As a pseudo-fictive author of many anti-academic treatises, I was lucky enough to come into possession of Volumes 1-13 of The Oneiriad, a pan-universal exploration of selfhood which elaborates on some theories of multiversal travel I had considered in my youth, before forming Die Spezielle Bruderschaft der Ontologischen Zerstörung; it seems apt to write some evidence of its contents now for the SBOZ before its untimely demise at the hands of never having existed in the first place.
The Long Good Sunday feels like the kind of boîte de nuit décadente where some of the younger SBOZ members might frequent, the rascal bohemians with hearts of lead, the Jean Genet copycats, the Burroughsian few. Run by an Indian émigré going by the name Gatsby, The Long Good Sunday is a debauch hotspot for myths, legends, mortals, and fanciful folk to conduct their dodgy dealings, like a pan-galactic Delboy.
But there are entities that do not fit so neatly into the phylogeny of the chthonic-conceptual-mythopoetic triad, powers-that-be who reside in The Long Good Sunday with motivations, orchestrations, constellations surrounding them even the dios promedio would struggle to engage with. One of this kind lists in Albion a zodiac of these hinonga1 but I wish to focus on two for this expedited essay from the asylum.
With his canine companion Venivici, we first meet Mr. Tomorrow. A face-changing immortal, perhaps some of the arclight sparking re-envisioned a Time Lord, but his regenerative prowess is not some bio-chemico-reconstitution, but a narratological effervescence. Tomorrow possesses a meta-awareness of his corporeality, constructed not of atomic echoes but story protocols; he changes his face when he dies because some author has brought him back and imagined him differently, or because they forgot what species his dog is. Mr. Tomorrow has access to meta-universal truths incomprehensible to the common character, the equivalent of a Taoist monk accessing absurdist knowledge of the laws of physics versus the know-how of a capitalist masturbating on their lunch break. In the Moorcockean mode, Mr. Tomorrow represents an order, but a blue-orange one, for one might find entire galaxies under his sway if it means some higher ordering can be fulfilled.
In équilibre opposé direct, the chaotic to the order, but once more you might easily find the chaotic equivalent forming bureaucracies to rebalance the scales of orange-blue hepohepo me te tikanga. Where Mr. Tomorrow is indebted to narratology to bring him back from the brink of death (although, being edited out is perhaps a closer term), Mr. Voltigeur (uncertainly monikered after French soldiers) is indebted to the abstract. Recalling the Lynchian mode of universal construction, we begin with the material, shft to the narratological, before spelunking to the abstract. Voltigeur rises, where Tomorrow falls.
But what does this mean in terms of The Oneiriad, of its philosopho-manifesting half-nonsense? In regards to the semi-conscious characters within it? Of its authors? Of its readers? In the usual literary mode - and even the kaotic - a character remains in its zone of influence. But Voltigeur, in both impish varietal and flamboyant flaneuse, has appeared in half-baked Janda tales, its presence felt in texts and locales2 outside of the authors original texts. Mr. Tomorrow, being a top-down force, is harder to reconcile or represent in material senses. Dogs exist, I suppose.
Good versus Evil. Chaos versus Order. Blue verses Orange. Versus verses The Trinity. Moving external to a bivalved mode is necessary for the consumption of this narratology. When one can grasp the tree making a sound in a forest, you will be slapped in the face.
As magico-authoreal caricatures, it is natural to fall into the old traps of categorisation. When dealing with entities which expand, explore, and circumvent the usual triads, it is almost impossible to resist the urge to find a new category, or redefine the old ones. Are Tomorrow and Voltigeur gods? Not quite. Are they concepts? They are bred from them, familial lineages, but as the finch is not the dinosaur? Are they chthonic? Only when we feel the presence of chaos or order in our day to day activities, and even then, are they Tomorrow and Voltigeur, or something else the magicians, writers, and disastrously insane have alternate names and phylogenies for?
Other than the pun, what accounts for the vault? What secrets could be unlocked by equally murderous and life-gifting beings such as Voltigeur and Tomorrow, destined to be - like Batman and Joker - to be adversaries, and like Joker and Batman without thematic resonance unless placed side by side. No one presumes the clown to be the enemy of chiroptera, same as a Napoleonic skirmishers are neither eldritch nor the enemies of temporal delineations. I envision some funnel, like the transcendentalists universal matter-to-dream engine, but with a bank vault door. And behind it, something akin to wisdom, or madness, both, or neither.
This essay was kindly donated by the SBOZ, and was written by Ricard St. Jassœmein in a state of situationist prank, hallucination, and sigilisation. If one would like to join the SBOZ, please email the last surviving member at severe.sboz@gmail.com. Please remember, the SBOZ does not exist, and neither does its members.
To access The Oneiriad and to support this author/evocator, you can buy any of the volumes from gumroad for £0+. Any donations appreciated for further manifestation.
Mr. Tomorrow, Mr. Voltigeur, JONAH, PETER, Seigneur des Marées et des Roues, La Femme aux Deux Visages, Miss Crepuscular, Miss K’arandzav, ERICA, Queen Thrip, Deandra of the Moors, Houdini Themiscyra, and the unnamed old man birthed of Lord Payne’s chrysalis—the full thirteen volumes of The Oneiriad indicate The Courier may be a member, also perhaps a Devil at Carauntoohil, and Lady Bethlehem, but also that these individuals may not comprise any order, and may simply be a trick of wordplay by Mr. Voltigeur himself/itself.
See: Glawenfordbrygge, The White Tree