today i tumbled windswept and dishevelled from a time warping trip through a vurt-ual rabbit hole and back…my automated alice swept me on a rollercoaster ride through a thousand neglected, abandoned and half forgotten projects, span me around a tangle of fantastical coincidences and deposited me right back where i started, squashed in a burnt out pissed-stained red telephone box, tiptoeing uneasily amongst a jumble of disconnected data on manchester, urbanism, dis/utopias, public space, listing, delisting and a plethora of bluestockings. in the words of our intrepid heroine, it would be so nice if something made sense for a change.
we’ve all been there. one minute you’re diligently researching a specific topic then quite unexpectedly you run across a reference to someone whose words and ideas you have long admired. whilst it might not seem particularly pertinent to your current task it cant hurt just to peruse it quickly for future reference, so you click on it out of curiosity...
before you know it you’re hurtling deep into cyberspace, sucked inexorably into a dizzying vortex of world wide signposts, where one link leads seductively to another and another, until a lifetime later you emerge blinking, cobwebby and bewildered, all original intentions irretrievably awry.
safely returned to some notion of the present, a quick shake of the tail and a nosy around your trusty search engine reveals the labyrinthine silken threads of your adventure; a trail of clues into the darkest recesses of your laptop files, and if you’re lucky, a glimmer of insight or new lead to continue this peculiar endeavour, this mountain of ossified data.
all that remains is to thank my guides alice, carroll, noon and moran for leading me along a hallucinogenic journey from listed building procedures, urban regeneration, the demise of the red telephone box, our very own lrm, the society for unread authors and surprisingly yet inevitably to another archaeology of the present.
p.s ~ the moral of the story, if there has to be one, would appear to be always follow the rabbit, never once considering how in the world you might get out again...
