#Ol' Joey Scrums

[joules-per-second]

When I'm on long stretches of highway, I like to put on my proverbial Hyperanalyzing Fangirl hat for the sake of celebrating media I love. Here's my deep dive into a couple of my favorite songs, both written by dear friends (and recipients of the Quad-Beard), the Ol' Joey Scrums:

"Pipe Dream" has a fascinating interplay going on between the instrumentals and the lyrics. The words to this song are incredibly jaded - there's a touch of optimism towards the end of the chorus, but even that is tempered by the "maybe" of "maybe someday we'll be the show you'd like to see". But even as the verses are self-deprecating to the max, and the chorus just barely brings itself out of a well of pessimism long enough for a couple of "maybe"s and an "I think" that things will get better, the instrumentals are playing another story. Every instrument is unabashedly optimistic, and it makes you really believe in that grain of hope offered by the lyrics of the chorus. For a song that contains the lyric "weathered from the rain, the pain, the cocaine, and the tears", it's one of the most concentrated joy-inducing songs I know.

"Self-Destructing Man" provides quite a case of emotional whiplash from "Pipe Dream", as it paints a clear image of a very depressing carnival attraction: "Step on up, just a five dollar ticket; Stand in wonder at the self-destructing man exhibit". The most intriguing aspect of this song to me is the narrator, a carnival barker of sorts. Throughout the chorus, the perspective seems to shift until the barker turns into/is revealed to be the titular Self-Destructing Man himself, calling "Why me?". That in itself is quite interesting, but a fascinating thing happened when I sang it on my own one day - I realized the entire mood of the song changes when it is covered by a woman. And unlike the changes that occur from feminine covers of songs like "Only the Good Die Young" or "December 1963", it was NOT to give the song sapphic vibes. Instead, when I sang it, the image of the song was no longer a man feeling like he's onstage in all his woe and insecurity, and using the imagery of a carnival barker to express this - instead, it became a scene of an actual carnival barker who is absolutely reveling in the despair before her, mocking the man with the final "Why me?" of the chorus. Removing the implied "self" from the self-deprecation of the song transforms it into quite a villainous piece! I love seeing how the same song can change so much from how different artists cover it.

Anyway, thanks for reading. :) I simply had too many thoughts going on to not share them, especially when sharing them could lead just a couple more people to find some music they might really enjoy!

[jflashandclash]

Traitors of Olympus IV: The Fall of the Sun

Twenty-Eight: Calex

If All Your Friends Jump Off a Cliff…

             Calex wanted nothing to do with this. He wanted to be back at home, at his flat in St. Albans. There, he would be sipping a cup of tea, eating some of Winston’s terrible attempts at supper that he made when Tiwa was running late at the hospital, and hearing Gretchen complain about boys and Tom tease her.

           He wished he’d never learned who his biological father was, never read about the adventures of Percy Jackson and the Heroes of Olympus, and never stepped foot in America.

           He didn’t know what he was to do.

           Then again, both Reyna and Axel had directed him to the same task: go to Euna. Just what to do when he got there eluded him.

           Before he could mutter something about how Axel may have bollixed his chances with Reyna, he stumbled away from their fight.

           The two warriors clashed into each other, a scrambling mess of golden armor blackened by dried blood to a dull mustard, like they’d decided to have a good ol’ scrum in a pool of black pudding.

           He didn’t know which one of them to help and doubted he could help regardless. Their movements were so fast, so brutal that he knew he would just get in the way. Besides, especially with his Eros gifts, he knew their fight was a tad personal and not something he’d want to interrupt.

           He walked towards Euna, careful to step around the vines linked back to her. He edged around Thalia’s swearing, shifting, angry cocoon. He didn’t want to know what kind of butterfly he’d emerge if these vines captured him.

           Euna pocketed Persephone’s box and held a hand out towards him.

           The updraft was violent. His scarf fluttered up and smacked him in the face as he approached. The roar was deafening, though he thought he heard a crackled hum alongside it.

           Despite their surroundings, or maybe enhanced by the bleakness of their surroundings, Euna’s loveliness was distracting. She looked older, colder. Her skin glowed faintly. Red, spiky flowers, trumpeted purple ones, and tiny, white bell ones dangled from her hair and clothes, tenderly brushing against her skin. Dark purple berries, and clustered brilliant red ones formed a crown along her head. From what Calex vaguely remembered from the Alnwick Gardens, all of those were toxic. Vines were the only thing keeping her tattered outfit together, and Calex had an uncomfortable moment of wondering whether Euna was puppetting the vines or they were puppetting her.

           “Right, Euna. Hey,” he said lamely, taking her hand, hoping he wouldn’t immediately pass out from the poisons. How his journey would end, unconscious by the pit of Kaos: There and Not Back Again: a Story about a Dumb Prick by Calex Rupin McKenzie.

           Her hand was rough.

           He remembered her distant gaze when he’d given Euna her first kiss and how taken aback she was with their godly audience. (And, how he’d been more than a bit mortified that she’d taken a fancy to a woman right after, though Calex knew it had nothing to do with him and everything to do with Thalia.)

           Before, her dark eyes were always distant, bored. Now, they were focused, radiating hatred.

           He’d been more than a bit worried about her since Santiago killed Joey. But he never knew how to help.

           Now he could.

           “We’re going to jump,” she said.

           Calex swallowed. “I don’t follow.”

           Her gaze shifted over the cliff.

           Calex looked down. “Vertigo” was too weak a word to describe the rushing sensation he felt, the loss of self when confronted with the reality below him. This was like comparing a glance down a faucet to a glance over a cliff off Mount Everest. Except, in this case, Mount Everest was the faucet.

           It was like the world just ended. When Calex thought about what he learned in Camp Half-Blood’s mythology classes, the world did end here, like those silly old illustrations of ships finding the edge of the ocean and tumbling into nothing.

           At first, Calex thought the thing beneath him was black and dark. Upon blinking, slowing his breathing, and tapping into his demigod focus, he knew it was all colors, swirling and colliding so violently and rapidly as to blur and appear a swirling vortex of nothing: a cycle of existence and destruction. A creature that—with each exhale—created and eviscerated with the same attention as Calex paid to blinking.

           The updraft and abrupt suction of air wasn’t any wind. Kaos itself was spawning new particles.

           No wonder Hera had screamed when Zeus hung her over Kaos. Nothing like forcing an immortal to face its own unimportance.

           “We’re going over the edge,” Euna reiterated.

           Calex squeezed her hand. He was glad she had offered hers to him. Had he not been holding her, he was scared he’d slip over the edge, gawking and forgetting, by comparison of the gargantuan thing beneath him, that he even existed or mattered. If he did at all.

           “Did you have to put it to words?” he whispered. Cold sweat broke out on his brow. Calex swallowed again. He forced his eyes away from the eminent evisceration and rebirth, glancing at Euna, who seemed unaffected by the gravity of Kaos. “Wait,” he said, “Euna, before we get ripped to pieces by that… thing beneath us, can you promise me something?”

           Her cold eyes examined him curiously. Unlike the others, it was clear she wasn’t on a time schedule. He guessed a godly killing spree didn’t need a special date or RSVP.

           Calex felt like he was supposed to say this isn’t what Joey would have wanted, but this was EXACTLY what the overdramatic girl would have wanted. Except, maybe, with a musical number with the pit of Kaos as a DJ scratch booth. Not—as Calex finally identified—the hum of a decapitated head dangling off Euna’s belt.

           He shook his head. “Assuming we live through this and all that unlikeness, we’re going topside to save the camp, slog Phobetor in his stupid piggy face, make sure Kally, Merry, and the others are okay, and then we’re going to get some pizza afterwards and have a long chat before you decide to jump off any other cliffs,” he said, “There are other ways to mourn.”

           Euna’s sternness broke at the mention of lunch. Although it had to be his imagination with the roar of Kaos, he could have sworn he heard Euna’s stomach growl. She pulled his hand in, so she could touch her belly. She frowned. “I really should have eaten more before this. And taken a nap. Add napping to the end of that list.”

           If Euna threw fists when members of Cabin Four tried to wake her from training, he’d be terrified for the poor bloke that tried to wake Euna after a plotting-the-destruction-of-the-gods nap.

           “We’ll have to get you another shirt along the way, least you kill Axel and Thalia with embarrassment.”

           “My shirt?” Euna asked, confused.

           “Is torn,” he said.

           Euna glanced down. “Ah.” She shrugged. “So it is. I don’t know why that would bother either of them.”

           Calex shook his head, almost smiling from her aloofness. This was still their Euna. “Shall we then? Lovely day for a dive. Or night. I have no real concept of what time it is.”

           Something slithered up along his legs to his hips. For a horrified moment, he thought he’d miss-stepped onto one of Euna’s traps. Then the vines pushed him against Euna.

           “If we get separated, you die,” she said as the vines laced their legs together. He was grossed out that Jack’s humming head bumped his thigh.

           Not that there aren’t 50 other things that will make me die here, he thought.

           Calex was already scared of tripping over the edge. Now he frantically struggled to keep his footing. For an absurd moment, he wanted to protest that he was covered in blood and would get Euna dirty, since that was clearly high on her priority list. Euna was shorter than him, and their proximity brought the poison berries to his chin height. Her hair tickled his throat and he got lightheaded when he inhaled the sickly sweet scent from one of the white flowers. Angel’s Trumpet, a devil of a flower, he remembered an Alnwick tour guide warning.

           She released his hand to hold up the rosewood box from her pocket. “Calex, I need you to make a tiny portion of Kaos fall madly in love with this box. Jack—” She glanced down, her face brushing Calex’s chest. “I need you to keep the rest of Kaos from getting near the box. Or us.”

           Jack had been humming Poison by Alice Cooper. A real oldie Calex knew from Winston. “Aye, aye, Captain Euna! That sounds like something I might be able to do.”

           “That’s it then? Make the primordial god of creation fall in love with a small, wooden box?” Calex asked, trembling. He swallowed a third time. His head already felt like it was spinning, though he couldn’t tell if that was from the toxic fumes, the terror, the continued vertigo, or the annoyance of remembering Jack was a real person and not a Halloween decoration. “I’ll need use of my bow, then.”

           He was too close to Euna, and he didn’t think he could wrap his arms around her and shoot behind her back. The scythe might also get in the way once they were falling. He unslung Soul Pain from his back and awkwardly held it to the side.

           “I’ll make us tied back-to-back once we’ve fallen and we know the vines are secure. You’re going to want these.” She placed something gooey in his free hand, then tapped her ear.

           When he stared down, he could see something that resembled plant goop.

           “I’ve got some lungs on me. Well, I don’t anymore, but I’m still a loud Jackie-boy,” Jack explained, and Calex could hear him grinning.

           Earplugs? Calex hoped these earplugs weren’t also poisonous, though at this point, he more hoped that Thanatos would still collect his soul here before it got turned to particle rubbish and that the god of Death wouldn’t chicken out since Calex would die so close to Kaos.

           When Calex pressed some of the goop to his left ear, the liquid seemed sentient, sliding in and clinging to his eardrum. The roar of Kaos, Jack’s humming, and the shouts and clang from Axel and Reyna’s fight dulled to a muffle. He pressed the remaining gunk onto his other earlobe, on standby. He wasn’t quite ready to lose all hearing.

           “Ready?” Euna asked, her dark eyes burning.

           Calex knew he was missing something vital. Euna had said mad love. Calex didn’t know mad love. He knew the fan-boy love he had for Percy and Annabeth, but there were healthy limits to that, despite Pax’s claims. Dare he call his feelings for Merry love? If it was, it wasn’t mad. He’d been careful not to let his feelings for her get out of control, out of respect that she didn’t fancy him quite the same way or at least wasn’t at a point in her life where she’d want the kind of love he had to offer.

           He’d accidentally imbued Thanatos with mad love, but that was a whim of survival. Maybe he could do it again, or maybe he’d flop and be screaming, “Bollix!!” as Kaos shredded them.

           No, Calex needed a solid example to pull this off.

           Another shout and clang came from the darkness near them, and Calex understood why Reyna and Axel were necessary for this quest.

           “I need to borrow something from you! Sorry, mates!” he said.

           Calex closed his eyes and expanded his senses. Everyone turned to colors and he glanced past Euna’s fury, Thalia’s irritation, and Jack’s excitement.

           A tugging hit his gut when he felt it: the irrational combination of respect, frustration, anger, passion, insecurity, wistfulness, benevolence, and desperation. Like a chemist listing off ingredients, Calex knew the missing element that kept the combination so volatile: trust. The perfect instability for what he needed.

           Calex mentally reached out and grabbed.

           Although he couldn’t hear them or see them, he could feel Axel and Reyna crumble as he robbed them, concentrating what was theirs into the palm of his hand.

           The emotion burned there, along the tips of his fingers. When he opened his eyes, he could see his fingers glowed a violent shade of red.

           “He’s got blood in his eyes,” Jack sang and Calex knew his eyes were the same shade.

           Calex nudged his palm against his ear, shoving the rest of the goop into his ear canal. The noises around them faded to murmurs. All he could hear was his own heartbeat and feel the thudding of Euna’s against his chest. Calex clenched his fists, one around the volatile emotions, one around Soul Pain.

           “Let’s go take part of Kaos,” he whispered.

           Euna stared at him steadily.

           Then she lifted Kronos’ scythe. The weapon was the only thing balancing them. They tumbled over the edge of the cliff, towards the swirling gap underneath the world, to steal a sliver of a primordial god, or get shredded in the process.

 Thanks for reading guys! I hope you enjoyed :D Tune in next week for Calex: When Your Spell Works Too Well.

[joules-per-second]

Behold, the Quad-Beard!