#compasses & cutlasses

[tlmtwelve]

Pheebruary prompt: Treasure

[eclec-tech]

I know that if any of us goes missing, there is no one better to find us than you.

🧡

Of course, Tech would have a failsafe in place! ✨ I love the idea of a little restraining bolt. He probably started this plan the moment Phee mentioned that she rebuilt Mel on the regular! 😃

Recorded Hope

Written for Pheebruary!

Prompt: Rebuilding Mel

Warnings: None, really. Mention of Tech going on the mission to Eriadu. Includes angst and hope.

A/N: This is a Tech Lives fic and a Tech Lives blog.

Word Count: a little more than 800

Another successful mission complete, Phee landed Providence on Pabu and patted a partially-functional-but-now-powered-down Mel on her way out the door. She put the crystal dagger she’d recovered in the Archium and paused next to Lula and Tech’s goggles. Her heart ached. She wished she could see him again or at least redo their last encounter. She wished she had been braver with her feelings, or offered to come with them, but she couldn’t change that now. She dragged her feet back home and slouched into bed.

The next morning she grabbed a bite of fruit for breakfast and headed back to the ship to work on Mel. She’d been her usual helpful droid self, but some severe blaster fire meant Phee needed to rebuild her again.

She sat in front of Mel and twirled a spanner before powering her up. The droid made a whirl, some of her lights coming on and others not. Phee removed the burned-out photoreceptor and a few wires that needed to be replaced. A new photoreceptor was modified and Phee hummed a tune to herself while replacing the wiring. Mel’s lights came on as she attempted to take in the information around her, almost panicked as if she was still on the run from yesterday.

“It’s okay,” Phee said, “We're home, but I'm not done with you yet.”

The droid relaxed and Phee was at least pleased that the new parts were working. She pulled out part of Mel’s front panel and sighed at the piece. It was completely covered in carbon scoring and while it protected some of the inner workings, some shots had managed to disrupt a power coil and a memory bank. Phee grabbed a spare metal scrap and continued to hum while cutting it down to size for Mel. She attached the front panel and left it open while she dug around to assess the damage to the memory. It wasn’t too bad. A little light was off, indicating part of it wasn’t working like it should. Another wire was replaced and the light came on, but started blinking. Phee knitted her eyebrows in frustration, but then found a small component attached to the back of the memory bank. It looked like a tiny restraining bolt. How did that get there? She picked it off and the blinking light stayed on strong. Once she replaced the memory bank and closed the panel, Mel beeped at her.

“A recording?” Phee asked. “Why didn’t you mention that before?”

Mel indicated that she didn’t know it was there before. Phee was getting more suspicious of the little restraining bolt. Someone must have put there without her knowledge between now and the last time she rebuilt Mel, but the only person who helped her with the droid since the last time she was rebuilt was Tech. Phee felt like she was falling upside down and spinning. Had she been standing, she would have toppled over. It was all she could do for the words to get from her brain to her tongue.

“Play the recording, Mel!”

Mel started playing a holovid. Tech’s face appeared right in front of Phee and she felt hot tears at the sight of Brown Eyes adjusting his goggles before he spoke.

Hello Phee. If you are seeing this then my family and I, or perhaps only some of us, are missing in action. It was our intention to retrieve information vital to saving Crosshair and keeping Omega safe, but as you know, things do not always go to plan. I have taken the liberty of hiding codes and secure information in Mel. I know the Imperials are not smart enough to find this data and leaving it solely in the hands of my brothers seems reckless should we all be caught. It will only be a matter of time before you have to rebuild her and I am certain you will easily find this recording. With the information I’ve left in Mel, you should be able to retrieve any recordings on my goggles and datapads including those behind an extra layer of encryption. There is also an encrypted backup on the Marauder’s computer. Should something happen to us, I will try to leave behind what clues I can. While I hope this is all for naught, I know that if any of us goes missing, there is no one better to find us than you.

Tech’s soft smile pulled at her and she watched him reach forward to stop the recording. Phee stared at Mel in shock before reaching for the button again. She paused on Tech’s image as the projection restarted and tears fell on her cheeks. Mel beeped at her almost asking if she was okay.

“Come on,” she said, rising to her feet, “We have to get to the Archium.”

[anonymousewrites]

Pearl of the Sea Chapter Fourteen

Found Family! PoTC Cast x Teen! Reader

Platonic! Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann, Jack Sparrow, Tia Dalma x Reader

Chapter Fourteen: Finding the Chest

Summary: Jack, Elizabeth, and (Y/N) land on a strange island to find Davy Jones's heart. They aren't the only ones.

            “There’s something to knowing the exact shape of the world and our place in it,” said Beckett, watching as the map on his way was painted. He glanced at Governor Swann, manacled and lacking his wig of stature.

            “I assure you, these are not necessary,” said Swann.

            “I thought you’d be interested in the whereabouts of your daughter and ward,” said Beckett.

            “You have news of them?” said Swann, eyes widening.

            “Most recently seen on Tortuga, and then they left in the company of a known pirate, Jack Sparrow, and other fugitives from justice,” said Mercer.

            “ ‘Justice?’ Hardly,” scoffed Swann.

            “Including the previous owner of this sword, I believe,” said Beckett, twirling the sword around. “Our ships are in pursuit. Justice will be dispensed by cannonade and cutlass and all manner of remorseless pieces of metal. I find it distasteful to even contemplate the horror facing all those on board.” He looked at Swann, who swallowed.

            “What do you want from me?” said Swann.

            “Your authority as governor, your influence in London, and your loyalty to the East India Trading Company,” said Beckett.

            “To you, you mean,” said Swann.

            Beckett raised a brow. “Shall I remove those shackles?”

            Swann looked down before meeting Beckett’s gaze. “Do what you can for my daughter and ward.”

            Beckett nearly smirked. He nodded to Mercer, who undid the manacles.

            “So you see, Mr. Mercer, every man has a price he will willingly accept,” said Beckett. “Even for what he hoped to never sell.” He would retrieve that chest before anyone else, and then he would have what he desired—control of the seas. Power.

l

            “Beckett?” Jack frowned as he heard the name from so long ago, and the brand on his arm itched.

            “Yes,” said Elizabeth, and (Y/N) nodded.

            Elizabeth had explained all that she had learned from her…discussion with Beckett. He didn’t want treasure; he wanted something else. Not only that, but although he’d handed over the letters of marque, signed, and sealed them, but he refused to let them all go free without issue from the navy if he didn’t receive Jack’s compass.

            “They’re signed,” said Elizabeth.

            “Lord Beckett of the East India Trading Company.” Jack gagged as he looked at the papers.

            “Will was working for Beckett and never said a word,” huffed Gibbs.

            “We told you we were arrested and needed the compass to be free, so of course there was some lord involved,” said (Y/N), rolling their eyes. They hadn’t held anything back maliciously. It had been unconsciously done.

            “Beckett is a problem, though,” grumbled Gibbs. “If he wants the compass, there’s only one reason for that.”

            “Of course,” said Jack.

            “To control Davy Jones?” asked (Y/N).

            Jack nodded. “With the chest.”

            “He did mention something about a chest,” confirmed Elizabeth.

            “If the company controls the chest, they controls the sea,” said Gibbs.

            Instantly, (Y/N) straightened. The ocean was one of the only places where freedom could still reign—the waves and the winds were not to be tamed by human beings. If Beckett were to do so…freedom itself would be broken.

            “A truly discomfiting notion,” said Jack.

            “And bad,” said Gibbs. “Bad for every mother’s child what calls themselves a pirate.”

            “It’s bad for freedom,” said (Y/N). They crossed their arms. “We can’t let him find it.”

            Gibbs glanced up. “I think there’s a bit more speed to be coaxed from these sails.” He didn’t want the navy catching up and hurried away. “Brace the foreyard!”

            “Might I enquire as to how you came by these?” said Jack, gazing at Elizabeth as he lifted the documents.

            “Persuasion,” said Elizabeth.

            “Friendly?” said (Y/N) dubiously.

            “Decidedly not,” said Elizabeth, and (Y/N) grinned.

            “Will strikes a deal for these, yet you were the one with the prize…full pardon,” said Jack. “ ‘Commission as a privateer on behalf of England and the East India Trading Company.’ As if I could be bought for such a low price.”

            (Y/N) was glad. Anyone who let go of their freedom so easily couldn’t be trusted in any capacity. They were too willing to let themselves be used.

            “Jack, the letters, give them back,” said Elizabeth sharply.

            “Don’t make her persuade you,” said (Y/N).

            Jack shrugged and continued on. Elizabeth’s hand twitched for her sword, but she resisted the urge to stab him. Instead, she huffed and stalked off.

            (Y/N) leaned over the side of the ship and watched the sea go by. “Jack, do you think we can stop Beckett?”

            “If we get the chest, the sea is ours.” The collective pronoun flew from him before he could stop it. “And then we can save dear old Will, he can marry Elizabeth before she gets rid of all the rum, and everyone is free to do pretty much anything they want!” Jack hurried on before the pronoun mistake could be noted.

            “Are you going to abandon us to ensure you have the power of the seas to yourself?” said (Y/N), cutting straight to the point.

            “Didn’t I just say you all will go off and live your happy, boring little lives?” said Jack jovially.

            “You’ve promised a lot, Jack,” said (Y/N). “You have a tendency to twist your words instead of doing the right thing.”

            “There isn’t right or wrong on the seas. Just human nature,” said Jack.

            “Wrong,” said (Y/N), turning and facing him. “There’s freedom on the seas. Freedom to the wrong thing, yes, but also to do the right thing.”

            “Is this going to be about trust again? Because I still don’t think you should put trust in pirates, laddie,” said Jack.

            (Y/N) shrugged. “I told you before, it’s about you trusting me. I don’t need to be tricked to help you stop Beckett or Jones. I’m here to protect freedom, the seas. That’s what I care about.” They looked at him. “So you can make yourself an enemy of freedom by leaving us behind to Beckett’s imprisonment or Jones’s servitude, or you can do the right thing and uphold freedom. Something tells me you respect that, even if you don’t respect loyalty.”

            Jack gazed at (Y/N) long and hard. Freedom seemed to be the theme of this adventure. He wanted to be free of Jones’s deal, Will wanted to be free of Jones, Elizabeth wanted to be free of Beckett, and (Y/N)…They wanted pure freedom. To be themself, to explore the seas, to exist without rules holding them to a standard they simply didn’t wish to uphold.

            “I do value freedom,” said Jack.

            He always had. That’s why he’d been branded a pirate. He refused to send another human being into eternal imprisonment. He refused to violate another person’s freedom so fundamentally. Jack may run around and abandon people to be locked away, but he would never turn the key himself to leave them to endless servitude.

            Not to mention, the more that he saw this teenager—(Y/N)—standing before him with nothing but a desire for freedom, genuine and caring, the more Jack wanted to uphold that, too. They had a strange faith in him no one else had as if they could see more in him, and Jack didn’t want to lose that. It was a strange feeling, but it was true.

            “I know,” said (Y/N).

            They smiled slightly. They knew Jack was dangerous, double-crossed everyone, and always had a plan to help himself hidden beneath the surface of any deals he made, but he also had a genuine…genuineness to him. And he never harmed (Y/N). In fact, he protected them at times. So, no matter how far fetched it seemed, there was a part of (Y/N) that had faith that he’d make the right decision in the true times of strife.

            “And that’s why I know you’ll do the right thing one day,” said (Y/N). “You’re just not willing to admit it.”

            “This is awfully trusting for someone who claims not to trust me,” said Jack, attempting to tease, but his tone fell flat, still serious.

            “I have faith, Jack. Not trust,” said (Y/N). They grinned, and the glint of mischief in their eye was akin to the sun skimming the waves. “And besides, I’m sure you’re curious of what glory and rewards doing the right thing may bring you.” They leaned back on the side of the ship.

            Jack gazed at them. “You’re very odd, you know that, laddie?”

            (Y/N) shrugged. “Is that a problem?”

            “No,” said Jack. “You make an excellent pirate.” He grinned.

            (Y/N) laughed. “What can I say, freedom on the seas with a bit of danger excites me.”

            “Careful. Or you may start doing the wrong thing,” said Jack, teasing once more.

            “How amusing it would be if I started doing the wrong thing and you started doing the right thing,” laughed (Y/N).

            Jack looked at (Y/N) fondly. “Amusing indeed.”

            “A child of the sea is a child of all.”

            Tia Dalma’s words echoed in Jack’s mind. He was beginning to see it. (Y/N) was changeable, untamable as the waves. They were willing to fight for one thing—freedom. They cared about their family—Will and Elizabeth—but their heart was wilder than theirs. For all their love and devotion, there was only one place it was clear that (Y/N) was truly at home—the sea. They had a heart of freedom, and it swam freely within the waves.

            Jack wanted to keep that freedom going. If (Y/N)’s free heart was drowned, it would be a great loss. It would be Beckett’s victory, removing any trace of freedom from the sea, including from the hearts that were as untamable and wild as the ocean itself. He wanted (Y/N) to be safe from his influence and allow them grow into their wildness.

            “Child of all.”

            Now, if Jack could only figure out what that meant.

            “Land, ho!” called Gibbs, thankfully interrupting philosophy that Jack wanted nothing to do with.

l

            Jack sat with his jar of dirt at the front of the rowboat while Ragetti and Pintel rowed. Norrington, Elizabeth, and (Y/N) sat within it, and Elizabeth held the compass in her hand to guide them while Pintel and Ragetti squabbled.

            Luckily, their sanities were not lost by the ways to pronounce “kraken” before they reached the beach. They dragged the boat onto the sand, picked up shovels, and waited for Elizabeth to guide them. They left Pintel and Ragetti to watch the boat and tide.

            Elizabeth frowned as they reached a sandy hill and began to walk in circles. The compass needle kept spinning. “This doesn’t work,” she huffed. “And it certainly doesn’t show you what you want most.” The compass kept spinning.

            “Yes, it does,” said Jack. “You’re sitting on it.”

            “Be pardon?” said Elizabeth.

            “It must be buried underneath you,” said (Y/N).

            “Move!” Jack shooed her.

            Norrington and Jack dug into the sand with their shovels, tossing a pile of dirt, grass, and sand behind them as they went. Finally, they hit something solid, and they scrambled to pull it out. Once they did, they revealed a chest. Jack hit the rusted lock, breaking it. Nervously, almost reverently, he opened the lid. Papers and maps sat within.

            (Y/N) brushed them aside to find another, small chest. Tentacles were carved in it, and, when they lifted it out, they found a heart carved over the lock. Leaning in, their eyes widened. “Bloody hell.”

            Norrington, Elizabeth, and Jack leaned in.

            Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump.

            A faint heartbeat thumped within the chest. The entire legend was true, and not even in a metaphorical sense but a literal one.

            “It’s real,” said Norrington. “You were actually telling the truth.”

            “I do that quite a lot, yet people are always surprised.” Jack glanced at (Y/N). “Most people, anyways. Smart ones consider I tell the truth.”

            “People think you lie for good reason!”

            All heads snapped behind them to find Will standing there, soaking wet.

            “Will!” exclaimed (Y/N) and Elizabeth, running to him and hugging him.

            “You’re alright!” said (Y/N) in relief.

            “Thank god! I came to find you,” said Elizabeth.

            Will hugged them in return.

            “How did you get here?” said Jack, thoroughly surprised someone could escape Jones.

            “Sea turtles, mate. A pair of them, strapped to my feet,” said Will sarcastically.

            “Not so easy, is it?” said Jack jovially.

            “But I do owe you thanks, Jack,” said Will.

            “You do?” Jack frowned.

            “After you tricked me onto that ship to square your debt with Jones, I was reunited with my father,” said Will.

            “That was an accident,” said Jack with a cough.

            “And we bartered to try to get you back,” said (Y/N).

            “How hard did he?” snapped Will.

            “Probably harder than you deserved, seeing as you were resourceful enough to get out on your own!” chirped Jack.

            “Jack, did you lie to me?” said Elizabeth.

            “He didn’t. We told you the truth about the souls and getting a hundred to save Jack and Will,” said (Y/N). They didn’t need infighting right now, not when so much was at stake.

            “You told the truth. He didn’t,” snapped Elizabeth.

            “We were finding a way to save young Will,” said Jack, shrugging.

            Will grabbed the chest and turned the lock towards him.

            “Oi! What are you doing?” said Jack.

            “I’m going to kill Jones,” said Will.

            Jack drew his sword. “Can’t let you do that, William.”

            (Y/N) groaned. And here was Jack, in fact, doing the wrong thing. Are these people incapable of communication?

            “ ‘Cause if Jones is dead, who’s to call his terrible beastie off the hunt, eh?” said Jack. Will stepped jack, and Jack kept his sword trained on him. “Now, if you please.” He held out his hand. “The key.”

            Will pulled Elizabeth’s sword from its sheath and pointed it at Jack. “I keep the promises I make, Jack. I intend to free my father. I hope you’re here to see it.”

            Norrington drew his cutlass and pointed it at Will. “I can’t let you do that, either. So sorry.”

            “Can we all put our swords away and just talk it over like mature people?” (Y/N) loved a good fight, but this was just people being idiotic.

            “I knew you’d warm up to me eventually!” said Jack, grinning at Norrington.

            Norrington just turned his sword on Jack, who frowned and pointed his at Will and then Norrington and then back at Will. All three men were willing to fight one another.

            “Lord Beckett desires the contents of that chest,” said Norrington. “I deliver it, I get my life back.”

            Alright, if that’s what we’re at, then no more talking, I guess. (Y/N) drew their sword and pointed it at Norrington. “I’m not letting you hand over control of the seas to a man like Beckett.”

            “Don’t make me fight a child. I still have some honor,” said Norrington.

            “Well, I don’t, just a raving fury at anyone who helps a tyrant like Beckett,” sneered (Y/N).

            All four with swords stared at each other, all tensed. Elizabeth watched, hands itching for a weapon. Norrington swung. The fight for the chest was on.

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[sungmee]

how about steddyhands matching throuple and couple tattoos?

(sun/moon/stars for steddyhands, swallows for ed/izzy, compasses for ed/stede ((ed's is pointed to S for stede and stede's is pointed to E for ed)), and for stizzy, stede has izzy's cutlass and izzy has stede's dagger)

[hotteoki]

pirate king (j.y.h)

pairing: pirate jeong yunho x fem reader

genre: strangers to lovers, alternate dimension, pirate au

wc: 4k

cw: mild language, weaponry

notes: i wrote this with the layout of the ateez ship in mind (the one in the 'illusion' mv but with blond yunho cause he 4+4 the halloween ver of deja vu

xtra - tysm @woosluv & @ssaboala for beta reading for me! <33

"all eyes on me now! if you still doubt mine, it's too pointless. we're still young and wild, we gonna find new world to be mine!" yunho's fingers moved along the quote carved into the compass he's had since who knows how long.

yunho's head was lifted up forcefully by hongjoong's pointing stick poking his forehead. "you're going to get lost later on the island if you don't listen to me right now," hongjoong tilted his head, stepping back to the blackboard. "captain, i mean this in the nicest way possible, we've been over this, like, six times in the span of a week. we'll be fine," yeosang called from across the room as he tapped his telescope against his other palm, still dodging wooyoung's outstretched arms every now and then.

"you all say this but i know one of you is going to get into some shit and i'm going to have to be the one to clean it up," hongjoong sighed, dropping his pointer onto the ground lazily, "okay, come on, let's get off the ship. remember the plan, and wooyoung, stop trying to kiss yeosang's face. you can do that when we come back."

yunho kicked the ladder down onto the dock, stepping off the ship first. the crew split up, him going into the left path trailing into the cave. they all knew exactly what they were looking for, and the lengths each and every one of them were willing to take to get it.

it was peaceful until a rustle attracted his attention. yunho paused, pretending to re-lace his shoes, his eyes darting to his left, the direction where the sound had come from. when it was calm for the following minute, yunho slowly stood to continue his journey, putting on an oblivious façade, his hand subtly inching for his sheathed cutlass with every step.

yunho wasn't stupid. he's had enough experience to know not to doubt his senses at any cost. true to him, the snapping of a branch immediately heightened his senses. he swiftly cut through the thick, tall grass, eyes meeting with ones belonging to an innocent doe.

as the doe ran off, yunho only noted then how it was running along the path he was on. the cogs in his head whirred in confusion as he wondered why a deer wouldn't run away from a potential predator, rather in the same direction as him. that thought never escaped as he trudged on, praying the cave he was walking towards would appear before him faster.

and lo and behold, there it was.

if yunho hadn't been looking for it specifically he would've missed it entirely. it blended in perfectly with the shadows of the swaying trees, outgrown weeds guarding the entrance, vines crawling around, all leading straight into the depths of the cave.

peeking into the darkness, he checked every corner, sharp eyes darting here and there. finally, they landed on an unusual glimmering spot. yunho stepped closer, cautious of the fact he was now exposed to any potential predators hiding deep in the cave.

he was about a meter away from the shining rock when he realised it wasn’t a rock at all. it was an hourglass etched into the cave walls, almost like the cave was built around it over the years. he breathed out a light sigh of relief upon feeling the grooves of the rock nearby. it wasn’t etched in that deep. he could easily pull it out with a bit of help.

he allowed himself a few more minutes of admiring the hourglass. the cromer, its name was. an hourglass with the ability to lead them to an alternate dimension, where they could escape this timeline that caused each and every one of them so much pain and loss.

after stealing books from other pirates, following leads from old legends, tracking down their ancestors' footsteps, seonghwa had finally found a map hidden deep in the journals of an unknown pirate, their initials and writings long faded within the centuries. the joy the crew had felt when they located the hourglass after years was a night yunho could not forget.

just as he was about to turn back and find his crewmates, yunho was greeted with the sight of the very doe blocking his exit. when it was made clear that the doe had no intentions of moving at all, yunho unsheathed his cutlass. this was no ordinary animal.

his theory was proved right when a gust of wind blew against his face. removing his hand from his face and opening his eyes, he tried to conceal his shock. where the doe had stood before was a girl about his age.

“you’re a shapeshifter.” you raised your eyebrows at his statement, “obviously.” “i thought they didn’t exist anymore after hunters hunted them down ages ago,” yunho still had his cutlass held in front of him, wary of this new stranger. “yeah, i know. that was centuries ago. there’re still a few of us left, but most of us don’t want to be found.” “you’re not one of them, though,” yunho pointed out.

“and with good reason,” you stepped closer as yunho stepped back. sighing, you held up your hands in surrender, “do i look like i’m going to attack you or something?” “you can never be too careful,” he shrugged.

“i’ll tell you an easier way of getting that hourglass without taking this cave down.” yunho’s arm faltered, “what do you mean?” “this entire island relies on the life within the roots, the air, the animals, you know, all that shit. you break this cave the entire island goes down with it. you and your crew would never make it out alive.”

he swallowed. he wasn’t sure if you could be trusted. shapeshifters were known to be tricksters, always up to no good. what if you were playing with him and he could’ve saved precious time taking the hourglass instead of talking to you? after meeting your impatient eyes, he finally decided to play it safe.

“what do you want in return?” “get me off this island,” you replied instantly. the lack of hesitation in your voice made yunho believe you’ve had thought about this for a long, long time. he sucked in a breath through his gritted teeth. the crew couldn’t just find an extra person for charity. they were already rationing their supplies amongst themselves, adding another person might as well be a goodbye to their albeit uncomfortable but familiar living.

“take me with you or no hourglass. your choice,” you crossed your arms, tone firm. yunho swallowed again, putting his cutlass away and rubbing a hand on his face, “you’ll have to talk to the captain.” “fine, then take me to him.” “you can’t just-” yunho wanted to scream. despite being a pirate since birth, he’d never experienced a situation like this, and he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do.

“you know what? fine, let’s go find him,” yunho pursed his lips. he knew for a fact hongjoong would never agree, but how else were they supposed to get the hourglass? it wasn’t like they could just bow their heads and march back onto the ship and off.

reminding himself of the crudely drawn map in their meeting room, yunho walked for what felt like hours with the intensity of your glare burning the back of his head. he thought he could drop onto his knees and thank the heavens the second he saw the familiar back of hongjoong.

hongjoong darted up at the sound of foreign footsteps, swinging his pistol at your face out of instinct. “she wants to speak to you,” yunho deadpanned, annoyed at the situation he was currently in. hongjoong lowered his pistol slightly, aiming at your chest now, “what do you want?” “i’ll talk when you get this pistol out of my face,” you frowned.

“i’m the one with the upper hand here, you really shouldn’t be making demands.” “considering i’m one of the remaining residents of this island who knows what you’re looking for and how to get it without dying, i don’t think you are.” hongjoong made a face, “and how do i know you’re telling the truth?” “you pirates. always so nervous about everything you see,” you paused, “i want to get off this island, you can help with that, and in return i’ll give you the hourglass.”

yunho looked for a reaction from hongjoong. when he was met with none, yunho was almost disappointed over the fact that his captain was considering his answer. “okay then,” hongjoong put his pistol away, “lead the way.” yunho felt his cheeks flushing at your cheeky smile. sure, he disliked you and your cocky attitude, but he wasn’t blind. anyone could tell you were gorgeous.

“i told you guys one of you was going to get into some shit. now look who’s cleaning it up?”

≡☆

it took a while for the entire crew to be gathered in the tiny cave the cromer rested in, all squished together to get a look at the hourglass while poor mingi stood on his tiptoes at the mouth of the cave. yunho watched in awe as you lifted your hands up, determined to keep his eyes open, only to be slapped with another aggressive gust of wind blowing in his face again.

he blinked cautiously, not realising his eyes had shut involuntarily. yunho vaguely felt his breath hitching at the infamous hourglass held in your hands. the gentle glow of each individual grain amongst the heaps of sand shimmered, tugging on his attention, while contrasting with the simple and plain metal supporting the phials.

“so?” you shifted your weight, waiting for something to happen.

and something happened indeed.

one look from hongjoong was all the crew needed as san shoved you to the ground, with seonghwa snatching the cromer from your grip and tossing it to jongho, the rest sprinting back to their ship. yunho followed his crewmates swiftly, but not before throwing his head back and yelling a quick “sorry!”

in his defense, he was sorry. just not sorry enough to feel guilty about it.

he nearly crashed straight into wooyoung’s back as he skidded to a sudden halt, confused as to why they stopped. sitting on the edge of the ship, legs swinging with an unamused expression, was you. but how…

“you really think you can outrun a doe? how self-centered.” hongjoong stared right back at you, irritated, “you can’t come with us.” “then i’ll take that back.” “i’d like to see you try,” he retorted, pistol now in hand again, “you can outrun me but can you outrun a bullet aiming straight for your head?” you huffed, “i’m not asking you to adopt me or anything, i just need you to drop me off at the nearest island.”

“bullshit. you’re saying you want to go from one island to another?” jongho scoffed from beside wooyoung. “i can’t leave this place without company. please just-” you sighed, and yunho could tell you felt defeated, “please just take me with you.” if he didn’t feel guilty enough, he definitely felt bad now. “cap, maybe we should take her.”

hongjoong gave him an odd look, clearly bewildered, “you were the one who insisted on leaving her.” “yeah well, i kinda feel bad for her now. she’ll stay with us for a few days maximum then we’ll just drop her off somewhere,” yunho briefly glanced at you, lowering his voice now, “i mean, maybe she really can’t leave. what, are we just going to dump her here?”

“i say we make her a deal,” yeosang chimed in, “she can live with us until we locate a nearby island, but if we arrive and it ends up being a bad one, she can’t argue and climb back aboard.” hongjoong nodded approvingly, “yeah, that sounds good.”

yunho watched as your face lit up when he repeated their deal to you. he silently swore to himself to always bring happiness to you during your stay if it meant he could catch a glimpse of your endearing smile again.

≡☆

yunho had volunteered to wrap up the cut on your arm you earned from san’s shove, despite seonghwa usually being the one to tend to the crew’s injuries. he led you down the stairs and to the medical room (which, really, was just their meeting room with a medical kit placed on the table), kicking away scraps of used bandages to the corner, praying you didn’t see them.

as he sat you down opposite him and began prepping the bandages, he began to wonder about you. where were your parents? how did you manage to come onto the island? why did you not have friends? what-

“you look like you have questions.” his gaze snapped up from your arm to your eyes, “no i- well, yeah, kind of.” you laughed lightly, “it’s okay, i get it. i’d be confused too.” yunho hoped you took the redness tainting his cheeks as embarrassment from being caught rather than his giddiness from your laugh. he motioned for you as he got started on wrapping your arm.

“i used to live on a different island, where my parents were. i met this guy, chan, and after being friends with him for a year or so, he offered to take me on a trip with his seven friends. i agreed. i honestly don’t know why i did. it was a spur of the moment thing. i followed him to the docks, where his ship was. turns out he’s a pirate and he’s the captain, much like your crew, actually.

“they said they wanted to go find some ‘treasures’, i just assumed they were joking around. they said they wanted to find an hourglass, i think one of the crew, hyunbin or whatever, said it belonged to his father. i remembered having heard some legends about it, and offered to lead the way. we searched for months, and finally found it on this island.

“when we arrived, they began arguing over who got to have it; they all had a different timeline in mind. someone wanted to go find their dead parents, someone wanted to rescue their girlfriend, it was- it was a lot,” you closed your eyes, throwing your head back, “we weren’t even from this timeline, for fuck’s sake! they fucked with the cromer as soon as they got their grubby hands on it, knowing damn well it was a full moon! i don’t even know what happened, to be honest, either that, or i can’t remember. it doesn’t matter. i don’t want to anyway.

“i think it’s something to do with the stupid hourglass. my theory is it passes down ownership to whomever it deems worthy to hold it, eliminating the past owners. that’s how i ended up alone. i tell myself they each left one by one, but it still bothers me how cursed magic like that exists. i don’t know, the whole thing’s really messed up. i guess being the holder gives you power to hide or expose it to others, because, well, as you saw, i could play around with its surroundings.” yunho hummed, taking in all the information.

he tightened the knot on your bandage, breathing out through his nose and rocking on his chair, “well, now that i know a lot about you, ask me anything you want.” “anything?” you lifted your head up again, eyes wide. yunho smiled, “yeah.” you leaned forward, head resting against your palms, “how are you so cute?”

yunho began spluttering, rocking a bit too far back on his chair, nearly falling over until you grabbed his hand, laughing at his reaction. as soon as he steadied himself, he yanked his hand away, feeling like his entire skin was on fire. you had a proud grin on your face, “i’m playing with you. though, really, you are cute.” he was genuinely convinced right then and there that you were the human form of heaven itself with the way his heart was palpitating.

the only dilemma yunho was having with himself was the fact that you couldn’t stay with them.

he liked to think that you shared the same thought as him.

≡☆

somehow, hours later, yunho found himself next to you on the beach, admiring the sunset from afar. “i haven’t had company in ages,” you commented, “it’s nice. especially since it’s you.” yunho had really wanted to kick his feet and giggle over your bold words, but he opted for a light chuckle.

“do you ever miss your old timeline? or dimension, or however you say it,” he regretted his words instantly at the sad look on your face. “all the time. i had a boyfriend, you know? he tried to stop me from going. i ignored him out of spite because of the amount of arguments we got into before i left. they were mostly to do with chan, he never trusted him, and neither should i have.”

yunho ignored the new, strange sense of jealousy he was feeling, and placed a gentle hand on your shoulder, “you wouldn’t have known.” you only gave a weak smile in response. “so tell me about your boyfriend.” you stiffened up slightly before relaxing again. if yunho wasn’t staring at you, he would’ve missed it entirely.

“well, he was the sweetest guy i’ve ever met. people compared him to a puppy all the time because of his energy,” you hesitated, “he had dyed blond-ish hair, a cute smile, a great sense of humour. he was tall, and was really popular. he always knew just how to cheer me up when i was down. he was considerate, caring, kind, he was everything.” yunho felt himself slowly getting upset. how could he ever compare to him? he sounded perfect.

“jealous?” you teased, nudging him. “not at all,” yunho rolled his eyes, playing with his compass again. he watched your eyes lower onto the very object, a soft look in them. “of course you still have it,” you murmured. “what?” yunho furrowed his brows. had he heard correctly? “it’s nothing.”

≡☆

nighttime rolled around and eventually all of them gathered around; yunho had found himself subconsciously scooting closer to you, landing himself a knowing look from mingi.

while your eyes connected with the flames yeosang started minutes ago, yunho couldn’t help but admire every inch of your carefully sculpted face. it was funny, wasn’t it? how he, at first, hated your overconfident demeanour, your demanding character, your addictive voice, your adorable laugh… huh. maybe he’d never hated you.

“so are you guys going to hide it now that you have to wait to use it?” you tilted your head curiously, and yunho wanted to choke a fistful of sand down his throat to contain the squeals that were threatening to bubble up with how absolutely beautiful you were. he shrugged, “most likely.” “the full moon’s in three days. where would you hiding it for three days?” “up san’s ass,” wooyoung laughed, before getting smacked by san.

yunho couldn’t bring himself to laugh at wooyoung’s immature joke. not when he now knew that he never had a chance with you to begin with.

but hearing your contagious laughter made him think of how lucky he was to have met you at all.

≡☆

“i know you, yunho, and i know you like her-” “like is an exaggeration.” seonghwa rolled his eyes, “just listen to me. she’s not going to be staying with us for long, and if you keep giving yourself a chance to get to know her, you’ll end up getting heartbroken.” “but isn’t that the point? maybe, when we use the cromer and get to a different dimension, maybe we can be together there…” he trailed off at how ridiculous he sounded. “that’s not how it works, and you know it,” seonghwa’s tone was now stern, almost to the point of telling yunho off.

“she clearly likes me too, can’t we at least enjoy the little amount of time we have together?” mingi tossed an arm around yunho from behind, “i say go for it.” “of course you’d say that,” seonghwa tsked, before continuing, “i’m asking you, as part of your crew, and your friend, to think this through.” “i am thinking this through!” yunho insisted, “i’d rather go through a heavy heartbreak than leave her with a bunch of ‘what if’s. i really do like her, seong-”

“no, you’re thinking this with your plan of finding her in a different timeline. yunho, you can’t do that. do you know how risky that is? ignoring the fact how we’ve only known her for a day too!” “of course i know,” he hissed, “but i don’t care how risky it is. i’m doing it.” “love at first sight, some might say,” mingi patted yunho’s shoulder. “oh, don’t get him started on love now,” seonghwa groaned. “love is a stretch, but i definitely find her interesting enough to want to be with her.” “just say you like her, yunho. everyone and their mothers can hear your giggles at night in your room,” hongjoong teased.

yunho’s face flushed, “i don’t giggle!” with that, he left the tiny crowd and stormed off to the meeting room. to his surprise, you were sitting at his regular seat, examining his compass. he left it there?

“so you want to be with me?” you raised an eyebrow, running a thumb over the quote the same way yunho does. “what- no?” yunho scoffed, taking a seat beside you. “i heard you guys. you get loud when you’re defensive. it’s okay, it’s cute.” yunho was at a loss for words. grasping for straws to change the topic, he gestured to the compass, “why did you say something like ‘i still have it’?”

you grew silent, and yunho thought you hadn’t heard him. he was about to repeat his question when you opened your mouth to answer, “i knew you, jeong yunho.” he flinched at the full name coming out of your mouth, “how…” “in my timeline. i knew you.”

you had the same stiff posture as you did on the beach, and yunho recalled what you were talking about during that time, “your boyfriend…” “yeah.” suddenly it all made sense. the dyed blond hair, the puppy personality, tall… yunho had heard every single one of them.

“we were together?” his voice was barely above a whisper. you nodded sadly, a bittersweet smile plastered, “i never got to say sorry for not believing you.” “well, at least i got an apology now,” he wrapped his hand around yours, the compass in between your interlocked fingers, and the cromer, your chance of a new happily ever after, placed on the table just centimetres away.

networks - @kflixnet k-labels kbookshelf neverendingdreams-net straykidsland @k-films

[ltwilliammowett]

Can you do a short term list for us in a funny way?

Welcome my dear newcomers aboard HMS Surprise. You have been exclusively selected ( or gently beaten up and dragged here) to join us on our South America tour. I promise you excitement, sleepless nights, beautiful scenery, storms, sunburn, no water and a bloody French…. oops I mean great adventure. To help you find your way around on board, here's a short list of important terms.

Landlubber - you, if you need this list - speak a non-sailor who simply has no idea about being a sailor.

Ship - your new workplace - this wooden lady is now your everything and treat her well, she is your life insurance to get you home safely. But be careful, she is very headstrong and if you want to tell me now that she is just an object, you thought wrong. She is very much a living individual and she will make you feel that.

The rigging - that sort of spider's nest above you - is there to operate the sails. Look forward to getting to know the ropes very well.

Sails - those cloth rags hanging from the thick wooden poles. They are used for locomotion and are not blankets.

Wheel - this strange wooden wheel with spikes on it - no, it is not an instrument of torture, but is used for steering.

Anchor - heavy, made of iron and keeps our lady in place.

Compass - this strange thing that lives in a box and is constantly moving back and forth. To cut a long story short: You know which way is north and you can keep your course. You'll soon know it by heart.

Captain - Boss

1st Lieutenant - Second boss and the one who can really fuck you up if he wants to. Get in good line and please don't suck up to him. But he is the one who puts you in everything, be it ward, mess, hammock, etc.

2.nd. Lieutenant - me and I too can make you uncomfortable.

Master - knows where the sails hang and what course to set. Takes just a little more work off the boss.

Purser - is responsible for your food rations, but will also try to get you to buy something from him to make life on board a little easier. Don't do this, he's quite expensive.

Sailor - Your new colleagues, and depending on their years of service, they will know how to handle that wooden lady, how to set the sails and so on. You'll learn it too.

Old Salt - an experienced old sailor, stick with him if you want to learn and he is willing to share his knowledge.

Surgeon - the name says it all. We have a good one on board, be lucky. And if you're lucky, you'll come home with all your body parts.

Midshipmen - mini officers who still need to learn. They can be quite demanding and annoying, especially when many of them are still very young. But don't be surprised if a 12-year-old gives you orders, he's allowed to.

Mess - the place where you eat

Cannon - heavy, iron, dirty, hot and with a loud bang. Used to stop the enemy or inflict serious damage. Keep your limbs to yourself and only follow the instructions of those who know what to do with them. Otherwise you will only injure yourself unnecessarily.

Cannonball - heavy, made of stone or iron. Come into the cannon and please do not trip over it.

Admiral - comes along sometimes. Is the boss of the boss

Hammock - your bed, but don't get too comfortable in it because you won't get much sleep anyway.

Rum - elixir of life, next to coffee

Powder monkeys - yes, they are children, but they know what to do and you can learn something from them too.

Boatswain - also called Bosun, he whistles the orders and drives you to work. He is also your wake-up call.

Marine - our sea soldiers, there aren't very many of them, but the few that there are are fine. They are there for the safety on board.

Cutlasses, muskets, grenades, axes, etc. - makes autsch, hopefully not with you. You will learn to handle them.

Cook - as the name suggests, and yes, having only one leg is normal.

Quarterdeck - not your dance area, that's the officers' area, you're only allowed there if your duty requires it.

Wardroom - also not your area. This is where we officers live and have some privacy.

Great Cabin - living and working area of the captain (you remember? - boss).

Gun deck - remember those big black things that bang loudly? they live here.

Berth deck - this is where you live, sleep and eat. Don't worry, it doesn't get cold there, you share the space with about 170 men.

Well, there is more, but I think that should be enough to start with. The rest will come naturally later. Don't stress about it and I think you will enjoy next year by the sea so much that you will want to come back.

[panda-writes-kpop]

Oh Captain, My Captain ~ Pirate!Winter

a/n: I recently watched the one piece live action while suffering from red-haired winter brain rot... thus this fic was created. @foolish-sparrow, my pirate queen and favorite mother figure, this one's for you. ❤️ also last fic of 2023, so I hope the new year treats you all well!

tw: possible ooc aespa girlies (I have never written for them before), violence (guns, swords, and death, oh my!), alcohol mentions, one suggestive mention

word count ~ 2.9k

summary: as a first mate to the captain of the Red-Haired Pirates, your job is simple. 1.) keep everyone in line, 2.) keep the ship running above water, and most importantly, 3.) remind your captain and lover that she needs to take a break every once in a while (after you plunder some enemy pirates, of course!)

♡ Masterlist ♡

"Come here, my love." Winter's voice rings out over the hustle and bustle of her crew as you slip past a few of them to head up the stairs, towards the helm of the ship.

Every great captain needed a reliable first mate. Someone they could trust when shit went sideways - as it often did as a pirate sailing the seas.

As luck would have it, you were the first mate to Winter's adventures as a captain, but your relationship quickly grew beyond what was conventional for a captain and a crew mate.

It's not like anyone's opinions mattered - if someone was out of line, a few days strung to the front of the ship set them straight. Winter was less harsh on her crew then most pirates, and had a semi-stable moral compass, but she couldn't let everything slide.

"I'm here, Minjeong, do you need something?" You ask as she backs away from the wheel to fish something out of her pocket.

"If I didn't know you better, I'd take that as a form of disrespect," She teases before tossing you a small necklace, "You should respect your captain, especially if they're pickpocketing necklaces off of dead rival pirates."

"I'm sorry, Captain Winter," You catch the necklace before mockingly bowing, "should I kiss your feet next time as a form of respect?"

"I'd prefer you started with my mouth-"

You scoff before admiring the necklace.

The rubies hanging along the necklace shine right in comparison to the gold chain it hangs on. There's a bit of rust on the necklace - from old money, you assume - but you know Winter means well. She often doesn't have much left over to spend on the two of you - she likes to reward her crew for a job well done when she's not fixing cannonball-sized holes in her ship.

You don't hesitate to put it on before answering her.

"Darling, if you want to kiss me, you don't have to grandstand. I'd do it for you anyways."

You lean in to kiss her, as she does the same, before a cannonball hits the left side of the ship. Winter grabs the nearest bolted-down object before catching you in her arms.

"You good?" She asks as you nod in response. "Way to ruin a moment."

"You'll really earn a kiss after this one, Captain." You look back to see a massive ship coming from the distance as your crew scrambles to be on the offensive.

Winter quickly goes to her feet before unsheathing her cutlass from her side.

"I've got this side covered. Go find Karina, Giselle, and Ningning. They're on strict orders to fire whatever they can find until we get close enough to invade their ship."

You're quick to your feet as well as you scan the crew members below you for the three girls you're looking for.

"I'm on it, Captain," You smile before backing away and blowing her a kiss, "but don't kick their asses too hard, alright?"

"If everything goes to plan, they'll regret setting sights on our ship." Winter swings her sword in the air as fellow pirates rally to her side and prepare for the incoming battle.

You scurry away on your mission with a sickeningly sweet smile on your face.

It's never a dull day on the seas with you, is it, Minjeong?

~

You catch Ningning on your way below deck, and you toss her your extra knife - she'll need it, given that hers find their way into the enemy's neck.

Below deck, Giselle is giving strict instructions to a few new recruits on how to fire the cannons. She spots you and waves as your eyes scan around the room.

"We're guns ablazing down here. How are we upstairs?" Giselle asks before tossing a cannonball into a nearby cannon.

"Everyone's ready, but I'm on the captain's orders to find Karina. Where's our head marksman?" 

"Check the gunroom. I think she snuck off with a girl - another marksman, perhaps?" 

"Damn you, Karina." You grumble before placing a hand on Giselle's back. "We're still up for drinks?"

"As long as I kick your ass at poker afterwards, then yes."

"You got lucky," You scowl for a moment as Giselle lights a match to set off the cannon, "but keep things running smoothly down here. I have a lovesick puppy to chase."

Giselle softly laughs as you plug your ears and move past the cannons. A few cannons fire off before you make your way to the gunroom. You try to open the door, but it's locked.

"Karina!" You loudly pound on the door before you hear two women squeal.

"Don't come in!" Karina yells.

"Wasn't planning on it, but we need you upstairs in the crow's nest. We're under attack from another ship." You announce before pounding on the door. "You can answer to me, or answer to your Captain. Either way-"

The door quickly unlocks and reveals a disheveled Karina along with another girl behind her in a similar state. 

"Don't tell Winter about this, please-"

"Get moving and I won't say another word." You step out of her way, and Karina scurries to above deck after grabbing her gun. "You too, c'mon!"

The other girl makes a noise resembling a cross between a shriek and a squeal before hurrying out of the room. You quickly close the door, but not before grabbing your favorite toy - a musket you lovingly called Killjoy.

With your specialists ready for battle, it was time to head back upstairs and see how much closer the other ship had gotten.

~

"Nice of you to join us, Karina," Winter jests as you join her at the side of the ship, "get up in that crow's nest and start shooting!"

"Got it." She nods before giving you a pleading look.

You wink at Karina, who deeply sighs before heading off.

"Which girl was she caught with this time?" Winter pinches the bridge of her nose in annoyance as you eye the rapidly approaching sea vessel.

"One of her marksmen. A new recruit, if I'm not mistaken." You ready Killjoy in your arms as the two ships are nearly about to collide.

Although Winter's ship has taken some damage, the other ship is about two more cannon blasts from going under. It makes sense that they'd try to get close, but they didn't know the talent of her crew.

With a skilled marksman, a masterful assassin, a crafty navigator who likes to play with fire, and the best swordsman to sail the coast, you had little to fear with your crew. You could hold your own, as could the rest of the crew, but you did like to let them show off - it gave you a clear reputation in the seas.

The two ships collide, causing you to grab the railing along with Winter.

"Charge!" She yells as a few members of your crew, including Ningning, swing across to jump aboard the other ship.

Karina quickly shoots down most of the pirates who swing towards your ship. In your arms, Killjoy is a deadly weapon, so you're able to down the last two pirates on your left. 

Before you can check your other side, Winter slices through a pirate that was headed your direction.

"Check both sides next time." She teases as you aim behind her shoulder and shoot down another enemy pirate.

"You watch the front, I've got your back." You say with a smile as Winter charges in front of you to take down another set of pirates who have just swung in.

You aim your musket at a pirate who swings in towards you, but you miss the shot due to a large explosion on the enemy ship that kicks up smoke and debris.

"Giselle, can you aim the grenades a little farther next time?" You scold the girl who appears next to you before she hands you a nearby trident.

"Accounting for distance and smoke, throw this ten degrees portside." Giselle, albeit a little too willing for your liking, takes Killjoy from your hands as you follow her instructions.

"I can't see anything-"

"-just trust me!" She yells as you throw the trident.

Sure enough, a pirate comes charging your way out of the smoke, but your trident pierces through his heart and lungs before he can reach you.

"How did you do that?" You're in shock as you grab the trident from the dead pirate.

"I'm the navigator. I'm supposed to know where everything is," Giselle aims your musket at the sky and shoots a pirate that neither of you could see, "but I did guess that they would charge you head on instead of moving to the side."

"Remind me to fish you out of the captain's cabin more often, mapmaker. You've got some serious talent." You compliment Giselle as the smoke finally clears and you can see who is coming your way.

"I like to make myself useful." She shrugs before easily downing another pirate that tries and fails to swing across to your boat. "I'll return her back to you in one piece."

"You better, or so help me God-" You grumble as Giselle heads to the quarterdeck to fend off more enemy pirates.

On the other ship, Ningning stabs two pirates at once before they both fall to the ground. Another tries to charge her, but a casual knife throw backwards ends their pursuit before it has a chance to start.

You've made enough of a dent in their crew that most fights are two versus one, and your trident stabs two pirates like a kabob before hitting the mainmast. 

You grab a sword from a long-deceased pirate as you jump into the fray. You parry an oncoming blow before pushing the other pirate back. Another tries to swing at your feet, but you're quick to jump out of the way and land a blow to their side.

Winter jumps in and kicks one of the pirates to the ground before stabbing her cutlass through their neck. The pirate you injured tries to move away from you while holding their side, but you rush forward and send them overboard with one push.

A gentle hand grabs yours as a sword comes right in front of your eyes. With two swords in their hands and a flamboyant hat on their head, you're certain that the foe in front of you is the enemy Captain.

Winter pulls you into one of her arms before pointing her cutlass directly at the other captain's chest.

"Surrender now, and we may let you live." She raises an eyebrow at the other captain, who takes a defensive posture.

"My crew and I will rip you to shreds."

"You might want to take a look around, then." Winter lets go of you before gesturing around her with her free hand.

The other captain looks around, panicked, as they notice that most of their crew is dead, overboard, or badly hurt.

Ningning waves her hand from the other ship, along with her remaining frontline fighters.

Karina jumps down from the last rung leading up to the crow's nest as she joins the rest of her marksman on the main deck.

Giselle stands to your left with a single grenade that she menacingly tosses up and down every few seconds.

You and Winter stand side-by-side with both of your swords pointed towards the nervous captain who immediately drops their swords.

"I surrender! Drop your weapons!" The captain barks as the rest of their crew raises their hands and drops their weapons.

With guns and swords drawn, you corral their crew into the corner as Ningning steers the enemy ship close enough that everyone can cross safely to plunder their treasures.

You cross your arms as two of your pirates lower the planks on both ships.

"You first, my dear Captain." You bow to Winter, who scoffs before sheathing her cutlass and offering you her hand.

"The captain and her first mate go together, you know." She smirks as you set aside your sword and take her hand. "Let's hope we find enough treasure to fix the ship."

~

The ship you plundered was full of treasures, including a fully stocked wine cellar that you and Giselle called dibs on. You found a pearl bracelet that you could probably pawn off for a pretty penny, but it'd look much better on your dearest than a stack of coins.

You're able to slip it into your pocket before anyone notices, and you help the crew members take some ammunition and supplies for yourself as Ningning counts up all of the gold, rubies, and other assorted treasures.

"How much are we looking at?" You ask before sitting next to her.

"More than enough to fix the ship, if that's what you're asking. We might even be able to afford the top-shelf rum." She jokes as you fish a small leather bag from your pocket.

You fill it full of gold coins before tossing it at Ningning.

"What is this for?"

"I know Winter hasn't been able to pay you for a while, so consider our debt settled. You're free to leave when you make it to the next island, if you want." You tell Ningning, who stares at the bag of money for a moment before emptying it back out.

"Months ago, I would've taken this money and ran off. I don't tend to like pirate crews, as a bounty hunter, but your crew is different." 

"Good different or bad different?" You ask.

"Depends on the day." She shrugs as you lightly push her aside.

"C'mon, we're not that bad-"

"I've watched you and Giselle drink a barrel of wine by yourselves-" 

"That was one time, and Karina still owes us money for that." You scoff at the thought as Ningning laughs to herself.

"I think I belong here, at least for now." She softly says after a moment of silence.

"Well, we're always glad to have you aboard." You rub her shoulders before standing up. "We've done enough talking. Let's get this treasure to our ship so we can make it to land before nightfall, which means Giselle and I can get wasted at the first land bar we see."

~

You roll your shoulders back after taking your second round of shots.

"Ningning's right, the top shelf rum really is the good shit!" Giselle yells over the live band that's playing to entertain the bar guests tonight.

"Who cares if it's top shelf or from the bottom of the barrel, if it'll get me drunk, it's good enough for me." You yell back as Giselle grabs her goblet of wine.

"I'll cheers to that." She says as your goblets smack together before you take a drink of wine.

"Excuse me," A tap on your shoulder causes you to turn around as a smaller member of your crew lightly taps your shoulder, "the captain's looking for you."

"Heading in for an early night?" Giselle teases before you casually flip her off.

"You know how Winter gets, it's all business all the time with her. I'll see if I can get her to relax for a bit." You stand up off of your barstool before nodding to the crew member. "Lead the way."

"If you're not back before the next song ends, I'm finishing your wine!" Giselle yells over the crowd as you roll your eyes.

"You better not!" You loudly respond before you weave through the crowd while watching the crew member in front of you.

Before you know it, you've made it to the back of the bar. Winter lightly traces the rim of her goblet with her pointer finger before her eyes meet yours.

"Thank you, Hana." Winter dismisses the girl with a wave as you slide right next to her in the private booth.

"How's the ship faring?"

"The contractor won't be able to fix all of the damages in a day, so we're stuck on land today and tomorrow." She wistfully says before taking a sip of wine. "Are you keeping an eye on everyone?"

"Love, you need to let everyone relax." You softly say while gently grabbing her arm. "They worked their asses off today, so they deserve a night off."

"The ship-"

"-will be fine. We paid a couple of locals good money to keep thieves off of it. Now, can the captain go off duty so I can speak to my lover?" You pleadingly ask as Winter sighs and removes her captain's hat.

Her beautiful red hair falls down past her shoulder as she hangs her hat on a nearby coat hook.

"Better?" She asks as you admire her hair.

"Better." You say before carefully brushing her hair with your hand. "You should put your hair down more often. It makes you look absolutely divine."

Her hand quickly grabs yours as you're halfway through combing her hair. Careful eyes meet yours as she tilts her head at you.

"Do you really mean that?" Vulnerability slips into her words as you watch her cringe at how child-like she sounds.

"I do," You smile before placing her hand in yours, "but I think I owe my captain a very special reward."

"You do, my first mate." Winter leans in to kiss you, and without the threat of pirate ships, certain death, or nosy crew members, you passionately kiss her back.

I'd spend everyday fighting off enemy pirates if I knew my day would end like this with you.

[brinefathomcaves]

100 Trinkets for Brinefathom Caves

A tiny bottle containing a drop of liquid gold that never dries

A child's drawing of a pirate ship

A broken-off cutlass hilt

A jar of mouth-numbing jellyfish jelly

A little mouse that likes to hide in your pockets

An albatross feather

A flute made from bone

A steel disk etched with the positions of constellations at the summer solstice

A tiny stone carving of a bird-headed, wing-armed woman

A dried out and fragile mermaid's purse*

A bloody hankerchief with embroidered flowers around the edges

Somebody's peg leg

A gold coin that's always damp

A rock-hard dried lemon*

A hand puppet that looks like a moray eel

A ring hung with rusty old keys

A tin cup etched with runes

A faded cameo portrait of a dwarf

A coin-sized stone that smells strongly of rum

A conch that sounds like someone singing when you hold it to your ear

A heavily-stoppered vial of super-spicy hot sauce

A dashing tricorn hat

A coconut lined with geode-like crystals

A pair of fins from a mermaid's tail †

Scissors that can cut sailcloth without making your hand tired †

A handful of dried fish eyes

Half a silver coin*

A six-sided iron teetotum with a different shell on each face

A dried puffer fish

A bottle of squid ink

A small rubber fish that squirts water when squeezed

A braided length of hair

A coin purse made from a clam

A tiny monkey's fist knot*

An actual mummified monkey's fist

A large scallop shell with Auran text etched into it

A pair of dice, each carved to look like a tiny coiled sea serpent**

A tiny wooden bird, delicately balanced on a round base, that acts as a weather vane

A weakly-magnetized iron starfish, a couple inches across

A polished steel mirror that only reflects you

A fern frond that's always green and fresh

A flag that blows into the wind instead of with it

A large cricket in an iron cage

A bone carving of a swallow*

A lover's eye pendant*

A pouch of bright blue sand

A small pot of pale green, pungent salve

A set of fanged wooden teeth

An articulated wooden hand

A vial of preserved, faintly-glowing lichen

Two square feet of a star-patterned quilt

A large, bushy false beard

Four brass buttons from a naval officer's jacket

A compass that points east instead of north

A piece of sea glass the shape and size of a smooth human heart

An empty but still great-smelling tin of tea from a far-off port †

A lantern shaped like an anglerfish †

A pipe inlaid with mother-of-pearl

A small jar of deep-sea fish teeth †

A leather eyepatch with a cat's eye embossed on it

A tin whistle that makes dolphin noises

A plush calico alligator with one button eye

Two halves of a sand dollar with gilding on the broken edges**

A pale blue glass eye**

A smooth pebble with markings that look like a face*

A minuature ship on a minuature sea in a minuature bottle. The sea reflects the state of the sea outside**

A sun-bleached wooden sign with an arrow painted on it

A scrimshaw etching of a ship on a large tooth*

A green bottle containing a letter from a shipwrecked sailor

A sea serpent's tooth, long as your forearm

A bottle containing seawater and a piece of living coral

A whittled wooden whale that sinks in water

A crystal deck prism

A small wooden goblet that doubles any alcohol poured into it †

A love letter neither written by nor addressed to you

A padlock that doesn't lock

A small piece of parchment with a large black spot on one side

A piece of gold lace*

A bronzed seahorse skeleton

A wind-up mechanical goldfish

A fist-sized lump of stone crudely carved into a chained, crouching man

A toy sailing ship

The flag from a pirate ship

A tarokka deck with simple black-and-white nautical-themed illustrations

A parrot skull with "Dear Polly" etched on the back**

A single earing hung with tiny bells

A necklace strung with shark teeth

A black bandana on which dragon are embroidered in gold thread

A cloak pin made from a shell containing a tiny immortal hermit crab †

An obviously-incorrect map of the surrounding sea

A saucy pinup drawing of a merperson

A woven silver bracelet that can magically turn into 10' of sturdy rope †

A necklace with an iron anchor pendant

A miniature replica of a lost ship's figurehead

A ring made from a spoon

A silver coin with a heart and initials etched onto it*

A few feathers tied together with a scrap of silk*

A compact with face powder and a powder puff

A yellow ribbon embroidered with initials*

A mask that looks like a horrible deep-sea fish

(Non-trinket rambling under cut)

I had help making this list! The other contributors (and the symbols that mark which entries they came up with) are as follows:

* @aranov

** Decoder13 (who isn't on Tumblr)

† @fishdavidson

[bleeding--scales]

a comprehensive guide on the crew of HER DARLING SCORNED.

the captain: meri merdoc. the ruthless leader and driving force behind the entire crew. she has a flawed moral compass and a refined taste for the more decadent and perverted leisures in life. won't hesitate to kiss you. won't hesitate to kill you. wildshapes into an orca.

the first mate: cass haven. the steadying balance to meri's violent behavior. stoic, unyielding, and ceaselessly loyal to those she trusts. a cleric of auril. upon first glance, one might mistake her quiet nature for benevolence, but she couldn't care less about what happens to you. wildshapes into a leopard seal.

the navigator: nerida shore. not much is known about their life or their past, and they prefer to keep it that way. they're headstrong and dangerously clever, sharper than a dagger to your throat. has one good eye, but damn, it's a good eye. is a known cheat, and is banned from all game nights. wildshapes into an anglerfish.

the boatswain: akir inder. resident weirdo and freak. his warlock patron is a titanically powerful sea beast. the crew is honestly unsure where his loyalties lie, but he's capable and almost never has a problem getting dirty. spends the most time with seshadri. wildshapes into a giant squid.

the surgeon: seshadri. hails from a small, remote village. philosophically opposes everything the hippocratic oath stands for. sadistic, unfathomably curious, and meticulous. will often use prisoners and stowaways to benefit his research. shockingly good at dancing. wildshapes into a sea snake.

the stewardess: silver-eye cutlass. to friends, she is called lass. was plucked out of the trash as a young child and given a home on the ship. is almost unanimously adored by everyone onboard. maintains order and routine amongst the crew, and happily involves herself with violence, should the need arise. is romantically partnered with bayard. wildshapes into a shrimp.

the cook: delmar. is often found lounging around half-sober. when he's not napping, he spends much of his free-time tinkering with new recipes and innovating technological gadgets. unfortunately, he also suffers from frequent bouts of sea sickness. loves arm wrestling (he always wins). wildshapes into a swordfish.

the gunner: thal havelock. former rich boy who was fed up with the noble lifestyle. an ostentatious flirt. in a rivalry with pera to see who can be the most annoying bastard on the ship. is the best at cards. laid-back, adventurous, and hates tedium. wildshapes into a barracuda.

the musician: bayard dubois. the fruitiest guy you know. adores making new friends, but will also backstab you faster than you can say bonjour! (listen, i know french doesn't exist in d&d. bear with me.) is the worst at cards. silly, carefree, and always itching to be a little kiss-ass. wildshapes into a sea otter.

the officer: zale sirena. the middle sibling of the sirenas. stone-faced and intimidating, but not generally quick to anger. a woman of few words. asexual. would really prefer to be napping right now. rarely drinks alcohol. wildshapes into a bull shark.

the carpenter: pera sirena. the youngest sibling of the sirenas. flagrant asshole and instigator of bullshit. it's an easy mistake to assume she has a big ego, but really she just adores pissing people off, and will wield condescension to achieve this. probably the laziest crew member. is a bigger alcoholic than the captain. wildshapes into a hammerhead shark.

the helmsman: anteia sirena. the oldest sibling of the sirenas. mature. does her best to be a prime role-model for her sisters, but often fails. is likely the kindest member of her darling scorned. holds fury in her heart, but is often too soft to enact this, so she lives vicariously through the actions of the others. is hopelessly in love with meri, but it's unfortunately one-sided. able to be gentle, but won't cry for you when you die. wildshapes into a mako shark.

[12pt-times-new-roman]

c3e72

We land on the northeastern shore of the island, and learn that FCG does not, in fact, know how compasses work.

Before using the compass to call the ghost pirates (?), FCG casts speak with dead on the bodies in the portable hole, and Imogen disguises herself as her mother to get them to talk. First, the druid:

[You failed your mission. Where is Thull?] "She remains at the key." [How many have come over?] "I don't know. I saw a hundred or more." [Did you ever speak to Ludinus?] "No. Just watched him." [How much time until we strike?] "I don't know." [What is the greatest threat to our organization?] "They've mentioned unity. Keep them scattered."

Next, General Ratanish: [Congratulations, you fell to a group of weaklings. Luckily, our master is forgiving. We can bring you back if you prove yourself. Tell me how we communicate.] "The old-fashioned way. The solstice has scrambled us." [Tell me how we protected our entrances to the key.] "The soldiers have been moved as you requested, and the Moonfolk have kept eyes as well." [You were in charge of keeping rebellions down, yes?] "Partially." [As you can see, I've been separated from our forces. Tell me about our entrances into the key.] "You have many tricks up your sleeve. The main pit entrance is easy. Otherwise... they were closed behind us as a precaution." [What happened to the two, the wizard and the monk?] "Probably dead."

In the throes of that massive success, they turn back to summoning a ship full of ghost pirates. From where the compass hits the water, mist billows and encloses the landscape, the temperature drops dramatically, and Orym hears nothing except for the waves and the wind. Noiselessly, a shadowed shape breaches the distant fog bank — the bow of a massive ship, chains hanging from the sides, an overgrown moss clustered up the hull, three masts with tattered sails.

It pulls up alongside the beach, and shadowed figures leap from the deck to meet them. They're mostly skeletal, wearing torn leather, wielding cutlasses — ten of them marching up the shore, splashing through the water. A handful stay on the ship, and a raspy voice echoes from it: "Take it from them. Leave them bleeding. Whatever they have is ours." Initiative!

wait are the Bells Hells finally going to get a ship if they defeat these guys??

Laudna knocks out most of the skeletons with a fireball and calls out in Shadowcant. "You sure you don't want to chat." "Hah. A chat it is. Kill the rest." The captain holds his action for the next couple of rounds.

Fearne legitimately considering not healing FCG when they're down and making death saves purely because their turn undead hit Laudna (even though it really shouldn't have bc she isn't undead) is certainly A Choice

Laudna reaches the captain, and puts his hand to her chest. "You're like me. Cursed. Rau'shan, Ka'mort, Delilah — we can end it. Together." He withdraws. "I chose this curse. The Strife Emperor granted me new life. So what else do you offer, besides returning what is mine?" She offers the compass and Chetney's cursed sword. "It's cursed, it talks to him — I figure it fits your aesthetic... it imbues him with the strength of a hundred holy men. It can grant you radiant abilities, the same ones that caused your men to flee." "Show me this blade."

Ashton rage build update: It seems like the 10th level improvement for the space rage build allows Ashton to teleport up to 60 feet on their turn. It's not clear whether this is a bonus action, a free action, or part of their movement.

Chetney approaches the captain with Graz'tchar unsheathed. "If you want your compass back, we beg but a simple journey across the seas."

Laudna's turn. "So, you're asking for passage? In trade, you all live, and you give me my compass and this fine weapon." "The compass first; the blade upon completion... you can't expect me to trust a bunch of pirates." "Collateral doesn't sound right to me. The blade now, the compass after."

Chetney hands over the blade, the captain accepts, and combat ends.

Travis went from having to be forcibly separated from the cursed sword, to willingly giving up the cursed sword after 72 episodes of buildup, to giving it away within a half dozen episodes of acquisition! that's what I call character growth!

"You have a thing here, in this realm, called guilt, and I've never really felt it before but I feel it really strongly here for some reason and it sucks—" fearne

"We didn't really do any research, we just heard about you from another woman and thought that sounded great" That is literally the Bells Hells' motto. Like. pirate captains, gods, what's the difference? they don't know shit about either!

They ask about the captain and his ship. They used to be well-known in these parts (unclear whether "these parts" refers to the Shattered Teeth or Domunas), but gained a lot of enemies; eventually, the enemies became part of the crew. They had almost gathered all of the things they were searching for when the curse befell them, and now they're searching for the rest — "things that are personal to me. Items, keepsakes, trophies, and my navigation tools."

And they, on semantics, give him his compass back. This surely will have no negative consequences in the future.

The boat is called "the Crimson Abyss." They're crossing over the Vermillion Reef. I mean, come on—

The captain has made multiple allusions to how his word is his bond, and how promises bind him, and how all the stories about him reflect this. Is he some kind of fey entity, somehow?

Ashton asks the captain about what's happening globally, and he says that he knows basically nothing.

I feel like the Bells Hells not knowing that Bane is a Betrayer God says more about the quality of the Exandrian public education system than anything—

Bane is the god of tyranny and conquest; they are lawful evil, and they believe in structure through domination, that those who are in power are there because they deserve or have earned it. In essence, if the Cerberus Assembly had to worship a god, they'd worship Bane. But for the captain, it's less about revery and worship, and more about praying to someone you agree with when you feel the occasional need to pray.

I do genuinely hope that Laudna giving up Chetney's blade for him without consulting him will become a point of conflict, I'd love to see more of their dynamic play out.

Time to identify magic items! They got boots of speed (which are much different and marginally less powerful than the boots of haste). With a round of Rollies, Ashton gets them, and trades them to Chetney for the Ring of Temporal Salvation.

Ashton goes to talk to the navigator, and they're the only one who picks up on the fact that she can't see the fog. Ashton mentions how they think that the Bells Hells can do something, or refuse to do something, about what the gods are facing; and on the mention of the red moon, she says that she hasn't seen it in weeks, and that worries her. They play into the navigator's anger (she's the skeleton of a fire genasi, he notices, and she's angry; he knows anger), plays on her doubts, to get the information they need. Like they did with Percy, it's unclear whether Ashton actually believes that the gods deserve to die, or if they're playing up that sentiment to appeal to the person they're trying to get information from.

The rest of them head below decks, and find that it's freezing cold, too cold to sleep. Somewhere, there's a violin playing.

[knife-like]

pirate aesthetics .

repost, don't reblog. bold what applies usually, italicize what applies sometimes, and strike out what never or rarely applies . insp .

adventurer ; sprawling paper maps, staring at the horizon, cool breezes, stargazing, notes scrawled in the margins of ancient books, swimming, billowing sails, daydreaming, worn compasses, ink spills, the smell of burning wax, candlelight, singing off-key, the smell of lemons, lit lighthouse

privateer ; eloquent speech, fine tailored lace, yellowed letters with red wax seals, god save the queen, fleurs, music boxes, feather quills, logging journals, blood-stained gold coins, rubies, engraved silver, suntanned leather, gold teeth, iron bars, birds in a cage

rebellious ; calloused hands, exposed sunkissed skin, beach bonfires, gleeful dancing, rusted telescopes, cries from the crows nest, defiant speeches, mist over the ocean, stick'n poke tattoos, stealing from the rich, treasure chests, barrels of rum, broken chains, a sealed scroll

lawless ; knives between teeth, crossed bones, knots of rope, cannonfire, darkness illuminated by firelight, red and black flags, a broken crown, burning ships, bags of money, notched wood, gunpowder, blood, hanged man's noose, a polished cutlass

cursed ; black water, dark storm clouds on the horizon, the eye of the storm, tarnished gold and silver, tentacles below the water's surface, blood in the water, sharks, creaking timber, doldrums, broken anchors at the bottom of the sea, piles of gold coins and other treasures, a figure head of a screaming maiden

tagged by : @shehook / tagging : you maybe :]

[tlmtwelve]

Pheebruary prompt(s): Meeting Hondo / Sword Play

[eriexplosion]

Entombed, PHEE MY BELOVED.

Omega is having so much fun in the junkyard she finds extreme enrichment in being able to Steal and Scavenge. I love that Omega craves Treasure this season, it's for a sad reason (SHE HAS TO EARN HER RIGHT TO EXIST WITH HER FAMILY RIGHT?) but it's also delightful to watch. LET SMALL GIRLS STEAL ALL THEY WANT, IT'S IMPORTANT TO THEIR PSYCHE.

Bolo and Ketch at Phee's storytime is so cute

Tech you would only know the story changes every time if you were listening every time she told it (and remembering the details) you know you like storytime.

God Hunter has reached maximum tired dad in this episode like legitimately the most exhausted I have ever seen him. His completely tired voice on 'Those two will believe anything.' Tired glances exchanged with Echo. This face.

We have a bit to go before he gets to that face but I am fucking entranced by it. Haunted by it. God give him a nap.

Tech and Phee sorting through the garbage haul together. Date Night Ideas for nerds.

MEL-221 is SO cute I love the paint job

Tech absolutely wants to pick Phee's brain for more unknown systems he wants to put them on his map, he MUST put more systems on his map.

Hunter turning around while they're talking though like he senses a disturbance in the force and it's going to make his life more difficult isn't it?

God him doing grouchy knife tricks in the background watching Omega copy Phee like she used to do with him, Hunter is so mad that is HIS little sister and Phee is STEALING HER.

"Who'd wanna hide treasure here?" Echo let's be real, the best place to hide treasure is where no one in their right mind would ever want to go. It just makes sense. Their distaste for how much this place sucks is great though, Echo has two sides: One wants to be doing more to fight the Empire, the other wants to find a nice sunny spot and drink a margarita already. Notably NEITHER of those sides wants to be on Suck Planet looking for Supposed Treasure.

CUTLASS CUTLASS CUTLASS

"If I'm right, which is always~" I love her so much.

Also her dramatically like THIS IS THE ENTRANCE TO SKARA NAL! And Echo is just. The WHAT? Genuinely one of my favorite things is when someone says something and Echo's entire reaction is "What the FUCK are you TALKING ABOUT?"

Phee you need to be aware when discussing 'the ancients' that everyone besides you in this room is less than 12 years old and their entire culture began that long ago too, they have very little reference for ancient anything.

Omega <3 BABY GIRL IS SO SMART also I love laying the compass on Phee's lantern to make it a projector that is so good

Hunter sensing the creature coming before it growls, I always love to see some of his enhanced senses at play. AND WHY IS IT ALWAYS WRECKER ABOUT TO GET EATEN, WHAT ABOUT HIM IS SO IMMENSELY SNACKABLE?

"You're just making this up as you go" hush Hunter that is your entire MO and you know it.

"So we have to navigate this death trap without it?" "Good thing you have me :D" *HUNTER GIVES THE LONGEST SIGH AND DRAWS HIS GUN FOR NO REASON JUST TO EMPHASIZE HOW UNCOMFORTABLE HE IS*

I love the door opening with the SPINNING as it slides

Heart of the Mountain is so pretty I want it as a rock candy

I've noticed when they need someone to fall while they're dangling precariously it's always Echo that goes first, life is hard when you have one hand capable of gripping.

The interior when the... it looks like a tomb guardian from Jedi Fallen Order iirc... activates looks so good.

Phee protectively clinging to the Heart of the Mountain, she doesn't WANNA give it up! Fair, Phee.

Hunter saving her last minute is such a good moment too, honestly this is a fun episode and yet another one I can't understand why people hated it sooooo much. This fandom lacks joy sometimes.

Let me tell you this thing approaching the Marauder is still stressful despite knowing nothing happens to it because of my intense belief that the marauder is NOT making it out of this show in one piece.

Them all being in this thing as it randomly self destructs is a lot, WHY DOES IT DO THAT WHEN YOU PUT THE THING BACK IN

"This puts as at 0 for 2 in treasure hunting"

MEL being blown up so much that Phee keeps a backup of her on the ship is a great detail.

[caltropspress]

AN ITINERARY FOR NON-PLACES: billy woods & Kenny Segal's Maps

We on a world tour with Muhammad, my man; going each and every place with the mic in their hand.

—Trugoy the Dove, ATCQ's "Award Tour" (1993)

Perhaps you will persuade him to relate something of his past. Perhaps there is one among you who can induce him to bring out his old travel-diaries; who knows? 

—Rainer Maria Rilke, The Journey of My Other Self (1930)

Now when I was a little chap, I had a passion for maps.

—Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)

Maps won’t work here.

—Aesop Rock, “Rabies” (2016)

1.

You arrive with certain expectations. You arrive with Edward Said quotes queued up in your mind, knowing “what on a map was a blank space was inhabited by natives.” As such, you equip yourself with “map and compass, gat and cutlass” (“U-Boats”), keen to trouble Orientalist notions. Don’t get it twisted as you mark twain: there are flare-ups. On “Hangman,” we hear of “Hindu kush, a Sikh surrounded by Thuggers,” a modernist nod to August Schoefft’s early-19th century painting. We hear of “flying carpets out this motherfucker.” It’s a whole-new, brave-new world. “The room smelled like Marrakech,” woods reports on “FaceTime,” and George Orwell’s “Marrakech” (1939) happens over the mind’s transom. Orwell depicts colonial subjects who, in the imperial imagination, are nothing more than “undifferentiated brown stuff”—each figure what Said calls “an atom in a vast collectivity.” So, yes, you can skirt “on the edge of Magellan maps” (“Wonderful World”), or take a cue from Mike Ladd and rip to shreds Universalis Cosmographia by Sebastian Münster, that lying bastard, but—like Dylan on “My Back Pages”—woods is riding “on flaming roads using ideas as [his] maps.” We’ll meet on edges soon, he says—probably the “lists of names, pages and pages” he’s hoarding on “Soft Landing”—but the impulse here should amount to more than freeing political dissidents from cages. On Aethiopes, woods clocked nautical miles, but now he’s on a world tour redeeming his frequent flyers. You’ll find nothing quite as unrepentant as cannibal tours here, though there are horrors and hors d'oeuvres aplenty. These Orientalist postulates are somewheres, but Maps is concerned with nowheres.

2.  SUBS & COMPONENTS

Yeah, I’m leaving tomorrow, but I got time today. woods begins “Kenwood Speakers” by speaking his words of departure like John Denver, only he spares us the sentiment. “Leaving on a jet plane—” Denver sings, “don’t know when I'll be back again. / I hate to go.” woods is at worst eager and at best aloof about his own leaving. V. S. Naipaul’s Ralph Singh from The Mimic Men, meanwhile, goes further, stating bluntly: “I am not coming back.”

Maps—like Dante’s Inferno, like Plato’s cave—is where all people come to know themselves. The album is billy woods’ itinerarium mentis—his journey of the mind—a [hero’s] journey into the center of the [real] earth. One-dimensional MCs can’t handle that. The undertaking requires steadfast digging into the so[u/i]l of one’s self. Another turn of the screw, gyring deeper, despite how much the torture/[tour]ture might hurt. We feel the pangs right along with him, do we not?

Guess who’s coming to dinner on “Kenwood Speakers”? Some born sinner, the opposite of a winner—but not a sardine in his line of sight. Only Deleuze and Guattari lines of flight—escape routes to deterritorialize your whole plane of immanence. The night before woods departs on a pilgrim’s progress, his body and being go surface-to-air—Habyarimana on an economy flight. Or John Denver even, who was watching time and space cross his path as his Rutan Long-EZ plane nose-dived into Monterey Bay. Knock the plane out of the sky and woods sparks his own personal gentrifier genocide.

This is where your humble essayist springs a gentrification quote on dat azz. Say, David Harvey quoting Lenin quoting Cecil Rhodes—that would be apropos. Some “Accumulation by Dispossession” shit; some spatio-temporal fixes shit. But bleary-eyed theorizing would diminish what woods does with his terse, yet totalizing, imagistic lines. I’m gonna sit this one out and leave it to the gentrifiers themselves to tell it. (Catch me like “Lenin lying in state” [“Warmachines”]; or, as we hear on “NYC Tapwater”: “I lie down like V.I. Lenin.”)

3.

The title “Kenwood Speakers,” of course, is a portmanteau of their names [Kenny Segal + billy woods]—the blending of sound and style of [e]strange[d] bedfellows: woods as an observant Ishmael to Kenny Segal’s affable Queequeg. woods listens to Kenny Segal’s beats like Ishmael opens up to Queequeg’s tattoos—his cannibal body [of work] a “book of nomad inscription,” according to Pierre Joris. The “port” of this portmanteau is a haven, a hush harbor. “The port would fain give succor,” Melville writes, “...in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities.” Portmanteau as leather luggage, too—filled with Kenny’s circuit-bent Omnichord, his pedals, his SP-404, his “weird little children’s toys turned into live beat-machine things” (in woods’ words). woods calls him “nuts,” but so too was Glenn Branca. Forget jazzmatazz, Kenny’s brand of jazzmaskronk incorporates No Wavy horns and angular guitar strokes put to the orbital sander. Bring the sinuosity. Tonal plexus, to perfection. Counterpane production steez: combining elements unmethodically in sun and shade; beats stuffed with corncobs or broken crockery. Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian. Bones litter the beach, gnawed.

4.  A MINIMALIST HOMEBOY WHO KNOWS HIS BEATS

The opening clicks on “Kenwood Speakers” are the clicking of a gas stove before the burner crowns with blue flame (...blue flame like the oven, woods says on “Rapper Weed”). And we can trace the sonic sum of his drum thump and drum pattern to LL Cool J’s “I Can’t Live Without My Radio,” another ode to electroacoustic transducers. The Rubin-produced banger gets audiophiliacs amped—woofers wallop and tweeters twitch. Move forward in time to “Fantastic Damage,” where El-P introduces a boom-bap that veers cement-crush. He leaves “ruthless rounds of radio dust” in his wake—“cranial mush.” Bigger, deffer, fitter, happier, more productive. 

In the liner notes for Radio (1985), Nelson George calls LL a “talkologist,” which we can apply to woods, too. “After-market speakers in the Saturn,” he raps, and his whip is his own personal universe, evidently. He’s a brother from another Lonely Planet. Fodor’s on the dashboard; Baedeker in the backpack. From Plainfield to Compton: Swing down, sweet chariot, stop, and let him ride dirty in a lemon (hell yeah): “Beater but they can’t catch it.” The engine clunks and clatters just as the beat breaks down after the first verse—a beat transition/deconstruction not heard since DJ Shadow’s work on “Latyrx.” Kenny Segal’s music is all Chords and Discords, like the Letters to the Editor section of DownBeat magazine. Noizy Meditations like that L.O.N.S. joint T.I.M.E. (“cover my tracks with backronyms”). Fair to say Kenny Segal could pull a broad sword from a hoarded synthesizer, word to Aes Rizzle.

5.

LL’s radio appeared to ward off gentrifiers by design, destabilizing the ground beneath their feet: “My JVC vibrates the concrete.” He was “terrorizing [his] neighbors with the heavy bass.” True to Duke Bootee and Melle Mel, the impoverished city is like a jungle sometimes—“the rats is madness”—and the superpredators sport Brooks Brothers suits. woods is watching the blue-eyed soulless ones encroach, the “blue-eyed White Walkers in King’s Landing.” They march on the miry Slough of Despond. He’s not trying to leave the neighborhood empty-handed, so he infiltrates. He finagles and ingratiates himself into a “dinner party with the neighbors, / Their apartment’s renovated”—no longer a “crumbling mansion.” He eats their food ravenously, wolfishly. With each morsel, he’s seeking the beloved community, or so they’d like to believe.

As they dine, woods “turn[s] the music up incrementally,” and you’ve got to imagine it’s some PMRC fare—Ice-T’s “You Played Yourself” or the like. Something equal parts catch-wreck and (w)reckoning. Or maybe the song is “Kenwood Speakers” itself. And it’s a sort of Jordan Davis reversal at work. woods as Lord Baelish with the “mischievous lies.” He’s Claudius with a cup of poison. The whole ear of gentrified Bed-Stuy serpent-stung, rankly (and thankfully) abused. woods goes full Ying Yang Twins and “whisper[s] in the host’s ear all night,” hexing him, slow-releasing Paraquat into his supple mind as he sups. (That’s what’s up.) We’ve seen him in this capacity before, like when he whispered to his own dull knife-sheared shadow on “houthi.” The hushed hemlock woods administers to the “host’s ear” collapses into what woods “hear[s]” later—that “they found [the host] in the morning [with the] hose run from the exhaust pipe.” A well-thumbed copy of White Fragility left behind on his nightstand. woods reveals himself to be Samwell Tarly with the black dragonglass dagger. “Wreathed in gas—I’m a carburetor,” woods raps, contrasting his smoky satisfaction with the carbon monoxide car killing. He sees the Wicket Gate blurry in the distance—and it bears a helluva resemblance to an airport gate.

6.  SPACE IS THE NON-PLACE

Much has been hastily made of the narrative structure of Maps—eager listeners figuring wussdaplan and blueprint to the realms ’n realities that the album presents. But order—beginnings [departures] and endings [arrivals]—isn’t important; movement is. Better find out, before your time’s out, what the flux? Think Inspectah Deck’s “alive on arrival”; disregard Puff Daddy’s “mess around be D.O.A., be on your way” (but heed his fugacious “ain’t enough time here”). Non-narrative acceptance will allow us to revel in what Nathaniel Mackey calls “the rickety, imperfect fit between word and world.”

And as we navigate that imperfect fit, dwell in the non-. Dwell in the non-, in the non-, in the non-. “An airport is nowhere,” W. S. Merwin writes, “which is not something / generally noticed.” Merwin’s poem (“Neither Here Nor There”) typifies ideas explored in Marc Augé’s Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity (1992). Augé analyzes the meaning of transient spaces in our fast-paced, globalized society. He sets places (rooted, concrete, community-rich locations—where “saplings bend” but don’t break) against spaces (abstract locations of the mind—“I live in my mind,” as woods said on “Asylum”). We spend an immoderate amount of time in a multiplication of “non-places,” which Augé sees as “installations needed for the accelerated circulation of passengers and goods”—airports, hotels, interchanges, high-speed roads. This is the world woods knows all too well on Maps. Whether he’s taking a “$300 Uber to a show” role-playing as Future in a Maybach, smoking a spliff that “could probably jump your car battery,” exploring “Johannesburg in a Ford Explorer,” or manifesting “Jimmy Wopo draped over his steering wheel,” woods inhabits the image of the non-place. Makes sense for someone who claims to be “from where every car foreign and [they] drive ’em on empty,” dwelling in disconnectedness. Your head is throbbing and I ain’t said shit yet—the next movement is by air.

7.

woods takes in the view from his plane window. “Space,” Augé writes, “stems in effect from a double movement: the traveller’s movement, of course, but also a parallel movement of the landscapes which he catches only in partial glimpses.” On “Soft Landing,” woods sees with new sight: “From up here the lakes is puddles, / The land unfold brown and green—it’s a quiet puzzle.” woods pieces the partial glimpses together into something cohesive and captivating—“a series of ‘snapshots’ piled hurriedly into his memory and, literally, recomposed in the account he gives of them,” in Augé’s words.

“But the book is written before being read,” Augé adds, and let’s exchange “book” with album and “read” with heard. “[I]t passes through different places before becoming one itself: like the journey, the narrative that describes it traverses a number of places.” For woods, these places include a pop-in with Aesop Rock in Portland, Oregon, a visit to the Alchemist’s lab in Los Angeles, and a late-night stop at Steel Tipped Dove’s apartment in Brooklyn. He takes up residence at Kenny Segal’s L.A. home and traipses around Japan, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Germany. Augé:

This plurality of places, the demands it makes on the powers of observation and description (the impossibility of seeing everything or saying everything), and the resulting feeling of “disorientation”...cause a break or discontinuity between the spectator-traveller and the space of the landscape he is contemplating or rushing through. This prevents him from perceiving it as a place, from being fully present in it, even though he may try to fill the gap with comprehensive and detailed information out of guidebooks.

woods has discussed the “mental and physical spaces that type of travel and touring put[s] [him] in.” His documentation of his movement through non-places is the least he can do to keep from entropying: “I was writing in hotels, and Airbnbs, and airports, and sometimes at home.” For us though, his audience, woods is no longer hiding places; he’s exposing places.

8.  LIKE, “I JUST FLEW INTO THE CITY—WHAT’S UP WITH YOU?”

We hear “hero’s journey” and immediately inch toward Ithaca and Homeric hexameter, but Gilgamesh should be our guidepost, not that man-of-many-ways Odysseus. Our guidepost is woods’ “Gilgamesh”—a relationship song of stunted growth and stasis. “Got a call out the blue,” he starts, but with Maps, the call is to us and it’s a clarion call. The name Gilgamesh rings out, and it sounds like “rattling medals.” On Maps, it sounds like a “chain banged [on] glass ceilings,” an echo of Prodigy’s piece banging on glass tables. We heard the vibrations on “houthi”—that “change on plexiglass” jingle. I’m impressed by the resonance. The message doesn’t “sound weak coming out the speakers” like it did on “Gilgamesh.” The marginal upgrade is Kenwood speakers—no puttering set of Polks.

woods is arguing for a new paradigm—he didn’t need his paradigm to shift like the rest of us did. He read the daily briefings and was familiar with what-goes-around-comes-around logic. He wasn’t caught lacking on 9/11—we were. He’d been rapping along with Biggie (Blow up like the World Trade…). He coveted his promo copy of The Coup’s Party Music with Boots holding the detonator on the cover. He was looking at the city like jihadis in the cockpit. When it comes to artistic representations, like my homie D.O.C., no one has done 9/11 better than billy woods. Noreaga adopted the personage of Manuel Noriega; Intelligent Hoodlum was reborn as Tragedy Khadafi; woods takes on the mantle of Osama bin Laden—green army field jacket over white robe. 

On “Gilgamesh,” he’s “left thinking like Osama in Khartoum” when his ex splits, “gone at first light, connecting flight—she made the plane.” Vindictiveness aside, woods should know her airport visit alone will be a hellish experience. Punishment enough. Subjected to TSA screens and pat downs while touring the globe, find woods “excessively mean-mugging” as the metal detector wand grazes his testicles. “Airports and aircraft, big stores and railway stations have always been a favoured target for attacks,” writes Augé, “doubtless for reasons of efficiency…. But another reason might be that…those pursuing new socializations and localizations can see non-places only as a negation of their ideal.” woods’ 9/11 bars may startle us, but they disabuse us of our bliss.

9.

GO flat out at top speed across curve of earth is the only way.

—Pierre Joris, A Nomad Poetics (2003)

The earth is a sphere.

—“Houdini”

All this perpetual movement, this implacable globetrotting, these abrupt shifts in location—it makes for a nomad poetics, as poet Pierre Joris puts it. woods is a “NOET,” where “NO stands for play [and] ET stands for et cetera, the always ongoing process, the no closure.” Joris describes how polylingualism is a nomadic trait that is capable of “moving through languages, cultures, terrains, times without stopping.” So woods drags us from witnessing Yemeni traders off the coast of Mozambique (“The Doldrums”) to Dien Bien Phu (“Baby Steps”) in less than twelve months. He slips into Jamaican patois and amuses us with his limited Spanish (Muchos problemas if you don’t have it for the plug…). In “The Schooner Flight,” Derek Walcott says, “either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation.” woods would remix: I’m nobodies and nations.

“[I]f it is all flux, all nomad wandering” for the NOET, “when & how to write,” Joris asks. “How not to stop & yet do the poem?” The nomadic poem—like the songs that make up Maps—is a “poasis, a poem-oasis, i.e., a stop in the moving along.” In Sufi poetry, this is known as the mawqif, which Joris defines as “the pause, the stop-over, the rest, the stay of the wanderer between two moments of movement.” The layover, in woods’ words. A moment of “movement-in-rest, of movement on another plane or plateau, between today’s & tomorrow’s lines of flight.” Recording “Rapper Weed” in Kenny Segal’s studio in L.A., for example.

Nomad poetics encompass a political component. Joris isn’t blind to the realities of “a historical era where cheap air flight has made at least the White World into summer travelers, sun-seekers, tourist-nomads, i.e., fake nomads, or really not nomads at all, while a large part of poor Third World people are constrained to turn themselves into forced labor exilees or at best transhumance-ing workers, transients that have been ‘transported’ as the term was used in the slave trade.”

The triangulation of “sugar, molasses, rum”—it’s a strangulation. There’s trouble with travel. Travel as forced relocation. Travel as travails, as toil—or, worse—as tripaliare (Vulgar Latin for “torture”). From your book I took a page, bell hooks—who writes in Black Looks (1992) of being accosted, detained, and interrogated by white officials while in an Italian airport, and another time being strip searched at an airport in France, suspected of ties to terrorism in both cases. “[T]o travel is to encounter the terrorizing force of white supremacy,” she writes. Augé writes about how “the user of the non-place is always required to prove his innocence,” but for bell hooks, a Black woman, “there is no comfort that makes the terrorism disappear.” Who is Augé to judge how she terror manages?

“Goin’ places that I’ve never been, / Seein’ things that I may never see again,” Willie Nelson sings, impatient for a return to the road. His is a romanticized perspective; with feelings of dissociation, woods offers a no-man-ticized one, more akin to Atmosphere’s “Travel” from 2000: “We travel like the blood that surrounds your brain”—pressure builds and aneurysms flutter under cranial walls. The itinerary looks blurry, the ink faded from sun, folds, and creases. “The engagements are booked through the end of the world,” croons They Might Be Giants’ John Linnell, “so we’ll meet at the end of the tour.” [Open Mike Eagle nods approvingly.]

10.  HEAVY AIRPLAY ALL DAY WITH A NINA SIMONE CHORUS

On “Soft Landing,” Kenny Segal introduces guitar to drums and they converse in a dissonant cadence. In the words of Cecil Taylor, they consist of “regular and irregular measurements, of coexisting bodies of sound.” woods takes flight and the sound of the plane lifting off the tarmac is a welcome relief, like blasts from Michael Nyman’s Decay Music (1976). “Birds flying high,” woods sorta-sings, and he follows their migratory patterns. Just get him the fuck outta dodge. He’s a budding ornithologist with his head in the loud clouds. We hear him mention “birds-of-paradise in the menagerie” and “midnight ravens” alike. The exotic and the demonic—he studies them all, binoculars to his peepers. 

“Before we take off, I call Mom and say, I love you,” woods raps. He’s taken a note from Quelle Chris who advised, “Call your folks while they still livin’.” woods’ mother antipodal to his ex who he texts upon landing with a significantly less felicitous message—one feminine figure signals ascent; the other, descent. The in-betweenness of the experience—limbic and liminal all at once, exemplified by woods with his “head in the loud clouds [and] both feet on the fucking pavement.” woods invariably finds himself in the in-betweenness, the purgatorio of his life’s purpose: be it from “Rolling Loud to Shakespeare in the Park” or his own nature documentary “narrated by an Attenborough [but] over the instrumental to ‘Keep It Thoro.’”

“You believe in [the airport],” Merwin writes:

while you are there because you are there and sometimes you may even feel happy to be that far on your way to somewhere 

You know how I feel? woods feels the altitude sickness, his ears popping. But once that subsides, he feels suspended in time and space. Sun in the sky. Breeze driftin’ on. Only gotta fear a flock of geese in the aircraft engines, what with no savior Sully to guide the passengers to safety. At long last, he feels free from the fetters of his life down below. He’s [re]set for a soft landing. 

11.

Look out, honey, ’cause I’m using technology,

Ain’t got time to make no apology.

—The Stooges, “Search and Destroy”

There’s a duality on Maps: two selves—one who longs to travel; the other who longs to return home. Calypso after the show, but FaceTime calls with the kids at the breakadawn. On “FaceTime,” though, home is the last place. Home is where the heart gave out. What woods takes with him on the flight are the repercussions, the health complications. Quarrels crammed in the carry-on. Relationship woes on the wing:

You flyin’ easyJet—Bratislava, Utrecht, Something felt off before I even left, So when I saw the missed calls, I knew what was next. Didn’t have to open the text.

woods delineates a communication breakdown. He initially tries to distance himself by using the second-person, but moments later he’s allowed himself to be drawn back in. He notes the “missed calls” and uses every shred of self-discipline to not “open the text.” The patterns, he reminds himself, are nothing new. He may be unnerved by “flyin’ easyJet,” but the awareness that “something felt off before [he] even left” feels good—a familiarity. The consonance of “felt off before I even left” provides him the lift he needs. No matter the angle he looks at it [“felt” or “left,” anagrammatically satisfying—he can sit with his feelings or leave them all behind], he’s floating above the rubble of the relationship.

Not for lack of trying. They did “couples therapy on Zoom, [but] it’s a train wreck.” The Celestial Railroad derails and they burn off the vinyl chloride toxic spillage. The evacuation zone is 30 kilometers wide. woods is a sucker—falls for it every time. Okay, okay, okay: not every time. He’s become adept at having his “evil eye ward off hex, though—FaceTime declined.” He goes full Last Tango in Paris on the enchantress, displacing his frustrations on a crowd of innocent civilians: “Butter wouldn’t melt, I gave ’em margarine.” Echoes of Tony Soprano after Carmela informs him that’s she’s filing for divorce: “The only reason you have anything is ’cause of my fucking sweat, and you knew every step of the way exactly how it works. But you walk around that fucking mansion in your $500 shoes and your diamond rings, and you act like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.” If we’re talking socialization mediated by screens, this is some real prestige drama—really real, son.

Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir être seul.

With so much drama in the relationship, woods retreats further. He loses himself at a gig. Afterwards, he writes at his desk in a hotel room in Tucson as he hears “dubstep drift in the window.” Partiers, “some half, some overdressed,” make their way through the halls, “checkin’ they phones” as the “bass shake[s] the walls.” woods is removed from it all: “I’m smoking alone in a cardigan, thinking of home.” In non-places, Augé insists, you can find yourself “alone, but one of many.” Once more unto the breach, he goes “back down to the bar again” only to witness an “afterparty packed like Parliament,” and who can really say whether it’s the funkiness of George Clinton or Margaret Thatcher, but the masses are pressed “ass cheeks and cheekbones”—baby got bacchanalia. woods, for his part, is “looking like the help or someone who just wandered in.” He’s an outsider amongst the “animal pelts,” “chunky rings, clunky shoes, [and] lots of ink.” Out of place, out of sight, out of mind, out-of-body experience. He’s Poe’s eagle-eyed protagonist in “The Man of the Crowd” (1840), “observing the promiscuous company in the room.” He marks the “dense and continuous tides of population,” “their aggregate relations,” and he “regard[s] with minute interest the innumerable varieties of figure, dress, air, gate, visage, and expression of countenance.” Despite all of that distraction, by the end of the song woods has only moved the pen six inches. “Really,” he says, regaining our trust, her trust, “I’m just waiting for my phone to ping”—emphasis on waiting. “I’m thinking ’bout you when I’m supposed to be thinking ’bout other things.”

12.

A stay in L.A., L.A., big city of dreams, but everything in L.A. is overpriced. Avaricious sonsabitches “bloated with gout, / Sores weeping, doubled-over, chest heaving from chasing clout,” shelling out “six Gs an ounce.” woods went from genuflecting at the weed price to oof. He’s a savvy consumer, but Los Angeles, as Mike Davis writes in City of Quartz (1990), is “a stand-in for capitalism in general.” He continues: “The ultimate world-historical significance—and oddity—of Los Angeles is that it has come to play the double role of utopia and dystopia for advanced capitalism. The same place, as Brecht noted, symbolized both heaven and hell. Correspondingly, it is the essential destination on the itinerary of any late twentieth-century intellectual, who must eventually come to take a peep and render some opinion on whether ‘Los Angeles Brings It All Together’ (official slogan) or is, rather, the nightmare at the terminus of American history (as depicted in noir).” woods excavates the future in Los Angeles, such as Davis’s subtitle goes, where the “Nike store on Fairfax” is absent of inventory, where one’s commodified state of being includes “monogrammed tube[s],” “crushed velvet,” and other offscourings of “colorful packaging.” None of which is of much interest to billy woods, a man who has “learn[ed] to toss the dregs.” This place, he knows, is a cemetery. He rests his riveted gaze on the “whole entourage on the couch buried in they phones.” You heard right: buried in they phones—their absence-presence of screen staring, their doom-scrolling a Tibetan Book of the Dead written in real time, a bardo of blue light. Mike Davis is quick to remind us: “Pío Pico, the last governor of Mexican California and once the richest man in [Los Angeles], was buried in a pauper’s grave.” “When it’s my time,” woods raps, “no need to pass the hat.” No GoFundMe campaign necessary to cover the costs of a champagne crepe-lined casket. “Just throw me in when the fire good and crackling,” he implores. My my, hey hey—it’s better to burn out than to fade away. Send him up in smoke just the same as so much of his precious time on earth. “Bury me in a borrowed suit,” woods advised his mortician on Earl Sweatshirt’s “Tabula Rasa.”

13.

Jet-lag is the cousin of Death. On “Bad Dreams Are Only Dreams,” woods grows weary as his transient life becomes a trance-ient life. “I can’t quite grab the new me,” he raps, brainfogged as he passes through time zones like skipping stones. His “old self [is] dozing in an aisle seat” on an Emirates flight. Forget about his girl back home, now he’s divorced from himself. Augé:

When an international flight crosses Saudi Arabia, the hostess announces that during the overflight the drinking of alcohol will be forbidden in the aircraft. This signifies the intrusion of territory into space. Land = society = nation = culture = religion: the equation of anthropological place, fleetingly inscribed in space. Returning after an hour or so to the nonplace of space, escaping from the totalitarian constraints of place, will be just like a return to something resembling freedom. 

woods has split the self, drawn-and-quartered it. He’s his own chain gang. On the side of the road where his “brain [is] exposed to the elements.” If we “lift [his] skull-top off delicate,” we see it’s “wider than the Sky,” as Emily Dickinson similized it. Worst of all, it’s infected by devils who’ve no regard for the fragile “bone china chafing dish” that holds the brain. “Absent-minded,” woods raps—he’s absent of his mind. And that might be an error, as criminal-minded might more accurately reflect his present status of “break[ing] time like bricks.” “Thoughts is cinder blocks,” but all I can see is woods breaking rocks in the hot sun. When he soundclashes, he fights the law. In his cell watching Shogun Assassin for the umpteenth time, but he’s also come into possession of a VHS copy of Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (1973). Flyin’ easyJet: Hong Kong to Paris. How different is monotonous prison labor from the toil of travel? Luggage heft; cramped legs; numb ass. woods needs rest and recovery, but “alarm clocks break spells.” He’s living in his own private Gitmo. Enhanced interrogation has him walking the witch. TSA sleep-deprives him to extract intel, to elicit a confession. His Self is reduced to geologic bits. He’s “crashed out,” Flight 93 style, as he becomes a plane making impact with the ground in Shanksville, PA and disintegrates. “Search for my own black box in the hills,” he raps, wanting to recover his own voice, his own data. Just as he said on “Red Dust,” “it’d be wise” to retrieve it. But what he finds amongst the strewn debris is a “black Rubik’s cube,” impenetrably scrambled.

This nightmare scenario has woods like the rappers he described on Armand Hammer’s “Aubergine”: “Tired, / Inertia the only thing keep ’em moving, / Glassy-eyed.” woods is a survivor of the crash, of sorts—his “parachute twisted and snarled.” You can’t put a price on a good night’s sleep, even if it’s a “king’s ransom.” But woods is “half ’sleep with the halo, dead on his feet,” so maybe it’s too little, too late. He wanders zombified, inactive, unconscious. He’s trying to get right for today; he’s “not swimming in tomorrows” like on “Babylon by Bus.” His death grip on reality is only as firm as his grip on surreality, as we heard from his appearance on Infinite Disease’s “Anomalady”:

After a while, you don't remember the crowds or venues,  just the hotel rooms. ¿Tu tienes WiFi? It's just me in a stocking cap, watching TV The city dead out the window, still not even sleepy Sleep deprivation, the days keep leaking Life on the screen, light the dark like a beacon

woods the amnesiac—he “don’t remember the crowds or venues.” If only he could repress the meaningless hotel rooms instead. Alive ain’t always living in non-places (just ask Quelle Chris), especially when it’s mediated by technology: WiFi passwords, TV, his phone. Somehow he survives; it’s the city that’s dead.

14.  FBI AGENTS NARROW THEY EYES

When you turn the knob on “Blue Smoke,” you trick yourself into believing you’re rehearsing with Ornette. We feel inner circle. We feel privy. But Max Roach might also be in the audience, like he was at the Five Spot in 1959, waiting for Ornette to step offstage so he could duff him up, which he did. The FBI had a dossier on Roach, just as they did for so many other Black cultural icons. COINTELPRO with the hyper-acuity. ELUCID forewarned: Fifty people at a rap show—one’s an informant. Police came to billy woods’ show on Known Unknowns, an album which has moments that jive with the claustrophonic and paranoisey sounds of Hiding Places. To avoid any confusion, I’ll pass the mic to media god Marshall McLuhan:

We now have the means to keep everybody under surveillance…. This has become one of the main occupations of mankind—just watching other people and keeping a record of their goings-on. Invading privacy—in fact, just ignoring it. Everybody has become porous…. When you’re on the telephone, or on radio, or on TV, you don’t have a physical body. You’re just an image on the air…. You’re a discarnate being. You have a very different relation to the world around you. And this, I think, has been one of the big effects of the electric age. It has deprived people, really, of their private identity.

On “NYC Tapwater,” woods takes a stab-your-brain-with-your-nose-bone attempt at mentoring the youngins: “No need for stop-and-frisk, it’s cameras everywhere, / They got your IG feed, / Come scoop kids after they do the deed.” Mass surveillance should have you shook. woods spies the “big-ass satellite dish pointed at the sky,” on “Blue Smoke.” woods fucks with the frequencies frequently, sabotaging the alphabet boys with “so much tape hiss.” These aren’t just some plainclothes cops with iPads in Missoula, Montana. These are FBI agents that “narrow they eyes, / Frustrated, asking to be reassigned” because woods is giving them nada. “Been on this n-word for months,” they concede, “I think it’s all just rhymes.” Yep, rhymes like dimes. Talk about a most strange game, but woods knows he “shouldn’t be surprised.” Know that you’ll be scrutinized. He threatens that he better not “catch you unsupervised”—from the Latin super [“over”] + videre [“to see”], which = overseer. You know that sound—it’s the sound of da police. Same as you heard at the conclusion of “Police Came to My Show.” KRS-One offered a likkle truth and implored you to open up your eye. An exercise, from the Teacher:

Take the word overseer, like a sample, Repeat it very quickly in a crew, for example: Overseer, overseer, overseer, overseer— Office, officer, officer, officer.

No wonder woods guards himself with galvanized steel security fencing. In a non-place like an airport, writes Augé, “the passenger accedes to his anonymity only when he has given proof of his identity.” Mom showed him where she keeps the passport hidden, and he retrieves it when necessary. Similar rules apply to others. “Anyone wanna be in my life gotta sign several waivers,” he raps strictly on “Babylon by Bus.”

15.  

I traveled among unknown men.

—William Wordsworth (1799)

I asked, “Is the mask for the killer or the crowd?"

—Armand Hammer’s “Sadderday”

What is known and unknown (in a Rumsfeldian sense); what is seen and unseen (in a Lord Quasian sense)? You can obfuscate the message. You can adjust the pitch of your voice. Augé explains how the “spatial overabundance [of non-places] works like a decoy.” Hiding places are everywhere, but they’re especially easy to access while on tour. A person “entering the space of non-place is relieved of his usual determinants,” writes Augé. “He becomes no more than what he does or experiences in the role of passenger…. Subjected to a gentle form of possession, to which he surrenders himself.” The rep grows bigger, ELUCID raps on “As The Crow Flies,” but not so big and unwieldy that woods can’t shuffle through a non-place without being recognized by adoring fans. He settles into what Augé refers to as “the passive joys of identity-loss.”

“Just picture me sittin’ with a pen in a cloud of smoke,” woods says on “Baby Steps.” He asks us to envision him in a rather peculiar scenario, one in which he’s taking notes on a performance while concealing his own presence (despite seeking “to determine if [your live set’s] a hoax”). The performer is a “glowed up” Weird Sister, “looking like she covered in gold dust.” woods deduces she “must not have re-upped her Lexapro,” but her glamorous appearance plays against woods’ own guardedness. You don’t just let anyone in. woods is privileged, though, as the performer “pulled [him] aside [and] explained she was just doing a bit.” One is inclined to consider whether this is all a projection on a screen. Or, put differently: Is this performative or praxis? Either way, woods was like, Oh. And not since his ex-wife’s reaction to learning “where [he] stashed it” has a response hit so heavy (“She paused, then she said, OK”). woods’ whole life feels stashed—brown-bagged or cardboard-boxed. A secret sharer, he’s not.

It’s' places no one knows who you are,

It’s faces we never wore.

—“Agriculture”

Would woods be able to distinguish a DOOMposter from the real thing—a cheap, bumbling replica from the genuine article? “Over time,” woods raps, “symbols eclipse the things they symbolize.” The mask becomes not a means to maintain privacy but a phenomenon itself—a mass-marketed one, at that. Just ask the MF DOOM estate. DOOM masks created and sold by both authorized and unauthorized retailers proliferate. Etsy shops stay busy predicting their posthumous profit margins [see: DEATHFAME]. MF DOOM likened his “imposters” to characters. “[W]ho I choose to put as the character is up to me,” he said. “When you come to a DOOM show…[you’ve] come to hear the show and come to hear the music. To see me? Y’all don’t even know who I am! Technology makes it possible for me to still do music and not have to be any particular place…. [I]f you’re coming to a DOOM show, don’t expect to see me, expect to hear me or hear the music that I present.” It sounds like DOOM is eternally wandering one of Augé’s non-places as one of McLuhan’s “discarnate beings.”

woods has been Camouflaging himself since at least 2003. Like Poe, he is the man of the crowd, and “[i]t will be in vain to follow: for I shall learn no more of him.” On “Soundcheck,” he asks the venue to “kill the lights,” just as he does every show, murdering the audience’s hope of eye contact, of facial recognition. Even if they manage the right angle and a “Nikon flash,” woods’ “face is the mask.” As he walks through the uncanny valleys of the shadows, you “develop the photograph but [find] something just wasn’t right.” President Kongi did not like to be photographed, and you heard Pac screamin’, spittin’ at the paparazzi. At the merch table, woods places his hand in front of his face for fan photo ops [or are they photo opps?]—a strange paradox of acquiescence [woods stops resisting the photo request, in cop parlance] and a gesture of refusal. “It’s GWAR when I’m off-stage,” he tells us on “The Layover.” The mask evolves over time. DOOM went from pantyhose, to a silver-sprayed Darth Maul mask, to a faceplate from a Gladiator helmet (the latter two prototypes thanks to the ingenuity of KEO). Oderus Urungus went from a papier-mâché helmet to a latex-horned extreme.

The proximal distance between woods’ and his audience inches ever close—close, that is, but not too close. No Next-level poke coming through-ness. A double portion of protection for him and his psychic health. He doesn’t want to make it hard for himself. “My shell, mechanical,” he quotes a trusted source in a world full of leakers, snitches, and finks. But for all the attention (achtung baby!) paid to woods’ face/non-face, more eyes should be devoted to retina-scanning his verse. woods’ “love language [is] an obscure dialect,” but his delivery veils his technical prowess. woods raps with a cup-runneth-over flow where words spill over the edge of the bar, past the four, combined with conversational cadence and syntax. 

Examine the second verse of “FaceTime.” woods’ sound devices and internal rhyming are in service to his theme, providing hand-holding to the listener as they walk the patterns together. The verse begins simple enough with a nursery rhyme sequence (“oboes…clarinet”; “rainbows…wept”) but almost immediately complexifies when the garbled /r/ begins to dominate with “Marrakech.” The alliterative /d/ [“dubstep drift in the window—I sit at my desk”] drags us to the “party outside,” away from our sanctuary of solitude. And the contraction of “Playboi Carti” leads to even more intense and immediate “partyin’” in the halls. woods brings us into the noise alongside him, even if we didn’t receive a formal invitation. The tumult of the scene is communicated through woods’ irregular pattern of internal and end-rhyme. “Phones,” “alone,” “home,” “cone,” and “blown” angle through the crowd, bumping and grinding against the dominate /r/ of “cardigan,” “origin,” “bar again,” “Parliament,” “parted,” “margarine,” “wandered in,” and “order” (or disorder, if I may). The sonorant pairing of “halls” &“walls” (destabilized by bass shakes); the triad of “melt,” “help,” & “pelts”; the trading of “chunky” & “clunky”; the bevy of /nk/ & /ng/ words (rings, ink, drink, ping, thinking, things, sink)—nothing saves us from the discomfiting experience described in the verse. We are subject to the final /r/ pairing of “tread water.” We’re exhausted by that point, and we drown.

Which way ought we go from here? Doesn’t much matter which way we go. 

16.  ODE ON INDOLENCE

“Soundcheck” is a reclamation of dignity. woods repeats his negative declaration (“I will not be at soundcheck”) four times throughout his verse, emphatically. Not since Bartleby have we heard such a vehement refusal. “I would prefer not to,” the scrivener says. woods’ refusal would make Paul Lafargue proud. It’s an unusual illusion that makes an MC believe he must puppet perform a phantom set for an audience of one, all in the name of amplification. It’s not that complicated. Organized Konfusion dealt with this shit in ’97. On “Soundman,” they summed it up nicely: If it ain’t loud enough, we tell the soundman turn that shit up, up, up. Tek and Steele embraced a more threatening approach. Exit the soundclash and enter the venue for a moment. Boom bye bye to a sound bwoy head. (Wiretap sound like Buju Banton, don’t it?) They demand a Sound [Man] Bureill.

woods craves his pre-show isolation: “I will not be in the green room if it’s too lit.” Are we talking incandescence or excitement? Either way, he wants none of it. Dah shinin’ of a spotlight in his face is not his style. His autonomy is the only item on his rider: “I reserve the right.” And that means no irksome obligations like soundcheck or backstage dawdling. He prefers to take in the town, a “local greasy spoon or Szechuan establishment,” maybe the Courtyard Marriott bathroom where he can “[blow] marijuana through the vents.” God-level expertise when it comes to that habit. We know from “No Hard Feelings” how he “towel[s] the door.”

He “might watch the sun set over your city from a parapet or a park bench.” woods considers the lilies and how they grow—they toil not, so why should he? We’ve seen him sitting there. We might’ve mistaken him for one of those Park Bench People that Freestyle Fellowship clued us into in 1993. “I see an old man sittin’ on a park bench,” Myka 9 sang, someone “lookin’ in the skies.” Might’ve been woods. “You’re thinkin’ ’bout your kids,” Myka said, “...’bout your girl, / You’re thinkin’ of all the things you did, / You see the children play.” woods wishes he was pushing his own baby on the swing, but he’s got to wait for that. 

Time’s not lost completely. He will not be at soundcheck, but he will be timely for the show. You won’t find him “wakin’ up on a park bench a bum” (“The Doldrums”). “Headlamps splash squatter tents on my way to the venue,” woods raps, “—they wave me in.” Who exactly? The squatters or the show promoter? Who would he be more comfortable with? “I’m smiling like I’m not,” he says from the stage, spurning the coon caricature so many Black performers have thrust upon them by the public. woods won’t dance a jig, won’t step and fetch it. Not even when it’s time to get paid. “After the curtains, I sit for a while before I go get the check,” he explains. He turns merch tables on the promoter; makes him wait. Work slowdown. The pay is small, so take your time and buck them all, as the Wobblies used to say. Every live show forget the lyric, huh?—probably intentional. Don’t give them what they want. Withhold your labor. Set your terms.

17.  THE CONQUEST OF BREAD

                                                         …For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

—Wendell Berry 

If woods can’t escape the commotion of the show, he’ll wander even farther off. On “Agriculture,” he moves beyond space and time. If “Paraquat” argued “Anno Domini, it’s no before, it’s only after,” then “Agriculture” reassesses and finds there’s only before. “Nothing in the thought bubble,” woods mentioned on “Soft Landing,” which leads us to this meditation, this reverie of the before. Before what—the Fall? Christ? Facial recognition software? Tour? “Before history [History…], I made fire in the cave,” he raps on “The Layover.” A time before connotes premodern, Arcadian. “Agriculture” strings together a sequence of befores, each more lyrical than the prior (“lyrical” not in a Biggie “lyrical lyricist flowin’ lyrics out my larynx” sense, but in a Coleridge & Wordsworth way). woods wakes “before the sunrise,” even before nature awakens fully, “before sparrow cry from thistle.” He notes “the kettle boil before it whistle,” holding space in the quiet intensity. The personified night “fight before it die” and, consequently, the “sky bleed purple,” battered and bruised. woods leads us to a place (in stark contrast to a non-place) that knows him from “before [his] hands been dirty” with corruption—a place “before [he] could grasp time,” somewhere embryonic. He welcomes us to his Walden, to an unspoiled place “without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies.” Here, the time is “before we had new names”—names like william woods, like F. Porter, like Madziwanyika. A time “before we was new in our own eyes”—before the mirror stage or interpellation.

To get there, woods has to travel to “parts unknown.” He’s only “at home when the road’s not paved.” He only asks for a “little piece of yard” where a “couple goats graze.” Sustainable living. Living that sustains. With a name like backwoodz, why wouldn’t the escape route point to the wilds? He retreats into the peace of wild things, as Wendell Berry calls it. There, woods can focus on [re]productivity. John McPhee, who has always had to balance teaching and writing, refers to his perennial phases as “crop rotations.” In the rural setting depicted on “Agriculture,” there are places enough for woods to push his plow. He retreats not out of complacency but out of a restorative need. He’s an ol’ dirty bastard, “squatting in the soil with a fistful.” CAN YOU DIG IT?! He channels Cyrus. He channels Kaczynski (and writes as much as him, too). “Agriculture” has a subtitle: Industrial Society and Its Future. “[T]echnology exacerbates the effects of crowding because it puts increased disruptive powers in people’s hands,” Kaczynski writes, staring at the whole entourage on the couch buried in they phones.

woods “used to plot on the come-up, plot on [his] brothers,” but now he lends care to his garden plot and “get[s] the tomatoes cropping sideways.” His idyll, exhilarating. He’s “stooped in the coop, gathering eggs” for breakfast, and, later, he “traded some to the neighbor for fresh bread.” The song seems mixed with Kropotkin on the console, a mutuality and self-sufficiency at work. He’d had this vision since forever. On Armand Hammer’s “Resin,” woods remixes the Jack and the Beanstalk fairytale. He plucks “one seed” from “out the pound”—transfixed by its “shiny and round” appearance, its seemingly enchanted qualities—and imagines a day where he’d “move away [and] put it in the ground.” “Ten years later,” though, the seed is “still in [his] drawer, rattling around—angrily.” (At least he didn’t end up with his bones ground to meal to make a giant’s bread, heh.)

“Agriculture” appears to be an illusion, a phantasy, at most a reprieve—a weekend upstate or a vacation in the old country. “I say I’m at peace, but it’s still that same dread,” woods laments, admitting his living off the fatta the lan’ is a temporary arrangement, a refueling on a road trip. “It’s hard to live when before you was dead,” and he finds the afterlife a troubling funk. But he’s in the now, he’s in the now, he’s in the now (as ELUCID is wont to say), and he sees “land on either side of the car.” That won’t suffice when he’s back in the city. He’s better off just getting blunted on reality.

18.

I was high all day, I escaped, goes the refrain on “Houdini.” From the spliff that woods lifts and inhales, he’s able to exhale the yellow smoke of buddha through righteous steps. No mask necessary; this is the vanishing act. To be ghost, to be Ghost.[1] The final “I escaped” of the refrain vanishes into the ether. Houdini was more an escape artist than a smoke and mirrors magician, of course. Others “working with mirrors,” but woods “disappears—[he] was never there.” Kenny Segal contrives a ¾ time signature so that woods can remove himself, waltzing past the typical regulations of time. “Day off,” he says at the top, though Armand Hammer’s “No Days Off” offered up the “sorcerer’s apprentice” gig. Doesn’t seem so appealing at the moment.

The green thumbing that had the tomatoes cropping sideways on “Agriculture” transforms OG into “fresh papaya” or another strain which has a taste that reminds woods of “Jamaican oranges that look like limes.” Where I’m from, you don’t see fireflies, he says. The pastoral escape again—he’s grounding himself (in both the ecotherapy sense and bringing that plane back down to terra firma). woods barefoot soaking up the Earth’s electrons [You don’t have to believe it]. But the tranquility turns quick as he “walk[s] into the forest filled with fear” and “hears something lumbering near.” But it’s just his mind playing tricks on him. It was all a dream—he “woke up sudden in armchair” (a money-green leather armchair, maybe). “Yo, you good to drive?”—and we’re buckling up, back to movement again.

19.

The wait is over, the wait is over, biddy-bye-bye [to the rhythm of BDP’s “The Bridge Is Over,” please]. woods and ShrapKnel scheme to lively up themselves like Marley and the Wailers on “Babylon by Bus,” but they’re touring ingloriously. “Cold open, slow to focus, cameras pan to a freeway,” PremRock directs. His cinematic pacing on par with Pasolini. The wait prevails—stasis. woods “sat on his gate for hours, pissing in a bottle.” Reminds him of the spider hole, probably, when “the job was to sit there all day and press ‘refresh’.”

On “Waiting Around,” he not only waits but wanders. For all his depersonalization on tour, woods counters the feeling by personifying the night again. She’s “young,” of course—full of opportunity—and he “watch[es] her move, spinning like vinyl jumping out the groove.” Graceful but with a smidgen of volatility. He personifies night, just as he does time, to keep him company. Later, he finds human companionship in the form of an actual woman. She’s an expatriate with “perfect teeth,” “5’3” [and] thick as congee porridge.” They smoke “outside in the darkness of the eve,” but she rejects his advances—even his offer to hop in his Horse & Carriage. woods sees defeat through the eyes and mind of Killa Cam. She kisses his cheek and bids him adieu. The ice melts but the champagne still cold. No hard feelings, right?

woods wanders Amsterdam like he’s done many times before. “I miss having nothing to lose,” he says, like back when he was twenty-two and ain’t had nothing but “twenty-two hundred in [his] shoe.” He feels like Jay-Z on “22 Two’s”: I been around this block too many times. Too true, Shawn Cart[ograph]er. woods reads the city with a stoner squint, a subtle wink, with whimsy. He cuts-up corners and avenues like Burroughs riding the Nova Express and disregards the grid like Max Heath. Or, put another way, woods embraces his instinctive travels and paths of rhythm. His verses break the grid too, what with their end-stops and enjambments that jar and jerk the listener as woods weaves through heavy foot traffic. He’s a herbaliser urban planner, dropping “a science of relations and ambiences,” what the Situationists called psychogeography. (Sorry ahead of time for not sparing you the Hallmark Guy Debord.) Each foreign city, for woods, is a Psycho Realm.

History has known men like woods, flâneurs flitting through throngs. “The crowd is his domain,” Baudelaire explained in “The Painter of Modern Life” (1863), just “as the air is that of the birds.” Birds flyin’ high—you know how I feel. “For the perfect flâneur,” Baudelaire writes,

for the passionate observer, it is an immense joy to take up one’s dwelling among the multitude, amidst undulation, movement, the fugitive, the infinite. To be absent from home and yet feel oneself everywhere at home; to view the world, to be at the heart of the world, and yet hidden from the world, such are some of the last pleasures of those independent spirits, passionate and impartial, that language can only inadequately define.

But for woods (who told us he was a dandy on “King Tubby”), language does seem to adequately define what he sees and feels, right down to the “cobblestoned streets” beneath his feet. Time seems to pass exponentially—those cobblestones are Old Testament old, from the Annals of the Former World. woods, we know, vacillates between dwelling at “the heart of the world” and remaining “hidden from [it].” Through woods’ songs—especially on Maps—he functions as “a mirror…a kaleidoscope endowed with consciousness which, with its every movement, conveys the multiplicity of life.” woods presents himself narratively as a first-person “I,” but he is an “I” that is “insatiable in his appetite for the ‘not-I.’” I is another. I is an Other. 

Debord and his Situationist posse (the Lettrist International Clik, for the people), encouraged citizens to embrace the dérive, to take a bizarre ride II the pharcyde, to “drop their relations…and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.” I jet propel at a rate that complicate their mental state, Bootie Brown rapped, but woods complicates his own mental state with his sauntering. The dérive can last any amount of time—minutes between meetings with distributors, Zoom podcast interviews, and press junkets. Pit stops between downtown bars and uptown bars. Middle-of-nowhere gas stations. You notice everything on the dérive—it’s an entropy of experience, but the gravitational pull of the flâneur pulls it all back together. woods looks to avail himself of these “Situations” (as the Situationists intended)—like the Native Tongues sought to create “Scenarios”—moments where he can shuffle off the alienation and spectacles of his Daily Operations.

20.

Rilke surveys the city in The Journey of My Other Self (1930) and catalogs what he sees—a parallel to woods’ journey to his other self: his performing self in juxtaposition to his personal self. Rilke walks along Rue Toullier in Paris, pondering: “People come here, then, to live? I should rather have thought they came here to die.” He sniffs an “odour [that] began to rise from the street…a smell of iodoform, the grease of pommes frites, and fear.” He might be smelling woods’ dinner: “ginger root, mussels, and pomme frites.” The “jaundiced moon” above woods matches the “greenish complexion” of a baby “in a perambulator standing on the pavement” not far from Rilke. “How much such a little moon can do!” Rilke cries. “There are days when everything about us is lucent and ethereal, scarcely outlined in the luminous atmosphere and yet distinct.” The moon seems to spotlight everything the world has to offer. “The nearest objects take on the tone of distance, are remote and merely displayed from afar, not given to us,” Rilke writes. And woods responds by grasping for “poems just out of reach.” Nothing is insignificant or superfluous.

“The fatal thing about these acted poems,” though, Rilke writes:

was that they continually added to and extended themselves, growing to tens of thousands of verses, so that ultimately the time in them was the actual time; somewhat as if one were to make a globe on the scale of the earth. The concave stage, beneath which was hell and above which the level of Paradise was represented by a balcony of unrailed scaffolding fixed to a pillar, only helped to weaken the illusion. For this century had indeed made both heaven and hell terrestrial.

billy woods paces that “concave stage.” His oeuvre has grown “to tens of thousands of verses” that provide us with his vision of the world. He passes a “Congolese concierge” who has fallen “fast asleep” as he returns to his “big, lonely suite.” “From the tiny balcony,” woods raps with an air of confession, “I watched my planes leave.” He’s scorned, forlorn—like Marilyn Buck’s poem “Waiting” (1989), woods “sit[s] wrapped / wrapped in a cool / breeze of assumed indifference.”

21. 

Vivez sans temps mort.

Aesop Rock’s anxiety kept him from touring early in his career, and he’s been cool to the idea ever since. “Not a piece of me is drawn to the theater,” he admits on “Waiting Around,” preferring the cloistered process of “recording songs in [his] bedroom.” He forgoes any “alternate venue” for his art. Ultimately, he “wasn’t comfortable ever” on stage—he just “can’t fuck with the premise” of formally presenting such inward-looking works (his “sons and [his] daughters”) to the outside world, face-first and face-forward.

woods knows, as well, that touring isn’t always a spiritually or financially profitable business. Remember what he told us on “checkpoints”: “Best tour advice I ever got: You’re better off beatin’ your dick.” Not just a tip on avoiding dalliances—a call to curtail impulse and instead self-stimulate on Seaman’s furniture—but a [cock-]hard truth about the economic cost of blundering across the country. Like Prodigy, woods’ll tour the album but only for more sales. He’s willing to do that now, but it was less enticing when he was playing to a crowd of two plainclothes cops.

That said, woods—unlike Aesop—finds value in the journey itself, in spite of merch sales and gas budget deficits. “We have a world of pleasure to win,” Raoul Vaneigm proclaimed in The Revolution of Everyday Life, “and nothing to lose but boredom.” The travel necessitated by touring disrupts your quotidian existence, your humdrum homelife, but the disruption that is the road life can grow tiresome just the same. “Nothing moving,” Vaneigm writes, “only dead time passing.” woods finds Time “holed up somewhere it didn’t have to move.” Touring cuts both ways—you’ll be bored stiff like the Timeless EP, or your experience will prove timeless like Bored Stiff in ’97. When he’s in Amsterdam, he watches In Bruges (or is he in Bruges—the compass stays confused) because he’s got “time to kill”—so that’s a time-kill, not a time-thrill. Sometimes the day gently passes; sometimes time is flattened. Which is which? You gon’ feel it in the rhythm and the pattern, or the “Pattern and Rhythm,” the penultimate chapter in E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel. woods' “room had a view,” dummy.

22.

Nothing but dumb luck when you’re unstuck in time. On “The Layover,” we learn woods “already knew the options was lose/lose, / Baby, that’s nothing new.” Fucking forget “the sun set in the desert, red glow, redness in the West” for a second. Look to No Country For Old Men, instead. Anton Chigurh pulls a coin from his pocket (no “safe full of Euros” for him). Carla Jean Moss calls heads but the coin flips and lands tails. Carla Jean is helpless, vexed. “Every moment in your life is a turning and every one a choosing,” Chigurh tells her. “Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this. The accounting is scrupulous. The shape is drawn. No line can be erased…. A person’s path through the world seldom changes and even more seldom will it change abruptly. And the shape of your path was visible from the beginning.” This the type of shit that’ll make Baby Jessica jump in the well again. We’re all “looking up at a circle of blue.” We’re all alone in the spider hole, but I suppose that’s the best part.

Like Armand Hammer’s “Topsy” from the WHT LBL album, “The Layover” includes a paratactic chorus that functions more as an appendix to the song. Full of alliterative phrases (light/lantern; shovel/spade; O’Shea/ofays/obey; posse/Parkway), metonymic references (Deion Sanders; O’Shea Jackson), musical/literary allusions (LL Cool J; Dorian Gray), and downright eerie similarities (“giant panda”/“giant obey”; “Gray”/”grave”; “other way”/“Parkway”)—if these choruses are hooks they’re shepherd’s crooks intended to snare ideas from one’s consciousness. That, or snaring us out of the spider hole, the well, our bad luck.

23.

woods stabilizes himself with his pen; centers himself with his pad. “More delicate than the historians’ are the map-makers’ colors,” Elizabeth Bishop says in her poem “The Map” (1946). In a letter, Bishop said, “I always like to feel exactly where I am geographically all the time, on the map.” She roots[/routes] herself against the threat of non-places. woods gets his mind right with “aromatherapy in the stu’ with lavender diffused in the booth” (“Rapper Weed”). Poe’s protagonist from “The Man of the Crowd” knew how to soothe the burn of a world in flames: “I derived positive pleasure even from many of the legitimate sources of pain. I felt a calm but inquisitive interest in every thing.” woods’ sure-footedness stems from his understanding of “the true nature of this world, in its staggering beauty and its infinite horrors,” as he put it in an interview late last year. He’s able to articulate that which is ineffable, likely because he “take[s] care of these words—Munchausen by proxy” (“Babylon by Bus”). Whispering sweet-nothings to his “ailing” children—manipulating them to serve his vision. For the MC whose “love language is an obscure dialect,” Pierre Joris reminds us “all languages are foreign.” We’re all living in a chaos-world, so “why should one have to write in the mummy/daddy language, why should that oedipal choice be the only possible or legitimate one?” woods works conscientiously, but he also guesses as he goes, filling in the blanks: “Paper and pencil—I wrote the verse like hangman.” Inspiration flits and stutter-steps on a hunt: It was always just a question of when. The duppy stalks, blowing “an ill wind in the trees.” woods is “running routes, trees, and patterns”—juking jumbees and stiff-arming the grimmest of reapers. They’re always pursuing, no matter where you move. “Time and the land are one” John Ashbery writes. In Bonnie Costello’s Shifting Ground (2003), she describes how Ashbery explores the “relationship of mind to environment and the play between temporal and spatial awareness.” He achieves this through disappearing paths and slippery topography, shifts in scale and perspective, and subversions of narrative sequence. As concerns woods: check, check, check, and [mic] check. His writing goes hither and yon.

24.  EVERYBODY COOKING

Came home, like, “There’s no recipes left!"

—“checkpoints”

By now, we know woods’ passion for grilling is akin to Nabakov’s lepidoptery—a hobby that enriches his art. The empirical aspects of cooking mingle with his transformative vision. Or, as woods boasts, You know I’m working the fire. As far as lyrics go, what woods spits leaves us salivating. He leaves us hungrier than Common in ’97 (he was a self-proclaimed “verbal vegetarian” anyway, limiting his menu). On Maps, woods’ travels are charged with food, from fine dining to stops “at a Costco in the Midwest with a pocketful of small bills folded like tacos.” Even his currency is cuisine.

woods rips recipe raps to counter the empty calories offered at airports. Merwin explained that “you sit there in the smell / of what passes for food.” Instead, feel the comfort of a home-cooked meal. On “Kenwood Speakers,” woods is Cold Lampin’ with [the] Flavor of  his host’s “skate wing, brown butter, and capers, / Sprigs of thyme, heavy pours of natural wine.” On “Gilgamesh,” he served up the class: “Stiff drinks, / …garnish the parsley.” His epicure bars extend to “Soft Landing,” where there’s “conch fritters crispin’ in the kitchen,” and on “Blue Smoke,” where the culinary poetics peak with an elaborate spread: “The pork belly was brined, braised, then deep-fried, / Fresh mint, Thai basil, pickled watermelon rind, / Julienned scallions and other alliums, gave the pepper mill one grind.” In Amsterdam, he indulges in a feast fit for President Kongi: “Grassy gin winning over sweet vermouth, / Framboise, ginger root, / Mussels and pomme frites, confit leeks.”

Meals upon meals upon meals. woods is out to lunch like Dolphy—he slows time and slow cooks. Unless he’s suspending his gastronomics for a detour through the dark side of the all-American meal. The velocity of tour life sometimes necessitates fast food: “The burgers was In-N-Out.” Budgeting time and consumption is a perilous path. Cee-Lo Green on “Soul Food” issued a Surgeon General’s Warning: “Fast food got me sick, / Them crackers think they slick.” Catch woods at an all-night diner with Cage and Camu at the counter—a chopped-and-screwed Nighthawks painted by Edward [Hip-]Hopper who, in his own words, “unconsciously...paint[ed] the loneliness of a large city.” No one reminded him that bad dreams are only dreams. Mark Fisher saw the scene for what it was: a [def] “juxtaposition of the café with the cosmos.”

Your time is your own, only when it’s not. Joy James speaks of “time theft,” the “loss of leisure to recover from fatigue and violence.” Not stolen moments but moments stolen from you. You stare at the time zone clocks on the wall of the airport and mumble woods’ lyrics from “Babylon by Bus”: I knew the time was borrowed. Borrowed or stolen? woods communes with DOOM/doom. “Living off borrowed time, the clock tick faster,” expanding and contracting like accordion bellows. It’s as if every hot minute after History Will Absolve Me is borrowed. Before history, he made fire in the cave. Dante’s descent into hell follows a clockwise spiral [the Flavor Flav clock still—(still!)—spins centrifugal]

25.  FROM THIS WORLD TO THAT WHICH IS TO COME

This is the end, as it’s always been. We spend time and money, money and time. The currency is mortality, or tempmortality. Method Man might “bust shots at Big Ben like we got time to kill,” but we’re in Bruges, and Ken drops warning coins from the belfry before leaping to his death, splat in the market square. That’s the Protect Ya Neck jump-off, for those wondering. Coldcocked by the clocktower.

We’re there but not there. Masked and unmasked. Time out of joint and intimately passing a joint in the cypher. Playing for crowds and playing with your kids. Aesop might refuse to tour, sticking to his quasi-reclusive career turn, or he may someday perform on his own terms. His own terminology in the terms of service, in the airport terminal. Terminus means the end. “I’m trying to live in the moment like death row,” woods raps on “FaceTime.” That’s the death row of last meals and last words, the Live from Death Row of Mumia Abu-Jamal; however, it’s also the Death Row of Suge Knight, of a record label that had its moment and then didn’t, done in by deserters, failed distribution deals, and bankruptcy.[2]

Who better to invoke than the Notorious B.I.G. to prove the point of tempmortality? woods has drawn from the well of Big Poppa’s precarity punchlines before. Where Big insisted rappers shouldn’t be mad because “UPS is hiring,” woods responds with a post-’08 collapse sentiment: “My advice: don’t stop rhymin’—UPS not hiring.” Just common sense for a recessionary gap. Death curves at every turn, so never take shit for granted. woods could be freelancing, writing rap reviews for a pittance. That being said, he’s “Ready to die, it’s no biggie” (“FaceTime”). He’s already “lived a couple lives” so he’s prepared to “go ahead and slide” into that good night. Somebody’s gotta die—if he goes, he goes. Insouciance is the order of the day. Walking with a panther, he tallies his “nine lives” and wonders like those devilish Yakubs “how many [he] already used.” B.I.G. appears everywhere on Maps, suggesting to woods that “maybe suicidal thoughts [is] the everyday struggle.” “Gimme the loot,” woods raps on “Baby Steps,” determined to get his—“it’s a museum.” Repatriate artifacts? Don’t soften the language. Gimme mine, ELUCID screams. 

woods has been around the world and ay ya ya, he’s been playa-hated (“Don’t forget: God’s a hater”). Mo Money Moor Problems—a wider audience translates to a wider world. But he can brag and meditate on mortality both. “Big jar when they donate my brain,” he says, and the organ transplant moves at a hash jar tempo. Bourdainian flourishes of “spicy chili oil—let that bad boy marinate” (Bad Boy, huh?). Sometimes we track time through the dates on “posthumous YouTube views”; other times we can only rely on “the lonely big tree like a sundial.” To the…tick-tock, ya don’t stop. To the…tick-tock, ya don’t quit.

“In all candor,” woods raps on the chorus of “The Layover,” “I got one foot in your grave.” He glosses over racist connotations and instead weaponizes farm tools: “I still call a shovel a spade.” Shades of the gravediggaz in Hamlet’s courtyard. woods has wielded the weapon before, on “Gilgamesh”: “Merrily dug his own grave, whistling as he shoveled.” Tarafah, the nomad-poet & free Bedouin, satirized the king and thus “dug his grave with his tongue.” To bring back Orwell’s “Marrakech,” if only for a moment: “They arise out of the earth, they sweat and starve for a few years, and then they sink back into the nameless mounds of the graveyard and nobody notices that they are gone. And even the graves themselves soon fade back into the soil.” 

Survival rate fluctuates like the market. Even Bourdain chose the rope in Hotel Chambard in Kaysersberg. “I don’t go to sleep—I tread water ’til I sink,” woods reveals on “FaceTime.” The waves never let up, but you got to keep ya head up, keep your head above water. Like Trugoy rapped, We’re all in tune with doom.

26.  A HEAD NӒDDA’S JOURNEY

Hing, hang, hung—see what the hangman done.

—“Sadderday”

Chokehold slowly closed the airway.

—“Dettol”

On “Hangman,” thoughts are hijacked by grisly Afro-Gothic visions. The head nodding of the listener turns to oxygen deprivation. Cold dead grip on the larynx. The neck compresses closer to unconsciousness, another stifled breath closer to death. To cease that “heart beat in [the] jugular.” woods raps as if he’s being hanged, and he makes a spectacle of it. The wheeze of the long /e/ sounds within the lines (“Matisse”; “teeth”; “deep”; “beat”; “peaks”; “Sikh”; “sheet”; “sleep”) and the choke of the short /u/ sounds within the end-rhymes (“colors”; “lovers”; “jugular”; “rugged”; “thuggers”; “fucker”)—we’re listening to the hangman’s tune. The tightening of the iron fist on the throat, garroted; the Iron Galaxy expanding but feeling like shrinking the way it pulls taut. The rope creaks as it tightens. 

As woods loses consciousness, he “hovers outside [him]self.” My shell, mechanical—he survives as he cites a familiar phrase and slips into a new rhyme pattern. He gargles back to life with hardcore consonance (the /g/ and /c/ takeover) and predominant l-sounds (“manageable”; “tangible”; “manacles”) to smooth the earlier ruggedness, but it’s still a bumpy ride. “People paralyzed by the lies they tell theyself,” but not him. He’s still moving and knows the “count right,” though he reaches for tangibility as a spirit roams beyond his grasp. Gotta stay on it, as “any day could be the day they frog-march you in manacles.”

The rhymes and rhyme schemes of the first verse attack, but the long /oo/ digraph pattern sustained through the second verse stabilizes (“undo”; “Rubik’s”; “cube”; “cartoons”; “booth”; “cocoon”; “moons”; “room”; “unamused”; “truth”; “stu’”; “fumes”; “shrooms”; “proof”; “vroom”; “womb”; “spoons”). The sequence produces a mesmerizing drone. Somewhere between Ginsberg’s OM or AUM (“AU opens the gates of heaven. The humming M closes the gates of hell. AUM is a long sigh; 5 minutes intense total concentration initiates cosmic vibrations”) and the monoliths & dimensions of Sunn O))). woods sings a Song of Experience that outmaneuvers protégés with wit and wisdom. He becomes the haunting presence of the chorus, the ominous and malevolent duppy. He’s gonna “keep it real with you”—that old platitude, yes, but really—the past can’t be undone, it’s a “black Rubik’s cube.” He knows; he’s been in the “booth like cocoon[/Cocoon],” a butterfly transforming into a shabazz palace, a butterfly pimped. Youngbloods can’t relate to a film allusion from before they were twinkles in their mothers’ uteri. woods somersaults “in a dead womb.” If woods records in a Silkk casing, Augé knows why: “In one form or another, ranging from the misery of refugee camps to the cosseted luxury of five-star hotels, some experience of non-place…is today an essential component of all social existence. Hency the very particular and ultimately paradoxical character of…the fashion for ‘cocooning’, retreating into the self.”

“Dig two graves…one for them, one for you,” woods drones on. We’re leveled by Kenny Segal’s menacing foghorn blast. It’s a motif heard throughout The Microphones’ The Glow Pt. 2 (released 9/11/01) with Phil Elverum crediting the first season of Twin Peaks for the idea. (Incidentally, you can hear it at the beginning of The Microphones’ “Map.”) Segal’s foghorn (in reality, a pitched-down trombone) shows up inconsistently throughout “Hangman,” heightening our trepidation, racking our nerves.

Size it up. On “Hangman,” woods admits that “payback always inexact, but [he] be squinting over measuring spoons” like T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock busy “measur[ing] out [his] life with coffee spoons.” The dreaded hangman and his moribund quantifications bleed and reverberate like King Tubby’s fingers on the Fisher Dynamic Space Expander. One look all it take to take they measurements.

27.  THE EXECUTIONER’S FACE IS ALWAYS WELL HIDDEN

woods’ brand of [afro-]pessimism leaves Frank B. Wilderson III in a state of bewilderment. Though we’re left with few illusions on Maps (“People don’t want the truth; they want me to tell ’em grandma went to heaven” would be one such example), nothing matches the protracted decline he sets forth on “Year Zero.” “I quit lookin’ for solutions,” woods opens, signaling the twilight of the gods. If he can’t summon the strength, where does that leave us? It’s underground hip-hop, gentleman. The gods will not save you. woods manages to tell us how it is without falling into despair (note the chuckling at the end of “Rapper Weed”), but his ruthless critique often leaves us laughless. I feel mirth at his gift of gab, but I’m indignant when I page through the briefings he throws down on my desk.

woods acts in accordance with Franco Berardi’s prompting, opting to employ a “dyst-irony” [dystopian irony], “the language of autonomy.” The pervasive /n/ phoneme within the verse (“lookin’”; “solutions”; “end hunchbacked in front”; “minds”; “Edison”; “weapon”; etc.)—the motherfucking alveolar nasal produced as woods raps through gritted teeth—slides homophonically into “end,” a succession of ’em, as though he’s John the Revelator humming end end end end end. Feels like a “tumor pressing on [our] brain.” Eschatological-hop for the ’2-3. Things look bad, real bad. Stupid people rule the land, we buy a pistol and learn how to use it, and our “taxes pay police brutality settlements.” There’s “quicksand [in] every direction, so go ahead and step on in.” That sinking feeling is unavoidable. “There is no bad luck in the world but white folks,” Baby Suggs says in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and so we crouch down in front of 124 Bluestone Road with our finger on the trigger. 

Technology won’t save us either. Tesla and Edison’s “great minds” fall short (their ilk might actually be the “worstest of men”). “Apes stood and walked into the future” only to “end hunchbacked in front the computer.” March of regress. Sooner or later they red-pill and rabbit-hole themselves into the comments section of extremist YouTube channels. Shitposters leaving links to their live-stream on 8chan. “Sooner or later it’s gon’ be two unrelated active shooters”—aspiring genocidaires—“same place, same time.” In Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide (2015), Berardi argues that active shooters possess “the psychopathology of human beings exposed to electronic hyper-simulation during their formative years, the special fragility of the first generation to grow up in the virtual age.” These killers “learn more vocabulary from a machine than from their mothers”—in [m]other words, “the dissociation of language learning from the bodily affective experience.” (woods isn’t one of them; he’s sure to “call Mom and say, I love you.”) These killers don’t know people, having only lived a “virtualization of the experience of the other.”

It’s not just the extremists, though. At even the “first sign of trouble, motherfuckers shimmy right out that human skin.” This world is never home, will never be home. Everything “home” is gone, homie. Time to tabula rasa that shit, wholesale. Everything for sale except for…nah, ev-ery-thing. “Kids,” woods says—and he’s addressing not only his young audience but other whippersnapper rappers and his own children, too—“you and your friends gon’ have to start again, / It’s nothing you can do with us—we’re fucked.” He repeats how fucked we are, for choral emphasis. We “poison everything we touch.” The wild jungle out the speaker “withered and died.” That bitter cassava on the tongue. The poisonwood bible that we thumb. Burn it down with us inside. Burn it to the ground. Make sure we don’t survive. “So what can be done when nothing can be done?” Berardi asks,

I think that ironic autonomy is the answer…. Politicians call on us to take part in their political concerns, economists call on us to be responsible, to work more, to go shopping, to stimulate the market. Priests call on us to have faith. If you follow these inveiglements to participate, to be responsible—you are trapped. Do not take part in the game, do not expect any solution from politics, do not be attached to things, do not hope.

If the gods are fucking you, you find a way to fuck them back.

28.

I do hate to be chucked in the dark aboard a strange ship. I wonder where they keep their fresh water.

—Joseph Conrad, The Rescue (1920)

“Everything is landscape,” Ashbery declares in The Double Dream of Spring. Go ahead and think rustic, but he includes “...the great urban centers… / …at the center of which / We live our lives, made up of a great quantity of isolated instants.” “I miss this place,” woods longingly raps on “NYC Tapwater,” only to undercut the thought, “—’til I’m back.” “Long face to match,” he says, just as he looked on ELUCID’s “Nostrand”: “Every day I walk past people begging to live, / Every day I walk past the living dead.” The quotidian is calamitous. And now even his “cats are strays.” He surveys the rest of the scene, from the inconsiderate bus driver, to the “new panhandler outside the store,” to the “young boy going through each bag of grabba like it’s raw silk cloth.” Time passes and doesn’t. Kenny Segal’s sloomy beat speaks volumes. Nothing ever happens ’til it do. Find woods in the doldrums. Baby, he’s got the bends. Where does he go from here? He’s been alone on an aeroplane, falling asleep against the windowpane. His blood thickens—he needs to be rejuvenated, needs an infusion, needs his drip feed on, needs a beat. He diagnoses himself: You lack the minerals and vitamins. He prescribes himself “one sip of New York City tapwater.”

A few weeks later, he sees the old panhandler “outside Kennedy Fried, grinding his jaw.” Ironically, “he ain’t recognize [woods] at all,” which we assume would please our camera-shy guy, but he seems to yearn for the recognition from this necropolitan wanderer, at least in this instance. He’s jet-lagged again, not quite grabbing the new version of himself. “Slipp[ing] in the bar at last call” probably won’t help the dissociation. The words are coming out all weird.

“I’m home, but my mind be wandering off.” So, what does he do in the second verse?—he hides in plain sight, of course. “Sometimes I don’t tell anyone I’m back around,” he confesses—he “just lay low.” woods the misanthrope. After all, it’s “the cat [that] miss [him] the most—purring loud on [his] lap.” Home is where the hard plastics are, so woods contemplates with his “fingers steepled, / wondering if [he] really need all this stuff.” Nobody ever really did it for the love, he claimed on “The Doldrums.” So when O.C. raps he’d “rather be broke and have a whole lot of respect,” woods is dubious. He hides. “Through the peephole,” creeping, dropping eaves, he “see[s] new people going up and down the stairs.” He’s a kindred spirit to Aesop Rock on his fire escape with the 6B panorama: A universe of brick buildings slightly off-balance. woods sees “new buildings just appear” out of nowhere. 

He sequesters himself in his apartment, but eventually ventures out again. He gives us a tour, keeping a body count, as Ice-T yowls, THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD! He spots celebrities, clothing boutiques, and corporate weed everywhere. On “Gilgamesh,” he saw the “whole neighborhood on stage,” even as he navigated a “two-block radius, at best.” His territory, small as it is in scale, is invaded. He gets dewy-eyed about “that ’08 Sour Diesel,” but not before “Death in a top hat dance[s] a jig in the street.” Antonius Block doing the wop, popping and locking down the block.

Gilgamesh returns to Uruk fearful “[h]is people would not share / The sorrow that he knew,” and he was right—they didn’t. “He looked at the walls, / Awed at the heights / His people had achieved / And for a moment—just a moment— / All that lay behind him / Passed from view.” On “Gilgamesh,” woods finds it “increasingly clear these walls is fucking closing in.” He’s back at the dinner table in that renovated apartment of his gentrifying neighbors. “Last year I pretended to care, / Right now, can’t spare the oxygen,” he raps, exasperated. But he can spare the exhaust fumes. He puts his “feet up on the Ottoman Empire” for some rest and respite and reveries of his own imperial conquests. 

“NYC Tapwater,” like “Kenwood Speakers” earlier, is Delivered Under the Similitude of a Dream [dreams is dangerous]. The City of Destruction you flee might not be Celestial but it’s sufficient enough. Home is never how you left it yet also is. Aphorisms fail us. You can’t go home again—sure. We follow woods on the “last car on the last train” on the Last Exit to Brooklyn. Home again, home again, jiggety-jig. “To market, to market, to buy a fat pig.” (The pork belly was brined, braised, then deep-fried…) In her 1965 poem “Questions of Travel,” Elizabeth Bishop writes:

Think of the long trip home. Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? Where should we be today?

People pin religious hope on travel, but—as Bishop once said elsewhere—the first person you meet when you get off the plane is yourself. Emerson said much the same, even discouraging travel (“The soul is no traveler; the wise man stays at home”). Everything you need is within you, he argued—you create the hallowed place, and then the place helps create you. In “Self-Reliance,” he considers traveling to Naples to become “intoxicated with beauty, and lose [his] sadness,” but he ultimately thinks better of searching for cheap flights on Expedia. “I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples,” he writes, “and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.” It all reeks of jet fuel.[3]

29.  NOSTOS

...in the world of supermodernity people are always, and never, at home.

—Augé

ELUCID opens “As The Crow Flies” straddling two simultaneous realities: home and away, near and far, physically present and mentally absent. He’s always, actively elsewhere. “I’m just cleaning up my kitchen,” he raps, as if to convince us of his domestic bliss, of the virtue of routine. “Emptying the fridge, bleaching counters, sweeping corners, / I be in my drawers aligning my silverware in order,” he says—his list of chores, implausibly, a flex. Soon, though, he’ll be “tripping through coordinates.” Tripping is operative—some altitude-induced delirium as he’s “10k and rising.” Surrealism is his point-of-view, recall (“Flummox”). His “baggage on the carousel loop” is the symbol on which to meditate. He’s “rooted” but “roam[s] free.” Presence and absence. Lost and found. Accustomed and unclaimed. The course he charts is in the form of an infinite loop. Augé writes of the Kafkaesque trappings of corporate-controlled travel: “Airline company magazines advertise hotels that advertise the airline companies…they outline a world of consumption.” The literature of non-places. You think you’re getting somewhere, but you’re not. “Everywhere and nowhere,” woods recently said. He, like ELUCID, is a real nowhere man and Everyman and all in one fell loop.

On “Soft Landing,” woods references a “brief, sweet moment” in which there’s “nothing in the thought bubble.” His final, concise verse on Maps, for all intents, is that fleeting instant. “All narrative goes back to infancy,” according to Augé. On “Baby Steps,” woods talks of “breasts out for the feeding,” which is a profane practice when he’s “feeling vulgar.” “Large areolas,” he lusts, “bite like I’m teething.” Not exactly the sacred act of nursing between madonna and child.

But that was earlier. On “As The Crow Flies,” woods is present. He concentrates upon his child with colostrum closeness and sees the journey has already begun, has always been. Drawing on Michel de Certeau, Augé writes that the “gleeful and silent experience of infancy is that of the first journey, of birth as the primal experience of differentiation, of the recognition of the self as self and as other, repeated later in the experiences of walking as the first use of space.” For all his expressions of misanthropy, an antinatalist woods is not.

“I’m in the park with the baby on the swing,” woods raps. This isn’t a reminiscence of park jams where your man gets shot for his sheep coat, though. He’s not evoking Kool Herc’s soundsystem in a jam-packed Cedar Park. If anything, we fixate on the mesmerizing motion of the swing—the symbolic push away of the parent and the insistent return of the child—a prodigal child where the only currency is glee. The child is thrust into oscillatory motion when typically we think of the father setting forth. A spirit quest under the guise of stepping out for a pack of cigarettes. But here, woods pushes his son farther along—fatheralong, for John Edgar Wideman. A preparatory speech on the pendulum swing of time. Feel-it-in-the-pit-of-the-stomach pain—a queasiness, an uneasiness. The child swings high, swings low. (Higher up, higher up, higher, the child calls like ELUCID from a storage closet stacked high with Betamax tapes—heart-wrenching home videos.) woods considers and counters Jay-Z’s image of leaving condoms on Nas’ baby seat. woods’ verse is not Supa Ugly but Supa Beautiful.

As woods sends his son into the stratosphere, it “hits [him] crazy: anything at all could happen to him.” We learned on ELUCID’s “Mangosteen” that woods’ hard shell [mechanical] only cracks when his baby gurgle, but as his son calculates risks and seeks to reap rewards, he fights the urge to tell the child: Don’t let me catch you intrepid. I mean, “he been climbing higher and higher on the jungle gym” (higher up! higher!), endangering bones and hazarding bruises. It’s like a jungle sometimes, you know, and it makes a father wonder how his child keeps from going under. The time goes so quick, another parent says, as you watch him “running faster, sometimes pushing other kids.” We shudder at the violence, innate as it seems, and struggle to navigate their dysregulated emotions as well as our own: “Tear-streaked apologies, balled fists—it’s a trip.” What he sees in the child’s behavior feels all too familiar—his own lachrymose regrets of being away—tripping. In Giovanni’s Room, Baldwin warns: “You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you can never go back.”

“It’s a trip that this is something we did,” woods reflects, acknowledging the presence of his baby’s mother for the first time. For Vincent Descombes, “The character is at home when he is at ease in the rhetoric of the people with whom he shares life.” As such, woods turns to the mother and “kiss[es] her on the lips.” The tender moment answers the stress heard about on “Soft Landing”: “It ruins the whole day when my baby-mother mad at me.” Here, home, things are set right. The ebb and flow of their relationship, the warp and weft of Penelope’s loom, settles into serenity. 

Time moves differently, exponentially, when you have children. “I watch him grow,” woods says, as if his son is doing so right before his eyes. Conceptualizing the multiplying of his son’s cells inevitably forces the gaze inward. woods is “wondering how long [he] got to live.” The last of his mortality raps on Maps, “As The Crow Flies” lands woods at the site of his final resting place, his thoughts dwelling on the immutable certainty of death. The Child is father of the Man, and the son—in all his vitality—raises the volume on the tick and the tock of the clock’s pendulum. For woods, it swings from bliss to bleak. Each split second a split atom—catastrophic. “Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors,” Poe writes—they “die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat.” Or pleurisy, like Wordsworth. Or nine bullets, like Big L. So you should pump this shit like they do in the future. woods is in possession of a plan to protect his neck and his legacy, in case. We heard it on Earl Sweatshirt’s “Tabula Rasa”: “Give my babies my rhyme books, but tell ’em, Do you.”

billy woods’ final words on Maps are a final exercise in approximation. They are against idealism; they enact that which is approximate. It is a verse composed of imperfect rhymes—close, but not quite. They point to good-enough parenting (word to Winnicott). Imperfect rhymes for imperfect lives. woods tells it slant. Like ELUCID—not fully in the kitchen, not wholly in Arizona for the show. Planting his feet in the Pacific and washing his face in the Atlantic. We sense the not-quiteness in woods’ sequence of slant rhymes:

swing | him | gym | kids | trip | did | lips | live

These end-rhymes are joined by the internal assonance of short-i sounds—a doubling-up; an overcompensation for when everything don’t always go according to plan, man.

[in] ~ swing | [anything] ~ him | [been] ~ gym | [pushing] ~ kids | [fists] ~ trip | [this] ~ did | [kiss] ~ lips | [him] ~ live

woods’ final words are short-lived, ephemeral as a push on the playground. While he wonders how long he got to live, his brief verse ends abruptly—oddly, after the seventh bar he falls silent—signaling a sooner-than-thought demise. That gnawing fear: a premature death. Time is of the essence, so he rather not waste words. He crouches at eye-level to tell his children what they need to hear before he’s gone (Western Education is forbidden, et al.). On tour, billy woods’ tendency is the same, ending songs in his set suddenly during shows. It’s on to the next performance, the next city, the next life.

Footnotes:

[1] “to be ghost” [disappear]; “to be Ghost” [face]

[2] woods has dabbled in these hip-hop double entendres before. “It’s walls topped with broken glass—I’ll show you slum village,” for example (from “No Hard Feelings”).

[3] Robert Leder, an executive at SMW Trading Company, was in his office on the 85th floor of the North Tower when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the building. “The whole office reeked of jet fuel,” he recalls.

Images:

“Alexander the Great in his griffin-powered flying chariot,” Roman d’Alexandre, 1444-1445 (detail) | “Cosmographia” (1544) by Sebastian Münster | LL Cool J, Radio album cover, 1985 (detail) | “It Shoots Further Than He Dreams,” John F. Knott (March 1918) | “Truck transporting people between the Republic of China and Libya,” Raymond Depardon (1978) | Capone-N-Noreaga, “L.A., L.A.” music video, 1996 (screenshot) | Frontispiece from Matthew Hopkins’ The Discovery of Witches (1647) | Can Dialectics Break Bricks?, dir. René Vienet, 1973 (screenshot) | Frontispiece from Matthew Hopkins’ The Discovery of Witches (1647) | Konrad Kyeser, Bellifortis, Clm 30150, Tafel 21, Blatt 91V (detail) | The Seventh Seal, dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957 (screenshot) | Guy Debord, Guide Pychogéographique de Paris (1957) | Vivez sans temps mort, Paris graffiti (1968) | “Engraving of Croatian mathematician Faust Vrančić jumping from a tower with a parachute,” Italy (1617) | John Bunyan, “A Plan of the Road From the City of Destruction to the Celestial City,” adapted to The Pilgrim’s Progress (1821) | Joos van Cleve, The Holy Family (ca. 1512-13) | “Alexander the Great in his griffin-powered flying chariot,” Roman d'Alexandre, 1444-1445 (detail)

[ange-la-ange-ootd]

A little bit of pirate lolita vibes.

The Great Voyage JSK - Long and Sharp Ears’ Studio

Claudia top - Tunnel Vision

Bat Lace Underskirt - Lady Sloth

boots - Demonia

Don’t Play Koi with Me earrings - Kikay

Anise choker - Creepyyeha

birdcage necklace - Black Peace Now

ring - Raspberry Mazohyst

[ID: A black and white pirate themed lolita fashion coordinate. The main piece is a black jumper skirt dress with a nautical themed print. It has illustrations of anchors, treasure, gold coins, ship’s wheels, compasses, chests, and cutlasses against a map background. It's layered over a white lace off-the-shoulder long sleeve blouse and paired with black tights and boots. The accessories include acrylic koi fish earrings, a bird cage necklace, and O-ring choker.]

[tiderider]

pirate aesthetics .

repost, don't reblog. bold what applies usually, italicize what applies sometimes, and strike out what never or rarely applies . insp .

adventurer ; sprawling paper maps, staring at the horizon, cool breezes, stargazing, notes scrawled in the margins of ancient books, swimming, billowing sails, daydreaming, worn compasses, ink spills, the smell of burning wax, candlelight, singing off-key, the smell of lemons, lit lighthouse

privateer ; eloquent speech, fine tailored lace, yellowed letters with red wax seals, god save the queen, fleurs, music boxes, feather quills, logging journals, blood-stained gold coins, rubies, engraved silver, suntanned leather, gold teeth, iron bars, birds in a cage

rebellious ; calloused hands, exposed sunkissed skin, beach bonfires, gleeful dancing, rusted telescopes, cries from the crows nest, defiant speeches, mist over the ocean, stick'n poke tattoos, stealing from the rich, treasure chests, barrels of rum, broken chains, a sealed scroll

lawless ; knives between teeth, crossed bones, knots of rope, cannonfire, darkness illuminated by firelight, red and black flags, a broken crown, burning ships, bags of money, notched wood, gunpowder, blood, hanged man's noose, a polished cutlass

cursed ; black water, dark storm clouds on the horizon, the eye of the storm, tarnished gold and silver, tentacles below the water's surface, blood in the water, sharks, creaking timber, doldrums, broken anchors at the bottom of the sea, piles of gold coins and other treasures, a figure head of a screaming maiden

tagged by : nada tagging : @ballagarraidh , @lighthouseborn , @shehook , @calithal , @yoakkemae ( ben )