Even Spookier

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Good evening and welcome to another episode of Tales of the Unexpected. If you remember our last episode, gentle reader, you will recall a story of oddly timed synchronicities. In tonight’s episode, things just get weirder...

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I guess it all happened over a week ago now, and I am still, a week later, trying to make it all make sense. Perhaps I should start from the beginning.

Nicole doesn’t lose things. Wait. That’s not true. She loses things all the bloody time. A purse, a water bottle, a phone. But they are never really lost lost. Maybe the thing in question is on a bedside table, or in a coat pocket, or in the bottom of a bag she used a couple of days earlier. She loses things, but she doesn’t really lose things.

And secretly I like the fact that she loses things because I like finding things. I have said on more than one occasion that my super power is being able to process visual information quickly. I notice things. Maybe an irregularity, or something that isn’t quite where it was supposed to be. A tiny bit of brown on a background of black. Something. I pick up on those things, which makes me good at finding stuff.

Then last week Nicole lost her keys. Lost lost. We looked everywhere. Every room of the house, the car, the caravan, front and back gardens, both at night with torches and then again in the daylight. And then when they didn’t turn up we did it all again. We retraced her steps from the last time she remembered having them, and we looked in places that there was no logical reason for them to be. Still nothing.

Three days passed. Nicole wasn’t getting any sleep. She lay in bed at night trying to work out where she could have put them down. She was certain that they were somewhere at home because that is the last place they were used, and they hadn’t been anywhere since. And, again secretly, I was disappointed because this time my super power was not able to come to the rescue and find the thing and solve the problem.

We were going out one morning. I was walking from the house toward the car. Nicole had kind of drifted off to the left to poke around a garden bed to see if she could see the keys there, thinking she might have put them down when she pulled out some weeds. I was juggling my messenger bag over my shoulder while fiddling with my phone trying to pull some music up to put on once we got to the car. Wasn’t even really watching where I was going.

Then my body stopped. For no discernible reason whatsoever, I just stopped walking and I started looking around. I remember the inner dialogue I had with myself: Wait, what am I doing? Oh, really? We’ve done this! We’ve looked all around here and they are just not here.

Oh. There they are.

The keys were on the ground, just over a little concrete retaining wall partially obscured by brown autumn leaves, but visible from the exact spot I had stopped walking. I picked them up and handed them to a more than slightly stunned Nicole.

This is the thing though. For a few seconds there, I was sitting on the back seat of the station wagon. I certainly wasn’t in the driver’s seat. There is nothing that I can say that will rewrite the events as I experienced them. I was literally stopped in my tracks so that I could see those keys on the ground. If I had seen the keys then stopped, fine. But this happened the other way around. I stopped so I could see the keys.

I have, in all honesty, never had an experience like it in my life. And what do you know? I got to be the hero after all.

What does any of this have to do with collage? Nothing. But I wish it did.

Could you imagine being able to deploy an intuition like this when making a collage? Being able to find the absolute perfect bit of paper for the task at hand, from literally thousands of scraps around the studio. Always being able to tune in on exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. Knowing just where to look to find the missing piece of the puzzle.

Man. I want that to be my new super power.

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Supermarket Sweep

I’ve jiggled around some of the artworks on my shop page recently so that there are a few new things to look at. Such as this one:

Under Construction (2025)

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Musical Interlude

LASH - Dead Lights (2026)
A new album from Dead Lights? Get in my ears! It really is just an amalgamation of their last three EPs dotted with a few new tracks, but still!

Myths - Danz CM (2026)
Hey, do you know what you need? You need dreamy ambient synths. I experienced this album driving through the mountains on a misty autumnal morning, but if you can’t do that, then maybe just close your eyes. Not while you are driving though!

Delusion - Tempers (2026)
I’ve read reviews that claimed that this is Tempers’ most accomplished album. I dunno. I kind of have a thing for Private Life. Don’t get me wrong, this one is good. But I can’t seeing it making as many regular appearances in my listening history.

Nine Inch Noize - Nine Inch Nails & Boys Noize (2026)
I feel like I’ve been giving Trent Reznor a lot of love lately, but this isn’t that. It’s actually more of a big nod to Boys Noize for being able to breathe new life into old NIN songs. My least favourite track on the album is probably Closer, because it doesn’t deviate enough from the original. I listened to this before their recent big Coachella appearance, and then again afterwards. The crowd noise between tracks is fun at first, but it gets tedious pretty quickly.

En-Tact - The Shamen (1990)
I dragged this album kicking and screaming out of the vault this week. I still think it is a lot of fun. But I guess you had to be there…

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Other things

• I’m posting my collage artwork every day on Instagram:
  https://www.instagram.com/cut_paste/

• You never know when I might do another original art giveaway through my Mailing List:
  Join at: http://www.joellambeth.com/subscribe/

• All of the posts on my Substack are available to ‘Free’ subscribers. Nothing is hidden behind a paywall. But if you would like to help support my art practice financially, then consider becoming a ‘Paid’ subscriber:
  https://joellambeth.substack.com/subscribe

  
  

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