tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-283651812024-03-13T15:35:57.788-05:00TelecommunicultureyHigh- and low-brow cultural goings-on in the Second City, brought to you by a roving microtechnoanthropologistMatildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.comBlogger321125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-68862247679768057712019-01-07T22:32:00.003-06:002019-01-07T22:33:30.242-06:00Write the Year 2019: Week 1—Tape<div style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", HelveticaNeue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
So. I’m going to try to write something every week this year. I don’t want to set up too many rules about what, because I can feel the failure nipping at my heels. I also don’t know that I’m going to keep it here on Tumblr, though I can’t think of a better place for it.<br />
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For this week, I just grabbed a prompt and ran with it. Mia Botha at <a href="https://writerswrite.co.za/31-writing-prompts-for-january-2019/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(68, 68, 68, 0) 50%, rgba(68, 68, 68, 0.25) 0px); background-position: 0px 1.15em; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-size: 1em 2px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0.15em; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">https://writerswrite.co.za/31-writing-prompts-for-january-2019/</a> has provided 31 prompts for January. I took the one from January 5, because I was going to try to do this yesterday. </div>
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Tape</div>
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WC: 1000</div>
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Somewhere in the depths of an upstairs closet, there’s a miniature wooden crate I keep not throwing away. It holds tapes—audio cassettes, which are things of a so-distant past that autocorrect can’t decide if that’s one word or two. It doesn’t hold many at the moment. Only two that I can think of, in fact.</div>
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One has the audio of a couple of episodes of <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He-Man </i>(and the Masters of the Universe, of course), because I was the kind of 11-year-old who risked maternal wrath by piling things up in front of the cabinet television in our front room to place the microphone of a tape recorder in the perfect position to catch every single household noise and the occasional distant snatch of <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">He-Man </i>audio. </div>
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The other is a bootleg of Roxette’s <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Look Sharp </i>that I bought at an open-air market in Arequipa, Peru.</div>
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I’d never been out of the US when I settled on the Andes for my area of specialization. I’d never been on a plane when I got on my first, bound for Lima (by way of Newark, then Miami), then on to a much smaller city on the south coast.</div>
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<i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You’ll cry every day,</i> someone told me. A well-meaning voice of experience, but I didn’t believe her. <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You’ll cry.</i></div>
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<i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></i>I didn’t cry.</div>
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I left Chicago in the middle of a punishing, terrible heat wave. I navigated the Lima airport for a 3-hour layover that turned into a 17-hour layover. And in nothing short of a miracle, I actually connected in Lima with people I’d met only once, who took me to the house I’d be staying in for the next three months.</div>
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I worked hard on two different digs. One planned, one salvage. I figured out how to get permission and materials and transport from point A to point Q when it turned out that point Q was where I needed to be and things needed to be.</div>
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I spent long days in a tiny room at the back of the house taking measurements and recording data. I watched <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Malicia </i>and<i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Time Traxx </i>and<i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> Equiiiiiiissssss Meeeeeennnn</i> on the 7-inch black-and-white TV in our house and laughed until I had to sit down in the street when my friend Erika saw an <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">X-Men </i>comic in a shop and said in disbelieving tones, <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Beast no es azul! Beast es gris!”</i></div>
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<i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></i>I went out dancing. I don’t dance, but I went out dancing. I drank good beer and bad beer and terrible Peruvian wine. I drank pisco and<i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> leche de monja</i>, even though no one would tell me how it was made until afterward. </div>
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I slept. I have never in my life slept well. In Peru I slept soundly, regularly, consistently. For short siestas during the day if I felt like it. All the way through the night. Night after night after night, and when I look back at these few paragraphs, I don’t know how I could have and still done all the things I absolutely did.</div>
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I read, constantly and voraciously. At breakfast and over lunch and after hours when there was, quite literally, nothing on television. <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">King of the Confessors</i> and <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Difference Engine </i>and <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dune</i> in English, along with a dozen forgettable Dean Koontz and Dean Koontz–knock-off mysteries from a beat-up metal locker in the house’s kitchen. <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Relato de un náufrago </i>and <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Bien años de soledad</i> in Spanish. Also <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Book of Mormon</i> in Spanish, because I had well and truly run out of things to read.</div>
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And things to listen to. I know I had the soundtrack to <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Little Mermaid </i>when I started out, but someone made off with that pretty early on. And I had Webb Wilder’s <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hybrid Vigor</i>, taped off a CD, which I listened to over and over and over until I was suddenly in auditory <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Book of Mormon</i> territory. That’s where Roxette comes in. </div>
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Why Roxette? I truly have no idea. I can tell you everything about the tape itself. The physical thing: It’s a clear-case Memorex 90-minute tape with pink and yellow brand marks and yellow reels. It’s still in its mini-crate somewhere upstairs. It would take me a while to lay hands on it, but I can picture it perfectly and still feel the way the reels’ teeth would bite into my pinky finger when I had to manually wind up the slack that eternally got caught inside the cheap knock-off Walkman I’d brought with me into the field.</div>
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But why Roxette? Honestly, I had a moment while I let this prompt worm its way through my mind when I thought it might’ve been Love and Rockets. I had more than a moment when I could not, for the life of me, recall the title of a single Roxette song, and so I cheated. I googled and the song titles knocked the dust off of everything. They came back to me in all their cheesy glory, “The Look,” “Musta Been Love,” “Dangerous,” “Listen to Your Heat.”</div>
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I can hear them now in all their cheesy glory with disco-salsaed hits on Rrrrraaaaddddddio Iiiiiiilo bleeding right through them. But there’s still no real answer to the trenchant question “Why Roxette?” other than “I didn’t cry.” </div>
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I was never homesick like that well-meaning person promised I would be. I was busy. I was curious and able to satisfy my curiosity most of the time. I was frustrated and often out of my depth. I was sneezy and headache-y and altitude sick sometimes. I was shy and awkward in the wrong clothes because who knew I would suddenly be invited to a huge, elaborate, unending Peruvian wedding?</div>
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I was out of books and sick of the music that would keep me company in my little back room, so I read the <i style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Book of Mormon</i> in Spanish. I bought a bootleg Roxette tape. And I never once cried. </div>
Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-21907952586602840872017-07-19T11:37:00.002-05:002017-07-19T11:37:44.414-05:00NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Contest—Round 1 The circumstances under which I wrote this were . . . subideal. I had two shows to review and another commitment. I had very little time to work out the ending, which unfortunately shows. But it looked like I wasn't going to even get the story in for a while, so I'm glad I did.<br />
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Heat: 16<br />
Genre: Fantasy<br />
Location: A food truck<br />
Object: A water fountain<br />
Word count: 1000 on the nose<br />
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Title: Topside Curio<br />
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Elio’s bell jar has some new whatnot again this morning. Mine does not. It's as empty as ever, but hers has a perch dangling from the dome.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="s1"></span></div>
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<span class="s1">She’s curious about it. She circles on feet that barely skim the mesh of the bottom plate. Her<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>wings beat fast enough to set the glass buzzing. It almost drowns out the snick of latches and the <i>tink</i> of the jar against the metal sidewall as the Topsider loops the handle over its customary hook.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">He pauses to watch as she tries it out.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Elio pays him no mind, for once. Her tail coils high around one thin filament. She stretches arms wide, and her fingers clutch the other. She tips backward. She swings, awkward at first. Scowling, determined, <i>interested </i>as she comes to understand the motion of the perch. Counter-motion as her legs pump and set the bell jar swinging.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">The Topsider’s mouth curves. He says something. It's jabber to me, but high-pitched and drawn out. He talks to the smaller ones outside this way. To the four-legged things on tethers the grown sometimes have.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i>Give 'em a show</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1">That's what he's saying. I only know because she's told me. Because she's made it a point to make as much sense of him as she can. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">The Topsider moves suddenly. He cups the jar in one immense palm, stealing its momentum just as it’s about to meet metal again. Elio jounces on her perch. Her wings snap into stillness. Her chin jerks to face him, and she shows her teeth.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I wonder if he thinks she’s smiling.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">******************************</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Elio doesn’t talk much. Even when we’re penned together night after night in the big plastic barrel the Topsider’s poked holes in, she doesn't talk much.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I think she hates me, though she’s spared a few words<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to deny it. To tell me she has bigger things on her mind than fault, rank arrogance, and stupidity, and I know she’s right.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">We’re dying, her faster than me.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">She smells wrong. Even underneath the thick-smoke, sharp-brine tang of the box. Even though he half drowns us every few days. He takes us out into the world, only to trap us in the shallow silver basin. The water shoots high, then rains down to half drown us. For all that, I should still be able to catch her scent, pale green and living. Different from the turned-earth, purple-browns of my own family, but familiar from Beneath. From home.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Her wings don’t sound right, either. They’re brittle from days swinging in the sun while the Topsider leans out the open side of the box and passes things to others waiting.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">That's what's killing her. The jabbering, even though she listens hard every day to make sense of it. It’s the way they exclaim over us, pawing and flicking their claws against the glass to make it chime, until he yells and shoves things at them. Red and white paper boats heaped with steaming, oily things go out. Silver and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>green and thin, good-for-nothing paper comes in. It never stops.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">She has to hate me. She’d never have been here if it weren’t for me. If I hadn't had a grand idea.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I'd meant it for both of us. I'd meant launch us out of a life dodging Topsiders. Gathering petty pieces for the Knacks.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It hardly matters when she's dying, but I truly meant it for both of us.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">She'd tried to tell me some<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>knew about us. Some<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>believed, but it seemed so unlikely. Topsiders were dangerous, but they weren't exactly famous for their powers of observation. For belief.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">And, the new boxes were too tempting. The Archs tagged them off limits right away. Anything that could zip around like that, was off limits, but I figured these were different. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">They'd sit for long stretches, and hopping was simple. Inside, a hundred places to keep out of sight and no chance<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>even the keener Topsiders would pick up our scent with the melange of meat roasting and sugar-sweet whatevers twining in the air.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Scavenging was hardly work once we learned their predictable rhythms. Once <i>she</i> learned and taught me enough to get by.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Almost enough.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">She'd never have been here if it weren't for me. She'd never have been caught.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">They loved her before the perch. They love her more each day she grows more daring. The small ones and the grown. The four-legged on tethers. They all tilt their heads and clap as she swings high.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I wonder if she's dying faster than I realized. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I'm wondering that very thing when her tail shoots up high. It loops through the anchor at the top of the jar, and she lets go with her hands. Grabs the bar with her knees and buzzes her wings.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">They're delighted at first. A jabbering chorus rises. Our Topsider laughs. He's proud until he hears it. The shattering of glass.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">She tumbles in a tight roll that never lands. Her wings buzz hard. She comes out of the tuck feet first. Right into my jar. I never saw it coming. I'm thrown to the side against shattering glass, then tumbling myself. Falling until I remember that I have wings. We both have wings.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">They swat blindly at us. They crouch and snatch, terrified now they no longer have us under glass.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I see her, plummeting. My tail whips out. It catches her, and I draw her to me.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i>Look!</i> I mean to say. <i>Free!</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I mean to remember long-forgotten words. To celebrate, but Elio sobs. She howls, collapses in on herself, and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I see them. Domed cages swinging on every window sill. From the front of the strange wheeled things of small ones zipping here and there.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I see Topsider jibberish rendered in paint, and behind it, row upon row of bell jars glinting in the sun.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Choking, she reads it out, word by word.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i>Curios</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i>Curios for sale</i></span></div>
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Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-13831475670234126392017-02-01T07:03:00.000-06:002017-02-01T07:03:31.385-06:00NYC Midnight Short Story Contest 2017<div class="p1">
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<span class="s1"></span>I'm the person who cried wolf about prompt difficulty, but this was hard</div>
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Heat: 83</div>
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Genre: Action/Adventure</div>
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Object: An investment</div>
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Character: An Airplane Maintenance Technician</div>
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<span class="s1">Title: Green</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Synopsis: In a post-apocalyptic world, a pirate and a hostage take a gamble. “I wasn't always a pirate.”</span></div>
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<a name='more'></a>They were the first words she’d spoken in hours. The first words she’d spoken to <i>me</i> at all. I wasn’t really the target audience for her back-and-forth with the goons in the gangway outside my unit when they’d grabbed me. When she’d had them grab me.<br />
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<span class="s1">“Ok.” I waited a decent pause before offering the word. What I hoped was a decent pause under the circumstances. “I wasn’t always a hostage.” </span></div>
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<span class="s1">She laughed at that. Surprised the hell out of me—a harsh exhalation and the hitch of her shoulders before the lines of anything like emotion smoothed out of her. “You’re not a hostage.” </span></div>
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<span class="s1">My eyebrows shot up. An unfortunate, involuntary movement that reopened what must have been quite a gash. Strapped tightly to the seat with my hands lashed together, the blood trickled unchecked down my temple. A striking <i>Am too! </i>visual, utterly lost on her as she kept her eyes on the road. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">“This is an Auto,” I blurted.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">It hadn’t been before. My memory was black-and-white bursts, like a heavy door rolling down and up inside my throbbing head. The grab. A run-of-the-mill heli on hand that had slipped seamlessly into the light evening traffic. Knowing and not knowing for long stretches, courtesy of the roughing up they'd given me, but I’d remember a fucking auto. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Information flooded in, too fast for my aching head. Scent, sight, and the sudden realization that the itch of drying blood was likely to be the least of my problems. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">“It’s a fucking ancient, gas-powered Auto.” My head whipped toward her. A rapid move that brought on nausea, black at the edges of my vision, and instant regret. “What kind of a pirate <i>are</i> you?”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">“The kind with a conscience.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The reply was swift. Sharp and unexpected. Our eyes met in the confines of the rear-view mirror. A strange, curiously intimate sensation. Her lips parted, out of frame. Her brows drew together. Fine lines like words I could very nearly read. Very nearly, but her gaze flicked to the side mirror just then. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">“The kind with a tail. Fuck.” </span></div>
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<span class="s1">She jerked the wheel and jammed the accelerator to the floor. She muttered something. <i>Too soon,</i> maybe. The lumbering body of the car lurched side to side as she steered through gaps in the refuse cluttering the decaying road that seemed nonexistent until we were through them. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Who?” I writhed against my restraints. Craned my neck trying to see, but my range of motion was nonexistent. Heaps of rusted out metal blurred by. Toppled furniture, luggage, toys, all of it from more years ago than it was worth counting. All of it from a world that used to be. “Who the hell would follow you out here?”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Not who. What,” she muttered. “Aerial surveillance. Unmanned. Better be, anyway.” </span></div>
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<span class="s1">She ducked her head to peer up through the spider-webbed windshield. To scan the sky for the source of the buzz close enough now to hear over the roar of the car’s engine. I envied her the view for a fraction of a second. Envied her the freedom of movement until I realized it was about to kill us both.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Left,” I shouted. I hurled myself against the straps with bruising force. The fibrous cuffs around my wrists cut into my skin as I desperately tried to gesture. “Hard left!” </span></div>
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<span class="s1">“I see.” She sounded annoyed. Far more annoyed than anyone deliberately hurtling toward certain death had a right to be. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">At the last second, we cleared it. The dark, hulking silhouette of a tractor. Mostly cleared it. The Auto was huge, as well as ancient. The back quarter panel just managed to clip one enormous tire. The contact smacked the rear end off on a tangent. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">We spun ninety degrees as a groan split the air. Through the driver’s side window, I watched, open-mouthed as years of corrosion met gravity. The tractor shuddered and fell in on itself. The cab toppled, taking out another of the slumping tires and setting off a chain reaction. Abandoned loads toppled off truck beds. Massive tree limbs, dead and gray like the rest of the landscape, raked the air. Reached out with brittle fingers to claw at the relics of lives interrupted a lifetime ago. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">“What?” The question was out of my mouth before I realized what I was asking. Before I realized that the she’d hauled the front of the Auto almost all the way around. That we’d slowed to a crawl, apparently to take in the show. “What are you . . .?” </span></div>
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<span class="s1">The question died in my mouth as it swooped into view. The black silhouette of a drone. Old school. Not <i>car</i> old school, but a bulky shape I’d never seen in the air. Never dreamed I’d see in the air. It hovered unsteadily, as if it had never dreamed it, either. The din of its rotors drowned out even the drumbeat of the badly idling car. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I found my voice again. Found the urgent question caught in my teeth, but it was too late by then. The drone erupted. The <i>world </i>erupted in chattering confusion. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Target confusion.” She hauled the wheel, hand over hand, and slammed the accelerator to the floor again.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Bullets.” I finally managed to choke out the world. “That thing was shooting fucking <i>bullets</i>.” </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Her eyes were on the road. They had to be, but she spared me a sidelong glance. She spared me a grin and a sweeping, one-handed gesture to the gray landscape flickering in and out of view as we wound through the piles of rubble. “Welcome to life beyond the perimeter.” </span></div>
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<span class="s1">“You won’t run.” The words were matter of fact. A statement, not a threat.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Not at the moment.” I lifted my still-cuffed hands and let them fall back into my lap, a wasted gesture in the absolute black of whatever structure she’d pulled the car into.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Her only answer was an unnerving, unmistakable snick. The lumi<i>-</i>strips on her suit flickered to life, scrolling up her arms and across her chest. Illuminating her face from below to eerie effect. She reached for me, leading with the now-open knife. I jerked against the seat, but she was only going for the straps, slicing through them in rapid succession. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Not now.” She flicked a glance toward my wrists. Wavered half a second before deftly sweeping the the blade through the tough fabric of the cuffs. “Not in an hour. Not along the way. You’re not going anywhere.” </span></div>
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<span class="s1">“Why’s that?” I flexed my fingers, forcing blood back into them. Stamped my leaden feet against the car’s flimsy-feeling floorboards, making her point for the moment, at least.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">“One. You’ve no idea where you are.” Her hands were busy as she spoke. Tugging, extracting, gathering things from under the seat. From a drop-down compartment in the car’s roof. From the glovebox banging painfully against my knees as it fell open. “Two. The drone from back there?” She jerked her chin in the general direction of the blackness out the back window. “It’s got friends. Lots of heat-seeking, motion-sensing friends—” </span></div>
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<span class="s1">“So <i>we’re </i>not going anywhere.” </span></div>
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<span class="s1">“—that <i>I </i>know how to avoid.” She went on, fetching, sorting, piling, as thought I hadn’t spoken. “Three. I’ve done my homework.” </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">She stopped her busy work at last, only to flip open a dark, sleek case. A screen. A state-of-the-art personal screen, as alien to me as the drone. Alien to damned near everyone<i>. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“How—?” </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“Pirate,” she said. It sounded almost apologetic, though her hands were busy again. “For the moment, at least, I specialize in knowing.” </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Blue light flooded the black between us, endless text, scrolling almost faster than I could read. Almost faster. My Old Name. The one no one was allowed to say anymore. No one had said in a lifetime. My history. Birth to Conflict to now, all there in excruciating detail. Long gone and all there. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"Elohna, comma, Mircea D. Don't know what the D stands for. Information loss, but don't say that where anyone can hear you." She wasn't reading. Wasn't even looking at the screen, and it wasn't like I needed to. "Captain, once upon a time. A big deal for someone so young. A big deal for your kind." She paused like she was waiting for a reaction. Went on when she didn't get one. "You flew for them. Scouted behind enemy lines and always brought your crew back alive. Chest full of medals by the time it was all over, and everything." </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"Virtual," I said. Not knowing why. Not knowing what else to say. "Virtual by then." </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"Virtual." She laughed in the near dark. "And then there was peace. And then it all went away. They took it away.” She paused again. Left me an opening, as if I might contradict her. As if I might know something she didn't. "You hung on a while. Longer than most. Trash routes and graveyard shifts. Demotions. To Co-pilot. To Mechanic." </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"Maintenance technician," I cut in. "Airline Maintenance Technician, Grade Three." </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">She swore under her breath, sympathy or empathy, I didn't know. Pity maybe. Pity, quite possibly. She passed a hand over the screen, blanking it out. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“There's nothing for you in Center,” she said quietly. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"Nothing for anyone," I snapped, angry at last. "Unless you're a pirate." </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"You'd make a great one." Her reply was mild. Unfazed. "Even tempered. Inquisitive and a quick study. Not exactly a social butterfly. Nondescript."</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"For 'my kind'," I couldn't resist the sarcastic quote marks, but she didn't rise to the bait any more than I had.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"For your kind." </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Silence fell on that particular truth. I was the first to break it, embarrassed for no reason I could name. "So. This isn't a recruiting mission for you, then." </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">She didn't laugh. Didn't say anything. She toyed with dark, glossy expanse of the now-dark screen, considering something. Making a decision. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"> "Not a recruiting mission. A gamble." She nodded sharply to herself. Waved the screen to life again and tapped it once. The space flooded with light. The cavernous space of an ancient airplane hangar. "An investment."</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">*****************************</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"How?" I asked. Eventually asked. "How <i>long</i>?" </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"My father," she said. An answer to both. All the answer she seemed to want to give, but she set her teeth and went on. "He fought, too." She held up a hand. Waved off the question of Old Names before I could even ask it. "He saw how it would go long before the end of Conflict. He wanted no part of it, so he made plans. He had an idea . . ." </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"Had." </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">I swore under my breath. Sympathy. Empathy. Pity. All of it together. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">We sat in silence a while. The two of us on the hood of the ancient Auto, dwarfed now by half a dozen hulking aircraft. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"We call it Green.” </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">She slid the screen from its case, almost reluctantly this time. She passed a palm over the black surface, end to end, then drew her fingers up, pulling the hologram with it. She curved an arm protectively around it, as though there was only so much she could stand for me to see. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“Not so accurate at first. Lived off what we could scrounge. Bunkers and houses and stores far enough out.” She flicked at one corner, shifting the field of view, blowing up one corner. “But we’ve earned it now.” Her voice was full of pride. “We grow things." </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">It was incredible. Impossible, farther even than this from Center, but there it was. Space stretching out. Houses and tilled land. Fences and tiny figures streaming out of a bigger building. There they were. I leaned in, my eyes darting from figure to figure, counting. Losing count. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"How many?" I could hardly find the breath to ask. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"One-seventy-six the last time I left for Center. I spend the most time there. Amassing capital. Making sure we’re stay off the radar. One-seventy-six,” she said again. Her gaze strayed toward one edge. "Two-hundred now, maybe. Children. Other investments. Two-hundred, I hope." She bunched an abrupt fist. The hologram shrank to a single cerulean point of light and winked out. "We've outgrown it. We need to find more land. Another place it's safe to settle. We need"—she blew out a breath—"so much of everything." </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“And you know where to get it.” </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">My gaze drifted up. Roamed over the motley assemblage ranging from two-seater crop dusters to something medium sized that must've hauled cargo. Must’ve hauled personnel toward the end of the Conflict. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Personnel like me. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">It clicked, then. What she was asking. It only clicked just then. I’d have liked to blame the head injury. The roughing up her goons had given me, but the truth is it was too big. Entirely too big. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">I thought about fuel. Parts and the hundred other things. How impossible it all was, when there was nothing at all this far from Center, yet here we were, the two of us on the hood of an ancient Auto. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“You know how to get it there.”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"I specialize in knowing." She nodded without bitterness. With something like hope as her gaze drifted up. “I’m a pirate.”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“But you weren’t always.” </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
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<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
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<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
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<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
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<span class="s1"> </span></div>
Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-84799545600778782122016-09-21T14:28:00.003-05:002016-09-21T14:28:50.693-05:00NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Contest 2016—Round 2 StoryStill in heat 34. The prompts this time around:<br />
<br />
Genre: Sci-Fi<br />
Location: A hot-air balloon<br />
Object: A Four-leave clover<br />
<br />
<br />
Not very happy with this. Sci-Fi is hard anyway. It felt nearly impossible in just 1000 words.<br />
<br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Title: In Ordinary Time</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Synopsis: A peacekeeper and a rogue storyteller meet again. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span></div>
<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s2"></span><span class="s1">It should have been a quiet night. Coterie Juliet leaned that way most of the time, with its low census and most denizens three or more generations out from transmittal. It was a lucky draw for her—for anyone—especially at the end of <i>Kermis</i>. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Tell me it’s chaos there.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Redland’s voice punched into Dita’s skull. It startled her upright, the motion abrupt enough to trip the position lock on the observation pod. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Knock,” she snapped. Aloud. It annoyed her. Unnecessary waves of sound disturbing the well-ordered silence. She bobbed in place until a familiar tug brought her back to center. “We’ve talked about knocking.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“<i>You’ve</i> talked about knocking.” The volume inside Dita’s head increased as Redland let his sensory filters dip and the comparative roar of Coterie Victor rolled in. “<i>I’ve </i>pushed you the latest data from Median on spontaneous social engagement.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Spontaneous,” Dita shot back. “That’s what you’re calling it over there?” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Exactly.” Redland chuckled and brought his filters back to full. "You know Victor. Especially after the <i>fête</i>'s wound down."</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Dita <i>did</i> know Victor, and not just by reputation. She knew its undulating streets during <i>Kermis</i>. The susurration of its discontent in ordinary time. She knew Victor, but Redland didn't need to know that. No one needed to know. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“I’m looking for sympathy here, D. Commiseration.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Sympathy, sure. Commiseration . . .” Dita gathered focus and lifted her gaze to the smoothly scrolling monitors. Natural ability warred with disuse. She tugged the neural tendril wider to give Redland field of view. “Afraid not.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Look at them,” he groaned. “Heavy-headed little lambs all tucked in. Empty streets. Is that limbic readout actually <i>flat?</i>”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Coterie-wide.” She didn’t bother to check the satisfaction rolling off her. “Blips here and there. Kids mostly. No interventions.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Blips.” There was a pause. Silence on Redland’s end. An unpleasant sensation on Dita’s. “Swap with me.” His voice went low. Going for persuasive, but Dita heard the desperation. She <i>felt </i>it. The gravitational tug of yearning, though that wasn't how the tendril worked. It wasn’t at all how it was supposed to work. “One loop, D. I’m on four . . .” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“This is old, Redland.” Dita gave her tech a mental twist, abruptly narrowing to positive push only. “There’s no way, even if I wanted to.” She winced against the nasty aftershock of meaning stripped out in transfer. Revenants of emotion. “<i>Doei.</i>” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She queued up the barely polite sign-off, poised to snap the tendril entirely, but Redland was faster on the draw. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“He’ll show sooner or later.” It was nonsense at first. Implication alone wriggling its way into Dita’s mind. “Baker,” Redland added. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“He’s in Oscar,” she blurted. “Discipline, social cultivation . . .” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“<i>Was </i>in Oscar. Juliet transmittal, <i>Kermis </i>Day 1.” Dita felt the full force of his smugness, too off-kilter to adjust incomings. “New initiative. Way over my clearance—way over yours—but I saw.” He let it sink in. A final push before his voice smoothed out. “It’s a good swap, Dita.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Good,” she echoed, but it was already a lie.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Monitors vanished. Neat rows and columns gave way to a single frame. The Keeper had him immobilized. Frozen with his head cocked, just enough of a smile visible to make her lie again. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Good.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">**************************</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Perdita.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She ignored her full name. Pushed away the urge to wonder how he knew it. How he always knew far more than anyone should. His tricks of the trade were irrelevant. A relic of Victor. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Denizen B-476. Late of Oscar. Late of Yankee, Papa, November. Newly arrived in Juliet for . . .” The incoming didn’t exactly end. It . . . thinned, too faint to sense. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Baker,” he said. He always said. “That’ll be redacted.” The addition was gentle. A far different tack than he’d ever taken before.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Inciting incident.” The cell barrier thrummed as Dita strode to the recovery slot. “Unauthorized, low-utility organic.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She turned her palm up, and the item materialized. A scalloped head nodding on a slender stem. She recognized it. Remembered fields and fields and the taste of green.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Four leaves.” He nodded toward it. “For luck.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Fallacy perpetuation.” Dita looked away as the clover winked into Evidence, just data in the Keeper’s stream now. “Your real problem, Denizen? Fabrication.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Fabrication? A <i>story.</i>” His eyes flashed. “You remember stories, don’t you?” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Minor child involvement.” Dita frowned. Something tickled the edges of her mind, well beyond the troubling fact of it. “Escalation.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Escalation. Fuck.” He snorted. “A kid. A story. She wasn’t happy. Then she was.” His eyes flicked from side to side as though he could see the scroll of information flooding the tendril. As if he could fend it off. “But you know that already.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She did know. A short-lived fluctuation in the limbic readout. A blip that was, then wasn’t. She knew without a doubt he’d smoothed over the only moment she might have been called to account for.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“You know the story.” He latched on to her hesitation. “You did Retro in school.” It was a guess. A shot in the dark, but it landed like always. He knew, like always. “You’d know this one. A tragedy, they say. A huckster and his hot air balloon. A left-behind little girl.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Recommending re-transmittal.” She spoke aloud. Unnecessary waves of sound. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“I always thought she was lucky.” His words came quickly. Desperately. “Before that bullshit with the shoes.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Fast-track per Section 41319, Universal Coterie Mandates.” Dita narrowed her outgoing to a filament hardly wide enough to carry the pronouncement out to Median. Not nearly wide enough to let anything more slip through. Anything troublesome. “Initiating.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Baker’s eyes went wide in the end. He was afraid. He was always afraid. It gave her no satisfaction. None at all, but the cell charged soon enough. It filled her field of view with scorching white. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">He hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t had the chance, but the would-have words lingered anyway. An unauthorized story in ordinary time. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>I can’t come back. I don’t know how it works.</i> </span></div>
<br />
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-48812151174671368562016-07-26T23:15:00.003-05:002016-07-26T23:15:50.493-05:00NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Contest 2016—Round 1 <div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Group: 34</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Genre: Suspense</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Location: A Parking Garage</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Object: A Fortune Cookie</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<span class="s1"><b><u>Needs Must</u></b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">These aren’t my usual hunting grounds. Sloping, stained concrete and lurid yellow diagonals. The scent of oil and exhaust. Of long-extinguished cigarettes and rain. It’s unfamiliar terrain, but needs must. Needs must. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I tread carefully, though I’m no less surefooted here than among the manicured lawns and paving-stone paths of more familiar haunts. But this is a different world. A new world of booming echoes. Fickle, buzzing light and thick shadows that I’d welcome under other circumstances. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">If I’d chosen this—been drawn here of my own volition—my heart would pound. My blood would rise to the challenge. Unfamiliar sounds and flashes of movement. The delicious suspicion that I might be the hunted just this once. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">But I have so little time. Just these few, dark, in-between hours. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I tread carefully. I trail my fingers along the wall. I listen, breathing in between my own steps as I wind upward. I strike out from the shadows once I hit the open roof. I weave between the few cars left in here-and-there spaces like rotting teeth. I walk the perimeter, confirming what I already know.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I have the measure of the place. These aren’t my usual hunting grounds, but they’re all much the same in the dark, in-between hours. Much the same for the likes of me, and the work is done. There’s little to do but listen. But wait for opportunity to flash her curious smile. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I lean forward over the pock-marked wall. There’s hardly a kiss of rain now, though it hasn’t gone long or far enough to be a memory just yet. The leaves are green-black and glistening below. Scudding clouds scatter the light of the three-quarter moon over them. They dampen the sound of car tires on slick pavement.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I want it to happen here. High above the trees. In the open air. By moonlight. I want this precise setting. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">My spine straightens in surprise as the thought takes me. In disgust. There is no <i>want </i>for the likes of me. No desire or imagining. There’s only compulsion. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Needs must. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I leave the roof by the stairwell, quickly enough that my footfalls aren’t quite silent on the metal steps. It’s fine. I tell myself it’s fine, and it’s not quite a lie. Silence—utter silence—is no friend. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I need them to know. I need them to suspect, at least. To wonder about the footsteps they might not have heard. To turn swiftly toward the flicker of motion that might have been a trick of the light. I need their shallow, hummingbird breath and the staccato of high heels ringing out ever more quickly on stained concrete. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I need their fear. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It arrives as suddenly as always. Opportunity, just as I reach the third floor. One step, then another and another and another. Soft curses and the frustrated jingle of keys. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I ease the door open. The pneumatic arm sighs overhead, listless enough that she wonders. She stills and turn toward it. Toward where she might have seen me a heartbeat ago, but there’s only what she might have seen now. What she might have heard as the shadows take me in. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She’s lost. That’s clear as she pivots around. The plastic bag in one hand spins tight around her fingers, revealing red characters, then hiding them against her thigh. Chinese. She likes Chinese. <br />
<br />
“Three.” She means to say it to herself, but the concrete is greedy. It snatches up the words and gives them back. “Was three yesterday?” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She strikes out upward, head down. Holds her keys like wicked silver claws between the knuckles of her free hand.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She strikes out and I follow, excited by it. The promise of a drawn-out hunt. The possibility of the rooftop. I follow, too eager to take myself in hand. To remember there’s no want for the likes of me. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I round the corner, surprised by how quickly she moves. How gracefully, even as her fear mounts. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I feed it, that fear. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I fall out of step with her. I let my own quickening footfalls echo in now-and-then counterpoint to hers. Let my metal watchband drag a glissando along an exposed pipe. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I drive her on. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She’s running now. The white bag spins madly. I’m close enough to see the dark hue of bloodless fingers as she rounds the corner into moonlight. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She wheels around, too late. They're always too late. My fingers close around her wrist. They deliver a sickening twist. Her keys tumble. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I have her. Opportunity in the palm of my hand when a hideous sound scrapes down my spine. When a dark shape sails out from the shadows and my vision goes white with pain. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I fall back, face to face with the cat. It’s black. A skeletal, with one ragged ear, snatching opportunity from my grasp. I stare in disbelief as it hisses, then bounds off, the blood streaming down my cheek the only evidence of its existence. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The woman screams once. She kicks out at me. A reflex as she goes to hands and knees for the keys, and then she’s gone. There’s no convenient, horror movie stumbling. No fumbling at the lock or shrill grind of a car not turning over. There’s only the squeal of tires. The blur of her face through the window as she tears past, phone to her ear. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I need to be gone. Compulsion denied licks through me like fire, but I need to be <i>gone. </i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I push to my feet. I try to, but something shatters beneath the heel of my hand. White cartons spilled around me. Chinese. I lift my palm from the pavement. Shards of the fortune cookie come away with it, leaving a pale strip of paper half exposed. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I need to be gone, but the words catch my eye. They arrest my attention. I’m laughing. Howling to the three-quarter moon. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>There’s no such thing as an ordinary cat. </i></span></div>
Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-32546835203240399742016-03-22T16:58:00.000-05:002016-03-22T16:58:04.459-05:00NYC Midnight Short Story Contest 2016, Round 2 <div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Title: Vagabond</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Requirements: Sci-Fi/</span> A Driving Instructor. An Assassination</div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Synopsis: An assassin walks between versions of the world, eliminating threats that might bring the walls between them down. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">There’s nothing remarkable about me. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">My story starts like this every time. It starts like this back where I’m from, a few accordion folds over in the universe. Multiverse. Whatever. Radford’s tried to explain it to me a hundred times. With the fancy board he calls out of nothing with a dramatic gesture down in the Underground. With paper napkins and shadow puppets and the smallest words he can muster, he’s tried to explain, but I don’t really get it. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Truth be told, I haven’t exactly exerted myself. Can’t see the profit in it, when all I do is step from here to there. There to here, and I’m staring into my own unremarkable face in the spiderweb spaces of a cracked mirror, and that’s that. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">I don’t have the words for it, big or small. It’s not quite like stepping through a door. Not quite like whisking aside a curtain or blinking my way from dark to sudden light. It’s not really like magic, either, though I say that a lot. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">It drives him crazy when I do. Radford and his pale blue dotted lines. Radford and the busy hands that make his hair stand on end as he goes on and on and on. An unending series metaphors about genes and locks and keys. Thinned-out places between Versions that some of us—just a very few of us—can step right through. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">It drives him crazy when I call it magic, and there’s profit in that. Satisfaction when his eyes narrow like he can look right into me if he tries hard enough. There’s a nasty kind of pleasure in knowing he thinks I’m holding out on him the way he holds out on me every time. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“Cascade management, my ass,” I mutter to the fractured version of my unremarkable face. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">I worry as the details filter in behind me. The sickly tan–pink tiles and the unsteady buzz of the tube lights that look like they’re on the verge of surrendering to gravity. There’s a rust-stained sink, cool porcelain under my palms, and I know right then it’s one of those. A Version where time’s been dragging its heels for who knows how long. Where absolutely everything takes forever and I’m bound to fuck up somehow. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">I worry and I wonder for the hundredth time why he sends me on these when he <i>knows </i>I’m bound to fuck up. The last of the Vagabonds and he knows I’m bound to say something or drop something or step from there to here at just the wrong moment. I wonder why he doesn’t send Charys or Jess or any one of the official Walkers. Rising stars who <i>get</i> how this works. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">I worry, and then I don’t. My gaze snags on the mirror again, and I remember even before the pop sounds just once in both my ears. Before whatever it is comes online and Radford’s voice fills my head. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i>Calm down. There’s nothing remarkable about you. Head for the drop. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i>*********************************************</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">It’s worse than I thought. Bad even for a Version like this, though I wonder how I know. My memories of every job are just sketches. Echoes after they get to them back at the Underground, and still I’m pretty sure this is worse than I thought. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">I sling the pack over my shoulder and push through the door. There’s a too-bright sun in a hazy sky. Thick, dusty smoke on my tongue. I turn a half circle and see the world is flat all around me. A black line in the distance and a sagging canopy behind me and off to the right, with four dark shapes hulking back to back. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i>Fuel station. You’ll need a car. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">That’s Radford, but not Radford in my head. Just something my mind’s bothered to hold on to. Been able to hold on to from a job or two or four ago, and who knows why the echoes always sounds like him. Who knows how it’s different from whatever sets off <i>actual</i> him in my head. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i>The drop, Vagabond. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">That’s actual him again. One of a thousand impatient-sounding snippets he records before he signs me on and sends me off. They fill my head one at a time, and I guess he must know how that works.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i>Stimulus and response. </i>There’s a dead space. Soundlessness between hard bookends. <i>Same way you’ll find the drop.</i> Dead space again. <i>Now go. </i> </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">**********************************************</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">There’s nothing remarkable about me. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">It’s my salvation. I look lost. I <i>am</i> lost, but so is everyone in a Version like this. I remember that much. The way they’re all choking on the smoke-thick air. Letting themselves be tugged along by things they don’t understand. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">It’s familiar. It must be why my mind holds on to it. Because it works like that for me. I’m not a Walker. There’s no shiny silver badge of honor not quite hidden behind my ear. No parade of symbols scrolling endlessly in the corner of my field of vision to translate this Version into my vernacular. There’s just me and memory and Radford’s best guess about what I’ll need to do the job.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i>Guess?</i> he snaps. <i>Prediction. Likelihood caught in a net of endlessly sophisticated calculations. </i> </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">He’s sneering. Annoyed with me, and it’s just as likely to be him or not him. Actual or memory. Either way, I tune it out as I drag myself toward the black line in the distance. Both of him are silent until one or the other coughs up the word <i>road</i>. It goes with <i>car</i> and <i>fuel</i> and when the dented yellow monstrosity roars past and screeches to a stop, I remember that I hate this. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">It zips backward toward me. The dented yellow monstrosity, quick for what it is. It belches smoke and zips backward in an undulating line. It stops again, right in front of me. A massive weight on wheels that rocks forward and back. There’s a soft purr as the window descends and a voice floats out. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“Lady. You trouble?” </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">I shield my eyes with my hand. I bend my knees and lean in. The man’s face is dark and bristled. His head is wrapped in an intricate nest of pale blue cloth. The voice goes on, but I only catch every fifth word or so. My ear trips over the accent as much as the string of archaic phrases I’ve never bothered to learn. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">I shake my head. He shakes his, impatient with me, but as far as that goes, he can get in line. I feel the tug. My feet kicking up dust as they drag closer to the car. I’m meant to get in. It’s my way to the drop and I’m probably supposed to make nice. There’s probably some trick to this, but that’s not how it is for me. I yank open the door and slide inside the car, ignoring the rapid-fire words muffled by the scarred, not-quite-transparent barrier between him and me. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i>Cab, </i>Radford supplies. <i>Currency. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“Money,” I blurt, proud of the old-fashioned word. “Wallet.” I produce the slim black square with a flourish. I flip it open, so the fan of green just peeks out. “City. Town. Ok?” </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">He meets my eyes in the mirror. “You trouble?” </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“No trouble.” I cobble a smile together from five or six I half remember. Unremarkable iterations of myself from Versions like this. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“No trouble,” he echoes. The car lurches into motion, even though he doesn’t believe it. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">He shouldn’t. No one should believe it. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">********************************************</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i>Nova Driving Academy</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">The tug comes just as the words glide by in my peripheral vision. I’m sick with the lurch of the cab. With the thick, filthy air here, and I wonder what would happen if I fought it. I wonder if I have before. If it’s one of the memories they’ve lifted right out of my head back at the Underground. One of the things my mind hasn’t bothered to hold on to. Hasn’t been able to. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">I wonder, but Radford is clamoring. <i>Binary system. White dwarf. Accretion of matter. Fusion. Cataclysmic. </i>It’s his system breaking down. Misapprehension slipping through an endlessly complex net.<i> Nova.</i> It’s just a name. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">The tug comes again and my palm slaps hard against the scarred plastic barrier. The driver’s arms go stiff. His spine goes long and the cab stops so suddenly that my knees slam into the seat. I shove a fistful full of bills through an opening hardly big enough for my fingers. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">It’s enough. It has to be more than enough, but he doesn’t take them at first. The window purrs down and he sticks his pale blue head out. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“Driving academy.” He laughs up at the sign, then back at me. “You want my job, lady trouble?” </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">I mean to smile, but the tug comes again. It’s sharp this time, and it’s only going to get worse. <i>That’s</i> a memory. An echo and more. I reach into the pack. The pain recedes, and my hand knows what it’ll find before I do. Solid weight and the texture of a pistol grip. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“Job?” I manage a smile this time, though he doesn’t seem to like it much. “Already got one.”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">*********************************************</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">There’s nothing remarkable about me. Not in the spiderweb spaces of a mirror. Not swinging my legs out from behind the wheel, calling out something encouraging to the pale kid with braces who’s holding on to the passenger-side dash for dear life. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Nothing remarkable at all, and I wonder why they want me dead back at the Underground. I wonder, and maybe it’s not the first time. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i>This is the drop, Vagabond. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">I raise the gun. It’s clean shot and then it isn’t. Then it’s chaos. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“Vieve!” The voice is a memory. The name, an echo and more. “Genevieve!”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">A man slams me to the ground. Slams <i>her </i>to the ground, but it’s too late. My finger twitches. Once, twice. Once, twice again, and they’re both still. Red spreads wide on black. The kid in the passenger seat is screaming, and I need to go. From here to there through the thinned-out space between this Version and mine. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">I need to go, but I can’t. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i>We need the body. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">It’s him. I know before I roll him off her. Off me. It’s Radford. In my head and on the ground, his eyes staring wide. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Your<i> body, Vagabond. </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">**********************************************</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“Have I done it before?” I slam him into sleek silver of the wall, my arm across his throat. It doesn’t seem to faze him, and that raises a question or two. “Do I do it a lot?”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“It’s never happened.” He looks me in the eye, but that hardly means anything. “We’ve never seen a Version where we . . .”</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“Where we die together?” My voice fills the lab. Echoes off every surface. “Where I kill us both?” My arm drops, heavy with a sudden possibility. “You. Was I even supposed to . . .? Did you <i>know</i>?” </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“That Version of you is physiologically identical and you know we have <i>no </i>idea how it is you do it. How you’ve closed more potential rifts than all the Walkers put together. Without the tech. Without the regimen or the premature aging . . . ” His voice fails him.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">My shoulders heave. A sob makes its way up and out, and I hate myself for it. I hate <i>him </i>for it. For finding me <i>fascinating </i>in this and every other Version. <i> </i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">He starts again with no little effort. “A casualty. Some of the models predicted a casualty. I had to specify . . . But Gen, you have to know . . .” </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">The door swings open, and I have to laugh. It’s a debrief tech. It’s business as usual, but her timing is impeccable.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<br />
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“I don’t, actually, Rad.” I lift my arms. The tech lays the silvery material of the prep suit across them. “I don’t have to know a thing. Cascade management. Just the way you like it.” </span></div>
Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-86882599162826153742016-02-03T10:41:00.002-06:002016-02-03T10:41:20.231-06:00NYC Midnight Short Story Contest 2016Once again, I did this. Made it to Round 2 last time. We'll see how it goes this year.<br />
<br />
Genre: Ghost Story<br />
Object: A Wish<br />
Character: A Translator<br />
<br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
<span class="s1"><b>Childhood Glosses</b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>You are a wish we call James. </i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It’s my first memory. My first patchwork of memories. The sway of the rocking chair. The groan of one protesting floorboard, a counterpoint to my mother’s voice and the sheltering warmth of her body. My father’s voice and the rasp his beard against my cheek. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It was ritual. The words from one, then the other. Hours apart sometimes, but every night from the time I was nearly weightless in the crook of an elbow, deep into the years I’d turn my face to the wall, shrinking from it. Love, unabashed and unwavering, that seemed hopelessly childish to me for too long. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I miss it, now they’re gone. The house is mine, huge and rambling. Cavernous and falling down in slow motion as the woods out back look on, eager to reclaim it. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I sleep in my childhood room. The same narrow bed, though it’s an afterthought now, crammed in among bookcases and her sewing machine. His rolling steel case tool chest that serves well enough as a night stand. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I sleep there. Or stare up at the ceiling more often than not. Out the window at the hungry woods and I miss the ritual. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>You are a wish we call James. </i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I miss the gentle words and the certainty of her fingers, then his. I miss knowing the dip and rise of the mattress with familiar weight. I miss voices that don’t belong to a ghost. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">************************************</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I called her <i>Da </i>from the start. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">That’s patchwork, too, of course. Something not quite a whisper, but a rearrangement of molecules in my ear. A name for the chill that always started at my toes and worked its way up my body, night after night as my mother or my father eased the door shut until the hall light was a narrow strip of floor-to-ceiling gold. As their footsteps retreated, the chill would come and the not quite whisper that settled the word in my head long before my body knew how to shape the air into the single, sharp syllable. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It wasn’t her name. Isn’t her name, I think, though I don’t yet understand how tenses are meant to slide past one another when it comes to a ghost. It’s what I called her, though. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">My parents insisted there was never any confusion. <i>Yee</i> and <i>Ya </i>were always my words for them. <i>Da </i>was always the ghost, and they took it in stride. My mother, laughing, liked to tell the story so often, it feels like another memory. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Brown eyes meeting her blue, then his in the dead of night. The gold of the hallway spilling in on their heels as I looked up from my crib. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>Ya, </i>I declared. Adamant and forceful before my gaze traveled up and over her shoulder to my father.<i> Yee. </i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>Ya, </i>she said a thousand times, splaying her fingers over her own heart. <i>Yee. </i>My father would add, the word and a shake of his head his only contribution. She was the storyteller<i>. </i>The one who knew how to tease a laugh from a sullen, angry soul. How to hold a room full of wide-eyed listeners in the palm of her hand. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She’d pause at this point. Always one breath longer than anyone thought they could stand it. Even me, long after the start of yet another retelling would make me roll my eyes. Even I would feel the air rush out of me as she lifted her hand to a point high up in the corner of the room. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>Da. He always called her Da. </i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">*********************************</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I have too much time to miss them now. Too many things and memories that I stumble over every day of this rest of my life that make me realize how remarkable they were. How extraordinary they must have been to build such an unremarkable life around me, strange as I was. As I am. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I was the wish they called James. The round-faced, dark-eyed infant who fell into their lives half a moment after they’d each found a corner of their hearts and minds empty.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>Not empty</i>, my father would say. Another line of dialogue from his spare repertoire, and my mother would nod. <i>Not empty. Waiting. </i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I never doubted the story. That it began and ended with a wish and its fulfillment practically colliding in time. There was a time when I found it disappointing. When I wanted heartache and struggle. Some fantastic revelation or dramatic twist.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">But it’s the calm that moves me now. The smooth contours of my life and I see the work of their hands in shaping it. I come across a basket at the foot of their bed, a small pile of things, his and hers and mine, and a note on top. A fold of paper sharply creased and slant of her hand. <i>Mending. </i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I open the door to his workshop sometimes. I cross the ill-tended yard and slip the key into the padlock that groans with years and rust and my unfamiliar touch. I peer through the doors, always surprised to find them still there. Tiny squares of paper thinned by time. Rough, full-sized pages from my sketchbook, replete with black, angry strokes. Oil on a clumsily stretched canvas. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I’m surprised every time to see my own evolution so proudly displayed. To find care and devotion and kindness still around me, every second of this rest of my life. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">*********************************</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">There was a time when they worried about Da. About me, I suppose, but it’s one more remarkable thing. The way I never felt the weight of whatever might have troubled them when they’d find me sitting up in bed, my eyes fixed on the high-up corner between the closet and the window. When I’d shiver in the dead heat of the California summer or wrestle with unfamiliar sounds. When I’d blame Da for all her not-quite-whispers. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I was six that summer. <i>Almost seven. </i>As I sit at the kitchen table with my coffee cooling, I look up, half expecting my mother to be there. Turning from the sink. Correcting me as she dries her hand on a flour-sack towel. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">But it comes from me alone these days. Interruptions from within that are nothing like Da’s not-quite-whispers, the same today as they ever were. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I was almost seven. First grade had been an unpleasant shock in many ways. Loud and unkind. Rigid and without laughter. The early days were worst. I saw kids just like me. They saw something to stare at. They saw skin and eyes and hair that were strange to them, even here where they shouldn’t have bene so out of the ordinary. But they would shout, and I would shout back, and the newness wore off the way it does when you’re young. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I made friends and fought with them. I went to their houses and never wanted to leave. I went to their houses and came home crying over some tragedy or other. I went to their houses and they came to ours less often. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Far less often, though there were reasons enough for that. The long, winding drive from anywhere but here. The sprawling, unfenced property with the woods out back. The ramshackle look that a hundred years lends to anything, no matter the care my parents lavished on the house. There were reasons enough that I never wondered why my friends’ visits came were so few and far between. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Reasons enough that it’s only now with coffee long gone cold and oils drying on the palette that I realize they must have worried about Da.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">****************************************</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">His name was Luke. <i>Doctor Luke</i>, he’d always say. I didn’t like the way he called himself that or how he’d drop to sit cross-legged on the floor, as though I wanted him there. I remember vividly the dread of pulling into the parking lot. Scrambling up on my knees to look at the cars snugged one next to the other in silver and black and white. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I remember vividly not wanting to go. My father’s wide palm pressed tight to my back as he lifted me down from the truck to the pavement. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>I know, James</i>, he’d say gravely. <i>I know you don’t want to. One more try, maybe? </i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It was always one more try. Just a few weeks, really. I can count them on two hands now, but then it was an eternity. Then it was time stretching out beyond any horizon I’d known as Doctor Luke prompted me with quiet words. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>She’s not for outside, </i>I would tell him, week after week. <i>Da stays home. </i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Nothing much came of it. I troubled him, he bothered me, and my parents were practical in their way. The visits stopped a few weeks shy of school and carried nothing with me but the memory of Doctor Luke’s oxfords and the way the carpet felt pressing into my knees. None of us carried anything but the absurd idea that Da was some imaginary friend. That I should call her that and not my ghost. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Nothing much came of it, though I understood better for saying it out loud. Da had never been for outside. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">********************************************</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The way I wander these days makes her angry. She can’t follow, and I know that. I feel her waiting in the upstairs hall. I step through the spot where she hovers and make an absent note every time that she’s a little farther from my bedroom door each day. That she’s on the steps sometimes. On the second landing if I’ve roamed until the sun goes down. In the front hall, frigid and furious the one night I drive to the ocean and stay until the sun rises behind me. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I don’t mean anything by it. Leaving her behind or even the silence that’s fallen over me since I’ve been back. I don’t mean to let the noise inside my head drown out the sounds she tries to teach my clumsy tongue to make. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She must be lonely in the huge, rambling house. My parents must have been some kind of company for her, though they never once felt the chill of her winding up from their toes. They never once felt her not-quite-whisper stirring the air, even at my bedside. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She must be lonely, but I’m not there yet. I belong too much to them to be lonely here. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">******************************************</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I knew about the fire. Even lagging behind the world as I do, I’d heard or seen something in one of the hundred papers I’ve smoothed out on the kitchen counter every day since the accident. One of the hundred papers I know so little about, because it was his job to read to us. My mother and I, neither of us entirely listening. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">But now it seems like I knew. Standing in his workshop for the first time in a hundred days with the smoke-black canvas in my hands, it seems like I knew. Like I should have done something to keep these walls standing. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The firemen think I should have. Their arms sweep through the air toward the woods where the smoke still curls up from the black bite the fire has taken out of them. They tell me I should leave now. Take steps if I want to go on being a fool or see the fire for what it is: A wake-up call. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I hear them. With my father’s workshop gaping open to the woods and the house behind me falling down in slow motion, I understand. But I don’t know what it means when there’s Da and my mother’s basket of mending. When there’s the narrow bed I sleep in and the remarkably unremarkable history of a wish they called James. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">**************************************</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I learn what it means to wake. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The house calls to me. Everything in it that needs doing. My hands are clumsy with childhood lessons, but it’s something. My mother’s patience and my father’s pride everywhere around me. And there’s Da. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">She prods and needles, her not-quite-whispers are constant in my ear. I find my voice, dusty and disused. I repeat after her. Out loud for the first time since I was six. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Almost seven.” I say out loud just as I open the door. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“After eight,” says the man I should have been expecting. He looks from the watch on his sun-browned wrist up to the sky. “Too early?” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I blink at him. The man I should have been expecting. I stare at skin and hair and eyes enough like my own that I almost shout.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">He weathers the moment long after it bleeds into rude. He speaks again. <i>“Koj hais lus dawb Hmong?” </i> </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Short, sharp syllables far more familiar than my own voice these days. Almost meaningless, but not quite. “I never learned.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>“Ob tiam.</i>” He nods as though I understand. As though I should. “Around the side?” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">He raises the toolbox I haven’t noticed. Reminds me that I should have been expecting him and there’s work to be done. He’s businesslike. Brusque and dubious in a way that wounds me, though he can’t know that. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Salvageable.” A corner of the workbench crumbles to ash under his fingers. “Expensive,” he adds. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“You’ll draw up . . .?” My voice fails at the question mark. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Estimate. Timetable.” He ticks things off on his fingers. It’s not unkind, but I only half hear him.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">We turn back toward the house. I’d like him to go. I’d like to get back to the familiar groan of the floorboards and Da. I’d like to get back to the work I can do, but he lingers. He follows me to the stoop. He stays, even though my hand is on the door. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Who is she?” He nods past me. High up and over my shoulder and it’s the first time I think to wonder how it’s always been like this. That she’s always in a high up corner and a chill l winding up from my toes. A not-quite-whisper from somewhere else entirely. She’s all of these at once.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Da,” I say. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>“Dab. Tus dab.” </i>He laughs, and I know he’s right. “Ghost.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><i>“Tus dab.” </i>It’s closer. Still an experiment on a clumsy tongue, but closer. “It’s not her name. I knew that.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">He tips his head toward the door. <i>“MeNaag.”</i> He frowns, thinking about it. “Little rain. She wants to know yours.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“James,” I say, though she drowns it out. Da. MeNaag. She’s never liked it. I know that suddenly. I’ve always known it.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“No good.” The man shakes his head. “<i>J.</i> Not in <i>dawb Hmong</i>.” He listens again. He holds up a hand and she falls silent. “<i>Xav xav,</i>” he says. “Wish. That’s what she calls you.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“<i>Xav xav,</i>” I echo. An experiment on a clumsy tongue. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">A wish they call James.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-76807794987826278962015-01-28T19:35:00.000-06:002015-01-28T19:35:10.588-06:00NYC Midnight Short Story ContestSo. I did this.<br />
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I was assigned to Heat 42 (the answer to life, the universe, and everything!). Genre: Mystery. Subject: A Secret Hiding Place. Character: A Traveling Salesperson. I'm seized with the need to disclaim or explain, but I shan't do that.<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Persons Unknown </i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Synopsis: A detective struggles into interview a reluctant person of interest in a murder case. </div>
<br />
<br />
He doesn’t like anything about this woman. Not the way she leans back in the cracked vinyl kitchen chair with one leg tossed carelessly over the other. Not the way her eyes slip closed and the end of her cigarette flares as she takes a deep drag. Not the way she’s cool and unruffled though the stifling summer heat presses down on every inch of the tiny walk-up. <br />
<br />
“I don’t know him,” she says. She sheds a ragged length of ash into a saucer without looking. “I’m afraid I’m not much help.” <br />
<br />
“I’m afraid you’re not.” He gives in. He roots around the inside pocket of his jacket and comes up with a limp handkerchief that already feels damp. He bumps up the brim of his hat and mops his forehead. “He’s on your back porch, Mrs. Grey . . .”<br />
<br />
“Miss.” Her voice cuts through his. Her lips part in a perfect O, smoke streaming between them. “And it’s a fire escape, Officer.”<br />
<br />
“Detective,” he snaps before he can stop himself.<br />
<br />
“Detective.” She smiles and stubs out his last cigarette. “That’s right.”<br />
<br />
“Miss Grey,” he begins again, trying for calm. “A man is dead. No identification. His head bashed in . . .”<br />
<br />
“I know.” She makes her eyes wide. She leans in. He sways toward her, helpless, as her elbows land on the scarred formica and her chin settles on her palms. She whispers. “I called the police, remember?”<br />
<br />
“You called. Must be, what, twenty tenants in this building? Thirty?” He jerks a thumb toward the back of the apartment. “But you called. Why is that, Miss Grey?”<br />
<br />
He brings a palm flat to the table with force. She doesn’t flinch. She watches the ash jump in the saucer. She gives him a heavy, reproving look, like he should know better than to try the usual on her. Maybe he should. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t like her.<br />
<br />
“I’m a concerned citizen, Detective.” She raises one shoulder in something that hardly qualifies as a shrug. “What if there were a fire?”<br />
<br />
<br />
********************************************<br />
<br />
“Walk me through it, Miss Grey.” He leans over the railing, jerking back as the wood groans under his weight.<br />
<br />
He turns back to find her still inside, one hand on the rusted bars swinging out from the window. She arches an eyebrow, and somehow he’s there with his palm out to steady her as she steps over the low sill.<br />
<br />
“He was here.” <br />
<br />
He follows the arc she traces with one peep-toe pump. The gaps in the warped boards are wide enough that he can see red rolling over the white sheet on the gurney far below. The mouth of the alley is thick with looky-loos crowding around the ambulance. Now it is, and he comes back to the fact that she’s the one who called it in. That ninety-nine times out of a hundred that means she knows more than she’s saying. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, she knows everything. It’s just a matter of asking the right questions. The thought settles him.<br />
<br />
“Walk me all the way through it.” He gives her a hard smile. “Our man was here. Why were you?”<br />
<br />
“I live here.” She gestures inside. She holds his gaze. She keeps her peace just long enough that his nails break the skin of his palms. She props a hip against the wall and folds her arms like she knows it. Like it’s just what she was waiting for. “I heard something.”<br />
<br />
His hand slaps against his chest, groping for notebook and pen. “Voices?”<br />
<br />
“No.” She shakes her head, almost like she’s sorry to disappoint him. “I suppose that’s strange.”<br />
<br />
“Miss Grey . . .”<br />
<br />
“Evelyn.” She runs roughshod over his all-business tone. “I imagine you need to know that, right? My first name. For all your forms and things.” She nods to the pen in his hand like she’s waiting again and he won’t get anywhere unless he gives. “Evelyn.”<br />
<br />
“Evelyn.” He grits his teeth and scrawls it down. “You heard something.”<br />
<br />
“Footsteps.” She looks up. Her lips move like she’s counting to herself. “All the way from the roof.”<br />
<br />
“One person? Two?” He wants the timeline, but he’ll double back for that. He’ll follow the path of least resistance for now. “Try to think . . .”<br />
<br />
“One.” She closes her eyes and opens them, smiling a little as though she’s just realized something. “He was in a hurry like he was after . . .” She breaks off with a gesture, like she’s rewinding the moment in her mind. “Something fell. Before him, I mean. Heavy.”<br />
<br />
She moves quickly to the railing. She leans on it with both hands. Smiling wide at the give under her weight.<br />
<br />
He snatches her back, breath hissing between his teeth. “Careful Miss . . . Evelyn.”<br />
<br />
“That’s new.” She points to the wood sagging outward. She runs her fingers along the upright rising to the floor above. “It must’ve hit. Whatever fell.” She jams the heel of her hand against the beam and pushes. The whole thing shivers and moans.<br />
<br />
“Must have.” He sounds as pale as he must be. He swallows against nausea and breathes through his nose. “Not safe out here. We can finish . . .” <br />
<br />
But she’s already pattering down the stairs. He follows, white knuckled and weak kneed. He doesn’t catch her until she’s three floors down, and even then, it’s only because she’s stopped.<br />
<br />
“A salesman.” She’s crouched well outside the sickly spill of the one working light in the alley, but he sees the gleam of teeth. “Of course.”<br />
<br />
“Don’t touch anything.” His voice bounces off the brick. She surges to her feet. Into the light, startled for the first time. Her smile vanishes. She hides behind the swipe of her palm. A cool gesture that hooks a stray, dark curl behind her ear. Her face, when it reappears, is hard again. He’s sorry rather than satisfied.<br />
<br />
“Evidence,” he says more quietly. He stoops, trying to make sense of the shadowed heap. “A salesman?”<br />
<br />
He lofts the question over his shoulder and waits. There’s an apology in the silence, though he doesn’t like this woman any better here than three floors up. She bites before too long.<br />
<br />
“Sample case. Right behind the mop bucket.” She steps beyond him, one long leg flashing by, too close for comfort. She runs a hand along the railing. “There should be flowers here. Geraniums.”<br />
<br />
“Second victim.” He doesn’t know what makes him say it. He’s a hard man, and not one to joke, but her laugh stirs the air and he’s thinking of changing careers.<br />
<br />
“We have to wait?” She looks from him to the line of uniforms pressing back against crowd on the sidewalk. She crouches, suddenly, her skirt pooling around her. She leans in, conspiratorial.<br />
“I’ve got a flashlight upstairs.”<br />
<br />
“Flashlight,” he repeats dumbly. “I have . . . “ He presses awkwardly away from her, trying to get at his belt. “Got one.”<br />
<br />
She laughs at that, too. The thick-fingered way he fumbles to free the penlight from the tools of the trade she’s made him forget entirely. But he twists the barrel and her attention snaps back to the cluttered corner.<br />
<br />
“There.” She reaches past him, pointing to where the weak beam glints off brass latches. “Sample case.”<br />
<br />
He fishes his handkerchief out again. He’s clumsy as he tries to one-hand the heavy case. Her fingers close around his wrist. He turns, blinking to find her close enough to breathe in. She’s looking away, though. She’s taking the flashlight from his hand and holding it high.<br />
<br />
“It’s empty.” She sweeps the light past the handle and back again. “No name and address,” she adds, when it’s obvious that he’s just not registering the significance of the blank white oblong behind the plastic facing. She bumps his elbow and nods down at the handkerchief still suspended in midair. “Shouldn’t we open it?”<br />
<br />
“Open it.” He clears his throat. “Yeah.” <br />
<br />
He tips forward to grasp the handle, falling on to one knee when it proves heavier than he thought it would be. She shuffles back out of his way, keeping the light on the case as he struggles to haul it up and out. It’s caught on something he can’t see. The vinyl edging pulls away at one dented corner and it’s snagged. He jerks at it, frustrated and panting in the heat.<br />
<br />
“Bingo!” She grins at him as the case thunks on to the warped wood between them.<br />
<br />
The sweat streams past his temples, and he wants the handkerchief for something other than fingerprints. He busies himself giving the case a once over, slowing his heart with routine.<br />
<br />
“Damage at the corner,” he mutters out loud so it’ll make its way into the notebook later. “Hinges and latches intact.”<br />
<br />
“Sturdy.” She sounds annoyed. Impatient, as if she wishes the fall had split the thing wide. “Open it now?” She shines the light right in his eyes. He winces and swipes out blindly, reaching for it, but she pulls it back, just out of reach. “Open it,” she says again.<br />
<br />
There’s a pleading note beneath that makes him want to do it. But a red light swings over them both. A door slams and then another, the ambulance getting underway at last, and he remembers a man is dead. He remembers he doesn’t like anything about this woman.<br />
<br />
“Why of course?” He stands the case up on its bottom. He drags it out of her reach. “ ‘A salesman. Of course.’ That’s what you said.”<br />
<br />
She stands. She twists the barrel of the penlight and tosses it at him. It clatters to a stop against the case. He leaves it there.<br />
<br />
“Who else would he be?” Her hands twitch at her sides. He’s halfway to patting his pockets for a cigarette, but she’s long since ground out his last one. She lifts her palms and twists at the waist, taking in the building. The filthy alley and the knot of people drifting away, now the shows over. “Who’d come here if they weren’t selling something?” <br />
<br />
He hauls himself to his feet, pushing down the urge to apologize. To offer her something. He struggles with the heavy case, muscling it up on to the railing. The flick of the latches is loud. Solid and satisfying. He half peers over his shoulder, expecting her, but she keeps to the shadows by some neighbor’s back door.<br />
<br />
“Family.” He hooks a finger under the curling edge of a photograph taped inside the lid. “Wife. Couple of kids.”<br />
<br />
“Won’t tell you anything,” she says. “His name.” She lifts up into a different voice entirely. Something high and sweet. “Such a good man.” She scrapes out a laugh. “She won’t know anything.”<br />
<br />
She takes one step, then another. Toward the stairs. Away from him, and he should stop her. He should go after her and do his job, but the night is stifling and he can’t bear the thought of that tiny apartment. He can’t bear the thought of her in it. <br />
<br />
“Check the bottom,” say says. She’s not facing him. Her hand’s already on the railing. She’s already gone. “It’s always at the bottom. All their secrets.”<br />
<br />
His knuckles knock against the base of the case before he’s even decided to listen. It’s hollow and there’s a seam, now he’s looking for it. He pries up the lining and finds a hinge that’s not quite flush with the rest. He presses the opposite side and the lid swings up.<br />
<br />
There’s another photo inside. A red-lipped girl pouting and leaning in to the camera. Blowing a kiss. The corners are worn. There’s a thumb print in one corner he can practically feel. He turns the snapshot over and the back is crowded with the round, looping letters of a girl too young for the man in the ambulance. Too young for the pouting red lips.<br />
<br />
Jim. Soon. You promised soon. Love, love, love.<br />
<br />
The signature is all flourishes. He can’t read the name. It hardly matters.<br />
<br />
“You said you didn’t know him.” He leans out into thin air. He twists his face up to call after her.<br />
<br />
She’s halfway up the flight above him. More than halfway before she stops, and he’s dizzy again.<br />
<br />
“I don’t know him, Detective.” She leans her elbows on the railing. “I just know men.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-90079821861226215322013-07-05T23:25:00.002-05:002013-07-05T23:25:18.295-05:00Helping a Brother Out: Man of Steel I think that Zach Snyder falls out of the normal human range for the detection of what looks/seems goofy. Should he be ridiculed and excoriated for this? Should we not extend a helping hand to a brother in need? We should.<br />
<br />
So, Zach. Here are some tips.<br />
<br />
1. The Dildo Express to the Phantom Zone—Diagnosis: Goofy Looking. It was this that alerted me to the severity of Mr. Snyder's need.<br />
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2. Ubiquitous Russell Crowe in Space Jammies—Diagnosis: Goofy Looking. This is followed closely on its heels by Russell Crowe, Obstetrician, but that's Conceptually Goofy. We'll get to that. But while we're here, let's also mention Jor-El's Avatar-asauras or whatever the hell that was. </div>
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3. Space politicians wearing standing rib roast hats—Diagnosis: Goofy Looking with a side of empathy for your Zod-led rebels. No one with a shred of dignity would consent to government by those hats. </div>
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<a href="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/51af4c10eab8eaa077000003-1200/the-council-of-krypton-will-be-seen-with-these-outfits.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/51af4c10eab8eaa077000003-1200/the-council-of-krypton-will-be-seen-with-these-outfits.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Let's move on to conceptually goofy, though, mostly because I can't find a picture of Supes wrestling one of the cleaning Robots from Wall-E like he's Bela Lugosi in Bride of the Monster. </div>
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4. Have you tried having Richard Schiff jiggle it? Hot on the heels of poor Amy Adams having to declare "It's supposed to go all the way in." </div>
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5. Superman plopping Lois in a crater and saying "You'll be safe here." And Lois neglecting to tell Supes, "Oh, hey, your dad violated my cognitive integrity and told me how to destroy the ship." </div>
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And never forget, Zach: Every. Single. Thing. about Night Owl is goofy. </div>
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<br />Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-3457056133276682012013-06-21T23:59:00.002-05:002013-06-21T23:59:34.170-05:00Sicily Sizzling Against my better judgment, I just re-read this post about <a href="http://telecommuniculturey.blogspot.com/2007/06/sicily-when-it-should-sizzle-batrice-et.html">Chicago Opera Theatre's production of </a><i><a href="http://telecommuniculturey.blogspot.com/2007/06/sicily-when-it-should-sizzle-batrice-et.html">Béatrice et Bénédict.</a> </i>(Against better judgment, because I hate my own pompous ass.)<br />
<br />
Though, I am surely as much an ass as Dogberry, I think Joss Whedon has, as usual, just said what I was trying to say with his <i>Much Ado About Nothing. </i>It IS all about the hotness of Beatrice and Benedick. <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDAQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DhHQ2756cyD8&ei=uCfFUb-SOYm-qgGdw4GADg&usg=AFQjCNElFZ6lYcLTxZ4UGz7vfv2XdSW7uw&sig2=wXMRPRC9RahbAx2PrAmUkA&bvm=bv.48293060,d.aWM">Of course it is of course it is of course it is of course it is.</a><br />
<br />
But it can't be without the whole story. It can't be without Hero and Claudio. It can't be without Don John and Leonato. It can't be without the whole canvas being crowded with fools.<br />
<br />
There was very little chance that I was not going to love this movie. I almost wish that weren't true before hand because I <i>really </i>loved this movie, and I feel like I landed so far beyond that foregone conclusion that I don't have words for it. Which will not stop me from going on and on and on and on. See above, re: I AM AN ASS.<br />
<br />
I love the hand-held camera work and the way the shots constantly shift and play with perspective. It's a play about presupposition and stubborn entrenchment in what each character thinks he or she is sure of. It's about scrutiny and surveillance and the way love is intimate and personal and doesn't mean a thing until it plays out in the public eye. And the public eye doesn't know a thing about what love really is.<br />
<br />
I love that it's unabashedly silly. That everyone is a fool at one moment or another, in word and deed and often both. I love that it's unapologetically smart, streaking past some of the best one liners without lingering. It's something I'll want to see again and again and I don't think I'll ever feel like I haven't laughed at and loved something new.<br />
<br />
I LOVE THE CAST. Is that worth saying, given how much I love the Whedonverse? I think it is. I did not love Fred in Angel. I really, <i>really </i>did not love Fred. At all. And after Wesley kept a woman ball-gagged in a cage, it was really hard for me to care about him as he persisted in not being trapped under something heavy.<br />
<br />
And though comparisons are odious, let's face it: My Beatrice and Benedick are Branagh and Thompson. They probably still are. But I loved Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof. I loved, loved, loved them in a way that I couldn't have without Joss telling his version of the whole story and making it. All. About. Them. They're ridiculous and smart and so, so, so ridiculously desirable and made for one another and seeing that all framed—literally and figuratively—by Joss's beautiful mind.<br />
<br />
I'm not going to gush about everyone else that everyone knows I love. (Except to say that Nathan Fillion, Tom Lenk, and Tom Lenk's manly mustache NEED A SERIES.)<br />
<br />
But Reed Diamond? Spencer Treat Clark? I RESENT NOT KNOWING THAT I LOVED YOU UNTIL NOW. Ditto Riki Lindhome. Clark Gregg. Well. Thank Ba'al that Coulson lives. It's unbelievable that he picked up the role of Leonato so late.<br />
<br />
<br />
And I cannot even believe that Fran Kranz was both Shaggy in <i>Cabin in the Woods </i>(yes, I'm aware he had some other name—it's a pop culture metaphor, youngling) and possibly the only even remotely sympathetic Claudio?<br />
<br />
Ok, that's not fair to Robert Sean Leonard. Well, yes it is. RSL is a really <i>good</i> Claudio. A truly odious Claudio. But this . . . I mean, I'd still push his impressionable ass down that picturesque stone-terraced hill, but Fran Kranz's Claudio is eerily familiar and interesting. I feel like I know him and thanks ever so, Joss, for making sure that there's something in everything you've ever made that will prevent me from sleeping at night.<br />
<br />
With all due deference to the late, great Roger Ebert, I loved, loved LOVED this movie.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-91677068336551054852013-03-16T22:50:00.001-05:002013-03-16T22:50:08.851-05:00Unseen Ambition: City and the City at Lifeline TheatreWhen initially announced, <a href="http://www.lifelinetheatre.com/">Lifeline Theatre's </a> 2012–2013 season seemed to have been ripped from the headlines of the diary where I record deepest Theater Nerd Desires: Wilkie Collins' <i>The Woman in White</i>; Barry Hughart's <i>Bridge of Birds</i>; and China Miéville's <i>The City and the City. </i><br />
<i><br />
</i> We saw <i>WiW</i> in the fall and it was SPLENDID. The spousal unit, who is disinclined to take my reading recommendations, had to agree that Marian is one of the greatest heroines (and the direct ancestress of <a href="http://www.gailcarriger.com/">Gail Carriger's Alexia Tarabotti</a>, whom he loves) and Fosco one of the greatest villains in all literature.<br />
<br />
Later last year came the announcement that they would not be doing <i>Bridge of Birds </i>this year (although I believe they have it on tap for next year), but they subbed in <i>The Three Musketeers. </i>So what's important here is that they have not strayed from my deepest Theater Nerd Desires.<br />
<br />
But that's not why I brought you here. I brought you here, because did you catch how I slipped in "China Miéville's <i>The City and the City"</i>? And did you say to yourself: Madman say wut? Because that should be unadaptable, right?<br />
<br />
NOT SO.<br />
<br />
We saw it this afternoon and it's far more successful than I imagined it could be. Joe Schermoly's set is a simple set of doors fronted by two wide steps with a set of uniform windows above. Otherwise, the scene is suggested by a few pieces of furniture and the costuming (Izumi Inaba) and movement direction (Amanda Link) of the cast as they move through Besźel and Ul Quoma, two cities occupying the same time and space, each politically required to remain "unseen" by the denizens of the other. Brandon Wardell's "nothing up my sleeve" lighting design primarily employs the visible street lamps, while still managing to shift scenes fluidly between the main character's narration and the action unfolding around him. Christopher Kriz's inobtrusive music and sound design also serve the adaptation well.<br />
<br />
And Christopher M. Walsh's adaptation is so impressive, given the novel. The novel is nothing short of amazing, but like everything of Miéville's, not exactly straightforward. Walsh translates concept, plot, and character to the stage in a 2-hour production that necessarily simplifies the text, but nothing about it is flat or wanting.<br />
<br />
Early on, there's some needful exposition through dialogue, but it is economically confined to interactions with a pair of foreigners who are understandably confused by the fundamental existential differences in this part of the world (c.f. any given episode of CSI or Bones, which squanders easily 38 minutes of every 42-minute episode with main characters [WRONGLY] explaining things to other main characters when it is shit every character ought to know). The main characters, when speaking to foreigners, shift into generic "Eastern European" accents and back out again when conversing with other "natives." (As someone who works on ethnicity and boundary guarding, really, the residents of each city ought to sound accented to one another, however, close their languages are in reality . . . but I quibble because I can and because I love.) It also takes the production a little time to really capitalize on Miéville's humor, but hits all the right notes once it does.<br />
<br />
The adaptation is skillfully handled by the actors and director Dorothy Milne. In a few cases, the repurposing of actors might have been handled slightly more attentively to make the differences between characters more marked and the performances more consistent. For example, Millicent Hurley is impressive as Professor Nancy, the academic advisor of the woman whose murder is at the center of the novel, but less memorable as the same woman's mother. Similarly, Patrick Blashill's performance as David Bowden, an archaeologist disgraced by his early forays into questionable scholarship, but less thought seems to have gone into his brief turn as a nationalist villain.<br />
<br />
But the leads are solid and consume so much stage time, that any directorial or performance missteps are minor. Steve Schine is remarkable as Borlú (and, I imagine, exhausted at the end of every performances). Schine has remarkable chemistry with both Marsha Harman (Corwi, the constable assigned to the investigation in Besźel) and Chris Hainsworth (Dhatt, his counterpart in Ul Quoma).<br />
<br />
It's not a perfect production, but the flaws are so minor and the undertaking is so ambitious that any shortcomings rapidly fade from memory. Unspeakably impressive job with something really challenging.<br />
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Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-16160387232293342652011-11-06T14:17:00.002-06:002011-11-06T14:17:23.365-06:00Thank you, Mrs. Hopkins, wherever you are.I am grading papers. I will be grading papers. I look forward to the time, many moons from now, when I will be able to say that I was grading papers.<br /><br />Some are good. Many are bad. Some have the goodness buried beneath really terrible writing. Those make me the saddest, for my sake and for theirs. For my sake because I have not learned the art of skating through and assigning a grade, so I often spend hours and hours trying to unearth the good and make comments that I hope will help the student let the good shine through. And I don't have that kind of time. For their sake because with the size of my intro classes getting bigger and bigger and bigger all the time, I just can't help them as much as I'd like to. Neither of us has that kind of time.<br />
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Grading always makes me think of Mrs. Hopkins, my Honors English teacher, Junior year, British Literature. She was fun. She was disorganized. She was zany. (As a class, we bought her a rubber chicken for Christmas, because she wanted one for her props box.) She loved the material and made us love it, too. But most of all, she taught us how to write.<br />
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I think my very first paper for her was on Hamlet. I got a <i>B</i>-- (yes, minus minus). I was shocked. I was appalled. I was disbelieving. I had always gotten <i>A</i>s. Always. I soon learned that mine was the highest grade in the class. <i>F</i>s abounded. <i>F</i>s! Can you believe it?<br />
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And then she spent several class periods teaching us How to Write—the mechanics: "That" is for things, "Who" is for people. Punctuation generally goes inside quotation marks in American English. If you put a comma before "which" and the sentence sounds funny, you probably meant "that." She taught us how to outline (and better still, WHY to outline, rather than giving us a busy work assignment forcing us to do it): For every I, there must be at least a II. For every A, at least a B. For every 1, at least a 2, and so on. If any topic level doesn't have at least one partner, it's either not part of the fabric of the paper, or it should be organized with some other point under an existing topic level.<br />
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She taught us that there was real joy in bringing order out of the chaos of our own thoughts, of disparate sources, of scattered notes that we thought we'd never be able to make sense of. She made us work hard, she gave us the tools to work hard, and she showed us the rewards for hard work—elegant, persuasive writing.<br />
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She was awesome.<br />
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<br />Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-26403826427271846192011-10-02T01:59:00.000-05:002011-10-02T13:00:57.298-05:00Love's Bitch, Poet Enough to Admit It: Tales of Hoffman, Opening Night @ Lyric Opera<br />
Opening night of the 2011 season. FINALLY. Especially as I was deprived of avant garde opera earlier this week.<br />
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I'm always well and truly ready for opening night by the time it rolls around, but especially so this year as it was a brand new (to me) production of an opera I know little about. My pre-show nerding out was somewhat disrupted by the fact that someone's coat and program were ON MY SEAT when I arrived early with the full intention of completely digesting the pompous program before curtain.<br />
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Unwilling to compound the problem by sitting in someone else's seat, I just sort of hung around in the lobby until I couldn't stand it anymore about 10 minutes before curtain. Of course when the owner of the things showed up, it turned out to be a very nice woman who had mistaken a 3 for a 1 because she didn't have her reading glasses, and then I felt like a jerk for being so huffy. (I wasn't huffy to her, I was just huffy on the inside, but I have an overdeveloped guilt-generating machine.) <br />
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In any case, I only just had time to skim the synopsis before the lights went to half. And stayed at half for, like, 10 minutes while people filtered in veeeerrryyy slowly and in chattily, which returned me to the brink of huffiness. (This is partly post-traumatic stress from a couple weeks ago when The <a href="http://www.edgechicago.com/index.php?ch=entertainment&sc=theatre&sc2=reviews&sc3=performance&id=123499">Paramount Theatre production of <em>My Fair Lady</em></a> used the overture for old school purposes and people talked all the way through it. I admit that this is my baggage.)<br />
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But I need not have feared: Butts were in seats (or outside the doors) when the curtain rose on James Morris in his <a href="http://www.shippinganywhere.net/catalog/bt480.bmp">Ringmaster Ned</a> get up in front of yet another curtain painted like oversized circus ads, featuring the "Mistress of the Writhing Monsters" front and center. It's not that Morris does not rock the tall boots as Lindorf, and it's not that I don't appreciate an Eve metaphor as much as the next gal, but this was the moment of the design that I didn't really "get." I loved the look and feel, but it's really out of step with everything else in a really tight, wonderful design, and even in a work that is pastiche within pastiche . . . I don't get it.<br />
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Of course, I hadn't SEEN the rest of the design at this point, so I was enjoying the old timey circus goodness and tall boots on their own merits, when a very terrible thing happened: James Morris sang . . . badly. It was downright creaky, no depth. Unpleasant. Now, as mentioned above, I am not terribly familiar with <em>Tales of Hoffman</em>. So, thought I, perhaps "Dans les rôles d'amoureux langoureux" is just an ugly piece not to my taste. Well, I've just watched <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jry5zLyCCt0">my Welsh bass-baritone boyfriend, Bryn Terfel, sing it,</a> and let's just say that's not the problem. I am <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=28365181#editor/target=post;postID=114801385322498811">very, <em>very</em> fond of James Morris</a>, so this weirded me out a great deal. Fortunately, whatever was going on seemed confined to the opening scene.<br />
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The circus curtain rises on Luther's tavern and <a href="http://www.lyricopera.org/uploadedImages/Season_and_Tickets/Seasons/2011-12/photos/dreamgirlsarticle.jpg">Ezio Frigerio's gorgeous, GORGEOUS set.</a> It's framed by a metal skeleton that suggests a mammoth clock face just settling into the earth. At center stage, the top half of the "clock" forms a second proscenium, stained glass alternating with metallic ribs. The upstage wall is translucent wall of more delicately traced arches converging on a rose window. Beautiful. Plus! Barbie townhouse elevators at stage right and left.<br />
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These are all static elements of the set that are <a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/314665_10150351696899161_44934609160_7976949_1817263927_n.jpg">accentuated</a> or <a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/309220_10150351696929161_44934609160_7976950_1006421576_n.jpg">downplayed</a> as appropriate by Jason Brown's amazing lighting design. The tale-within-a-play-within-a-fable nature of the opera calls for a fluid, but easily understood, sense of time and space. Brown's lighting answers the call and keeps an already-long opera moving along.<br />
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The moveable pieces are equally wonderful. Luther's tavern is established with bright brass wagon-top still that buildings on Frigerio's steampunk cathedral aesthetic. Something inside one of the still's elements turns merrily all the while, suggesting both a calliope (hmm . . . am I going to have to rethink my position on the circus theme?) and <a href="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSJp-Smvb51NRk_mrDi2zfLDcpHLqG2tVsBHe3w-UJKXUvyCh0C"><em>Modern Times</em></a>.<br />
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If I'm picking on the circus thing, I should probably wonder why <a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/295729_10150351672819161_44934609160_7976863_1227322133_n.jpg">there's a train in Spalanzani's living room.</a> But the answer is obvious: There is a train in Spalanzani's living because (a) it's an awesomely cold, industrial thing that is still somehow rodent-like and (b) it sets off <a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/303859_10150351672719161_44934609160_7976860_390533237_n.jpg">James Morris's superfly steampunk get up</a> to its greatest advantage.<br />
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Train or no train Spalanzani doesn't know how good he has it, because dude, Crespel's living room is totally haunted. Haunted with <a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/314665_10150351696899161_44934609160_7976949_1817263927_n.jpg">incredibly creepy self-playing instruments (to say nothing of James Morris's steampunk pony cart—which, RUDE driving that into a man's living room, particularly after having [probably] killed his wife and [definitely] plotting to kill his daughter)</a>, <a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/311361_10150351696864161_44934609160_7976948_239763510_n.jpg">his late wife, who may or may not be stuck inside a pipe organ (it might have been intended as a window, but the frosted vertical lines read pipe organ)</a>. Act III: <a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/300795_10150351719434161_44934609160_7977091_1979635483_n.jpg">Magnificently creepy gondolas</a>, candelabras (nerve wracking in juxtaposition to a large chorus), and extremely well-managed fog.<br />
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Cannot say enough good things about the set design. Lovely to look at, excellent framing device (literally and metaphorically), and easy to block a large chorus on it.<br />
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I don't know who to credit with two other notable marvels: The design for Olympia, the automaton, and the ghostly instruments. The self-playing instruments only merit second mention in that their motion is simpler and more repetitive. But it's still really, REALLY freakin' cool.<br />
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But Olympia? Olympia glides—and I mean literally glides—hither and yon around the stage while every blessed cast member (or near enough) is on stage. Hell, she WALTZES with Hoffman at one point. She's clearly on some kind of rolling platform, but how it moves I have absolutely no idea. Stupdendous.<br />
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Of course the technically amazing movement is only part of what amazes about Olympia. Her <a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/312074_10150351678174161_44934609160_7976880_1803620800_n.jpg">make up</a> and costume are wonderfully false and terrible (also, kudos to whomever affixed that wig!). And Anna Christy is quite simply amazing. Her physicality is the perfect mix of photo op princess and golem. And, of course, her voice is sublime.<br />
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In this production, Lyric deviates slightly from the usual (if there is any usual for an opera whose composer died long before orchestration was finished) in casting 4 different principals to play Hoffman's loves. I have no beef with this. As pompous essayist Roger Pines notes, "Olympia, Antonia, and Giulietta are radically different (how remarkable that <em>any</em> one singer has ever been able to take on all three in one evening)." Also, I got to see both Anna Christy and Erin Wall, as well as Alyson Cambridge for the first time.<br />
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Wall bears the burden of pathos with Antonia, and she bears it beautifully, both in her arias and singing with Matthew Polenzani. Dramatically, she plays the material—up to and including her death from vaguest villainy—for all its worth. As for Cambridge, I really enjoyed her voice (and isn't that Barcarolle delicious), but didn't get much of a sense of her dramatically.<br />
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Other than the split casting for the love interests, the rest of the production is fairly typical: Morris plays all four villains (deliciously); Rodell Rosel plays the servants (I didn't much care for the overly hammy Harpo Marx schtick as Cochenille in Act I, but I loved deaf, dumb, and Frantz); and Nicklausse is a trouser role. A trouser role played BRILLIANTLY by Emily Fons. Her comic timing is flawless, her voice is divine. I am so unendingly grateful that Lyric decided to insert her Act II aria, which is to die for.<br />
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Perhaps the best part of Fons' performance is her pairing with Matthew Polenzani, who plays Hoffman so very earnestly and without an iota of irony. He relies on her rendition of Nicklausse to play the perfectly over-the-top exasperation with him just so, rendering any self-awareness on his part completely unnecessary. <br />
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I love what this take on the role does for the ending, which could easily descend into pat-yet-awkward opera ending #532. The Muse of Poetry, also played by Fons (and I wish—oh, how I wish!—they'd dispensed with the awkward 11th hour costume change; it's FUNNIER if it's Nicklausse [or the muse, if you prefer] all along!), shows the folly inherent in the pursuit of love and urges him, instead, to dedicate himself to her. But what lends brilliance to Hoffman's tales—what makes him a poet—is his ability to fall in love, wholly and sincerely, every time. Polenzani's Hoffman is wrecked and ruined at the end, a slow, gratifying burn, but you wouldn't be surprised to find tomorrow to be another day, another declaration of undying love. <br />
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SUCH a satisfying opening night.<br />
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HOLD THE PHONE! I'm editing to add that I cannot believe I neglected to mention David Cangelosi and Christian Van Horn! Cangelosi is always amazing, but he's particularly satisfying as the mad scientist. Christian Van Horn is just right in how he plays both the comedy with Frantz and the fear and eventual heartbreak over Antonia. The trio in Act II with Morris, Polenzani, and Van Horn . . . I don't have words for it. <br />
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<br />Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-33135351121670568412011-09-24T17:19:00.001-05:002011-10-02T13:01:17.316-05:00You are All My ChildrenI was more or less born watching All My Children. I stopped watching regularly several years ago, although it's like the mob (wrong soap, but I also watch that one): You're never really out. I used to write the Tuesday AMC recaps for rec.arts.tv.soaps.abc (remember USENET? Then you are old, as am I). I'll be giving the show a send-off with friends I made on RATSA, some of my very first imaginary internet friends. I think I'll have more to say on the slow death of the genre when I'm slightly less over-committed than I am right now.
But for now, here's what was happening in Pine Valley on 9/23/1997.
WE HAVE AN OPENING FOR A MISTRESS
Skye toodles around Weirdwynd hummingly and grabs a nostril-full of some garment of Ed's. He pops in and watches her. She spies him and he tells her not to stop as it happily reminds her of Maria. They discuss the kids in a very couple-like manner. Ed wants to pitch the shirt of her olfactory dreams because it's covered with paint. She urges him to save it. He agrees, saying it's another nice memory. Ed wants to take her out to dinner for all her help.
She tries to plead work. Ed urges her, she accepts. They opt for Holidays over the Valley Inn. Ed calls Mary in to brief her. She asks if he's up to it and asks about his hand. He urges her to call if the kids wake up. She agrees. They bail, she picks up the phone and reaches out to the Count to deliver the bad news: Ed is better. Ed walks in and catches her in the act. I haven't seen him glower like that in ages. He rips the phone from her hand, but Dimp is so upset that he's broken the connection. Ed harangues Mary who claims Dimp was concerned for his health. Mary admits she told him about Sea City et al. Skye gets in on the act. Mary weeps and wails. Ed kicks her out, telling her she betrayed him and his wife and is out of there tonight.
Skye and Ed discuss damage control. Ed is irate that Mary turned on Maria who was good to her when she was ill. Ed wonders who else Dimp has bought. Skye is astonished that loyalty means nothing to Dimp. Ed says Loyalty, love, trust and any other human emotion is just a word to Dimp. He'll stop at nothing to get what he wants.
Skye comes in with an apron and a cookbook with flour all over her face. She's going to make dinner. Ed tries not to be giggle as Skye mulls over the cookbook. They look up how to fold and egg. Ed takes the book from her, and says he knows what she's up to and it won't work. Skye looks incredibly guilty. Ed says she can't distract him from the Dimp/Mary/ Maddie debacle. He appreciates it, and wants to repay her. He's letting her go.
Skye is stricken and begs for her job at Tempo. He tells her to go forth, be fruitful and multiply. Skye grits her teeth and insists she's having fun. Ed doesn't want her her to give up her life for him. Skye refuses to let him go through the fight of his life alone. She tells him that armed forces won't remove her from Wildwind. Ed relents and is shocked to find that he just laughed. He feels like it's a sign: if he can laugh, he can win. Skye runs out to deal with the souffle.
Ed and Skye are finishing the dinner. Ed refuses more. They joke about her cooking abilities. He asks about the tune she was humming. Sky reminisces about Althea getting ready to go out as she watched when she was a little girl. She had repressed the memory before tonight. The bell rings. Ed goes to answer. It's a cop serving Edmund papers to appear in court re: Maddy's custody.
SHE HAS AN OPENING, SHE'S A PRINCESS
Rewind to Laura interrupting Scott's slipping virginity. Gillian scolds her for not knocking and then for her guttersnipe language in explaining that she knows what's going on. All the blood has clearly abandoned Scott's brain as he defends Gillian from Laura who tells him she's oh so sorry that she thought sex should mean something. Gillian burbles something about it being fun. Laura seems primed to scratch her eyes out, but settles for calling trash trash regardless of which side of the tracks it's from. Scott lackidaisically berates her for such language.
He yells at her for barging in. Laura suggests closing the door next time. Scott rather irrelevantly tells her that Gillian's performance is a command one and wonders why Laura is there. She claims Stu offered bad info and urges them to pick up where they left off. Gillian tells her it's not th th that seempew. Laura wonders how many men of different nationalities have fallen for the faux party girl act. Gillian wonders why Laura doesn't like games. Laura goes off on phonies. Gillian throws it back saying Laura lied to Scott for months. Scott doesnt like that either. Gillian urges Laura to admit she's jealous and hangs on Scott.
Scott tells her to back off. Her voice leaps several octaves as she sneers that she didn't realize Scott was only interested in her mind. More unintelligible stuff and she flounces out after some advice to Laura about not starving? Laura apologizes and humbly admits she had no right to barge in on them.
She says he has the right to bed whomever he wants. Scott is either the quintessential tease or suffering from Alzheimer's. In spite of the fact that he was playing down comforter to the princess in the bra, he claims he wouldn't do that when Stu might walk in. The long and the short of it is, it's none of Laura's business, he's a guy with needs and Gillian is a veritable Galaxy of Mailbox Fulfillments. Scott, with no trace of irony, is indignant that she should think him so cheap. Scott tells her again that sex was not the issue and can't believe she really thinks that's why they broke up.
Scott says that Gillian's assets help him forget what he misses most: Laura. The Luuuv doctor has prescribed defunct royalty for what ails him. Laura doesn't trust him and therefore doesn't love him and that's the bottom line. He tells her to look him up if she decides to trust him.
THE MAGICAL MELTDOWN TOUR
At WRCW Liza looks on as Tad is in the throes of another successful interview with Jane and her magazine. Pitch pitch pitch, verbal spar verbal spar verbal spar and yes . . . ladies and germs . . . I do believe there's a ratty orange haze on the meadow. Brooke rushes the set and tells Tad that they have to tell the public together. She raves, she rambles, Tad tries to reason and Liza orders the crew to catch every minute of the breakdown.
Liza directs the camera crew. Tad continues to try to talk her down. Jane Pratt comes over for no particular reason and reminds Brooke that they met the month before at the Women in Media (snicker) conference. Brooke alternates for a few moments between apologizing and continuing to rave at Tad. Jane slowly backs away and Tad asks her to reschedule. My heart about stops as Brooke utters the words that strike fear into the hearts of BABES around the world:
I want to do it here. I wanna do it here for the cameras.
She assures him that this could happen to anyone! (Don't you threaten me, woman) They tried to put her in jail for telling the truth. Tad, at long last, is the first person, including hospital personnel, to ask her for a blow by blow of the plane incident. She says she tried to warn innocent people. Tad tries to ask sensible questions and she barks that they don't want to deal with her (no one does, Brooke, no one does). She explains that she took a big scary flying thingy, but it was ok because Jim was with heranitwasokuntilthebigbadnoiseandthepressureandthethingand the oh Ladyyyeeeee.
She makes weird hamster noises when she comes to the part about the flight attendant restraining her from opening the Emergency exit. She says Jim defended her, apparently having sublimated ths slap. Tad gently suggests a short sharp trip to hospital land. Brooke promises us all that she isn't going to go away and Tad has to help her. Jim creeps in on little cat feet.
Tad tries to reassure Brooke that if the airline is hiding something it will come to light. He tells her it was natural for her to panic so soon after the crash. She screeches that the threat was real, not her panic. Tad tries to present the possibility that she'll never have a satisfactory answer. Brooke whines that Jim is the only one who understands, knows etc. Tad suggests that she talk to someone. Brooke spies Jim and gets positively banshee-like demanding that Jim explain things. Tad finally clues in that they're being taped and tells everyone to knock off. Liza slinks around taking notes as Tad demands Brooke go back to the hospital if the police are involved. Derrick shows up to escort her back to rubber land. Jim get sin his face . Liza looks pleased as punch.
She watches the back of Brooke's head through a monitor. Jim tells Derrick this doesn't have to get ugly. Derrick suggests it already has. JT winds down and asks for a private word with his detectiveness. JT points out that this could be a double-edged PR nightmare. Derrick can't let her walk, but JT isn't suggesting that. He promises to take Brooke on a date down to HQ on the morrow. Derrick caves, but still tries to sound threatening as he promises an APB if she's a no show. Brooke throws looks of death at Brooke, then rolls over to have her belly-scratched as JT approaches. As they bail, she babbles about having won Tad over to their side. Liza smiles.
She hands the tape off to a lackey instructing him to rush it to editing and suggesting that problems be addressed to her, not to Tad. He re-enters. She plays innocent when he asks after the tape. She flat out lies that it has probably been erased. Tad plays the baby card: is she gonna teach Coco to lie in utero? Liza says it was fascinating and he's too close to the issue. He begs her as a friend to give the tape up.
She says she has sympathy but she can't back off every big name loony who throws herself in camera range for him. Tad begs again, for her to do it for him. Doing the right thing is more important than a 30 share. Liza says responsibility to audience out ways responsibility to the mother of his child and she will report the meltdown. Tad blames this coldness on Adam hurting her. Liza appears to consider this.
Back at Casa Destiny Brooke tries to thank Jim. He assures her it's nothing. Brooke wants to make a list and check it twice. Jack tops the list of pressure folk. Jim rips the pen and paper from her hand. She whinges to him to back off. She turns on him, telling him he sold out and asking the dollar amount. He denies taking a dime (hmmm . . . didn't they discuss him taking a settlement earlier? Wasn't Brooke sure he could do no wrong?) Brooke says that the concern everyone is playing at is a smoke screen. JT tells her she's hiding behind her anger so she doesn't have to deal with the crash. He kneels in front of her and urges her to let what is inside of her out. I predict the CDC is all over his pornographing butt in minutes.
Brooke stares at him, fiddles with her ear. Then her chin. Hauls herself to her feet and vows not to give into fear because it's what THEY want. She won't be trapped in the past. She will face each day head on, she squeaks. No body is the boss of her or her feelings. She trounces to the stairs, looks back over her shoulder at him, then heads up. JT looks put out.
Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-20235632487100880672011-08-17T15:38:00.002-05:002011-08-17T15:39:21.088-05:00Songwriter's Navel: Week 27, In Which I Write a Cheerful Song About a Dead Person<a href="https://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/cmm9/Public/BigYellowHouse.mp3?uniq=allt4l">Extraordinarily frustrating and messed up recording.</a>
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<br />Argh.
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<br />This is one of those songs where I failed completely to capture any of the interesting things that were in my head. The rhythm is all wrong, the melody line wanders away from what it should be at multiple points, and boy did I screw up the B sections. I'm really disappointed in it.
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<br />This was the last assignment that I was in class to receive: Write a song with "summer" in it and write in one of the "bright" keys with sharps—E or B, capoing ok, because only crazy people write in B on the guitar.
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<br />When I missed class because I was sick, I had intended to go to a Sunday make-up class. My grandmother then died on Saturday and I felt like it was wise to go up to hang with the family on Sunday instead. On Monday, I beat my head against the wall trying to do the assignment that would be due on the coming Tuesday, which was a "Turn the Page" song in 3/4 or some variant thereof. Late in the head-beating-against-the-wall process, I thought about playing around with the summer assignment instead, and the line "Let's spend the summer in the big, yellow house" popped into my head. My grandmother was, of course, on my mind, and the house they lived in when I was a kid suggested itself. I spent a lot of time there as a kid, often with my cousin, who is the same age.
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<br />I threw my capo on the second fret and started playing around with chord shapes in the key of D. (Yes, a normal person probably would have just written it uncapoed in E. Have we met?) The melody of that line popped in and stayed there, and I could feel that there was a kind of <em>sotto voce</em> tail end to the line (what the heck do you call that, when there's lyric, but it's kind of filler . . . oh, hell, I am deeply stupid today. Anyway, in the first couple of A sections, it's "You and me.").
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<br />Why did the line "chasing helicopter daisies" suggest itself? I could not begin to tell you. I don't even really know what it means, although I'm pretty sure it refers to samaras, which are those helicopter seeds that maples produce. For a while, the line was "chasing helicopter daisies down the street," but then the song told me that, no, there wasn't that tail end to the second line, and furthermore there wasn't a hard AABB rhyme scheme, but rather some loose, suggestive assonance running through the lines instead.
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<br />The second half of the first A section ended up being about my grandmother's car—a pea green Nova, probably a 1971 or 1972. The vinyl interior was a busy houndstooth pattern that was always, always hot and had a crackly texture (at the time, both my grandparents smoked, which no doubt contributed). The back seat was always filled with bingo chips and coupons, which suggested some images for later. I fought with the phrasing of the second half of the verse, but it ended up thus:
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<br />[A] Let’s spend the [G] summer in the [D] big, yellow house, [D]
<br />You and [A] me, chasing [G] helicopter [D] daisies [D]
<br />[A] Let’s feel the [G] houndstooth burn the [D] backs of our [D] knees in the
<br />[A] Back seat of the [G] car behind the [D] big, yellow [A] house
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<br />And this is where I started to ruin the song. Using the refrain at the beginning and ending of the A section doesn't work, particularly as the chord progression is the same throughout. I tried to tell myself that I could vary the melody and fix it, but no . . .
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<br />After I wrote this verse, I sat with it for probably 4 or 5 hours trying to write more. I tried coming at if from a stream-of-consciousness perspective, writing down images and memories associated with the house and that time of my life in my notebook. I tried crafting sentences in the same rhythmic template as "Let's spend the summer in the big, yellow house." I tried thinking of words that have the same rhythm as "helicopter," thinking that maybe that second line was the lynchpin of the A sections, given that it was an unusual choice. I had a melodramatic hissy fit during which I declared that I was obviously OBVIOUSLY never ever ever going to write another song EVER again.
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<br />Part of my trouble stemmed from the fact that the song was very much about my cousin and me staying over at our grandparents' house, but I'd introduced the back seat of a car in the first A section, which suggests clandestine nookie and maybe a romantic relationship. Those kinds of ideas kept creeping in, and I have "Let's live together" and things like that. In other words, I had a brain divided.
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<br />I'd brought my songwriting notebook on the morning of the funeral, because I didn't really know how the day was going to go, if I'd be in a position to go to class that night, and so on. In the car, it suddenly became clear to me that the second A section started with "Let's find adventure in the big, yellow house" and involved hiding in the pantry (neither my house nor my cousin's had anything as cool and exotic as a pantry, and we loved the one at Mimi & Papa's). Back-seat nookie be damned! Nothing says childhood like finding adventure! What I wrote down in my notebook as the second A section actually morphed into part A section, part B section, but I wouldn't know that until the following week, when I picked the song back up to work on.
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<br />Here's the second A section:
<br /><blockquote>
<br />[A] Let’s find [G] adventure in the [D] big, yellow house, [D]
<br />You and [A] me, secret [G] hideout in the [D] pantry [D]
<br />[A] Cold cream [G] disguises, and [D] cloak-and-dagger [D] schemes on the
<br />[A] Dirt-floor [G] in the basement of the [D] big, yellow [A] house
<br /></blockquote>
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<br />Did we ever disguise ourselves with cold cream? You bet we did! Mimi had a big old white glass tub of ponds on her dresser, and she was foolish enough to give up her bedroom to us when we stayed over. We totally caught hell for using all the cold cream once. I'm not sure that the basement, strictly speaking, had a dirt floor, but it was unfinished and dark and scary with unreliable old light-switches. We both loved sneaking down there and feared getting stuck.
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<br />B section! What the what? So, I had two long A sections with repetitive lyrics and repetitive chord structure. Just how many songwriting rules can I break at once? The B section . . . sort of has different chords. I completely fucked the B section up in the recording, because I was trying to follow a suggestion about removing this long, awkward pause at the end of the first line and I just screwed the pooch big time. I guess the B section is more free-form images:
<br /><blockquote>
<br />[E] On the checkerboard floor, in the [D] claw-foot [A] tub, we’ll sail away [E] [D]
<br />Down the [A] green stamp [A7] river to the [D] bingo-chip sea [A] to save the [E7] day
<br /></blockquote>
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<br />Being a big, old-fashioned frame house, it naturally had a big, claw-foot tub and black-and-white tiles in the bathroom. They might have been octagonal, rather than checkerboard, but another strong memory associated with Mimi was the fact that she would never, NEVER let you win at checkers. If you beat her, you beat her on your own merits. I had originally written the second line as "coupon river," in reference to the aforementioned back-seat coupons, but as S pointed out, that's a lousy, lousy word to sing. I think green stamp works because it evokes the same kind of thing. (Does anyone but me even remember what green stamps are?) I'm still murderizing the melody in the B section, and the timing problems I introduced in recording ain't helping.
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<br />I had hoped I'd be able to work the story about locking my uncle into his bedroom into the song. (Come on! It's an old house with brass keys in the locks. You're two 7-year-old girls. You're annoyed with the 17-year-old uncle who is not delighted to have you around. Tell me that you wouldn't try turning the key in the door to his room just once.) It didn't work out quite that way, but this A section got filled up with things we weren't supposed to do.
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<br />The attic was really just more bedrooms. I'm not exactly sure why weren't supposed to go up there. The screen door on the front of the house was heavy wood on an ancient spring. It shook the whole house when one left it to slam. At the back of the house, there was a weird arrangement of a kind of mudroom and then a very small bedroom, which was my grandfather's. They kept their "frigidaire" (as Mimi always, always called it) back there. Like the pantry, we just thought it was cool and would often set up shop there:
<br /><blockquote>
<br />[A] Bet we’ll find [G] trouble [D] big, yellow house, [D]
<br />You and [A] me, we’ll play it cool, [G] we’ll get off [D] easy [D]
<br />[A] Ransack the [G] attic, slam the [D] front door, [D] use the back porch as our
<br />[A] Technicolor [G] stage by the [D] big, yellow [A] house
<br /></blockquote>
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<br />I thought I was going to go right into a B section, then end on a tag, but as I was leaving the house, another A section cropped up:
<br /><blockquote>
<br />[A] We’ll keep our [G] secrets in the [D] big, yellow house, [D]
<br />Safe and [A] sound, locked up [G] tight with a [D] brass key [D]
<br />[A] No one will [G] know, we’ll never [D] tell, they’ll [D] find out what we
<br />[A] Whispered [G] in the dark in the [D] big, yellow [A] house
<br /></blockquote>
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<br />As for the second B section, I owe a debt to my cousin. She made a collage for the funeral that had pictures and images that she associated with the house and our sleepovers there: Bingo chips (natch), jell-o (didn't make the cut), and a transistor radio. I had forgotten that we were in the habit of sneaking the radio into bed at night and surreptitiously (I'm sure) listening to it.
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<br /><blockquote>
<br />[E] In our throw-pillow fort on the [A] front room floor, we’ll sing along [E]
<br />To the [A] transistor popping, [D] crackling through our favorite [E7] song
<br /></blockquote>
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<br />So. You can't end on the B section, you know. So what the hell? How about a schmaltzy taggy thing:
<br /><blockquote>
<br />[A] Make me a [G] promise in the [D] big yellow house, [D]
<br />cross your [A] heart, never [G] grow up, never [D] change
<br /></blockquote>
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<br />I really did try to edit out some of the repetition and work on other suggestions that would have improved this, but nothing was willing to come together. At. All. I'm sorry, little song. You deserved better.
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<br /> Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-83042482521268560672011-08-11T12:59:00.002-05:002011-08-11T16:52:41.152-05:00Re-Seduced: Minnesota Fringe Festival, Day 2.On Sunday, we once again rearranged dinner plans slightly to accommodate our theatre schedule. Also, Saturday was just a leeettle overindulgent on the food and booze front, so a later dinner was not a bad idea.
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<br />First up, Steampunk! Anyone who knows anything about me knows that a show called <a href="http://www.fringefestival.org/2011/show/?id=1542"><em>Robot Lincoln: The Revengeance (The Musical)</em></a> is like crack tailored to my specific nerd receptors, so that was our first show on Saturday, back at the Thrust (STOLL!) stage at the Rarig Center. <a href="http://telecommuniculturey.blogspot.com/2011/08/re-seduced-minnesota-fringe-festival.html">(See previous entry for bitching about the building, but liking the actual space.)</a> As we waited in the traditional second of 2 lines, I tweeted gleefully about the warning sign outside the theatre (guns, strobe lights, adult language, and violence), and broke the rules about no photography (only realized that I was breaking a rule in retrospect; also I'm not sure taking a picture of my program counts as rule breaking, even though I was in the theatre) to capture the Best. Dramatis. Personae. Evar.
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<br /><img src="https://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/cmm9/Public/IMG_0295.JPG?uniq=alhjll" width=300>
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<br />Sadly, the show itself was pretty disappointing. The "plot" was convoluted and there wasn't much in the way of fun dialogue. The performers were singing to taped music, which led to a lot of problems. (I feel like an utter shit mentioning that—my homeless, underfunded theatre group had to do the same with a production of <em>Mother Courage and Her Children</em>, and it was a nightmare.) On the plus side, the group seems to have paid a lot of attention to the design, and that paid off. Robot Lincoln's costume was terrific, and there were a number of other great visual touches.
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<br />The "love duet" between Booth and Robot Lincoln was everything I think the show could have been with more time and stability for the production. Jason Garton was terrific as Booth, and Libby Slater was hilarious as Mary Todd Lincoln (less so as "Uncle Samantha," but that character was a very sketchy).
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<br />From the Rarig Center we were off to the <a href="http://www.gremlin-theatre.org/">Gremlin Theatre</a> in St. Paul for <a href="http://www.fringefestival.org/2011/show/?id=1442"><em>The Duties and Responsibilities of Being a Sidekick</em></a> by <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Barkada-Theater-Project/121557297937303">The Barkada Theatre Project</a>. Other than being <a href="http://telecommuniculturey.blogspot.com/2006/08/superfriends-of-dorothy-hamburger.html">a sucker for superhero stuff,</a> we hadn't chosen this show for any particular reason, but I'm so glad we did. The show was really well written (an interesting, compact story—no mean feat with a maximum of 60 minutes), had great fight choreography, and the cast (featuring Randy Reyes, whom we'd loved in <em>Brain Fighters</em> on Saturday) was just great from top to bottom. Also, great pre-show and entr'acte music, even if they DID cut us off on the theme from <em>The Greatest American Hero</em> just when we were taking it to the bridge.
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<br />From the Gremlin back to Theatre Garage for <a href="http://www.fringefestival.org/2011/show/?id=1438"><em>Those Were the Days</em></a> by <a href="http://www.blueumbrellaproductions.com/">Blue Umbrella Productions.</a> TV themes arranged swing-choir style with a minimal, but well-done framing story? Yes please! Really great arrangements, great ensemble and solo work from the whole cast (I forgive the mishap with the <em>Jem</em> theme, though it is dear to my heart), fun choreography. I'm not sure I would have done the whole <em>Eight is Enough</em> theme, but it's not my show, now is it? Shutting up, sir.
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<br />And finally, back to the Thrust at the Rarig Center for <em><a href="http://www.fringefestival.org/2011/show/?id=1525">The Smothers Brothers Grimm.</a></em>, by <a href="http://comedysuitcase.com/2010-2011/the-smothers-brothers-grimm">Comedy Suitcase</a>. This was the show we'd rearranged our dinner plans for. It had some great highlights, especially the closing "silent film," but the whole show was uneven.
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<br />The framing premise involves Milton, a young boy (wonderful work by Andrew Moy) who has recently lost his comedy-obsessed grandfather, and whose parents are convinced that he is not dealing with the loss. The parents try to get him to sleep by telling fairy tales, but Milton insists on "punching them up like grandpa would." We get Hansel & Gretel as told by Laurel & Hardy. Our group was divided on this. I mostly liked it, but felt it went on a bit long (then again, it's Laurel & Hardy . . .). Next was Rapunzel a la <em>I Love Lucy</em>, which just felt awkward and as if there weren't a lot of there there. Bob Newhart responding to the 911 call from the Three Bears, suffered from not enough Bob Newharty goodness. Some of the interstitial stuff with the parents and lovable drunk uncle were really good, and some fell a bit flat. The epic silent Sleeping Beauty segment was epic.
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<br />I was hit really hard by the realization that my fun at Fringe was over. I'm still trying to talk myself off the ledge of crazy renewal of my involvement in theatre.
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<br /> Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-79870146723910372162011-08-10T16:02:00.001-05:002011-08-10T16:03:50.428-05:00Songwriter's Navel: Week 26, In Which I Write a Happy Song About Eschewing Unhappiness<a href="https://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/cmm9/Public/WastingLight.mp3?uniq=algqi8">Recording</a> (I'm out of practice at everything. Be gentle.)
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<br />Behind again. Got a summer cold. (And I am a giant baby.) Then my grandmother died. (She was 94, lived independently until about 2 weeks before her death, and was fully with it until about 12 hours before the end—so, as ways to go go, not bad.)
<br />This leaves me not just temporally behind, but 2 songs short for the session, striking fear into my heart.
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<br />The Kernel gave us a bunch of "-ing" phrases (e.g., "standing on the corner of bitter and fine">) to use in our lyrics, or we could make up our own "ing" phrase to use. For musical requirements, we were to establish a pattern of 2 or 3 chords, then move the same pattern up a step, a 3rd, or a 4th.
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<br />I got a "participant" trophy on this one. I misunderstood the instruction about the portable chord pattern. We were supposed to keep the same tonality, so if the pattern was major chords like C to F, then the moved chords should also be major (e.g., C to F, then D to G), so that the song would have an interval-based pattern, rather than being tied to a key. My song was all in 4ths, but the way I used them resulted in it being a boring old song in C. I also didn't use any of the provided phrases, nor did I really "get" that the "-ing" phrase was meant to be the hook.
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<br />It's been nearly a month since I wrote this, so it's challenging to recall how the lyrics came together. Looking at my notebook, I note that this started from a SUPER-EMO place with the image of an open door looking like a square of blackness on a very bright summer day. I was certainly working the -ing words, as I have dozens written down. I guess the phrase "wasting light" came early, and I've just remembered that initially the "hook" was going to be "wasting light on the likes of you."
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<br />Oh, yes. Now I remember.
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<br />So I mentioned during the <a href="http://telecommuniculturey.blogspot.com/2011/06/songwriters-navel-week-23-in-which-i-do.html">dark days of Hall and Oates</a> that I had unwelcome communication from someone and was toying with the freeing sensation of torching one's identity and escaping such things. That situation from the past has been on my mind (and showing up in my anxiety dreams). The responsibility for the unpleasantness that ensued (and apparently continues to ensue) is on someone else, but I wondered if I had handled things differently . . . well, you know the drill. Without telling a long, boring story that even I don't want to revisit: I was very unhappy for a while, something happened that reminded me that being happy is pretty cool, and I decided to stop being unhappy. That's how the story really goes, even if I thought it went differently in the past.
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<br />As soon as I started to revisit that sensation of suddenly remembering what it felt like not to be unhappy, though, the "on the likes of you" part seemed out of place in the song, but it kept trying to creep back in. That was interesting in and of itself, because the music that started to take shape was very light and tripping. Bright and lots of motion. And it started to feel like the song was like THIS < instead of like THIS >. That will make sense to no one except my classmates, but Paul Simon talks about the necessity of writing FROM a specific point in such a way that you have lots of possibilities for what can be included in the song, rather than progressively shutting down possibilities by trying to write TO a specific point. Including the line "on the likes of you" was personal, petty, closed off, and not that interesting.
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<br />The first verse:
<br /><blockquote>
<br />Breathing in the dawning day (chords are [SHOCKER!] a split measure C-to-F vamp)
<br />Tilting back my head to catch (full measure each of Em and Am with the chord change coming on the body part [See, that's I-to-IV, too, but minor and therefore missing the point of the assignment]).
<br />The moment spilling brilliantly (return to the C-to-F vamp)
<br />Everlasting resolution to (Dm to G vamp [I-to-iv vamp])
<br />Stop (Ascending C to G in split meausures, so C, Dm, Em, F, G)
<br /></blockquote>
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<br />So, having patted myself on the back for writing to the possibility, rather than the specific point, let me admit that I got locked into several things. I became stubborn and insistent that the second line of the verse had to have a body part. Why? Who knows. If I wanted to justify it, I suppose I'd say that I wanted to convey the sense of being so completely out of practice at something that your body feels awkward and alien. Hmm . . . that actually makes some sense.
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<br />Verse 2:
<br /><blockquote>
<br />Sounding out forgotten words
<br />Lifting up my palms, to gather
<br />Fleeting joys and passing fancies
<br />Making good on good intentions to
<br />Stop wasting light
<br /></blockquote>
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<br />So the second verse is very like the first, structurally. Body part in line 2 and every line beginning with a gerund, save the last, where the gerund "wasting" is drawn out over the ascending chord line. I never do that drawn-out vowel sound thing, though I like it in lots of the music I consume. For some reason it scares me. Anyway, I like it here. Profound? No. Pleasing? At least to me.
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<br />Verse 3:
<br /><blockquote>
<br />Stumbling through what might have been
<br />Falling to my knees, to thank
<br />Yesterday for moving on
<br />Singing out my resolution to
<br />Stop wasting light
<br /></blockquote>
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<br />Ooh, I broke my own rules! No gerund starting line 3. What's this verse about? Gratitude to chance, I guess. Above, I said I decided to stop being unhappy. I suppose that's true, but I don't know that I would have (or if I would have, how long I would have remained mired in the unhappy situation) without the precipitating event, for which I can't claim a lot of credit.
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<br />Now. Nobody called me on this, but look! It's a bridge after 3 full verses, with only one verse after that! Any fool knows the bridge should come earlier in the song. I don't know. It felt like it should go here.
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<br /><blockquote>
<br />Drifting past such simple gladness (Am to D split-measure vamp)
<br />Slipping into sorrow, passing through (Em to Bm split measure vamp)
<br />At last (End on full measure of Am to full measure of F)
<br /></blockquote>
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<br />I did get caught on the bridge not sounding distinct enough from the verses, and that was a fair cop by my classmates. I tried to remedy that in the way I recorded it, but I think it still needs something more. Oh, I just also remembered that I distracted everyone from questioning the placement of the bridge by cleverly questioning its length. In the process, I made the Kernel feel bad for implying that bridges had to be a specific length. He's never implied any such thing, although he has noted that individual bridges I have written are too brief. I suck at bridges. (He has also never said that, just so we're clear.)
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<br />Final verse!
<br /><blockquote>
<br />Wandering, I am wandering
<br />Slipping off the path, to chase
<br />Laughter tripping off my tongue
<br />Pressing on, no hesitation, and I
<br />Stop wasting light, I
<br />Stop wasting light, I
<br />Stop
<br /></blockquote>
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<br />Oh, right! I had another rule. That "-tion" word near the end of the 4th line. I'm a wreck of rules.
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<br />Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-39287865463422569562011-08-08T18:55:00.003-05:002012-01-04T18:33:45.350-06:00Re-Seduced: Minnesota Fringe Festival, Day 1So, I used to do theatre, right? And then, quite a while ago, I broke up with it. Mostly. I mean, sure, I have been <a href="http://www.edgechicago.com/index.php?ch=entertainment&sc=theatre">doing reviews,</a> but that's safe, right? I mean, it's not like I'd go crazy and see 7 plays in two days and then desperately miss doing theatre, right? RIGHT?
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Insert insane cackle here.
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So I went to Minneapolis for my bunny-faced friend's birthday, and this just so happens to coincide with the first weekend of the <a href="http://www.fringefestival.org/2011/">Minnesota Fringe Festival:</a> 168 plays, each no more than 1 hour long, running in rotation at 18 different venues. Um . . . ok, when I write that out, I don't sound like someone committed to recovery and breaking with my codependent ways . . .
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BUT NEVER YOU MIND THAT.
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We were set up with a 10-show pass and 3 buttons initially, and on Saturday, we were headed to <a href="http://intermediaarts.org/">Intermedia Arts</a> for <a href="http://www.fringefestival.org/2011/show/?id=1580"><em>I'm Making This Up as I Go</em></a> on Saturday afternoon. It was not the most auspicious beginning. The crowd was small and the sets were . . . of uneven quality . . . however, the last comedian, <a href="http://www.reverbnation.com/mikelesterhumor">Mike Lester,</a> was bizarre and quite funny.
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Next, we were off to the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Minneapolis-Theatre-Garage/187950725909">Minneapolis Theatre Garage</a> for <em>Vampire Lesbians of Sodom</em> by <a href="http://www.brazentheatre.org/BrazenTheatre/Welcome.html">Brazen Theatre</a>. I'm pretty sure I saw this show in Chicago more than a dozen years ago, but couldn't remember much about it. Having refreshed my memory, that's not surprising—it's a funny concept with a lot of potential, but the show itself is a bit ho-hum. As for the production: Its wigs were truly magnificent and Mark Hooker/Margo Caprice was fantastic as one of the titular sinners. In fact, he was so fantastic, I nearly failed to suppress my fan-girl-itude when we saw him <a href="http://www.112eatery.com/">112 Eatery </a> later that night. (Fear not, my pathological introversion raced to the rescue once again, and he and his companion were left in peace.)
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The highlight of Saturday was definitely <a href="http://www.fringefestival.org/2011/show/?id=1534"><em>Brain Fighters</em></a> by <a href="http://jokingenvelope.com/">Joking Envelope</a> on the Thrust stage (aka STOLL!) at the <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/twincities/maps/RarigC/">Rarig Center on the U of M's campus.</a> As you can see from the linked photo, this building was forged in the bowels of architectural hell.
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When we arrived, there was a line out the door for securing tickets (the system for multi-show pass holders was to hand over the pass for the appropriate number of punches in exchange for tickets), and then we had to trudge through the belly of the beast to wait in a second line into the theater. With no real sense of how big the venue was, we were worried—so worried that we did not get ice cream from the ice cream truck, despite my having loudly yelled "ICE CREAM TRUCK!" upon seeing it. I had tweeted a couple of pictures of the lines and made public my fear of missing the show, but the lovely <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/scrimstreet">Sara Stevenson Scrimshaw</a> responded to say that we should not fear, as the theater was large.
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And it was! Despite the building being ugly and having nothing resembling a plan for flow of actual people, the space was great and the show was greater. It's a three-person, all-ages show written by <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/josephscrimshaw">Joseph Scrimshaw,</a> whom you may remember from such awesome cruises as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XPm_n1Yeus">JoCoCruise Crazy</a>. (Can someone please tell me why Joseph Scrimshaw is not superextradoublefudgey famous?)
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The script was funny and wonderfully paced. The three actors (JS himself, <a href="http://www.examiner.com/theater-in-minneapolis/artist-profile-randy-reyes-director-performer">Randy Reyes</a> [whom we'd have the pleasure of seeing in another great show on Sunday], and Mo Perry) worked flawlessly together and nailed the physical requirements of the story (ok, that sounds weird unless you know the plot, which involves being able to turn yourself into anything you can convincingly imagine). Oh, just go see it if you possibly can.
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We'd initially had a dinner reservation that would have conflicted with <em>Brain Fighters</em>, but we rearranged our schedule to support our local Sea Monkey. This left us with a 9:30 reservation at the aforementioned 112 Eatery (and I would like to note once again that I DID NOT fangirl all over anyone there) and time to kill in between. We'd intended to go to <a href="http://www.moto-i.com/">Moto-I</a> on Friday night, but we were seduced by champagne cocktails, chocolate chip cookies, yoga pants, and Ike, who thinks he is a lap dog.
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<img src="https://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/cmm9/Public/IMG_0266.JPG?uniq=alfjno" width="300" />
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The downtime between theater and dinner on Saturday gave us, as a group, time for sake and snacks at Moto-I, and me, as an individual, time to contemplate breaking and entering so that I could pet Casper the Great Pyrenees, who IS SO FLUFFY! Really enjoyed the sake flight at Moto-I (Junmai Nama Genshu was the best!), and the many yummy snacks we had that are lost to the mists of the sake flight and the Ginger Mistress.
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Fear not, puppy lovers, I did eventually get to cuddle Casper (who, as previously mentioned, IS SO FLUFFY!), however briefly, before we headed to 112.
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<img src="https://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/cmm9/Public/IMG_0284.JPG?uniq=alfjv8" width="300" /> A word about 112 itself before getting to the good parts: Loud loud loud loud loud. LOUD. I wish that it weren't so loud.
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We shared a bottle of a Turley Old Vines Zinfandel and continued our communist ways all through the meal. We had truly amazing scallops with oyster mushrooms, frog legs that are very nearly as good as those at <a href="http://telecommuniculturey.blogspot.com/2005/01/because-chef-girard-says-so-new.html">Brigtsen's </a> (I do not say this lightly), the 112 steak tartare (which kind of buried the lede, if one assumes the steak is the lede—it was weirdly chicken salad–like, and we wished we'd gotten it "unprepared"), and fried Shishito peppers (we liked Moto-I's version better). For our mains, we shared the prociutto ahi tuna (amazing), the stringozzi w/ lamb sugo (amazing fresh pasta, but the lamb didn't shine through), and the nori encrusted sirloin w/ ponzu (good . . . not great, though).
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For dessert, the butterscotch budino (I don't like butterscotch at all, but this was relatively tasty), the lemon cheesecake, and . . . <s>this is not good: I cannot for the life of me remember what I had. It was good. It was probably chocolate based. it is not on the menu they have up online.</s> Olive oil chocolate cake! (Thank you, bunny-faced one!)
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Ok, this is already a bit long, so I'll do Day 2 later on.
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<br />Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-42475929671641481452011-07-14T13:12:00.002-05:002011-07-18T13:52:40.436-05:00Songwriter's Navel: Week 25, In Which I Crack Myself UpTwo recordings. <br /><a href="https://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/cmm9/Public/JamiesNotTalkingBluesMeg.mp3?uniq=-hw1brg">Megaphone vocals. </a> (Because I hear there's a man who'll pay you fifty dollars to sing into a can.)<br /><a href="https://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/cmm9/Public/JamiesNotTalkingBluesLP.mp3?uniq=-hw1brm">Live performance vocals. </a><br />(Because some people prefer less silliness to more silliness.) <br /><br /><br />I'm not going to lie to you, Marge: I had fun writing this.<br /><br /><br />A few weeks ago, we had a discussion of "fun" in class. The Kernel, who may have been exaggerating for comedic effect, or may have been giving us a glimpse into the lives of quiet desperation that musicians lead, declared that there was too much pressure to have fun, that he couldn't remember the last time he'd had "fun," and that both songwriting and performing were hard work, rather than fun. <br /><br />Although this treads on my desire for OTSFM to fulfill my workplace pr0n needs, I get the point*: Songwriting is scary, often frustrating, difficult, and sometimes satisfying, but "fun" isn't a word that usually springs to mind. I mean, it's "fun" for me in the same way that having my intellectual ass kicked for 4 years as a U of C undergrad was fun, but it's not . . . amusement park fun. <br /><br />Except writing this song was TOTALLY fun. Pretty minimal requirements this week: Use a diminished chord and the song should include someone's name. Early in the week, I joked that the front runners for the subject of the song were "Lothian" and "James Victor, King of Croatia." A robust and hilarious comment thread ensued. <br /><br />I then spent Thursday and Friday with the King himself. <img src="https://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/cmm9/Public/Moose.jpg?uniq=-hw19y4"><br /><br />I defy you to look at that face and not write a song about it.** In addition to the powerful cuteness field pulling me in that direction, I suddenly thought it would be really funny to write a talking blues from the point of view of a baby, particularly one whose face is so expressive, he constantly looks as though he's deeply frustrated by his inability to share his deep thoughts with the world. <br /><br />From there, it was just a matter of setting down a rhythm and filling in details from my visit. I listened to a little bit of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CogtZ4EUwww">Woodie Guthrie</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuaLS1TZNxI">Townes Van Zandt</a> to get a feel for how to do a talking blues. To be honest, though, it was pretty easy to get going. <br /><br />The first verse was just about how waking up in the morning looks to a baby. On Friday, Jamie was inclined to sleep in a bit, but was woken up by the dogs of the household having a fight over food. My brother had come into the guest room probably 20 minutes before and waved me back into the bed as I started to get up, saying "I don't have the baby!" After the dog fight, he came in again to change him and said, sadly, "Now I have the baby." My brother is big and bald. I'm certain he loves having this pointed out in song form. <br /><br /><blockquote><br />[C] Woke up of a morning, but it wasn’t the heat<br />[G] Dogs snappin’ and a-snarlin’ over something to eat<br />[F] With my big, bald daddy leanin’ over my crib<br />[G] Told him good mornin’ with my toothless . . . grin<br /></blockquote><br /><br />The second verse is a bit of filler (other than a diaper change definitely being the first order of business each morning—Jamie is an Olympic peer, a detail I'm sure he'll be delighted to have memorialized in blog format), but I needed to go into the chorus in such a way that it reads like the message the baby is trying to communicate. <br /><br /><blockquote> <br />Wasn’t but a minute, I was clean and dry<br />And my giggle put a twinkle in my mama’s eye <br />She kissed me and she asked, “How’s mama’s little man?”<br />Took a deep breath and answered, . . . the only way a baby can<br /></blockquote> <br /><br />Up until the chorus, the chords are some what irrelevant, and C does as well as any key. It figures, then, that trying to hammer out the melody and chord progression in the chorus was a real pain in the ass. <br /><br /><blockquote> <br />I got the [C] blues, I got the [G] blues<br />I got the [F] baby blues, ‘cause [F#dim] I can’t sing the [G] blues<br />I got the [C] blues, I got the [Gdim] baby blues<br />I call ‘em [F] Jamie’s not-talking blues [C]<br /></blockquote> <br /><br />In particularly the melody over the second line was giving me fits, possibly because that's not really an F#dim in the second position, but a D7 with an F# in the bass. (I swear at some point, I tried it as a D7, but it didn't seem like it worked. Fortunately, my Check-Plus grade for the assignment was not jeopardized, because I had a back-up diminished chord, and the Gdim was the genuine article. (On a side note, Jamie likes when I play guitar and talk music theory to him. I kept playing diminished chords and singing, "There's a baby on the train tracks!" and he would giggle.) <br /><br />Continuing in the "things that are only amusing to me" vein, I thought it was funny to turn his time spent on his play mat into a kind of business meeting. There is a big elephant dangling from the mat, which sometimes sits on his head, and let's face it, "pachyderm" might be an outdated taxonomic category, but it's a great word for lyrics. Moose, with its oooooo sound, ditto. And Monster needed to be included, not just because it was a gift from me. I'm sorry to malign monster's work ethic, but the rhythm of the words dictated that he be mentioned third, and "late" rhymes with "eight." <br /><br /><img src="https://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/cmm9/Public/Monster.jpg?uniq=-hw19om"><br /><br /><blockquote> <br />First meeting of the morning starts round about eight<br />With my pachyderm and moose, but my monster’s always late<br />I call things to order on the jungle mat<br />Monster reads the minutes in a minute . . . flat <br /></blockquote> <br /><br />Jamie is, generally, a happy little guy, but it's true that Tummy Time sends him into a rage—a highly illogical rage, given that he can flip from tummy to back and back to tummy more or less at will. Also, the threat about blowing this joint makes me laugh, both on its own merits and because it would involve tummy time, given that his mobility is limited to the army crawl at the moment. It's also funny, because when we speak in Jamie's voice, he sounds a lot like a Jim Henson's William Faulkner Baby.<br /><br /><blockquote> <br />New business, first item is the heinous crime <br />That mama and daddy call “tummy time” <br />Sure, I can roll over, but that ain’t the point<br />If they keep that up, I’m gonna blow this . . . joint<br /></blockquote> <br /><br />So we do nicknames in our family. Lots and lots of nicknames. Many of them terrible, inappropriate, and carried through life with no expiration date. (Example: One of my sisters had no hair until she was nearly 3. My uncles still call her "Moonie." Klassee with a <em>k</em> and two <em>e</em>s, that's us.) Jamie has nicknames to suit his moods, most of which come out when he is pointedly NOT. TIRED. I'm pretty proud of having worked the most common into this verse. Herr Professor Big Eyes gave me some trouble until I realized that it had to be at the beginning of the line (despite its being a near rhyme for "tired"), and I hit on "real live wire" for a little bit of Talking Heads flavor. <br /><br /><blockquote> <br />Round about nine, James Victor rolls in <br />He’s the King of Croatia, he’s Anger Piggs<br />He’s Herr Professor Big Eyes, and a real live wire <br />With one thing to tell you all, he’s not . . . tired<br /></blockquote> <br /><br />And finally, I had to work in "baby ennui," which a concept I have long embraced. Let's face it, Dr. Spock, T. Berry Brazelton, and all those other LIARS tell you that babies always have a solvable problem when they're crying. SHENANIGANS. Sometimes babies feel suffocated by and bored with the sweet baby life: Baby Ennui. <br /><br /><blockquote> <br />No, he’s not tired, he don’t need to sleep<br />This is nothing but a case of baby ennui<br />That was an itch, he wasn’t rubbin’ his eyes<br />How many times can he tell you, he’s not . . . <br /></blockquote> <br /><br />I made an extremely rough recording of the song on my phone and sent it, along with the lyrics, to my brother and sister-in-law so that they got first listen. (It seemed only right.) Per good suggestions from E, my voice and guitar teacher, I'd like to work on how I play this, hopefully getting to the point where I can do a stumbling, irregular finger-picking pattern instead of the Carter-family strum which is boring (and I'm not very good at). <br /><br /><br />*No, not the kind of workplace porn that has coworkers having a doubly adulterous affair on your shared desk ('cause, been there. Neither fun nor porny): Workplace pr0n involves a workplace that one does not absolutely hate the thought of going to each and every day.<br />**That specific face happens to have resulted from me singing "Moo moo moo moo moo moo moose" (vocal exercise) and making his moose toy dance. He thought this was hilarious.Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-84952142152827019552011-07-13T23:36:00.001-05:002016-11-05T13:22:21.016-05:00Thugnificient: Attack the BlockWon some passes from <a href="http://hollywoodchicago.com/">Hollywood Chicago</a> for an advance screening of <em><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD0gm7dHKKc">Attack the Block</a></em> at <a href="http://www.landmarktheatres.com/Market/Chicago/Landmark'sCenturyCentreCinema.htm">Landmark Century Centre</a> tonight. <br />
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And OMG OMG OMG! I am sooo glad we did.<br />
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This was released in the UK back in May. It'll have a <a href="http://www.slashfilm.com/attack-block-release-date-july-29/">limited US release starting July 29.</a> (And since that slashfilm link already goes there, let me just say that <em>Super 8</em>, which was fine, is not fit to sift through <em>Attack the Block</em>'s poo. In fact, I said to the ZK as we came out of the theater, "And THAT's how you do <em>Goonies</em> in 2011.")<br />
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I can't think of a single thing I didn't love about this movie. (Oh, wait. There's the dog. Hrumph.) The cast is wonderful. The script has exactly the right balance of humor, horror, character development, and a nice story arc. The pacing is excellent, and the exposition is flawless. A car that's destroyed in the first scene is later revealed to belong to a supporting character; a British flag visible in every exterior shot of the block . . . well, that would be telling. <br />
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The "block" in question is estate housing in South London (roughly equivalent to housing projects in the US). Moses is the leader of a group from the block that's just on the verge of graduating to gang. In fact, the movie opens with them mugging a young nurse (Sam, who is later revealed to also live in the block). <br />
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Baby's first mugging (later revealed to have been carefully planned by the group to minimize their chances of pissing themselves) is interrupted by a ball of fire from the sky, destroying the aforementioned car. When they go to investigate, Moses is attacked by something mysterious. He puffs himself up and vows to hunt it down. They do (in grisly, foley-tastic fashion) and drag their trophy back to the block, where they decide to hide it in Ron's weed room ("It's a room. And it's full of weed. And it's Ron's.") until they decide how best to make a profit from it.<br />
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At Ron's (beautifully, disgustingly played by Nick Frost in a deeply, deeply wrong leather jumpsuit), we meet High-Hatz, the local gang boss (or the Moses of Christmas Future, if you'd like to rock the Judeo-Christian-Dickensian canon). High-Hatz decides that it's time to accelerate Moses along his career path and hands off some product to him, specifying how much profit he expects. Moses is elated, terrified, and uncertain all at the same time, but doesn't neglect to swagger for his ecstatic followers. <br />
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Just then, though, they notice more and more great balls of fire streaking to earth. Although none of the "grown ups" believes them, they recognize the situation as a full-blown invasion. There's a lovely series of scenes of each member of the group turning back into the little boy he is as he gathers weapons and makes excuses to his family, pleads for 10 more minutes, or gets stuck taking the dog out. We pointedly do not see the inside of Moses's home until a very nicely done scene late in the movie. That scene is understated, but conveys a wealth of information about how Moses has gotten to the tipping point we see at the beginning of the movie. <br />
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I don't need to do a blow-by-blow plot synoosis, because I KNOW YOU ARE ALL GOING TO SEE THIS, but it just unfolds beautifully. Having seen what Moses is on the road to becoming in High-Hatz, we also see what he was or might have been in "Probs" and "Mayhem," the would-be gangstas with their cap pistols and supersoakers. And as the group gets into deeper and deeper shit along the way, we get to see how race, class, gender, circumstance, and yes, personal responsibility contribute to their highly localized apocalypse. <br />
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Ok, I know I ragged on <em>Super 8</em> above, so that bears some comment. It's true, I lack some, but not all, critical J.J. Abrams receptors: Thought <em>Cloverfield</em> was a boring-ass piece of shit.<a href="http://telecommuniculturey.blogspot.com/2009/05/welcome-to-bridge-of-uss-crap-you.html"> You can see for yourself what I thought of <em>Star Trek</em></a>. On the other hand, I enjoyed many things about <em>Lost</em>, and I absolutely love <em>Fringe</em> (granted, I refer to it as the All-Denethor Comedy Power Hour). I liked <em>Super 8</em> ok, or at least the first 2/3 of it. And I certainly was impressed that they'd assembled a cast of really solid young actors. <br />
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What. Ever. The cast of <em>Attack the Block</em> blows them away. John Boyega is just outstanding as Moses. Alex Esmail and Luke Treadaway are the pinnacle of comic relief as Little Stoner (Pest) and Big Stoner (Brewis). As Sam, the victim-turned-ally-turned-White-Street-Cred-With-The-Po-Po, Jodie Whittaker gets to be profane, bitchy, concerned, brave, selfish . . . . you know, a real human being. (Although it's worth noting that the movie probably passes the Bechdel-Wallace test, but only just, thanks to a conversation between Sam and a helpful neighbor just after she's mugged.) The female counterparts of Moses et al. also get to try their hand at saving themselves, saving the blokes, and leaving the blokes behind because their tired of the trouble they bring. <br />
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Love. Just lots of love for this movie. Might be the best horror movie I've seen since <em><a href="http://telecommuniculturey.blogspot.com/2007/03/american-toxic-host-gowemul.html">The Host.</a> </em>Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-12602932173716843192011-07-13T12:23:00.001-05:002011-07-13T12:24:42.932-05:00Songwriter's Navel: Week 24, In Which The Narrator May Be Cutting Veins Of Indeterminate Origin<a href="https://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/cmm9/Public/DarknessFalls.mp3?uniq=-hw2j8e">Recording</a>. This song is goofy, and the recording reflects that in playing with the vocals. Believe it or not I dialed back the drama. <br /><br /><br />A subideal week for songwriting.<br /><br />The assignment itself sort of hamstrung me, because we were to explore our own "cheese line"—the highly individual point at which we roll our eyes, rather than being moved or wiping a tear away. This is not my strong suit to begin with, and worse, the Kernel suggested that a shortcut to the cheese line was writing about a pet. Given that (a) I had tears rolling down my face during the TRAILER of <em>Marley and Me</em>, (b) <a href="http://telecommuniculturey.blogspot.com/2007/01/my-god-its-full-of-jubilees-children-of.html">I wept through 9/10 of <em>Children of Men</em></a> because of a dog, and (c) I'm still wont to unexpectedly burst into tears after the recent loss of our foamy cat, this was dangerous, dangerous territory. I knew that there was no way I could write about a pet. <br /><br />We were also out of town for the holiday weekend, so I was shorter on time than usual. Please ignore the fact that I have started writing the last several songs on Tuesday morning AND that I actually had a bit more time because I did not have a private lesson last week. Add in another stumbling block in the form of a false lead as soon as I started writing, and you have the recipe for a not-very-good song. <br /><br />In addition to exploring the cheese line, we had to use root motion only in 4ths, 5ths, or steps (or half steps, as it turned out in class, but I had not interpreted the instructions in that way). I started writing from this requirement, which resulted in the false lead into a completely different type of song. I thought I'd saved that effort, which was something like 3 lines of what I was fairly sure was going to be a chorus, but I can't seem to find it. It was something along the lines of: <br /><br /><blockquote><br />Darkness falls on strange, strange houses<br />Like (simile lost to the mists of time, but it had the word "beneath" in it and internal assonance)<br />Like the vein beneath the blade<br /></blockquote> <br /><br />Ouch, check out that last line. I'm not sure it's cheese, per se, but it's certainly melodrama. Naturally that shouldered its way into the song I actually wrote. Why? I like the way it sounds. I like the long <em>a</em>s. I like going from the <em>v</em> to the <em>bl</em>. But it's a terrible line, and it rightly dogged me. <br /><br />I had the chords for this chorus-y thing, and I kind of liked the melody and pace I'd set down. It took its time over "darkness" and "falls." I liked the repetition of "strange." But I Could. Not. find anything to finish out the chorus. <br /><br />In desperation, I picked the guitar back up and started playing around with root motion. Suddenly I had an Em-Bm vamp and a verse just kind of spilled out. <br /><br /><blockquote> <br />You should’ve known better <br />You should’ve read the writing on the wall <br />You should’ve seen it coming from a <br />Mile away, now darkness falls <br /></blockquote> <br /><br />Lines 1 and 3 are a simple, split-measure Em-Bm vamp repeated twice. Line 2 is one split measure of Em Bm, then Am to Bm. Line 4 hangs out on Am for 2 full measures, then hits a split measure of G-D and back to the vamp. Initially, I'd had a full measure of D at the end of the verse. The Kernel advised going right back into the vamp. It's musically the right move (and that's what I recorded), but my brain and fingers have a hard time jumping back to that right away. I've since come to think of that D as the panic measure. <br /><br />Content-wise, I feel like this kind of writing is such a cheat on the one hand, but on the other, I'm inclined not to be too hard on it. It's conceptually a blues form: Three different ways of saying the same thing, then some kind of "stinger" at the end. It shows up in all kinds of songs that I like, and Ba'al knows it's the stumped songwriter's friend. Also, in the case of this song, which shaped up immediately to be a revenge song, the repetition of the same idea feels conversationally real. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92IkddsjtAA">It feels like an argument, like one of the all-time greatest scenes in cinema, right?</a><br /><br />The last line of this verse gave me trouble. Initially, it was just "darkness falls" scavenged from the false start. It went through an awkward adolescent phase where it was "but you thought you had it all" (which ended up on the lyric sheet I printed out before racing out of the house to try to get to OTS early enough to vomit up a third verse), and I ended up singing "You were heading for a fall." More on why I ended up reverting to the original in a minute. <br /><br />The second verse is more of the same technique and problems of the first:<br /><blockquote><br />What were you after back then?<br />What kind of fool did you take me for? <br />What kind games were you playing with <br />Me? I’m not playing any more<br /></blockquote> <br /><br />Many of these lines were harvested from a false start song from about a year and a half ago. Strangely, that song was intended to tell a funny story. Again, not really anything profound here. I kept swapping the "fool" line and the "games" line, trying to come up with an ending rhyme I didn't hate. I suppose what I ended up with is serviceable, but I kind of hate it. <br /><br />By the end of the second verse, I was oh so tired of the vamping, so I needed a chorus, bridge, or ambiguous B section. Both the chords and words fought me pretty hard, and that shows. <br /><br /><blockquote> <br />[Am] I see the [D] lie beneath your [Em] smile (darkness falls) [Bm]<br />[Am] Like the | [Em] vein be- [D] neath | the [C] blade (darkness falls) [G] <br />[D]<br /></blockquote> <br /><br />I messed around with this six ways from Sunday. I left off the last measures of each line (the Bm and the G, respectively). I added them back in. I played them while singing "darkness falls." I played them with no lyric over them. I tried to rewrite the "vein" line so it didn't inappropriately imply that the narrator was suicidal. And finally, I was just sick of it, so I wrote the "darkness falls" in as echoes. <br /><br />I left the house not knowing whether this was a bridge, a chorus, or something else, and hastily rewrote the end of the first verse so that I wasn't using "darkness falls" there. In class, the verdict was that I was trying to force "Darkness Falls" as the title, but that it came out of nowhere (because, let's face it, whatever this section is, it doesn't fit at all with the verses). Ending the first verse with it is a half-assed attempt to remedy that. <br /><br />And oh the veins. The Kernel was on board with it, saying that he did not take it as the narrator being suicidal, but my classmates were not convinced. S commented that I satisfied the cheese requirement, because this was literally a "corte de las venas" (vein-cutting) song; L interpreted it as the narrator being so angry that she was going to kill herself—a sentiment that doesn't make any emotional sense to me, so I certainly didn't want to convey it. For now, it's just sitting there, making the song un-performable. I'm not sure it's a good enough song to spend time remedying the B section. <br /><br />I hand wrote Verse 3 in the wings of the balcony at OTS. I think I squandered all my melodramatic simile power earlier in the day, because I kept coming out with incredibly literal lines like, "They will never find the body." What I ended up with is not exactly far advanced from that problematic literalism: <br /><blockquote> <br />Nowhere you can hide now<br />Nowhere that's safe to rest your bones<br />No one will shed a single tear<br />For you. No one'll miss you when you're gone<br /></blockquote> <br /><br />I also had originally written "no place safe to rest your head," which too obviously wants "dead" for its rhyme. I suppose one solution to the B section is rewriting this verse to be less explicitly threatening to the person addressed, but the truth is, as little as I like this verse, I like it better than that B section.Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-63767888267491618102011-06-30T11:29:00.003-05:002011-06-30T12:41:54.393-05:00Songwriter's Navel: Week 23, In Which I Do Not Write A Hall & Oates Song<a href="https://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/cmm9/Public/ShesGone.mp3?uniq=-4v91uj">Audio proof that I do not need to adopt either a mullet or cheesy pr0n 'stache.</a> Like Michael J. Nelson, I'm immune to hockey hair, as I had it from 1987 to 1990.<br /><br /><br />So, I <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZZngTkp54I">did not know this song.</a> Thus, it was somewhat unnerving when I passed out my lead sheets to the class and the Kernel declared "This is a Hall & Oates song." Before I realized that he just meant that my uninventive title was also the title of an H&O song, I stared in horror. Truthfully, I had worried that this sounded like Bon Jovi song, or worse, like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmEBIudXvfo">"Every Rose Has Its Thorn."</a> (That's right, I Hannah Montana-rolled you. If I have to live with awareness of that cover, so do you.) But never in my darkest moments, had I considered Hall & Oates. <br /><br />But let's not dwell. The assignment this week was to tell a story in the course of the song and employ the line of fourths (i.e., to use root motion in fourths to spice up the chord progression and borrow from outside the key). I started tossing around story ideas in my head, as usual going first to a couple of stories that I want to tell and have tried and failed to tell before, just to get that out of the way. I then had the image of a woman pulling a wilted flower out of her hair and tossing it away, and the song suddenly became about escape. <br /><br />Why that and why now? Hmmm . . . a couple of things. My niece recently went to prom. This is very strange, because I'm pretty sure she's, like, 3 or something. They're also letting her take SATs and AP classes. What's that about? Anyway, she really hadn't wanted to go, but a friend pressured her into going as a group of female friends. When I asked if she'd had fun, she said, "Not really. It's kind of a couples thing." I laughed and told her that having gone to three proms as part of a couple, it kind of always sucks. Bad music, bad food, in my case, thanks to single-sex Catholic schooling, the awkwardness of all the members of one sex or the other not knowing each other well. Lots of build-up and expense for inevitable disappointment, which is true of a number of those kinds of events. <br /><br />The third of the proms I went to was <a href="http://telecommuniculturey.blogspot.com/2011/03/songwriters-navel-week-11-which-is.html">the ONB's</a>—he hadn't gone to his junior prom; I was so comprehensively done with high school and the first 18 years of my life that there was no way in hell I was going to my senior prom (ESPECIALLY after democracy was subverted and they would not let us have "Paint it Black" as the theme), and because people spew all that "Memories that last a lifetime, blah, you'll never be young again, blah" bullshit, he seemed to want to go to his. It was a disaster starting with the limo getting sideswiped on the way there. So. Proms are not fun. <br /><br />But I was also thinking more broadly about extricating oneself more comprehensively. Not just from the messed romantic comedy low expectations that prom is the magically delicious best night of your life (Although I cannot stress enough: No, no it's not. If it is, you are seriously, seriously doing it wrong. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1otPZdd1TnQ">(See Patton Oswalt on Arch Campbell, starting around 7:30 of this clip.</a>), but from the life that's handed to you as a kid, as opposed to the life you make when you become an adult. Also, truth be told, the story started to be about setting fire to an identity in general, thanks to an extremely unwelcome blast from the past recently. <br /><br />Moving on, though. Verse 1! <br /><br /><blockquote> <br />| [E] Late-night [Asus2] creases in a | | [B] borrowed [A] dress | <br />| [E] Careless satin [Asus2] shoes | | [D] cast a- | [A] side like | <br />| [E] White [Asus2] lies | | [E] [Asus2] |<br />| A [E] kiss to [Asus2] seal, her | | [B] past to [A] press between |<br />| [E] Pages, [Asus2] people, | | [Dsus4] places, and [G] times of her |<br />[C] Life <br /></blockquote> <br /><br />The content isn't especially profound: As it happens, I borrowed the dress I wore to the first prom I went to. It was fine as dresses go, my boyfriend's cousin loaned it to me, and the experience was not traumatic or terrible in any way, so it's sort of cheap, dishonest shorthand to include the "borrowed" here, but I didn't want to describe the dress in any kind of specific way, I needed the syllables, and it invites the listener to form their own assumptions about why the dress is borrowed—Is it because of money? Does it suggest the woman is not invested in the occasion? <br /><br />Adding "late-night" before creases was, to me anyway, sort of interesting. Early on, I'd been thinking about this scene as the woman carefully undressing, so I had her smoothing the creases and lining up the shoes. I have a persistent problem when writing narrative that I become obsessed with minutely describing a person's actions. All I want to say is the person went out the front door, but I get hung up with every step along the way. It struck me that in a song, there is NO TIME, LEAVE THE BABY! I didn't want to waste time talking about meaningless actions, I wanted the images of the dress and the shoes to convey something about mood or character. I'd thought about "angry creases," "careworn," "lonely," and the terrible cop out "thousand." I don't know why "late night" occurred to me (I suppose the pressure to stay out all night whooping it up after prom might've suggested it), but I decided I liked it. Again, I feel like it suggests and invites, but doesn't direct. <br /><br />The other thing that was sort of interesting about writing this verse was the addition of "like white lies" after the shoes. Frankly, I don't know what that line means, and I didn't know that I needed anything after "cast aside," but when I started trying to set chords to the verse, it suddenly seemed necessary to have a simile and a slight extension of that line. I had a bitch of a time coming up with the simile, though. I knew the phrase needed a long <em>I</em> sound, and I had thinkings like "dice," "time," "silence," "childhood" (UGH) . . . I like white lies well enough, even though it's sloppy and I don't know what it means. <br /><br />The second half of the verse took the place of the image of the flower. I already had a dress and shoes. I didn't want to have to talk about the flower, so I took the image of pressing the flower and spun out a few things that I hope suggest a scrapbook or box of mementoes, implying that the woman is either trying to decide what to take with her or tossing out the whole lot or whatever. <br /><br />Oh, I should talk about the magic of the line of fourths. The little E to Asus2 figure was certainly suggested by my practicing <a href="http://telecommuniculturey.blogspot.com/2011/06/songwriters-navel-week-19-in-which-i-am.html">this</a> for the showcase last Sunday. So that split measure started off the verse, and I initially went Bm to a resolved A major in the second half. I can only hope I was singing a slightly different melody over the Bm, because as it is now, that chord is surely a plain old B, which seems to put the song in E until we get to the D in the second line, but it's cool, baby, because that D is just from the line of fourths. But was the song line-of-fourthsy enough? No, it was not until the second half of the verse, when it all goes crazy! I absolutely would have just done exactly the same thing in the first and second half of the verse otherwise. I like this trick. I like ending on the C in the verse and then heading into the chorus on a D, and look! The chorus is actually in A, isn't it? <br /><br />Chorus! <br /><blockquote> <br />Now she’s | [D] standing on the [A] outskirts, | <br />| [Bm] Balanced on her [A] toes | <br />Half a [C#m] breath before the [E] dawn<br />A one-way | [D] ticket in her [A] fist, |<br />And a [Bm] Name that no one knows at [E] all, <br />And she’s [D] gone<br /></blockquote> <br /><br />My favorite line in the chorus is "Balanced on her toes." I don't think anything else about the chorus works without it, and I completely stole it from Suzanne Collins's <em>Hunger Games</em>: She describes Rue as standing "tilted up on her toes with her arms slightly extended to her sides, as if ready to take wing at the slightest sound." The idea of using the word "breath" came from problems rhyming "dress" in verse 1, and I admit I also kind of like "half a breath before the dawn." Liminality, man! Go, go gadget Victor Turner! I'm a lot less crazy about the rest of the chorus, but I became attached to the idea that she's not just leaving, she doesn't want anyone ever to find her. <br /><br />Verse 2 gave me fits. I sort of had the idea that it was about her leaving behind a few things on the porch, propped inside the screen door. Again, this is the kind of thing that you just don't have time to spell out in a song, and I was trying to do that, so I suppose I deserved the fits. I didn't want to talk about a ring, nor did I even necessarily want the thing she leaves behind to BE a ring, so the velvet box got me out of that. Certainly it's most likely a ring, right, but for all YOU know it could be a human head. Or it could be filled with chocolate, ok? <br /><br />I also got myself stuck on the idea of her leaving a letter or a note. First of all, cliché city. Second of all, as I went on writing the song, I became more and more convinced that she was not sad or uncertain about leaving, but celebratory, so a letter apologizing or explaining was not her style. The dress and shoes in verse 1, I know, suggest that she's running from a wedding (after it's already happened, presumably), and the velvet box and the word "vow" aren't helping there. Going back to the theme of prom, adolescence and the stupid things we think we'll be attached to FOREVER when we don't know any better . . . I guess I was thinking of it as a childhood sweetheart sort of thing and the woman realizing that children pick terrible partners for the rest of our lives. Don't put your childhood-self in charge of the adult you, friends! So the vow became threadbare, and the second part of the verse became celebratory in an impressionistic way. Probably I am the only one who is cheering this woman on at this point. What can I say? I wouldn't run away from my current life in a million years, but I should have run away from a lot of things a lot earlier. (I'm going to spare you the dark hours when the key "die[d] with the sunlight." VAMPIRE KEY!) <br /><br /><blockquote> <br />| [E] Velvet [Asus2] box and a | | [B7] threadbare [A] vow | <br />| [E] Memory and a [Asus2] spare key | | [D] she leaves be- [A] hind in the | <br />| [E] Mo- [Asus2] ment | | [E] [Asus2] |<br />| The [E] Screen door [Asus2] hisses, | | the [B7] front porch [A] sighs |<br />| [E] In the distance, [Asus2] promise, | | [Dsus4] tomorrow [G] bright on her |<br />[C] Shoulders <br /></blockquote> <br /><br />As usual, I was recording rough drafts along the way, so as not to lose the melody and timing. I knew that with 2 verses and 2 choruses, the song was just under 2 minutes, which is usually my "long enough" mark. But as is happening more and more lately, the song insisted it had a third verse at like 1:30. (I try to leave the house by 2 PM to avoid traffic or leave enough time to sit in it so I'm not late for my lesson.) <br /><br />I thought that verse 3 would have her at least far away, but no, she was content to barely make it off the front porch. I actually wrote the second half of this verse first, but it became clear that the "nowhere, nothing, no one" part was better supported by the escalating line of 4ths. The lines in the first half are still clunky, and the "milkweed" seems clunky and inauthentic to me. I wanted the idea of dropping the picture (or note, or flower, or whatever the hell it was going to be) into a ditch. Ditch. Ditch. Not a singable word. Weeds gave the same impression of neglect, but was too vague. Milkweed's fine, I suppose. Turning her back on the pay phone was ridiculously hard to get into a line, and it's still not quite there, but inserting the idea of a familiar, childish touchstone (i.e., the swing set) helped a bit. <br /><br /><blockquote> <br />| [E] Drops a faded [Asus2] picture and her | | [B7] last [A] regret |<br />| In the [E] milkweed [Asus2] by the swing set, turns her | | [D] back [A] to the |<br />| [E] Pay [Asus2] phone | | [E] [Asus2] | <br />| [E] Dusty [Asus2] miles on an | | [B7] outbound [A] road |<br />| [E] To nowhere, to [Asus2] nothing, | | [Dsus4] to no one | [G] she’s ever |<br />[C] Known <br /></blockquote> <br /><br />And there you have it: First song of the new session.Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-57525605889249154022011-06-24T18:23:00.001-05:002011-06-24T18:24:22.274-05:00Songwriter's Navel: Week 22, In Which I Catch Up And Completely Miss The Mark<a href="https://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/cmm9/Public/LBDT.mp3?uniq=3luio0">Recording</a> of the last song of the previous session. I'm glad to be caught up and glad to be done with those songs, as I don't feel like I produced much of anything good.<br /><br /><br />But new leaf, yo!<br /><br />The final assignment was to write a song in the style of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. You, like I was, might be saying "Who the frilly heck are Felice and Boudleaux Bryant?" So glad you asked, because they wrote every song that ever has been or ever will be written. (<a href="http://www.bmi.com/news/200304/images/fbryant3.jpg">Also, check out Felice's sweet 70s threads.</a>) Ok, not quite, but they DID write, "Wake Up, Little Susie," and a shit-ton of Everly Brothers songs, including "Love Hurts," which I will admit I did not know the Everly Brothers had recorded, because I am a Philistine. <br /><br />They also wrote a song called, "Hey Joe," which could not be any less THAT "Hey, Joe" if it tried, for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpuydEJMmjQ">Carl Smith is no Jimi Hendrix</a>, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3K8t6wKjdg&feature=fvst">Jimi Hendrix is no Carl Smith.</a> My appetite for the absurd and silly made me latch on to "Hey, Joe," because the "jolly dolly"-type lyrics and obsessive-compulsive internal rhyming are right up my alley. <br /><br />A couple of weeks ago, I wrote "Boy meets girl, and there's blood everywhere" in my notebook. I'm not sure that I didn't steal it from a song we were talking about in class, or worse, from a classmate. I'm worried about that, but not so worried that I didn't use that line as the starting point for this song. <br /><br />The line I started with got chopped up in the process, and I knew that the last line of the first verse was something along the lines of "a case of girl meets boy." The last word of the verse ended up being "boy," which needed to rhyme with line 2, and lines one and 3 ended up having internal rhymes, but not rhyming with one another. <br /><br />Point-of-View seems to have been the problem of the session for me. I started out thinking that the narrator of the song was "the boy" in question—a man who'd gotten embroiled in a bad relationship. This gave me an incredibly shitty line "By the time I got there, there was blood everywhere." What the hell kind of line is that? You have the back-to-back <em>there</em>s and a sentence that is boring as all get out when spoken, let alone sung. Songwriting is about killing your children, though, so once I had killed off the other problematic character on the canvas, things started to shape up: <br /><br /><blockquote> <br />Just a [D] small-time stop on her [A] way to the top <br />She’s on a [A7] mission to search and destroy [D7]<br />Her look [D] is devil may care, but there’s [A] blood everywhere<br />Another [A7] classic case of girl meets [D-->Db] boy after boy after boy after boy <br /></blockquote> <br /><br />Ok, so the lyrics started to come together. The melody started out being boring, derivative, and altogether blah, and it never really improved. The best thing I can say is that I at least figured out (after beating my head against the wall in the OTSFM balcony wing and alerting the world to the fact that there are, apparently, foil lasagna pans in the ceiling there) that a D7 at the end of line 2 (rather than a plain old D), would at least make it sound slightly less like a rip off of Paul Thorn's fantastic <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzU9FgNTYrU">"Great Day (To Whoop Somebody's Ass)"</a><br /><br />After I had the first verse down, the other verses just became sort of wordplay challenges. And since no song by me is complete without Judeo-Christian allusions, I give you verse 2: <br /><blockquote><br />She goes from [D] town to town, she’s [A] makin’ the rounds <br />She’s the [A7] fire and they’re gonna get burned [D]<br />She’s a [D] Delilah, you see, she’s a [A] downright Eve <br />But [A7] Samson and Adam never learn <br /></blockquote> <br /><br />The only songwriting award I'm ever likely to win is for most religious content generated by a complete heathen. But in this case, it's only partly my fault! I know that I didn't want to go to the chorus until after the second verse, as the chorus is not particularly strong, and the verses are short. I wanted something about rules or learning to lead into it, so I figured the verse would end with "never learn." From there, well, I'm sorry: Can I help it that Delilah and Eve just happen to be two singable vixens whose beaux are not very smart? <br /><br />Initially, I'd thought of ending the verses that led into the chorus with an Ab7->A7 slide, echoing the Db->D slide at the end of the first verse. It just ended up sounding stupid. The dramatic arpeggio sounds stupid, too, I know. <br /><br />The chorus is still the weakest part of this, despite harmonic help from the Kernel. My original chord progression did not have the F#, went to F#m after the Bm, and just went from G to G7 before ending on the D. This is better, but the lyrics are bad; I <a href="http://telecommuniculturey.blogspot.com/2011/02/songwriters-navel-week-05-mediocrity-in.html"> already have a song called "Close Enough"</a>; and that song sounds suspiciously like this one these days. <br /><br /><blockquote><br />Look but [D] don’t touch [F#]<br />You see her [Bm] baby blues<br />Across a [Bm/A] crowded room<br />Don’t you [G] think that’s close enough [G#dim]? <br />Look but don’t touch [D]<br /></blockquote><br /><br />Being lazy, I couldn't help but notice that I had used "learn," but not "rule." Sweet! I knew what verse 3 ended with. Remember how I said that songwriting is about killing your children? Sometimes we fail at that. And by "we," I mean "I." See, I had a whole Helen of Troy/Face that launched a thousand ships thing that i wanted to work in well after it was clear that it was not going to work at all. And still it made it in here. <br /><br /><blockquote><br />She’s all [D] chantilly lace with a [A] dangerous face <br />Launched a [A7] thousand ships filled with fools [D]<br />Just a [D] cryin’ shame they keep on [A] playin’ her game<br />Keep gettin’ taken [A7], they keep breakin’ the rule <br /></blockquote> <br /><br />Once I got that atrocity down on paper, I thought I was all done. While I was literally in the act of putting on pants to leave the house, this damned song insisted on another verse. WTF, man? <br /><br /><blockquote> <br />She ain’t the [D] girl next door, she’s nothing [A] you’ve seen before<br />She’s a [A7] drive-by she’s a hit and run [D] <br />She ain’t [D] nobody’s gal, she’s a [A] femme fatale<br />A Mata Hari [A7->Ab7], she’s a smoking gun<br /></blockquote><br /><br />There you have it. Eight weeks, 7 song equivalents. Here's to moving on to better things this session.Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-35002443138700100482011-06-23T15:39:00.001-05:002011-06-23T15:40:33.764-05:00Songwriter's Navel: Week 21, In Which There Is A Questionable Bb And Dangerous Levels of Drama!<a href="https://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/cmm9/Public/WhentheLight.mp3?uniq=3ltbw3">Recording.</a> (I know the drama is unforgivable. Please forgive me anyway.) <br /><br />Given the choice between Doomsday and cocktails, you might expect me to choose the latter. I expect me to choose the latter. But Doomsday it was. This week's assignment was to write about our favorite Doomsday scenario. <br /><br />Doomsday it, apparently, is.<br /><br />Given that the song started to go in a Doomsday-y direction immediately, I at least thought I knew what I'd write about: Nostradamus, obviously. IMDB insists that <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081109/"><em>The Man Who Saw Tomorrow</em></a> came out in 1981, but my memory is equally insistent that I saw this several years earlier than this. In any case, it freaked me the fuck out and I resigned myself to not seeing the age of 14, thanks to the impending nuclear holocaust. <br /><br />I jotted down a lot of detailed memories from watching this: how we watched on our <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9RbAhCqW2E">cutting edge OnTv box</a>, the nightgown I had at the time and the way that the elastic pulled at the skin on my wrists and neck, the detailed inventory of the dolls and stuffed animals that I would pile up over my heart when I went to bed at night—to prevent me from being stabbed to death by the maniac afflicted with ADD who was obviously going to climb in my bedroom window, but only try to stab me once— and the order of dearness to me in which they were piled. And, of course, my nightly prayers, which always ended with "and let the world never end and let no one ever die again." <br /><br />I think that I have grown into a remarkably well-adjusted adult, if we're grading on a curve. <br /><br />Anyway. Having gotten a bunch of that stuff down, I wrote in my notebook: <br /><blockquote><br />It is a single moment. <br />It was a million moments. <br /></blockquote> <br /><br />I guess that got me thinking about absenting thee from felicity awhile, yadda yadda, drawing one's breath in pain to tell my story and what have you. And I thought to myself, "Who cares? Who WOULD care, even if there were anyone to care?" And, you know, all that "whimper, not a bang" astronomical Sagan-y stuff. <br />Which naturally lends itself to metaphors about light traveling through great distances of space. <br /><br />And then it turned into a <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=video&cd=4&ved=0CFEQtwIwAw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DROK6Y7ynQww&ei=Mp0DTvK5DZDogQe3yL2RDg&usg=AFQjCNFIx_v4rnSfH-MOL5DxhEt0pRgUVw&sig2=ylyKVLnWuZNKERflJvoIXQ">Roger Whittaker song.</a> Ok, my classmates say that it did not, but they are nice people and I'm pretty sure they're lying. <br /><br />But let's see how this all actually came together into a melodramatic mess. <br /><blockquote><br />[Em] When the light arrives<br />[D] Light of a [Am] single moment<br />[D] Shadow of a [Am] million moments<br />[Em] Trapped in the [D] teeth of [Em] time<br />Rhyme and [Bm] reason [D] died on the [Em] doorstep<br /></blockquote><br /><br />Most of that's pretty straightforward from the stream of consciousness outlined above. "Trapped in the teeth of time" took a while to get. I ended up feeling like that fourth line needed to at least quasi-rhyme with line 1, and I stuck myself with "time." The metaphor is ZOMG melodramatic, but I wanted some hard, closed consonants after all the sibilance and mmm sounds. I also don't like the use of the phrase "rhyme and reason," but I did want something that would convey the idea that whatever "reasoning" led us to finally blowing ourselves completely apart would be lost before the initial pulse of light had even finished. <br /><br />Verse 2 continued on in a similar, "Seriously, chuckleheads, no. one. will care." No one will care what outraged you, there will be nothing there to sympathize with your fear. Nada. Yeah, that's a recipe for more DRAMA!<br /><br /><blockquote> <br />[Em] When the light arrives<br />[D] Who will taste the [Am] steel of malice<br />[D] Press the fear from [Am] every atom<br />[Em] Snatch the future [D] from [Em] the sky<br />Speak the [Bm] final [D] lines of the [Em] fable<br /></blockquote> <br /><br />Oh, a note on the chord progression and how it's executed. It all started with the pinch-fingerpick on the Em. Initially, I carried that throughout the whole song. In my lesson, E quite rightly pointed out the wrongheadedness of this. Given that there's a whole bunch of split measures running into one another in the verse, and that my fingerpicking is erratic and unreliable, this left almost no harmonic support underneath the melody (which was obvious as I kept losing the damned melody). <br /><br /><br />She suggested using it as an intro and then strategically in the course of the song. Despite my distaste for this song, it's probably one that I'll play at the showcase on Sunday (which says more about the crap I've churned out this session than anything positive about the song), and when we worked on it again this Tuesday, we'd decided on carrying the strum through the verses and returning to the fingerpicking before the chorus-B-section-whatever-the-hell-that-is. Not sure that's the right call, but that's the way I recorded it for the moment. <br /><br />Speaking of the odious B section. The Em-driven verses felt overbearing after 2, so I originally wrote a new section that more or less replaced each chord in the verse with its relative major (if it was minor in the verse) or relative minor (if it was major in the verse). Super. Duper. Roger. Whittaker. Naturally, this became a chorus by consensus and to spite me. Here it is as originally written: <br /><blockquote> <br />[G] When the light [D] arrives<br />[C] Keen and cold and [D] silent<br />Not a [Em] breath to [Bm] bear the [Em] cries <br />[G] When the light [D] arrives<br />[C] Passionless and [D] violent<br />From the [Em] void to [Bm] paint the [Em] night <br /></blockquote> <br /><br />The ever-wise Kernel commanded "When in doubt, reharmonize!" <br /><br />So what I recorded was: <br /><blockquote><br />[G] When the light [Bb] arrives<br />[Am] Keen and cold and [Bm] silent<br />Not a [Em] breath to [D] bear the [Em] cries <br />[G] When the light [B] arrives<br />[Am] Passionless and [Bm] violent<br />From the [Em] void to [D] paint the [Em] night <br /></blockquote><br /><br />That Bb sounds incredibly strange to me. In fact, it sounds so strange that I meant to ask the Kernel if I had possibly written it down wrong twice. Of course, I forgot to do that Tuesday, so the weird Bb is immortalized. <br /><br />Content-wise, I think it's clear that <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-1555972608-8">whatever Brenda says</a>, it is irresponsible of me not to keep the drama and emotion shackled. The only line I'll even make an argument for is "Not a breath to bear the cries." <a href="http://embiggened.tumblr.com/page/3">'Cause there ain't no air in space.</a> <br /><br /><br />Several times this session, my brain has tricked me into writing songs that are too long. I wrote what became the fourth verse and then all of a sudden the old brain was like, "Oh, you know what? There's a another verse before this one." What the hell, brain?<br /><br /><blockquote><br />[Em] When the light arrives<br />[D] Casting off the [Am] mighty and <br />[D] Meek and every [Am] story of the<br />[Em] Foolish [D] of the wicked [Em] of the wise <br />None of [Bm] these will [D] rise from the [Em] ashes<br /><br />[Em] When the light arrives<br />[D] Sleek and fleeting, [Am] rarefied<br />[D] Stone faced and [Am] hollow eyed <br />[Em] Callous as the [D] rising [Em] tide<br />As the [Bm] sinless [D] mind of the [Em] ages<br /></blockquote> <br /><br />In retrospect, I guess I get what the brain was getting at. The last verse is the "In summary, morons, no one gives a ballistic fuck about your issues. Congratulations on killing 7 billion people and ruining a perfectly nice planet" verse. But before that the song wanted a "I'm looking at YOU" verse, in the spirit of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFGrQMD6Uqc">"And finally, Christians? Christians? Yes, I'm sorry, I'm afraid the Jews were right."</a>Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28365181.post-62277357265821435662011-06-16T15:50:00.001-05:002011-06-16T16:30:52.525-05:00Songwriter's Navel: Week 20, In Which I Rely On The Assumption That Non One Listens To The Words<a href="https://webshare.uchicago.edu/users/cmm9/Public/NoAlibi2.mp3?uniq=3lo490">Recording</a><br /><br />Another ZOMG! It's longer than 3 minutes! song.<br /><br /><br />Occasionally, the Kernel will cruelly force us to talk about our songwriting strengths. I can't be 100% certain that I have always first uttered something along the lines of "I don't have any," before mumbling, "Well, words are usually easier for me than music," but my response is always in that ballpark. In a similar vein, my friend E asked me a few weeks ago if I ever suddenly had the feeling that I would never be able to write another song. I told her quite truthfully that I feel like that every week. <br /><br /><br />And yet . . . <br /><br />Anyway, this week was one of the weeks I should really like. Our assignment was to write a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7oQ4Y4RO1I">I-V-vi-IV song</a> and start the melody on beat 3 of the first measure of each verse. Although funny (and mind bending, thanks to the OCD adjustment of tempo and key), that medley video is actually soothing to my songwriting soul: Some of those are good songs, some are bad; there's quite a diversity of genres represented; and they don't necessarily all sound the same. Of course, once you know to listen for it, you hear the progression everywhere—for example in the IHOP in Crestwood when your husband is just trying to be thankful that, for once, <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.delilah.com%2F&ei=MG76Tf-QCe7KiALxzpDsBA&usg=AFQjCNG_EWOQzLRSM27s8Ao37eFXe8LDZQ&sig2=rsqYLKJYRJiKIiDi9maHBw">Delilah</a> is not on. <br /><br />I really didn't have a lyrical concept for this song when I started working on it, which probably accounts for serious content problems two weeks in a row. I don't remember why I started out with the image of a bar at closing time. For no earthly reason, I think it started with me remembering an episode of <a href="http://alicehyatt.com/"><em>Alice</em></a> that opens and closes with Mel mopping himself into a corner. Anyway the image suggested the first verse (oh, and after much dinking around, I decided that D was my key of choice):<br /><br /><blockquote><br />[D] This place has [A] seen [Bm] better days than [G] these <br />[D] I wish I could [A] say the same [Bm] [G]<br />[D] Behind the [A] door, [Bm] drink myself in- [G] to a corner <br />[D] Trying to [A] forget every [Bm] letter of your [G] name<br />For [D] tonight, [A] just for tonight [Bm] [G] <br /></blockquote><br /><br />For the longest time, the first line was "These chairs have seen," because I was still thinking that the narrator was working in a bar at closing time, turning the chairs upside down on the tables. Of course, that person is not a very responsible employee if sie is "drink[ing hir]self into a corner" while on the clock. I worked with "paint," "mop," "talk," and some other verbs in place of "drink," and spent a lot of time trying to figure out if the person was walking through the door, locking the door, watching others walk through the door, and so on. In other words, I really didn't know who this person was or what was happening. More responsible songwriters probably would have tried to figure that out before moving on to verse 2. <br /><br />My lyrical attention snagged on the short second line of the verse, and I liked the idea of carrying the "I wish" sentiment through the verses, so I had the line "I wish I could say I cared" for the second verse before I knew what else was going on. And then all of a sudden things got out of control. The character was a songwriter. OH NOES! <br /><br /><blockquote> <br />[D] Another [A] song, [Bm] tale of woe, [G] love gone wrong <br />[D] I wish I could [A] say I care [Bm] [G]<br />[D] I fill the [A] page, knock [Bm] one more back, [G] take the stage<br />[D] Remember to [A] pretend this [Bm] then, and I am [G] there [G] <br />For one more [D] night, [A] just one more night [Bm] [G]<br /></blockquote><br /><br />Oh, I've just remembered that it wasn't until I had written the second verse that I went back in and added the fifth line of the verses, bringing in the word "night." I'm generally symmetry gal, so I don't know where the need for an odd number of lines came from, particularly given that the last line isn't really a refrain and the damned song has a chorus anyway, so it doesn't need a refrain. <br /><br />Speaking of choruses, brace yourself for one that makes no sense whatsoever in the context of the song. <br /><br /><blockquote> <br />[D] No [A] ali- [Bm] bi [G]<br />[D] I’m [A] behind the [Bm] yellow [G] line<br />[D] No [A] ali- [Bm] bi [G] tonight <br />[D] I [A] am the [Bm] scene of your [G] crime<br /></blockquote> <br /><br />And repeats exactly the same chord progression from the verses. But hold up! I'm not going to beat myself up over that fact (or at least not too much). Because, you see, I am fascinated by songs that manage to have really distinct A and B parts, and then you realize that they use exactly the same chord progression. I do think the chorus sounds different (or at least different adjacent) here. Originally, I was drawing out the Bm in the last line and had a big pause between "scene" and "of your crime." The Kernel pointed out quite rightly that this kills the momentum of possibly the only good line in the song. (Um, of course, he just referred to it as a good line, not the only good line in the song. BUT WHAT DOES HE KNOW?) <br /><br />OH DEAR SWEET FANCY JEEBUS. I just realized that I recorded this in the wrong form. The recording goes:<br /><blockquote> <br />Verse<br />Verse<br />Chorus<br />Verse<br />Chorus<br />Bridge <br />Chorus<br /></blockquote><br /><br />And normal people with any inkling of songwriting ability would put the bridge . . . after the first chorus? Oh hell. Anyway here's the bridge and verse 3. Oh, and a tag, which is slightly less than a half verse. <br /><br /><blockquote> <br />[D] Bar after [A] bar, the [Bm] same old tune, the [G] same old sorrow<br />[D] I wish there were some [A] other [Bm] way [G]<br />[D] I work the [A] crowd, [Bm] smile and nod, [G] laugh out loud<br />[D] Down another [A] drink, I’m not [Bm] thinking too [G] straight<br />Tonight, [D] no [A] not tonight [Bm] [G]<br /> <br />Bridge<br />Last [Bm] call, same as [A] last night<br />I’ll [G] have myself the [D] usual a- [Bm] gain<br />Another [A] regular to [Bm] spend [A] the night <br /><br />Tag<br />[D] Back then I [A] knew [Bm] better men than [G] you<br />[D] Wishing [A] that you [Bm] were here [G]<br /></blockquote> <br /><br />Kindly, as always, classmates asked what the song is about and noted that there are two threads that never quite meet. They are perfectly, 100% right. I didn't want this to be about a songwriter/performer, but once it was, I got to thinking about where the subjects of songs come from. As I've <a href="http://telecommuniculturey.blogspot.com/2011/05/songwriters-navel-week-15-which-is.html">noted before</a>, I almost never write songs about the ZK. As Steve Earle says, "Some girls are better for writing songs about," which probably means they're not the girl you want to be married to, they're the ones who done you wrong, amiright? <br /><br />So that got me thinking about songwriter-as-crime scene and performance as reenactment, which . . . oh hell, it's just too dense and unworkable. <br /><br />Which did not stop me from a game-time decision to play this on the 6th when me set was too short. It was a disaster, as everything was that night.Matildahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13864272738244481954noreply@blogger.com0