Docs: The Journal of Microbiography Issue #2

PO Box 26183
Baltimore, MD
21210
USA

The purpose of Docs is kind of strange. It has a very strict format in that each contribution is four pages long: a title/index page that lists who/what is being written about, and three different "documents" that somehow relate to that entity. When I read the first issue of this zine I had absolutely no idea what was going on, as the "documents" can be anything (photos, screenshots, excerpts), don't have to be what was listed on the index, and the people described don't actually have to exist.

And so you get three pages of seemingly random stuff, that is considerably more interesting because you assume there must be some connection to it, that it must mean something, that it somehow describes someone who may or may not exist. You struggle through multiple pages of text with no paragraph breaks, you stare at pictures of leaves, you try to decipher a bad photocopy of a crumpled piece of paper, and all the time you wonder how these three things possibly describe the entirety of a person, or if that's even possible.

Huh, so apparently I am somewhat enamored with the idea behind this zine, even if the content for the most part doesn't totally grab me (even bizarre, mysterious poetry/lyrics don't interest me that much). My favourite section from this issue was about the world squirrel, who's lived from infinity to infinity, and whose documents consisted for an excerpt from a "truly evil" Swedish black metal band's biography, an interview with a restaurateur, and a screenshot of a .WAV audio file. Fantastic! Somehow this does describe a mythical squirrel.