Speaker 1: It could happen here to welcome the Evans Robert podcast
Speaker 1: End of the World at the beginning of news. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we did it right. Evans, Evans, Robert. Who's
Speaker 1: here with us? That would be kill Joy, Margaret and Lictorman, Sophie.
Speaker 1: I like this m M keeping Victiman, Comma Sophie, kill
Speaker 1: Joy Comma Margaret, Um Margaret Commas as I could also
Speaker 1: attorney's general you kill Joy's Margaret. One of my hobbies
Speaker 1: is anytime I pluralize something, attorneys generally it Um. Margaret,
Speaker 1: How are you? How are you doing on this beautiful
Speaker 1: December day. I'm good. I just got my booster shot
Speaker 1: and the negative effects haven't kicked in yet. That's good. Um.
Speaker 1: How does it feel to have, like, as your interne
Speaker 1: sped up, now that I have a boost? Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: making the same fight that everybody makes, because it's easier
Speaker 1: than thinking about the fact that, oh, Macron looks like
Speaker 1: it's going to be a real, real nightmare and the
Speaker 1: world's never going to go back to you know, it's
Speaker 1: not going back to normal. I miss It's it's being
Speaker 1: able to walk into a bar and not worry that
Speaker 1: I was going to catch a new variant of a plague. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a yeah. Yeah, how are you doing with the plague?
Speaker 1: I live completely alone and isolated, so yeah, which I
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not sure this is how I would
Speaker 1: have built my life if I hadn't done it during
Speaker 1: a plague. Yeah. I mean, well, I dream about interacting
Speaker 1: with humans. Yeah, just like hugging a person that that
Speaker 1: you don't know all that well and it not being
Speaker 1: like involving both of you risking your life. It's like
Speaker 1: a blood packed Yes, we're going, Doug, and if we
Speaker 1: wind up in how we'll scream at Satan together. Hu,
Speaker 1: you have written another story. I mean you wrote this
Speaker 1: a while ago, as you did with the last one.
Speaker 1: But we're doing. We decided we one of the things
Speaker 1: we wanted to do to close this year out was
Speaker 1: a little bit more fiction, because fiction, I think plays
Speaker 1: an underappreciated role in uh revolutionary practice, in kind of
Speaker 1: every aspect of being someone who envisions the different world. Um.
Speaker 1: So we we've always I mean it could happen here
Speaker 1: from the beginning, there was always a strong kind of
Speaker 1: um uh focus on fiction. Um. And I'm really happy
Speaker 1: to be presenting another one of your stories. Today. Thanks.
Speaker 1: You want to introduce this piece? Sure. This piece is
Speaker 1: called The Free Yorks of Cascadia. It was first published
Speaker 1: in Fantasy and Science Fiction, which is the name of
Speaker 1: a magazine. Um and this one was also really important
Speaker 1: to me because Fantasy and Science Fiction F and s
Speaker 1: F was one of the magazines that my my dad
Speaker 1: had a subscription to. Yeah. Yeah, this was a very
Speaker 1: um uh and it was a very important piece for
Speaker 1: me that it got published there. Yeah, that's awesome. Um well,
Speaker 1: let's uh, let's let's let's take a take a hop
Speaker 1: in a publicly funded bus and roll down to Storytown.
Speaker 1: Speaking of taking one's life in one's hands. The story
Speaker 1: is called The Free Orcs of Cascadia. You all know
Speaker 1: the first part of the story. The song ended in blood.
Speaker 1: It was two years ago in the summer. Rick Green,
Speaker 1: the singer of Goblin Forest, crooned in his Osborne esque
Speaker 1: voice to fifteen thousand Goblin metal fans. A short man
Speaker 1: wearing green body paint and brown leather, stepped out from backstage,
Speaker 1: drew a sword and cut the singer down from behind.
Speaker 1: The last lyrics Green ever sang were take me back,
Speaker 1: take me Back, take me back to the misty Mountains.
Speaker 1: The man with the sword, of course, was Golfin Bull,
Speaker 1: the rhythm guitarist for Crimpatool the opening act. He and
Speaker 1: his bandmates escaped in the ensuing chaos and remain at
Speaker 1: large to this day. Neither band has released a song
Speaker 1: or played a show since the rest of Goblin Forest
Speaker 1: decided to call it quits. Without Green and crimp Atool,
Speaker 1: no one knew what happened to Crimpatool. Fans deserted the
Speaker 1: genre and droves, and overnight Goblin Metal went from stadium
Speaker 1: rock fad to a niche interest of the obscure Canadian
Speaker 1: orc cults were originated. It was no longer hip to
Speaker 1: be Green. If golf and Bull had been trying to
Speaker 1: take the Goblin Metal throne, as it were, he failed spectacularly.
Speaker 1: Rumors have flown about motives and locations, but there have
Speaker 1: been no arrests and no like statement from the band.
Speaker 1: All we've had to work with were rumors until now.
Speaker 1: Earlier this month, Orc Folk act Alsith listed golf and
Speaker 1: Bull as the harpist in their liner notes of the
Speaker 1: single The Gray Fog of a Ruined Forest. All Syreth
Speaker 1: was as obscure as Crimpatool was infamous. The band had
Speaker 1: never done an interview, not even a photo shoot. Like
Speaker 1: everyone else these days in countercultural music, their videos featured
Speaker 1: only masked performers. I've been casually obsessed with post civilization
Speaker 1: culture ever since the Communicate from the Junkyard Rats of
Speaker 1: the Rust Belt, and I've been covering music of pretty
Speaker 1: much every secessionist movement and subculture I could sink my
Speaker 1: teeth into. Since after I saw those liner notes, I
Speaker 1: put out feelers to friends and friends of friends, and
Speaker 1: I waited, and last week I was invited to go
Speaker 1: to an orc village hidden away in the burned forests
Speaker 1: of Cascadia. I was invited to be the first person
Speaker 1: to tell Golf and Bull's story hell Fire Harriet Exclusive.
Speaker 1: Usually I post full interviews for everyone, but reserve my
Speaker 1: travel diary for the patrons of my blog. This time, though,
Speaker 1: I'm foregoing that this story is too important, so I've
Speaker 1: interspersed to the two below. All I knew before I
Speaker 1: went with what everyone else knew. Three years ago, a
Speaker 1: bunch of metal heads and hippies and burners and nerds
Speaker 1: all decided to dress up like orcs and goblins, and
Speaker 1: some of them took it too far and decided to
Speaker 1: distance themselves from the rest of society. They got really
Speaker 1: famous one summer, then that fame died in a single
Speaker 1: bloody act, and who knows what kind of weird ship
Speaker 1: they're up to. Now, before you get worried, no, I
Speaker 1: will never offer a platform to a fascist fascist. Fascism,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, is the furthest thing from golf
Speaker 1: and Ball's mind. What he's into is a lot weirder
Speaker 1: than that. Still, it's sort of lucky that I survived
Speaker 1: to write this story. So you killed a guy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I killed a guy. We stared in silence at one
Speaker 1: another for a while. He wore raw hide and fur,
Speaker 1: and not much of either. He wasn't painted up, but
Speaker 1: his skin was sort of natural olive is Our teeth
Speaker 1: were filed down to fangs like any serious works. There
Speaker 1: was still something unassuming about him that I have a
Speaker 1: hard time describing. You're waiting for me to tell you
Speaker 1: about it, aren't you. The interview was not off to
Speaker 1: a good start. Are you worried about how your words
Speaker 1: will sound in court? I killed Rick Green on stage
Speaker 1: with a sword in front of thousands of witnesses. Talking
Speaker 1: to the media, isn't going to make anything worse for
Speaker 1: me at this point, and I don't respect the authority
Speaker 1: of the US government to hold me accountable for my actions.
Speaker 1: I will not go to court, So why do you
Speaker 1: do it? The old world is dying my world, the
Speaker 1: Free Orcs of Cascadia. We're not going to replace the
Speaker 1: old world, but we will be part of its replacement.
Speaker 1: In order to do that, we have to take ourselves seriously.
Speaker 1: An element of that struggle is the struggle to create meaning,
Speaker 1: to create a new sacred. I killed Rick Green because
Speaker 1: he was defiling something mint to be sacred. How so
Speaker 1: we share an aesthetic, but he didn't understand what it
Speaker 1: meant to be an orc. You killed him because he
Speaker 1: was a poser. I guess you could put it like that.
Speaker 1: So the lesson here is, don't be a poser. Don't
Speaker 1: be a poser. You heard it here first, kids, don't
Speaker 1: be a poser, or golf and Ball will literally murder you.
Speaker 1: They picked me up in the parking lot of grocery
Speaker 1: outlet in northeast Portland. That's a mundane detail, I suppose,
Speaker 1: but perhaps the single most remarkable thing about my trip
Speaker 1: was the ever present contrast between mandanity and the bizarre.
Speaker 1: I bought a case of coconut water while we waited.
Speaker 1: Works might like coconut water. Who doesn't like coconut water.
Speaker 1: They showed up in a mid teens Honda Civic sedan,
Speaker 1: and I've been hoping for something out of Mad Max.
Speaker 1: The two women who got out, one cis one trans,
Speaker 1: both white, were dressed in clean gray tank tops and leggings,
Speaker 1: like half the women who live in Portland. To be honest,
Speaker 1: I only noticed them in the parking lot at all
Speaker 1: because the trans woman was cute. Hell Fire this, this
Speaker 1: woman asked. She was tall and severe, with the fierce
Speaker 1: but almost trustworthy look of a loan shark, or, as
Speaker 1: it turned out, an Orchis enforcer. That's me, I said, Fenrik.
Speaker 1: This this woman offered her name, but no handshake, fist
Speaker 1: bump or hug. I nodded. Nor Inda, the trans woman said,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of trans women these days, she didn't
Speaker 1: bother to feminize her voice. Her name sounded familiar, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't place it. How is this going to work?
Speaker 1: I asked. We're going to drive around back where no
Speaker 1: one can see us. Fenric said, We're going to take
Speaker 1: your phone, and laptop and any electronics and put them
Speaker 1: in a fair day in the car. Then we're going
Speaker 1: to put you in the trunk and drive out to
Speaker 1: the forest. Will provide you with a recorder and notebook
Speaker 1: when we arrive. You'll get your stuff back when we leave.
Speaker 1: I nodded, I'd pretty much expected this. Do you need
Speaker 1: to use the bathroom? Nor? In asked, have any medical
Speaker 1: conditions we should know about? No, and no, I said,
Speaker 1: either of you want a coconut water? Goblin forests sang
Speaker 1: in English. But Crimpletool's lyrics were all in Tolkien's Black Speech.
Speaker 1: Dark speech are lyrics were in Dark Speech. Each Token
Speaker 1: referred to the language as black speech. Token meant well,
Speaker 1: but he was about the most influential unconsciously racist author
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. All his villains were either Green
Speaker 1: or Middle Eastern. When you engage with the work of
Speaker 1: historical authors, especially when you make derivative works a century later,
Speaker 1: you have to adapt to one's own social context. Calling
Speaker 1: the language black speech today is at best wildly misleading.
Speaker 1: Its name is a translation. Anyway, It's possible that dark
Speaker 1: speech is just as accurate. Besides, Token didn't write the language.
Speaker 1: He only wrote like sixteen words or something we wrote
Speaker 1: the rest Most of us prefer to translate the name
Speaker 1: of it as dark speech, since why our murderers PC
Speaker 1: My status as a person who has ended the life
Speaker 1: of another person carries no implications about my personal ethics
Speaker 1: other than that I clearly believe there are circumstances under
Speaker 1: which it's okay to kill someone. Imagine being at the
Speaker 1: Renaissance Fair when the apocalypse hits and you're stuck trying
Speaker 1: to recreate society, surrounded by swords and minstrels and these
Speaker 1: and thous. You know how that sounds like either heaven
Speaker 1: or hell, depending on who you are and also who
Speaker 1: you're stuck there with. That was my first impression of
Speaker 1: the village of Gray Morrow. The fires out west have
Speaker 1: burned forest after forest and small town after small town,
Speaker 1: and no one tries to deny that pretty much every
Speaker 1: bioregion on the planet is going through a transformation right now.
Speaker 1: It's in the worst spots, these dead ecologies that the
Speaker 1: post civilization movement has found its roots, like wild flowers
Speaker 1: growing up between paving stones, or rats hiding in the walls.
Speaker 1: I guess, depending on who you ask, Gray Morrow sits
Speaker 1: in the scorched graveyard of a Douglas fir forest, half
Speaker 1: way up a mountain, occupying the remains of an evacuated town.
Speaker 1: Slab foundations are all that remain of the original structures.
Speaker 1: A seasonal creek runs through what was recently a river
Speaker 1: bed at the edge of the village, and long abandoned
Speaker 1: train tracks skirt the ridge above town. Even armed with
Speaker 1: all of that information, you'd still have at least seventy
Speaker 1: or eighty possible spots to search. Satellite imagery would help,
Speaker 1: of course, I can't imagine that the Big six texts
Speaker 1: of the U. S. Government don't know where Gray Morrow is.
Speaker 1: The residence of Gray Morrow in general, in golfing Bole
Speaker 1: in particular, had an awful lot to lose by letting
Speaker 1: me write this report. Nourinda let me out of the trunk,
Speaker 1: and she smiled when she saw me. Her bottom teeth
Speaker 1: were filed. That should have been unnerving, but I've always
Speaker 1: been a sucker for face tattoos or anything that really
Speaker 1: shows some one is going for broke. Fenric just stared
Speaker 1: at me. Severe. Being severe was pretty much her thing,
Speaker 1: as far as I could tell. She took a sip
Speaker 1: from her cocoanut water. Three other cars filled a makeshift
Speaker 1: parking lot. The village itself was surrounded by a wall
Speaker 1: built from black and logs set upright and buried in
Speaker 1: the ruins of the road. My escorts had changed clothes,
Speaker 1: and rout Fenric looked like a bandit out of Skyrim,
Speaker 1: complete with iron puldron on one shoulder and a hand
Speaker 1: axe strapped to her belt. I won't lie, it was
Speaker 1: a good look. I'm no fashion reporter, but I figure
Speaker 1: half the magazines in New York would love to get
Speaker 1: someone out here and take pictures of orcs like her.
Speaker 1: Nornda wore a simple, modest dress of undyed wool. Imagine
Speaker 1: a Viking kindergarten teacher who also wears a rather large
Speaker 1: dagger horizontally on her belt at the small of her back.
Speaker 1: My crushing on her intensified. She handed me a spiral
Speaker 1: notebook in an old fashioned digital recorder, and we walked
Speaker 1: into the village. A lot of people say that you
Speaker 1: killed Ritt Green because you are jealous of Goblin Forest's success.
Speaker 1: That the Orchish code insisted that if you wanted the throne,
Speaker 1: you had to kill the reigning monarch. Golfin Bull stopped
Speaker 1: fidgeting and stared directly at me, his dark brown eyes
Speaker 1: boring into me. That's bullshit. I'm sorry, it's like three
Speaker 1: layers deep of bullshit. He was still staring at me.
Speaker 1: I was starting to regret this line of questioning. Okay,
Speaker 1: to start, there are pretty much two ways to interpret
Speaker 1: the Orchish Code of Honor. It's not written down anywhere,
Speaker 1: but there's some strong central themes, like an interdependence between
Speaker 1: individual sovereignty and collective identity. We veou you strength, but
Speaker 1: the idea is that everyone develops their own strengths, whatever
Speaker 1: they may be, for the benefit of all. One should
Speaker 1: be as self reliant as one is able to be,
Speaker 1: both for one's own sake and again for the community's sake.
Speaker 1: I cared deeply about this. That same basic idea, though,
Speaker 1: can be interpreted two different ways. So there's a split
Speaker 1: in the ARC community. Damn right, there's a split. The
Speaker 1: free Orcs are matriarchal and the or Seene are patriarchal.
Speaker 1: Golfin Bill produced a cigarette from god knows where, considering
Speaker 1: how little he was wearing, and lit it with a
Speaker 1: lighter from the same mysterious origin it wasn't tobacco, it
Speaker 1: wasn't weed, maybe mugwart. The matriarchal way of interpreting those
Speaker 1: tenants is roughly anarchist. It's anti authoritarian, an anti nationalist.
Speaker 1: At the very least. We respect the wisdom of elders,
Speaker 1: children and women self identifying women. But the hierarchy is
Speaker 1: anything but rigid, and the guidelines are anything but laws.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, our sense of community or tribe is fluid.
Speaker 1: Gray Morrow is a free or village. Go fifteen miles
Speaker 1: southeast and you'll find a larger village lonely mountain there
Speaker 1: or seen. The patriarchal way of interpreting Orcish tenants is
Speaker 1: roughly fascistic. Authority is absolute. Rank within the hierarchy effects
Speaker 1: every aspect of one's own life. It's not racialized, but
Speaker 1: it's nationalistic. There are very specific considerations of who is
Speaker 1: and isn't a part of any given social grouping, and
Speaker 1: definitions of strength tend to skew toward boring shit like
Speaker 1: physical size and power. So you tell any doubters that
Speaker 1: you weren't trying to claim the goblin throne because your
Speaker 1: faction of ORCS doesn't work that way. No, Orcish culture
Speaker 1: works that way. Even those fascistic ships don't work that way.
Speaker 1: Among the or scene. If you kill your superior, people
Speaker 1: aren't going to just suddenly start kissing your ass. They
Speaker 1: will literally flee you and turn your skin into a
Speaker 1: battle flag. You advance and rank by demonstrating your capacity
Speaker 1: to lead. This isn't some fucking Hollywood bullshit. Evil is
Speaker 1: a lot more banal than that. I didn't have the
Speaker 1: heart or maybe the courage to tell him that. To me,
Speaker 1: to pretty much any outsider, Hollywood bullshit is exactly what
Speaker 1: the whole place looked like. When you say battle flag,
Speaker 1: what do you mean? Who do they do? Battle with us?
Speaker 1: The free Orcs? Are you at war for the very
Speaker 1: soul of our culture? How did that start? When I
Speaker 1: cut down Rick Green, the Mountain King? You killed him
Speaker 1: because he was the leader of a rival faction, then,
Speaker 1: not because he was a poser. They weren't a rival
Speaker 1: faction until I killed him. But sure he was a
Speaker 1: poser though all fascists opposers. Did you go on tour
Speaker 1: with Goblin Forest specifically to murder him? Yeah? Probably? What
Speaker 1: do you mean? Probably? That's a very specific question about
Speaker 1: a very specific intention. I mean, I guess I had
Speaker 1: been thinking about killing him for a while. It was premeditated,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't you know, No, I don't know, because
Speaker 1: I've never killed anyone. So it's like I've known Rick
Speaker 1: Green almost five years. He and I and maybe thirty
Speaker 1: other people. We started this whole thing, Goblin Metal of
Speaker 1: the Orcs. All of that. Rick Green has always been
Speaker 1: a fucking bastard. I figured I'd probably kill him one
Speaker 1: day for being kind of a Nazi or whatever. Then
Speaker 1: we go on tour together and I tell myself, hey,
Speaker 1: if this goes badly, I can always just kill him
Speaker 1: on stage. You've got to understand, Orcas culture wasn't even
Speaker 1: a year old at that point. We weren't split into
Speaker 1: the Free Orcs and the or scene yet. There were
Speaker 1: only maybe five villages total. We were just starting to
Speaker 1: explore what it meant to be ourselves, what kind of
Speaker 1: culture we could build. Then, while we were on tour,
Speaker 1: I hear he's got himself crowned the Mountain King. And
Speaker 1: this isn't a game. I don't know how to get
Speaker 1: that through to you or your readers. This is our life.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to put on a silly hat. And
Speaker 1: pretend to tell people what to do in some LARP somewhere.
Speaker 1: But Rick Green had gotten himself corornated for real dictator
Speaker 1: over actual people. So I killed him. The free Orcs
Speaker 1: split off the or scene, closed ranks, and we've been
Speaker 1: at war ever since. Am I safe here? He didn't
Speaker 1: answer me, at least, he didn't dare me down again.
Speaker 1: He just looked off into the distance, maybe towards lonely Mountain.
Speaker 1: I've been to LARPs before, where when you show up,
Speaker 1: they make you put on garb. That is to say,
Speaker 1: they make you wear period appropriate clothes, or whatever weird
Speaker 1: interpretation of period appropriate that particular group of larbers had
Speaker 1: come up with. As I met the denizens of the village,
Speaker 1: they all came out to the parking lot to introduce themselves.
Speaker 1: I realized they didn't insist on anything like that because
Speaker 1: they weren't LARPing. Pretty much, every one of them was
Speaker 1: dressed like either a Viking reenactor or fantasy game villain,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't an act. About thirty adults and eight
Speaker 1: kids lived there, running the age Gamut from six months
Speaker 1: to seventy eight years. They told me their names and pronouns.
Speaker 1: About a third told me she a third heat in
Speaker 1: the third day. Many of them were white or past
Speaker 1: as such, but a significant minority were black. Nourenda told
Speaker 1: me later their Orc villages with substantially higher proportions of
Speaker 1: people of color. That might be true, but I got
Speaker 1: the impression she said it to convince herself or me
Speaker 1: that the free Orcs aren't a specif typically white phenomenon.
Speaker 1: No One, no one decent, likes looking around their community
Speaker 1: or scene and seeing only white faces smiling back. After
Speaker 1: everyone introduced themselves, immediately forgot all their names. There are
Speaker 1: only so many fantasy names like Lazarre and Demlin that
Speaker 1: you can hear before they all just sound the same.
Speaker 1: Noriinda and Fenrik flanked me as we walked through a
Speaker 1: gate in the wall into the village. It's strange to
Speaker 1: say village in America. We don't really have villages here,
Speaker 1: But in some ways Graymorrow isn't the United States. And
Speaker 1: to be certain, it was a village, maybe ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen houses crowded together along either side of a single
Speaker 1: potholed street. Two architectural styles reigned. Junkyard shacks built out
Speaker 1: of railroad cars in regular cars, and traditional American log cabins,
Speaker 1: many of them were adorned with solar panels. At the
Speaker 1: end of the street, near the Black Palisade, the beginnings
Speaker 1: of a stone tower stood fifteen feet high. I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure if I was impressed or not. On one hand,
Speaker 1: the village couldn't have been around longer than three or
Speaker 1: four years, and they had already done so much much.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it was filthy. Everyone was filthy.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of obsessed with the post civilization movement, so
Speaker 1: I wish I could tell you everyone looked well fed
Speaker 1: and happy. They didn't. People looked proud, and they didn't
Speaker 1: look miserable. But there was an intensity in everyone's eyes
Speaker 1: you simply could not mistake for happiness. A trash pile
Speaker 1: needed tending near the front gate, and some of the
Speaker 1: animal hides stretched for tanning had begun to rot. Everything
Speaker 1: looked like it was about to fall apart, both physically
Speaker 1: and metaphorically. What now, I asked when we reached the
Speaker 1: central square, a stone cobbled chunk of what had been
Speaker 1: once an intersection, now decorated with poorly tended gardens and
Speaker 1: rustic benches of dubious quality. You're here to interview. Golfing
Speaker 1: Ball or you're not, Fenrick asked, I am. Golf Ball
Speaker 1: doesn't live here. I waited for her to elaborate. Golfing
Speaker 1: Ball lives in the forest with the rest of his band.
Speaker 1: He's on his way. You'll meet him a bit outside
Speaker 1: of town. I'll take you to him when he gets there.
Speaker 1: Someone near the gate shouted, and both of my escorts
Speaker 1: flinched bodily and turned to look. It was just a
Speaker 1: kid chasing another kid with a wooden sword. Fendrick and
Speaker 1: Narindo were on edge. Something was about to happen. Tell
Speaker 1: me about your new band, Ulsare. What does the name mean?
Speaker 1: Alsyrith is the dark speech word for the phase of
Speaker 1: the moon on the last night before the new moon,
Speaker 1: the last sliver of light. Ulsareth is a holy day,
Speaker 1: a day of self reflection. Our band's music attempts to
Speaker 1: capture that spirit of self reflection. On Alcyreth, we listened
Speaker 1: to our naysayer and think about ourselves and our community
Speaker 1: your naysayer. Free Orchish villages don't have leaders. We have naysayers.
Speaker 1: Two years ago, we tried rotating leadership. It was ineffectual.
Speaker 1: We didn't need leaders We stuck with it anyway because
Speaker 1: we felt like we had to, because those were the
Speaker 1: rules we had come up with. Then one person said, basically,
Speaker 1: this is bullshit. We don't need someone to tell us
Speaker 1: what to do. We need someone to tell us what
Speaker 1: to stop doing. We need someone to tell us what
Speaker 1: we're doing wrong. Every new moon, every village picks a
Speaker 1: new naysayer. That person spends the month picking apart group structures,
Speaker 1: observing what's happening, being critical and Alsareth, we fast and
Speaker 1: listen to the naysayer. They don't offer solutions necessarily, but
Speaker 1: instead bring our problems to light. Does that work surprisingly well,
Speaker 1: except about a third of the naysayers end up leaving
Speaker 1: after their month. Some go to other villages, some good
Speaker 1: to live in the forest, like Narinda Alsareth singer did,
Speaker 1: but most leave the woods. As we put it, most
Speaker 1: go back to civilization. That's why Noarinda's name sound of
Speaker 1: familiar when she didn't she introduced herself. To be honest,
Speaker 1: I saw your name list in the liner notes and
Speaker 1: didn't pay much attention to the rest. That's an argument
Speaker 1: for me to take my name off our next release,
Speaker 1: if there is one. Why did you put it there?
Speaker 1: In the first place, Why did you agree to this interview?
Speaker 1: And what do you mean if there is one? I
Speaker 1: told you we're at war? Yeah, we're losing that war.
Speaker 1: He took a deep breath, trying to keep himself calm.
Speaker 1: He didn't strike me as a man who is afraid
Speaker 1: to cry, but he was clearly trying to keep his composure.
Speaker 1: There's no way that Gray Morrow would have let you
Speaker 1: talk to me here if any of us thought that
Speaker 1: Gray Morrow had a future. There's no way I would
Speaker 1: have talked to you at all if I thought I
Speaker 1: was going to be alive to see another alsirath. Why
Speaker 1: are you losing? Why are you going to die? It's
Speaker 1: not a question of military efficacy, or of bravery or
Speaker 1: strength or any of that ship. It's just a question
Speaker 1: of numbers or seen society. As a military society, every
Speaker 1: member fights. As far as we can tell, they've got
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred warriors, We've got five hundred, so use guerrilla tactics.
Speaker 1: Golfing Bull shook his head. Striking Rick Green down from
Speaker 1: behind was a cowardly action. I can justify it almost
Speaker 1: by the fact that Green had declared himself my monarch.
Speaker 1: But the orseeen warriors are my peers. They would not
Speaker 1: stalk me in the night. I will not stalk them.
Speaker 1: That sounds, I know how it sounds. So that an
Speaker 1: interview I want to be remembered. I want the free
Speaker 1: Orcs of Cascadia to be remembered. I put my name
Speaker 1: on the liner notes so that someone like you, an
Speaker 1: anti fascist music blogger, would talk to me. I leveraged
Speaker 1: my own infamy to draw attention to what we're doing,
Speaker 1: what we've done. I fucking hate the tragic utopian trope.
Speaker 1: What like seriously, like fuck you? Okay, I know I'm
Speaker 1: here as a journalist, but I'm not gonna write your
Speaker 1: fucking obituary. I don't think i've ever turned on an
Speaker 1: interview subject like that before. I get it. Hopeless causes
Speaker 1: are beautiful, But as I understand it, the whole goddamn
Speaker 1: point of holding onto your honor more firmly than your
Speaker 1: life is because the world is a better place for
Speaker 1: everyone if more people did that. Right, Okay, the world
Speaker 1: isn't a goddamn better place if you let your subculture.
Speaker 1: And I'm sorry, I know it's very serious and I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to downplay it, but that's what this is
Speaker 1: a musical subculture be taken over by fucking Nazis, and
Speaker 1: I respect that you're going to fight them for it.
Speaker 1: That's cool. But if you consider buying some guns, maybe
Speaker 1: a few drones, they'll come in here with spears, right
Speaker 1: and you'll fight them off with other spears. It's there
Speaker 1: are fucking Nazis everywhere. If you don't give a shit
Speaker 1: about going to jail or dying, then fucking shoot the
Speaker 1: Nazis were trying to kill you. You don't understand, You're
Speaker 1: fucking right, I don't, if I'm being honest. Most of
Speaker 1: the time I was waiting, I spent flirting with Norenda
Speaker 1: and avoiding talking to Fenrick. Horenda asked me to keep
Speaker 1: our conversation off the record. We didn't talk about Gray
Speaker 1: Morrow or the orc thing much. Anyway, everything I learned
Speaker 1: about the village and its culture I learned by observation only.
Speaker 1: An elderly man came by and offered us cold tea
Speaker 1: and wooden mugs steeped BlackBerry leaves sweetened with juice from
Speaker 1: the berries. He said, no caffeine, no other particularly strong
Speaker 1: medicinal effects. The three of us took cups from his bladder,
Speaker 1: and he continued down the street, passing out drinks. No
Speaker 1: one else approached us. I watched people go about their lives,
Speaker 1: though the tension in the air was thick. I saw
Speaker 1: a few people look at cell phones and spent a
Speaker 1: not inconsiderable amount of time trying to decide if that
Speaker 1: was hypocritical and or bad ops sec. Eventually I gave up,
Speaker 1: as frankly, it wasn't my business, and one of the
Speaker 1: most interesting things about all the post civilization groups is
Speaker 1: all the bits and pieces they choose to carry over
Speaker 1: from mainstream culture. Finally, after an hour, Fenric stood up
Speaker 1: come with me. I followed her to the other side
Speaker 1: of town and through a smaller gait. On the other side,
Speaker 1: a box truck that had seen better days sat on
Speaker 1: a road that had too. We skirted around the truck
Speaker 1: and up into the black forest. The scorched hills looked
Speaker 1: more like meadows than forests, with green grass and undergrowth
Speaker 1: broken only by black spikes of burned trees. We followed
Speaker 1: the path this way and that, and soon I was lost.
Speaker 1: Soon after fog set in, I was further through the
Speaker 1: looking glass than I had realized. I imagined us lost
Speaker 1: a mile from a town full of people who gave
Speaker 1: a double meaning to the word stranger, and probably at
Speaker 1: least an hour's drive from civilization. My guard hadn't shown
Speaker 1: me much in the way of kindness, and I was
Speaker 1: on my way to meet someone I knew to be
Speaker 1: a murderer. It's the kind of shift I live for.
Speaker 1: If I'm being honest, I love my stupid, fucking weird
Speaker 1: job and the stupid fucking weird world we live in.
Speaker 1: Thank you, my readers, for making that possible for me.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out my Patreon page if this
Speaker 1: is the first thing you've read by me. Lots of
Speaker 1: members only content over there, including a few snippets of
Speaker 1: orc song from Nearinda. The only thing I saw in
Speaker 1: the distance was a single black spire, thicker than the
Speaker 1: dead snags around me. As we approached, it came into
Speaker 1: focus as a boulder jutting up into the sky like
Speaker 1: an angry finger. Sitting at the base of it was
Speaker 1: a short man with a sword across his lap, golfing bull.
Speaker 1: I'll leave you to to it, Fenric said. She left
Speaker 1: me alone with an armed murderer. I sat down across
Speaker 1: from him, took out the notebook and recorder and asked
Speaker 1: him questions. All right, convince me we can't fight them dishonorably,
Speaker 1: because you can't protect an idea by defiling that idea.
Speaker 1: We don't want them to destroy our way of life,
Speaker 1: but we don't want to destroy our way of life
Speaker 1: ourselves either. The basic problem with your scene is that
Speaker 1: they're interpreting your code of honor to mean might makes right. Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 1: By facing them in open battle, nobly dying or whatever
Speaker 1: your goddamn planet is, you're just letting them make my right.
Speaker 1: You're letting their superior numbers dictate what your cultures to
Speaker 1: look like. It's like majority voting, but even dumber because
Speaker 1: more people die. I expected him to double down on
Speaker 1: his position. Most men would. What do you suggest instead, funk?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Don't be here when they attack, Go
Speaker 1: somewhere else, stay on the move, build your strength. Oh ship,
Speaker 1: That's what Rick Green was doing, wasn't it. Huh Goblin
Speaker 1: forest singing in English, a stupid name like Rick Green.
Speaker 1: All That ship was designed to make Goblin metal more
Speaker 1: palatable to the masses, to get fans, to get recruits
Speaker 1: for his stupid, fucking fashy goals. Yep, do that. I mean,
Speaker 1: don't become fascists, or change your name, or make your
Speaker 1: music where everyone knows Goblin Forest and have shipped on Krimpazol.
Speaker 1: Just don't be obscure for the sake of being obscure.
Speaker 1: Fucking advertise you have a decent thing going here. People
Speaker 1: abandoning mainstream society left and right, no coal pun intended.
Speaker 1: Make it easier for them to get here. Make it
Speaker 1: so that when you fight the fashion your epics swords
Speaker 1: and spears Viking deathmatch, you win better. Yet, make it
Speaker 1: so they don't even want to funk with you because
Speaker 1: they know they lose. I don't know whether that would work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but dying doesn't work either. The Earth way of life
Speaker 1: isn't meant to be some revolution. It's not meant to
Speaker 1: supplant the mainstream. It will never appeal to the mainstream,
Speaker 1: not without losing its soul. Would you live like this?
Speaker 1: Would you want to? You're right, I'm obsessed with you
Speaker 1: weird subcultures, but I wouldn't want to live like you.
Speaker 1: We both stared at each other in silence. It wasn't
Speaker 1: an uncomfortable silence. We're both just thinking, Okay, scrap that
Speaker 1: you're never going to get big numbers. You don't need
Speaker 1: big numbers. You don't want big numbers. You don't need recruits,
Speaker 1: you need allies. What would that look like? God damn
Speaker 1: due all Orcish men not actually listen to women's ideas.
Speaker 1: I'm used to guys just talking over me or shutting
Speaker 1: down completely. If I get mad free Orkish men, I
Speaker 1: would hope know how to listen. Guns break the spell
Speaker 1: and the spell you're casting here's powerful. It's good. So
Speaker 1: no guns. Other people have guns, though, Let those people
Speaker 1: stand guard or make their arm presence. Note outside or
Speaker 1: seen camps other people have access to, say dock singe.
Speaker 1: How many recruits are the or Sine gonna get if
Speaker 1: every time some want to be forest Nazi dude joins,
Speaker 1: someone tells his mother what they're about for access to
Speaker 1: the media, How many recruits are going to join if
Speaker 1: everyone knows the or scene or posers putting out substandard
Speaker 1: water down goblin metal just to try and lure an
Speaker 1: impressionable military age men to fight their holy war. You'll
Speaker 1: write those stories. I'm not gonna write you any propaganda,
Speaker 1: but sure I'll tell the truth. How do we get allies,
Speaker 1: but at another single, maybe a full length. The gray
Speaker 1: fog of a ruined forest was the best ship of
Speaker 1: hurtin years. You're redefining folk music, just like you redefined
Speaker 1: metal without ship like that, and I'll cover it. Talk
Speaker 1: to more press, maybe someone other than you. Not everyone's
Speaker 1: going to be sympathetic to what you did, even if
Speaker 1: that fucking guy was a fucking tree. Not see a
Speaker 1: hunting horn cut through the fog and through our conversation,
Speaker 1: and my subject's face fell into despair for a half
Speaker 1: second before determination took over. What's that? Interviews over? And
Speaker 1: I thought there would be more time another day. At
Speaker 1: least we have to get you out of here. Turns
Speaker 1: out Fenric had taken us on a purposefully circatuitous route
Speaker 1: into the woods. It wasn't a quarter of a mile
Speaker 1: straight downhill before golf and bowl and I reached the
Speaker 1: box truck at the back entrance to Graymorrow. Norinda and
Speaker 1: Fenrick stood there talking with a kid, maybe fifteen, who
Speaker 1: was out of breath. She was dressed in scraps of
Speaker 1: fur and leathern cloth, like you might imagine a medieval beggar.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until I noticed all the twigs and sticks
Speaker 1: and moss tangled up in the fabrics. I recognized it
Speaker 1: as camouflage. I saw about thirty the scout, for that's
Speaker 1: what she was said about. Fenrick asked, exactly thirty, ten
Speaker 1: with pikes, ten with tower, shields and swords, five archers,
Speaker 1: two scouts to command, one non combatant. I'd guess a surgeon,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't promise how far away I asked. Fenrick
Speaker 1: glared at me for interrupting. Five miles Nourenda said, probably
Speaker 1: three and a half by now downhill. We have time
Speaker 1: to get you out with the children and the elders.
Speaker 1: The scout had just run five miles uphill because she
Speaker 1: was too stubborn to use a walkie talkie or a
Speaker 1: cell phone. We should evacuate everyone. Gulf and Bull said
Speaker 1: what Fendrick asked. We've got walls and almost even numbers.
Speaker 1: Fuck them, this is our home. I wanted to shout
Speaker 1: at her. I wanted to shake her, to tell her
Speaker 1: this wasn't a fucking game, that it wasn't the twelfth century,
Speaker 1: and that killing people or dying over some squatted chunk
Speaker 1: of nowhere was somewhere between stupid and reprehensible. It didn't
Speaker 1: though I'm a good journalist. This isn't the place for
Speaker 1: us to debate this, Nourenda said, and all four of
Speaker 1: them walked through the gate and left me standing by
Speaker 1: the truck. That was why the gardens were untended, and
Speaker 1: with the trash was piled up and the hides were
Speaker 1: left to rot. They were expecting this. They'd lost their
Speaker 1: will to pretend like their lives were going to continue
Speaker 1: to progress forward. I'm not the first to suggest that
Speaker 1: Nila him as the dominant effect of society today, with
Speaker 1: climate change destroying communities and bioregions all over the map,
Speaker 1: with the economic crisis deepening and the wealth gap widening.
Speaker 1: I think all of us are guilty of forgetting to
Speaker 1: tend our gardens. All of us have a hard time
Speaker 1: figuring out why it matters whether or not we deal
Speaker 1: with our trash. All of us have proverbial or literal
Speaker 1: Nazis marching on us. The Nazis the free Orcs of
Speaker 1: Cascadia are dealing with are the literal variety. Some cosplaying
Speaker 1: fascist was about to stick a sword between Noranda's ribs.
Speaker 1: Biole rows in my throat. I don't know I believe
Speaker 1: in love at first sight or any of that ship,
Speaker 1: but I just couldn't handle the idea. I fucking hate honor.
Speaker 1: I will never be an orc. I got lost running
Speaker 1: through solutions to the problem of hypothetical arrows and swords
Speaker 1: that were going to interfere with Norinda's continued existence. Most
Speaker 1: of those solutions involved assault rifles, which I didn't have
Speaker 1: access to. Cars, though were available. What's thirty warriors of
Speaker 1: medieval armor versus one station wagon driven by an angry
Speaker 1: woman with a lead foot. I put the odds in
Speaker 1: my favor. I wasn't going to do it, though. Instead
Speaker 1: I waited to evacuate. I don't think that speaks well
Speaker 1: of me. Individually and in groups, people came out through
Speaker 1: the gate and loaded bags and baskets on to the
Speaker 1: back of the truck. Noriinda returned with a simple backpack
Speaker 1: sewn from raw hide. Most of her belongings were probably
Speaker 1: wherever she engulfen Bule and the rest of Allsareth lived.
Speaker 1: She handed me my phone, I didn't have service. I
Speaker 1: wondered whether or not she engulfen Bule were dating. It
Speaker 1: wasn't relevant to the present moment exactly, but my mind
Speaker 1: always as a way of thinking about bullshit to avoid
Speaker 1: thinking about impending doom. Another important effect of our generation
Speaker 1: distract ourselves with disaster with petty things like love and jealousy.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you said to Golfen Bull, Randa said,
Speaker 1: but whatever it was worked. He just convinced everyone to evacuate. Everyone,
Speaker 1: I asked, shocked, everyone except him and Fenric and Gorn.
Speaker 1: Which one's Gorn, the man who brought us tea? Do
Speaker 1: you remember him? He's old a ship, though, I said,
Speaker 1: because I have no in manners or common sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's old as ship. He's a linguist by training. His
Speaker 1: main hobby is writing morbid poetry and dark speech, and
Speaker 1: when he can't figure out how to say something, he
Speaker 1: just makes up new words. He developed about a third
Speaker 1: of the language, did all that ship before orc culture
Speaker 1: was even around. He's also a widower three times over.
Speaker 1: He doesn't give a shit about dying. His last chat
Speaker 1: book was called soon I will return to the Earth. Oh,
Speaker 1: Gorn is going to die today. Golf and Bull and
Speaker 1: Fenric they're going to hold the wall as long as
Speaker 1: they can and then fall back to the woods. And you,
Speaker 1: I asked, I'm driving us out of here to another village.
Speaker 1: Then I'll take you home after that. I don't know, girl,
Speaker 1: I don't know. If I signed up for this, I
Speaker 1: might leave the woods go back to being a vet tech.
Speaker 1: I just nodded. I was too biased to offer objective
Speaker 1: life advice. Oh, and golf and Bull said to give
Speaker 1: you this, He said, it's in case he dies. He says,
Speaker 1: you're right, you shouldn't have to write his obituary, so
Speaker 1: he wrote his own. She handed me a piece of
Speaker 1: paper I piled into the back of the box truck
Speaker 1: with are to other people, many of them in tears,
Speaker 1: many of them in shock, and we drove away from Graymorrow.
Speaker 1: None of the three free Orc survived the battle. Goren
Speaker 1: died and paled on a spear while holding the gate.
Speaker 1: Fedric was killed by an arrow that struck her in
Speaker 1: the back of the neck as she and Golfing Bull
Speaker 1: ran golf and Bull, Fenric's lover turned and stood his
Speaker 1: ground over her body. I didn't know any of that yet.
Speaker 1: I found out when Mirinda found out two days later.
Speaker 1: Maybe all three of them would have survived if I
Speaker 1: hadn't interfered, and they had all fought with equal numbers.
Speaker 1: Maybe more of them would have died. Maybe I can
Speaker 1: forgive myself. Maybe there's nothing to forgive. In the back
Speaker 1: of the truck, by the light coming in through a
Speaker 1: crack in the steel wall, I read Golfing Bull's note.
Speaker 1: All my life, I didn't give a shit about anything.
Speaker 1: I liked weed and metal in whatever counterculture trend was
Speaker 1: big in a given year, but my heart wasn't in it.
Speaker 1: I just went through the motions until I became an orc,
Speaker 1: saying I'm an orc and meaning it. Isn't like a
Speaker 1: transman saying he's a man and meaning it. Gender is
Speaker 1: a social construct that goes back as far as I understand,
Speaker 1: to the beginning of humanity. There has always been gender,
Speaker 1: and there have always been people who transgress the roles
Speaker 1: assigned to them at birth. An orc is a social
Speaker 1: construct that we just fucking made up. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess the orc is an archetype too, but it's a
Speaker 1: fantasy archetype. We know what's make believe. Make believe is
Speaker 1: what gave my life, meaning, I promise you that for me.
Speaker 1: The day we decided we were orcs was the first
Speaker 1: day that the sun shone benevolence upon the world. It
Speaker 1: was the first day that color radiated from everything I saw.
Speaker 1: It was the first day that the rain on my
Speaker 1: roof tapped out codes of meaning. It was the first
Speaker 1: day of my life, my real life, my first Also,
Speaker 1: I fell in love with the world. Everyone finds meaning
Speaker 1: in different ways. I found meaning by believing in some
Speaker 1: ship we made up and letting that be real. I
Speaker 1: was born Jason Sanchez. I died gulfing Bull. I'm not sorry.
Speaker 1: That was great. That was so fun. I mean, not
Speaker 1: my narration, the story. The story, not my narration. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: The second we finished, we all just got that little
Speaker 1: smirk on her face. Think that was delightful. Yeah, Margaret,
Speaker 1: you're the best. Yeah. I mean, if I were going
Speaker 1: to be an orc, there would be rifles but problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is absolutely This is like a really good example
Speaker 1: of what I mean that when I write utopian fiction
Speaker 1: or like fiction about other societies, I'm not saying, hey,
Speaker 1: everyone go do this or like this is what people
Speaker 1: should do. No, I mean I liked that. I like
Speaker 1: I like that. I've had that experience in other cultures,
Speaker 1: you know, places like slab City and different kind of
Speaker 1: encampments and whatnot. That I've spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: and as a journalist where it's like I'm fascinated by
Speaker 1: and I respect aspects of this, but like, I also
Speaker 1: think some of these things are that you're doing or
Speaker 1: dumb or I don't understand why you do it, or
Speaker 1: this isn't like you know, but you don't Your notes
Speaker 1: don't matter. You know, that's not your job, although actually
Speaker 1: having an impact in that way is is kind of Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Somebody go, somebody go make an work village. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll go out there, I'll report on it. We'll go.
Speaker 1: It'll be fine. Don't take the band name all sort
Speaker 1: though I already stole that. There's a number of dope
Speaker 1: band names in here. All right, people should make orc folk.
Speaker 1: I'd be really excited to hear make orc folk abandon
Speaker 1: civilization to live as fantasy creatures. Um, fight fascists, all
Speaker 1: that good stuff. Yeah, Margaret, is there anything you'd like
Speaker 1: to plug? Well? I do have a new book out,
Speaker 1: or a reprint of an older book called A Country
Speaker 1: Ghost that is a more directly utopian book. It's out
Speaker 1: from a K Press, came out last month, and um,
Speaker 1: I think that's it. That's the main thing. Oh, you
Speaker 1: can support me on Patreon, although it's no longer supporting
Speaker 1: me on Patreon. It's supporting a publishing thing that I'm
Speaker 1: starting back up with people called Strangers and a Tangled Wilderness.
Speaker 1: And it will publish fiction and memoir and like the
Speaker 1: kind of like more culture side of radical politics and
Speaker 1: less the like theory and stuff. What's the patreon patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness? Because why
Speaker 1: would I pick short names for things? Don't do that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we have we have a live show coming up right,
Speaker 1: Robert h. That doesn't sound like us. It's a virtual
Speaker 1: live show of for Behind the Bastard to put our
Speaker 1: friend prop that's on Thursday February allegedly moment House dot
Speaker 1: com slash Behind the Bastards. I can't confirm or deny that. Okay,
Speaker 1: you gotta a lawyer on here before you can sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's get Moira on the horn and where come on
Speaker 1: the horn and tell us if we're actually doing this
Speaker 1: thing that show? Yeah? Are we also? Are we alive?
Speaker 1: That's another question? How I text here that most days? Um?
Speaker 1: All right, well, thank you Margaret, and thank you all
Speaker 1: for tuning in in the first year of the rest
Speaker 1: of the next year. It could happen here as a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: find sources for It could Happen here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.