I don't even believe in God so I suppose it was always unlikely I would see the face of God in a sensory experience in a former Woolwich market space. Or indeed anywhere else for that matter. But, having attended Dream Machine at the Woolwich Works, I can now confirm that unlike one other visitor I did not see the face of God.
Neither did I see animals (horses specifically) or all of my friends. Or any of my friends. For me it was a solitary experience and I didn't mind that. It would have been nice to have someone close to discuss the experience with but I'd decided to go it alone - as I so often do.
Testimonies on screens after the experience reported that others saw, not unreasonably, the sun or at least lots of orange and that they felt like they were either in a space ship or in the stargate sequence of Stanley Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey.
I didn't get that last one but it did at least resonate. I had more a sense of being in a very long tunnel and I saw lots of fractals, lots of shapes, lots of vague interference, and, at one point, a field almost entirely consumed by purple with crosses, Christian crosses in fact, overlaying that purple. I've searched on the Internet and the closest thing I can find to it (above) is not very close at all.
Which I suppose makes sense because Dream Machine is all about interpretation and allowing our minds to do the work for us. I'd taken the 122 bus down to Woolwich, I seem to be there a lot these days, had chips and beans and a can of Coke in the Arsenal Gate Cafe (I seem to be there a lot these days too) and even a chocolate ice cream before killing a bit of a time in the 28c sunshine and entering the 'experience'!
In a very old looking building marked up as a PUBLIC MARKET! You take your shoes off and you hand your phone in (so as not to be distracted as well as, I guess, so you don't take photos - all of these (apart from the ones outside the experience) are nicked from the Internet) and then you enter a large warehouse space.
A young lady explains to us, there's about 25/30 of us in there, how the experience will work and we're each handed a towel in case we need to keep warm (I repeat, it was 28C) and find a face mask on our individual seats. Seats that were quite comfortable but could have been even comfier. I'd have probably fallen asleep if they were but apparently that's allowed and even celebrated as part of the experience.
The idea is that you pop your facemask on your forehead and only pull it down over your eyes if you find the experience a bit too intense. Nobody did. First of all there's a little tester and then there's the real thing. They're much the same. The real thing just lasts a bit longer.
The young assistant guides us through breathing exercises and talks a bit about mindfulness (oh, here we go) and then the lights go down, we close our eyes, and the music of Jon Hopkins starts up. Hopkins has collaborated with Brian Eno and David Holmes (let's ignore Coldplay for now, oops - too late) so you can probably imagine what it's like.
Fairly mid-tempo electronic music that you could, at a push, probably half-assedly dance to. It's not bad but you'd probably not choose to listen to it in many other scenarios. Then the white lights start flickering and our brains add the colour. As I said earlier, for me there was lots of yellow and red and some very intense purple and black. I never felt overwhelmed by the experience but I did quite enjoy it. If anything, it was like waking up in the evening at the back of the Glastonbury dance tent after falling asleep in the afternoon.
Writing in The Guardian, Jonathan Jones said that Dream Machine is "as close to state funded psychedelic drugs as you can get" (all four UK governments have, for some reason, combined to pay for those who want it to have this experience) and talked of this "freaky phenomenon" having a "majestic beauty" but over on theQuietus Robert Barry was |"dying of cringe" at the Brion Gysin inspired novelty and compared it to being "put on hold by an upscale insurance provider"!
I found the middle ground between these two extremes. When the experience is over, maybe fifteen/twenty minutes - you do lose track of time, you're invited into a room full of soft chairs and bean bags where you can talk to the other guests (I didn't), draw what you've just 'seen' (I didn't - but one guest drew something like the image below), or just lie around on a bean bag for a while. That was the option I took because I'm both shy and lazy. It was nice to be given a choice of 'after care' options though they weren't really necessary. Eventually I headed out into the still scorching heat blinking.
There's no reason God wouldn't appear in Woolwich. In fact, if God did exist and is ubiquitous as many of his/her/their believers like to say, then he would definitely appear in Woolwich - and everywhere else too (not just majority Christian countries which seems to happen). But even though God didn't appear in Woolwich, I did and though I may not be God - I am, at least real, and my experience was real as much as it was enjoyable. I jumped on the 122 bus, popped into Sainsburys to buy a couple of bottles of San Miguel, and came home.
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