Manufacturer’s note on curing the dreamer, Reil’s Von der Lebenskraft, 1795: Three causes of insanity: 1) malfunctioning representations of common sense (hypochondria); 2) malfunctioning representations of sensibility (hallucinations); 3) malfunctioning representations of imagination (a mix of both). The dreamer is the third, the worst. Projecting worlds too enchanting for others to see, insisting they are real and deciding to stay awhile. When someone evacuates their eyes they retreat to the Island of Reil. They are reduced to the synapses of the insular cortex. They do not exist as something within the nerves. They are the nerves, the chemical composition, the electric impulses that once made a body tick-tick-tick forward. In 1795, you must end this exile by breaking the matter that is all there is, by driving in spikes and waiting for the scream.

Manufacturer’s note on Late Renaissance meteorology: When a windblown hat fell on Kircher’s head, he decided it was raining hats. For a moment, perhaps it was. 

Manufacturer’s note on Kircher’s Musurgia Universalis (trans: The Music of the Universe; or the great art of consonance and dissonance in 10 books, in which the universal doctrines of sound and music will be demonstrated and made apparent), Book 1, 1650: At the time of its nesting, the hen speaks in warbling Cs. The rest of the time: A-A-A-A-D. The cuckoo: E-C-E-C, ad infinitum. The nightingale knows every note. It has its favorites — yo-yoed E-D and C-B trills — but it knows them all. So does the sloth, which Kircher thought was an ape. It sings out the most alphabetic of diatonic scales, A minor: A-B-C-D-E-F-G. It is unclear where he encountered the sloth, living in Germany, moving to Rome. He