Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Book Club Club book Club book Club, and welcome to
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media book Club, which is your weekly fiction
Speaker 2: podcast of book club that comes from Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Marta Kiljoy, and my guest today is
Speaker 2: gar Hi Gare.
Speaker 3: Hello.
Speaker 2: How's your Let's pretend like it's Sunday, because that's when
Speaker 2: people are listening.
Speaker 4: How's your Sunday going?
Speaker 2: Pretty good? Isn't it Easter coming up soon? You would
Speaker 2: think I would be the person in this conversation who
Speaker 2: would know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, really, really really betray your Catholic upbringing, Margaret.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is two weeks from now ish and one
Speaker 2: week from when this podcast comes out.
Speaker 5: Okay, so we still you still have time to get
Speaker 5: your Easter feast together.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 5: Yeah, in order to do my weird pagan celebration that
Speaker 5: we've decided to call Christianity exciting.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hello, dear listener, Margaret was wrong. It is Easter. I sure,
Speaker 1: hope you have your little chocolate eggies ready for the celebration.
Speaker 1: Eat well, eat well.
Speaker 2: Actually that's a good segue into today's thing, today's story,
Speaker 2: because today's.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm not gonna tell you what it's about. It's
Speaker 5: a story you'll hear what it's about.
Speaker 4: But wait, wait, wait are stories about things? Some of them?
Speaker 5: I just thought there were things that happen. Yes, Actually,
Speaker 5: all fiction is true. That's what the word fiction means.
Speaker 2: Everything possible to be believed is the image is an
Speaker 2: image of the truth, said William Blake.
Speaker 3: So true, bestie.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So today's story is called The Last Beat of My
Speaker 2: Heart and it is by Edward Morris.
Speaker 4: It is Edward Morris. Well.
Speaker 2: Edward Morris is a proud pagan who studies Buddhism and
Speaker 2: is a queer, disabled retired bouncer from Portland. He's a
Speaker 2: twenty eleven nominee for the Pushcart Prize in Literature. He
Speaker 2: was nominated for the two thousand and nine Reesling in
Speaker 2: the two thousand and five BSFA. His short stories have
Speaker 2: been published over one hundred and fifty times and have
Speaker 2: made it into Italian, Polish, Finnish, Spanish, Hungarian and even Canadian.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, which is the language that you grew up speaking?
Speaker 3: Yeah? That was my native tongue. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He has a novel called Alphabet of Lightning that is
Speaker 2: out from Broken Eyebooks. The Last Beat of my Heart
Speaker 2: by Edward Morris zero zero zero one zero zero zero
Speaker 2: two power. The plug is seated in the wall by
Speaker 2: spinly little hands. The juice flows. The tiny piercing green
Speaker 2: light comes on. Two young girl's voices, rapped and fascinated
Speaker 2: by an old new toy. Do you remember when they
Speaker 2: used to use these for real? Before even CDs? As
Speaker 2: if I'm only two years older than you, It's eighties music.
Speaker 4: Look on the.
Speaker 2: Label all different, okay, So how do you make it play? Ahem,
Speaker 2: let me see sis side a stop auto reverse, crunch, crunch, crunch,
Speaker 2: blank tape hiss. Then, just like Heaven The Cure Electra Records,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven, I have to put this song first
Speaker 2: on the tape. Laurie will know why it was playing
Speaker 2: the last time we hung out. It was playing when
Speaker 2: she kissed me. That's why it goes first. There are
Speaker 2: rules and steps to everything, everything a kiss, leaving your body,
Speaker 2: taking a punch, making a mixtape. Laurie's older brother, George,
Speaker 2: is a DJ, and he says you can't put more
Speaker 2: than one song by the same band on the same
Speaker 2: side of the tape. It just doesn't work. I understand that,
Speaker 2: just like I understand that I'm stuck here stuck being
Speaker 2: a kid, stuck doing this thing that takes forever. There
Speaker 2: are parts about this tape and this night that I
Speaker 2: don't want to remember, but I can't shut this off,
Speaker 2: Like it's all a bad dream and I'm just about
Speaker 2: to wake up, except that I never do.
Speaker 4: I never do.
Speaker 2: It's this hot night, August twenty first, and seventh grade
Speaker 2: is about to start in a week, and things are happening.
Speaker 2: I'm pissed off at Dad. I'm going to sneak out
Speaker 2: and go to what's left of the dance anyway, after
Speaker 2: i make this mixtape, I already feel like I'm starting
Speaker 2: to leave my body again. I think that when you
Speaker 2: get out of your body, you have to learn to
Speaker 2: either stay out and move around or come back and
Speaker 2: make yourself move. There are rules and steps to it.
Speaker 2: I want to know them. See, I just learned how
Speaker 2: to leave my body for longer than a minute or
Speaker 2: a second or whatever. I'm going to try it again soon.
Speaker 2: I remember all the words, are enough of the ones
Speaker 2: that I took away from Uncle Walter's house on the
Speaker 2: last day. I remember how I do I do. I
Speaker 2: remember how to take a punch too. I've had the
Speaker 2: practice you have to learn how to hit, back, block, fall,
Speaker 2: or hide. Even when a body thinks it can't, the
Speaker 2: mind finds a way. It's like that anytime something awful
Speaker 2: happens very fast, I have a lot of time to
Speaker 2: think until until until, oh God, I'm done copying the
Speaker 2: last song on this tape, and Dad's passed out, and
Speaker 2: I can sneak out to the dance. Chris Clark from
Speaker 2: down the street is bringing this giant bottle of homemade
Speaker 2: wine he ganged from his dad. And the last time
Speaker 2: I went to a dance, the coolest girl I know
Speaker 2: kissed me. This time, I'm bringing the tape just in
Speaker 2: case Laurie's there. Anything can happen when I'm done, When
Speaker 2: the tape is done, when I'm Saturday Night a Holocaust.
Speaker 2: Dead Kennedy's Alternative Tentacles nineteen eighty two, which is a
Speaker 2: thing that you can buy because it's an album, much
Speaker 2: like the things that you can buy that we advertise,
Speaker 2: which also bear the complexity of being anti capitalists like
Speaker 2: the Dead Kennedys and yet making their living.
Speaker 4: Through the sale of products.
Speaker 2: Here's ads, and we're bec done. It's still now, It's
Speaker 2: still then. I'm still right here wanting something I can
Speaker 2: never have, dreaming the real world again where it is
Speaker 2: some year I don't even want to hear. I don't
Speaker 2: want to hear it. Don't want, don't, don't. Decay has
Speaker 2: its rules and steps too. I don't get played much anymore.
Speaker 2: I haven't. I can't. I can't remember Laurie's face. I can,
Speaker 2: I can. I have no idea if I remember it right.
Speaker 2: But I remember Laurie's mouth, like raindrops and strawberries, the
Speaker 2: way she put her hands in my hair and looked
Speaker 2: into my eyes just like her, like nobody and nothing
Speaker 2: else but her, which was the only way I ever
Speaker 2: wanted her to look in my eyes. I remember her face.
Speaker 2: I think I have to.
Speaker 4: Believe that it is Laurie's face.
Speaker 2: I have no idea where I'll go when I finally go,
Speaker 2: when the ribbon on this tape breaks, or its iron
Speaker 2: oxide emulsion eventually cycles down to nothing. I was almost
Speaker 2: done learning how to leave my body in dreams and
Speaker 2: sometimes awake when the awful thing happened, the one I
Speaker 2: don't want to remember. I was almost done learning to
Speaker 2: say those words that Uncle Walter was saying that one
Speaker 2: day when I walked in on him in the back
Speaker 2: room of his garage where the kids weren't supposed to
Speaker 2: go when we were over to visit, back when I
Speaker 2: was only eleven and there were still visits. I heard
Speaker 2: Uncle Walter saying those words when I saw him walk
Speaker 2: up out of his body. He was chanting them in
Speaker 2: his throat like he could sing in three different tones.
Speaker 2: But Uncle Walter wasn't singing really, He was sort of
Speaker 2: shaping the notes where his body was because his essence was.
Speaker 2: At the time, I lost my balance and stumbled where
Speaker 2: I was standing and trying to be quiet, cracking the
Speaker 2: back of my head on the doorframe. Uncle Walter's essence
Speaker 2: was walking up out of his body where he sat
Speaker 2: in that broken backed, farty, old lazy boy of his
Speaker 2: in some kind of strange posture. Then his essence stopped
Speaker 2: walking up out of him. What happened wasn't pretty. Uncle
Speaker 2: Walter ended the process. He was startled I had startled him.
Speaker 2: We exchanged some words of our own then Uncle Walter
Speaker 2: and me, not very nice ones. He cut me out
Speaker 2: of his life until he wrote that letter. We were
Speaker 2: both horrified. We should have calmed down. Later on, by myself,
Speaker 2: I parroted those initial words I heard Uncle Walter say
Speaker 2: to make himself walk up out of his body. I
Speaker 2: said them as well as I could in the dark
Speaker 2: in my own room. Later, I could feel the words
Speaker 2: in the back of my throat. It felt like swallowing
Speaker 2: a bee. I needed to sit down so I could
Speaker 2: stand up out of myself and climb the spiderweb ladder.
Speaker 2: The silver cord thing that came up out of my
Speaker 2: head and pulled me to my feet, making me look
Speaker 2: toward the ceiling and sing more of what weren't quite words.
Speaker 2: I could sense that there was a world on the
Speaker 2: other end of that silver cord, maybe even one with
Speaker 2: lions and wardrobes and scary sorceress queens, giants and singing
Speaker 2: harps and magic beans, anything I could imagine. Maybe I
Speaker 2: tried and tried to get up out of here. Maybe
Speaker 2: I never wanted to come back, but couldn't figure out
Speaker 2: how to cut.
Speaker 4: Off and float away. Not in time, Not in time.
Speaker 2: I could do it in school if I really thought
Speaker 2: about it for a whole minutes, pretend like I was sleeping,
Speaker 2: and then go out through the top of my head
Speaker 2: along the ceiling towards the clean, bright light that whispered, come,
Speaker 2: but I couldn't yet I was still alive. It wasn't
Speaker 2: time Rabbit over you the damned Big Beat Records, nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three. I've been having better luck leaving my body
Speaker 2: right before I lay down to sleep while saying those
Speaker 2: weird words I somehow knew in my bones to be
Speaker 2: Scott's Gaelic, the ones I heard when I walked in
Speaker 2: on what I shouldn't have seen. Then there were the
Speaker 2: nasty words we had, and the first ones that good
Speaker 2: old Walter ever said on the subject shortly before that,
Speaker 2: when he came back into himself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll teach you to do that.
Speaker 2: When your balls drop, Uncle Walter told me when I
Speaker 2: walked in on him when he got done being startled.
Speaker 2: But his dark eyes were still doing that weird thing
Speaker 2: they did sometimes. The lights were starting to flicker in
Speaker 2: that room, the way that lights always did around Uncle
Speaker 2: Walter when he got upset. They did when he walked
Speaker 2: back into his body, just before he spoke. First, I
Speaker 2: never asked the question that immediately preceded his actual comment.
Speaker 2: Uncle Walter pulled the question straight from my head. I
Speaker 2: felt him do it, and that made me remember something
Speaker 2: even earlier, the way the candles flickered in the garage.
Speaker 2: When I was six and I walked in on Uncle
Speaker 2: Walter and Dad shouting at each other. There was some
Speaker 2: kind of a circle drawn on the concrete, half finished.
Speaker 2: It didn't look like paint. They looked like they were
Speaker 2: going to fight. I remember the nasty words that they
Speaker 2: had that day, too. I remember all the nasty words
Speaker 2: everyone Dad, or Uncle Walter or anyone else ever said.
Speaker 2: I have to strange, remember Laurie's face, but I remember
Speaker 2: all those nasty words. Dad never talked to Uncle Walter
Speaker 2: again after I was eleven, but I could pick who
Speaker 2: to listen to, one or neither. I can't be in
Speaker 2: touch too much. Uncle Walter wrote in that one weird
Speaker 2: letter not long later, it would break a lot of words,
Speaker 2: whatever the hell that meant, and cause a lot of
Speaker 2: problems between me and your dad that I would never
Speaker 2: ever be able to solve. Not like there aren't enough
Speaker 2: of those anyway. I'm sorry, have a good life, Walter.
Speaker 2: I brought this on myself now I have forever to
Speaker 2: be sorry. But we don't talk about things like that
Speaker 2: in this house, not until this tape is done. Then
Speaker 2: maybe we will because I'm done. I was almost done.
Speaker 2: It's almost done. I'm almost done rubber ring the Smiths
Speaker 2: Sire nineteen eighty seven. And you know what else is problematic,
Speaker 2: like the Smiths.
Speaker 5: The advertisements that you may or may not hear on
Speaker 5: this podcast.
Speaker 2: We've been having some bad ones lately, and we've been
Speaker 2: working to get them out of here. But in general,
Speaker 2: if you think to yourself, do Margaret and Garrison support
Speaker 2: you becoming a jailer? Think I can speak for both
Speaker 2: of us when I say the answer is yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: you could probably refer to our body of work.
Speaker 3: And come to that conclusion yourself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: And you know, so here the other ads that are
Speaker 2: hopefully not for the state of Israel or becoming a jailer.
Speaker 4: Hopefully those have been excised by.
Speaker 6: Now and we're back.
Speaker 2: I am an endlessly repeating placeholder on the skin of
Speaker 2: this emulsion that decays down to nothing even now. Lodged
Speaker 2: in the hot, dusty left hand cassette deck of a
Speaker 2: little Sears component stereo I bought with lawnmowing money in
Speaker 2: eighty nine.
Speaker 3: That was it last year.
Speaker 2: It has a CD deck in the top, but I
Speaker 2: don't have any CDs just a whole bunch of these
Speaker 2: mixtapes I started making for my big sister Hannah's old
Speaker 2: records before Dad burned half of them for having skulls
Speaker 2: and stuff on them and band names like Suicidal Tendencies
Speaker 2: or the Butthole Surfers nineteen eighty nine. Last year, when
Speaker 2: everything but Dad made sense, I can tell where the
Speaker 2: skip is, the little leader between each song. Just once
Speaker 2: I got stuck, stuck, stuck, and now the smiths are
Speaker 2: telling me not to forget the songs that saved my life.
Speaker 2: I was wearing George's big DJ headphones when I snaked
Speaker 2: the extra long cord fifty feet through the room and
Speaker 2: out onto the roof to go smoke a cigarette. That time,
Speaker 2: I didn't care whether Dad smelled it. You could damn
Speaker 2: well come up and yank me down. Mom was on
Speaker 2: the back porch twenty feet below me. I was more
Speaker 2: worried about her. She always went back there and did
Speaker 2: a lot of wash or dishes or something to get away,
Speaker 2: to get her head away. I remember Walter yelling at
Speaker 2: Dad in his garage when I was six, don't you
Speaker 2: hurt my sister, you lousy drunk. But back then I
Speaker 2: couldn't put two and two together and get anything. I
Speaker 2: was six six six. All of a sudden, the back
Speaker 2: door banged, and Mom was screaming up at me, Get downstairs,
Speaker 2: get downstairs.
Speaker 4: And I saw.
Speaker 2: Hallelujah Leonard Cohen, Columbia, nineteen eighty four. I saw the
Speaker 2: column of fire lick up the side of the back porch,
Speaker 2: the flamethrower belch from the dryer vent. I had time
Speaker 2: to be fascinated, just time. I opened my mouth to scream,
Speaker 2: and I didn't even think about what I was screaming.
Speaker 2: And I was screaming the words, those words, those sketchy
Speaker 2: Uncle Walter words at the top of my lungs. I
Speaker 2: saw Mom jump back a bit and make the sign
Speaker 2: of the cross. And then those headphones had a long cord.
Speaker 2: I mentioned that not silver, but curly plastic coated copper wire.
Speaker 2: It led back in the window to the tape deck.
Speaker 2: When the awful thing happened, I remember the song, the
Speaker 2: one I was copying, The last Beat of My Heart.
Speaker 2: Susie and the Banshees, Polydor Records, nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 4: Ah God.
Speaker 2: Susie's operatic voice starts out slow and goes up up
Speaker 2: up as my skin goes up, up, up, and my
Speaker 2: heart just keeps going faster, faster, faster, And to the
Speaker 2: last beat is immolation. The last beat is twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: eighteen seventeen. Click Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, auto reverse play.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I dream like now or the other dream I
Speaker 2: had where powers Berg FD put my tape deck in
Speaker 2: a bin with a bunch of stuff to take to
Speaker 2: the Goodwill. I may be there still, but dreams decay.
Speaker 2: Part of me knows that, just like part of me
Speaker 2: knows it was a bad idea to go out that way,
Speaker 2: whether I was right or not. When I was only
Speaker 2: halfway through making this mixtape for LORI no reason payback
Speaker 2: for that kiss. It was just after dinner. The old
Speaker 2: man popped me in the mouth for spiking at my mohawk.
Speaker 2: Then he called my music satanic. I said what I said,
Speaker 2: and then Mom goes, don't use Dad's logic against him, honey,
Speaker 2: it bruises his ego. And then he hit or a
Speaker 2: lick too. And then that was an hour or so ago.
Speaker 2: It's almost seven. I'm away to the roof of smoke.
Speaker 2: Just as soon as I finish, I'll leave another tape
Speaker 2: in maybe the Misfits or gg Allen, just to give
Speaker 2: Dad nightmares when this song is done. Those tapes are
Speaker 2: in the file cabinet where I keep my smokes, where
Speaker 2: Dad doesn't know. The drawer goes all the way back.
Speaker 2: And there are other things, the ones I started making
Speaker 2: the words of my own that you won't find on
Speaker 2: any backwards records because the witches in our family never
Speaker 2: worshiped Satan.
Speaker 4: Dad then crack.
Speaker 2: I remember his fist connecting with my mouth, flattening my
Speaker 2: lips to my teeth, knocking me sideways and down. I remember,
Speaker 2: I remember the blood of a newly wakened witch spilling
Speaker 2: an anger on that floor, and the curse I shrieked
Speaker 2: at my father, the curse that comes back to me
Speaker 2: one thousandfold as I stop the world and melt, and
Speaker 2: the first song comes on again, and I wake into
Speaker 2: the hot August dream a little while longer, restless and
Speaker 2: wanting to be out the door, waiting to finish this
Speaker 2: mixtape and bring it down to the school dance. That night,
Speaker 2: Dad accused me of talking to Uncle Walter behind his back.
Speaker 2: I wish Uncle Walter and I would have talked a
Speaker 2: good bit more that's the end of the story.
Speaker 3: I have a one main question.
Speaker 5: Okay, what's a tape deck?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, there was a cartoon called
Speaker 2: Dark Wing Duck and one of the jokes, the only
Speaker 2: joke I remember from this pretty mid car tune. YEA
Speaker 2: was the younger kid being like records are those like
Speaker 2: big CDs? And I remember thinking, I'm in like fourth
Speaker 2: or fifth grade. I remember thinking it's a pretty bad joke.
Speaker 5: Wow, wow, Margaret, I'm sorry, my sense of humor is
Speaker 5: worse than your fourth grade sense of humor. That's right,
Speaker 5: I'm attempting to say. I just I think it's really fast.
Speaker 5: I love the like the like what's a fax machine jokes?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I actually really like them.
Speaker 5: I briefly had a tape deck, but I transitioned to
Speaker 5: CDs pretty soon. Yeah, but I do remember some old,
Speaker 5: some old it's probably some kind of like weird like
Speaker 5: Christian music tapes that I had.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: My first tape was Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream that my
Speaker 2: sister dubbed for me, with a bunch of ram on
Speaker 2: the other side and some new water.
Speaker 3: Okay, well it's like two out of three.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's I'm not a big Smashing Pumpkins fan anymore.
Speaker 2: But new order thumbs.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And the what was the first like CD you bought?
Speaker 5: Oh, this is probably gonna be embarrassing. It might have
Speaker 5: been in an Owl City CD, which is which is
Speaker 5: quite embarrassing.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: So the reason that like old people like to think
Speaker 2: that young people don't know anything about the past is
Speaker 2: that old people don't know anything about the present or
Speaker 2: the recent past.
Speaker 5: I have no idea who al City is. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: you actually did know what a tape deck was. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And and I knew all but one of one of
Speaker 5: the bands in the story, which I'm which I'm actually
Speaker 5: pleasantly surprised by.
Speaker 4: Hell yeah, no, owl.
Speaker 3: City was like a like.
Speaker 5: A Christian electronic like sound producer. Oh okay, the guy
Speaker 5: actually created most of the sounds for like the fifth
Speaker 5: generation of the iPhone. So he both made music, which
Speaker 5: some of which is like okay, but like like Christian Moby,
Speaker 5: I don't I don't know what Moby is. Maybe, oh,
Speaker 5: interested add that to my list?
Speaker 4: Okay, uh self?
Speaker 5: Right? Just Vegan who is almost almost radical, who made
Speaker 5: a lot of electronic music in the nineties. It kind
Speaker 5: of sounds like the postal Service, but slightly more electronic
Speaker 5: and slightly worse. That's kind of that's kind of owl
Speaker 5: City in my mind.
Speaker 2: Okay, I like the postal Service. I also like the
Speaker 2: post I don't know if I like the worst version,
Speaker 2: but see that's the thing, right, Yeah, I found that
Speaker 2: very fun. It is It is definitely always startling once
Speaker 2: you get sent back into your body by another like
Speaker 2: corporeal form entering the room that you're traveling from.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that always that always does take a sec to adjust.
Speaker 5: Like I can totally handle like some like grotesque like
Speaker 5: earth spirit showing up, but if another like actual human
Speaker 5: being walks in, that's like incredibly jarring.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I like this story because it's it's a magic set
Speaker 2: in the real world story that feels like real, like
Speaker 2: it feels like yeah, yeah, absolutely casting fireballs or whatever.
Speaker 2: He's no, this is this is what like actual like
Speaker 2: occult practice looks like. Yeah, and then just talking about
Speaker 2: how like you know, there's the whole genre is not
Speaker 2: the right word, but maybe trope of like people with
Speaker 2: shitty parents, especially dads, who need to find ways to escape,
Speaker 2: and they escape into their music, right and I like
Speaker 2: the idea of taking that literally and seeing what it
Speaker 2: looks like. I love that the silver chord, you know,
Speaker 2: the headphones with their cord is the same as like
Speaker 2: the silver chord that allows you to move in the
Speaker 2: astral plane.
Speaker 4: I just I loved that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I also am a sucker for this like
Speaker 2: generational thing that has come down through time but is
Speaker 2: like not wanted the modern context, you know, the like
Speaker 2: the weird Scott's Gaelic magic or whatever that they're referring to.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it definitely has like like a like an
Speaker 5: American Gothic kind of feel like doing magic and like
Speaker 5: an old like basement garage as opposed to like doing
Speaker 5: it in like a temple or like cathedral, and like
Speaker 5: the like the like the general like.
Speaker 3: Western esoteric tradition. Yeah, where you have like robes and.
Speaker 5: You're doing like ceremonial stuff versus like you're drawing chalk
Speaker 5: circles and like the basement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and laying on a lazy boy in order to
Speaker 2: be comfy while you leave your body.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's like there's like a dryer and like washing
Speaker 5: machine in the background 'or like that's Yeah, I kind
Speaker 5: of enjoy that style of like Gothic American combined with
Speaker 5: this like very like low fi occult current, which is
Speaker 5: honestly pretty well reflected in the uh in the mixtape uh.
Speaker 3: He and all of the artists mentioned.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also funny. I usually don't like stories where
Speaker 2: I'm not entirely sure what's happening, Like.
Speaker 5: I actually who interesting. I love stories that I don't
Speaker 5: know what's happening.
Speaker 2: Okay, and for me, like I feel like often I
Speaker 2: think sometimes it's just and is not the case. I
Speaker 2: really like the way that I don't totally know what
Speaker 2: happened in this story. I've read it several times, right sure,
Speaker 2: And I am not entirely certain whether this is the
Speaker 2: voice that is coming from the mixtape. Like I'm not
Speaker 2: certain whether the framing story of the two girls who
Speaker 2: find an old tape, whether they're like hearing this as
Speaker 2: an audio narration between songs. I also don't know whether
Speaker 2: like the idea is that the protagonist has died and
Speaker 2: then like is now sort of living in this tape
Speaker 2: inasmuch as they're living anywhere, Like I don't quite know,
Speaker 2: and I actually like that I don't know, and I usually.
Speaker 5: Don't I definitely love stuff where it has that level
Speaker 5: of like it has the level of ambiguity that I
Speaker 5: experienced my actual life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like when that happens, when.
Speaker 5: I'm like, I'm not sure what the voices in my
Speaker 5: head that I'm talking to, Like, where do they come from?
Speaker 3: Is that? Is that just me?
Speaker 5: I really appreciate that sort of thing, And like, yeah,
Speaker 5: the the notion that you can like continue to live
Speaker 5: in some way through a recording that gets played back, Yeah,
Speaker 5: I definitely find to be a very fun concept and
Speaker 5: very like evocative of like the whole point of making
Speaker 5: art as well. It's like, is our just this really
Speaker 5: like almost sad attempt at immortality?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but no, I definitely enjoy.
Speaker 5: When I have I don't have like a firm ground
Speaker 5: underneath me, because I feel like the ground we experience,
Speaker 5: I think people assume is slightly more firm than what
Speaker 5: it actually may be.
Speaker 2: I think that that was like a big part of
Speaker 2: the growing up process for me was learning that the
Speaker 2: the ground under our feet is not as firm as
Speaker 2: as we thought, and like realizing like once you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: there isn't really a neurotypical you know, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: like and the more you realize that, you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: everyone is just different levels of like higher low functioning crazy,
Speaker 2: Like it's useful.
Speaker 5: And all the stuff they're talking about in the story
Speaker 5: of like with with their mention of like dreams and
Speaker 5: waking up from dreams and the slow intermeshing of dream
Speaker 5: and wakefulness.
Speaker 3: And I think a lot of these concepts for young.
Speaker 5: People specifically, are easier to envision via dreams, Like it's
Speaker 5: hard to figure out where like the bottom of a
Speaker 5: dream is, like how like how far can you keep going?
Speaker 5: Sometimes you think, oh, this is all right, this is
Speaker 5: just I'm awake, I'm doing going through my tasks, and
Speaker 5: then boom, you're totally somewhere else.
Speaker 3: You're like, oh, that was actually a dream.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you just see like this like almost like
Speaker 5: eternal descent and how there's certain ideas of that that
Speaker 5: are absolutely reflected in our kind of everyday waking existence
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, no, I.
Speaker 2: Love all this stuff and it actually ties into I'm
Speaker 2: gonna read the notes from the author from Edward Morris
Speaker 2: that he sent me. He said about the story one,
Speaker 2: it ends with the stories for Jackie Kessler and the
Speaker 2: ties that bind, and then the notes about the stories
Speaker 2: I could rant for a week. It's of course mostly
Speaker 2: drawn from life, but it's also an homage to the
Speaker 2: great writer who's work crossed my axis at the same time,
Speaker 2: Jackie Kessler and her horrifying the ties that bind. There's
Speaker 2: a two thousand and six story her narrator didn't get
Speaker 2: stuck on a mixtape. She got her face eaten off
Speaker 2: by Jack Russell. It was more of a mean girl's scenario,
Speaker 2: but it hit me so hard I had to try
Speaker 2: my own. I have enough other things to rant about
Speaker 2: the subject matter for a full blown interview, trying to
Speaker 2: keep this concise. That was a basically he was like,
Speaker 2: there's so much to it that I kind of can't
Speaker 2: get into it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I think that I think.
Speaker 5: Underlines some of what we were talking about a little
Speaker 5: bit with yeah, like the uh, how you can like
Speaker 5: capture the human form within like linear experiences of art yea,
Speaker 5: even though I would say it's it's hard to usually
Speaker 5: view the human form in that fashion because it is
Speaker 5: both a linear experience but now it also exists independent
Speaker 5: of linear time, Like it is this this thing from before,
Speaker 5: but now it could be played in the future and
Speaker 5: it's still there in the future, it's still repeating that
Speaker 5: same moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 5: I think the day that this comes out, I'll be
Speaker 5: investigating ghosts at the Oregon Ghost Conference. And there's certainly
Speaker 5: some people that view ghosts in a similar way. They
Speaker 5: view ghosts as like a moment of a person caught
Speaker 5: in time that keeps replaying the same action over and
Speaker 5: over again. They're not really like even like interactable, but
Speaker 5: it's just it's just replaying this thing that like imprinted onto.
Speaker 5: Like I don't quite know how tape decks work, but
Speaker 5: I assume if you have like two tapes in a
Speaker 5: little bit of the first one can get pushed into
Speaker 5: the second one if it like is done in directly.
Speaker 5: Possibly I'm totally like constructing a terrible metaphor, but as
Speaker 5: if like a person going through a specific motion was
Speaker 5: so strong or impactful to them that it gets imprinted
Speaker 5: on the next person who's going to.
Speaker 3: Enter into this space as well.
Speaker 5: Right, And there's certainly people that view ghosts in that framework,
Speaker 5: which I find to be a really interesting way to
Speaker 5: think about that concept.
Speaker 2: I like that I have ever told you my theory
Speaker 2: on ghosts. I don't think so My theory on ghosts
Speaker 2: is that I don't believe in ghosts, but it's a
Speaker 2: conscious choice because of the.
Speaker 5: Way that I live, Like, I mean, that's more or
Speaker 5: less my view on ghosts generally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because I'm like, at some point I was like,
Speaker 2: I you know, I was like, I live in a
Speaker 2: van by myself, sleeping in the middle of the woods.
Speaker 2: And then later I was like, now I'm in a
Speaker 2: cabin in the middle of the woods, and now I'm
Speaker 2: in a house in the middle of woods.
Speaker 5: It just doesn't do me any good believe that, like,
Speaker 5: you know, totally something to be around that has mean,
Speaker 5: that's that's kind of some more of my like chasmetic background.
Speaker 2: But yes, absolutely, yeah, because I mean, and that doesn't
Speaker 2: make me right or wrong.
Speaker 4: It just makes it like it's the way that I.
Speaker 3: Need to cope.
Speaker 5: Believing a ghost would just more or less be like
Speaker 5: an inconvenience. They start of how the human mind works. Yeah,
Speaker 5: sometimes it's easier just be like, nah, I'm just I'm
Speaker 5: just not going to deal with that right now. Yeah,
Speaker 5: Like I've I've totally thought about which beliefs I currently
Speaker 5: hold that would that I would change if I were
Speaker 5: to move into like an isolated forested area. Yeah, of
Speaker 5: course I would change certain beliefs about how reality works.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: There used to be, like, you know, I used to
Speaker 2: live in this this off grid barn and guests would
Speaker 2: stay in the other room in the barn, and they
Speaker 2: would like report ghost sightings in this barn. And so
Speaker 2: it came up at a meeting people were like, oh,
Speaker 2: we should talk about the ghost in the barn. And
Speaker 2: I was the only one who lived in the barn
Speaker 2: full time. So I was like, there is no ghost
Speaker 2: in the barn on the agenda. And they were like,
Speaker 2: why are being so dismissed, And I was like, because
Speaker 2: I live here alone.
Speaker 5: Like I mean, that is kind of why I appreciate
Speaker 5: the role of like the city magician. Because you're surrounded
Speaker 5: by people, you have a little bit more flexibility to
Speaker 5: allow certain things into your like orbit of being and
Speaker 5: like your orbit of experience. But I absolutely like respect
Speaker 5: the kind of witches and mystics that like take the
Speaker 5: hermit path and and like go out and I can
Speaker 5: totally see myself doing that at some point, Like I
Speaker 5: totally respect the log Lady journey, yeah, because yeah, I
Speaker 5: think that is an incredibly valuable method of kind of
Speaker 5: experienced reality, and I think it can it can have
Speaker 5: you also be much closer to certain other types of
Speaker 5: experiences than in the hustle and bustle and constant like
Speaker 5: consciousness and light that is just perforating human cities.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think they do.
Speaker 2: Both have really specific advantages for like ways of finding wisdom,
Speaker 2: you know, I think that. Yeah, But before we get
Speaker 2: totally off track, we should probably and end this particular episode,
Speaker 2: and to end it with plugs from Edward Morris. Edward
Speaker 2: Morris says broken Eyebooks dot Com is a wonderful small
Speaker 2: press that needs everyone's help. They run Gwendolen Kisseday, they
Speaker 2: run Matthew Bartlett, and they gave my highly experimental alphabet
Speaker 2: of Lightning a hope. Alphabet of Lightning is the beginning
Speaker 2: of a novel series called There Was a Crooked Man,
Speaker 2: which is about as long as Dies the Fire or
Speaker 2: maybe Song of Ice and Fire, which are two of
Speaker 2: my favorite book series. So that was promising. I haven't
Speaker 2: read this yet. This story was the first thing I
Speaker 2: read by Edward Morris, but I really liked it, so
Speaker 2: I'm going to look out more. Yeah, it is a challenged, difficult,
Speaker 2: challenging and tremendously important work that took me three decades
Speaker 2: to nail, and all my friends who have read it
Speaker 2: deliriously love it. So everyone should check out Alphabet of Lightning.
Speaker 2: And if they want to check out you and your
Speaker 2: work and they're not currently listening to that, it could
Speaker 2: happen here feed, but instead listening to my feed, where
Speaker 2: can they find you?
Speaker 5: Well, you can find me only it could have it
Speaker 5: here feed. I recently put together an update on the
Speaker 5: situation in Atlanta, Georgia ree Copcity. I tried to summarize
Speaker 5: the past six months of events in like forty five minutes,
Speaker 5: so that was a very very interesting task. And then
Speaker 5: also I'm I'm You can probably check out my my
Speaker 5: feed on Twitter dot com at Hungry Bowtie for some
Speaker 5: timely coverage of the Oregon Ghost Conference, which will eventually
Speaker 5: turn into some sort of episode, but not not until
Speaker 5: I have time to process the experience. The everyone should
Speaker 5: check out the Atlanta update. It's a it's a very
Speaker 5: good episode.
Speaker 2: And as for me, if you're not listening to this
Speaker 2: on the Cool People Did Cool Stuff Feed, I have
Speaker 2: a podcast It's called Cool People Did Cool Stuff it
Speaker 2: is about cool people who did cool stuff. And also
Speaker 2: my most recent substack post is called Afraid of the
Speaker 2: Woman in the Mirror and it is about transness and monstrosity.
Speaker 3: And about becoming Blenny Mary.
Speaker 2: And we'll see you all next week.
Speaker 3: It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 5: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 5: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 5: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 5: find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Speaker 5: Coolzonmedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening.