Marc Bolan had a strange magical voice like he was singing in a different language, and he lived with a wizard in France for a while, stuff I could only dream of doing. Maybe in the future. Dad said I should concentrate more on real life rather than being off with the fairies. Maybe I should concentrate less?
Anyway, to fill the music black hole, I started reading. Not fictional stories but true supernatural stuff. I read that in Russia, the Soviets were training candidates to be telescopic, or telepathic, something like that. Being able to move objects by thought alone. Yes, mind over matter. I could do that! Well, I couldn’t. Yet. But I could learn. How hard could it be? I reckon within a couple of weeks I’d be able to throw people against walls simply by pushing the force through the palm of my hand.
The Russian candidates underwent card tests, predicting a sequence of special psychotherapy cards with simple shapes on them such as a square, triangle, diamond, circle or three wavy lines (my favourite). I didn’t have that deck of cards so I didn’t bother with that test and I skipped several others because they sounded really boring. The first fun-looking experiment was for advanced level psychic students and involved the heavy-duty task of separating a yolk from the albumen of a hen’s egg using power of the mind, only. The separation would be undertaken in a tank of water.
As luck would have it a fish tank freshly filled with water and an oxygenating bubbler had appeared in my room in anticipation of winning a goldfish at the upcoming fair at Barking Park. But right now I requisitioned it in the name of science.
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Excerpt from ‘The Playlist’, (Hard Egg Publishing 2020) available from Amazon. UK / US
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The following video is purely an illustration of the excellent music around at the time and is for enjoyment purposes only