys as you guys weren't in my field of what's-what as it were. We were all having a drink or two. Nothing party-ish, but buzz inducing all the same. This cabin was dripping in brown wood and a frosty light. 60's or 70's lower-class mediocrity was the brown, orange and cream aesthetic of this space. Imagine ugly linoleum with speckled somewhat bluish light piercing in and this is something of the colourscape in this closed environ. I thought this mum was hot. We got closer and closer. A sexual tension emerged, persisted, then ramified, and as I went to kiss her, as I thought this dream was about to become sexy, and Max, I felt this desire, my cock beginning to ache, we tumbled through a doorway into a bedroom. A commotion broke out. THe details are fuzzy now. But either a son or husband or partner was asleep there. Desire, sex, passion = extinguished. Something was wrong. I bailed. We bailed.
***
Sophie just disturbed me writing this 'dream journal' email for a spot of brunch. We had avo, ham and tomato on toast, with some nuts, seeds and olive oil strewn across. She asked me what I had been up to as she worked. I said I was sending you an email, that'd I'd been a bit of a shit in not being in touch. Apologies on that level, if it's required. I've thought about you a lot. Sophie was touched by the b'day message she received. She asked a bunch of questions about how you and Dani are, about Dani's work (Zoom-ness and so forth), and how your thesis is going. Naturally, I had no answers. So put an end to that. Please address those questions in your reply if you can. She's just ducked off to a #blcklivesmatter thing in the city. I've got some work to do, so I'll try and wrap this up.
***
The colonial farmyard
As I was saying, we were bundled out of this cabin. We were walking away from the beach. Moving inland. There'll be some instances to come when there was something definite to a dialogue between us, something at least audible, but for the most part imagine the next parts of the dream, our interactions together, as something akin to a closed captions logic. You know, on TV, how you can add that feature where the subtitle reads [indistinct chatter], well, that's the vibe I'm trying to communicate here. Indistinct chatter accompanied us. I think we may have had some beers in our hand as we walked through verdant paddocks, gum trees smattered just so. A real picture. Australiana meets the European idyll. I mean, the countryside was clearly Australian, but... Anyway... As our walk progressed we started to see some buildings. As we got closer they became ramshackle. These buildings were at first quite disparate to each other. We zigged and zagged by each. These buildings were colonial era, whatever that means. In sum, they were old. If you can picture looking into one of these structures you will probably see a few holes in the roof, an element of wall missing, a whole panoply of rusting tools and machines scattered as only the disused and forgotten can be. We thought this was awesome. A real adventure. Walking. [indistinct chatter]. exploring. playing around in this fantastical farm. Inviolably we progressed. And as we marched onwards the structures began to condense around us. From a smattered set of sheds and outhouses, I guess, to what could now be categorised as the homestead. This homestead had something of a village feel to it. (the European aspect). I mean, it could have been owned by a single family, or several 'peasant' families could have lived in this dilapidation. The buildings began to close in around us, as if we were now walking along a path or alley, some kind of thoroughfare that divided this side from that, that went from one entry point to the next. It is here at this point of claustrophobic feeling that you said something. I don't now recall exactly what Max, but I can still hear your voice. It was troubled. Not by fear, but by what I might call your sense of equanimity, tranquility, ataraxia, whatever. It was a wise dismissal. A grunt. An exasperation. Something You, peripherally... We then focussed our attention on one of these buildings--dismally 19th century frontiersman. We could hear music. A radio at least. We looked through doors and windows. The house looked a hoarders house. Piles of this and piles of that. Antiques and rusted curios everywhere. I don't think we saw anyone. But the music or radio became troubling. It forbade something. We hurried. We hurried around these lanes and paths. Grass and mud under foot. rust and orange and greyed maze walls made of timber and corrugated iron consuming us vertically. After what seemed a long time, we rounded a final corner, and if I can describe an angle accurately, we could see off into the distance over and beyond this declension, an oval or something that seemed suburban. We had to make our way down. And this is when dogs appeared. Vicious looking dogs. Merl freaked out, removed himself from the dream image. I think you stayed with me as the dogs attacked. I think I felt responsible for you being there, on this now strange trip of real estate tourism. In short, i thought I would take one for the team. Only one dog pressed in upon me, the others waited behind. It was going to bite. So i let it. The dog only took my arm in it's mouth. The worst thing being its saliva. It was tender actually. An act of friendship. I forget the tendernesses that followed, but we all shared in it.
The community sports oval
It is now completely dark. We're at the community sports ground we escaped to. Like that one up in Coburg near the leisure centre. It was older than that though. Pavillions with castiron beautifications and stuff. Something you might find in Bowral, home of the Don. We were on the playing surface. Walled in all sides. It wasn't exactly a gladiatorial feel, but we were trapped. And that feeling of being trapped was governed by our anxiety and stress at knowing that the family or folk of the village were after us. [manic indistinct chatter]. in this blue, black and purple haze of night vision, the chaotic light of the torches of our tormentors threatened the violence that the dogs in their mercy resiled from. I think beers we present. Like we had to up and go immediately as if we had been sitting and drinking and chatting casually. Should we grab them, the six pack, half consumed? What should we do...
The walk up and into the unknown city
Having escaped this coliseum of terror we scampered up a hill. Tasmania returned to us. Well at least to some degree. We had become lost. As I'm sure you now are in god knows where all this is at. Are we in Burnie? Are we in Devonport? Where the fuck are we? We've just Sojourned for so long and now there is this cityscape in the night sky. The buildings were way too tall for what I knew of these regional Tasmanian centres. We kept approaching, the cityscape and skyline rising and falling like the LED levels on a mixer, something a DJ would use, you know. This aroused our curiosity as you could imagine. We began speculating. [indistinct chatter]. Time and history becoming this terrible weight all of a sudden. Had we been outside of history? HAd centuries of urban development taken place? Whatever the case, this schizophrenic or bipolar up and down of mood and primal feeling soon translated into excitement. We were approaching the city again, whatever city this was. fun and ecstasy beckoned. it was as if only now a bender was about to kick off. The transition from looking up at shapeshifting monuments to human ingenuity occurred quite quickly as we found ourselves walking the auto-recomposing streets that were being stomped upon by peoples of the future. maze-like again. these streets took us nowhere and everywhere almost simultaneously.
The Atari style conversion to road trip
The dream is nearly over. It's hard to put these last aspects as they're kind of one. BUt here goes. These magical streets of the unknown city did give us what we wanted but only in part. Part Bladerunner, part Avatar, part whatever cinematic universe you can conjure. the next things threatened, the next thing sought, the next thing desired, THE NEXT THING as such. And from this dazzling and dizzying urban experience, a flattening of our worlds took place. From n dimensions free of any laws of physics that govern our regular lived experience, a two-dimensionality faded or transitioned into being. We were now on a bus, a coach, or some form of long distance transport. We were going somewhere. To that next thing. If looking out a window is possible in two dimensions, then this is what we did. THe view? half civilisation centuries from now, half memory of any trip along the Hume Hwy. We went straight. We turned left. We turned right. Parabola here, vague curvature there, we drove or controlled our movement. Together, that is. Not hive mind, but in unison. We directed this mode of movement within these constrained dimensions like one may have moved a car, or a duck, or a farmer in some kind of primitive Atari video game. I'm nearly awake now.
The technicolour city of love
If you've ever taken DMT, Max, and I assume you would've, and if you've 'broken through' as they say, then this is how things seemed to us. Flooding forth and hurtling beyond any sense of constraint, we could see on the horizon our destination. It was another city. This time humanity seemed of little relevance. This city was held together by pure flows of colour. We began to merge with this power. how does one describe pure flows of colour? One shouldn't. It should be some kind of rule. It should be left to the life world of dreams or psychedelic experience. It can only be felt, lived, embraced. It is embracing. That's all the description I'll offer. On a sidenote, that perhaps helps conclude things, I recall a line from a text that took aim -- not in a negative way -- at Levinas. Before the face, first the embrace. We looked at each other. We felt love. We had arrived.
(6/6/2020)
The boob
I stayed at Soph's place last night. Was awake or at least stirred around 8am. Decided to snooze as is my wont if given the chance. And in this snoozing I found myself on the northwest coast of Tasmania. I was down there looking for a cheap plot of land. I was in some sleepy seaside town. I think this was based in some relation to Sisters Beach. A place where I've been with my family on a couple of summer holidays. The realtor was helpful. Something like a bogan mum. I couldn't say if she was appallingly ugly. She certainly wasn't hot. Nor was she disgusting. Something typically 'single mother' that's lived a hard life. Anyway. My eyes drifted toward her breasts. One in particular. It would've been her right breast. Her slinky top had fallen down. Her 'nipple' was out. But it was discombobulating. I don't know the anatomical specifics of breasts so I'll put it this way: the round flat part, and the raised bit; the egg white and the yoke as it were. I simply couldn't tell what was what. My eyes were darting all over this tit trying to understand its strange manifestation. I think i was turned on by this anomalous boob. I was also trying to be polite. The dream moved on.
Driving around
If you care to google any vistas of the northwest coast of Tasmania, -- from rolling farmland to temperate rainforest to beach images -- this is how the next phase of the dream went. Moving from plot to plot, we drove and drove, but there was no sense of time here. I was being shown around by this bogan lady (the boob element now something in the past). We came to some kind of township, away from the smell of damp bush undergrowth, the sensorial realities of non-urban environments, the stuff that animated that now just past phase of the dream. This township was different to the one the dream started in. I think I asked the bogan (I don't know why I keep calling her the bogan) to consult some local realtor in this town. She obliged. And I trundled around. I came to be in this vast bookshop. An old house I guess, dusty, smelling of how ancient books should smell. Empty. The supreme indifference of this lack of humanity seemed appropriate as I surveyed the shelves. There were literary treasures everywhere. I can't remember any titles now. And it was at this point that I thought of you and Merl. Somehow this bookshop indicated that perhaps this township and its near locale was the place I was perhaps now interested in. As if you guys would approve of this venture on this basis. This desire for land or place.
Architecture
After leaving the bookshop (I never left per se, was just transported as it were...) I came to be at a beach. The beach was sadly nothing remarkable. It had that air of a car park nearby. A rocky outcrop, possibly manmade framed the nature of the waves and sand. This rocky outcrop started morphing and doing its dream-like thing. Citizens were milling about. I started to talk to a young boy. It became apparent that he lived here (or is it there?). He proceeded to explain how this rocky outcrop, this pile of boulders in the ocean, was indeed his family home. I was stunned. How? It's hard to describe now, Max, so I don' think I'll try. It came across as a bunker of some kind, built into the sand. His brother lived beneath a concrete slab that was redolent of a grave. Flummoxed, I moved on. And as I turned back for one last glance at this bizarre dwelling, an overwhelming structure had birthed itself. Again, hard to describe Max, but try and imagine 1000's of wooden chairs fused together. These so-called chairs weren't chairs, but they were. And the only reason they weren't chairs that actually were chairs was because the architecture simply wouldn't let it be so. Some form of design refused this reality.
The single mum
From a carpark. Then a park. I began walking through a reserve filled with families. This reserve of cricketing banality, bbq's, uncle's drinking beer, was I think, a composite of all the parks I'd been to as a child. That's the best way to put it. A fuzzy, grainy image of childhood times. A tennis ball may have been hit my way which I threw back cordially. Or, I asked to play cricket with some kids. And now, after putting this much of the dream down, the rest is starting to get drowned out, but I'll persist, because the bit to come is the relevant bit. This befriended child, the cricketer, introduced not only me, but you and Merl as well to his mum. We were in a log cabin. It was part of this reserve. Maybe now that I think of it, it was more of a holiday yard. A holiday yard. What the fuck is that? It wasn't a caravan park at least... Anyway, the mother was from Melbourne. Some academic. She and I spoke as to why I was there. I explained. And soon we were chatting warmly. You and Merl at this point were chatting with her friend(s). Can't really say what was occupying you guys as you guys weren't in my field of what's-what as it were. We were all having a drink or two. Nothing party-ish, but buzz inducing all the same. This cabin was dripping in brown wood and a frosty light. 60's or 70's lower-class mediocrity was the brown, orange and cream aesthetic of this space. Imagine ugly linoleum with speckled somewhat bluish light piercing in and this is something of the colourscape in this closed environ. I thought this mum was hot. We got closer and closer. A sexual tension emerged, persisted, then ramified, and as I went to kiss her, as I thought this dream was about to become sexy, and Max, I felt this desire, my cock beginning to ache, we tumbled through a doorway into a bedroom. A commotion broke out. THe details are fuzzy now. But either a son or husband or partner was asleep there. Desire, sex, passion = extinguished. Something was wrong. I bailed. We bailed.
***
Sophie just disturbed me writing this 'dream journal' email for a spot of brunch. We had avo, ham and tomato on toast, with some nuts, seeds and olive oil strewn across. She asked me what I had been up to as she worked. I said I was sending you an email, that'd I'd been a bit of a shit in not being in touch. Apologies on that level, if it's required. I've thought about you a lot. Sophie was touched by the b'day message she received. She asked a bunch of questions about how you and Dani are, about Dani's work (Zoom-ness and so forth), and how your thesis is going. Naturally, I had no answers. So put an end to that. Please address those questions in your reply if you can. She's just ducked off to a #blcklivesmatter thing in the city. I've got some work to do, so I'll try and wrap this up.
***
The colonial farmyard
As I was saying, we were bundled out of this cabin. We were walking away from the beach. Moving inland. There'll be some instances to come when there was something definite to a dialogue between us, something at least audible, but for the most part imagine the next parts of the dream, our interactions together, as something akin to a closed captions logic. You know, on TV, how you can add that feature where the subtitle reads [indistinct chatter], well, that's the vibe I'm trying to communicate here. Indistinct chatter accompanied us. I think we may have had some beers in our hand as we walked through verdant paddocks, gum trees smattered just so. A real picture. Australiana meets the European idyll. I mean, the countryside was clearly Australian, but... Anyway... As our walk progressed we started to see some buildings. As we got closer they became ramshackle. These buildings were at first quite disparate to each other. We zigged and zagged by each. These buildings were colonial era, whatever that means. In sum, they were old. If you can picture looking into one of these structures you will probably see a few holes in the roof, an element of wall missing, a whole panoply of rusting tools and machines scattered as only the disused and forgotten can be. We thought this was awesome. A real adventure. Walking. [indistinct chatter]. exploring. playing around in this fantastical farm. Inviolably we progressed. And as we marched onwards the structures began to condense around us. From a smattered set of sheds and outhouses, I guess, to what could now be categorised as the homestead. This homestead had something of a village feel to it. (the European aspect). I mean, it could have been owned by a single family, or several 'peasant' families could have lived in this dilapidation. The buildings began to close in around us, as if we were now walking along a path or alley, some kind of thoroughfare that divided this side from that, that went from one entry point to the next. It is here at this point of claustrophobic feeling that you said something. I don't now recall exactly what Max, but I can still hear your voice. It was troubled. Not by fear, but by what I might call your sense of equanimity, tranquility, ataraxia, whatever. It was a wise dismissal. A grunt. An exasperation. Something You, peripherally... We then focussed our attention on one of these buildings--dismally 19th century frontiersman. We could hear music. A radio at least. We looked through doors and windows. The house looked a hoarders house. Piles of this and piles of that. Antiques and rusted curios everywhere. I don't think we saw anyone. But the music or radio became troubling. It forbade something. We hurried. We hurried around these lanes and paths. Grass and mud under foot. rust and orange and greyed maze walls made of timber and corrugated iron consuming us vertically. After what seemed a long time, we rounded a final corner, and if I can describe an angle accurately, we could see off into the distance over and beyond this declension, an oval or something that seemed suburban. We had to make our way down. And this is when dogs appeared. Vicious looking dogs. Merl freaked out, removed himself from the dream image. I think you stayed with me as the dogs attacked. I think I felt responsible for you being there, on this now strange trip of real estate tourism. In short, i thought I would take one for the team. Only one dog pressed in upon me, the others waited behind. It was going to bite. So i let it. The dog only took my arm in it's mouth. The worst thing being its saliva. It was tender actually. An act of friendship. I forget the tendernesses that followed, but we all shared in it.
The community sports oval
It is now completely dark. We're at the community sports ground we escaped to. Like that one up in Coburg near the leisure centre. It was older than that though. Pavillions with castiron beautifications and stuff. Something you might find in Bowral, home of the Don. We were on the playing surface. Walled in all sides. It wasn't exactly a gladiatorial feel, but we were trapped. And that feeling of being trapped was governed by our anxiety and stress at knowing that the family or folk of the village were after us. [manic indistinct chatter]. in this blue, black and purple haze of night vision, the chaotic light of the torches of our tormentors threatened the violence that the dogs in their mercy resiled from. I think beers we present. Like we had to up and go immediately as if we had been sitting and drinking and chatting casually. Should we grab them, the six pack, half consumed? What should we do...
The walk up and into the unknown city
Having escaped this coliseum of terror we scampered up a hill. Tasmania returned to us. Well at least to some degree. We had become lost. As I'm sure you now are in god knows where all this is at. Are we in Burnie? Are we in Devonport? Where the fuck are we? We've just Sojourned for so long and now there is this cityscape in the night sky. The buildings were way too tall for what I knew of these regional Tasmanian centres. We kept approaching, the cityscape and skyline rising and falling like the LED levels on a mixer, something a DJ would use, you know. This aroused our curiosity as you could imagine. We began speculating. [indistinct chatter]. Time and history becoming this terrible weight all of a sudden. Had we been outside of history? HAd centuries of urban development taken place? Whatever the case, this schizophrenic or bipolar up and down of mood and primal feeling soon translated into excitement. We were approaching the city again, whatever city this was. fun and ecstasy beckoned. it was as if only now a bender was about to kick off. The transition from looking up at shapeshifting monuments to human ingenuity occurred quite quickly as we found ourselves walking the auto-recomposing streets that were being stomped upon by peoples of the future. maze-like again. these streets took us nowhere and everywhere almost simultaneously.
The Atari style conversion to road trip
The dream is nearly over. It's hard to put these last aspects as they're kind of one. BUt here goes. These magical streets of the unknown city did give us what we wanted but only in part. Part Bladerunner, part Avatar, part whatever cinematic universe you can conjure. the next things threatened, the next thing sought, the next thing desired, THE NEXT THING as such. And from this dazzling and dizzying urban experience, a flattening of our worlds took place. From n dimensions free of any laws of physics that govern our regular lived experience, a two-dimensionality faded or transitioned into being. We were now on a bus, a coach, or some form of long distance transport. We were going somewhere. To that next thing. If looking out a window is possible in two dimensions, then this is what we did. THe view? half civilisation centuries from now, half memory of any trip along the Hume Hwy. We went straight. We turned left. We turned right. Parabola here, vague curvature there, we drove or controlled our movement. Together, that is. Not hive mind, but in unison. We directed this mode of movement within these constrained dimensions like one may have moved a car, or a duck, or a farmer in some kind of primitive Atari video game. I'm nearly awake now.
The technicolour city of love
If you've ever taken DMT, Max, and I assume you would've, and if you've 'broken through' as they say, then this is how things seemed to us. Flooding forth and hurtling beyond any sense of constraint, we could see on the horizon our destination. It was another city. This time humanity seemed of little relevance. This city was held together by pure flows of colour. We began to merge with this power. how does one describe pure flows of colour? One shouldn't. It should be some kind of rule. It should be left to the life world of dreams or psychedelic experience. It can only be felt, lived, embraced. It is embracing. That's all the description I'll offer. On a sidenote, that perhaps helps conclude things, I recall a line from a text that took aim -- not in a negative way -- at Levinas. Before the face, first the embrace. We looked at each other. We felt love. We had arrived.
(6/6/2020)