The telephone directory

[version]

 

[sufi]

In 1972, they formed a band. Verlaine picked out a bass guitar from the pawn shops on Third Avenue and taught Hell the basics. They cut their hair, changed their names (from Meyers and Miller to Hell and Verlaine), called themselves the Neon Boys, and brought Billy Ficca in. For a few months, they rehearsed in Verlaine’s apartment. They didn’t have money for amps or a kit; Ficca, a brilliant, jazz-oriented drummer, drummed on phone books instead.

 

[craner]

I like his framing of that sort of thing as 'invisible literatures':

"I have always been a voracious reader of what I call invisible literatures — scientific journals, technical manuals, pharmaceutical company brochures, think-tank internal documents, PR company position papers — part of that universe of published material to which most literate people have scarcely any access but which provides the most potent compost for the imagination."

So much wisdom and truth in this Ballard piece.