This is Not a Game: The Mysterious Death of Theresa Duncan, Part Five
I have been dishonest with you, readers, and I must now reveal the shocking truth. My real name is not “Dream’s End.” My mother and father were not Mr. and Mrs. End, and no one ever looked down at my happy, gurgling baby face and said, “Honey, let’s name him Dream.”
I mention this, because I’m afraid it’s a concept that may be confusing some people regarding Theresa Duncan. She was not her blog. The blog was a public representation of herself she chose to put forward to the world. That’s true of this blog as well, though there is an important difference which I hope will become clearer as we move forward.
But first, I’d like to address some general concern offered by a few of my readers, and that is that this speculation I’m engaging in, and that’s all it is, of course, might somehow be dishonoring Theresa Duncan’s memory. I’d like to suggest that this is not only incorrect but that my speculation about her is a very fine way to honor her memory.
If you will recall, a couple posts back, I entertained the idea that Theresa Duncan didn’t even really exist. (I accidentally deleted that post, but appended it to Part 4 below.) Seems silly to those who knew her, but to be honest it’s hard to FIND anyone who knew her…online at least. There are a couple people interviewed…a few anonymous sources…a few articles about her here and there, mainly from many years back…and that’s it. I finally confirmed to my satisfaction that she did exist, but I’m suggesting that the fact that I thought maybe she had not existed would have made Duncan really happy. It would be, in a sense, a very high compliment.
I say this, because like so many artists within the sort of esoteric, postmodernist, ultra-hip media savvy she was associated with, playing with ideas about identity, especially online identity, image vs. reality, memory…all these were themes which were featured on her blog. You’ll notice, for example, that she has MANY pictures of women…and often younger girls…wearing masks. Her last image was a woman perhaps taking off a mask.
But if you think I’m overstating the case, read the previous post in which Duncan not only rejoiced in the creation of the fake author JT Leroy, she and her “Lunar Society” actually held a wake for him. And the Lunar Society itself is a “fake” secret society she created, though it does seem to me like there were real members who did meet once a month. None of them, if they even exist, has ever been interviewed…so maybe the entirety of it was made up. (Update: There is a new post on Theresa Duncan’s blog, written by Glenn O’Brien (corrected from “Chris O’Brian”. I think he was part of that little group and in any event, seems to have known them well.)
But it gets even better. There was a profoundly postmodernist hoax played not long ago concerning a musician about whom Duncan seemed rather obsessed: Pete Doherty whose on-again, off-again relationship with Kate Moss took up a surprising amount of space on such an erudite blog. Why that is, I think I’ve figured out and probably has more to do with a savvy PR campaign than anything nefarious. But notice her glee at this story:
Pete Doherty Hoax! Wit of the Staircase Xclusive!
“The Samaritans have today recruited 600 extra staff to deal with an expected surge in calls as troubled fans come to terms with today’s revelations about rocker and teen icon Pete Doherty. In a surprise press conference today, the men behind Doherty’s career revealed themselves – and admitted that the Libertines, Babyshambles, the tales of drug use, the armed robberies and the affair with supermodel Kate Moss have all been part of one of the largest hoaxes in British history.
The men behind the scandal – Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, who were themselves infamous popstars under the name The KLF – admitted how they plucked a young Buddy Holly impersonator Doherty from obscurity and made him a media darling. “It was a meant to be a quick stunt to show the frailties of our celebrity-obsessed culture,” said Cauty, adding, “there are too many people who are famous despite their lack of talent, usefulness and basic intelligence. We wanted to do something that held a mirror up to that.” Mr Drummond called Britain’s pop-culture “sick” and said that although he regretted the hurt caused to Doherty’s many fans, he hoped “this incident taught us all some important things.”
In a prepared statement, the two men – famous for many other pop pranks, including the famous burning of GBP1million on a remote Scottish island – detailed how they manipulated the British Press into making Doherty an icon. Doherty – whose real name has now been revealed to be Trevor McDermott – was making a living as a part-time Buddy Holly impersonator in the Cornwall holiday circuit…”
So Doherty’s identity was ALL a creation of Drummond and Cauty. That’s quite a hoax.
Except THAT isn’t even the hoax. The hoax was that none of this was true. There really is and was a musician of that name and no “Trevor McDermott”. The real hoax was that the hoax wasn’t a hoax. I can’t prove that Duncan knew this when she wrote the article but either way, that should give you a better idea of why I think Duncan would have loved my post claiming she may not have existed. In fact, I feel sure she would have printed it out and framed it. Very tastefully, of course.
You Just Don’t Get It.
That’s what a lot of people are telling me. I’m not an artist. I don’t understand how artists communicate symbolically and thus this is why I am so wrong about Duncan and what her website represents.
Bollocks.
I mean…serious bollocks. The people who are suggesting this, including some people who should DEFINITELY know better, are forgetting that there is a subculture out there for which…wait…I need to bold this and put it on a separate line:
HOAXING IS THE ART.
This group of what I will call “hoax magicians” is a community for whom disinformation, false identity, plagiarism and a whole host of other mind games is the primary expression of their art and beliefs. They justify this behavior, when they bother to justify it at all, by suggesting that we are all stuck in this consensus reality..whether that is in terms of our interpretation and expression of art or capital “R” Reality. Their disinfo-magic is their attempt to liberate us from these ideological prison.
Problem of course is that there’s not much liberating going on. They simply offer new belief systems to step into. Long after they may have abandoned a particular hoax, followers and true-believers carry on.
This bothers me. It especially bothers me because the subjects they touch on affect people in the real world who are searching for answers. And, as will become clear, the terrain of “mind control” and the “illuminati” (made famous, let us not forget, by the master and guru of so much of this ideology of chaos, Robert Anton Wilson) is prime real estate for these folks. You’ll find them elsewhere too, of course. They like the UFO world as well. And, evidently, the music world.
Here’s an example. The people alleged to be behind the Doherty anti-hoax were prime figures in this approach to mindfuckery. Drummond and Cauty, mentioned above, evidently did not number the creation of Doherty among their pranks but were the perfect pick to play this role by the creator of this hoax during “hatequest2006.” I’ll be honest, I’ve looked around the hatequest site, and I don’t really get what it is about. It does not seem to be primarily about creating such hoaxes but I strongly suspect it serves as an incubator for such hoax ideas.
In any event, it is the circles to which Drummond and Cauty belong that I am interested in. I should say, I’m just learning about much of this myself, but I want you also to know that I have a pretty good tour guide who is introducing me to this bizarre landscape. Have a look at the wiki entry for the Drummond and Cauty’s band “KLF” and be sure to read all the way to the bottom, or at least skip to there and see how much their approach mimics and draws from Robert Anton Wilson and the Dischordian movement. Here’s a snip:
Drummond and Cauty made heavy references to Discordianism, a modern chaos-based religion originally described by Malaclypse the Younger in Principia Discordia, but popularised by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson in the Illuminatus! books, published between 1969 and 1971. The attitude and tactics of Drummond and Cauty’s partnership matched that of the fictional cult whose name they had adopted. Throughout the partnership, these tactics were often interpreted by media commentators as “pranks” or “publicity stunts“. However, according to Drummond, “That’s just the way it was interpreted. We’ve always loathed the word scam. I know no-one’s ever going to believe us, but we never felt we went out and did things to get reactions. Everything we’ve done has just been on a gut level instinct.”[65] Cauty has expressed similar feelings, saying of The KLF, “I think it worked because we really meant it”.[53]
Please notice the dispute that what they are doing is a “scam”. It’s ART! So while they did not pull off the Doherty hoax, I imagine they wish they had.
This is only one such group. I will present just a few more to give you a flavor and top it with I think has got to be the best of the lot.
We met the fictional “JT Elroy” in previous posts. We also have Luther Blisset. Blisset is real. He played football (soccer) in Italy. But this is what else goes by the name Blisset. From wiki:
Luther Blissett is a multiple-use name, an “open reputation” informally adopted and shared by hundreds of artists and social activists all over Europe and South America since Summer 1994.
On the Usenet, the first reference to the Luther Blissett Project appeared on 7 November 1994. It was a trumped-up report on alleged uses of the multiple name all over the world, and – albeit written in a somewhat clumsy English – it was posted by a “Luther Blissett” from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
For reasons that remain unknown, the name was borrowed from a 1980s British football player of Afro-Caribbean origins. In Italy, between 1994 and 1999, the so-called Luther Blissett Project (an organized network within the open community sharing the “Luther Blissett” identity) became an extremely popular phenomenon, managing to create a legend, the reputation of a folk hero. This Robin Hood of the information age waged a guerrilla warfare on the cultural industry, ran unorthodox solidarity campaigns for victims of censorship and repression and – above all – played elaborate media pranks as a form of art, always claiming responsibility and explaining what bugs they had exploited to plant a fake story. Blissett was active also in other countries, especially in Spain and Germany. December 1999 marked the end of the LBP’s Five Year Plan. All the “veterans” committed a symbolic Seppuku. The end of the LBP did not entail the end of the name, which keeps re-emerging in the cultural debate and is still a popular byline on the web.
A group. Using a real name. Creating media hoaxes. Hoaxes ARE the artform. There were a couple of spinoff groups. Here’s a hoax that sounds like loads of fun:
Luther Blissett’s most complex prank was played by dozens of people in Latium, central Italy, in 1997. It lasted a year, involving black masses, satanism, Christian witch-hunters in the backwoods of Viterbo and so on. The local and national media bought everything with no fact-checking at all, politicians jumped on the bandwagon of moral panic, there was even video footage of a (rather clumsy) satanic ritual abuse being broadcast on national tv, until Luther Blissett claimed responsibility for the whole racket and produced a huge mass of evidence. Blissett activists called this “homoepathic counter-information”: by injecting a calculated dose of falsehood in the media, they meant to show the unprofessionality of most reporters and the groundlessness of moral panic. The hoax was praised and analyzed by scholars and media experts, and became a case study in several scientific texts.
As you can see, while the general idea of this kind of hoaxing could appeal to the adolescent in all of us, obviously darker “storylines” are fair game, if you’ll pardon the pun.
Here’s wiki on the last Blissett hoax and the ensuing spinoff group:
1998-99. Darko Maver is a controversial Serbian sculptor and performance artist. His works are life-size dummies looking very much like brutalized, maimed, blood-covered corpses. His art is the target of state censorship, and he’s locked in a Serbian prison for anti-social conduct. In Italy, pictures of Maver’s works are exhibited in Bologna and Rome. Prestigious, high-brow art magazines publish a solidarity appeal. Some respected critics even claim to know the artist personally. When “Darko Maver” dies in prison during a NATO bombing, pictures of the body appear on the web. Only, that man isn’t “Darko” at all, he’s a Sicilian member of the LBP. The truth is revealed a few weeks after the Seppuku. The “works” were pics of actual corpses, found on rotten.com. It’s the last big hoax by the LBP, and the debut of a new group, 0100101110101101.org.
Is any of this starting to ring some bells here? Notice that the pics of the dead prisoner appear all over the internet, probably, I’d imagine, sometimes appearing in blogs created just for that purpose. The link above will take you to the binary group I’m going to call “19373″ since that is what it translates to in decimal.
In fact, much of this can be described as being similar to another “philosophical movement” if we can even characterize it as such, called “neoism.” I’m just learning about this, so bear with me, and this one is tough to characterize. I will say that the creators of actual ARGs are often inspired by it. Joseph Matheny lists it among his influences. Butwhat is it? Check this out:
The central three methods are plagiarism, shared identity, and false histories.
Plagiarism is used in order to decommodify ideas. The critics of plagiarism hold that plagiarism devalues ideas, but this is of course, an exact reversal of the truth of the type that capitalism has always favoured. (e.g. the idea that shampoo nourishes hair, the idea that cars are sexy, the idea that humans are interchangeable capital while commodities are living things, etc.) Plagiarism is neccesary to revalue ideas. It is their use as commodities which removes their real, human value.
Shared identity is a means of dissolving the individual credit/debit system. By rejecting individual identification, the neoist hopes to simultaneously avoid blame and accrue free credit.
False histories are endlessly generated to constantly breathe new life into the neoist myth and to resist art-historification. Neoism has perfected this technique, surpassing its forebears dada, situationist, and fluxus to the extent that even now, some thirty years after the movement started, art historians have done their best to ignore it, or to treat it as only a footnote to the more historifiable mail art movement. It should be mentioned that the art movements mentioned aren’t the philosophical forebears of neoism (neoism is not an art movement), only that they had similar aims in resistance to categorization and historification.
The above three methods are only the beginning of neoist action. Many other methods are borrowed from other movements, such as the derive, various dislocations, various misdirections, misinformation, hysteria, the abuse of drugs and alcohol, abstinence, sobriety, foolish behaviour, sensible behaviour, dehistorization, rehistorization, and perhaps most importantly, actions against neoism, as neoism is clearly its own worst enemy.
This description, by the way, comes from the same site that generated the Doherty hoax. Imagine that. But I must pass on my favorite site that seems to be attractive to these hoax magicians (”magician” being a term I use deliberately, as you’ll see). There’s one company that has a website and puts out all kinds of books and even a DVD about the “truth” of various conspiracy theories, including the mind control related theories Duncan was writing about. They aren’t the only ones, but I picked them for the glorious postmodern choice they made in naming themselves. You see, this purveyor of the “truth” behind world events, this gathering place of the elect freed from imposed consensus reality…
…calls themselves “Disinfo.com.” It’s time, I think, for those of us who explore the underbelly of history dismissively labeled as “conspiracy theory” to realize we are being had on many fronts. And by naming themselves as “Disinfo”, they are laughing directly in our faces.
I want to hastily add a word about “disinformation” itself. I have pointed out that a good disinformation campaign is structured like a good ARG…some facts stated outright and other information which confirms these facts is planted for the victim to uncover as “confirmation.” But another point about disinformation is that the best kind has lots of true information within it. MKULTRA, to give but one example of concern to Duncan, was quite real…documents and Congressional hearings tell us this. So I don’t mean to imply that everything touched by these scam artists is false…only that it is likely “contaminated.”
But I want to repeat the main point of this post. There is a subculture out there for which HOAXING IS THE ARTFORM. And as you explore Duncan’s site, you’ll run into references to lots of these folks. Many, I think, sincerely believe that creating and promoting false realities has some artistic or philosophical value. But the most dangerous ones are the ones who are intentionally utilizing very dark and dangerous memes for a massive mindfuck, which, I might add, also tends to have the added “benefit” of obscuring the truth of some dark secrets which really need exposing.
This post is long, but we aren’t done quite yet, because I need to give a little more detail on one more characteristic so many of these hoax magicians share. They are often into the occult, and most of them are attracted to so-called “chaos magic.” I’m not going to go into details here but start with the wiki article if you like. I will say that the Discordianism of Robert Anton Wilson, which seems so much to mock every religious and spiritual group, actually has a lot of overlap with the chaos magicians. Whether this means the chaos magicians are engaging in satire or that Discordianism uses humor to explain a deeper philosophy…I have no idea. And I’m sure that amuses all involved.
But it was this link to chaos magick that has provided me with a framework to begin understanding what Duncan’s site is about. But how I came to this I’d like to briefly mention because it is symptomatic of this kind of undertaking. The hints that I should look in this direction keep coming from people who are telling me at the same time that there’s nothing to see here at all. For example, one skeptic of my “theories” (which I use in quotes because I am still very much up in the air about exactly what is going on here) happened to link just to one place in Duncan’s blog he found interesting. It was Duncan writing about how she was “charging her sigil.” A sigil is any magical sign used to help focus ones will or intention. But hers was made of letters. Here’s a pic:
As you can see, this particular sigil is made up of letters. But I was more interested in the wiki link below this image. She specifically had mentioned “charging her sigil” so I went to that section of the wiki link. And here is what I found.
To charge the sigil one must concentrate on its shape and hold that form in his or her mind while emptying the mind of all other thoughts.
Many magicians use various body mechanisms for inducing brief ‘no mind’ like states. These include fasting, sex, drugs, spinning, exhaustion, fear, fight or flight responses, etc. Some magicians claim to utilize the process of masturbation for use of sigilia. Noteworthy proponents of this method are Peter Carroll in Liber Null, Phil Hine in Condensed Chaos, Grant Morrison in Pop Magic!
I mention that because to understand where I’m going, it helps to become familiar with some of the folks in this scene I’m interested in. For now, I just want to point out that all three men mentioned in this article are involved in chaos magick and/or Discordianism. In fact, if you see at the bottom of the Wiki article, there is a link to Morrison giving a handy demonstration of how to create a sigil. And if you watch the video, you’ll see he’s presenting this information to “Disinfocon” which is, as you will have guessed, a conference put on by the “Disinfo.com” myth machine.
One big happy family.
We are almost done, and thanks for your patience in getting this far. If this is new territory for you as it is for me, I hope you’ll stick with me just a bit longer.
I had related that Duncan’s website and some of the sites to which she linked or which linked to hers, with all of it’s casual mention of various occult topics, mind control theories and the like, seemed like the entryway to an “ARG” or alternate reality game. We’ve seen examples of these, including examples using the same themes of mind control which concerned Theresa Duncan, such as the ARG “El Centro.”
I’ve also pointed out, though without getting into too much depth, that ARG creators tend to be a conglomeration of media theorists, postmodern artists, chaos style occultists and Discordians and the like. Which is why the following passage in the wiki article about sigils caught my attention.
Hypersigil
A ‘hypersigil’ is an extended piece of artwork, be it a novel, song, dance etc, that is created with a similar intent as a sigil. People attempting to create a hypersigil optimally want it to allude to and be referenced by multiple other artworks to reinforce its ’strength.’ The term was possibly coined by Grant Morrison. He used the word to describe his purpose in writing the comic book series The Invisibles. Morrison considers it the key to a memetic complex created with magical intent.
What the article doesn’t say, and I have yet to understand, is intent to do WHAT? But nevermind that. I’m suggesting that Duncan’s blog was part of such a hypersigil. All the self-referencing images and themes and, since it is computer based, the literal linking of pages. (Obviously, if you keep clicking all pages link to all pages, but I’m referring to a smaller circle of pages and references we’ll see come up over and over.)
I don’t know what “magic” is supposed to be accomplished, but I am trying to suggest that the “mind control” mythos is a central theme. Her own beliefs in this conspiracy she began to discuss may well have been sincere. Those who play these games “score points” in a way, when a “player” begins to take the game as reality. Or perhaps she was aware that it was primarily an “artistic” endeavor. Remember, “hypersigil” is a term of magic as applied to “art.”
This is rather complex but made much simpler if you will read the following two excerpts from discussions about ARGS and hypersigils themselves. The first one discusses the how an ARG can and should be used as a hypersigil.
I am pondering the nature of Alternate Reality Gaming — is this a hypersigil framework, or what?:
{snip}
true, true…
but i think this is actually a hypersigil framework: sort of like a software system for creating a type of mass-involvement hypersigil. and what i find odd is that there is that marketing slant. a good point i read in a related article was that even if the consumer culture grabs onto this framework for consciousness expansion, it cannot help but be evolved. it is like the techniques of reality bending are going mainstream. and the folks who are participating are having transcendental experiences that they wonder how they can re-experience… they long for the time when they were immersed in the “game.”
i am just wondering how to get one of these buggers going on a large enough scale to make some shit happen… it seems that the seeds have to be planted well in advance and then a good group of collaborators is needed to perpetuate the reality/hypersigil…
{snip – “How useful in magic can it be?” }
My thought was this:
If people are immersed in an ARG that they think is merely a game (but the orchestrators know is an elaborate hypersigil ritual), then quite a lot of use can come from it.
a) you get complete belief and immersion from possibly thousands of psychic-carbon units (peeps)
b) you concentrate all that psychic energy towards a goal
c) then you release the energy though the inner-workings and unfolding of the “game,” or alternate reality play.
I don’t mean to imply the people having that discussion are behind this in any way. It simply shows the kind of thinking behind this. And also, happily, shows that I’m not the only one out there with this strange idea. But I’d like to offer one other such snippet. This is an answer to a question posed by someone on the Barbelith forum. The question was how to use fiction as a sigil to transform his life.
As a first step, I’d suggest becoming a popular sci-fi author or comic book writer with a solid fan base, then come up with an idea for a serialised story that will come out every month or so and be read by thousands of people. Ideally you should develop a concept that reflects the zeitgiest of the times and resonates with so many people to such an extent that they are inspired to create places like barbelith that are still going strong almost a decade after your hypersigil is completed.
I’d root the story in a fictional world that’s not too disimilar to our own, but perhaps a more glamourised, sexier version. The kind of world that you would most like to inhabit yourself. Get the story going and get your readership excited by it. Heat things up a bit. When you think that your fictional world has started to permeate the consciousness of several thousand people on a monthly basis, start adding subtle autobiographical elements into the narrative. Put people who you know into it. Take the characters to locations that you have visited and have them do the things that you have done. Try and reflect different aspects of your own life in this fictional world.
At the same time, make a conscious decision to start acting like the characters. Go to places they might go, do the sort of things they might do, look for opportunities to get to know the types of people that they might know, maybe get the haircut that one of your characters has, or start wearing the type of clothes that they would wear. Try and get some really tangible feedback going on between this fictional world, that loads of people are engaging with every month, and your own life.
Slowly and subtley start to dissolve the boundaries between the two worlds, and start to recognise how much of your own life and the limitations and parameters that you impose on yourself are in fact just fictions themselves. Gradually replace some of these fictions with new ones out of your hypersigil, that have more or less the same level of objective validity as, say, the fiction that dictates you need to smoke 20 cigarettes a day. Keep it going. Keep building the feedback and the momentum. Be careful not to disrupt the flow of the story’s narrative though. For the hypersigil to work it has to function as a consistant and engaging fictional world, you have to cultivate and nurture it so that it starts to take on a life of its own within the consciousness of your readership. You have to be careful not to push things too far too fast, or sacrifice the integrity of the narrative by being too eager to force the results you want through it. You have to be patient and let it cook in its own time.
I think it’s quite essential that you have a lot of readers engaging with your story on a regular basis and developing a vested interest in the narrative and its characters. Part of the process is about creating feedback between the hypersigil narrative and your life, but I think another aspect of the process is about getting a large group of people to invest in that narrative – because it then becomes the dominant version of events.
For example, I suspect Grant Morrison’s hypersigil probably had a dramatic transformative effect on his life because the King Mob “fiction suit” he was identifying with became more real to people than the alternative narrative of the Glaswegian guy who writes comics. If you write down a slightly fictionalised sexed up version of your life and place it in the public domain in such a manner that people will personally invest in it, this version of events will suddenly become more real and valid than how things may have really worked out, which exists largely in your head. Once something is written down and published it has more power than the subjective memories of half a dozen people.
I would encourage those of you who still aren’t getting what I’m talking about to explore Duncan’s website. See what she writes about and who she links to. And watch the cumulative effect as she continues to introduce occult and conspiracy themes along more mundane (though superbly written) perfume reviews and celebrity spottings.
Some of her friends say she definitely believed in the conspiracy she wrote about…and this may be true. But reread my other posts and notice how Anna Gaskell ALSO used the same themes…she and Duncan continually reinforcing each other. Recall how Gaskell’s brother also reinforced these themes, this time in a mainstream newsweekly. They were supposed to be enemies…and yet it seems for all the world that Gaskell and Duncan were working together. And as you learn the “lay of the land” explore other avenues offering the same themes. like disinfo.com. And then notice the people who hover around such places.
And so we end with the question we began with. What does this tell us about the death of Theresa Duncan? I have verified that she existed. Silliness to those who knew her, but essential when researching stories whose primary existence seems to be the worldwide web. I’ve confirmed, via a chat with the funeral home, that the body of a person identified as Theresa Duncan was delivered to a funeral parlor in Michigan and buried and that many people were in attendance. That really happened, though the only odd thing was no death notices were placed in the paper…yet another barrier to learning about her via the internet.
And we also know Blake existed, was a respected artist and allegedly committed suicide. A newspaper in New Jersey claims that a body has been found but, despite this age of CSI, they’ve yet to get a positive ID. (I’ve emailed the reporter but haven’t heard back. The person who answered the phone at the New Jersey sheriff’s station mentioned in the article said she didn’t know anything about it but switched me to a press officer who is out of town. That’s pretty much how this has been going for me.)
And we know that, together, and I would argue with the assistance of others in her circle, they began to “inhabit” a story about mind control, Scientology, Project Monarch and dark and unspeakable crimes. Were they led into that story by a group of not-so-merry pranksters, out to once again show how stupid the rest of us are by reinforcing the continually expanding mind control mythos? Was she an active participant in the creation of this “hypersigil” who somehow lost control? Or was she simply Theresa Duncan, artist, whose clear interest in the occult and conspiracy culture (as evidenced from the very beginning of her blog and discussion of her life) fed into a developing psychosis of some kind?
I still can’t say. But what I can say is that the story she created on the web, whatever part truth and whatever part fiction, will go a long way toward advancing the agenda of those seeking to define the culture of “conspiracy theory.” She is not their first victim, if victim she is. But I hope, no matter what opinion you may have of my take on the Theresa Duncan affair you will pay attention to the to what these hoax magicians are up to. Believe me…they are paying attention to us.
schmalie said,
July 31, 2007 at 12:21 am
this story first came to my notice on the cover of the LA times arts section. i came home and googled duncan and viola…. lost a whole day to reading and getting sucked into this whole mysterious happening. it’s all very x-files.
i’m a writer who lives in venice, ca and i run in the same circles theresa and jeremy seemed to… yet i have never met them. their faces looked familiar… but there are so many pretty people in venice it’s hard to say. the LA arts and entertainment scene is a small world and i am very surprised our paths never crossed. this is the main reason i started to suspect that not everything was what it seemed… and then i stumbled upon this blog.
the whole thing is intriguing.
and the investigative work you’ve been doing is certainly compelling.
keep it up.
i’ll come along for the ride.
if you need me to do any ‘in persona” venice sleuthing, let me know.
HMW said,
July 31, 2007 at 1:13 am
I think the attention being paid in LA circles to the backstory of Theresa Duncan’s demise is being opportunistically funneled by the LATimes towards an unwitting blogger with this July 29 story about “profile stalking,” something we are doing now -
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/newmedia/la-ca-webscout29jul29,0,5837697.story
>WEB SCOUT: Online snooping made easy
“Profile stalking” is the latest craze in the world of social networking. And we’re all guilty of it.
By David Sarno, Times Staff Writer
July 29, 2007 <
The mentioned blogger, Beth Prouty, says on her own blog that she is surprised to find her name in the article so she was used by the LATimes opportunistically.
Duncan’s interview with Frank Morales reads as quite genuine.
I’ve heard him interviewed on Pacifica and read his articles. His comments to Theresa about Operation Garden Plot and martial law are particularly pertinent to LA readers since they are in a testing zone for militarized police.
I’m inclided to believe that Theresa was taking too many LA intelligentsia on a trip to reality and she became a viral marketed lesson of what can happen when you learn the names of who is in waiting in the rabbit hole.
TYCO said,
July 31, 2007 at 1:40 am
resistance is futile.
you will be assimilated.
is this what happens when someone assigns an empirical value to abstract ideas?
mybe this is why she killed herself.
the sheeple she was engaging called her ‘peter wolf’.
sad really…
Michael Morecock said,
July 31, 2007 at 2:26 am
I think your discovery and analysis is extremely important. They ping on things that have been troubling me for some time – the nature of reality, faith, belief, etc. I’m not a magician, but from my limited study, it would seem that magicians attempt to manifest their desires into reality via strength of will – belief. It is imperative (to them) that they believe what they are attempting to manifest, so sigils and hypersigils are methods to immerse themselves into an alternate reality that seems so real to them that it becomes real. Other people might call this willful insanity. However, if you can get other people, through a novel or a role playing game or better yet, a religion, to believe the same things, then perhaps you can all create a separate reality together, and you won’t be insane anymore.
The interesting thing to me, is that these magical beliefs run through our society already, just not as outrageously. Motivational speakers say that if you believe it, you can do it. “Creating your own reality” is a new age cliche.
This leads to questions about the nature of our collective experience, and to spiritual concepts like the “Egregore”, which is a spiritual being (god) made up of the collective consciousness (or unconsciousness, depending on the writer) of individuals.
If “god” is simply the collective consciousness (and I suspect magicians believe this to be so) then our collective reality can be influenced in profound ways by influencing our collective beliefs. If we all believe it to be true, then it IS true. Perhaps this explains the desire of religions to convert the infidel – the unconscious belief in magic.
It also helps explain the desire of political parties to gather members, and in fact, explains the belief in the idea of democracy – that whatever the majority decides – is correct. The consensus truth. Wikipedia.
It also helps explain the desire of institutions, religions, secret societies, Stanford, Hollywood, to influence mass media. Because to them, the meme IS the reality. Change an idea, and we change the world/universe/reality. Or do we?
Doodad said,
July 31, 2007 at 2:34 am
I wonder how O’Brian had access to her blog. Are they easily accessed to make new posts and change pictures?
I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation but I don’t know that much about blogs and passwords for them etc.
lori g orsini said,
July 31, 2007 at 3:02 am
yes folks
this all begins with “dungeons & dragons”
am i partially correct ?
some folk are constantly at it
keep your ears peeled
au revoir
lori
Professor Pan said,
July 31, 2007 at 3:17 am
Well, DE, since you’ve referenced me in your piece as a skeptic, I might as well chime in.
I went to a disinfo.com conference in the late 90s in NYC. It was a very interesting and somewhat haphazard and uneven event, but I particularly enjoyed listening to Grant Morrison and media critic Douglas Rushkoff (with whom I’ve corresponded, on and off, over a couple of decades). There is some excellent information on the disinfo site — I’ve never seen any indication that the site is promoting *actual* disinfo. The name is ironic, and (to me) a clever appropriation.
I honestly don’t know where you’re going with this series, and this article in particular. While I love your style, and you’ve clearly done your homework, you seem intent on creating a deep, dark mystery out of this sad affair. And in the process, you’re attributing malign intentions to artists, ontological mavericks, and tricksters. Without knowing Theresa or Blake, or their close friends, you really are just working your own brand of creative mojo on their public output.
You’re essentially creating a meta-game of your own, integrating possibly non-relevant ideas and people into what is very likely just the sad story of two smart, creative people who, for whatever reason, killed themselves.
Again, I say this as a friend and a fellow truthseeker. Take a step back and see how this unravels.
CD said,
July 31, 2007 at 3:46 am
Thanks Dreams End for looking into this!
hands of aten said,
July 31, 2007 at 4:17 am
In some ways I think your ARG theory is interesting.
I happen to have friends who knew both Blake and Duncan, so the whole idea that she didn’t exist or that they are really reclusive never made sense to me. I also happen to know that they (Blake included) have been discussing CoS in a paranoid way for several years. This is confirmed by certain people in the articles, but also by good friends of mine.
So a lot of that paranoia is real, unless of course, they have both been planning this thing for years. I wouldn’t rule that out completely, but it seems unlikely.
But here’s the thing about her blog. After her death, looking at it, it seems like some giant puzzle. I know a lot of people who think the whole thing is very strange, and the blog does seem like a rabbit hole at this point.
However, I also have friends who read her blog before her death, and did not think of it this way at all. Most of the blog eulogies you see for her are from people who read her site, and thought some of her posts were paranoid / crazy, but mostly looked past that to the art / culture criticism.
And on the other hand you have the people who think the site is a rabbit hole that somehow provides clues or message about her death. These people seem to have known nothing about her or her site until she died. So my point is, her death is in some ways the rabbit hole. That is, the blog only seems to pull people into this alternate reality when looked at through the lens of her death.
My point being, if you are right that it is an ARG, it is not an ARG that lead to her death, but an ARG that depended upon her death. We are at the beginning of the game, you could say.
I don’t know what to make of all of this. I’m really not a conspiratorial thinker at all, but her blog is really creepy.
HoA
ps. As a friend of mine noted, I think there is a good bit that could be gleaned from all the Hitchcock references (”The Trouble with Anna Gaskell” for one), and note that Gaskell’s boyfriend Douglas Gordon works a lot with Hitchcock and themes of doubles, shadows, etc.
OccultedIgnoramus said,
July 31, 2007 at 4:29 am
DE: Haven’t finished reading this entry yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s spelled BOLLOCKS.
Banta said,
July 31, 2007 at 5:36 am
“My point being, if you are right that it is an ARG, it is not an ARG that lead to her death, but an ARG that depended upon her death. We are at the beginning of the game, you could say.”
This is an excellent thought and one that I’ve been having, I just couldn’t figure out how to express it.
A hoax for the sake of hoaxing seems incredibly dangerous to me. And even if most of the people involved in such a train of thought are genuinely doing it simply for the sake of “art”, there’s little doubt what other forces this sort of game benefits.
God, I wish people could speak directly to one another. There’s no benefit for mankind in spreading confusion. I should probably shut up before I get too preachy about this, but it really sort of angers me.
Also want to add that few words scare me as much as “collective consciousness.”
dreamsend said,
July 31, 2007 at 5:41 am
thanks for all the comments. Let’s see..
I fixed “bollocks” …. an uneasy phrasing, that.
hands of aten, your link doesn’t work. You link to “theresalduncan.blogspot.com” but nothing comes up. Are you starting a memorial for her? Making a statement of some kind?
Doodad…a very good question. If someone came into my office odds are they could just open the blog and not need to sign in, so it may not mean anything. However, I kinda suspect the blog was a group effort anyway.
Pan, I think I was pretty clear where I am going with all this. And I think the people I’m talking about are pretty clear where I am going with this. And since you know those people pretty well, maybe some of them will explain it to you. Maybe you could pass it along to BRH and he will do the honors?
CB said,
July 31, 2007 at 6:15 am
I’m agreeing (I think) with Pan. Whatever interests they may have had, the suicides are not really all that astonishing. I talk to people who have tried it every single working day and the explanations are usually very mundane and sad.
As for the “paranoia”, please consider some alternative explanation. There are plenty and maybe they’ll show up in the toxicology report
HMW said,
July 31, 2007 at 7:52 am
I found Theresa’s blog to be quite coherent.
She understood on a personal level the awful images of women promulgated by media and exposed it as abusive.
And it is this coherence which makes me think she didn’t commit suicide. But then she was very attractive and that invites abuse at an early age and constant unwanted attention, too. Maybe that did wear her down. But many women experience that and gain a surviver identity from resisting. Complicated. Which I had more to go on.
The poster from the movie ‘Marie Antoinette’ she put up as illustration resonated with me because I’d already noticed that next to each other on the video store shelf are the movies ‘A Man Named George’ showing Robin Williams as George ‘Father of Our Country’ Washington and then ‘Marie Antoinette,’ both of them in powdered wigs and one of them evoking the stoning of Paris Hilton while the other evokes God Bless America.
The game is pretty obvious and Theresa got it. Did it get her?
Professor Pan said,
July 31, 2007 at 1:39 pm
DE writes:
<>
What people do I know pretty well? And do you mean BRH as in Blue Resonant Human? I haven’t heard from him in years.
Not sure what you’re getting at. Please explain, because I’m getting an accusatory “you’re in on it” vibe, which I hope is not your aim.
gothamcityinsider.com said,
July 31, 2007 at 2:29 pm
I think human beings are drawn to mysteries like this. We may think we want it all black and white and in large print but our minds crave the search. We want to carry a torch down dark roads and uncover things like scavengers. Maybe I need to re-read Guns Germs and Steel. I found myself re-reading Sheldrake this morning because I know Duncan was into Sheldrake. I think its easy to perpetuate this mystery when those swarming around the issue are just as sublime and smart and savvy. We love rabbit holes because it implies a never ending search; we like the goose chase and the internet was built for that never ending maze; if this then that, like a choose your own adventure book from when we were kids. It’s a black hole, and everyones speculation is just as plausible as anyone elses because none of us really know or will ever know truly what happened and why. I wrote to a friend last night about this and said that if i were to die mysteriously, I’m sure things about me would come out that no one ever knew, and for the thrill of the human imagination and the NEED TO KNOW i’m certain many people would knock down those doors and find lots of stuff i was into that only i knew about and that would surprise a lot of people who thought they knew me or knew my friends or what i did with my spare time. We love the hunt, the chase, thats what its all about. Its open season for our imaginations to run wild and we speculate. we gather more clues to stir the stew. we don’t know which maze paths we should go down; we may take one and neglect another, there are so many forks in the road and paths. but the way people are behind closed doors, especially lovers, can be very different from what or how they are when they’re around other people. who knows what was really going on. we only know what they’ve decided to leave us with, as little or as much as there is to sort through now. we may be shocked to find it was a lot simpler and more typical than we wish to believe and want to allow. we’re looking for something extraordinary, something magically tragic… more romantic and tragic and cryptic than walking into an ocean and leaving your ID behind, more coincidental and crazy than being in love with hoaxes and Machiavellianism. we want it to be art. we want them to have left a legacy for us to figure out like a college scavenger hunt but they may have left us with nothing and we’re the ones making it all seem to be more than it is.
Thirtyseven said,
July 31, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Oh ho ho! You’re getting into Grant Morrison the morning after I finished re-reading The Filth and We3? Too weird! “Synchronicity accelerates,” as Malaclypse once said.
I think there’s a certain amorality to chaos magick — but it’s born of wisdom. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is a saying a lot of people know. I’m not aware of an equally snappy proverb to express the opposite and equally true proposition that projects of great evil will often have unintended positive consequences. Look no further than the CIA program to use LSD as a weapon of social control — nyuk nyuk nyuk.
The “wisdom” is refer to is terrible knowledge — the best kind of wisdom. Basically, our intentions have surprisingly little to do with our outcomes and results. I realize that the current “Law of Attraction” climate is pumping people towards the opposite conclusion, but it’s a conclusion I’ve seen a lot of evidence to support, especially in my own life and my own study of history. (Both of which are shaped by my own, sub-conscious assumptions.)
An act of magick creates change — change plays itself out in unpredictable ways. I think one of the main lessons/ethics of Chaos Magick is that you can’t count on a single spell, or sigil, or comic book, or anything to change the world. Or even change your life. It takes constant work and regular maintenance. It is a process of trial and error. I think the “ritual” aspect of magick is too connected with women and children strapped to altars and surrounded by men in black robes, in public consciousness. The main point of “ritual” is that it’s a ritual, a regular, cyclical, repeated activity that keeps your overall project at the forefront of your mind and forces you to consistently confront the reality of your current situation.
Just wanted to throw that out there — another great read, thanks for getting the blog ritual going again.
ImpeccableLiberalCredentials said,
July 31, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Dreams and doubles… anyway, the news of these deaths and the posts about them have created a very significant reality, as I am often inclined to measure it, in google search traffic and technorati tags posted.
What ever her goal was, whatever her troubles were she had a fairly significant readership, and anyone who was harassing her would have been making a mistake.
… and the “Devil in Dick Cheney” seems to be a common and problematic meme in Venice Beach and surrounding areas.
Anyway, for awhile we focus on this “case” we are all Theresa Duncan, and I wish us all success, freedom, increasing skill and knowledge. At least while the moon is still full…
Pinky said,
July 31, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Your ARG theory really rings true. I noticed that Theresa’s last blog post had to do with storytelling. When the only sources of information on this story are online and traditional sources of reality (newspapers, etc.) are utterly corrupt, biased and suspect, it’s hard to know what’s real anymore.
I seriously question whether the two of them are dead at all. You said you spoke to someone on the phone at the mortuary. But where did you get the name of the mortuary? That information could have been fabricated and planted, with a confederate in the game waiting to answer the phone. I wonder what would happen if you called back and tried to arrange a real funeral there? Would they transfer you to the voicemail of someone who’s on vacation?
For that matter, who are you? You could easily be part of the game. Conveniently confirming her death for us.
The only questions that trouble me (in terms of the ARG) are the statements Theresa made in her blog about Jim Cownie. If this man even exists (don’t bother showing me online proof – it’s all made up) and if he really is a politically connected businessman, surely there were libelous implications made against him that he would not have tolerated for the sake of “art,” even if the request to play along with the game came from his beloved ward, Anna Gaskell.
Hey, what was that? Okay, I think the CIA are peeking in my window. Gotta go -
ImpeccableLiberalCredentials said,
July 31, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Jim Cownie is a real person who contributes a lot of money to the Iowa Republican Party, the Republican National Committee and Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) as well as Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE)…
you can do the search yourself:
http://www.fec.gov/finance/disclosure/norindsea.shtml
dreamsend said,
July 31, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Pan,
I owe you a clarification…I do not mean to imply you are in on it, so I wanted to say that publicly. I do mean to imply that you are familiar with these types of folks and know the sorts of games that get played. It’s my job to prove or at least put together a coherent case that this is going on here…and that takes some background knowledge which I’m trying to provide. But I found your statement about disinfo.com to be…well…a little disingenuous. Over at RI you are the first to be skeptical of a lot of claims…and frankly, you are usually right to be. But it’s clear to me that people like disinfo.com are knowingly putting out crap they don’t personally believe, or exaggerating as Jon Gaskell did in Pointblank.
Is NO ONE picking up on this? Jon Gaskell’s brother pulled off the most successful, mainstream “mind control” hoax article that I’m aware of. That is significant.
as for chaos magic I tell you what I am seeing that is in common in all the groups I mention but not necessarily true of everyone in each of the groups. It’s a logic like this:
Consensus reality is bogus.
We can shape perception of reality.
Perception in turn shapes actual reality.
So let’s do some stuff to help shape other people’s realities.
That makes me uncomfortable enough, but I think this often hides or quickly devolves to:
Those “sheeple” are so stupid, they buy into consensus reality. So we can mess with their heads….maybe some people will “wake up” but meanwhile, what fun messing with the rubes.
This is exactly what disinfo.com is about. I don’t know how anyone could think differently who knows the landscape. A certain writer who pops up here every now and then was once asked to write an article for one of their “everything you know is wrong” books. He had one look around the site and figured out who was behind it and basically told them to fuck off. Oh, and I have a feeling we will be looking closer at disinfo.com because unlike some of these other folks they managed to get some pretty mainstream backing…at least for enough time to get going. Research their history…
In any event, I haven’t finished making my case, but I’m now open to hearing the alternative analysis of why the people Duncan said were involved in a mind-control related plot to get her were them selves putting out mind-control plots and heavily utilizing mind-control themes and images. My analysis is that this was all to reinforce, arg like or hypersigil like or whatever you want to call it, the mythos of mind control that is being perpetuated. I think that is very clear. How much of this was them working together vs. someone feeding on Duncan’s delusions, I don’t know. But people called her paranoid for her “delusions” about the Gaskells and yet here they are, promoting those same “delusions”. Am I the only one who finds that rather suggestive?
Finally, without being overdramatic, exactly the sort of games I expected when I put up this first article are being played. Emails I’m getting, some messages in the comments, etc. It’s not “spooky” or weird in any way because we expected it. And while I may write about those games at some point, right now, I have no interest in giving them any air time.
But it is for that reason I wanted to clarify about Pan. My message to him sounded cryptic and I shouldn’t have done that. Pan is very knowledgeable about this material (hence his comment that I’d “done my homework) and I’d love it if he would at least acknowledge that this kind of gameplaying has taken place on the net…whether he agrees with the Duncan part or not.
As for the sigil reference…for me her sigil post was a very big sign that Duncan was aware of these very circles that I guess people want to say aren’t involved. Pan says that it was simply something he found interesting and I was suggesting he keyed in on it for some specific reason because there are hundreds of posts, and that one is kinda far back. But maybe chaos magick works and there’s some synchronicity going on there? In any event, someone who definitely WAS playing games with me was also emphasizing sigil.
By the way, it’s a little harder to research but starting with her blog, it’s clear that Duncan was very familiar with the occult scene during her time in Detroit. And if there is one city that comes up when researching the “occult underground” or whatever more than any other save maybe Los Angeles, that would be Detroit. Find her posts about who she worked with there. you should also notice who pops up in her images, though some of them are a little obscure if you don’t know that particular world very well.
I’m a guy with a blog, and as such there’s no reason someone should place a lot of trust in me. But if you all did know me, then the following would be reassuring:
I can’t get everything down on this blog all at once. There’s lots more going on and that I have learned about that hasn’t made it here yet, so just hang on. Meanwhile, explore her blog and also the linked blogs.
One final note…I went out on a limb, if you’ll pardon the pun evoking the SRI series, by putting this series up so quickly and that’s a main source of the criticism about this. People who normally are all for writing about and exploring such material think we should wait and let things sort out before we start “connecting dots.” Admittedly, that criticism is coming primarily from Jeff Wells, whose been known to take a leap or two in his own dot connecting. Sometimes ineffectively and sometimes with stunning success.
I chose to go forward with this because if there is anything to what I’m saying, it will get obscured very quickly.
I am getting emails from lots of people who say they knew her, though nearly all are people who knew her primarily via email and “saw her at parties and openings.” Some say to me, “thank you…there’s something weird going on here” and some tell me “she was clearly paranoid, and you should just drop it.” So there’s not even consensus among her own friends, or at least the ones who’ve said anything on line or to me privately.
So I chose to go forward. I am not worried about hurting my online rep as I don’t really have one. I put up some interesting analysis and also delve into mind control and other sorts of conspiracy related material. So I’m in a unique position here and my quick reaction was to shake the trees a bit and see what fell out.
And things are falling out. That much I can assure you of.
dreamsend said,
July 31, 2007 at 4:35 pm
My information on her funeral came from calling this funeral home:
http://www.lynchfuneraldirectors.com/obituaries-lapeer.html
Googling around, Lynch seems to be quite real, but do your own research and get back to us. I see them listed in various funeral home associations, etc. Meanwhile, her death certificate should be public record in NYC for anyone who lives there. I’d love a scan. The police report should also be public record to some degree, however I don’t know what those rules are and it may only be the case after a case is closed.
As for who I am and trusting me…no, please don’t trust me. remember, I was suggesting she didn’t even exist a couple of posts ago. If someone had read that and taken that and run with it, they probably regret it. so please, do your own research. Look at her blog. Google the people she mentions having been involved with. Use your browser to get the name of the images, as sometimes that can tell you things as well.
The one oddity about the funeral home so far, at least according to the receptionist I spoke with, is that no death notices were filed with the local papers. I specifically asked that, hoping I could access them online. Like I said in the post, she said this was very unusual, though given that TD hadn’t lived there in quite awhile this may not be that mysterious. She had press in LA and NYC where she knew more people.
How anyone can look at this and just see “double suicide” I don’t know. But I really don’t mind criticism…this blog has always been a way that allows others to see my thinking process on certain topics and my conclusions sometimes change right in front of the reader’s eyes. But I do acknowledge those changes as they occur.
gothamcityinsider.com said,
July 31, 2007 at 4:40 pm
Someone said it best that delusion is still harassment. People thinking someone is capable of some sort of terrorism is still terrorism, its the fear. SOMETHING sparked her paranoia at some point and thats what may very well’ve fueled her erosion deeper and deeper into this thing. But obviously at some point Theresa Duncan had to have come in contact with something PERSONALLY to make her believe someone was after her or watching her, etc. whether it was drugs or an incident, there has to be a starting point or a watermark moment. And we aren’t really discussing Jeremys death and I see Jeremys disappearance even more intriguing than this. we have no proof his body was found or if he’s alive or dead. we have a wallet on a beach and a romantic tale about a man walking into the sea because he couldn’t live without his soulmate… I may or may not believe these things, either way, they have popped into my psyche so I’ll share them with you…
1- if theresa duncan really thought the CoS was after them then it was brought on by Jeremy and his work with beck. right? jeremy doesnt design an album cover for CoS member Beck, then Jeremy and Theresa never meet the CoS world. can we assume that?
2- theresa kills herself because she is so stressed about a directing gig not going well AND all the pressure and /or paranoia that the CoS is after her or them, well jeremy is definitely going to feel the guilt. Jeremy thinks ” Oh my god theresa killed herself because of the CoS and i was the one who brought the CoS into this equation” he can’t live with that so he walks into the water and makes sure people know he’s gone.
3- ok lets get all roswell on it now… theresa kills herself out of paranoia and depression. jeremy is not dead. the beach thing was staged. jeremy was sucked in by the CoS somehow and now he’s somewhere living in hiding. the beach scene would be perfect for that. leave all your ID behind and vanish. again, no body = no proof. do we know jeremy burke is dead? no.
4- maybe theresa’s suicide note was B.S. – maybe she WAS depressed and bummed that day, sure, then she took some sleeping pills drank some wine and she laid down and never woke up. still doesnt say whats happened to jeremy.
5- someone was suggesting maybe the funeral home was a hoax and they had a line set up. no. i can confirm for you that theresa duncan is dead and was autopsied. and they are waiting for a final conclusion although public police reports have stated it was most probably an OD of pills and alcohol.
6- why would the CoS be hunting down two people who most everyone seems to have never known of? everyone is learning of their EXISTENCE for the first time as they learn of their DEMISE. isn’t that a bit odd?
7- i read somewhere someone saying their endings were too cliche with the suicide love notes and the walking into the ocean. like “OH it could NEVER be them- they were just too high brow for that”. too high brow for what?!! LOVE?!! listen, behind closed doors everyone is different. the uber-intellectual couple u may’ve hung with, behind closed doors may’ve called each other poo-bear and chocolate love butt. saying their intellectuals doesnt absolve them from falling into a stereotypical romeo and juliet tragic ending. 12 years together? soulmates- been thru a lot together? i’d say its MORE likely that an intellectual ends their life like this in this romantic way. someone well versed in the arts and romance and books walks into the ocean and never comes out.
WoodyWoodman said,
July 31, 2007 at 5:44 pm
On a slightly tangental note, my favourite hoax by Alan Sokal
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html
For any further info just google Sokal Hoax, the sites are legion.
In many ways the impressionist movement was brought about by artists reponses to the threat of the camera. It became very important to find a new way of capturing and commenting on light in a fashion that the camera could not. To me the underpinnings of post modernism is a reaction to past generations championing emperical knowlege, materialistic philosophy and the primacy of formal logic. Perhaps not as a rejection but as an effort to subborn their original intentions for new purpose.
I heard recently about an experiment in which they determined that the disappearing ball trick requires the magician to pretend to follow the ball with his eyes when he ‘throws’ it in the air. It is actually social cues and expectations that fool the viewer more so than the dexterity of the magician.
A while ago I mentioned that I was trying to teach myself formal logic and DE warned me that this was not a strict path to enlightenment, carrying with it baggage of bias, a notion with which I largely agree. What is most important to me is that it really teaches you how most people will instinctively think. It is like studying to disarm bombs, you can’t help but learn how they are made. It is a book of magic in it’s own way.
Professor Pan said,
July 31, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Thanks for the clarification, DE.
As for disinfo.com, I make no claims about their motives and I don’t personally know anyone who works for them. As I said, I attended their conference, which I enjoyed, and I visit the site very infrequently. I don’t know how that makes me ingenuous — please explain. I know from perusing the site that there are multiple posters and viewpoints, so I’d like to hear who “they” are and what type of “crap” they’re putting out that “they” don’t believe. I never noticed an overriding perspective or tilt in their collection of articles and books, but if you see it, please point it out. They have always seemed to me to be a “kitchen sink” operation, putting out a smorgasbord of counterculture materials.
I’ve also read about chaos magick, and the concept of sigils has been around for some time (my first encounter with it was via Psychick TV and Genesis P. Orridge). Anyone with the slightest interest in magick and the occult — as Theresa clearly had — would have likely encountered the concepts and practices. I posted the link to the sigil because I found it interesting and indicative of her occult interests– that’s all. And the link isn’t deeply buried — I gravitated toward the “esoteric” category and found it pretty quickly.
And I don’t think chaos magick is about creating bogus realities for other people or “messing with the rubes” but again, I’ve only done limited research into the subject. If you would offer more examples it might be more persuasive.
As to alternate reality games, I don’t think I’m any more familiar with that practice than other media savvy people. I mean, look at the LOST tv show game to see how mainstream it has become to create fictional, interactive experiences. And the Net has always fostered a sense of play and illusion from the beginning — how many people, including yourself, use a handle instead of your real name? When I began using the handle Professor Pan, I constructed a hypertext (how quaint that sounds now) story about the character. Why? Because it was fun. So while academics and pranksters may have taken gaming to a new level, I don’t see it as inherently nefarious or malign. Nor do I see evidence of “gaming” in the Duncan/Blake suicides (assuming they are suicides).
Re: Thomas Lynch — He’s a writer (and a gifted one) as well as a funeral director, and Alan Ball cites his books as being influential on “Six Feet Under.” I find it very implausible that he would risk his professional reputation, both as a funeral director and a lauded author, to engage in some kind of hoax. It doesn’t make sense.
And I’m not dissing you for golng out on a limb with what is almost a stream-of-consciousness series, and your perspective is intriguing. But your admittedly cryptic (and somewhat accusatory) comments about me, and the continuing push for the possibility that Duncan isn’t actually dead, make me think you’re getting too immersed in this saga and its potential as a game.
We ply some dark waters — conspiracies, the occult, the paranormal, and other topics relegated to the fringe. It requires a reflexive skepticism because the waters are full of mines. I know you are sincere and intelligent, and I think as researchers we should always be ready to tell one of our cohorts when he or she might be floundering in the deep end. I would hope someone would throw me a line if I needed it.
Regardless, I’ll be following what you write, and I’m certainly not suggesting you should stop your line of inquiry — just take a step back and (like I always tell Hugh) be sure to try to prove your theories wrong instead of just seeking to prove them right.
gothamcityinsider.com said,
July 31, 2007 at 5:55 pm
The Sokal Hoax thing reminds me of junior high school. A friend and I were in a group together and we both had nothing, it was Monday and we had forgotten to do our paper. We got up in front of the class and proceeded to bullsh&t through a half hour presentation about ROYGBIV and colour paradigms and alternative optical spectrums. EVERYONE bought it. the teacher gave us an A !! and he was one of these sciene teachers who wore a labcoat. i can’t recall if he was a doctor or not but he very well may have been. we just went up there, acted like we knew what we were talking about and it worked. talking over peoples heads always works because they never want to admit they can’t comprehend what you’re talking about so they’ll just nod and feign comprehension. its the dogpile mentality and its human nature.
Pinky said,
July 31, 2007 at 6:56 pm
I still have no proof that either of them are dead. I wish I was a detective (instead of just playing one on the internet) and could go interview NY police and coroners. But no ephemeral online posting assuring me that they are dead has any meaning in the context of this possible hoax.
On the other hand… maybe this whole hoax theory is a misdirection designed to distract us from the fact that one person has been murdered and another has disappeared. The perpetrators are all named on Duncan’s blog – she even stated that these are the kind of people who would kill. Her posts in the last few months don’t sound like she was depressed – she was scared. And now she’s dead.
Or is she???
gothamcityinsider.com said,
July 31, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Can we piece together some sort of timeline? I am willing to help on my end with my blog and whatever info I’ve gleaned from people emailing me and whatnot.
I’d like to know how and when the relationship with Beck soured. Assuming that Duncan & Burke had no reason to interact with the CoS prior to the Beck project.
How did Duncan & Burke become involved with Jim Cownie?!
How were they introduced to Anna Gaskell? I was shocked to learn Burke had dated Gaskell back in the day.
How does it go from Beck to Jim Cownie?
If we are to believe they were scared or being harrassed and they were paranoid, can we try and piece together why? What did they do wrong in the eyes of the CoS? Burke’s Winchester piece?
So Burke does an album cover for Beck. YEARS later he does an art installation lampooning gun-company heiress Sarah Winchester. OK… wheres the connection betwixt Winchester and Cownie?
I dunno… I agree with Ron Rosenbaum here. If these two were really being stalked and hunted, why not name their tormentors in their suicide notes or at least make mention of it however crypitcally…
Professor Pan said,
July 31, 2007 at 7:16 pm
She’s dead, he’s dead.
http://tinyurl.com/32ezr6
Can we agree on that now? Of course, the police could be “in on it”… and the coroner who examined Blake’s dental records… and the reporters at NYT, LAT, and Newsday… as well as the families….
gothamcityinsider.com said,
July 31, 2007 at 7:42 pm
When I say “Burke”, I meant “Blake” I just realised I’d been making this mistake over and over.
Johnny Belmar said,
July 31, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Two less self-centered people on earth. Who gives a shit.
Banta said,
July 31, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Gothamcityinsider,
That timeline stuff is a bitch to find, online anyway. And trust me, I’ve been trying.
GorgeousGrotesque said,
July 31, 2007 at 8:40 pm
It’s all pretty sad. I had a twinge of hope that maybe Jeremy Blake wasn’t dead…but I guess that’s not so. The whole conspiracy theory-thing, well I find it fascinating, which is obviously why I’m reading this site, but I also have known a passionate artist who committed suicide. Mental illness is a dark and largely misunderstood and unknown demon. My friend seemed totally normal and happy the day before he killed himself- even left me a message saying he wanted to have dinner with me soon…then hung himself in his parents’ backyard the next morning. You can’t know what was going through their heads, what made them do what they did. It’s a horrible tragedy.
And to Johnny Belmar- if that’s how you feel, then why are you even reading this blog? Clearly you give enough of a shit to have found it and read through the entire convoluted thing. People are fucking weird, at least I know that much.
dreamsend said,
July 31, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Yep. Here’s an excerpt from the July 31 article:
A body found by a New Jersey fisherman last month was that of artist Jeremy Blake, the New York Police Department confirmed Tuesday.
Johnny Belmar said,
July 31, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Maybe he didn’t swim out to sea. Maybe he was pushed out, slowly, by the collective psychosis of those around him. There will probably be so many large, fashionable pairs of sunglasses at his funeral…
WitnessLA.com » Blog Archive » Jeremy & Theresa: Sadly Ending the Faux Death Theories said,
July 31, 2007 at 11:01 pm
[...] here, for those of you who have not already run across it, is a link to one of the more interesting, but [...]
Crow said,
August 1, 2007 at 2:15 am
HMW said: “…But then she was very attractive and that invites abuse at an early age…”
I don’t mean to go off-topic, but can you back up that statement at all?
wonderer in the wilderness said,
August 1, 2007 at 2:39 am
“Jon Gaskell’s brother pulled off the most successful, mainstream “mind control” hoax article that I’m aware of.”
Wait, wait wait, I’m a mile behind all of you. What did I miss here? Is there a link or two? Is this the article I think it was, the one in Pointblank on Johnny Gosch,( and I think) the Gannon scandal? How do we know for sure it was a hoax? Who was in on the hoax? Did the author say it was a hoax? Clarification?
wonderer in the wilderness said,
August 1, 2007 at 2:55 am
This article by Tim Schmidt?
http://www.johnnygosch.com/images/pointblank.pdf
wonderer in the wilderness said,
August 1, 2007 at 3:17 am
Tim Schmitt?
Banta said,
August 1, 2007 at 4:57 am
Yes, wonderer. Go and read the RI post on this.
http://rigint.blogspot.com/2007/07/thursday-july-26.html
wonderer in the wilderness said,
August 1, 2007 at 5:05 am
Yes, but it looks to me like the “fired” Tim Schmitt is still working for another Republican publication. Was he in on it? What does he say about the Gaskells, Duncan and Blake?
Della Foix said,
August 1, 2007 at 6:34 am
Rah rah sis boom bah go Prof Pan !!!!
wonderer in the wilderness said,
“Jon Gaskell’s brother pulled off the most successful, mainstream “mind control” hoax article that I’m aware of.”
Wait, wait wait, I’m a mile behind all of you. What did I miss here? Is there a link or two? Is this the article I think it was, the one in Pointblank on Johnny Gosch,( and I think) the Gannon scandal? How do we know for sure it was a hoax? Who was in on the hoax? Did the author say it was a hoax? Clarification?”
I was going to point that out myself. DE where’d you get the idea that this was a hoax? I too will wait to make any pronouncements, although will note the fact that anyone who has gotten too close to exposing anything about the FMM scandal is found DOA and that is a remarkable coincidence that well may be pertinent here. It would be wise to note the degree of separation these folks shared. The Gaskall “April Fools” connection is just too close for comfort.
Although your commentary on ARGs is well researched and perhaps pertinent I have no feeling whatsoever that the Wit’s blog, which I have read since it’s inception was anything other than a masterful work of lfe as art. Artists tell their stories and the stories around them, so undoubtedly the story is there in the aquamarine superluminal stillness at the bottom of the Wit’s sandy sea. I seriously doubt it was a consciously created puzzle.
However perhaps her last post was something playing on her mind. We all have stories to tell however in this case as in others mentioned above who chose or were in the process of choosing to quite literally brought them the ultimate silence.
The reference I quoted earlier by Baron von Luxxury who was not Jeremy Blake as was suggested by another poster, but a friend who alluded to Theresa as being the real Sable Starr is another cryptism in this regard. Although their respective ages would completey rule out their being one and the same it is another interesting reference that alludes to pedophila. Sable and her side kick Lori Maddox having been the very best known of the very young teen groupies of yesteryear.
I did notice in reading a change in Theresa’s temperment around February. Perhaps the harrassment was getting to her.
In my own investigations into ARG’s I have noted that Majestic, perhaps the seminal ARG, was disbanded and reputedly purchased by the powers that think they be after noting how useful the technique of blurring reality could be to their own endeavors. I agree with the poster who commented that the ARG here would be spun after the fact. This may in this case only serve to obsifucate the truth. I believe this has been noted by others here as well.
A great loss of two very talented people.
GorgeousGrotesque this ones for you…
dreamsend said,
August 1, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Jon Gaskell said it was a hoax. It could be one of those “anti-hoaxes” but either way, the point is, Gaskell printed an article that “confirmed” Duncan’s “delusions”.
I’d love to understand this “sable starr” business more, Della Foix. I didn’t really understand that.
gothamcityinsider.com said,
August 1, 2007 at 2:23 pm
I think we all want this to be more than it is for a myriad reasons. I think we’re all creative and smart and that means we read into things and enjoy it and our brains work on overdrive. We quickly pass over the obvious or the banal because we assume it has just GOT to be more than what it appears to be; this simply CAN’T be all there is. We want to believe that, so whether we know it or not, we fuel and perpetuate that. I posted once before that I’m sure if I died suddenly or mysteriously, lots of things would come to light about me that people would be surprised of and never knew. We all have skeletons in the closet and things that happen to us on a daily basis that we keep to ourselves. Mystery loves company. Without us, there’d be no wonder, no romance, no crypticism. Right?
cdub said,
August 1, 2007 at 3:13 pm
“Someone said it best that delusion is still harassment.”
That is not quite what they said – they said that the delusion of harassment is just as real as harassment (that is, presumably, to the harassed/delusional, who is apparently existing in a sort of undetermined Schrödinger’s cat state.)
Presumably, by the same logic, the delusion that something is an ARG is just as real as something being an ARG…
gothamcityinsider.com said,
August 1, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Right, the terror is the fear itself. Once thats planted, it doesn’t matter if anything tangible happens again, it’s there, it’s alive and will always be with you. It could very well have been a self-fulfilling prophecy for Theresa and Jeremy. Maybe they poked around and found what they were looking for, maybe they instigated it by trying to find out, who knows. I still can’t believe there was any foul play here. Foul play may’ve been the seed planted in her mind about the evil the CoS is capable of but I can’t imagine much more than that – then again, it seems thats all the CoS needed. They didn’t need to dispatch a killer when they may’ve just turned her against herself.
GorgeousGrotesque said,
August 1, 2007 at 3:46 pm
The Des Moines Gastronomical Society: members include Jake Gaskell & Pete Cownie. Their website has this quote on the members page: “If you can’t convince ‘em, confuse ‘em.” -Harry S. Truman.
How appropriate.
http://www.desmoinesgastronomicalsociety.com/Memberssss.htm
CB said,
August 1, 2007 at 4:46 pm
A middle aged woman gets sloshed and weepy and takes pills, miscalculating…she dies. Younger man reads biting blaming “suicide letter” feels guilty, probably drinks too and walks into the ocean. Two moments of irrational human emotion; two lives lost.
No matter how lofty we assume thei intellects to be, this seems like a very simple story. Trying to read more into it: CoS harrassment, occult, whatever is simply zebra hunting.
dreamsend said,
August 1, 2007 at 5:21 pm
CB…
What you suggest is indeed common. But what is far less common is to have someone die after having written on a very popular blog about how she was being harassed and stalked. What is also unusual is having the subject of her delusions, Gaskell, play along with the delusions as in the Pointblank article “confirming” everything Duncan was talking about. At the time, it was edited by Anna Gaskell’s brother, an email from whom is on the internet saying the whole thing was a hoax. And Anna was playing along as well. All of the “alice” and “twins” imagery are core images from the stories of “Project Monarch.” there’s even discussion of a component to “mind control” called “twinning” which is somehow supposed to join two victims together in some way.
My contention was that Duncan was part of a group of artists engaged in creating some sort of ARG-like construct with themes of mind control and Project Monarch as the basis. Whether that was an ARG actually to be “played” or just a decision to carry on that theme in a way that blurs the lines between reality and fantasy, I couldn’t say. I can’t prove my point but if you know the “internet lore” around “Project Monarch” it is quite apparent. At the very least, we can say that at least two sets of people, Duncan/Blake and anyone else involved in the creative process that informed her blog, and the gaskells. I’m finding others, but that’s all about that for now. In hindsight, I think that’s why this blog struck me so forcefully because I AM familiar with those themes and images…and others who wouldn’t be wouldn’t see all the references.
CB said,
August 1, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Many people are harrassed and stalked…they call the cops. A blogger is not some rarified person immune to the emotional stress of middle age. Pills and booze are an integral part of this, as are anxiety disorders.
The zebra hunt makes for an interesting and disturbing read, like other reads over the years. Most people play these games for fun. If they kill themselves, it’s for very personal reasons: relationships, finance, criminal charges.
HMW said,
August 1, 2007 at 5:50 pm
gothamcityinsider wrote:
“Mystery loves company.”
Well put. Confusion is contagious and I see ‘awe and wonder’ as a stealth form of ’shock and awe.’
And this has been exploited for ages. Recently as discussion groups on ‘The DaVinci Code,’ for instance.
Cyber-cointelpro is ramping up in ‘news’ and disinfotainment.
BTW, I noticed that disinfo.com’s hard copy books have…disinfo…in them. Warning.
Culture war heads-up:
The west coast has a youth’n'music oriented periodical distributed from San Diego to San Francisco with local advertisers and names that are all versions of the California Herald fronted by a Gene Mahoney.
Theresa Duncan would recognize the themes in this rag instantly. I did because I know the value of misogyny to the National inSecurity State.
Sniff the sulfur at its website- http://californiaherald.net/
It promotes ‘he-man’ poets who rage at “bitches.” And worse. Like Che Guevara on a meat hook.
“Santa Rosa Herald, East Bay Herald, Marin Herald,” etc. All the same rag with local advertisers duped into being friendly credentials for psy-ops.
This rag is more right wing than Ann Coulter and looks to me like a professional CIA product designed to peel off young cultural creatives away from leftie rockers with relentless negative framing and also to badjacket women which is a core theme of military recruiting which needs young men to remain aloof from young women. The movie reviews direct readers to hostile images of women and there is a cartoon that is always about evil women.
Besides chronic attacks on the image of Che Guevara and women there are smears against every musician who has ever spoken up for human rights and against fascism, Joan Baez, Frank Zappa, Michael Moore, etc.
The magazine’s website has the worst reich-wing columnists and carried disinfo about Joan Baez’ trauma-based dissociative identity disorder issues. Yes, she really has them as a result of early child abuse.
Look out for this rag on the west coast. It looks like a professional USG alphabet agency device to me.
And this is precisely the kind of thing Theresa Duncan was exposing on her blog.
gothamcityinsider.com said,
August 1, 2007 at 5:51 pm
We’d be naive NOT to follow the paths the coincidences lead us to. There’s a very good chance, and we could even make the assumption, that Yes, Theresa was well-aware of and interested in all this hoax-as-art / Project Monarach malarky BUT she killed herself for completely different reasons. It is a wild coincidence but it could be just that, a coincidence. It may’ve been the furthest thing from her mind as she wrote out her suicide note and swallowed those pills and waited to fade out. I doubt she thought “ooh people will wonder since i’m into all that stuff on my blog…” Yes, you are right, just because she was into hoaxes or she was paranoid or she made mention of the CoS terrorizing people doesn’t mean thats how she met her end but we can only work with what clues we;ve been given and so far the only ones we are privy to and the only ones we can really scour is whats on the internet – an arena prone to misinformation and labyrinthian rabbit holes. Personally, the deeper this seems to go, and the more subcutaneous we search, the more I feel like it was a simple but tragic Romeo & Juliet. Only the two of them knew what was going on in their lives and behind closed doors. We knew what they wanted us to know about them- just like anyone. You present what you want to have known and keep secret what you want to hold dear. We knew their personas but not them as people. And they did well selling us their personas because we seem to be searching for every possible alley to avoid what may be the glaring truth; the simple truth; the TYPICAL truth.
gothamcityinsider.com said,
August 1, 2007 at 5:55 pm
P.S. and what I meant by “the TYPICAL truth” is most likely a version of what CB has suggested above and what I’d heard from the beginning. Theresa was bummed about something she was working on and Jeremy came home from work and found her dead.
dreamsend said,
August 1, 2007 at 6:08 pm
I am familiar with this territory, so I can see with certainty that nothing on her blog was particularly revelatory. Actually, I don’t even believe a lot of the Monarch stuff, but right or wrong, it’s two mouseclicks on google to get the stuff she had there. No need to “silence” her.
She did have a more sophisticated understanding of certain things but she didn’t demonstrate much knowledge about MKULTRA and spoke in fairly vague generalizations.
And CB, I’m not sure what your deal is, but when someone blogs that people are out to get them and then they die in unclear circumstances, that’s something different. Meanwhile, her “delusions” seem to have been fed by people around her like the Gaskells or else she was in on the “joke.”
It’s possible that all this was in play and yet she still was mentally ill or depressed for some reason, sure. But CB, please don’t be a cop. Because if one of my loved ones says people are out to get her and then dies an unnatural death, you’d better be investigating that, no matter the surface appearance.
But enough of that, there are plenty of anonymous folks out there telling us that TD was crazy. Most of them base it merely on the content of her thought…Scientology out to get her, or whatever. But at least one noted behavior that was alienating her friends…and her circle of friends would know better, but they just aren’t talking.
For example, in the Washington Post article, they quote Glenn O’Brien saying he was totally taken aback but that they were very private.
I found that interesting, since he is the one who had access to her blog to make the last post and to change her picture at the top left. How did he do that? Did he just go into the apartment? Did he have the password? Either way, it suggests he had close access to them and would have been in a better position to know her than most.
“I missed it completely,” said Glenn O’Brien, a friend and longtime Manhattan art world denizen. “They had a lot of friends, but they were ultimately very private people. I once heard her say something about Scientology that sounded sort of improbable to me, but I just sort of let it go. It was like a can of worms you didn’t want to open.”
Others in the article paint a picture of true psychosis. Whole thing is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/31/AR2007073102098.html?sub=new
I’ll have more to say about all of this in awhile.
Erno said,
August 1, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Do any of the Duncan/Blake articles mention that Scientologists DO stalk and harass people they deem to be a threat? That seems like an important point to make in this case.
HMW said,
August 1, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Steve Kangas wrote extensively about CIA characters like Richard Melon Scaife.
Then he died of a gunshot to the head in the building where Scaife has offices.
This caused a ripple on the internet similiar to the ones after Gary Webb and Hunter Thompson died of gunshots to the head.
Even the Washington Post had to write about Kangas’ death making reference to the recent controversy over the death of Vince Foster. The WPost played up the ‘everyone loves a conspiracy’ theme.
And a hoax story about kangaroos and guns in an Australian military simulator was sent around the internet starting at precisely the time of the Kangas controversy, what looks to me like an effort to eclipse the story of Kangas’ death and perhaps sensitize spam filters, a tactic used against grassroots email organizers like AfterDowningStreet.org.
http://www.snopes.com/humor/nonsense/kangaroo.asp
Steve Kangas’ website had ‘kangaroo’ in the url and he did a timeline of CIA atrocities and a history of the Origins of the Overclass including Operation Mockingbird.
All good stuff preserved on other websites by his friends and allies after his death.
So the topics these people were all writing about remain the important ones, more important than their deaths.
What is the view of Scientology in LA image-producing circles which influence so much of America? What level of knowledge in LA is there of misogyny as a National inSecurity State device?
I know Alex Constantine is monitoring the CIA infiltration of Pacifica’s station in LA.
Is LA a key battleground in infowar? Hell yes. Has been since Hays and the Office of War Information and the red scare black lists.
Maybe there is another scare underway now and Theresa Duncan is being used as its viral marketing device.
GorgeousGrotesque said,
August 1, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Ok, so I’m sure this is irrelevant, and I’m sure it is just all coincidences, but it just made my spine tingle…and i just wanted to voice something about it once, to get it out of my head. My friend, Todd Baldwin, the innovative, fiercely talented graphic designer/artist who did lots of album art and promotional art for electronic music in the 2000s, the one that I mentioned earlier- I just wanted to go a little further about him, as he is actually the reason that my interest was piqued in the whole Blake/Duncan story from the start. He went by the design moniker of Pigeonhole designs, and earlier Airline Industries. Anyway, he committed suicide 2 years ago last week. Well, I met him a few months after he had moved back to the DC area, from Los Angeles. 7 months later he took his own life. When the Blake/Duncan story surfaced, well it hit me hard because I was reminiscing about Todd, and it was just weird, because Jeremy Blake was the same age as Todd, and even reminded me of him, his looks and rockstar persona. And it was just weird – reading how Jeremy Blake had grown up in the DC area (where I’m from, where Todd grew up) and had become this visionary artist in the computer graphic field (like Todd) and had moved out to LA (like Todd) and then within less than a year of moving from LA back to the East Coast, had committed suicide (like Todd). I just wonder if they ever knew each other. I’m sorry if I’m wasting your time if you’re reading this…I’m not trying to draw any conclusion about anything, it just struck a deep chord in me. I’m not saying there’s any connection, it just weirds me out, and it also renews my sadness and sense of loss over my own friend. So the straw that broke the camel’s back and made me actually write something about this was that I just read the washington post article about Blake & Duncan, and then was reading a blog (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/) linked to that that said that Theresa Duncan had worked for the software company Magnet Interactive, based in Georgetown. Todd worked there before he moved out to LA. It is just all bizarre. I’m not trying to make it anything more than a series of really weird coincidences but it is at least that.
dreamsend said,
August 1, 2007 at 9:34 pm
GG, thanks for the note. If you’ll recall, there is another such “twinning” that of Sarah Hannah’s death with Duncan’s. I posted their pictures and they, too, share a great resemblance.
And I think, in fact, “twins” is a subject that you, or at least someone who named a series of paintings identical to your moniker also deal with. There’s a lot of “twinning” involved here. If this ISN’T some ARGish game, then it makes me believe that there is a LOT to the idea of synchronicity.
Banta said,
August 1, 2007 at 10:13 pm
“If this ISN’T some ARGish game, then it makes me believe that there is a LOT to the idea of synchronicity.”
Sigh, I sometimes wonder if all of our lives aren’t an ARG.
cadeveo said,
August 1, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Ah, man. I’m surprised you didn’t know about LBP and the like already. I remember being on the Italian’s e-mail list back in college. As I recall they were very much anti-Stewart Home, who is/was one of the Luther Blissett’s from England.
There was another group after the Seppuku by the name of Wu Wei? I think or something similar.
And that sight you mention, which you’ve chosen to abbreviate as “19373″, the numbers add up to 23, which is another discordian wink and nod, by the way.
Negativeland will be good for you to check out if the KLF’s media pranking interests you. They got a lot of mileage out of causing the media to believe that the suicide of a certain teenage boy had been sparked by one of their songs, “Christianity is Stupid.” They did this by simply putting out a press release after the kid’s suicide disavowing any involvement or link to the song. The lazy media did the rest and, like the later KLF, thing, they said that was the point. To point out how lazy, false and easily hacked the media was.
If you’re interested in other links to this kind of thing, you should explore Genesis P. Orridge, Psychic TV and the like. If I remember correctly, there’s some link between neoism. But I might be remembering incorrectly. There is a link to chaos magick, sigils and the like, though.
I suspect many movies are also hypersigils. Unlike the Grant Morrisons, though, the folks involved with that aren’t likely to brag about what they’re doing.
dreamsend said,
August 1, 2007 at 10:42 pm
19373 actually adds up to 33. But you could add 1 + 9, 3 + 7 and then tack on the 3. I had messed around with that number but everyone already thinks I’m nuts.
If I can’t find time to do a full posting tonight, I’ll put up something abbreviated just to start another comment thread. This one has been a goldmine and thanks to all who are chiming in.
dreamsend said,
August 2, 2007 at 12:21 am
GG,
You have probably seen this, but it is a tribute site to Todd Baldwin. It was as recently as 2005 when he died. There are tributes and images for anyone interested…
http://www.toddbaldwintribute.com/
I didn’t see that much personal information on there, but thought I’d pass it on.
Trifecta said,
August 2, 2007 at 5:23 am
What is this TWINS theme running all over the internet, and now the bridge collapse?
cadeveo said,
August 2, 2007 at 6:49 am
Yeah, that’s the way I added it up, DE. 1+9=10+3=13+7=20+3=23
The 33 gematria would be more masonic than discordian (if you put any truck in that)!
Now that I’m thinking about it, wasn’t there an operation MindFuck in Illuminatus which essentially entailed lots of these kinds of above-mentioned covert pranks upon consensus reality?
Google gnome suicides. These were being conducted at the same time as the major Luther Blissett stuff, though by an unrelated group (as far as I know). Lawn gnomes being stolen and then found hung, as if having committed suicide. I seem to recall someone being arrested for involvement in this…
Ah…found a quick blurb. It was the Gnome Liberation Front:
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=974606
eric swan said,
August 2, 2007 at 8:01 pm
We’re supposed to be surprised by people who commit suicide. This, Watson, is simply a case of a girl who “pixelled herself into a corner’.
mike payne said,
August 10, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Theresa probably would be flattered that you consider Staircase a rabbit hole.
She was righteously capable of lording over one.The namesake of her blog-didn’t really apply to her-of course she would think of things to say later-no she’d probably be asleep-because she would have already blown everyone away with her quick tongue.She cracked me up so fast I can’t remember what she said-she was that quick.
Alot of LA writers mostly and the scattered commentor’s are pretty happy to throw stones on her grave-Theresa often referenced witches,these hack journalists’ are seeming to rejoice that she is dead.Forget all that, Staircase was a daily mag,I would say-more interesting,she sustained an aethetic-she taugh poetry and lead her readership to literary sourcery.The fact is,she was this dynamic-she was also the essence of opportunity-which is also a characteristic diametrically opposed to the idea of “esprit d’escalier”. She landed gigs in elevators. If you want to see Theresa Duncan on screen-buy THE HISTORY OF GLAMOUR it’s only $10-it’s a perfect movie.
The main character Charles it’s her person,her humor is the overall vibe of the flick.There’s a scene at the Googenheim where silouettes(?) of Theresa and Jeremy are chatting at the opening.
Theresa knew Brendan Canty,drummer Fugazi,just to name one real person.
She knew me,she was so so so cool to me-we met when I answered an ad for a roomate in D.C.-she answered the door-my hair trigger response was “I live here”.
It was like Weird Science when they had made a woman.
I was totally impressed by her-my first reaction aside-my feeling wasn’t romantic
I didn’t sexualize her .She’s just been at the top of my list ever since. It’s hard to grasp how proximity changes your life.
Theresa could belt out Star 69(death valley 69) by SY-she would want to drive and drink
an old Porsche-maybe next time,she liked the analogue gauges.
She would sing in the shower-or I would here her ask for a certain bra-
Her every response to me was a yes,never an excuse or whine no no’s.
She had friends no matter what LA wants to print-she maybe didn’t know how much people like me thought of her,what am I gonna do-call her everyday and say THeresa you are special. Theresa didn’t like trouble talk-she didn’t seek attention via made up drama.She was a great writer,because she was also an inventor-she wasn’t writing to impress,to show off her education -some say she lied about her college-the name she gave her thesis-should be an inspiration to everyone.
That’s it Peace Out Theresa D.
I believe the last official post on Theresa Duncan’s weblog should be her own-if you agree please comment there-I get an error each time I try. It’s my opinion that the current presentation of Theresa Duncan’s blog-is comparable to when Keith Richards
dies someone takes up his guitar to give it one last strum for us all.
dreamsend said,
August 11, 2007 at 12:21 am
For those who don’t know…Keith Richards is said to have faked his own death way back in the sixties. I don’t know the details, but this is the kind of “mixed message” I get all the time. Do with it what you will. Naturally, it comes via Reston, VA.
obit/lament « the seaword said,
August 11, 2007 at 4:12 am
[...] 10:12 am · Filed under the mystery of the wit of the staircase, theresa duncan jeremy blake Mike Payne, buried in the comments of Dream’s End: “Theresa probably would be flattered that you consider Staircase a rabbit hole. She was [...]
jeesh said,
August 11, 2007 at 7:21 am
“For those who don’t know…Keith Richards is said to have faked his own death way back in the sixties. I don’t know the details”
don’t know the details… sounds familiar. go on…