Saturday, October 20, 2012

What happens next?

It's been a month or so since I updated. I have the flyer collection books through number 650 (though I've seen individual flyers into the 800s), and flyers continue to appear on lamp posts around town. The supplies of the flyer collections seem to be getting replenished, too--at least 2 sets have appeared at the store, and part of a third set remains there.

I actually have duplicates of the first 200 flyers. There are occasional missing numbers and duplicate flyers within the big collections, so I'm going to compare the contents of 2 sets and my single copies to see how consistent the numbering system is over a decent run of flyers. When I'm done with that, I'll have 2 volumes, 1-100 and 101-200, to resell, if anyone is interested. They're $15 each.

I had taken a bit of a break from thinking about the flyers, and then I watched the "Resurrect Dead" movie a few days ago about the Toynbee tiles. That got me thinking about them again--issues of solving the mystery, finding more flyers, etc, has been a very complimentary process to the group of folks trying to solve the Toynbee tile mystery. And I very much share their ethical concerns for how to document/archive/present materials like this, whose creators might not want attention, as in the case of the tiles, or whose mental stability is in question, as the case is with these flyers (and I presume with the tiles as well).

So I'm still not sure how I'd like to proceed: though these flyer collections are now "for sale" in a very limited sense, the store proprietor who is handling them seems distinctly weirded out by the whole thing, and I'd imagine that arrangement won't last much longer. And most of the flyers (oddly like the Toynbee tiles) encourage readers to make more copies and distribute them further. So I'm guessing that their author wouldn't be unduly upset to see the whole range of them posted.

Oh, and I bought one more tangential/ephemeral publication related to the flyers:


As you might have already guessed, a lot of the info in this book would be, ahem, difficult to recommend! But it highlights a number of interesting practices that are further mentioned in the flyers, such as the origin of the "state divine" idea, and more explorations of art history and its early relationships with quasi-gnostic healing ideas. An interesting little read.

2 comments:

  1. I'm very interested in reading the collections, and in hearing what if any differences you find between the printed flyers and the books. I'm also fascinated by that other volume you found!

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  2. I bet you'd enjoy my Marlin Pals collection!

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