I've been thinking about propaganda, about art and the extraordinary power of symbols, and how we've come to surrender so much of our imagination to the people who manufacture the things we consume. A corporation can survive the loss of its executives, its factories, even great fortunes, but what becomes of it when the symbol itself is made worthless? There's something in that worth considering. The artist has a peculiar advantage in these matters, being permitted to speak in a language that can mean a hundred different things to a hundred different people, and I wonder whether we've made sufficient use of that privilege.

Anyway, I'm lying on this goddamn cot again, Halloween is approaching, and the accumulated deprivation of sleep is beginning to interfere with the ordinary arrangement of things. There's a great deal on my mind, although I seem to be losing my ability to keep any of it in one place.

Don't go chasing waterfalls.

NIGHT MATERIALS

https://nightmaterials.online/

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A warning has been left on my windshield, informing me that my parking privileges are in jeopardy. Parking privileges. Christ almighty. As though there were some great honour in leaving a Ford Escape overnight in an industrial parking lot in Etobicoke.

So here I sit, waiting for the gentleman responsible to come wandering out of his security office and explain himself. I have a few questions, and increasingly fewer hours of sleep with which to exercise the patience ordinarily required to ask them politely.

It's a beautiful autumn evening, at least. The planes are passing overhead, the debt is nearly paid, and there's still some life to be found among the lunatics and dreamers.

NIGHT MATERIALS

https://nightmaterials.online/

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Eleven fourteen on a Tuesday night and I'm back on this goddamn cot, a miserable arrangement of canvas and metal that has been slowly conspiring against my spine for the better part of a month. I don't suppose I've slept more than a few hours at a time in weeks, and whatever faculties I've managed to preserve are beginning to behave in ways I don't entirely recognize. But there have been some good people looking after me, some unexpected graces amid the wreckage of recent days, and I find myself profoundly grateful for them, even as the rest of me seems determined to come apart.

So I lie here watching the ceiling fan turn and letting my mind go where it will, back through the years and into the company of old bastards, strange grievances, and memories that have no particular business visiting me at this hour. Somewhere along the way, I begin to feel that familiar switch, when the warmth goes out of things and the machinery in my head starts operating according to some other domain. I don't know. Maybe it's the exhaustion. Maybe I've just been awake too damn long.

NIGHT MATERIALS

https://nightmaterials.online/

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I wonder how many establishments along University Avenue have closed their doors without anybody properly mourning them. The filthy ones, especially. The places that fed the drunken, the penniless, and the magnificently irresponsible at hours when no respectable person ought to have been hungry.

There was once a route home from Chainsaw in Waterloo that could be measured almost entirely in pizza slices, poutine, and increasingly regrettable decisions. I seem to remember every goddamn stop along the way.

Or at least I thought I did.

NIGHT MATERIALS

https://nightmaterials.online/

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It's Sunday morning in Hamilton, Ontario. The brakes are grinding, the trains aren't running, and Wolf Johnson is sitting in an enormous parking lot trying to change his trousers without attracting the attention of the authorities.

Somebody parks beside him, naturally.

A few thoughts before an afternoon of questionable athletic endeavours. No particular destination in mind, beyond the trampoline park.

A special thank you to the Night Shift for keeping the wheels turning.

NIGHT MATERIALS

An online zine and a peculiar little world of its own.

https://nightmaterials.online/

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If you enjoy these wandering conversations, you're welcome to leave a few dollars in the jar.

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theclashthechaos@gmail.com

There are certain indignities involved in bathing in a bathroom sink. Nowhere to put your clothes, nowhere particularly clean to put anything, a handful of pre-soaped scrubbing pads, and a dripping faucet keeping you company.

Standing naked in the bathroom of the office where he's been sleeping, Wolf Johnson talks his way through another peculiar evening. Somewhere between washing up and contemplating the rather unfortunate circumstances of his existence, his thoughts wander toward Jack Kerouac, Umberto Eco, a thwarted ambition to study rhetoric at Berkeley, and an old high-school teacher who insisted that a paragraph must contain three sentences.

There's some business about refusing to play along, the comforts and consequences of being an outsider, and the strange ways adversity can sharpen our attention to otherwise inconsequential things.

And there's the dripping faucet. Always the dripping faucet.

An unhurried recording about whatever happens to come to mind, made in a bathroom that was never supposed to be anybody's home.

NIGHT MATERIALS

An online zine and a peculiar little world of its own.

https://nightmaterials.online/

Content advisory: Contains frank sexual language and a brief, audible climax during an otherwise nonsexual conversation.

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If you enjoy these wandering conversations and would like to help keep the microphone on, you can leave a few dollars in the jar. Every contribution helps sustain NIGHT MATERIALS and the peculiar little world growing around it.

Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/thewolfjohnson

A man books himself a hotel room after forty days without a proper night's sleep. The hotel has other ideas.

In the inaugural episode of NIGHT MATERIALS, Wolf Johnson finds himself ~$180 poorer, considerably more exhausted, and without the bed he'd been looking forward to all week. What follows is a meandering account of life without a home, the financial wreckage of divorce, fatherhood, the peculiar absence of joy, and the occasional indignities of simply trying to get by.

Somewhere along the way, the conversation wanders into the machinery of social media outrage, the increasingly theatrical nature of public discourse, the peculiar things people do for attention, and why sitting across from another human being with a cup of coffee might still be one of the better ways to make sense of the world.

There's also some talk about what NIGHT MATERIALS might become, the little world growing behind the online zine, and an unfortunate but possibly accurate description of the whole endeavour as a glory hole for expression.

No particular agenda. No grand conclusions. Just some thoughts from a tired man who really could have used that hotel room.

A special thanks to Heather and Anne for their generous contributions to the Night Materials Ledger, and to everyone in the Night Shift helping keep the lights on.

NIGHT MATERIALS

The online zine and Night Shift: https://nightmaterials.online/

FOR ALL I THINK OF HER

Poetry by Wolf Johnson, available on Amazon.