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TitleDear Mom and Dad, I Arrived in San Francisco Tonight [..]
Author
PublisherCommunication Company (as The John Dillinger Computer)
PlaceGlide Church, San Francisco
Year1967
Date 12/24/1967
Date 2n.d., ca.
Publication
Volume
Issue
Page(s)
MediumB.s.
DimensionLt.
Extent
Imprint
Collation1/c: ye pa
CatalogCC-297
CollectionSOLA-ph(BL)
Cit. No.
KeywordsInvisible Circus
FilenameBANCROFT reference = CAP/Folder 08, Item # 02
Trans. TitleDear mom and dad, | I arrived in San Francisco tonight [..]
Section
Group
Sub-Group
Series
Folder
CC-297
click image to enlarge
Notes
Abstract
This typed sheet takes the form of a letter home from “Emil,” who has just arrived in San Francisco and gone to church to please his parents and grandmother. The church turns out to be Glide during the Invisible Circus, and the letter begins to register the event’s strange sacramental theater: the “funny triangular thing” that someone offered Emil as a “blessed sacrament,” elevators, shredded plastic, and other fragments of the happening. As the account proceeds, the words themselves begin to fall apart and drop down the page, echoing the kind of “dropping out” that could follow an LSD experience — not simply leaving school or society, but slipping out of ordinary language, family expectation, and respectable narrative. The page is both a parody of the dutiful letter home and a small performative relic of the Invisible Circus, where the typewriter becomes part of the altered field.
Full Text
Dear mom and dad,
I arrived in San Francisco tonight and, so as to make you and
grandmother happy, went to church...and that’s where it all
becomes confusing. There were all these people, you see,
and somebody came up to me and gave me this funny triangular
thing with a rounded bottom like a half(quarter) of an aspirin
tablet, and said something about blessed sacrament; and then
I went into the sanctuary, and you’ll never guess what, here it
was three o clock in the morning and there was this service going
on and then I rode this elevator with all these funny people
and walked around all this shredded plastic and then I found this
typewriter and suddenly don’t want to
write
  any    
     more

      and I thi
               nk
it has
something             to       do
with                                      that
funny
      tablet              thing
                                  your loving sun

                                  Emil

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