hints but no tips At various times, the makers of The Réal have left their mark on various pieces of paper regarding the "true" meaning of many of the book's references. The following are a few of these confessions. Sadly, we could not get similar notes from Alex, the woman behind the The Réal's music. Finally, we should point out that reading this section might be tantamount to reading the last pages of a mystery novel, first. So, if you read this section and get upset because you're finding out too much, don't say we didn't warn you.
from MarkStrip street preacher room [$2.5 chips] -- Vegas is about religion. Not just all the wedding chapels but something else that is less obvious. Put in it's most provocative form: Vegas is the realization of the Kingdom of God on Earth. What begins in Puritan Massachusetts ends in the sands of Vegas. City in the wilderness. Realized eschatology. The death of God as the realization of the kingdom. When the kingdom arrives, what you see is what you get. Disappearing building [Japanese hotel] -- Vegas as a shrine to nothing. The flickering of the lights is the trace of that which is always passing away. Transience. Even what seems most substantial is as insubstantial as drifting sand. The lesson of Vegas is losing. To learn to lose is to learn to let go. Nothing is harder than letting go. Nothing. Introductory sequence -- Silicon is also sand. Stories etched in/with grains of sand. What does it mean to go against the grain when the grains keep shifting? Speculator -- not sure -- God = gold = God = light = lite Wall Street and the Strip are two sides of the same yellow brick road, which has gone fiber optic. Mummy room -- Mummy -- mum -- mom Why can't we get away from Egypt? empty crypts -- cryptic remains Room #52 [final room] -- Is there any it to get? Auster: "All clues. No solutions. That's the way things are. Plenty of clues. No solutions." Neon sign makers ["Saying No to Yesco"] -- I'm tired of mourning. Get over it; get on with it; never get it. Generals proposing theme park [Ringing telephone/Stardust room] -- Cannot forget the relation between Vegas and the Nuclear Test Site. The vaporization of the bomb is reflected in the vaporization of the lights -- and vice versa. Always VICE versa. In Vegas, Europe is not only over but is forgotten. A wait has been lifted. Where are the tattoo parlors in Vegas?from José (by way of an early note to Hartley Shearer)
ROOM # 9 -- the japanese t-HOUSE hotel. those geisha girls and samurais on the last page whose names are anagrams for theorists i used to dig -- they're the cast of the LOVE BOAT... ROOM # 15 -- the deaf/dumb change girl. as weird as Mark's references to Derrida is this oblique tribute to Samuel Fuller. What can I say? She doesn't make change. ROOM #30 -- Tight slot machine ever seen Dead Ringers? I love that movie. Hence the surgical/ optical tool you use to "go deeper" into the slot machine.The slut machine. "The loosest slots in town," boasts one casino. I don't know if this room remains too obscure to be anything more than disturbing -- still, putting a "loose slots" quote on the first page might be too pedantic. ROOM 39 -- Saying No to Yesco. Read by [Ed Oassa] a friend of a friend: a Hawaaian P.I. in his 40's. English PhD from Berkeley. Went to Kentucky, some college job. Didn't get tenure. Was stuck in Kentucky. Became a truck driver. Did that for 5-10 years. Then and now is a P.I. in Oakland, etc. Big guy, tough guy. A sweetheart. Introductory sequence. The "sand" poem read by Alex is probably my favorite part of the CD (next to the still images from the highway, also at the beginning). I wrote the words in about 10 minutes, sitting in the middle of the Berkshire mountains (MASS.) during a cloudy, wet Spring afternoon. No irony here. There's this hammering noise in the recording we couldn't get rid of because the audio was recorded in the 4" x 8" studio apartment Alex and I shared at the time. They were repairing the fire escape outside the window and that noise is now permanently joined with the proverbial sands of time. The ants in the animation replaced an earlier version with a horizon, storms and a postcard. Dissection of a sound effect: the screaming ghosts The eery ghost noises that come up during the last page of "Indian Cigars" story is actually made up of three (very) different sounds: a piece of glass being smashed, a train whistle, some old-fashioned hand-over-mouth "Injun" noises. All three elements were adjusted for pitch, slowed down in tempo and reverb was added to the final track. There's a similar--if not more odd--genealogy behind all the sound effects I made.from Ralph
The mysterious scrapbook (literally) found in the deserted motel was suggested by chapter 18 ("The Scrapbook") of Stephen King's novel _The Shining_ (which was recently the victim of a dreadful ABC miniseries, please read the novel or see the Kubrick film version instead). That scrapbook reveals the secret history of the Overlook Hotel through cut and pasted newspaper articles and penciled annotations. Who or what constructed the scrapbook is never revealed. Some of the occult symbols used in _The Real_ are adapted from Kurt Seligmann's fine "History of Magic and the Occult," "The Key of Solomon the King," and "The Magus by Francis Barrett." In particular one of the slot reel symbols is "the devil pointing out hidden treasure" another is from a medal commemorating the transmutation of lead into gold at Prague in 1648. Others are from the I Ching. Many of the images in The Real are constructed with bits of pictures swiped from pages torn out of magazines in the late seventies / early eighties. Marcia Stieger a collage artist, was kind enough to give us access to her 16 cubic foot scrap file, an amazing mine of pop culture ore for us to refine.