#had me thinking that for a while until i saw an opaque circle forming right in the middle of the tablet

[thedawner]

Be wary of reviewers who say not to buy a protective foil for your display tablet.

[thiswasinevitableid]

for monster march, ghost + indruck + nsfw?

Here you go! I borrowed some ideas we’ve tossed around on the Discord

A sketchbook, new pens, a Hershey bar, and a bag of jumbo marshmallows. A small but lively fire. And a new, huge, fuzzy sleeping bag waiting for him in the tent. 

Not a bad camping set up for a city-boy art goth (as Barclay likes to call him).

Indrid sticks another marshmallow on the fork, roasting it until it’s deep brown, the smell of burning sugar curling through the air and settling in his hair. He’s never liked Graham Crackers, so he jams a square of chocolate into the molten center of the marshmallow and shoves the entire thing into his mouth. 

Kepler is small. Barclay hadn’t been kidding about that. He’d also been right that one of the two tattoo shops in town was willing to hire Indrid after looking through photos of his work and confirming he completed his apprenticeship. 

He’s been living in the Eastwoods campground in the Monongahela National Forest while he apartment hunts, and the tattoos he’s done so far netted him enough cash to buy his luxurious new sleeping bag. He might be waiting on a place for some time, so he may as well camp in style. 

Three “s’mores” later, the moon is up and the night is chilly enough that he wants his sweatshirt. Ducking into the tent, he can’t find it on his pillow, where he swears he left it this morning. Maybe he accidentally buried it getting dressed.

A splashhiss interrupts his rummaging. Scrambling from the tent, he discovers his fire is now a pile of soaked ashes and logs being angrily stirred by a thick piece of kindling. 

“Excuse me, but what the fuck?”

A man in a ranger uniform appears, the stick falling through his hand as he gives Indrid a disapproving stare. 

“Look here, I know you’re new here, maybe to campin entirely. But you can’t just leave a fire burnin when you go to bed.” He doesn’t sound mad, more like he’s a disappointed big brother scolding his sibling. 

“I wasn’t-”

“And all this” he gestures to the food on the table, “has gotta go in the bear box. Black bears are real good foragers and we don’t want ‘em comin’ into camp and gettin to comfy around humans.”

“Of course, but-”

“You didn’t take any food into the tent, right? Wouldn’t want somethin to decide to join you ‘cause it smelled a snack.”

Indrid pinches the bridge of his nose, “I am aware of all of these rules, and plan to follow them. Once I actually go to bed instead of ducking into the tent for my sweater. But since my evening appears to be over…” he grabs the marshmallows, roasting fork, and chocolate, carries them to the bear box, and slams it closed. 

When he whirls back around, the ghost is still there, chagrined. 

“Uh, sorry. I kinda jumpy about people leavin fires alone.” In the lantern light, his smile is as charming as his drawl. His stocky, bearish shape and unassumingly handsome face command Indrid’s focus, which is why his revelation comes so quickly. 

“You...there’s a statue of you at the visitor center. Which makes you, ah, damn it what was the name-”

“Duck. Duck Newton. They put my legal name on there, even though Juno tried to stop ‘em. But my name’s Duck.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Duck. I’m Indrid.”

“Nice to meet you too. Uh, sorry for ruinin your campfire, looks like you were havin a nice time.”

“It’s alright. I suppose I’m grateful there’s someone haunting the campsites to keep them in order.”

“You’re takin me bein’ a ghost surprisingly well.”

“I’ve always been interested in strange things, to the point that I earned the nickname ‘mothman’ in high school.”

“Huh” Duck watches him a moment, then shrugs, “well, guess I better be goin’. Have a nice night, mothman.”

With that, he’s gone.

------------------------------------------------------

“Hello again.” Indrid says as the campfire smoke curls around a human form, “Doing your rounds?”

“More or less. I like my job, and ain’t about to give it up just because I beefed it and turned into a ghost.” A creak as Duck joins him on the picnic bench. When he materializes, he floats slightly above the worn wood, watching Indrid draw. 

“That’s incredible, it’s so realistic it’s like you pressed the leaves into the pages instead of colored them.”

“Thank you.” adds depth to the leaf, “you know, I looked at the statue again today. It hardly does you justice.”

From this close, he can see a blush spread up semi-opaque cheeks. Then he starts fading.

“Oh, ah, I’m sorry. I was aiming for a benign compliment, not to make you uncomfortable.”

“S’alright, just surprised me. Not many folks wanna flirt with a dead guy.”

“I’m more interested in what the ‘dead guy’ wants.” Indrid smiles, hoping to convey he would submit to spectral touches as readily as he’d keep talking. 

Duck floats closer, “Kinda curious about your other drawin’s.”

Indrid turns the sketchbook back to the beginning, “they’re half portfolio and half travelogue. Here” he holds up a fade, detached piece of paper,  covered by an Morpho Butterfly that looks ready to fly away, “this is the first tattoo I ever designed.”

“Damn. Guessin’ that means you did this one” he touches the Rosy Maple Moth on Indrid’s forearm (or tries to). It’s chilly, but not in the way Indrid feared. More like taking a cool shower on a sweltering day.

“I did. Here, it gave me an idea for my first series of flash tattoos…”

They go over the illustrations page by page. Slowly, Indrid weaves in questions to Duck who, instead of recoiling from discussion of his mortal life, tells him rambling stories about the woods and which places serve the best food in town. 

The conversation doesn’t end until the fire goes out on it’s own, Duck standing automatically, grabbing a water bottle, swearing, and then disappearing so he can pick the bottle up. 

“Do you think that’s part of why you’re still here? Some unfinished business having to do with the woods?”

“Nah.” The water bottle thunks back on the table as Duck reappears, “I tried to live a normal life, improve the world the way I knew how, make some kind of difference to this town. Then I had to go play the goddamn hero.”

“I would say saving two dozen people from a forest fire makes a considerable difference in the world.”

A sad huff of a laugh, “Yeah, guess you’re right. Just...I meant to do somethin’ with my life, not my death, even if it was a small somethin’, and the closest thing I got to unfinished business is a model ship.”

“I...what?”

“It was four-masted and everything! I had Leo order it in special and everything and then I never, I never got to-”  He tilts his head up, sniffs once, “never mind. I better let you get to sleep.”

By the time Indrid calls “goodnight,” the ghost is gone. 

------------------------------------------

“Please tell me you’re gettin a place soon so you stop eatin everythin outta a can?” Leo bags the last of groceries.

“No such luck. Ah well, there are worse things than canned soup and Pop-Tarts.”

“At least let Barclay feed you, half the point of havin a friend who can cook is to let ‘em do it for you. You need stamps or anything?”

“N-” A box behind the counter catches his eye. It’s at an odd angle, as if whoever put it there is hoping no one will see it. Indrid can just make out an illustration of a four-masted ship.

“Is that for sale?”

Leo looks where he’s pointing, and for a moment something in his gruff affability wavers. Then he nods, “Yeah, suppose it is.”

“Can you ring it up for me?” Indrid nearly bounces on his toes when Leo sets the box on the counter and confirms his hunch. 

The older man sets a gentle hand on the cardboard, sliding it across to Indrid, “Don’t worry about that, kid. It’s yours.”

----------------------------------------------

“Duck?” Indrid turns in a circle by the picnic table, “Duck, I have something for you!”

He saw the ranger briefly last night, but he didn’t hang around. Gingerly, he sets the box on the table, tearing off a piece of sketch paper to write a note in case the ghost stops by while he’s asleep. 

“Holy fuck.” Duck floats across the table from him, “‘Drid, where did, how did--why?”

“Leo still had it. As for why I, ah, it seemed like you still wanted it. If you can douse a fire and over my camp stove, I figure you can build a model ship.”

Duck disappears and Indrid’s heart sinks; that must have been too much. Then he’s squished in an invisible, wonderful bear hug.

“Thanks, ‘Drid.”

From then on, Duck spends every night at his campsite, building the ship while Indrid draws, reads, or talks with him. The model lives in the safest corner of the tent during the day.

“I mean, I’m up durin the day too, but I scared a few folks on accident and I don’t want people avoid the forest because of me.”

Indrid also learns that Duck is stuck within a certain radius of where he died, and that his attempts to talk with Juno when she was in his part of the woods only lead to his friend thinking she was hallucinating and Duck feeling miserable for three solid days. Indrid offers to act as messenger and invite Duck’s friends (many of whom have, by chance and by proximity to Barclay, become his friends) to the campsite to see him. The ranger is quiet for some time after that offer.

“Not yet. Maybe someday, but not yet. I, it ain’t even been a year, ‘Drid. I think a lot of ‘em are still hurtin. And, and maybe this is selfish but...I ain’t ready to deal with them findin’ out I aint fully gone. It’d be so much all at once.”

Indrid doesn’t bring it up again. More than once, when Aubrey tells a story about Duck only for her eyes to sadden halfway through, or when he sees Juno looking at Duck’s statue a little too long, he struggles to keep his promise. 

A cold front blows into town and, since he’s still in the tent, he pops into Kepler Thrift N Find in search of an extra sweatshirt. Tucked in between one reading “Ranchos” and one with a picture of Garfield is a soft, well-loved hoodie with “Monongahela National Forest” on the front. He buys it and wears it home, the fact it’s loose in the arms making it even easier to tuck in his hands when he gets cold. 

He stops by the visitor center out of habit, checking out the new plush wild animals. There are also hints of Duck here and there; his name on displays, his face in group photos. As he contemplates a small, squishy black bear, he notices Juno looking at him more than usual.

“Hello again” he sets the bear on the counter.

“Howdy. This all?

“Yes, please. Are you alright? You look, ah, tired.”

“Yep. Or, uh, just noticed that sweatshirt. It was one that got made special for staff a few years ago.”

Indrid fidgets with the cat-bitten drawstring, “It was Duck’s, wasn’t it?”

“Uh huh. He put that patch on the sleeve. Guess it startled me to see it on someone else.”

“I understand.” 

“Knew him since we were kids. Hell, he’s my daughter’s godfather. Still don’t feel right, bein’ here without him.”

Indrid pushes the bear towards her and she pets it.

“What was he like?”

In the empty visitor center, Juno tells him. In her stories are echos of every conversation he’s ever had with anyone who knew Duck. When it’s time to close up, she asks if she can hug him, and thanks him for listening to her. 

“Guess you weren’t kiddin about wanting to sleep with a bear” Duck teases as Indrid sets his new purchase inside the tent. Indrid whaps at him, arm going through his torso. The ranger floats nearby as Indrid heats up ravioli and opens a can of Mountain Dew. Indrid tells him about the conversation with Juno. 

“Huh, guess that is my old one. Glad someone is gettin some use outta it. And it looks good on you.”

Indrid sets down his bowl, “We talked a lot, Duck. And it made me think about what you said to me one of the night after we met. You said you wanted a chance to make the world, the town, a little better. Everyone I’ve talked to, and I mean every one, has a story about you. How you helped them, how Kepler is worse off with you gone. You did so much, even with your time cut short. I, I wanted you to know that.”

The ghost looks away, “I wasn’t done tryin to help.”

“You still aren’t. You do what you can to keep the forest and the visitors safe. And you, you’ve made my life immeasurably better Duck. Seeing you is the best part of my day and I think I’m falling--ah, that is, you’re not done making a difference.”

Duck hasn’t moved since Indrid started talking about his feelings. When Indrid tries to meet his eyes, he disappears. Hurried, he reaches out to offer a reassuring touch and gets only air. 

“Duck?”

Nothing, even after he calls his name three more times.

He slumps onto the bench, “well, fuck me I guess.”

---------------------------------------------------

This is a terrible idea. But it’s his last, and therefore his best. 

Indrid even asked Barclay’s boyfriend, Joseph, if anything in his impressive library of the paranormal advised the reader on dealing with upset ghosts. A few did, always from the perspective of trying to get the specter to go away. They said nothing about what to do if your upset ghost was missing, leaving an ache in your heart you didn’t know you were capable of feeling. 

Instead, after a week of silence, Indrid changes tactics: if he can’t coax Duck back, maybe he can annoy him into appearing. 

Tonight, he finishes dinner and cleans his dishes, puts the bulk of the food in the bear box, and then tears open a bag of chips, scattering them across the table. He eats one, then leaves the open bag laying amongst the potato shards. 

Next, he dumps his remaining water on the fire, which takes it down to embers but does not extinguish it. When none of that gets a reaction, he decides to narrate.

“Hmm, that should be fine, it’s not that dry and I don’t think sparks can go over the edge.”

“Should I leave these juice pouches out? Yes, I think I should, in case I get thirsty at night. Maybe I’ll take one into the tent, just to be safe.”

He already feels silly and like no one is listening, and so he escalates. 

“I know I shouldn’t leave food out for the wildlife, but since there’s no handsome, ghostly ranger here to punish me for my transgressions, I am just going to leave some nuts out for the raccoons. I like raccoons. They deserve nice things. Hell, how about I just leave them a whole buffet since no one is stopping me!”

All he gets in reply are the few bugs awake this early in the spring and the crack of brush as a small mammal runs away from the weird bipedal thing yelling at his camp fire. He doesn’t leave out food for the raccoons; he climbs into his tent in a huff. What a bad idea, to think this of all things would bring Duck back to him. He’s being childish and bratty and selfish; Duck doesn’t deserve that, no more than he owes Indrid his company. 

He changes into his pajamas pants and sleep shirt, intending to go back out to make the site safe and tidy. Except.

Except something just opened the bear box. The chip bag crinkles and the fire hisses out a minute later. He should be running outside to apologize, but his mind has simultaneously  registered the full darkness of the night , the possibility that Duck is not the only paranormal thing in these woods, and the fact the nearest other campers are on the other side of the campground, meaning he is very, very alone.

The zipper on the tent moves, the flap falling open so his lantern shines on nothing but April air.

“Duck? Please say that’s you.”

A low chuckle, “It’s me, ‘Drid.” The fly zips shut, “mighty peeved about that trick you pulled.”

“I’m, I’m sorry. I missed you, but that was a bad way to communicate that.” He can’t see him, and the lantern only picks up the odd shift of sleeping bag or tent floor, so Indrid’s eyes’ dart about trying to pinpoint him.

“Oh, you communicated plenty, sugar. Like what you want a certain, uh, ghostly ranger to do to you.”

“Oh god” he winces, “please, forget I said that, it’s humiliating.”

“Not all that surprisin, truth be told. I mean, you and I flirted now and then. And you told me enough about yourself for me to suspect that you’re a kinky little weirdo who’s dyin to get fucked by a ghost.” 

“I, I feel I should point out that I only want to fuck one ghost. You. I want to fuck you and that means fucking a ghoOOOst.” He gasps as cold lips press into his neck.

“I can make that happen, darlin, all you gotta do is say it. You were a pain in the neck earlier, so now I expect you to be real polite and use your words.” Duck’s voice has never been like this before, rough and possessive yet still, under all of it, the same warmth draws Indrid in like a flame. 

“I want you, Duck.”

A bite to his ear, strong arms wrapping around his waist from behind him, “Want me to do what?”

“Fuck me” this is like every wet dream he had as a teenager, the supernatural being coming for a fellow outsider. 

That gets him a tender kiss on the cheek, “That’s better. Though, if I’m rememberin correctly, word you used was punish.”

Indrid yelps as Duck turns and shoves him to lay across his lap, kicks his legs out in surprise when his waistband slides down to his upper thighs. 

“Yesss” he wiggles his ass as Duck palms it, “yes, Duck, pleaseAHgod” the first strike stings, and Duck doesn’t let him recover before delivering five more, three to each side. His cock perks up at the pain. Stranger still, because Duck is invisible, all Indrid has to do is tilt his head to watch it harden and twitch with each slap.

Twenty strikes later Duck pauses, hand rubbing soothing, cool circles on the burning skin, “Learned your lesson?”

“Mmhmm.” Indrid presses an awkward kiss to Duck’s knee. 

“Glad to hear it.” Duck hauls him up onto his knees, slides a hand under his shirt and up his chest, “I’m rarin’ to feel more of you--holy fuck” 

“AH!” Indrid arches as Duck toys with his left nipple piercing, his other hand quickly finding the right. 

“God, fuck, you’re fuckin hot, if I were alive I woulda taken you home first time I saw you.” Messy kisses cover his neck as Duck tugs the piercings.

“Gaahnnyes, that’s, that’s very flattering.”

“Ain’t flattery, sugar, it’s the truth. Never could turn down some skinny punk with piercin’s and messy hair, not when I was a teen burnout hidin in the woods and sure as hell not now.” He moves Indrid onto his back, rucking up his shirt as his legs twist in his half-down pants. The ranger cups his face, and Indrid is positive he’s meeting his eyes, “tell me what you want sugar, tell me so I can treat you right.”

“Marks, I want marks anywhere you’ll give them.”

A growl from above him, then lips smashing into his, drinking him in before continuing down his throat, biting and sucking hard enough that he cries out every time. Duck pauses, teasing his nipples with his tongue as he rakes his nails up his sides. He sits up and for a horrible moment Indrid loses him. Then with glee he watches five red marks drag down his chest. He moans, rolling his hips and discovering just how closer Duck’s clothed cock is to his own. The contact only feeds the rangers eagerness, and Indrid is tosses and turns as he sucks, bites, and scratches, laying claim to the illustrated expanse of his body. 

“More, please, god that all feels so good.” 

“Don’t worry darlin, still got plenty of you to mark up, but we’re gonna do somethin else while I do.” He eases Indrid onto his stomach, slaps his ass fondly, “don’t go nowhere.”

Indrid’s duffel bag unzips, clothes and pens moved aside until a bottle of lube hovers in the air. The tube compresses and drips coat the rough outline of fingers. When the two digits press into him he sighs, eyes closing as he melts under Ducks watchful eyes. 

“That’s it ‘Drid, relax for me. Got well over a year of horny to work out, so this cute ass needs to be ready to take it.”

Indrid pushes his hips back in reply, taking as far as the fingers will go and whimpering excitedly when he presses in the tip of the third. Duck works that one more carefully, kissing Indrid’s face and shoulders as he whispers about how good he is, how much he’s wanted this.

“I want it too so for, for goodness sake please fuck me soon or I’ll leave my entire cooler out for the bears.”

“Only one bear in this campsite tonight darlin.” Duck laves his tongue down the base of his spine, bites down hard on his ass. Indrid’s still moaning from the pain when his cock pushes in.

“Fuuuckme that’s good. Shoulda snuck into your tent sooner, sugar, made you a fuckin cocksleeve you feel so fuckin good.”

“Ohgod” is all Indrid, voice muffled by the sleeping bag he’s biting, manages before Duck adjusts them so Indrid is on his knees. The ranger isn’t gentle, pounds into him like he’s nothing but a warm hole and chuckles whenever Indrid moans. 

“H-handprints, Duck, want hand prints GAHyesyesyes” he struggles to move in time with the ghost as the air fills with ear-splitting slaps. He’s so close, the pain and the sensation of phantom fingers claiming his body making his body beg for release. When he slides a hand down to jerk himself off, the arm twists up and stays trapped against his back. 

“You wanna cum, you know what to do.”

He blinks away the ecstatic tears, words raw in his throat, “Please let me cum, Duck. I want to, need to cum while you fuck me pleaseplease-” he cuts off into whine as the ghost works his cock hard, all the while jamming into him hard enough that the smooth fabric of the sleeping bag burns his knees. When he cums it’s with a weak cry of Duck’s name, which is swallowed up by hungry lips as Duck kisses him over and over, repeating Indrid’s name like an incantation as he pumps his hips and cums, pulling out as he does so it splatters on the reddened patches of his ass. 

A final kiss to the top of his head, and then there’s no contact between them and the zipper is moving.

“Oh no you don’t” Indrid scrambles, sweaty and exhausted, between the tent fly and the invisible man somewhere in front of him, “for goodness sake, Duck, I thought you liked me enough to at least let me fall asleep before you ran.”

The ranger finally appears, hair a mess and cheeks noticeably pink, “‘Drid, all that was amazing, but it’s all I can give you. I, I can’t...you said you were fallin for me and I can’t give you that.”

Indrid cocks his head, “Why not?”

“Because I’m a fuckin ghost, ‘Drid! You deserve to be with a livin’ fella, you deserve someone who can be a real part of your life.”

He crosses his arms, “Duck, you are a real part of my life. Honestly, what part of all the nights we spent together, all the ways we take care of each other, all of this” he points at the rumpled sleeping bag, “suggests otherwise?”

The ghost doesn’t speak, simply hugs himself (or tries to).

“If this is too much, if I’m offering something you do not want, then please tell me. But if this is you thinking that some paranormal quirks keep you from being a worthy partner for me, kindly think again.”

Duck disappears and Indrid is gearing up to try and tackle a supernatural entity when a familiar face buries itself in the crook of his neck. The ghost clings to him, and Indrid clings right back. 

“You really wanna give it a go?”

“More than anything.”

Duck lifts his head so their cheeks rest together, “Then fuck it. Let’s see what happens.”

----------------------------------------

Indrid finishes hooking up his lightly used Winnebago, AKA his solution to the lack of available apartments. He’s in a different section of Eastwoods, but he’s happy with his new spot. He opens one of his few boxes, gently lifts the completed model ship into a place of honor, and waits, humming happily, for an unseen hand to knock on his door. 

[onwesterlywinds]

In Marble Halls

All her life, -̴̠̘̎-̶̮̬̽̕-̴͙̀̕͜-̴̧̘͐͒-̶̘̰̒̈́-̴̩̏͛-̶̮̬̽̕-̴͙̀̕͜-̴̧̘͐͒-̶̘̰̒̈́-̴̩̏͛ͅ- had dreamt of a storm fit for the end of the world. The rain would fall and the lake would rise, such that the water would drown out the last vestiges of the only home she had ever known until only Gruenes Licht yet stood. The thunder would crash and the clouds would roll and the great castle would weather it all, not as a beacon of hope but as an empty warning, a testament unearned.

She ran now through that dream made manifest.

The cobbled streets below were already flooded with a fulm of water as far as she could see. The houses around her sat dark, many of them with their doors flung open to the tempest in their residents' haste to flee in the exodus; the chapel's rear steeple had given way, and dark water gushed out from under the tall oak doors as if from a backed-up drain. With one hand she clasped at her star globe; with the other, she tore free her stifling wet bodice, hiked up the hem of her sodden petticoats and hurried onward to the great castle stairs.

She was the last of them all. Her parents had abandoned their post; her brother's transformation into a sin eater was surely all but complete. Her fellow ladies-in-waiting had been taken by the darkness, one by one. Tadric had usurped Pauldia, destroyed Sauldia-

But he had not taken her.

And of all the court, only she had realized Branden's greatest failure: the archmage was not dead.

And she would bring him to justice, but not alone.

And there was hope - not for Voeburt, perhaps, but for another to find in some far-flung future.

She ascended the marble steps to the palace as hail began to pelt her skin. Her legs burned with fatigue from the distance they had run, and still the worst of the climb stretched up ahead of her. Worse yet, the marble would be hazardous at a run: a single misplaced step could cause a painful slip at best and a deadly fall at worst, but her feet were all she had to avail her now.

Once ascended, she paused for only a moment by the overrunning fountain to catch her breath, and to stare out from the castle's heights at her swiftly submerging homeland. Deep in her heart she knew the godsforsaken visage would be the last she ever saw of it. At first the sight was nearly too much to bear, given the weight of an entire kingdom broken below her. Yet even then, the knowledge that she would be the sole witness to Voeburt's destruction provided comfort and purpose. She alone would shoulder this memory, lock it deep in her heart, and guard it so fiercely that no others would need endure it in her stead.

A heartening chorus, as if of tiny bells, resounded encouragingly in her ear. With that sound accompanying her final steps, she shook out her skirts and readied the pendant she kept on her person at all times: the last remaining key to the palace's doors.

Despite the Light raging outside, the grand hall within sat utterly dark and still. The arched stone ceiling high above remained blessedly intact, granting her a reprieve from the endless torrent of rain for the first time since she'd begun her trek. Even the pattering upon the darkened stained glass sounded to be of a much greater distance away, rather than the same tempest that had consumed the rest of Voeburt.

Then there came the heavy clap of a man's hands, and with it, a single flicker of light illuminated a ghostly figure at the far end of the hall.

"There you are, my dear." His words echoed throughout the chamber as if from an age apart, or else from within a far corner of her own mind. "I knew you would not keep me waiting long."

"TADRIC!" she screamed. The noise echoed back at her amid the oppressive darkness, and her star globe sprang to readiness with the merest flick of her wrist.

He stepped forward, again and again, and his voice grew ever stronger. "Oh, how pleased I am you've come. Your soul will make for such excellent company."

"How dare you, fiend!" she retorted. "By rights you should be dead!"

"Indeed so," he agreed. "I certainly had not anticipated any part of me lingering here. I regret only that I have Beq Lugg and their work on the mortal soul to credit for this... turn of events, but it is a welcome development nonetheless. Overcoming one's mortality grants the most splendid boons - though I imagine you would struggle to relate."

At that, she could only seethe.

He gave a quiet little tut. "That's right, darling. You know I've had the measure of you for years." His smile had always been unsettling in life; on his ghost, it was terrifying. "All that time, and yet it's taken nothing less than the end of the world for you to confront me."

"Enough!"

"Oh, yes. I trust you'll remain so beautifully fierce when I bind your exquisite soul to mine." Tadric was halfway across the hall now, and his outline appeared to grow more and more opaque in the darkness. Even now she could make out the shine of his boots, the meticulous detailing on his robes, the glimmer of a reflection across his sharpened teeth. "I've no doubt you'll last longer than Pauldia did - nor that you'll be far more pleasing to the eye than she was at the end. Or do you truly think yourself enough to hinder me? Alone as you are, with only your little cards for guidance, and none of your kin to aid you?"

It would have to be enough. She would have to be enough. There could be no more Sauldias, no more Pauldias, no matter the sacrifice it would take.

"No," Tadric continued, as if the conclusion had only just struck him. "You cannot harm me. Not now, and certainly not here, in this castle you usurped for so long. You forget I know the way of your wretched kind."

She was undoubtedly within range of his magicks, but he was not yet in range of hers. Only a little further, only a single step more, and she could fall as long as she liked-

"'To take back as much as is taken. To create as much as is destroyed. To give as much as is received...'"

The words she had once sought as a reprieve were poison from his lips, rotten to their very core.

"...And you, my dearest, have a heavy debt to repay."

Far better to repay that debt here, in the service of her kingdom, no matter the cost. "And repay it I shall," she whispered.

"Hm?"

She spoke then the words her friend had taught her - the words she had carried deep in her heart throughout all her years.

"Acht-la ormh inn."

The castle doors burst open at her invitation, showering her in droplets of rain and sleet that glimmered against the light from her star globe and refracted like stained glass upon the walls. Her friend flew in at her back, little more than a diminutive flash of crystalline hair and bright blue petals; yet as they circled the chamber, faster and faster, they dazzled the hall in a shower of fae dust and grew to their full height, where their wings unfurled like pennants in the wind.

"Ready yourself, dear flower!" they shouted.

Upon herself she cast a shield; for her friend, she drew forth the card she had kept in reserve all through her trek: The Spire. In the same instant, they unleashed bursts of pure energy, stellar explosions and fae quickenings in tandem.

Tadric's ghost recoiled, his face contorting in rage or pain. Bathed in the full majesty of the King of the Faeries and trapped by patterns of stars, his form took on an harshness of its own as the Light gathered from the storm without needled its way into his soul, splinter by splinter, and corrupted him from within.

"This- isn't- over!" Tadric spat at her, through the waves of raw Light that bubbled up from behind his lips. "You stupid girl. You worthless bloody changeling!"

Titania cried, "Now!"

And when she stretched out her hand, she called upon the might of the heavens to bind the castle and everything in it - Tadric, the king, herself - into the space of a singular moment.

That moment stretched out across the foreseeable future, across endless possible endings, and ignited in a burst of color.

When the spell faded, Tadric's ghost was gone. The world around her was utterly, impossibly still. The sound of the rains had ceased; the distant echo of Light rang out no more. Only Tadric's memory remained, his laughter echoing within her ears - a nightmare from which she could only hope to find reprieve. The palace doors were shut tight and would not open ever again.

And then Titania spoke into the silence.

"Lyhe Il. Oh, dear, brave flower. It is over at last."

She was weeping, she realized; the king had drawn her into an embrace as soft as a field of clover and as gentle as a warm midsummer's day. She collapsed against their touch, impossibly weak and weary and wanting.

"Hush now," they whispered, and pressed their lips to her forehead. "Sleep, and dream of rainbows and meadows and northerly winds, for you have more than earned your name."

"N-No!" she sobbed, clutching at the fae king's shoulder. "I h-have to stay with you, I-I must ensure-"

"He is gone, my flower, in all the ways that matter. All that yet remains is to expel the last traces of him - and there is time enough for such a task in the years to come. Until then, I would not risk your safety while you abide here."

Years. Such a gentle word for the surety of their imprisonment. "But-" Her tears overtook her again, and Titania cradled her ever more tightly. "I couldn't possibly leave you on your own, and with so much Light! Who will you play with; who will you dance with?!"

Titania traced one of their thin fingers along the curve of her nose, liberating a stray tear. "I entered this castle on your invitation and my own intentions - and here I shall stay, on behalf of our people. It will be comfort enough to know that my flower has found the peace she has sought for so long - and that she rests as a hero to Voeburt and the fae alike."

Yet peace still seemed so nebulous a prospect, as remote as the stars themselves. Peace could not grant her a retroactive belonging among Voeburt's people and court; it could not suppress the abject ache for understanding with which she had come of age in her awkward Galdjent skin. She had given all of herself for both her peoples, her past and her present and her future, and still she could not unmake the years of her own solitude. Only Titania had ever granted her such a reprieve.

If the King of the Pixies wished her to dream, then dream she would.

"Be with me," she whispered. "I know I will wake up without you-" She did not dare wonder what travesties the Light would wreak upon the king during their solitude. "-but until then... do not ask me to fall asleep alone."

Titania acquiesced to this final wish with a single kiss goodnight, and began to sing.

Never harm, Nor spell nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh; So, good night, with lullaby.

As her eyes closed, she stared up at the kaleidoscopic light streaming in from the stained glass windows far above.

The sight was so lovely as to push all thoughts of the storm from her mind.

[lo-55]

Tilt The Hourglass Ch. 11

Forget putting a bell on Maul, Maul was going to put a leash on Kenobi. 

The foolish boy had made the executive decision to leave before dawn with no more than a note.  

Maul handed the piece of flimsi to Jango, his jaw set tight. 

Dear Mr. Fett and Maul, 

I went back to the Agri-Corps dome to get another look at the secret room in case I saw something I missed before that might help Master Jinn. I will return with lunch around midday planet time. Thank you for last night, and I apologize for the inconvenience. 

Sincerely, Jedi Initiate Obi Wan Kenobi

Jango didn’t look any happier to see the note than Maul felt. He knew Kenobi was impulsive and foolish but this was truly ridiculous. 

How was it possible that this was the same man who had consistently beaten Maul through his lifetime? 

Maul paused. 

Well. Kenobi had charged a Sith head on after his vaunted master had fallen to his hand. He’d taken only a single other Jedi to confront that same Sith when he had back up. He’d left the Jedi with no help at all to try to rescue Satine. Maul had seen him fight on full battlefields and loose his lightsaber. And, he was also the one who had raised Skywalker and Tano. 

What was that saying about Neti falling from their branches? 

Maul realized with no small degree of horror that Kenobi had mellowed with age, and this one was twice as rash as the one he’d known. 

Well fuck. 

Maul had been busy in his room in the morning after breakfast, and Jango had been off talking to someone on a private comm that he wasn’t allowed to eavesdrop on, and in the middle of all that Kenobi had just. Vanished. 

“I should have kept a better eye on him,” Maul scowled at the flimsi, quietly willing it to light on fire. He’d never gotten the hang of spontaneous combustion, and it didn’t work now either. 

Jango shot him an unimpressed look over the edge of the parchment. It was small, hotel issued. 

“I’m pretty sure you’re younger than him,” Jango said patiently, “so if anything he should have been watching you.” 

He didn’t even bother with Maul’s bristling pride this time. Jango wouldn’t snap at him, of that Maul was certain, but he was clearly irritated by Kenobi’s lack of forethought. 

It didn’t help that a moment later the door swung open and Clat’Ha strode in, her eyes white around the edges, with Jinn in tow. 

Maul blinked at the white bandages plastered to the normally dignified Jedi’s nose. Was Jinn getting in bar fights now? At this point it wouldn’t surprise Maul. 

“What-” 

Jango was cut off by Clat’Ha, who had gone pale. 

“It’s Obi Wan. He’s gone missing.” 

Maul’s blood went cold. His face blanched to grey-pink. “What?” 

Missing? Truly missing? 

Maul’s mind went to Xanatos. He was the only other threat they had encountered on this journey. Well, the only one that still lived. The draigons were gone, the pirates were space dust, only the washed out Padawan was left. 

“He went to the AgriCorps dome this morning,” Jango said, showing them the note. Jinn’s mouth thinned into a line and his brows pinched together. 

“Si Treemba said he saw him there, but he vanished. They heard shouting and fighting near the annex they found the other day, but when they got there Obi Wan was gone,” Clat’Ha shook her head mournfully. 

“We have to find him,” Jango spoke for all of them. 

Jinn held up his hand. 

“We must be patient,” he counselled, and Maul knew he wasn’t the only one who wanted to strike the Jedi in the face. “If we rush in with haste, we run the risk of putting him in further danger.” 

“Funny to hear that from the Jedi,” Jango snapped. 

Jinn narrowed his eyes. “I wouldn’t expect a man like yourself to understand the subtleties of bidding ones time and gathering information-”

“It’s hard to gather information when you hoard cards to your chest like a hutt on a losing streak-” 

“If you needed to know I would tell you-”

“Like you told Obi Wan? Listen you-” 

“Enough!” Clat’Ha snapped, stepping between the bickering men. It was enough to get them to cut it out, at least momentarily. “Arguing helps no one, now shut up. Our first priority needs to be looking for Obi Wan. I’m going out to the dome to see if I can find any leads. And you two are not going to go after eachother the second I’m gone, got it?” 

She looked pointedly from one man to the other, until both were bowed to her will. 

Maul would have been impressed in any other situation. 

“Kenobi isn’t dead,” Maul said with certainty. All three looked at him, startled. Maul met their eyes defiantly. “He’s not weak enough as to roll over and die just like that.”

“...The kids right,” Clat’Ha’s shoulders relaxed and she slowly eased into a smile. “We’ll find him. I’m off, I’ll comm you if I find anything new.” 

“I’m going to go to the dockmaster,” Jango said finally. “I’ll find out if there’s a ship that’s left Bandomeer that might have him on it. Maul, you should come with me. It’ll be dangerous.” 

Maul shook his head. “I’ll find you later. I wanna check on a rumor I heard first.” 

Jango eyed him suspiciously, but Maul had proven himself resourceful and dangerous. Reluctantly, the Mandalorian agreed. 

“Just keep your head down, okay? I’ll be very upset if I don’t get the chance to adopt you properly.” 

Maul kicked his boot. “Cut the sentimental Banthashit,” he scolded. “You’re supposed to be a Mandalorian, a fearsome warrior!” 

“And there’s nothing Mandalorian’s value more than our ade, Maul’ika. Children are our future, and you are mine.” Jango patted his head lightly, minding his horns. “Meet back here tonight, or I’m coming to find you.” 

Maul rolled his eyes. As it he hadn’t noticed the tracer Jango had slipped into his poncho pocket. He would leave it be for now. If he went somewhere he didn’t want Jango following he would take it out and attach it a tooka for Jango to follow after. 

For the time being, he left the apartments and headed to the Offworld admin building in Bando. 

It wasn’t hard to sneak in through the vents. It was one of the only good things about being this small again, was how easy it was to slide through buildings and ships. He had to carefully rerout a few cleaning droids, but besides that he didn’t have any trouble finding Xanatos’ office. He did, however, notice that the door was hidden behind the same opaque wall that Kenobi had found in the dome. 

Certainly Xanatos’ work. 

Maul briefly considered kicking out the grate and ripping Kenobi’s location from Xanatos’ screaming throat, but the building was situated between an actual mine and a smelting facility. There would be guards, miners, and a hundred other workers in the building, and if it went into lock down Maul had seen laser grid generators in the vents on his way in. He didn’t fancy fighting an army of disgruntled Offworlders or getting cut in half again, thank you. 

There was always window, he supposed… 

But Maul was patient. He had to be. 

He hated it. 

It went against his very nature. Still, he was rather good at lying in wait. 

He watched Xanatos work. It was hard to see from this angle, but in the reflection of the window Maul caught his fingers moving, and the input of codes. He watched the pattern that formed. The computer showed only a code, and while Maul didn’t have the key he had enough to work it out. 

He even got the password. 

Crion. 

When Xanatos made for the door Maul carefully lifted a familiar lightsaber off of his hip and set it gently aside. As soon as Xanatos left Maul slowly eased his way out of his hiding place. He grabbed the lightsaber, one he had once thrown into the plasma generators in Theed, and searched Xanatos’ correspondences for any mention of Obi Wan in his little code. He found a few, but they were vague and brief. 

It told Maul just enough to know that Obi Wan was alive, and had been sent a mine in the seas. 

Maul copied as many files as he could and saved them a data stick in the desk drawer before he made off for the vents and the outside world. 

By then it was nearing dark. The miners had traded shifts, and the office workers had gone home. 

Maul was sneaking around the side of the building when he heard something very interesting. 

Jinn. 

The master was sneaking around the shadows like a common thief. Like Sith. Maul nearly laughed. The Jedi hypocrisy would never cease to amaze him.  

"If you have plans for Bandomeer, you should know I am here to stop you," he said, his voice low but full of Force. It really was his intention to put a stop to his former Padawan’s ploy here. 

Xanatos flung one side of his cloak behind him dramatically, and Maul could see the lines of lineage. Kenobi had a habit of stripping himself of his own cloaks, as did Tano. His hand rested casually on the hilt of a lightsaber. A familiar lightsaber. 

Xanatos patted the lightsaber. "Yes, I still have it. After all, I trained for all those years. Why should I give it up like a thief, when I deserve to carry it?"

Maul was beginning to think he was going to have to write down when he knew about Jedi traditions and cross check it. He had been raised to kill them, which meant he needed to learn how they fought and how their sentimentality made them weak. 

He didn’t know there were rules about keeping lightsabers after leaving an order. 

To be fair, a sith never would have been given the chance. 

"Because you deserve it no longer," Jinn answered. "You shame it."

A flush spread over Xanatos' face. Jinn’s comment had hit him. Xanatos still cared what Jinn thought of him. 

Good. 

Maul could use that. 

He was stiff, and angry, then he relaxed, smiling. Maul tracked his emotions carefully. Weaknesses. Everyone had weaknesses. 

"I see you are still a hard man, Qui-Gon. Once that bothered me. Now it amuses me." Xanatos began to circle around him. "We were friends at the end, more than Master and apprentice."

"Yes," Jinn said, taking careful steps to keep up with Xanatos. Maul tensed when he turned so he could have seen him if he were looking. He didn’t. 

 "We were."

"All the more reason for you to betray me. To you, friendship is nothing. You enjoyed my suffering."

"The betrayal was yours. As was the enjoyment of suffering. That is what you discovered on Telos. Yoda had already seen it. And that is why he knew you would fail."

"Yoda!" Xanatos spat the word. "That knee-high troll! He thinks he has power. He hasn't dreamed of a tenth of the power I know!"

"You know?" Qui-Gon asked mildly. "How do you know such power, Xanatos? A mid-level manager of a corporation, sent to do the board's bidding?"

"I do no one's bidding but my own."

"Is that why you're here? Is Bandomeer a test of your abilities?" 

"I don't take tests," Xanatos snapped. "I make the rules. Bandomeer is mine. All I have to do is reach out my hand and take it."

He circled closer, his cloak swirling and brushing against Jinn. He was a viper waiting to strike, but his fangs weren’t out. Maul knew Xanatos’ words. He had heard the same himself. 

A Sith does not wait for opportunity. He makes opportunity, and then he reaches out and takes what is rightfully his! 

The lesson, like many, was accompanied by pain. Maul had limped for a week afterwards, but only where Sidious could not see it. 

Power. What did this wash out know of power? He hadn’t even made it to Jedi Knight. 

"It's a tiny planet. Galactically insignificant. Yet it pours forth wealth into my hands. If you would only lose the tiresome rules of the Jedi, it would do the same for you. But no, Qui-Gon is too good. He is not tempted. He is never tempted."

"Bandomeer is not yours to own! You were always overconfident. You have gone too far

this time."

"No." Xanatos drew his lightsaber. "Now I have gone too far."

Maul cocked his head. He could feel the Darkside swirling around him, brushing his skin, searching for its place inside him. His body was too small to house much of it yet, but it was not he who called it, merely he who had a true hold of it. He who was its child. 

“Those who accept the power of the dark side must also accept the challenge of holding on to it.” Maul startled. He didn’t recognize the voice of his memories. “By its very nature the dark side invites rivalry and strife. This is the greatest strength of the Sith: it culls the weak from our order. Yet this rivalry can also be our greatest weakness.”

Xanatos laughed again, breaking Maul away from his thoughts and the voice. 

"You destroyed everything I loved," he accused, his lightsaber barely missing Jinn’s shoulder, so close it singed the fabric of his tunic. "You destroyed me that day, Qui-Gon. Yet I was reborn. Stronger, wiser. I have surpassed you."

Maul snorted, and started to leave. He decided he didn’t care about the rest of the fight. He needed to find Kenobi and he actually had a lead. He would come back and finish cleaning up Xanatos’ mess later. 

Kill him, maybe. Offer Kenobi his head for recompense. 

Well. 

Maybe not that exactly. Kenobi could be squeamish, 

"And where is your new apprentice?" Xanatos sneered.

Maul didn’t stick around to hear the rest of it. He knew the answers already. A deep sea mine. There were only a few close enough to the shore for a control freak like Xanatos to send Obi Wa- Kenobi to. 

Maul did stop long enough to send the information to Jango. He figured he might like to know where he was going, and where Xanatos and Jinn currently were duking it out. 

Meanwhile Maul found a small transport to take him out to see. He knocked the owner out cold, stashed his body, and stole the ship. He kept it low to the waves. In the darkness of the night any guards would be hard pressed to see him approach. 

He wasn’t met with blasterfire when he stopped the transport underneath one of the high legs of the rig. Maul secured it and spidered up the sides until he was sneaking on board. His come flashed with an incoming message from Jango, one that he soundly ignored. 

When he reached the top of his rig Maul pulled out his (finally finished) weapon. 

Maul held what looked like a S-195 blaster pistol, with slightly longer than average barrels. 

They made a perfectly functional blaster, with only slightly weaker bolts than a regular one would have. 

Maul was still working on that.  

It would work for this. 

Carefully, he snuck into the mine. 

 He had to ride on top of the turbolift, out of sight of the hulking, but stupid guards. They would be easy to mind trick, but tricks only lasted so long and he had seen slave collars like the ones on the sentients he passed. Those would be rigged with explosives. He rather liked Kenobi with his head on his shoulders, thank you. 

Once he was further down he could feel it. 

Kenobi’s light. 

Something was keeping it dim, but still there. A suppressant? 

Xanatos was really getting annoying. Maul was killing him when they got back to the mainland. 

If Jango didn’t beat him to it. 

Maul should have answered him comm so he could call dibs. 

Too late now. 

He hopped off the turbolift when he reached the floor where Kenobi’s presence was the strongest. It was till a phantom thing compared to what it had been before, nevermind what it would be. 

Maul kept his hood drawn firmly and made his way further inside. 

Deep in the undersea caves the slaves were kept in bunks. There were no bars to keep them in place, for their collars and their emaciated state did that just fine by itself. Maul could tell at a glance that most of them were half starved, or more, and beaten on the regular. 

The collars around their throats stood out over standard, tattered jumpsuits. The guards were lax beings, and with a simple command the two playing dice outside the bunks fell asleep. 

Maul picked his way through the slaves. 

It reeked of unwashed beings, blood, and sickness. 

Maul found his way to Obi- Kenobi, who was resting uneasily beside a spindly limbed being. Phindian. Weak joints, and a particularly pronounced jugular. Maul considered fourteen ways to kill him before he turned to his target. 

Maul tapped Kenobi lightly on the shoulder with his boot, startling the little Jedi awake. Maul touched his mind lightly, minding the darkness inside of him and keeping it careful. Just enough that Kenobi recognized him in his frightened, sleep addled state. 

Blue eyes stared up at him, Kenobi’s mouth dropped open in shock. 

“Maul?” he asked quietly. Hope trembled in his voice and Maul’s stomach twisted unpleasantly. 

People weren’t supposed to feel hope around him. They were supposed to fear him! Maul scowled down at him and tossed his lightsaber at Kenobi’s gaping face. 

Kenobi caught it on reflex alone, the weapon calling to him. It had felt utterly wrong in Maul’s calloused hands, his anger not mixing with the righteous light and the burning hope that lived inside Kenobi’s crystal. 

Kenobi cradled it to his chest. 

“This weapon is my life…” he whispered, a sentiment that was shared between Jedi and Sith alike. 

“Then you can owe me twice,” Maul said derisively. “Let’s go. “

“I can’t!” Kenobi touched his collar. It was buzzing faintly with electricity. Maul scowled. 

“Can’t you use the Force to turn it off?” Maul asked irritably. 

Kenobi shook his head miserably. He was a sorry sight, his clothes tattered and, now that Maul was close enough to see, his back burned with familiar marks of electric whips. 

Maul had a veritable tapestry of those same scars across his own back. 

“They’ve cut me off. I can barely feel it anymore,” Kenobi’s voice cracked.  

Maul winced in unwanted sympathy. He knew the feeling well. It was one of his masters favorite punishments. 

Maul knelt before Kenobi and reached for his throat. The little Jedi twitched but didn’t fight against him. He tilted his chin to give Maul better access. 

The metal was sturdy, it would be hard to cut through without killing Kenobi along with it, and the electric charge was near to the tiny explosive. Not small enough to blow through a wall, but it would do plenty of damage to soft human skin. 

It would be easy to turn it off. Getting it off was another matter. 

Not to mention the rest of the slaves that lay around them. 

Maul looked down to find the phindian watching him through slitted eyes. 

“...You’re not going to let me leave the rest of them here, are you?” Maul asked, exasperated. 

Kenobi startled. “What?” 

Maul pulled his hands away and stood up to brush off his cloak. 

“Show me where they keep the spare parts for the equipment,” Maul ordered shortly. Kenobi frowned. 

“I don’t know where those are.” 

Maul gave him an unimpressed look. “Haven’t you ever escaped from a prison before?” 

Kenobi frowned at him. “Why would I have had to do that?” 

“... Jedi really don’t teach anything useful, do they?” 

“Hey!” 

“Obawan,” the phindian finally gave up his ruse and sat up. “Your friend will free us.” 

Maul quirked a brow. 

“Not so!” The phindian waved his long arms. “He will cause us trouble.” 

“I’ll definitely cause you trouble if you don’t quiet down. Who knows here where the spare parts are kept?” Maul demanded shortly. He pulled his hand back to reveal the blaster holstered at his side. The phindian paled and Kenobi smacked Maul on the leg. 

“Don’t threaten him! He’s my friend, Guerra!” 

Maul rolled his eyes. “Then he should be helping. I won’t ask again.” 

The phindian, Guerra, stood up reluctantly. He looked dead in the eyes. Yet, in the furthest depth, there was hope. 

Maul bit back the urge to stomp it out. He needed this being’s help, for the time. 

Guerra looked to the sleeping guards warily. Maul rolled his eyes. “They aren’t waking up soon. Get going.” 

Other slaves stirred around them. Eyes watched them through hooded darkness. Maul breathed in the despair and fortified himself. It was going to be a long night. 

Guerra lead him into the tunnels, down the hall to locked room of spare parts. It took Maul less than a minute to pick the locks. They were old school and not very advance to begin with. 

Once inside he found a power pack for one of the big drills they used in lower levels, a wire coil, and disemboweled the locking mechanism for the doors. The circuit boards were kept carefully intact while he fetched a small tool box, conveniently equipped with a soldering iron, and set to work.He attached his wire coil to the capacitor for the door, and connected that to the big battery. While he was at it he found a heavy magnetic coupling splitter. He wished for Daleen. She’d already have the whole place turned on its head electronically. 

With his girls, and his brothers, Maul could have done anything. 

He would get to them soon enough. 

“What are you doing?” Guerra asked nervously. “This is fun! Not so. I do not trust your friend, Obawan.” 

“I’m making an EMP generator,” Maul said shortly. 

Kenobi’s face split into a startled, hopeful smile. “You can do that? Where did you learn? Did Jango teach you?” 

“Hmm? No. Now hold still. The collar’s going to tingle and then all the lights will go out. Stay close to me. Humans have terrible vision.” 

“Hey!” 

Maul ignored Kenobi’s indignation and pushed the ‘lock’ button. The door fizzled, the battering flickered faintly with electricity, and everything went dark. 

Maul relished it. 

“Let’s go get your friends, Kenobi.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Obi Wan stayed close to Maul as they prowled through the darkness. 

He couldn’t understand how he could see so well, his gold eyes glowing faintly in the darkness like embers to an unseen fire. Maul was one mystery after another. 

Obi Wan had thought him to be a Mandalorian, like Jango, but he wore no armor and he didn’t speak with the same accent. He fought viciously and without mercy when it was needed. Kenobi could not forget the grim comfort he had taken during their fight with the draigon’s to have someone as skilled and determined at Maul at his back while they battled off their death. His every shot was perfect. 

Even before that, he’d felled two hutts in the span of a breath. 

Maul was unlike anyone Obi Wan had ever met before. 

Admittedly, he had mostly met Jedi. Obi Wan had never been out of the temple, and it showed sometimes now. In the temple he had never been hungry. In the temple he had never hurt so badly for so long. 

Obi Wan swallowed those thoughts and followed Maul in the darkness. He could sense him through the Force, his presence dense and heavy. There was a gravity to Maul, in his sharp teeth and gleaming gaze. His ferocity was frightening, but as Maul had said, he did not allow his anger to control him. 

He controlled it. 

Obi Wan could not say the same thing. 

It was his own temper that had resulted in him being sent away from the order, and his own impulsiveness that had lead him to leave behind the safety of Jango and Maul to investigate on his own. He just wanted so badly to impress Master Jinn he thought- 

They would have come with him, he realized now. 

Fett was a good man. Even if he was Mandalorian, and Obi Wan had only hear horror stories about them, he had held Obi Wan’s shoulder when he’d felt like he was drowning in his despair and spoke kindly to him when he didn’t have to. He offered to help with no chance of recompense. 

And here Maul was, guiding him through darkness. Saving him. 

Saving all of them. 

Shame welled up in Obi Wan’s chest. 

How could Obi Wan tell Maul that when he’d come to free him he’d been so relieved he barely thought of the other prisoners? He had thought only of the weight being lifted off himself, in the scant seconds before Maul brought up the idea of freeing everyone. How could he call himself a jedi when he was so self centered?

When he’d opened his eyes and found his friend looking down at him, half hidden in his familiar poncho, he’d been confused. But the Force whispered of Maul, of bright eyes and vicious determination, and he hadn’t been afraid for even a moment. 

Maul was comfortable, in the same way a nexu would be to those familiar with it. He was dangerous to be certain, but he’d never hurt Obi Wan. He’d only ever helped him, from the moment they had met on the Monument, when he’d been thrown into Mauls arms. 

Obi Wan grasped Maul’s poncho as he trailed after him. His other hand held his lightsaber. 

“If you throw up, I don’t have anything to clean your mouth with,” was the only warning Obi Wan got when they returned to the slave bunks. Maul pulled a knife from his boot, the movement something Obi Wan felt more than saw, and slit the guads throats. 

Obi Wan should have mourned their loss. Any good jedi would have. 

But his back stung, and Guerra’s haunted words whispered through his mind, and the pain of the miners and the death that permeated the air choked down any grief he would have for the slavers. Obi Wan was sickened to realize he would have killed them too if he could have. 

“The light, Little Jedi.” 

Obi Wan, somewhere between grief-sick and warm whenever Maul called his that, lifted his saber and ignited it. 

In the pale blue glow hallowed faces watched the three of them. 

“We’re leaving,” was all he said. 

“The collars,” started one slave, a human who had lost his eye fighting the other day. 

“They’re off,” Maul said shortly. “And if you’re that worried, here,” he held up something shaped vaguely like a wrench. Obi Wan stayed still when Maul reached for his collar again. The soft leather of his gloves ran across Obi Wan’s throat before the wrench found its way across a seam he hadn’t noticed. There was a click and the collar fell off in two pieces. 

Silence fell. Then, one by one, starting with Guerra, the rest of the slaves approached. Maul unlocked their collars. He set them all free. 

“What is your name?” One of them asked at last, their voice hoarse and rough. 

Obi Wan’s companion regarded him carefully. 

“...Maul,” he said at length. 

The word spread through the slaves in the whisper. Maul hunched his shoulders and shoved the wrench into a togruta’s hands. 

“It’s a magnet lock,” he said gruffly. “Fit it around the edges.” 

He stalked away, and was followed by the rest of the newly freed slaves. 

A young twi’lek women, one scarred across her face, stopped them. There were tears in her eyes. A single one fell from the left and she wiped it away before touching it to Maul’s cheek. Maul twitched away from her, his hand flying to his blaster, but he didn’t draw. 

“You have broken our chains,” she said quietly. “May water find you in the desert, and the sun find you in the snow.” 

Obi Wan didn’t understand, and the look on Maul’s shadowed face said that he didn’t either, but he inclined his head all the same. For someone who boiled with anger all the time he was remarkably patient. 

Obi Wan had never seen him take his temper out on someone who hadn’t wronged him first. 

They make their way through the darkness. More than once did Maul had Obi Wan extinguish his saber before guards rounded the corner. In the shadows he draw his knife and snuffed their lives out. He didn’t fire his blaster once. It would have made too much noise, and given away his position. 

Where had Maul come from, if Jango had not taught him these things? 

The finally reached the surface. The clear air of the night blanketed the newly freed sentients. 

There was no way to call for a ship to pick them up, but within an hour one came to investigate the silence from the mine. The Offworld insignia blazed on the side. 

Obi Wan helped Maul take the ship by force. Together he guarded Maul with his ‘saber while Maul blasted through their attackers. 

The climbed on boards. 

It was a good sized ship, and once they were further in Obi Wan understood why. 

The ship wasn’t just sent to investigate. It was sent to reinforce them. New slaves took up cages in the cargo hold, and across from them were exotic animals. There were monkey-lizards and glittering vulptex. He saw colorful kiros birds fluttering around one cage. Obi Wan found a tiny varactyl in a cage that squeaked at him when he came closer. It was no bigger than a tooka, and it payed through its cages, as if sensing safety from him. 

Obi Wan broke the lock and took out the little lizard to cradle in his palm. He turn to ask Maul when he thought and paused. 

Maul had stopped in front of a small crate where shadows moved within. 

It took Obi Wan a minute to realize that the shadows were three slim, young creatures that hummed with the Force. Tails lashed through the crate and tiny clawed paws lashed out. Maul growled, something low in the back of his throat. Obi Wan felt it then. The hair on the back of his neck prickled with anger, hurt, sorrow and grief. It swelled the room before reached a crescendo and falling again. 

The fighting from the animals was over. 

Maul opened the crate and three small vornskr, two males and female with a chopped ear and a crooked tail, went tumbling out. 

They circled Maul, rubbing their cheeks along his legs and chirping up at the startled looking boy. 

The moment was ruined when a human woman came back from the front of the ship. The togruta with the locking device followed after her.

“We’re going back to the mainland,” the human said. “You should buckled in.” 

“Thank you,” Obi Wan said with a short bow. 

She nodded once at him and left. 

Obi Wan looked Maul, who finally gave him a crooked, gap toothed grin. 

“Through victory our chains are broken,” he said, the words slow and solemn despite his smile. There was something familiar to them, and the Force hummed its agreement.

Maul had set him free.

[sunsetinmyvein]

The Radio Station - Chapter Four - That’s All I Have to Say

8th of October, 2015

  Despite their best attempts to stay in touch, eventually busy schedules got the better of the both of them. They’d texted a bit initially after their night at the bar, but as soon as Matty was on tour, time differences made it difficult to keep up any form of routine. However, she knew that he’d be back in London soon enough. Surely that would be their time to catch up. She reached out to him in January when she knew he was back, hoping for the best, but his schedule was too packed between press for the album, shows and trying to see family and friends that he was obligated to catch up with whenever he was at home. So, she dropped it. And eventually, communication stopped. Her career started escalating at a much quicker pace than what it had before. The two guys who ran the usual morning peak hour shift went on to do their own thing, which left the prime-time slot open for application. She had considered applying, but before she’d even filled out the forms the station asked her directly if she wanted the position. They’d seen how much of a positive reaction she was getting on her show, it would make sense for her to fill that spot. Of course, she took it - it would be insane not to. The pay was much the same as what she was already on, but the chances for bigger and better shows at that hour were endless.

 Matty was also on his own rollercoaster of a career. The 1975 was only getting more and more popular as their debut album began reaching all corners of the planet. What they had expected wasn’t going to go much further than their circle of close friends, was suddenly spreading to places they couldn’t have even dreamed. They toured and interviewed and did meet and greets non-stop to try and keep the hype going. It wasn’t until they started properly discussing a second album release that Matty finally had to stop for a moment and take a (small) breather. He needed the time to work out what he wanted their next step to be. Once the band had the majority of the album planned out, and a few songs properly sorted, they figured it was time to start releasing some material. And in an incredibly convenient turn of events, they found themselves back at home while they were looking for a way to debut their lead track. So, what better way to get their new material out there than to broadcast it live across national radio? Of course, Matty had been pretty quick to suggest where they should do that.

  It had been over two years since he’d last been on her show. Both of them were acutely aware of that as he knocked on the glass door the morning of the interview. She hadn’t been keeping up with the band’s trajectory as much as what she had in the past, mainly for simply not having the time to. Which meant that his new look came as a slight surprise. His hair looked like he’d been letting it grow out much longer than what she’d seen on him previously. He was currently trying to tame this mop of unruly curls by having them tied back in a bun. His jeans had a big enough chunk of denim missing from them that she would’ve thought they’d deserve to be discounted for how much fabric was missing. He was wearing a floral button-up shirt, but she suspected that the buttons clearly didn’t get much use for how few of them he had done up now, his chest tattoo almost on full display. And this seemed to be in contradiction to the obscenely heavy woollen coat that was over the top of it. As he pulled her in for a tight hug, she found herself suddenly overwhelmed by the smell of stale cigarettes and wine. She hesitantly hugged him back, hoping that the scent wouldn’t linger on her own clothes.

“What’s with the shades?” She asked as he moved back, eyeing the sunglasses still perched on the bridge of his nose. It made sense for him to wear them on his way here, but she wasn’t sure if he was aware that he was still wearing them inside the studio.

“Hungover.” He answered with a shrug. She just nodded, supposing that it was a Saturday, it would make sense for him to have been out last night.

  “I can’t believe it’s been over two years!” He said as he plopped himself down across from her, setting an opaque water bottle down on the desk.

“Yeah, I think we’ve both been pretty busy.” She nodded in agreement.

“Told you that you’d get bumped up to a peak hour slot eventually.” He grinned. His smile forced an uncomfortable flutter through her chest, but she couldn’t deny that she was incredibly proud of that accomplishment.

“You did.” She smiled back. “The early mornings have been a rough routine to get into, but it’s been nice having new goals to work towards.” She nodded, thinking back for a second on all the things she’d manage to accomplish in the short time she’d been in her new role. “I’m sure you’ve got many stories of your own.”

He chuckled lightly, “Yeah, a few.” He scratched at the back of his neck as he glanced down at the table. “I’ll save them for the interview.”                                      

 Now that she had a more structured show, she had a bit more of a routine to adhere to with her interviews. Which definitely made things a lot easier. It meant that she didn’t have to wing it as much knowing each interview would have the same intros. “So, you guys played two shows at Alexandra Palace this week-” She started as the intros finished up, before Matty cut her off.

“Yeah, we’ve been in London for the last week or so for those shows.” He confirmed.

“Oh.” She said, suddenly finding a million thoughts running through her head. He’d been in London for a week already and he’d not tried to catch up? She knew he was a busy guy but a week was a long time to be stuck in a part of the country that wasn’t where you actually lived. Trying to ignore the pang of hurt in her chest, she continued, “Are you keeping busy?”

“Just trying to keep writing and recording for the new album, seeing my girlfriend when I can.” He said with a nod. Ah. Girlfriend. Suddenly not trying to get in touch made a lot more sense.

She cleared her throat before continuing, “How’s that going?” Things already felt like they didn’t flow as well as what they had the last time that they saw each other. Too much time had passed to just pick up and act like nothing had happened in that gap. She felt almost like she was back at square one, meeting this man for the first time.

“I’d rather not talk about it.” He shot back. She frowned in response. “I’m sorry, I just… don’t like discussing that stuff in interviews. Relationship problems shouldn’t be hashed out through headlines.” He explained.

  There was a pause as she tried to catch up to the path his brain had decided to take, rather than what she had intended. “I meant the album.” She corrected him.

“Ah, yeah! That’s going well.” He laughed. “We’ve been getting heaps of material recorded while we’ve been up here.”

“When will it be out?”

He hummed thoughtfully as he pushed his sunglasses back up his nose, “In about six months, I reckon. We’re thinking sometime around February.”

“That’s not too far away. I’ve heard the album described as ‘a bunch of eclectic sounds’, do you think that’s an accurate way to define it?” She questioned.

“We didn’t know what to do after the first album. I think that we made a decision that we just wanted to be truly expressive and for it to be in pursuit of the truth. That’s why the album is called I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful, Yet So Unaware Of It, because we were scared about making a new record. And I thought ‘you know what? I’m gonna – it’s just about making decisions. About making bold decisions.’ “ He had a look of conviction as he said this, “The record is kind of comprised of that attitude. It was called that before we’d even written any of it.”

  “That’s a very dramatic album title.” She pointed out.

“Well… we’re very dramatic boys.” He said with a grin.

“It’s definitely going to be a mouthful for anyone asking about it.”

“It was just something I said to a girlfriend of mine, at the time. It kind of laid the foundations for the bold decisions thing. If it’s called that, then there’s no rules as to what it could be. But it’s subjective, it could be perceived as quite sweet, it could be perceived as quite voyeuristic.” He answered with a shrug.

“If people weren’t aware of you guys before, having an album title like that and making bold decisions,” She emphasised the words as she quoted him, “is for sure going to get you on the map.”

He couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Yeah, that does seem to be the direction we’re headed in…” He agreed. “You know, sometimes I think about toning it down, but then I remember who I am and think… nah.” He dwelled on this for a moment, before pulling himself back on track. “The first record, the idea of being judged just wasn’t there, because nobody had heard it or was potentially gonna hear it. The preservation of that idea, and the cultivation of it in the face of this knowing of how many people are gonna hear it – that was the most important thing to the record. Writing from the purest place.”

  “It’s sounding like it will be very different from your last album.”

“Mmhm.”

“And even from what you’re saying, it sounds like this album, much like the last, will be very different within itself. In light of that, would you say the concept of genre is dead?” She asked, leaning back in her seat as she watched him process his answer.

“Yeah.” He eventually said. “They’ve never really mattered. Genres, I mean. Imagine if you woke up one morning right, and you had your record collection, and the concept of genre just didn’t exist. The purity of that experience, of listening to music without those rules, it’s like a blissful idea.” He let out a sigh before shaking his head. “I really don’t care, to be honest with you. It’s so irrelevant to me.”

She figured that was as good a time as any to segue into her next line of questioning, “It’s been a while since we had you in the studio. The last time was right after your debut self-titled album came out. But you have released the track Medicine since then.”

“Yep.”

“I feel it’s a very…” She searched for a second for the right word to describe it, “minimalistic track?”

He nodded slightly before speaking, “We wanted it to sound like Velvet Underground produced by Trevor Horn, you know? That was kind of the vibe.” He made a vague hand gesture at this. “But I wouldn’t say it’s very representative of our next record. It’s kind of a return to the sound of our EPs. It was weird with us, because for a lot of people the first thing they heard was the album. But we released that after a year of releasing EPs, which really embedded us in the musical culture we wanted to be in. We kind of came from the left field and moved slightly to the middle. But a lot of people saw us immediately with Chocolate and Girls and misinterpreted the irony of some of the kind of pop elements of that.”

  “The 1975 have definitely had their fair share of poppy radio hits.” She concurred.

“Yeah, you guys are playing us non-stop.” He chuckled.

“All of that attention on the airwaves has gotten you a few pretty awesome gigs, too. Have you got a favourite festival that you’ve played across the last few summers?” She asked as he took a swig from his water bottle.

“Glastonbury.” He answered instantly, before feeling the need to elaborate. “Uh, Glastonbury’s kind of… It’s Glastonbury. If you’re from the UK it’s kind of the festival.” He said with a pointed look. “And Glastonbury is one of the only festivals where we can walk around, because it’s so enormous. They leave you alone a little bit there. I managed to walk around kind of… freely… But we did like… pfft,” He looked like he was counting in his head for a split second, “three festivals a weekend all summer or something like that. We’ve been everywhere from Finland to Latvia to Singapore.”

“Playing so many shows now, and meeting so many people, are you finding the fans are getting kind of crazy? You guys must nearly be at boyband status in some parts of the world.”

“The shows are very intense. It’s weird because there’s a lot of young… well, you know I don’t mean young,” He scrunched his face up as he corrected himself, “when I say the main core audience is say sixteen to nineteen. But it’s a lot of young kid’s first shows. So, the first twenty-five minutes of the show is just…” He tried to find the right words, before letting out a laugh, “It’s a shit show. Just people getting pulled out, fighting, passing out… There’s so much fainting.” He answered as he began trying to pluck a hair off the microphone that was stuck to it.

  “Well, you guys might be about to cause even more passing out now.” She began, taking a glance at the clock and seeing that it was nearly halfway through their allotted interview time.

“Oh?” He mumbled in confusion.

“Because right now, we are going to give people the first listen of a brand-new track from your upcoming album.” She clarified, mostly for the sake of listeners but it seemed that Matty himself had forgotten the reason he was here.

“Oh! That’s right.”

“You heard right, folks. Coming up right now is going to be the live debut of The 1975’s new track, Love Me. Any final words Matty before it’s out there in the world?” She asked as her finger hovered over the switch to fade their audio out and switch to the music.

He thought for a second. “Nah, not really. Enjoy it, I suppose.”

  She switched off the interview track and pressed play on the new song, instantly seeing the text line overflowing with incoming messages from fans. For a second, she tried to read a few, before eventually minimising the window for now to avoid giving herself a headache. Looking back to the man sitting across from her, she had expected him to have been waiting to say something, or for him to have already been halfway through a story, but he was just staring at his phone, his headset still sitting on his head. Considering how hard it seemed to be to get in touch, she felt it would’ve been nice to have at least, you know, three minutes to try and catch up. This suddenly made the fact that he had been in London for a week without dropping a message make more sense, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. Their breaks between songs had previously been filled with light hearted conversation, and now the silence just felt suffocating. Had he really changed that much in two years to not even wanna talk? She let the song play through, then played a few snippets of interview introduction to segue back into them talking before switching the microphones back on.

  “You just heard The 1975’s new song, Love Me, for the very first time. A special live debut off their new album for all of you lovely listeners. We had a lot of messages coming in from fans telling us their thoughts.” She spoke, before Matty chimed in.

“What did you think?” He asked as he leaned forward in his seat to rest his elbows on the desk.

“I liked it.” She answered truthfully.

“Did you listen to it prior to hearing it now?” He asked in curiosity.

“Yeah, I listened when it was emailed to me this morning, in case I happened to miss it this time around.” She nodded. He just let out a noise of appreciation before leaning back into his seat. “You were right, it’s very different to what you’ve done in the past.”

“We’ve made a record where every song sounds different from the other ones. Back to the concept of genre, we don’t listen to just once genre anymore. We consume whatever sounds good. So, we want to create in that same way that we consume. And we just thought that, er, our choices of songs that we put out had to be based on confidence. Bold decisions, as I said before.” He said with a dismissive wave. “I think this first track is... quite bombastic? George said to me once that ‘if we don’t go with it now, when are we going to go with it?’ And he was right. It’s a bit of a big ballsy song.”

  “That’s a pretty good way to describe it.” She agreed with a nod. “I’ve heard that there are quite a few songs on this album where, lyrically, you’re exploring a few new concepts? Like ego and sexuality. Can you elaborate on that?” She questioned.

“I think if I elaborated on a lot of stuff, it wouldn’t symbolise things in a certain way. You know, if everything was laid open. Like Medicine isn’t a love song about a girl for example,” He said that offhandedly, but suddenly she found herself thinking on what the song is about, if not that. But he continued talking over her thoughts. “but I don’t talk about those things. I like to let the music speak for itself. Erm… well, yeah. I think the idea of a conflicted sexuality is something loads of people go through. The shared experiences that loads of people go through, the shared fears of humanity like love, death. I don’t think there’s any question for anyone who knows my band that I’m slightly odd in a sexual way.” He made a face as he said this before laughing at himself. “I’m not exactly the most manly man in the world. But there’s just… stuff about sexuality and the superficiality of it and what it really means. But I’m still writing parts of it at the moment. It’s a bit of a weird time doing press right now.”

  “You always seem to have a hell of a vocabulary in your lyrics, so I’m sure whatever themes you end up writing about, you’ll end up doing it in some kind of poetic way.” She prompted, but he just continued on his own tangent.

“It’s erm… The whole point of this was…” It looked like he was struggling to find the right words as he adjusted his sunnies. “It goes back to identity, and it goes back to… there’s a lot of stuff on this record, where I’m answering questions from the first album, and I’m making references to the first album. And I’m talking about y’know, being wiser now and more naïve then. And there’s this back and forth between the album that preceded this album and this album that our fans will really, really understand the subtext of.” He said, before figuring he should probably round back to what she had said. “So, I suppose that is kind of poetic, yeah.”

“And you have that knack for imagery and storytelling through you as the main focus of the lyrics that people latch onto.”

“One of the things that I always want people to be aware of, is if I’m talking with a sense of kind of… dissatisfaction about behaviour in my songs? Is that I’m normally talking about me. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m saying those things. It’s often my reactions to those things being said.” He explained.

  “A few more light-hearted questions before we round out this interview.” She said as she stretched her arms above her head. Trying to maintain the same sense of chemistry that had existed in their last interview was taking its toll, she was eager for this to be over. “I’ve seen that there’s a petition going around about you guys.” Matty instantly groaned. “Will you ever play Antichrist live?” She asked.

He let out a dry laugh. “I like it lyrically, but it so doesn’t sound like us.” He huffed, before frowning. “We might play it.” He said eventually.

“I’m sure a lot of fans will be excited to hear that it’s not off the table just yet. Next one, in your travels in the last couple of years, have you met any celebrities that you’ve been starstruck by?”

“Not really… There’s been a few, but nobody I’ve been properly starstruck by.” The gears were visibly turning in his head as you could see him running through people in his mind. “I wanna meet Miley Cyrus…” He said under his breath, before looking across the desk to her. “I wanna meet her so much. Why’ve I not met her yet? I’ve met loads of people in that world that I’m not that impressed with.”

“One last question that I saw come up on the text line, if you had a biography written about yourself, what would you title it?”

“FUCKING LEGEND.” He shouted without a second thought. Eventually, once he stopped laughing, he considered the question seriously. “What would I call it..? Probably something to do with my hair. The only thing people care about is my fuckin’ hair.” He resigned as he absentmindedly brought his hand up to said hair.

  “That’s all we’ve got time for, Matty.” She said as she let out a relieved breath.

“Aw, shame.” He pouted.

“I’m sure you’ll be off to your next great adventure in no time.” She assured him, putting on the interview charisma. “But for now, it was lovely to have you on.”

“Always great to be on.” He beamed.

“All the best with recording the new album.”

“I’m sure we’ll be back out here soon.” He said with a nod, but given their track record she had a feeling that he didn’t mean that.

“That was Matthew Healy of The 1975, on the show here this morning to debut their new song Love Me off their upcoming album, I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful, Yet So Unaware Of It.” As she spoke, she watched out of the corner of her eye as Matty began getting up and gathering his things. “We’ll be playing it for you again in the next hour, so keep listening out if you want that replay.” She said as she queued up the next set of tracks and faded her audio out.

  Once she had taken her headset off, Matty came around to her side of the desk. He didn’t seem to dawdle as much this time waiting for her to be free to speak to him, but he also didn’t seem entirely at ease as he tried to casually sit against it. “Come out for a drink with me.” He suggested as he stole a glance at her over the rim of his sunglasses.

The abrupt offer caught her off guard and she had to think for a moment about what to say. “It’s mid-morning?” She asked in confusion. “And I’m at work?”

“After that.” He shrugged casually.

“Don’t you have a girlfriend?” She questioned, suddenly finding herself feeling like she knew less and less about this Matty the more he spoke today.

“What does that have to do with anything?” He asked with a frown.

That was the final straw. He’d done more than enough in the half-hour he’d been here to make her grateful that they hadn’t stayed in touch. “Look, I know you’re an attractive guy and all but that doesn’t mean you can just get away with whatever you want.” She shot back.

He suddenly had a look of surprise on his face as he tried to backpedal, “Hang on, that’s not-“

“And I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression before.” She added.

“That isn’t-“

“The interview’s over. I think you should get going.” She said finally, watching as his face fell. She expected him to look angry or defiant, to want to argue the point, but instead he just seemed… disappointed?

“Yeah... Sounds like I should.” He mumbled as he left the studio.

Taglist:  @imagine-that-100 @dot-writes @tooshhhy @robinrunsfiction @approved-by-dentists

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[ficsandcatsandficsandcats]

I have an interesting idea. How about a shy reader who has been with Jaskier for a while. She’s interested in kink stuff, like spanking and bondage, but she doesn’t want to bring it up and risk Jaskier freaking out. But one day it just slips out and Jaskier is definitely willing to show here the ropes

Fandom: The WitcherPairing: Jaskier x ReaderWord Count: 1,853Rating: MTaglist: @heroics-and-heartbreak @whatevermonkey @mynamesoundslikesherlock @magic-multicolored-miracle @writingstudent @mlleecrivaine @amirahiddleston @ultracolorfulnerdcollection @coffee-and-stories  a/n: This was very fun to write, nonny, thank you! Hope you enjoy!

Every part of your life with Jaskier was thoroughly satisfying and sex was no exception. He was attentive and thorough and sweet and gentle. Sometimes just a little too gentle. You weren’t naïve despite how you may seem due to your naturally shy nature. You knew of some of the more… advanced maneuvers people could do in the bedroom and you were excited by the possibility. Still you weren’t sure how to bring it up. You didn’t want Jaskier to think that you were unsatisfied or worse think you were some sort of freak for wanting him to tie you up and find ways to use pain to heighten your pleasure. You almost asked several times when you were talking about the future. Jaskier was always asking what you wanted to do with it, what would make you happy, and you saw in his eyes a sort of unconditional love and appreciation that made you feel safe. But you overthought your words and the moment passed and you decided it would be something you brought up with grace and the proper context.

That is not what happened.

Jaskier had been retying a length of rope and your eyes watched the progression with avid interest.

“You know,” Jaskier said as he coiled, “I knew a sailor who taught me how to tie knots exceptionally well. I keep offering to tie people up for Geralt but he uses magic which sort of overshadows it.”

“You could tie me up.”

You spoke the words in a nearly breathless whisper that made Jaskier do a double-take, not certain that he had actually heard it until he saw the hungry way you watched him as he held the rope taut between his muscled forearm and large, capable hand.

“Is that something you’d enjoy?” he asked, genuinely curious and not a little bit surprised.

“I mean…” you floundered a bit, blushing and looking askance, “Well it’s not something I need per se…”

“That’s not what I asked,” Jaskier insisted, “I asked if you’d enjoy it.”

“Well I don’t know, I mean, I can’t say for sure that I would but… I might?” you glanced up to meet his eyes tentatively and saw nothing but a glint of excitement in the pale blue depths. He considered you carefully for a moment and then set the rope aside, moving over to sit next to you as he pulled out his notebook and quill.

“What’s that?” you asked, a little startled as he poised to write. You worried he may be about to pen the Ballad of the Lusty Wallflower but at the top he scrawled: TO DO.

“I would very much like you to tell me all of the things that clever little brain of yours has been thinking about trying and we can track it here,” he explained.

“Oh, a sex ledger,” you said. He bit his lip to keep from laughing and just nodded.

“At the top here we have ‘get tied up’ but tell me, lovely, what happens next?” he asked, a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

“Oh gosh well I suppose most of the usual things. Touching, kissing, teasing… Perhaps… and this doesn’t require being tied up because honestly sometimes I think it sounds more exciting to just have to hold myself still. Like, you tell me to stay in a position and I just have to hold it while you do all sorts of debauched things to me,” your words came a bit faster as you stared into space, picturing the images you’d brought to mind a thousand times before, almost forgetting that Jaskier was there until you heard the frantic scribbling of his quill as he wrote it all down.

“Well don’t stop now,” he insisted, looking back up at you, “What else? Tell me everything.”

And you did. You told him about the spanking and the edging and the blindfolds and how much you craved a rougher touch, how powerful you imagined you would feel if he treated you less like a tender, precious thing and more of a sturdy, capable woman. He suggested a few of his own and clarified and vetoed items to be used on you (yes to a hairbrush, maybe one day with a belt though you’ll have to build up to it). By the time you were done Geralt had returned and your heart sank. You’d wanted to try at least one of things out but, though you had discussed a bit of voyeurism, fully doing it in front of Geralt was just a tad too far for your taste.

You traveled in near silence, Jaskier filling the empty air with songs and anecdotes and generally anything he could do to make Geralt nearly smile or, for your entertainment, scowl. You were thrilled when Geralt suggested staying in the nearest village and less thrilled when he rented only one room for the three of you. Though he knew that you and Jaskier were an item, you were usually good about timing things out so he never walked in on anything he’d rather not see. You suspected he used his witcher hearing to aid in that. But you didn’t want to have to share, tonight. You wanted the time and space to do everything and Jaskier sensed your disappointment. When Geralt left the room he was still casually fishing through his pack and the moment the door shut behind the witcher he crossed the room and bolted the door. When he turned back to face you he was transformed from the carefree bard to someone far more solemn and nearly stern.

“Take off your clothes,” he ordered in a voice he had never used with you before. You were struck by how quickly it affected you and you undid your laces with trembling fingers as he watched you, eyes blazing a path down your form. He rolled up the sleeves of his undershirt, eyes still on you as he bared his forearms. You’d seen every inch of his naked form but somehow this glimpse of flesh was more erotic, more charged than those moments you spent wrapped around his naked body.

“Turn around and rest your hands against the windowsill,” Jaskier commanded, roughly turning your body by your hips. You enjoyed the way he manhandled you, tossing your body around and bending you over lewdly as you grasped the wood framing the opaque window. You could see the dark forms of people walking past and this thrilled you all the more.

“If you move a muscle I will refuse you your release, do you understand me, Y/N?” he growled into your ear, nipping your lobe at the end of his words. You arched against him and though he was still fully clothed you felt him, hard and straining against his trousers, and your need grew.

“I said do you understand me?” you he asked.

“Yes,” you answered breathlessly.

“Good girl,” he murmured, “Now, before this continues, we need a word to say if anything happens that you want stopped. It can be any sort of word, just one you feel you will remember.”

“Roach,” you said. There was a pause and an odd choking sound as Jaskier fought back more laughter.

“Perhaps not the name of a companion. Right idea, just… it may be awkward to cry out the horse’s name in a moment of overstimulation, yes?”

“Ah… good point… What about lute?” you offered. You gasped as you felt his large, calloused hand touch your back, following the path of your spine until it landed on your ass.

“So if I do this,” he said, giving a little smack that made you jump, “And you don’t like it or you want me to stop, you’ll say lute. Do you understand the rules?”

“Yes.”

“Repeat them for me,” he ordered.

“If something happens I don’t like, I say lute,” you replied.

“And?” he asked. You thought for a moment and then another swat came.

“You keep your hands on the windowsill,” he said, “I won’t remind you a second time.”

You nodded and again his open fist came down on you, pulling a gasp that bled into a moan.

“Use your words,” he growled.

“Yes,” you said, fingers grasping the windowsill as proof of your determination to obey.

“Good,” he said, nodding at you appraisingly, “Now we don’t have much time, and there is too much I want to do to you to do it all justice tonight. But a taste is in order. So you stay just as you are and let me show you just how capable I think you are.”

He roughly parted your legs and you felt him palm you, chuckling at how wet you already were.

“I haven’t even touched you yet and look how badly you want me,” he murmured, lips trailing down your spine as he knelt. You craned your neck to see what he was doing but soon it was apparent as his tongue replaced his hand. His hands gripped your calves and it wasn’t long before he felt you trembling. You clutched the windowsill for dear life but when he began to teasingly circle your clit, the faintest brushes that stoked but didn’t satisfy as you wanted, one of your hands fell to his head. He pulled away, rising imperiously over you, face slick and red.

“What was the rule?” he asked.

“Um. Keep my hand on the windowsill,” you answered, feeling a thrill shoot up your spine at the look he gave you, disappointment that couldn’t fully hide the glimmer of excitement in his own eyes at the chance to punish you.

“You disobeyed, love, that has consequences,” he said. He looked pointedly at your hand and quirked an eyebrow, prompting you to place it back where it was supposed to be. One hand slid into your hair, seizing a handful and holding your neck taut while the other teasingly traced up and down your skin, still sensitive from prior spankings. He pulled his hand back and you tensed in anticipation.

The doorknob rustled and Jaskier released you quickly as Geralt knocked on the door.

“Jaskier, let me in,” Geralt called.

“Uh, just a moment Geralt!” Jaskier called as you scrambled to pull your dress back on, suddenly grateful that Jaskier had stayed clothed. Jaskier attempted to adjust himself to hide his still painfully hard erection, glancing back to make sure you were dressed before he unbolted the door and swung it open with an overly casual gesture. Geralt peered between him and you and muttered something under his breath.

“The innkeeper would like to know if you’ll be gracing them with a performance tonight,” Geralt said, clearly annoyed at being the messenger.

“Of course!” Jaskier said before turning to you, “Y/N, would you like to accompany me?”

“Yes,” you said, “I’ll fetch your lute.”

There was a tense pause at the word where you and Jaskier shared a heated look that deeply confused and worried Geralt but he hadn’t survived this long by putting his nose where he knew nothing but trouble lurked so he simply grunted and walked away.

[jae-bummer]

Freckles & Stars (Fae!AU)

Request: A yuta faerie!au pls

Pairing: NCT’s Yuta x Reader

Genre: Fluff

You had the smallest freckle in the shape of a star. 

Truthfully, you couldn’t remember a time without out it, but you knew there was one. You knew there was a point in your life when there was no freckle decorating the little expanse of skin directly between your index finger and thumb. Memories aside, it had grown to be one of your most favorite features of your body in the short years you had become familiar with yourself. 

Gazing down fondly upon it, you let out an easy sigh. 

Yuta. 

It was a strange thought to have, but it seemed to always accompany any moment of pondering you spent with that star. You seemed to vividly remember it’s association with the same moment you stopped remembering Yuta. 

Or at least the same moment you stopped fabricating Yuta. 

That’s what your mother had insisted. Yuta, the simple fabrication of an adolescent mind. An imaginary playmate, if you will. But to you...to you, Yuta was very much a living, breathing, little boy. A little boy who had made up almost the entirety of your childhood as you had remembered it. He laughed with you, played with you, and loved you just as much as you loved him. 

You spent your days in the garden, skipping stones, and creating forts in the weeds. He taught you the names of flowers and how to purse your lips into whistling different types of bird calls. He allowed for your small fingers to braid his dark hair as long as he was allowed to steal kisses from your cheeks. From the moment you had met, you had been infatuated with him, and he, with you. He was your best friend, and he showed you the most colorful pieces of his corner of the world. 

But he was imaginary. 

That was what your mother had said. 

“Y/N!” her voice called from the kitchen. 

“Yeah?” you called back, but heard nothing but silence in return. 

You grumbled to yourself, subconsciously rolling your eyes, as you set down your pen in the spine of your notebook, and pulled yourself from your desk. You gave one, last, longing glance to the doodles you had left there. 

“Y/N!” she repeated, as you stumbled down the hall. This time, you remained silent until you reached the kitchen, only lifting your brows as she made eye contact with you. “Can you set the table?” 

You nodded as you moved past her, your body following the usual motions without thinking much of it. 

“You know, some verbalization would be nice,” she hummed. “I can’t hear your brain rattle.” 

“Yes, mother,” you groaned. “Nothing would please me more than to set the table.” 

“I could do without the sarcasm,” she muttered. 

“Now that would be asking a lot,” you grinned. 

“Apparently,” she chuckled. “Why couldn’t I have a child that jumped at my request?” 

“Have more kids,” you smirked. “And you may have better luck.” 

“And have another like you?” she asked with a smile. “I’m fine.” 

You began to circle the dining room table, idly placing various pieces of cutlery until a knock sounded on the door. Furrowing your brows, you glanced toward your mother who shrugged her shoulders vaguely before setting down her whisk and wiping her hands against her jeans. “Expecting someone?” 

“Oh crap, you mean you’re supposed to wait until your parents leave before you throw a raging party?” you asked. “I must have missed that step in college.” 

“You actually have to have friends to throw a party, Y/N,” she clucked, turning the corner. “You should start working on that though.” 

You let out a light chuckle as you continued your work, setting plates down before going to retrieve glasses from their designated cabinet. Chewing on your lip, you strained your hearing as you thought your mother’s tone grew more stern from the entry way. Surely she was attempting to ward off a salesman or someone who had the wrong address. 

“Y/N!” she called for what seemed to be the millionth time today. 

You set down the glassware you had in your hands and shuffled into the living area, tilting your head as you stepped down into the entryway. You felt the color drain from your face and your limbs grow heavy as eyes not at all unfamiliar met yours. 

“Can you please tell this young man that you have no idea who he is?”

The shape of them...round, inquisitive, housing dark chocolate orbs, hadn’t changed in the years that had passed. His features were more sharp, more handsome, more...wild even. He was no longer the small, soft, chubby boy you had once known...once thought you had completely fabricated. Standing in your doorway, dressed in a fitted suit, he looked like a dream, like a fantasy...but this time...this time he was very real. 

“Yuta?”  

“Yuta?” your mother blinked. “Wasn’t that the name...?”

“Of my imaginary friend...” you nodded slowly. 

“For what I hope to be the last time,” his voice chimed, now mature and smooth. “I am very much, not imaginary.” 

“Evidently,” your mother breathed. “But...but how? This...this is him? How do you know?” 

“It’s him,” you continued to nod. “Would this be a bad time to say I told you so?” 

“How could you blame me?” she gasped. “Any time you wanted to introduce me to your friend, he disappeared. I saw you quite literally talking to flowers when you had claimed to be talking to him.” 

“To be fair, I was incredibly good at hide and seek,” he grinned. “And daisies are the best listeners.”

Oh, that smile. How could you ever forget that smile? 

Your mother deadpanned before giving you an exasperated look. “So, Yuta? What’s the occasion for your visit?” 

“Well,” he said slowly, his brilliant smile turning to a grimace. “I’ve come to collect my mate.” 

“I’m sorry, your what?” your mother asked without skipping a beat. 

You felt your mouth grow dry as something electric seemed to slice through your veins. 

“My mate?” he tried again, his voice just as blunt as you always remembered. 

“That’s what I thought you said,” she chirped. “And while I’m flattered, as you’re a very attractive young man, I’ve been married for a very long time.” 

“Ma’am,” he chuckled. “Maybe you should sit down for this-”

“No, I think you should sit down for this,” she began. “I know exactly what you mean and your intentions with my child and-” 

“I don’t quite think you do,” he interrupted. “I don’t mean to disrespect, but are you familiar with...well...are you familiar with the term “fae”?”

“Sure. I had an Aunt Fay once and she was an awful woman,” your mother murmured.

“I think he means fae as in fairy folk mother,” you clarified. You wouldn’t have known the term yourself if it wasn’t for the immense amount of fantasy novels you had read through your young adult years. You furrowed your brows as you watched Yuta’s facial expressions. You hadn’t seen him in quite some time, but the discomfort on his face still managed to make you sympathize with him.

“Yes, exactly,” he nodded with a thankful smile. 

“Alright,” your mother sighed. “And so?” 

“And so,” Yuta nodded. “I, Yuta Nakamoto, am...a fae prince.” 

You felt your mouth slowly begin to open as you glanced at your mother for a reaction, but found none. Her eyebrows were barely lifted, but in general, she looked unimpressed. “Are you now?” 

Yuta couldn’t help but roll his eyes as waved his hand vaguely before him, the air particles themselves seeming to become more crystalized, more clear, sparkling on their own. Glancing from my mothers face and then slowly to mine, Yuta smirked before snapping his fingers. With the small action, it seemed as if a layer of dust had been wiped clean from his features, exposing his true form. What had originally been an already handsome man, had adapted into an otherworldly being. His ears had elongated in shape, pointed, as a stereotypical fairy being. His skin had turned an opaque, grey-silver, a quiet glistening beginning to shine from every pore. He was breathtaking. 

You looked to your mother again who’s jaw had also dropped. 

“You are,” she said simply. “C-C-Continue.” 

“I’m a fae prince,” he repeated. “And when Y/N and I were children...we had made a pinky promise...we told each other that when we were older, we would get married because there would never be anyone we loved more than each other...and well...apparently pinky promises are just as binding to children as unbreakable vows are to high fae.” 

“What do you mean?” you whispered. You already felt the inkling of an answer in the bottom of your stomach, but needed the clarity in his words. 

“The star,” he said simply, reaching out for your hand. With a permanently mischievous smile on his face, he placed the same area of his hand beside yours, a freckle mirroring the one that had lived on your skin, on his as well. “Our star...our promise.” 

“I’m...I’m your mate,” you confirmed quietly.

“I’ve wanted to tell you before,” he murmured. “But I had to wait...until I was of age...and you were of age...and now we have the coronation...and...”

“I’m sorry, the what?” you croaked. 

“Your coronation?” he coughed, scrubbing a hand along the back of his neck. “You know...to rule by my side?” 

“Oh right,” you hummed. “Just...keeping it casual. My coronation.” 

“This is all...fine and dandy,” your mother said quietly. “But do you honestly expect to just...take my child away from me?” 

“Ma’am,” Yuta sighed, glancing up at your mother through his lashes. “Your child is no longer a child...that’s why it’s time for the mating bond-”

“Will you stop calling it that!” she gasped. “The word mate is just so...so...”

“Visual?” he grinned, lifting his brows. “Sensual?” 

You couldn’t help but snort at the amused glint behind his eyes. 

Your mother couldn’t work up a death glare quickly enough for either you or Yuta before crossing her arms. “You know what, you two sound like a match made in heaven. Fairy heaven. I assume you die if you try to break this bond, so who am I-” 

“Oh no,” he said, shaking his head. “Much worse than death. You’ll suffer for ten eternities in the deepest pits of-”

“You know, why don’t you spare me,” she sighed. “Look, we still have a lot of talking to do, especially once Y/N’s father gets home, but let’s have dinner. If I hear anything more about a mating bond without food in my stomach, my hanger may just have me smack that cute little grin off the fairy prince’s face.”

After a long conversation and several more acts of fairy magic from Yuta, you had made the long journey to the Court of Spring, where you had the privilege of meeting his parents. They were just about as enthusiastic about the situation as yours had been, with the added bonus of not being advocates for interspecies relationships. Luckily, Yuta had made it overwhelmingly clear that their prejudices would not be tolerated. After your coronation, fae magic would be just as available to you as it was to any of them, and you would have the rest of eternity to “learn to love each other.” 

Lovely. 

Nonetheless, when you had been ushered into your lavish room that evening, you were feeling incredibly out of place and uncomfortable. The only saving grace to the situation was your soon to be husband, who until very recently, you were convinced had been a figment of your imagination. 

“Mind if I come in?” his voice floated from the door. 

“Even if I did mind, wouldn’t you still find a way?” you mused. 

“If I said yes, would you be annoyed with me?” he chuckled. 

You let out a sigh and tried to keep the smile from your lips. “Maybe only a little.” 

You could tell he was smiling without even turning to glance at him. It was as if the small star on your hand was a beacon to guide you toward all things Yuta. The pinhole decorating your flesh was your map to the man you hadn’t seen in years. It was the reason you felt so comfortable, as if you had known him during all of this time.  

You watched his shadow carefully as it moved along the floorboards and toward where you sat on the mattress. He sat carefully beside you, hardly letting any of his weight lean against the bed. 

“I’m sorry...for all of this,” he said after a moment. 

Glancing at him from the corner of your eye, you saw him intently watching you. “No, you aren’t.”

“And what would make you say that?” he asked, his expression shifting to one of amusement. 

“Well, are you?” you asked in return. 

“Not really,” he admitted. “But I promise my intent to apologize isn’t as shallow as you assume.” 

“Don’t apologize for things you aren’t sorry for,” you muttered, shaking your head. You looked away from him and wrapped your arms around yourself. “And what exactly was the intent then?” 

“Let me rephrase,” he sighed. “I do not apologize for the bond I’ve made with you. Actually, I’m quite proud of this bond. I’m also quite proud that I get to call you my mate-”

“My mom was right, it does kind of sound creepy...” you grumbled. 

“Really? Mate?” he hummed. “I kind of like it?” 

“You would.” 

He rolled his eyes before continuing. “I’m proud that you are mine. And that I am yours. We are equal partners. What I am sorry for...is anything that has caused you discomfort...that has caused you anxiety...that has caused you sadness. I am but a man...and realistically, I’m not even that. I am but a creature, but I swear on my life, my damned, everlasting life, that until my last breath, I will protect you, and I will love you with a ferocity unmatched by any mortal man.” 

You turned to face him and couldn’t help but smirk. “Always one for the dramatics, Yuta.” 

He smiled as well, his face unbearably close to yours. “But I swore it.” 

“I knew you loved me then, but we aren’t kids anymore,” you whispered. You looked down, placing your hand atop his. “We don’t know each other in the way we used to...” 

“Fine,” he grinned. “Should you braid my hair?”

“You’re an ass,” you nodded. 

“Your ass now,” he grinned. “And forever. And not just mortal forever. Immortal forever. Do you know how inconvenient immortal forever is? On one occasion, my mother made my father sleep in a different bedroom for a century after an argument. That’s what immortal arguments are like. You have the time to be petty.”

Lifting your brows, you couldn’t help but laugh. “A century?”

“Give or take,” he smiled. “My point is, I want us to start off really, honestly, trying. I want us to make our younger selves proud. And I know what I’m asking of you is unfair...I’ve ripped you from everything you’ve ever known...asked you to live beside me...amongst people you are unfamiliar with.” 

“Yuta,” you sighed, nodding your head. “I’ll try. I have no choice, but to try...and if I have to try...I couldn’t think of anyone else better to try with.” 

Another smirk played across his gorgeous lips as he began to nod as well. “So what do you say? You can make me a flower crown in exchange for a few butterfly kisses?” 

“How about a real kiss?” you whispered, the words burning your mouth as you spoke them. “It’s been some time.” 

“Who said butterfly kisses weren’t real?” he growled, his hand crawling up toward your neck. His fingers held the back of your head as he let his lashes hit your cheekbones, the sensation causing you to audibly giggle. 

“So you’ve given me butterfly kisses,” you said slowly, as he pulled away. “But what about fairy kisses?” 

“Fairy kisses?” he asked, furrowing his brows. “Is this a mortal thing?” 

You smiled mischievously at him before letting out a laugh and grabbing his chin. You traced his lips with your thumb, all intention of placing your own pair there in just a few heartbeats. “Nope, it’s a Yuta thing.”

[in-the-grip-of-depression]

In The Grip Of Depression Chapter 15: Slowly Losing It

Chapter 1|Previous Chapter|Next Chapter Trigger Warnings: mentions of blood, violence, vomiting, torture

Roman popped up next to Thomas and sent a glance at the bottle in front of him with a shudder as Thomas asked about Virgil.

This was what had been happening for the last two weeks and Roman said what he usually did "We haven't seen him yet"

Thomas sighed and glared at the bottle of pills. "What about Pr... Depression?"

Roman grimaced "He's gone quiet now and stares at the trees as if they're going to grow teeth and eat him."

Thomas frowned at that "Do you think maybe he's staring at Virgil?" he asked in a shaky voice.

Roman shrugged "Like I said, we haven't seen Virgil so maybe."

Thomas sighed again. "I hate this. I wish we knew if he was OK."

Roman put a comforting hand on Thomas's shoulder. "we all wish this wasn't happening but this is what Virgil wanted us to do so we have to do it."

Thomas's phone went off and he turned off the alarm and grabbed the bottle of antidepressants. He tipped one onto his hand and gulped it down with a mouthful of water.

"It never gets any easier." he murmured "Each time I take one I feel so horrible and guilty."

Before Roman could say anything Patton appeared, panting.

"Roman I was doing the usual check up on the barrier and I think I saw Virgil." he said quickly and Roman turned to Thomas who said "Go, see if you can see him."

Roman didn't need telling twice and immediately went back to the mindspace, running to where the barrier was, followed by Patton.

When they arrived Logan greeted them. "Pres.... I mean... Depression has been more restless than normal."

Logan stumbled slightly over Prestons name. They'd all decided that to help the process they'd start referring to him by his label rather than his name but Logan was still getting used to it.

Roman looked through the barrier which was becoming slightly more opaque as the days went by. Logan had a theory that it was strengthening each time Thomas took a pill and that's why it was becoming harder to look through.

On the other side was a ragged, dirty, slightly bloody looking Preston who was staring into one spot without blinking.

Roman turned his eyes to where Preston was staring and noticed something flitting between the trees.

"I think I can see something." Roman murmured when suddenly Preston started backing away until his back was against the barrier.

"what's going on?" Patton asked but got his answer as a dark cloud seemed to seep between the trees and a dark figure lurched towards the barrier.

"is that.... Virgil?" Roman gasped in disbelief.

Sure enough the cloud dispersed to show Virgil limping towards the barrier. His face was littered with scratches, his hair wild and untamed, his eyes were dull and rimmed with black. His arms seemed to be bleeding freely in some places from recent looking injuries and his clothes were torn and stained with blood.

Overall he looked like he'd been through hell and the others hated that he had to go through this.

He eventually came to a stop, his eyes flitting from each of them before coming to a rest on Preston.

"If one of us kills the other I wonder how that'd effect the situation. Would the barrier lift and consider it a job well done or would Thomas have to stop taking the medication? If that's true then how is he supposed to know when it's worked because from what I've seen this barrier is getting harder to see out of and if no one can see what our states are they can't tell Thomas when it's safe to stop taking the pills." Virgil spoke quickly in an emotionless voice, hoarse from all the screaming he'd been doing.

Preston seemed to flinch at Virgils voice which shocked the others.

Virgil let out an empty laugh at Prestons reaction. "Don't worry about any of that, I don't plan on killing you just yet. I'm a bit fucked up from this process but I haven't become the utter monster you said I will. Not yet anyway."

Roman cleared his throat and asked "Virgil why did you disappear for so long?"

Virgil pulled his eyes away from Preston so they were locked onto Roman.

"There's no point in me going through this if the rest of you are going to suffer alongside me because you're watching me screaming in agony everyday. You guys don't need to see that."

Roman sighed "it would still probably help us more than not being able to see you at all so we don't know what's happening."

Virgil took a few steps closer to the barrier and gestured to his scratched up face. "You really think you can stand there and not react when I start doing this to myself in an attempt to block out the pain radiating through my entire being?"

Patton sniffed and said "We're concerned kiddo and the not knowing just makes us think up the worst scenarios."

Virgil closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Fine, I'll stay out here for the next day or so but you'll see. Its better for all of us that I stay as far away from the barrier as possible."

Preston suddenly used the barrier to push himself to his feet and took a couple shaky steps away from Virgil.

"What are you doing P.. Depression?" Logan asked.

Preston winced at being referred to as Depression but otherwise didn't react to Logans question, he just kept his eyes on Virgil warily.

Virgil suddenly inhaled sharply and backed away from the barrier his eyes darting towards the trees and then back to the barrier as if deciding whether or not to make a run for it.

Roman stared at Virgil in concern and shock as Virgil growled out "You want to see what I go through each day? Then keep watching because today's show is about to start."

Preston was shaking slightly and he had backed up against the barrier with a half-hearted sneer on his face.

"I think todays pill is kicking in." Logan muttered.

Virgils eyes were full of unshed tears as pain began to flood his senses. He couldn't hold back the shriek of agony as it felt like everything in his body had been set on fire.

Preston was in a similar state except his mouth was open in a silent scream.

The barrier pulsed and both of them suddenly let out matching screams which made the others flinch as they collapsed on the floor.

Virgil started clawing at himself and reopening some of the scratches on his face as the pain kicked up a notch.

He started choking as something hot bubbled in his throat and he pushed himself onto all fours in an attempt at getting rid of the sensation.

Prestons screams cut off suddenly as blood splattered the ground around him. The red liquid was pouring from his mouth as he struggled to breathe.

Virgil also began coughing up blood until both of them were kneeling in a pool of blood.

After a while the pain and coughing up blood came to a stop and there was a long silence where the only sound was Virgil and Preston gasping for breath.

Pattons face was streaked with tears as he held onto a rather shaken Logan who hadn't seen this type of reaction to the pill yet.

Roman had seen Preston coughing up blood the day before so he wasn't as caught off guard but seeing Virgil like that had definitely got to him.

He wished he could break down the barrier and rescue Virgil but he knew that it was a foolish dream that he wouldn't be able to make happen.

Virgil had apparently recovered enough to get to his feet again but his eyes had a strange glint to them and the way he was staring at Preston was definitely scary.

Preston sensed Virgils gaze and they locked eyes, both of them with that same look in their eyes.

Preston got to his feet with a creepy smirk on his face as he rasped out "Your 'friends' seem to think they're safe on the other side of the barrier but I can still hurt them if I hurt you"

Romans eyes widened at that and waited for Virgil to retort with some sarcastic comment or insult but was utterly stunned and horrified when Virgil just grinned and replied in a harsh growl "Try it and I'll rip your eyes out and shoved them down your vile little throat."

Preston took a small step to the side, causing Virgil to do the same the other way so they were now circling each other like two wolves readying themselves to tear each others throats out.

"Remember the good old days when I could make you cry just by bringing up how much the others hated you?" Preston taunted and Virgil let out a small snarl "That had nothing to do with anything you did though. If I'd been in my right mind I wouldn't have fell for half your shit."

Preston was smiling smugly "But you weren't and I almost destroyed Thomas with a few simple words and threats. You were weak and so easy to break."

Virgil suddenly laughed "the key word in that sentence was 'were'. Maybe back then I was weak but not anymore."

Prestons eyes flittered to where the others were watching with fear on their faces and then back to Virgil with a sly smirk. "Really? So you're not the same weak little trait who listened to every word spewed by De....."

Before Preston could finish Virgil had launched himself at him and his hands were around his throat, squeezing tightly.

"don't you fucking dare!" Virgil roared, black smoke starting to form around him as he glared down at Preston with a murderous expression.

Preston chuckled weakly, his gaze flickering from Virgil to the now utterly horrified expressions on the others faces. His plan was working.

Virgil was consumed by his anger and would have probably continued choking Preston of a familiar voice hadn't called his name.

He looked round, noticed the tear streaked faces of his friends and then looked back down at Preston who he quickly released and jumped away from as if he'd been zapped.

He backed away from Preston and stumbled over, the black haze vanishing as he realised what he'd been doing. He sat staring at his hands in horror while tears started to fall from his eyes.

"What's happening to me?" he whispered in despair, barely noticing that the others were trying to speak to him.

He remembered what Preston had said during the first day of being here, about how at his very core was a cruel monster.

He kept having moments where he felt so ready to hurt someone and he'd been fighting it ever since he'd punched Preston and damaged his cheekbone but as the days progressed he was finding it harder to stop himself acting on the violent urges. He truly was becoming a monster and he was terrified.

He clenched his eyes shut, not caring if Preston managed to recover and attack him. He thought back to when he'd had the idea of antidepressants, he'd been so ready to sacrifice himself to save Thomas and the others.

He still felt like that but he knew they were starting to regret letting him go through with this. They wouldn't be able to continue down this road when they saw the thing Virgil was becoming because of it.

Virgil needed another plan. He knew that if they stopped with the pills now he'd probably end up becoming a worse monster than Preston had ever been, with his ability to force Thomas to listen to him. He wondered if he could maybe convince the others that he was a danger to Thomas.

He remembered how they'd reacted when he'd woken up from his coma and shut down that idea. Maybe he could convince them that he and Preston were in league with each other? Virgil knew he wouldn't be able to do that. He hated Preston way too much to even try and pretend, besides Preston wouldn't play along.

He was jolted from his thoughts by a sharp pain in his back and his eyes shot open to see Preston standing over him with a smug grin on his face.

Virgil glanced down and noticed the knife Preston had apparently kept a hold of was now sticking out of his back. He vaguely noticed the others screaming and shouting his name before black smoke suddenly shot out of him and blasted Preston backwards several feet until he collided with the barrier.

Virgil grimaced as he tugged the knife out of his back, ignoring the blood that began trickling from the wound.

He stood up, the black smoke swirling around him wildly as he examined the knife in his hands. He'd reached a decision about what to do. He was just going to explain what was going to happen and make sure they knew the importance of making sure Thomas took the pills.

First, however, he had to deal with Preston.

[datawesomenessdoe-blog]

TFtCS: Scientific Standstill

   Melissa darted across the street towards where she last saw the strange man, a stern gaze of determination plastered on her face as she charges through the bullet-hell monsoon. Her teeth grin as the powerful wind grabbed at the loose ends of her plastic cloak; at this point the poncho was only a restraint, so the aggravated wizard ripped it off like a layer of plastic skin, it being released and tossed around through the air until the black void of night consumed the vibrant yellow. A group of enforcer-craft soon hovered a few blocks back, most likely where they’d meet up with Lynn.    “Dammit!” Melissa shouted, determination and anger inflating her vocal chords. “VAAUBAN. SHOW YOURSELF.” She took a firm stand in the one-lane alley, foot stomping in a puddle, its wet contents splashing against her boot. Melissa balled her fists as a thin aura of purple engulfed her outline, yet despite its lack of thickness, the color was extremely opaque and potent, almost radiant. Her steps slowed; the sound of an opposing sprint coming to a halt. Her irises hadn’t change color, but rather, they had multiplied. Between the magician’s naturally-colored green eyes and her blackened pupils sat a thin ring. It was exactly the same as her aura: thin and opaque. As she slowly strolled north, a metal door to her left gave the tiniest creek, but this was still a conformation for the young woman. She aimed a hand at the door, opened it, and squeezed it once more. The staple-shaped emergency handle was crushed under the weight of Melissa’s magical power, the door being pried off from its upper hinge with extreme ease.    The sounds of wet, hard-sole boots clack against the concrete surface beneath and the door is aggressively slammed shut, a crack in the gate’s top barely revealing the outside world. It was pitch black, well, aside from the small amount of light Melissa’s body had been shining with. While her aura was a bold shade of light purple and could easily be seen from a distance, it still failed at acting as a colored flashlight. The man lunges up from behind one of the many metallic containers, a makeshift Harbinger pistol in hand. He fires, the charge of electrified plasmic matter brightening up the room with its blue-white energy. Under normal circumstances, a high voltage handgun would’ve been enough to instantly kill an average armorless human, along with sending their body several feet away. However, Melissa merely backhands the dense ball of electrons, sending it into the iron wall to her left, the surface being slightly dented due to the amount of force. She grunts and approaches the man, grabbing him by the shirt collar, the patchy armor over his body in a similar design to the gun; old Harbinger metals, silver and sleet, chipped away at the ends, rusty bolts holding its form together.    “M-Melissa…! W-what brings ya’ around here?” Vaauban forces out a fearful laugh, his artificial eye darting around the room with his biological one. Melissa grunts and tightens her grip, lifting the scrawny man up from the ground, her aura of neon color seemingly thicker as it flutters a white hue. “Gah! Alright-alright-alright! What-do-you-want!?” His voice echoes through the closed shop, they both being concealed in the back room.    “Just what in THE FORERUNNER’S GOD DAMN NAME are you doing here!?” The fist squeezes, leaving Vaauban with barely little air as he’s indirectly choked. “Let me guess, you want to do just what you did to New Harmony? I should just kill you here and now.” The glow outlining Melissa’s unused right arm flames to a point, sharpening to a single, arched end, almost like some kind of elongated sickle of desaturated purple.    “WAIT-WAIT-WAIT!” The old enemy aggressively wiggles and shakes in the wizard’s grasp, afraid for his life. “C’mon, it’s me! Good ol’ Doctor Gallagher!” She cocks back her arm, teeth grinding with hate-filled anticipation. “M-Melissa! We’re both wise Harbinger doctors, surely we can be civil!” The magician looks down, her eyes shaded from what little brightness was in play.    “No… The Vaauban Gallagher I know died a long time ago… You’re no New World Harbinger, you’re a TRAITOR!” The woman swings, but finds her surely-swift movement to be rudely interrupted. The city, no, the whole planet rumbles beneath her feet. She drops the man, then covers her ears as a ping of sound echoes across the world’s atmosphere, masking the sound of enforcer sirens that approached from the distance. “SHIT! I’ve been using it for too long!” Vaauban goes into a sprint for the only remaining door, dashing to get into another portion of the store. Melissa lifts one arm from her head, trembling under pain as she struggles to form a circular barrier around the surviving exit. Her aura of power begins to dissipate, becoming translucent as she becomes ever-more weaker. A sudden burst of plasma stuck the woman along her face, registering her nearly blind.    “Listen Mel, I like you and all, but I’ve got a feeling that if who I think just entered the orbit really is that person, well, they might like you more than me.~” The purple circle fuzzes away, letting Vaauban easily walk right through its once-protective body like mere fog. “I know your weaknesses; no vision, no grasp over your power. Now if you’ll just hand over the Shard, well, I’ll be on my merry way.~” He extends his free hand, HV-Handgun still being tightly kept in the counter. Despite the clear threat against her very own life, Melissa takes the situation quite oddly. Chuckles leave the downed woman’s maw as she looks up with a pair of beady, useless eyes.    “V, you’re pretty dumb for a doctor; you know that?” The metal door that had been previously broken was met with powerful kicks from the reverse side, leading to a sudden jump from the man. “I have two friends with me. One’s a self-trained comissionist, and the other a retired Nullifier unit, so I’d get a move-on.~” Vaauban growls from the extensive pool of fury that found its way inside of him.    “This won’t be the last time you’ll see me Melissa!” The scientist makes a break for the only free door, his broken, Harbinger armor clattering as the metal opening slams shut. Just as the criminal makes his escape, Davy’s robotic fist impacts on the opposing side of the sealed gate, sending the sheet of metal flying across the room. As the door is punched-in, the captain lunges forward, most likely from the abrupt amount of abnormal thrust that her extremedy generated. Behind her are Lynn and several Enforcers, some human, some not. Their armor is decorated with colors of deep blues, along with multiple tints of yellow and gold. In their arms are multiple same-modeled Impact Blast Cannons, assault rifle-esque machine guns that work more with strength and raw force, rather than the electronic pulse that Vaauban’s HV-Handgun had to offer.    “Haha! I did it!” Davy poses atop the collapsed wall piece, her legs both split, one taking a knee and the other extended while her metal arm held down against it’s abused surface. The shaking becomes evermore violent, causing the redhead pirate to collapse down onto her knees. “Okay, look. We gotta’ getta’ move-on, now!”    “Davy’s right! Listen, I have NO IDEA what in the world’s goin’ on here, but we need to go, NOW.” Lynn leans over and tightly grabs Melissa’s wrist, lifting her from the ground like a fallen soldier, her synthetic palm reassuring to the blinded female. “Wait…” Suddenly, the rampant shaking ceases. All is quiet in the city as thousands of flying cars all rest on the ground, the portion of the city that the protagonists have found themselves in not as empty as it once was. Davy, Lynn, and Melissa, along with the group of Enforcers all exit the structure with haste, the police heading in the direction in which Vaauban evaded. The three remaining trying to see just where the boom of sound originated from through the metal hedges that made the urban setting. Nothing. All was quiet.    Another forceful shockwave suddenly juts out from Hammerspace, followed by one of the largest spacecrafts that any of them has ever seen, something that they have only seen few times before. The ship was ridiculous in size, taking up nearly the entire sky as a fleet surrounds it. Hundreds, possibly thousands of Vanguard frigates blip into existence around the colossal beast.    “Is that…” Melissa begins to speak, still being able to see the gigantic foreign object due to its shear magnitude, even with terrible vision.    “The Hammerhead Conclave…” Lynn finishes, staring up with an open, white-pupiled eye. She stares in a masked awe; the Hammerhead was a Vanguard ultimate-class ship- one of only three in existence. “Does this mean-”    “HELL YEAH!” Davy shouts down the corridor-like streets, her excited voice echoing for an undistinguishable distance. “Brother’s here!” Triumphant, childish laughs escape the bold woman as her hands straighten and raise into the air, almost as if her new idol’s mere entrance is something to party about. Suddenly, the air heated up and everything slowed down, coming to a complete halt after ten seconds or so. Melissa looked to her left and right, jumping at how time had come to a seamless stop before her. An orange orb flew over from the invisible half of the hammerhead, it heading right towards the young wizard. Directly in front of her the figure landed, its torso twisting and rotating before falling to a knee, the other leg propped up with a hand held against its upper portion. The glow faded, leaving Brother in its place. He looked up towards the mobile Melissa, his singular eye scanning her body as his thick, orange aura pulsated. The many grooves in his metallic wires also pumped with the fluid-esque substance.    “So.” His voice boomed through the soundless city as he honed in on the singular human. “Looks like I was right.” He stares and speaks in a flattened tone, clearly disappointed, whether in the woman or himself seemingly unknown.    “W-what’s going on here!? Why has everything just stopped all of a sudden!?” The tiny, frightened organic began to panic, darting over from object to object for a quick, yet deep inspection on any kind of mobility.    “Ahh… So you’re unaware of the Armaments’ properties… Allow me to explain. My crew had managed to detect a small, sudden eruption of Lunar Polarity coming from this exact location. We had a hunch that it couldn’t have been Sister, well, that was until the source of energy grew to unholy proportions…” Melissa stops running, looking up to the crouched Sapient as his soft, British tone explained with melancholy.    “Dammit Vaauban!” Her hands became fists along the purple robe that she bad been baring, only to be stammered in her tracks. “Wait, so why exactly is everything frozen?”    “... The Armaments have time-based powers, as you would probably know. This allows those powerful enough to have some control over time, the more of the Armament, the slower they can change progression. Despite this, all who have a Shard are in relative time with the slowdown.” His upper eyelid lowers, its left and right corners lifted higher than the center as his right arm lifts and extends, palm up. “Give me the Shard that you bare, and we’ll pretend that you didn’t steal and use a military superweapon. Fair?” He sits with little movement, leaving Melissa time to observer her own, much smaller appendage. A small piece of some strange, otherworldly symbol fizzles into her hand from Hammerspace, it being the blue shrapnel that the High General desired. “I don’t care that I’m Vanguard and you’re Harbinger; we both hate our enemy just as much, so help me keep her from gaining this power.” Brother’s eye turned back into its uninterrupted shape, a luminescent, red circle of compassion and sympathy.    “...” Melissa stared at the floating object as it dropped into her fleshy palm, looking like nothing more than an old piece of metal that had been ripped from vehicular disposal. It was tiny, but the amount of power that could be siphoned from its depths was unimaginable. “No.” She boldly claimed, the end of her limb now clenching back whole with the piece of hardened material protected in the confines of her fingers. “Listen, I can understand why you’d want this, but I’ve kept this Shard of Luna protected for three years. Even though Sister wants my friends and I, Nemesis will surely be back for Davy’s blood, and without any Shards, we won't be able to stop her.” Eyes lift up from the unphased road, Melissa now looking dead into the godly robot’s visionary orb with her own. “If handing this over means risking my friends’ lives… Well I refuse to just hand this over. Kill me if you need to, but keeping my friends, my family, my Davy… It means keeping them safe.” Her chest swells with a huge breath, the sound of air leaving through her nose being the only audio left to leave the human. She was scared, possibly even horrified! Brother could easily kill her if he wanted to, and could definitely get away with it. However, he merely closes his eye and lowers his hand, a sigh of both disappointment and fatherliness escaping from his metallic, energy-making lungs.    “McGregor. During the war, I wished nothing but your very demise; all Vanguard did. I’m well aware of who you really are, even if your friends aren’t. But I believe that your intentions are true, and while saying this breaks literally every single line that I’ve been told to follow…” The eye opens, well-relaxed accompanied by a gentle sound of relief. “I’m actually going to trust you. But if you lose your Shard of Luna, or anything happens to your accomplices… the punishment will be most severe. Am I understood?” She simply stares down at the item, taking half a minute just to look back up at the superior force of nature. A smirk dawns upon her face, closed lips and a thankful look meeting the High General, followed by a reassuring nod of the head.    “Yes Sir, but let’s agree to keep this a secret, alright?”    “Agreed.”

[followmetoyourdoom]

Day 2: Hurt Comfort/Trapped - Iristo

Set post-canon when Mephisto is staying with the girls and slowly healing. But somethings take longer to heal than others...

Click here for my hc about Mephisto’s post-canon appearance in this fic btw ^-^

Read it on ao3 or below:

All night Mephisto had been tossing and turning in the too comfortable bed, the alien bed where he didn't feel like he belonged. Especially when he should be out there trying to bring Praxina back from whatever madness had taken over her.

Not to mention the constant phantom pain he experienced in his legs. Or rather, what was left of his legs after the explosion. Mephisto was grateful the princesses had accepted him into their home, had taught him better control of light magic so he could craft himself feet that he could actually walk on and move. But even so… there would always be more of him missing than that.

Regardless, he had chores to do.

Clumsily he got to his feet, wincing as he put weight on his legs. He had to get used to this walking lark, not just to blend in with the humans, but also to help his own recovery.

Wandering out of his room, he popped his head around the kitchen door. Ellira was already cooking more of that strange human food, it sizzled in the pan and she cursed as it spat at her. How curious earth cooking was.

"Morning," he said groggily, slinking further around the door. "Need any help?"

Ellira raised her eyebrows at the dark bags under his eyes and sighed. The poor boy had been through so much. "I think you'd make more of a mess than I could," she joked goodnaturedly, thinking of an easy job for him - she knew how easily boredom took a hold of him. "Although… would you mind putting the laundry on? I have to go out to the shop later, but I'll leave breakfast in the microwave for you when you finish. Sound like a plan?"

Mephisto nodded. Breakfast did indeed sound good, and he'd tackled that particular chore before, even if the laundry contraption did confuse him sometimes. There were so many different buttons, and even Iris hadn't been able to explain them all to him as she'd rested against the laundry room's door. But they'd managed regardless.

Making his way upstairs, holding onto the banister for support, Mephisto knocked gently on Iris' door.

"Laundry collection," he called.

There was no reply so Mephisto carefully opened the door to find the room empty. He shrugged and wandered over to her laundry basket, enchanting it to follow him and leaving the room with it in tow. He'd return it later. Maybe.

Mephisto repeated the process with the other princesses' rooms and soon had a little train of baskets following him down the stairs. Another was added when he popped into Ellira's room, and soon he was shoving the clothes into the machine, regardless of colour and with his head turned the other way so he didn't see anything he shouldn't.

He dragged the last basket forwards to empty, but as he did so the door it had been propping open slammed shut.

The tiny laundry room turned pitch black immediately and Mephisto froze.

It's okay, he rationed, the door just shut. All I need to do is open it. He called a magic circle so he could see where he was and found the door handle.

But it wouldn't open.

Now the panic was setting in. The light around Mephisto's hand faded as he tugged and pulled with all his might at the door, his actions getting more and more sporadic and desperate.

"Stupid thing, open! WHY WON'T YOU OPEN!!!" He slammed his fists against it, hoping Ellira was still in the kitchen. He went to blast it open, damage be damned, but when he try to call on his magic again, it failed him. "No! No I can't have- I can do this." This time the light returned but soon spluttered out and Mephisto was left in the dark once again.

He slipped uselessly to the floor, the memories flooding back to him.

He remembered all the times Gramorr had punished him, stripping him of his magic and locking him in an opaque crystal dome that Praxina was forced to break him out of to practise her magic. He remembered all the times he'd screamed himself hoarse and cried out for help until he ran out of tears, but it had never mattered because the dome was always too thick and no sound could get in or out. The only thing he'd ever been able to do was wait and try his best not to break down completely.

So that's what he did now.

He pulled his broken legs towards himself, wrapping his arms around the cold crystal prosthetics and rocked in place, whimpering his sister's name over and over again.

She'd save him, she always did. Praxina would be at it already, working to free him so they could be reunited again. She would break him out soon, she would, he knew she would; she had to otherwise the punishment would be worse.

Perhaps your brother needs a more permanent crystal residence, hm?

No, please Master I- I can do this. I just need more time.

You are trying my patience Praxina! You have run out of time, complete the spell now or I will make true on my promise. I can afford to lose one twin, especially him.

Hours passed.

The tormented imagines became clearer and clearer in Mephisto's mind, the real world but a dream. Anything was better than reliving this, anything.

Eventually the door swung open and Mephisto blinked then scrambled out on all fours. He huddled against the nearest wall he came to, and basked in the artificial lights of the hall, thankful to be out of there but confused by his surroundings.

"Mephisto?" Iris carefully crouched down in front of him, concern etched onto her face.

Flinching, Mephisto held his hands up, magic circles flickering on and off before them. "S-stay back! Where am I? Where have you taken me?!? Who are you?"

Iris shared a look with the other girls, but they were just as befuddled as she was. Turning back to Mephisto, Iris went through his questions slowly and steady. "It's me, Iris. And you're in the house, you're staying with us for a bit, remember? Are you okay Mephisto?"

But this did nothing to console him. "Where's my sister! What did Gramorr do to her? What sort of illusion has he put up this time?" he demanded, tearful eyes darting around frantically, taking in his surroundings, but his mind couldn't process anything he saw. Not even when the other princesses stood behind Iris called upon their magic, ready in case he acted up. Mephisto was just too lost in the memory of those awful times.

Talia frowned down at him. "What is he blabbing on about? Is he trying to trick us?" She stepped forwards, magic circle now fully formed.

"No! Talia, I- I think he's just confused and scared. I can handle this, don't worry. Step down."

Auriana placed a hand on Talia's shoulder, pulling her back and steering her towards the laundry room. "C'mon, let's finish putting the clothes in that metal box thing."

Talia sighed but lowered her hand, albeit reluctantly, and followed Auriana into the tiny room.

Meanwhile Iris sat cross legged in front of Mephisto who was still freaking out. "Mephisto, Mephisto look at me," she commanded. When he did so, she carefully took his hands and placed them on her open palms. "See, you're safe. No magic, nothing to hurt you. Safe."

"But Praxina…" he mumbled.

"Praxina… is," Iris didn't really want to upset him right now, especially if he was having a bout of amnesia, but she didn't want to lie either. "She's not here right now. But she'll be joining us soon, I'll make sure of it."

And Iris meant it. One way or another, she was going to ensure Mephisto got his sister back.

For now she simply squeezed his hand. "Do you want to go back to your room? Have some food? Or just sit here for a while longer?"

Mephisto could only nod, so when he didn't move, Iris assumed he was agreeing with the latter. She went to drop his hands, but Mephisto held onto them tightly, needing something, someone, anything to hold onto.

They sat there in silence for a while. Even when Talia and Auriana left the laundry room, Iris simply tilted her head towards the practise room, she'd get there in time. But more time passed and Iris eventually moved to sit next to Mephisto against the wall, leaning slightly against him when he tugged at her arm and rested his head on her shoulder.

"Thank you," Mephisto muttered almost an hour later, sitting up properly. "And sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for," Iris turned to smile at him. "You're part of the team now, we've got to look out for each other, yeah?" When he didn't reply, Iris cocked her head. "You wanna talk about it?"

Mephisto considered this. "Not yet… but uh, small dark spaces are a no for me."

"Okay I'll keep that in mind. Make sure you always prop the laundry door open then, it tends to slam shut and stick."

"Yeah, I noticed," Mephisto muttered dryly, then fumbled to apologise when he saw the look on Iris' face. "Sorry, that was…" He struggled to find the right word. "Unnecessary," he finally settled on. "I'm trying to work on the whole sarcasm thing."

Iris smiled sadly. "It's okay. I know it's hard. Everything's just suddenly changed and you're not sure where you fit in, you don't know what feels right or what you're capable of doing..." she trailed off, remembered when she'd first been introduced to magic, when her world had turned upside down. "Sorry, I got a little off track. But, you can talk to me about it whenever you want. I might not have gone from evil to good, but I do know a little something about drastic changes."

Mephisto cleared his throat, afraid to speak his mind, and stood up, stumbling slightly. Iris jumped up after him and hovered her hands near him worriedly. The concern on her face almost brought fresh tears to Mephisto's eyes.

"Do you need anything?"

Okay this was ridiculous, he couldn't take her pity any more. "I think a kiss might help," he quipped, trying to change the tone of the conversation.

And it worked, though perhaps a little too well.

Iris giggled and stood on her toes to plant a kiss on his cheek. "There, better?"

Mephisto almost fell back on the floor. As it was he squeaked ever so quietly, then coughed in an attempt to mask it. "Right um… I uh, thank you princess, and uh… food yes, food sounds like a good idea, I heard mention of food earlier." He walked towards the kitchen, head in the clouds, and smacked face first into the door frame.

Gasping, Iris rushed over. "Are you okay?"

"This is where sarcasm really comes in handy," he muttered, holding his face. "Klatznik, I haven't broke anything, have I? I'd hate to ruin my dashing good looks."

Iris raised an eyebrow as Mephisto tentatively peeked out from behind his hands, his face perfectly intact except for a tiny red mark on the end of his nose. "God forbid you ruin your dashing good looks."

"Well yeah have you se- wait… was that sarcasm?"

Grinning, Iris booped him on the nose. "Maybe. And you're fine silly." She pulled him into the kitchen. "C'mon, let's get food, I promise it'll help."

Mephisto gave a lopsided smile as he watched her hair swish over her shoulders and knew he was done for. Though, if he was being honest with himself, he'd been falling for the princess for a while now. She always knew what to say to cheer people up and was so nice - he never knew nice could be so appealing, but then again, he never knew he'd ever be on this side of the fight either.

Iris caught him smiling at her and smiled back, a slight blush decorating her freckles.

Maybe not all changes were bad.

[lyndsaybones]

In Dreams 12

Chapter 1...Chapter 2…Chapter 3…Chapter 4…Chapter 5 …Chapter 6…Chapter 7…Chapter 8 …Chapter 9...Chapter10... Chapter 11

GEORGETOWN

WASHINGTON, DC

She’s found that there are few things as cleansing as a scalding shower. After her abduction, the hospital smell clung to her skin like soap scum and she sat crumpled in the corner of her shower for the better part of an hour, scrubbing until her skin was red and oversensitive. If she couldn’t shed her skin, she’d take it off herself. She exited smelling of freesia and feeling a little less like a stranger in her own body. When Donnie Pfaster got his hands on her, she tossed her clothes in the building’s incinerator upon arriving home and stayed in the shower until the answering machine recorded Mulder’s impassioned pleas for a call back.

Baptism, as she was taught, was the act of washing away Original Sin. Babies, perfect little beings, born with a sin that wasn’t of their own doing, seems just this side of ludicrous to her. While she still struggles to accept the notion that an infant has sin on its soul, she does believe other people’s sin can stick like a bacteria, infecting and infesting. The act of sacramental baptism is a nice ritual, even if a hollow one. But her particular form of baptism, washing away the misdeeds of the evil men around her, is absolutely essential.

She’s not sure how long she’s been under the pelting heat, time gets as slippery as a bar of soap when trauma is involved. Mulder hasn’t come looking for her, blessedly. She swallows thickly, pushing down the acid crawling up the back of her throat. Back down the waterspout you go, she thinks to herself. She is sitting, arms resting atop her knees, leaning up against the white tiles of her shower stall. The heat licks like a flame across her chest, turning her skin pink. When she does decide to stand, dizziness threatens to pull her right back down again. She swallows hard and squeezes her eyes shut, clinging to the faucet knobs until the feeling passes. She opens her eyes and sees the floor dappled with pink dots...red dots. She reaches for her nose, but her hand comes away with nothing but water. She looks down and sees the trickle of scarlet running a path down the inside of her thigh. Her heart begins to pound, but she keeps her breathing even as she shuts off the water and opens the shower door. She manages to get dressed and put in a call to her doctor’s office. She doesn’t even realize Mulder isn’t there until she turns to tell him what’s happening.

“Mu-” she stops short, turning a quick circle in the living room. “Mulder?” she calls and is met with silence. She snatches up her cell phone and keys and heads for the door.

“What are these?” he asks, shaking the opaque pill bottle. Oblong white pills rattle about. They look like Tylenol.

“I’ll be honest, Fox, I don’t know what they are. But I know that they’ve been used for people in your position,” Diana says softly.

The inside of her sedan, what he assumes is her sedan, smells vaguely of stale cigarettes.

“They’ll give me back my memories?” he asks.

“I hope so,” she says.

He purses his lips and scrutinizes the contents.

“I asked you before, what’s in it for you?”

“Leaving was a mistake, one that I’m trying to correct,” she says.

The morning sun casts long shadows on the street ahead of them and catches a flash of foxfire moving out of Dana’s building. She is hustling down the stairs, fumbling with her keys as she goes. He starts pawing frantically for the handle, stuffing the pill bottle in his pocket as the door swings open and he steps out.

“Dana!” he calls as she is busy unlocking her car door.

She looks at him, shielding her eyes against the sun with her hand. She looks at him and then at Diana and drops her hand. He sees her utter a silent “oh” and a quick nod. She swings the door open and ducks into the car. The door slams shut and the engine is started before he can even get ten steps closer to her.

“Dana! Wait!” he yells as she pulls away.

WOMEN’S HEALTH SPECIALISTS ALEXANDRIA, VA

She’s starting to feel like she should just pack along her own exam gown these days. The options lately have either been ones with too much fabric that have her drowning in thin cotton, falling off of her shoulders, or so worn out that the ties in back are missing and there’s little to no hope of keeping her ass covered. The pink one she has on now falls into both categories, somehow, so she is sitting on the excess fabric, putting a millimeter of distance between her rear and the tissue paper on the exam table.

Her doctor is on vacation, which is frustrating, and the doctor on call is running late, it seems. The room is chilly and she shivers as an involuntary shudder races down her spine. There is a gentle knock and the door opens. The doctor looks like he ought to be on the cover of  an AARP magazine, with a head full of silver hair and face so lined with wrinkles that it looks like used tissue paper, he’s got to be at least 80 years old.

“Dana?” he asks kindly.

“Yes,” she answers.

“I’m Dr. Kurtzweil. I understand you’re having some spotting?” he asks as he washes his hands.

“Yes, for about an hour now.”

“Okay, well let’s see what’s what, huh?” he asks, motioning for her tie lie down.

She stares up at the ceiling, which has an inspirational poster tacked onto it, something about perseverance or persistence or some such, while she waits for him to find the heartbeat with the doppler monitor. The silence makes her heart thud.

Please, please, please, please, please…

The sound echoes off of the walls, a steady, almost mechanical rhythm. She didn’t even realize she’d been holding her breath.

“That’s a good sign!” he says with a chuckle. “Let’s do an ultrasound and take a peek.”

She swipes a tear away from her cheek and nods.

She doesn’t answer. He’s tried four times now, forcing himself to wait fifteen minutes between attempts. But she doesn’t answer. He imagines her, as she was last night, mindlessly wandering off to her own funeral. But he reminds himself that she saw him when she left, really saw him. Not looking through him like he was on a different axial plane. And he saw her too, saw the one thing she projected as her eyes flicked between him and Diana: hurt. He’d hurt her.

He drums his good hand on his thigh and bobs his good knee as he stares at the digital clock on her VCR. The pill bottle vibrates in his pocket and sounds as menacing as a rattle snake. He wonders if the contents are as pernicious as the last bottle of pills he’d been exposed to.

He startles when the key slips into the lock and the tumblers trip one by one. He stands and whirls around as the door swings open.

“Thank god,” he says as he crosses the room. He wraps his arms around her without a thought and pulls her close to his chest. She is as stiff as a two by four in his embrace, which scares him nearly as much as last night’s episode.

“Where did you go?” he asks as he pulls back, hand still clasping her shoulder.

“I need to lie down,” she says as she shucks his hand away and moves around him.

“Dana, slow down. Talk to me,” he says, ka-thunking behind her down the hall.

“I started bleeding,” she says as she pulls the elastic band from her hair, letting it fall loose and curly around her face.

“Bleeding? You mean?” he can’t really say it out loud.

“I went to my doctor’s office. I would have had you come, but you were...busy,” she says as she toes out of her plain white canvas tennis shoes.

“What did she say?” he asks, pulse rushing in his ears.

“He,” she corrects. “My doctor is on vacation so I had to see the physician on call.”

“I don’t care if was the Energizer bunny, as long as he’s got an MD. What did he say?”

She’s yet to look him in the eye, going about her business as she slips out of her jacket, fluffs a pillow, turns down the bed.

“I have a condition called low lying placenta. Last night’s...exertion, caused the bleeding, but it’s not serious and the baby is fine. I just need to take it easy.”

His shoulders sag and he lets out a long breath.

“The baby’s okay?” he repeats.

She finally looks up, eyes tired and red.  

“Yes,” she says softly.

A moment passes between them, reassuring looks and quick nods.

“I remembered something,” he says. “We were sitting on your bathroom floor, you were sick.”

She crinkles her brow and eyes him suspiciously. “That’s been every day this week,” she says matter of factly.

“It wasn’t this week. It was different.”

She sits down on the bed, still watching him.

“How do you know it was a memory?” she asks.

“I wrapped my arm around you and I asked you not to give up. Do you remember?”

Her mouth falls open by a tiny fraction and the look on her face says that yes, she does remember.

“I had given up. I thought I was going to die.”

He sits down next to her, hip to hip. “I knew then, that I couldn’t live without you…” he trails off, thinking carefully about his words. She looks like a doe caught out in the open and just as apt to lope away if spooked. “That’s when I knew that loved you.”

He can see her searching his face, looking around for a man she knows, who knows her. He wants to be that man again.

CASEY’S BAR WASHINGTON DC

“Well, what have you to report?” he asks as he stubs out his cigarette in the heavy glass ashtray. The mahogany bar is long and beautifully kept for a quiet corner watering hole. It’s the kind of place the older crowd comes for a drink without the unseemly behavior of undergrads and townies.

Kurtzweil’s mouth draws in a tight, angry line, his thick eyebrows twitching nervously.

“Healthy fetus, 13 weeks gestation,” he says, staring at the amber liquid in his glass.

“And the samples?”

“Look, if you want a genetic profile, or stem cells or whatever, your best bet is cord blood.”

“You were told to collect genetic samples.”

“And I’m telling you that it is risky. And she knows that. Shook up as she was, there was no way she was going to consent to an amnio.”

Cancer man looks at him like he is completely insignificant. He seems to register that perhaps he is.

“I didn’t say anything about consent. I told you what I want. You know what will happen if you don’t.”

“You have your own people for this kind of thing. Why on earth are you doing this to me?”

“You’ve been allowed to toil too long, Alvin. Your books, your clumsy attempts to connect with Fox Mulder, you needed to be reminded of who it is you’re testing.”

The old man’s mouth bobs and his craggy face writes a story of utter indignation.

“You always were a son a bitch, Spender,” Kurtzweil says as he digs his wallet out of pocket and slaps a twenty on the bar.

“I’ve never claimed otherwise,” Cancer man says as he lights another cigarette.

The old man waves an angry hand and plods to the door, bruskly passing the leggy brunette making her way to the bar.

“Ah, Diana. Just in time. Can I get you a drink?”

His smile, seemingly a genuine one, is not returned as she sits down.

“Did he take them?” he asks.

“Yes, but he’s very suspicious,” she says.

“Perhaps he’s more like his old self than we thought.”

GEORGETOWN WASHINGTON, DC

He sits on the edge of the bed and she, tucked under the covers, curled up on her left side, looks so small.

“What do you think they could be?” he asks as he holds up the bottle.

“I don’t know. But I think we should definitely have them analyzed,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” he says with a quick shake of his head. “You’re tired, you should rest.”

He begins to rise, ready to go make a call to the Gunmen and start trying to unravel whatever knot they’re in the center of.

“Stay awhile,” she says quietly. “Please?”

He nods and walks around the end of the bed. She reaches back and lifts the blankets behind her, a silent gesture for him to join her. He slips out of his shoe and crawls between the sheets, settling his weight behind her, bending his elbow gently over her middle and tucking his casted arm under the pillow beneath his head.

“I could’ve died last night,” she whispers.

“I won’t let that happen,” he says into her hair.

“I didn’t have any control. There’s nothing that scares me more than that,” she says, tears cracking in her voice.

“I know,” he says softly, pressing a gentle kiss on the spot behind her ear. “I remember.”

[flauntpage]

Works of:  A Conversation with Dan Miller by Jesse Malmed

When we have the internet—like we must right now—we find ourselves down any number of world-holes. I just tried to find a concrete answer as to how long after being born a baby can remain unnamed. There are states’ rights and rules about accent marks and banned names (a good enough band name, I think) and one source that says it’s 60 days in Australia and 42 in the UK. I’m typing this in Illinois and thinking both about the specificities of titles and sitting down for a job conversation and staging an argument and what you’re about to read. Dan Miller is relentlessly curious and critical, attuned both to the minutiae of our lived experiences and the systemic forces assigned to buffing them out. Before coming to Chicago in 2014 to attend Northwestern’s MFA program, Dan was living in Melbourne, where that critical curiosity and restless attentiveness began to find form in exhibitions, objects, situations and texts. The most visible component of his practice over the last few years—his ongoing, wildly generative collaboration with Thomas Kong—is finding new publics through a recent (and really excellent) publication with Half Letter Press. There’s a wry sleight of hand continually at play in Dan’s activities—somehow art about art about not art; hard work and hardly work; collaborative and singular. We both talk both about his work and then don’t. We barely mention his garden even though it was one of the things I thought about most when thinking about this, a slow conversation Dan and I had over the last few weeks. The images are all his.

Jesse Malmed: Let’s start somewhere in the middle: what were your cultural interests in your mid- to late-teens? And what would have been the obvious first question in an interview about your practice at that moment?

Dan Miller: I could conveniently bookend that period with two musical experiences: seeing Billy Joel and Elton John in concert as a fourteen-year-old, and seeing the anonymous art-rock band TISM play shortly before my nineteenth birthday. What I learned in those years is reflected in the enormous gap between the family-friendly Anglo-American über-culture and an Australian band who were wasting their university educations on writing vulgar anthems against the establishment. In those years it was music where I encountered ordinary people making things in response to their immediate worlds. This is the kind of culture I’m still interested in today. Back then, I gravitated to musicians and writers who understood our double isolation; suburbia at the “arse end of the world.” I was an enthusiastic spectator, but I completely failed to imagine producing anything other than good grades. If someone had asked me about my ‘practice’ then, I would have assumed they were asking what I was going to do when I finished law school.

JM: Transgressive/aggressive/soft/DIY/DIT/&c musics (and the communities surrounding them) seem to be the gateway for so many artists’ awakenings and interests in making culture. I think part of the ubiquity of this experience is reflected in your answer—conventional music is everywhere, so unconventional music has something obvious to bounce against, to camouflage itself as, to appear in stark relief against—in the way that maybe tens of thousands of people don’t assemble to watch a bloated but weak example of social practice on SPTV and then find their minds blown when they see a really killer sopra group playing in their cousin’s basement. Or maybe that’s what reality tv is. Did you ever play in bands? Are there other obvious or non-obvious ways that impacted your practice?

DM: You’re absolutely right. Although for many would-be artists I think music is the gateway but not the drug. I’ve never admitted this, but I was in a band in high school with a couple of friends for about five minutes. We practiced maybe twice, and we never played a show. Because I couldn’t play any instruments, I was designated as the singer. Because I couldn’t sing, we hit a wall pretty quickly (none of us appreciated the ideology of punk). There is a cassette tape in the bottom of a drawer somewhere that I really hope has been sitting next to a strong magnet this whole time. If anything from this experience influenced me it was the sheer terror of the idea of nakedly attempting to perform a talent in front of an audience. In recent years I’ve avoided repeated feats of virtuosity, and I’ve avoided being ‘on stage’ in various ways. I’ve explicitly shied away from working alone. Art is a place where—if you choose—you can be the singer, the guitarist, the roadie, the sound engineer, the pit photographer, the groupie, and the PR flack, all at the same time, while everyone else looks in every which direction. I love the messiness of this, and the unpredictability of a practice in which the author-spectator binary is abandoned or ignored.

JM: Maybe we could flip the old pedagogical saw and say that “those who can’t play instruments sing and those who can’t sing go on to make art”. I’m curious about how the “author-spectator binary” is contingent on some kind of spectacle (or text, I suppose). What does that relationship (or the breakdown of that binary) look like when there’s nothing else to look at? Or, if that question feels too obvious (or too opaque), could you offer some reflections on your experience in artists’ gardens?

DM: Well, it’s a truism that artists often “hide behind their work,” but I think the separation of artwork and author does little to avoid the extent to which the artist themself is also the thing offered up for consumption. The spectacle/text is all-encompassing. Thomas Pynchon may never give an interview until the day he dies, but we, loyal spectators, will forever be imbibing the Pynchonesque. What a breakdown of the author-spectator roleplay could bring is not necessarily “nothing else to look at,” but maybe “everything else to see.” A theorist whose work has influenced my thinking around this in the past couple of years is Stephen Wright, who argues that we should replace spectatorship with usership. What this implies is that art has to become more useful—perhaps so useful that it is indistinguishable from all the other useful things in the world. We should remember that ‘art’ as we know it is a set of conventions invented only in the last few hundred years. The ancient Greeks surely knew what to do with an oenochoe when they saw one on the dinner table.

JM: Do you remember in earlier days of the internet when email forwards or geocities pages would be filled with either lists of Steven Wright quotes that weren’t his or unattributed jokes that were his under the heading Head-Scratchers to make you go HMMMM? His work became useful in that context and functions pretty well as a voice and institution (let’s not say brand) such that it magnetizes ideas and phrases that feel like they could have been his. I would love to see him do a set of all the various jokes that have been speculatively attributed to him. The other Wright was my introduction to Bernard Brunon and a number of other artists whose practices he described as a kind of dark matter or, at least in my recollection, artists whose work is almost invisible unless you know what to look for. I’m curious about how your own interest in visibility (and in invisibility) deals with usefulness. I think it’s easy for us to see how a vessel can be doubly useful (I see what ewer doing there), but I’m curious about work that may be both useless (as art is sometimes described and proscribed to be) and invisible. We can easily make the argument that no art is truly useless but that its utility is bound up in our intellectual and sensorial experience, in its role as catalyst for thought and feeling—of course. Maybe there’s also something about the space between visibility and legibility that could be interesting to talk through.

DM: I would love to see Stewart Lee, my favorite meta-comedian, circle the wagons around Stephen Wright’s joke-magnetism. Or Yogi Berra’s, for that matter. I don’t know if The Other Wright has a funny bone, but my favorite anecdote of his is attributed to Brunon. Bernard Brunon is of course a very unwellknown artist who ran a house-painting business for 27 years, That’s Painting Productions, that was 100% a functioning house-painting business and 100% an ongoing artwork. I recall Wright mentioning in a talk he delivered to my laptop screen that Brunon often turned down invitations to exhibit in museums and galleries on the basis that he is “too busy working.” This is almost the diametric opposite of Duchamp’s boast that he had never worked a day in his life; that he had “never gotten wet.” Marcel, naturally, loved making the useful useless. If the readymade can said to be work, it is negative work. In the White Box, Duchamp asks “can works be made which are not “of art”?” This reads to me like a challenge that has never really been taken up. Let’s say that it was; would these “works” be invisible? I don’t think so—at least I believe that an artwork that is not visible (this is not to restrict visibility to the visual field alone) is not an artwork at all. But I agree with you that legibility is an important part of this—I’m interested in “works” that are legible as completely viable non-art to some people, and as completely viable art to others.

JM: I was once with a gaggle of artists at a small-town diner and there was curiosity about our presence there. “We’re residents just up the way,” one of us said something like. “Oh—you’re doctors?” they earnestly responded, trying to square our grubbiness with a concept of scrubs-iness. Like that, like practice, let’s shift in thinking about works to working. I’m always interested in how artists’ work impacts their work (and vice versa). An amount of your productive labor is given over to others in various ways. What other work have you done since you began making work? How have these works impacted your work? Are you interested, like Brunon, in fusing your work and your work in that capacity?

DM: Obviously art has an internal language and syntax, but we artists often don’t give non-artists enough credit for understanding what we do—or, worse, we relish the idea that what we do is somehow arcane. The classic “what kind of art do you do?” question can be a genuine invitation to dialogue, rather than eye-roll small-talk. Still, the possibility that a kind of double liberation can come from collocating (physically, conceptually) work and work is incredibly seductive. Ben Kinmont’s Sometimes a nicer sculpture is to be able to provide a living for your family (1998–ongoing) is a major inspiration. It’s no coincidence that many of these kinds of projects—Julia Bryan-Wilson named it ‘occupational realism’—occur at sites of commerce. Outside the work I’ve done in and around the art world, since I became an artist I’ve done all sorts of things for money—I’ve mowed lawns, moved furniture, hosted progressive dinners, ushered concert patrons, mounted televisions in fast food restaurants, and installed christmas decorations in shopping malls. Some of these jobs were fascinating (and many gave me ideas for artworks), but none seemed to offer the kind of structural stability needed for a true work-work fusion. But I keep thinking about it—I even wrote a manifesto last year calling for a group of artists to run a convenience store. This was heavily influenced by seeing Thomas Kong run his store Kim’s Corner Food over the past three years, but also by Chris Kraus’ book Kelly Lake Store, in which she applies (and is rejected) for a Guggenheim Fellowship to re-open a shuttered general store in one of those small Wisconsin towns you know so well.

JM: There’s something especially excellent about the convenience store as the site for these conceptual and physical experiments, as it relates to our earlier mention of usefulness and uselessness. Convenience stores have in their bones the understanding that you might be able to find a better selection or a better price or a better match elsewhere, but that there’s enough here, it’s not too expensive and what could be a better match than you and it being in the same place at the same time? They are eminently useful and in their relative predictability reveal their differences more immediately than other species of spaces. Did you know about Thomas Kong’s work before visited Kim’s or did you stumble upon that store just looking for a snack or something to drink? Do you remember your first conversations with him?

DM: I didn’t know anything about Thomas’ work before I met him in his store, although certainly a few other artists in Chicago had been aware of him for a while. The ironic thing is that I was walking home from the grocery store when I first noticed Kim’s Corner Food—I’m much more inclined to go the extra distance to avoid paying above retail (although there are a lot of surprising bargains at Kim’s). But you’ve absolutely nailed it when it comes to ‘convenience’—there is something irrepressible about it. If there’s a convenience store on your block, not even an Amazon drone could deliver you a cold Pepsi faster than you could put on your slippers and shuffle down the street. So what is this thing called ‘convenience’ we’re all so willing to shell out for? Perhaps it’s a kind of surplus value—maybe the surplus value that some people claim art produces. Fundamentally, though, it’s the use of this revenue-generating peculiarity to create time and space for other things that interests me. Some of the best jobs I’ve ever had have been inside the galleries of art museums, working in pseudo-security guard roles. I was always good at my job, but I also got a lot of thinking done and even conceived a bunch of artworks while making sure visitors didn’t touch the expensive paintings. One thing is for sure: the museums never docked my pay for thinking.

JM: I tried a form of active Cartesian splitting once while doing a cater-waiter gig in which I actively kept my mind occupied by a specific art problem that I had while I was dropping dinners and refilling glasses. I found that it was easier for me to be doing two kinds of work at once (at least something like that, with specific rhythms and relatively low agency) if I was focused in my mind-wandering. I also held one of those museum non-guard jobs before and thought often of this line from a David Berman piece about that kind of position: After guarding masterpieces for weeks, it feels good to stand in my dentist’s office before this cheap painting of a ship. Now, re-reading that piece I remember another line that I love: What Duchamp did with the urinal no longer surprises me, what surprises me is the idea that they had urinals back then. I was thinking yesterday about a class clown alone and home from school or wondering how if your work was doing your work would you daydream about washing dishes and populating spreadsheets. The you/r there is everyone/’s. I’m in rural Vermont as we type and two days ago a few of us walked a few miles to the General Store, which is mostly germane to this moment because of the name. There’s also been an uptick in an urban/e, curated “General Store” that strikes me now as being very much a Specific Store. Should interviews have questions at the end of each paragraph?

DM: Wow, that David Berman piece brought back a lot of memories for me. The anecdote about the guard placing asbestos fragments on the floor is brilliant—being sent home with pay is pretty much the ultimate work fantasy. To answer your non-question, if my work was doing my work (let’s say I was sent home with pay forever), I have a feeling I would still be washing dishes and populating spreadsheets, since they seem to be two fairly essential parts of living these days. I certainly wouldn’t be fantasizing about them. Do you daydream about writing grants when you’re in the studio? I recently got to see a piece of antique furniture called a dry sink, from the days before running water. Wasn’t a urinal without water just a pan? What would a dry spreadsheet look like? I’m not a luddite since I think being a reactionary is the surest way to misery, but I do enjoy inconvenience. Doing things the hard way is part of my DNA. Despite the idiosyncrasy of the space of the convenience store, some part of me thinks being an artist should mean being against convenience. Or maybe just against standardization. Where I live now, my nearest ‘convenience store’ is one of those monolithic chains that practically owns all of us. When Žižek first came to America, he was famously shocked by the condition of the toilets. Me, I was shocked to discover that businesses readily sell postage stamps for more than their face value. Still, I wouldn’t hold gouging like that against a mom-and-pop hardware store/pharmacy/tobacconist if they had some exotic plants in the window and a few handmade signs behind the counter.

JM: There’s a very specific handwriting that I associate with that scale of capitalism. My grandfather—Poppa Clown—who ran a vacuum store, produced his own special rug shampoo and sold bric and brac at the Cloverdale Swap Meet in greater Vancouver, had a style of writing that I still see in bodegas and on occasional telephone poles. When I just googled “my grandfather’s handwriting” I felt class anxiety that apparently he wasn’t a member of the quill-squiggling epistolarati. I’d like to switch gears a little bit—though I could type about handwriting for days—to ask you about Plinth Projects. I am, of course, very interested in platformist projects and outré curatorial conceits. This one has particular resonance for me in this moment because of the on-going conversations about the removal of Confederate monuments in this country. Perhaps you could share with us a bit about that project and how it has or hasn’t impacted your own thinking surrounding monuments here and in Australia and beyond.

DM: That’s a timely question. In the past few weeks that there has been renewed focus on monuments in Australia that celebrate colonial victories and ‘heroes,’ as rallying points for ongoing work by indigenous activists and their non-indigenous allies. Monuments are excellent things around which to focus people’s attention in a time of struggle, but they also allow us to see the absurdity and cruelty of the nation-state and its myths. Plinth Projects took an empty pedestal in Edinburgh Gardens, a popular park in Melbourne, as a site for a series of public art interventions in 2013 and 2014. The original statue, of Queen Victoria, had gone missing some time in the early 1900s, and as an empty pedestal it was actually very beautiful—it seemed to suggest, “we don’t make those kinds of myths here any more.” It had an empowering quality. My first real experience of the plinth was standing on top of it and making out with a date, not long after I moved to Melbourne in around 2009. A group of friends who used to meet for picnics in the park referred to it as the “statue without a statue.” In 2011 some traditionalist members of the otherwise left-wing local city council proposed erecting a new statue of Queen Victoria, a harebrained idea that was scuttled on the basis that it would be too expensive. So when we came along in 2012 and suggested mounting a series of con/temporary art projects on the plinth for a fraction of the cost, they were very glad to take us up on it. I do regret that we didn’t work with any indigenous artists, but I would at least suggest that our efforts, and those of the artists we commissioned, were deliberately anti-monumental. Art is almost never able to enact change at a political level, but I hope that it can at least present propositions for different ways to work against the status quo.

JM: Just a bit away from where I grew up there was an interesting response to a newly erected monument to sadistic conquistador Juan de Oñate y Salazar: indigenous activists chopped the statue’s foot off in mirroring recompense to his own brutality four centuries prior. This is a different but related manner. In the span of a week I was reacquainted with Laszlo and Lazlo Toth. The former is the geologist who attacked Michelangelo’s The Pietà in 1972 and the latter is the nom de plume of Don Novello (better known as a whole other character, Father Guido Sarducci) which he’s used for any number of wonderfully frustrating and deflating epistolary relationships with corporations, politicians and other loci of power. I’ve been thinking about this in part because I’m interested in characters like Sarducci because through their persistence of being as they move from show to show to movie to newspaper to show they stitch together diegeses and reveal them as a (speculatively) unified universe. Considering how fictions overlap might seem like an academic or obtuse response to our ever-worsening political climate. I obviously don’t advocate for what Toth did to The Pietà, but there’s something striking about how easily, if we were inclined, we could damage art. As a culture we have such respect for these objects that I won’t even consider touching a commercially-produced and friend-designated sculpture’s plinth without clearance. But they’re very vulnerable in real terms. Have you ever used a pseudonym?

DM: Late last winter I walked into an exhibition opening at an artist-run space in Chicago, having just hopped off my bike and carrying a large backpack of stuff. The entrance to the exhibition space was narrowed by an inexplicably-placed empty pedestal, and just as I had squeezed past I turned to hug a friend and swiftly wiped—with my backpack—a small sculpture off a shelf on the opposite wall. It didn’t break, but the gasps were audible, and everybody turned to stare at me. Someone from the gallery came over to ‘handle’ me. Most people there continued to give me the side-eye for the rest of the evening, as though my presence as a human in the space was worth less than the artwork I had accidentally assaulted. I was puzzled by the reaction. Somehow it never occurred to me that the artwork might have value beyond its role as a prop for our gathering there. Or, to look at it another way, it was our gathering there that was the thing that gave the object meaning. I feel the same way about monuments and other objects that aspire to permanence—they are just taking up space until people decide that they have meaning in their moment. This is the difference between making history and receiving history. Personally, I am not someone who cares a lot for objects (my favorite kinds of pseudonymous public performances are more along the lines of Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping), but I appreciate the role of icons because without them there could be no iconoclasm. And no, I’ve never used a pseudonym, but I have such a common name that it happily often functions like one.

JM: We hear often about art “starting a conversation” or, as you just described it, as a prop for our gathering (I’ve found the idea and phrase MacGuffin useful too). Like any good octopus, I’m both seduced by this idea and can easily summon another seven counter- and comple-example of how I experience art both in public and private. I’m curious maybe to hear more about the types of sociality and conversation you’re thinking about both with your work and the work that most appeals to you. I’ve spent 93.5% of this conversation thinking about it in terms of the constraints we’ve laid out and what I want to read and write about than about its eventual (and not circumstantial) public-ness. This is a very specific type of public-ness and of conversation. The inanity of the questions on talk shows is forgettable if not forgivable because we seem to want to hear about a celebrity’s vacation or their co-star’s pranks. In this process I am trying to write to you as if we were just writing to each other but there are also moments when I have a sense of your answer or, even, when I’m curious what that answer looks like as we type from our cheated-out talk show chairs. I want also to interject now briefly with one of part of that Toth thing that I think is an interesting historical footnote: apparently the first person to subdue Toth after his attack was a young Bob Cassilly, the artist who later created St. Louis’ City Museum. What is the best painting to have a conversation in front of? Have we ever seen a social practice work built around conversation that ended up yielding objects because people were so talked out they just wanted to spend their social time more materially? Someone told me recently that someone less recently had told them that when orchestrating large events everyone benefits from a small but irritating shared experience—like a quick rainstorm—to bond over otherwise they’ll seek that same antagonism from something more integral to the occasion itself—the dreary groom or the bad wine—which event planners generally try to avoid. How many times has the word “iconoclastic” been engraved into a monument?

DM: I’m not arguing that art’s main function is to “start a conversation.” That is the kind of cliché we see used all the time in defense of the indefensible—witness the responses of multiple US institutions in the past year to outcries over their exhibition of racially offensive artworks. What I mean is that the public presentation of artwork—even if distributed privately—is always an attempt to engender a public of some kind. But your question about paintings is a good place to start. For me, the best paintings to converse in front of are anti-authoritarian and dark and delightful and often vulgar. To return for a moment to my home country, I think of paintings by artists like Juan Davila, Gordon Hookey, Helen Johnson, or Janenne Eaton. But when I think of the conversations that could be had in their presence, I imagine viewers who share something with the artist (a community, an inclination, a grudge, a species) and see that thing affirmed or tested in some way. With artworks like this, you could say that the social both precedes and follows the artwork.

I’ve never understood the idea of a social practice that was somehow divorced from material practice—like you suggest, I see plenty of so-called social practice that generates objects. But I also see plenty of material practices that generate sociality. Bob Cassilly is actually a fine example of a kind of social practice artist who was motivated by a fierce allegiance to the material world. I had a chance to visit his unfinished opus Cementland while in St. Louis earlier this year, and I have been haunted ever since by the mystery of how he imagined his audiences moving and conversing through that space. There are also great examples of artworks that acknowledge the co-dependence of the social and the material while not privileging ‘art’ as an unimpeachable realm of experience. I’m thinking here of much of Group Material’s work, in particular their project Democracy (1988-89). For me, even something as frivolous as having a cuppa in the ‘tea break’ room in Jeremy Deller’s British Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale was completely moving and concretely social. I like your pop-sociological hand-me-down fable about bonding with strangers. I am for an art that can be a “small but irritating shared experience,” but we shouldn’t forget that any shared experience is completely dependent on other previous mutual experiences. A quick rainstorm feels like it does because we all know what it’s like to wear clothes, move through public space, and be struck by falling water.

Walking to Mordor

EDITION #26

Anatomical Theatres of Mixed Reality: The Operature

The Rise of the Performance Art Festival in the USA

How We Work: An Interview With Sara Drake

Works of:  A Conversation with Dan Miller by Jesse Malmed published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[nofomoartworld]

Works of:  A Conversation with Dan Miller by Jesse Malmed

When we have the internet—like we must right now—we find ourselves down any number of world-holes. I just tried to find a concrete answer as to how long after being born a baby can remain unnamed. There are states’ rights and rules about accent marks and banned names (a good enough band name, I think) and one source that says it’s 60 days in Australia and 42 in the UK. I’m typing this in Illinois and thinking both about the specificities of titles and sitting down for a job conversation and staging an argument and what you’re about to read. Dan Miller is relentlessly curious and critical, attuned both to the minutiae of our lived experiences and the systemic forces assigned to buffing them out. Before coming to Chicago in 2014 to attend Northwestern’s MFA program, Dan was living in Melbourne, where that critical curiosity and restless attentiveness began to find form in exhibitions, objects, situations and texts. The most visible component of his practice over the last few years—his ongoing, wildly generative collaboration with Thomas Kong—is finding new publics through a recent (and really excellent) publication with Half Letter Press. There’s a wry sleight of hand continually at play in Dan’s activities—somehow art about art about not art; hard work and hardly work; collaborative and singular. We both talk both about his work and then don’t. We barely mention his garden even though it was one of the things I thought about most when thinking about this, a slow conversation Dan and I had over the last few weeks. The images are all his.

Jesse Malmed: Let’s start somewhere in the middle: what were your cultural interests in your mid- to late-teens? And what would have been the obvious first question in an interview about your practice at that moment?

Dan Miller: I could conveniently bookend that period with two musical experiences: seeing Billy Joel and Elton John in concert as a fourteen-year-old, and seeing the anonymous art-rock band TISM play shortly before my nineteenth birthday. What I learned in those years is reflected in the enormous gap between the family-friendly Anglo-American über-culture and an Australian band who were wasting their university educations on writing vulgar anthems against the establishment. In those years it was music where I encountered ordinary people making things in response to their immediate worlds. This is the kind of culture I’m still interested in today. Back then, I gravitated to musicians and writers who understood our double isolation; suburbia at the “arse end of the world.” I was an enthusiastic spectator, but I completely failed to imagine producing anything other than good grades. If someone had asked me about my ‘practice’ then, I would have assumed they were asking what I was going to do when I finished law school.

JM: Transgressive/aggressive/soft/DIY/DIT/&c musics (and the communities surrounding them) seem to be the gateway for so many artists’ awakenings and interests in making culture. I think part of the ubiquity of this experience is reflected in your answer—conventional music is everywhere, so unconventional music has something obvious to bounce against, to camouflage itself as, to appear in stark relief against—in the way that maybe tens of thousands of people don’t assemble to watch a bloated but weak example of social practice on SPTV and then find their minds blown when they see a really killer sopra group playing in their cousin’s basement. Or maybe that’s what reality tv is. Did you ever play in bands? Are there other obvious or non-obvious ways that impacted your practice?

DM: You’re absolutely right. Although for many would-be artists I think music is the gateway but not the drug. I’ve never admitted this, but I was in a band in high school with a couple of friends for about five minutes. We practiced maybe twice, and we never played a show. Because I couldn’t play any instruments, I was designated as the singer. Because I couldn’t sing, we hit a wall pretty quickly (none of us appreciated the ideology of punk). There is a cassette tape in the bottom of a drawer somewhere that I really hope has been sitting next to a strong magnet this whole time. If anything from this experience influenced me it was the sheer terror of the idea of nakedly attempting to perform a talent in front of an audience. In recent years I’ve avoided repeated feats of virtuosity, and I’ve avoided being ‘on stage’ in various ways. I’ve explicitly shied away from working alone. Art is a place where—if you choose—you can be the singer, the guitarist, the roadie, the sound engineer, the pit photographer, the groupie, and the PR flack, all at the same time, while everyone else looks in every which direction. I love the messiness of this, and the unpredictability of a practice in which the author-spectator binary is abandoned or ignored.

JM: Maybe we could flip the old pedagogical saw and say that “those who can’t play instruments sing and those who can’t sing go on to make art”. I’m curious about how the “author-spectator binary” is contingent on some kind of spectacle (or text, I suppose). What does that relationship (or the breakdown of that binary) look like when there’s nothing else to look at? Or, if that question feels too obvious (or too opaque), could you offer some reflections on your experience in artists’ gardens?

DM: Well, it’s a truism that artists often “hide behind their work,” but I think the separation of artwork and author does little to avoid the extent to which the artist themself is also the thing offered up for consumption. The spectacle/text is all-encompassing. Thomas Pynchon may never give an interview until the day he dies, but we, loyal spectators, will forever be imbibing the Pynchonesque. What a breakdown of the author-spectator roleplay could bring is not necessarily “nothing else to look at,” but maybe “everything else to see.” A theorist whose work has influenced my thinking around this in the past couple of years is Stephen Wright, who argues that we should replace spectatorship with usership. What this implies is that art has to become more useful—perhaps so useful that it is indistinguishable from all the other useful things in the world. We should remember that ‘art’ as we know it is a set of conventions invented only in the last few hundred years. The ancient Greeks surely knew what to do with an oenochoe when they saw one on the dinner table.

JM: Do you remember in earlier days of the internet when email forwards or geocities pages would be filled with either lists of Steven Wright quotes that weren’t his or unattributed jokes that were his under the heading Head-Scratchers to make you go HMMMM? His work became useful in that context and functions pretty well as a voice and institution (let’s not say brand) such that it magnetizes ideas and phrases that feel like they could have been his. I would love to see him do a set of all the various jokes that have been speculatively attributed to him. The other Wright was my introduction to Bernard Brunon and a number of other artists whose practices he described as a kind of dark matter or, at least in my recollection, artists whose work is almost invisible unless you know what to look for. I’m curious about how your own interest in visibility (and in invisibility) deals with usefulness. I think it’s easy for us to see how a vessel can be doubly useful (I see what ewer doing there), but I’m curious about work that may be both useless (as art is sometimes described and proscribed to be) and invisible. We can easily make the argument that no art is truly useless but that its utility is bound up in our intellectual and sensorial experience, in its role as catalyst for thought and feeling—of course. Maybe there’s also something about the space between visibility and legibility that could be interesting to talk through.

DM: I would love to see Stewart Lee, my favorite meta-comedian, circle the wagons around Stephen Wright’s joke-magnetism. Or Yogi Berra’s, for that matter. I don’t know if The Other Wright has a funny bone, but my favorite anecdote of his is attributed to Brunon. Bernard Brunon is of course a very unwellknown artist who ran a house-painting business for 27 years, That’s Painting Productions, that was 100% a functioning house-painting business and 100% an ongoing artwork. I recall Wright mentioning in a talk he delivered to my laptop screen that Brunon often turned down invitations to exhibit in museums and galleries on the basis that he is “too busy working.” This is almost the diametric opposite of Duchamp’s boast that he had never worked a day in his life; that he had “never gotten wet.” Marcel, naturally, loved making the useful useless. If the readymade can said to be work, it is negative work. In the White Box, Duchamp asks “can works be made which are not “of art”?” This reads to me like a challenge that has never really been taken up. Let’s say that it was; would these “works” be invisible? I don’t think so—at least I believe that an artwork that is not visible (this is not to restrict visibility to the visual field alone) is not an artwork at all. But I agree with you that legibility is an important part of this—I’m interested in “works” that are legible as completely viable non-art to some people, and as completely viable art to others.

JM: I was once with a gaggle of artists at a small-town diner and there was curiosity about our presence there. “We’re residents just up the way,” one of us said something like. “Oh—you’re doctors?” they earnestly responded, trying to square our grubbiness with a concept of scrubs-iness. Like that, like practice, let’s shift in thinking about works to working. I’m always interested in how artists’ work impacts their work (and vice versa). An amount of your productive labor is given over to others in various ways. What other work have you done since you began making work? How have these works impacted your work? Are you interested, like Brunon, in fusing your work and your work in that capacity?

DM: Obviously art has an internal language and syntax, but we artists often don’t give non-artists enough credit for understanding what we do—or, worse, we relish the idea that what we do is somehow arcane. The classic “what kind of art do you do?” question can be a genuine invitation to dialogue, rather than eye-roll small-talk. Still, the possibility that a kind of double liberation can come from collocating (physically, conceptually) work and work is incredibly seductive. Ben Kinmont’s Sometimes a nicer sculpture is to be able to provide a living for your family (1998–ongoing) is a major inspiration. It’s no coincidence that many of these kinds of projects—Julia Bryan-Wilson named it ‘occupational realism’—occur at sites of commerce. Outside the work I’ve done in and around the art world, since I became an artist I’ve done all sorts of things for money—I’ve mowed lawns, moved furniture, hosted progressive dinners, ushered concert patrons, mounted televisions in fast food restaurants, and installed christmas decorations in shopping malls. Some of these jobs were fascinating (and many gave me ideas for artworks), but none seemed to offer the kind of structural stability needed for a true work-work fusion. But I keep thinking about it—I even wrote a manifesto last year calling for a group of artists to run a convenience store. This was heavily influenced by seeing Thomas Kong run his store Kim’s Corner Food over the past three years, but also by Chris Kraus’ book Kelly Lake Store, in which she applies (and is rejected) for a Guggenheim Fellowship to re-open a shuttered general store in one of those small Wisconsin towns you know so well.

JM: There’s something especially excellent about the convenience store as the site for these conceptual and physical experiments, as it relates to our earlier mention of usefulness and uselessness. Convenience stores have in their bones the understanding that you might be able to find a better selection or a better price or a better match elsewhere, but that there’s enough here, it’s not too expensive and what could be a better match than you and it being in the same place at the same time? They are eminently useful and in their relative predictability reveal their differences more immediately than other species of spaces. Did you know about Thomas Kong’s work before visited Kim’s or did you stumble upon that store just looking for a snack or something to drink? Do you remember your first conversations with him?

DM: I didn’t know anything about Thomas’ work before I met him in his store, although certainly a few other artists in Chicago had been aware of him for a while. The ironic thing is that I was walking home from the grocery store when I first noticed Kim’s Corner Food—I’m much more inclined to go the extra distance to avoid paying above retail (although there are a lot of surprising bargains at Kim’s). But you’ve absolutely nailed it when it comes to ‘convenience’—there is something irrepressible about it. If there’s a convenience store on your block, not even an Amazon drone could deliver you a cold Pepsi faster than you could put on your slippers and shuffle down the street. So what is this thing called ‘convenience’ we’re all so willing to shell out for? Perhaps it’s a kind of surplus value—maybe the surplus value that some people claim art produces. Fundamentally, though, it’s the use of this revenue-generating peculiarity to create time and space for other things that interests me. Some of the best jobs I’ve ever had have been inside the galleries of art museums, working in pseudo-security guard roles. I was always good at my job, but I also got a lot of thinking done and even conceived a bunch of artworks while making sure visitors didn’t touch the expensive paintings. One thing is for sure: the museums never docked my pay for thinking.

JM: I tried a form of active Cartesian splitting once while doing a cater-waiter gig in which I actively kept my mind occupied by a specific art problem that I had while I was dropping dinners and refilling glasses. I found that it was easier for me to be doing two kinds of work at once (at least something like that, with specific rhythms and relatively low agency) if I was focused in my mind-wandering. I also held one of those museum non-guard jobs before and thought often of this line from a David Berman piece about that kind of position: After guarding masterpieces for weeks, it feels good to stand in my dentist’s office before this cheap painting of a ship. Now, re-reading that piece I remember another line that I love: What Duchamp did with the urinal no longer surprises me, what surprises me is the idea that they had urinals back then. I was thinking yesterday about a class clown alone and home from school or wondering how if your work was doing your work would you daydream about washing dishes and populating spreadsheets. The you/r there is everyone/’s. I’m in rural Vermont as we type and two days ago a few of us walked a few miles to the General Store, which is mostly germane to this moment because of the name. There’s also been an uptick in an urban/e, curated “General Store” that strikes me now as being very much a Specific Store. Should interviews have questions at the end of each paragraph?

DM: Wow, that David Berman piece brought back a lot of memories for me. The anecdote about the guard placing asbestos fragments on the floor is brilliant—being sent home with pay is pretty much the ultimate work fantasy. To answer your non-question, if my work was doing my work (let’s say I was sent home with pay forever), I have a feeling I would still be washing dishes and populating spreadsheets, since they seem to be two fairly essential parts of living these days. I certainly wouldn’t be fantasizing about them. Do you daydream about writing grants when you’re in the studio? I recently got to see a piece of antique furniture called a dry sink, from the days before running water. Wasn’t a urinal without water just a pan? What would a dry spreadsheet look like? I’m not a luddite since I think being a reactionary is the surest way to misery, but I do enjoy inconvenience. Doing things the hard way is part of my DNA. Despite the idiosyncrasy of the space of the convenience store, some part of me thinks being an artist should mean being against convenience. Or maybe just against standardization. Where I live now, my nearest ‘convenience store’ is one of those monolithic chains that practically owns all of us. When Žižek first came to America, he was famously shocked by the condition of the toilets. Me, I was shocked to discover that businesses readily sell postage stamps for more than their face value. Still, I wouldn’t hold gouging like that against a mom-and-pop hardware store/pharmacy/tobacconist if they had some exotic plants in the window and a few handmade signs behind the counter.

JM: There’s a very specific handwriting that I associate with that scale of capitalism. My grandfather—Poppa Clown—who ran a vacuum store, produced his own special rug shampoo and sold bric and brac at the Cloverdale Swap Meet in greater Vancouver, had a style of writing that I still see in bodegas and on occasional telephone poles. When I just googled “my grandfather’s handwriting” I felt class anxiety that apparently he wasn’t a member of the quill-squiggling epistolarati. I’d like to switch gears a little bit—though I could type about handwriting for days—to ask you about Plinth Projects. I am, of course, very interested in platformist projects and outré curatorial conceits. This one has particular resonance for me in this moment because of the on-going conversations about the removal of Confederate monuments in this country. Perhaps you could share with us a bit about that project and how it has or hasn’t impacted your own thinking surrounding monuments here and in Australia and beyond.

DM: That’s a timely question. In the past few weeks that there has been renewed focus on monuments in Australia that celebrate colonial victories and ‘heroes,’ as rallying points for ongoing work by indigenous activists and their non-indigenous allies. Monuments are excellent things around which to focus people’s attention in a time of struggle, but they also allow us to see the absurdity and cruelty of the nation-state and its myths. Plinth Projects took an empty pedestal in Edinburgh Gardens, a popular park in Melbourne, as a site for a series of public art interventions in 2013 and 2014. The original statue, of Queen Victoria, had gone missing some time in the early 1900s, and as an empty pedestal it was actually very beautiful—it seemed to suggest, “we don’t make those kinds of myths here any more.” It had an empowering quality. My first real experience of the plinth was standing on top of it and making out with a date, not long after I moved to Melbourne in around 2009. A group of friends who used to meet for picnics in the park referred to it as the “statue without a statue.” In 2011 some traditionalist members of the otherwise left-wing local city council proposed erecting a new statue of Queen Victoria, a harebrained idea that was scuttled on the basis that it would be too expensive. So when we came along in 2012 and suggested mounting a series of con/temporary art projects on the plinth for a fraction of the cost, they were very glad to take us up on it. I do regret that we didn’t work with any indigenous artists, but I would at least suggest that our efforts, and those of the artists we commissioned, were deliberately anti-monumental. Art is almost never able to enact change at a political level, but I hope that it can at least present propositions for different ways to work against the status quo.

JM: Just a bit away from where I grew up there was an interesting response to a newly erected monument to sadistic conquistador Juan de Oñate y Salazar: indigenous activists chopped the statue’s foot off in mirroring recompense to his own brutality four centuries prior. This is a different but related manner. In the span of a week I was reacquainted with Laszlo and Lazlo Toth. The former is the geologist who attacked Michelangelo’s The Pietà in 1972 and the latter is the nom de plume of Don Novello (better known as a whole other character, Father Guido Sarducci) which he’s used for any number of wonderfully frustrating and deflating epistolary relationships with corporations, politicians and other loci of power. I’ve been thinking about this in part because I’m interested in characters like Sarducci because through their persistence of being as they move from show to show to movie to newspaper to show they stitch together diegeses and reveal them as a (speculatively) unified universe. Considering how fictions overlap might seem like an academic or obtuse response to our ever-worsening political climate. I obviously don’t advocate for what Toth did to The Pietà, but there’s something striking about how easily, if we were inclined, we could damage art. As a culture we have such respect for these objects that I won’t even consider touching a commercially-produced and friend-designated sculpture’s plinth without clearance. But they’re very vulnerable in real terms. Have you ever used a pseudonym?

DM: Late last winter I walked into an exhibition opening at an artist-run space in Chicago, having just hopped off my bike and carrying a large backpack of stuff. The entrance to the exhibition space was narrowed by an inexplicably-placed empty pedestal, and just as I had squeezed past I turned to hug a friend and swiftly wiped—with my backpack—a small sculpture off a shelf on the opposite wall. It didn’t break, but the gasps were audible, and everybody turned to stare at me. Someone from the gallery came over to ‘handle’ me. Most people there continued to give me the side-eye for the rest of the evening, as though my presence as a human in the space was worth less than the artwork I had accidentally assaulted. I was puzzled by the reaction. Somehow it never occurred to me that the artwork might have value beyond its role as a prop for our gathering there. Or, to look at it another way, it was our gathering there that was the thing that gave the object meaning. I feel the same way about monuments and other objects that aspire to permanence—they are just taking up space until people decide that they have meaning in their moment. This is the difference between making history and receiving history. Personally, I am not someone who cares a lot for objects (my favorite kinds of pseudonymous public performances are more along the lines of Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping), but I appreciate the role of icons because without them there could be no iconoclasm. And no, I’ve never used a pseudonym, but I have such a common name that it happily often functions like one.

JM: We hear often about art “starting a conversation” or, as you just described it, as a prop for our gathering (I’ve found the idea and phrase MacGuffin useful too). Like any good octopus, I’m both seduced by this idea and can easily summon another seven counter- and comple-example of how I experience art both in public and private. I’m curious maybe to hear more about the types of sociality and conversation you’re thinking about both with your work and the work that most appeals to you. I’ve spent 93.5% of this conversation thinking about it in terms of the constraints we’ve laid out and what I want to read and write about than about its eventual (and not circumstantial) public-ness. This is a very specific type of public-ness and of conversation. The inanity of the questions on talk shows is forgettable if not forgivable because we seem to want to hear about a celebrity’s vacation or their co-star’s pranks. In this process I am trying to write to you as if we were just writing to each other but there are also moments when I have a sense of your answer or, even, when I’m curious what that answer looks like as we type from our cheated-out talk show chairs. I want also to interject now briefly with one of part of that Toth thing that I think is an interesting historical footnote: apparently the first person to subdue Toth after his attack was a young Bob Cassilly, the artist who later created St. Louis’ City Museum. What is the best painting to have a conversation in front of? Have we ever seen a social practice work built around conversation that ended up yielding objects because people were so talked out they just wanted to spend their social time more materially? Someone told me recently that someone less recently had told them that when orchestrating large events everyone benefits from a small but irritating shared experience—like a quick rainstorm—to bond over otherwise they’ll seek that same antagonism from something more integral to the occasion itself—the dreary groom or the bad wine—which event planners generally try to avoid. How many times has the word “iconoclastic” been engraved into a monument?

DM: I’m not arguing that art’s main function is to “start a conversation.” That is the kind of cliché we see used all the time in defense of the indefensible—witness the responses of multiple US institutions in the past year to outcries over their exhibition of racially offensive artworks. What I mean is that the public presentation of artwork—even if distributed privately—is always an attempt to engender a public of some kind. But your question about paintings is a good place to start. For me, the best paintings to converse in front of are anti-authoritarian and dark and delightful and often vulgar. To return for a moment to my home country, I think of paintings by artists like Juan Davila, Gordon Hookey, Helen Johnson, or Janenne Eaton. But when I think of the conversations that could be had in their presence, I imagine viewers who share something with the artist (a community, an inclination, a grudge, a species) and see that thing affirmed or tested in some way. With artworks like this, you could say that the social both precedes and follows the artwork.

I’ve never understood the idea of a social practice that was somehow divorced from material practice—like you suggest, I see plenty of so-called social practice that generates objects. But I also see plenty of material practices that generate sociality. Bob Cassilly is actually a fine example of a kind of social practice artist who was motivated by a fierce allegiance to the material world. I had a chance to visit his unfinished opus Cementland while in St. Louis earlier this year, and I have been haunted ever since by the mystery of how he imagined his audiences moving and conversing through that space. There are also great examples of artworks that acknowledge the co-dependence of the social and the material while not privileging ‘art’ as an unimpeachable realm of experience. I’m thinking here of much of Group Material’s work, in particular their project Democracy (1988-89). For me, even something as frivolous as having a cuppa in the ‘tea break’ room in Jeremy Deller’s British Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale was completely moving and concretely social. I like your pop-sociological hand-me-down fable about bonding with strangers. I am for an art that can be a “small but irritating shared experience,” but we shouldn’t forget that any shared experience is completely dependent on other previous mutual experiences. A quick rainstorm feels like it does because we all know what it’s like to wear clothes, move through public space, and be struck by falling water.

Walking to Mordor

EDITION #26

Anatomical Theatres of Mixed Reality: The Operature

The Rise of the Performance Art Festival in the USA

How We Work: An Interview With Sara Drake

from Bad at Sports http://ift.tt/2x5le8P via IFTTT

[trrnndsmmssn]

Ablative Desert, Fugitive Gods

The cosmic furnace arises proper-like to scald our flesh-meat and evaporate our souls.

A few months we did a short bike ride beginning in San Bernardino, through Joshua Tree and Salton Sea. A recounting, henceforth:

 San Bernardino - White Man’s Hüzün - Yucca Valley

The trip started in the hills of San Bernardino. We untethered the bikes from the car and filled our panniers with the contents from a nearby Walmart. There was an abundance of fig newtons.

Almost immediately we encountered a long climb. David was unused to biking as medical school had given him few opportunities to temper his legs. Andrew and I had been practicing amongst the spandex’d multitudes of the Bay Area and fared somewhat better.

At length, we broke the back of the climb and turned onto a dusty hilly trail named simply 2NO1. 

The road proved a challenging combination of rocks and dust, at times not much more than a torturous rut. We quickly learned to spot patches of deep soft sand where we had to pedal hard lest we quagmire in the silt. Even still our back wheels fish-tailed frantically. 

There were very few people on this road, just one man in a truck thickly covered in fine sand sporting a Confederate flag. It looked a pale and dusty ghost, a silvery mirage of a collapsed and repudiated society.

Andrew amongst the Yucca’s

As we descended, the landscape thickened with Joshua tree. Before long, we had passed Pioneer Town. In Yucca Valley, we stopped at a cafe for cold beers and sandwiches. The community board was layered with adverts for Yoga, both cosmic and earthly.

The first day of riding is often subjectively arduous though objectively unremarkable. The entrance of Joshua Tree National Park lay at the end of a modest climb, but regardless, I panted and cursed this final climb.

Throaty American sports cars zoomed passed me, the vehicle de jour in this region. Every car looked like Dodge Charger. A convertible driving the wrong way screeched to a halt, the driver leaned out to shout, “’Ey yo, which way to Joshua Tree”? 

Out of breath, I could only gesture with a forward thrust of my chin.

The night fell quickly and in the nigrescent opaqueness we secretly camped behind some rocks. We compensated for the lack of a fire by listening to Joe Frank and drinking whiskey.

David at sunset

Defecation and the Art of Losing (Then Finding) One’s Bike

The next day we got up bright and early, quickly made coffee and rode out while the day was still inchoate. Rarely an early riser, it was strange for me to observe the sunrise. It happens rather quickly.

Through the cool morning we rapidly rode south east moving through the Mojave portion of the park - populated with tourists, boulders, and Joshua tree - into Pinto Basin which belongs to the Colorado desert. At the velocity of mopeds, we descended a long gradual slope into a wide dry flatness dotted with ocotillos, creosote and salt brush, a desolate expanded pan of baked dust. The sun accelerated into the apex of its blue keep.

Smooth, creamy tarmac and the sweet negative grade into radiant bosom of the Colorado Desert

Then and there I was overcome with a growing desire to shit, the urgent chthonic missives from my bowls starting to overrun my consciousness. All around me was a featureless plain.

After some time, I spotted a pile of rocks not far off the road. I pushed my bike over a trough of sand on the side of the road and onwards towards the rocks. In a great hurry, I abandoned my bike halfway, leaning it against an anonymous bush. My consciousness destroyed by a grating umbral desire, I hurried like a possessed man behind the rocks to resolve and evacuate the matter.

I walked out from the rocks a new man, I regarded world with a fresh mind. With a jaunt in my step I walked back out humming a pretty tune only to realize with a shock that I was lost. The manifold creosote and salt bushes suddenly appeared to me indistinguishable from each other and just tall enough to hide bike and road both. 

My monkey mind panicked, a fey miasma of anxiety washed over me. I rushed from one bush to another imagining distinctions, chasing one false memory after another. I grew breathless in the hot, dry heat, the sun beating down like an arbitrary archon. The world became a mirrored labyrinth.

I auto-exhorted: “Calm the fuck down, think of a reasonable plan”. Yet I continued to panic. I looked around me slowly - an uncaring landscape of burnt sienna, yellows, and washed out greens - and took deep breaths.

At last I saw a car drive by which indicated the road and I made for it. There I made a guess that I was behind where I had diverted off the road and headed up towards that way. I kept a sharp eye on the tip of the trough of sand on the side of the road, concentrating and focusing in a way which I rarely did. If my mind wandered even for a moment, I walked backed and rechecked my work. Diligent and ponderous, I tracked the ridge of sand, the affect of keen focus making time decelerate into a lumbering gate. Reality acquired a lugubrious viscosity, the here and now saturating my subjective purview and enacting a special kind of crisp madness. It was torture by radical mundanity.

At last, I found my bike leaned just under bush like any other. There was no Zeno’s Paradox preventing me from finding the break in the trough clearly carved by bike tires. The relief felt like a spike of drugs flooding the blood stream.

As I rode back onto the road I soon saw David circling back to find me.

“What in the hell happened to you?”

“I had to take a shit”, I replied.

A Dying Sea Circumscribed by Grapefruit  - An Uncomfortable Camp Out

The day continued to grow hotter as we sallied forth from the Cottonwood exit of Joshua Tree NP. We descended further to almost sea level and were greeted with a world akin to a convection oven. On the currents rode scalding winds, the hot breath of the desert.

On the side of Box Canyon Road I saw a tent pitched in the middle of an arc of littered beer cans. The land sizzled. There were few trees and fewer leaves, shade was rare and impoverished. Underneath the only good, occluding tree was a truck and a fat Mexican man eating his sandwich. 

It was unbearably hot and barren, the vegetation stingy and often burnt. Yet the first signs of Mecca on the northern shore of the Salton Sea were dense lush grapefruit orchards heavy with fruit tended by Mexican serfs. It was an oasis of verdancy that stood in strange juxtaposition to the blighted desert it existed within, a surreal outcome of US water rights and capitalism.

The most recent incarnation of the Salton Sea did not exist until 1905, but since then it has had a strange history. In recent years, it is only kept barely alive by polluted agricultural run off. The salinity of the water has climbed, causing mass die offs. Before entering Mecca we had read on wikipedia that “The US Geological Survey describes the smell as ‘objectionable’, ‘noxious’, ‘unique’, and ‘pervasive’.” Indeed the scent of the air was redolent of a ripe fart.

We ducked into a food court to drink endless icy draughts from a soda machine and escape the suffocating staticity of heat. We discussed our options; originally we had wanted to go as far as Slab City, but the idea of existing, much less cycling, in this seared pit seemed suddenly ridiculous. Crazed by the heat, we simply had to exit.

At 6pm we tore ourselves out of an air-conditioned gas station Starbucks and rode out on the 86 towards Salton City.The subsequent hours were brutal and long, the evening offering worthless tokens of relief. We passed decaying cities, former resort towns ablated by sun and sea, billboards offering to sell land for next to nothing repeating on and on with a slow metronomic regularity, a deathly andante.

It was nearly pitch dark by the time we turned off onto the Borrego Salton Sea Way. We camped out on a patch of desert. Even the real night offered no cessation from the heat, the desert now continued to bake us from below. Bone tired from a long day, our filthy bodies marinated in distilled secretions, we barely had the energy to pitch a minimal camp. David ate half a pack of peanuts and passed out. Without much ado, we all quickly slipped into obliterating slumber.

Old Time Western RV Resort - TV, Beers, and Pools

We were packed up and on the road just as the sun threatened to appear. Still exhausted from the previous day we pushed ourselves to make miles before the heat truly came to evaporate our will. Periodically hosing myself down with my squirt bottle offered temporary but real respite. 

The ride was blissfully flat. Riding fast, we arrived in Borrego Springs in time for breakfast. We ducked into a cafe and ate a cornucopia of breakfast foods and drank endless cups of coffee. Afterwards we found an RV park with a pool and checked in. The rooms were in buildings fronted by facades of an old western town. I forget which building we got, perhaps the Saloon or Barber shop.

Never had watching TV ever been so satisfying. With the A/C blasting, we watched a country sheriff deal with an errant snapping turtle somewhere near the Texas-Louisiana border. I learned that TV has evolved into a multiplicative art form, though repetition and folding a minute narrative is expanded like pulled taffy. I welcomed its stultifying effects.

We went out to the pool, beers in hand, and experienced a sort of joy which I cannot depict with any essential accuracy. At dinner while we feasted on variations of the burger, we all knew that that, short as it had been, mentally the trip was over; and we we never had much gumption to begin with. And so, the ghost was given up.

Climbing out of Desert - Disappointment and Yeti - Camp In the Hills - Evac to LA

With some sadness, and yet refreshed, we left Borrego Springs and climbed up over the mountain ridges which delineated Colorado Desert’s western limits. It was a surprisingly hard and prolonged climb but I felt motivated by the sensation that we were escaping the desert. As we approached the top we were rewarded by stunning broad vistas of where we had been. We looked down upon a browned and bereft landscape but further off near the horizon, the long shimmering line of the rotting sea, putrid yet crystalline-blue, scintillated in the morning light. The span of merely a day had already fostered a coying sense of nostalgia for a place we were still in the middle of escaping.

Once over the ridge the landscape changed dramatically. Trees and vegetation existed there. We stopped in Ranchita hoping to provision at the market next to the Yeti sculpture but we arrived too early by hours. We simply pushed on towards our destination: a campsite in the Palomar Mountains.

At Holcomb Village we stopped at the gas station, perhaps the only one in town, for lunch. The bulletin board posted, amongst offers for goods and services, a vehement letter excoriating the person who had shot the author’s dogs, ending with the invective: “SLEEP WELL ASSHOLE!!!”. There was something sincere, direct, and archetypal about the letter.

That night our ride arrived in and we ate and drank our fill. David’s mind had already moved to other matters that would occur in his near future. In the morning we strapped the bikes onto the car and drove to LA; and, in such a manner, continued on with our mundane, cosmic lives.

[flauntpage]

Works of:  A Conversation with Dan Miller by Jesse Malmed

When we have the internet—like we must right now—we find ourselves down any number of world-holes. I just tried to find a concrete answer as to how long after being born a baby can remain unnamed. There are states’ rights and rules about accent marks and banned names (a good enough band name, I think) and one source that says it’s 60 days in Australia and 42 in the UK. I’m typing this in Illinois and thinking both about the specificities of titles and sitting down for a job conversation and staging an argument and what you’re about to read. Dan Miller is relentlessly curious and critical, attuned both to the minutiae of our lived experiences and the systemic forces assigned to buffing them out. Before coming to Chicago in 2014 to attend Northwestern’s MFA program, Dan was living in Melbourne, where that critical curiosity and restless attentiveness began to find form in exhibitions, objects, situations and texts. The most visible component of his practice over the last few years—his ongoing, wildly generative collaboration with Thomas Kong—is finding new publics through a recent (and really excellent) publication with Half Letter Press. There’s a wry sleight of hand continually at play in Dan’s activities—somehow art about art about not art; hard work and hardly work; collaborative and singular. We both talk both about his work and then don’t. We barely mention his garden even though it was one of the things I thought about most when thinking about this, a slow conversation Dan and I had over the last few weeks. The images are all his.

Jesse Malmed: Let’s start somewhere in the middle: what were your cultural interests in your mid- to late-teens? And what would have been the obvious first question in an interview about your practice at that moment?

Dan Miller: I could conveniently bookend that period with two musical experiences: seeing Billy Joel and Elton John in concert as a fourteen-year-old, and seeing the anonymous art-rock band TISM play shortly before my nineteenth birthday. What I learned in those years is reflected in the enormous gap between the family-friendly Anglo-American über-culture and an Australian band who were wasting their university educations on writing vulgar anthems against the establishment. In those years it was music where I encountered ordinary people making things in response to their immediate worlds. This is the kind of culture I’m still interested in today. Back then, I gravitated to musicians and writers who understood our double isolation; suburbia at the “arse end of the world.” I was an enthusiastic spectator, but I completely failed to imagine producing anything other than good grades. If someone had asked me about my ‘practice’ then, I would have assumed they were asking what I was going to do when I finished law school.

JM: Transgressive/aggressive/soft/DIY/DIT/&c musics (and the communities surrounding them) seem to be the gateway for so many artists’ awakenings and interests in making culture. I think part of the ubiquity of this experience is reflected in your answer—conventional music is everywhere, so unconventional music has something obvious to bounce against, to camouflage itself as, to appear in stark relief against—in the way that maybe tens of thousands of people don’t assemble to watch a bloated but weak example of social practice on SPTV and then find their minds blown when they see a really killer sopra group playing in their cousin’s basement. Or maybe that’s what reality tv is. Did you ever play in bands? Are there other obvious or non-obvious ways that impacted your practice?

DM: You’re absolutely right. Although for many would-be artists I think music is the gateway but not the drug. I’ve never admitted this, but I was in a band in high school with a couple of friends for about five minutes. We practiced maybe twice, and we never played a show. Because I couldn’t play any instruments, I was designated as the singer. Because I couldn’t sing, we hit a wall pretty quickly (none of us appreciated the ideology of punk). There is a cassette tape in the bottom of a drawer somewhere that I really hope has been sitting next to a strong magnet this whole time. If anything from this experience influenced me it was the sheer terror of the idea of nakedly attempting to perform a talent in front of an audience. In recent years I’ve avoided repeated feats of virtuosity, and I’ve avoided being ‘on stage’ in various ways. I’ve explicitly shied away from working alone. Art is a place where—if you choose—you can be the singer, the guitarist, the roadie, the sound engineer, the pit photographer, the groupie, and the PR flack, all at the same time, while everyone else looks in every which direction. I love the messiness of this, and the unpredictability of a practice in which the author-spectator binary is abandoned or ignored.

JM: Maybe we could flip the old pedagogical saw and say that “those who can’t play instruments sing and those who can’t sing go on to make art”. I’m curious about how the “author-spectator binary” is contingent on some kind of spectacle (or text, I suppose). What does that relationship (or the breakdown of that binary) look like when there’s nothing else to look at? Or, if that question feels too obvious (or too opaque), could you offer some reflections on your experience in artists’ gardens?

DM: Well, it’s a truism that artists often “hide behind their work,” but I think the separation of artwork and author does little to avoid the extent to which the artist themself is also the thing offered up for consumption. The spectacle/text is all-encompassing. Thomas Pynchon may never give an interview until the day he dies, but we, loyal spectators, will forever be imbibing the Pynchonesque. What a breakdown of the author-spectator roleplay could bring is not necessarily “nothing else to look at,” but maybe “everything else to see.” A theorist whose work has influenced my thinking around this in the past couple of years is Stephen Wright, who argues that we should replace spectatorship with usership. What this implies is that art has to become more useful—perhaps so useful that it is indistinguishable from all the other useful things in the world. We should remember that ‘art’ as we know it is a set of conventions invented only in the last few hundred years. The ancient Greeks surely knew what to do with an oenochoe when they saw one on the dinner table.

JM: Do you remember in earlier days of the internet when email forwards or geocities pages would be filled with either lists of Steven Wright quotes that weren’t his or unattributed jokes that were his under the heading Head-Scratchers to make you go HMMMM? His work became useful in that context and functions pretty well as a voice and institution (let’s not say brand) such that it magnetizes ideas and phrases that feel like they could have been his. I would love to see him do a set of all the various jokes that have been speculatively attributed to him. The other Wright was my introduction to Bernard Brunon and a number of other artists whose practices he described as a kind of dark matter or, at least in my recollection, artists whose work is almost invisible unless you know what to look for. I’m curious about how your own interest in visibility (and in invisibility) deals with usefulness. I think it’s easy for us to see how a vessel can be doubly useful (I see what ewer doing there), but I’m curious about work that may be both useless (as art is sometimes described and proscribed to be) and invisible. We can easily make the argument that no art is truly useless but that its utility is bound up in our intellectual and sensorial experience, in its role as catalyst for thought and feeling—of course. Maybe there’s also something about the space between visibility and legibility that could be interesting to talk through.

DM: I would love to see Stewart Lee, my favorite meta-comedian, circle the wagons around Stephen Wright’s joke-magnetism. Or Yogi Berra’s, for that matter. I don’t know if The Other Wright has a funny bone, but my favorite anecdote of his is attributed to Brunon. Bernard Brunon is of course a very unwellknown artist who ran a house-painting business for 27 years, That’s Painting Productions, that was 100% a functioning house-painting business and 100% an ongoing artwork. I recall Wright mentioning in a talk he delivered to my laptop screen that Brunon often turned down invitations to exhibit in museums and galleries on the basis that he is “too busy working.” This is almost the diametric opposite of Duchamp’s boast that he had never worked a day in his life; that he had “never gotten wet.” Marcel, naturally, loved making the useful useless. If the readymade can said to be work, it is negative work. In the White Box, Duchamp asks “can works be made which are not “of art”?” This reads to me like a challenge that has never really been taken up. Let’s say that it was; would these “works” be invisible? I don’t think so—at least I believe that an artwork that is not visible (this is not to restrict visibility to the visual field alone) is not an artwork at all. But I agree with you that legibility is an important part of this—I’m interested in “works” that are legible as completely viable non-art to some people, and as completely viable art to others.

JM: I was once with a gaggle of artists at a small-town diner and there was curiosity about our presence there. “We’re residents just up the way,” one of us said something like. “Oh—you’re doctors?” they earnestly responded, trying to square our grubbiness with a concept of scrubs-iness. Like that, like practice, let’s shift in thinking about works to working. I’m always interested in how artists’ work impacts their work (and vice versa). An amount of your productive labor is given over to others in various ways. What other work have you done since you began making work? How have these works impacted your work? Are you interested, like Brunon, in fusing your work and your work in that capacity?

DM: Obviously art has an internal language and syntax, but we artists often don’t give non-artists enough credit for understanding what we do—or, worse, we relish the idea that what we do is somehow arcane. The classic “what kind of art do you do?” question can be a genuine invitation to dialogue, rather than eye-roll small-talk. Still, the possibility that a kind of double liberation can come from collocating (physically, conceptually) work and work is incredibly seductive. Ben Kinmont’s Sometimes a nicer sculpture is to be able to provide a living for your family (1998–ongoing) is a major inspiration. It’s no coincidence that many of these kinds of projects—Julia Bryan-Wilson named it ‘occupational realism’—occur at sites of commerce. Outside the work I’ve done in and around the art world, since I became an artist I’ve done all sorts of things for money—I’ve mowed lawns, moved furniture, hosted progressive dinners, ushered concert patrons, mounted televisions in fast food restaurants, and installed christmas decorations in shopping malls. Some of these jobs were fascinating (and many gave me ideas for artworks), but none seemed to offer the kind of structural stability needed for a true work-work fusion. But I keep thinking about it—I even wrote a manifesto last year calling for a group of artists to run a convenience store. This was heavily influenced by seeing Thomas Kong run his store Kim’s Corner Food over the past three years, but also by Chris Kraus’ book Kelly Lake Store, in which she applies (and is rejected) for a Guggenheim Fellowship to re-open a shuttered general store in one of those small Wisconsin towns you know so well.

JM: There’s something especially excellent about the convenience store as the site for these conceptual and physical experiments, as it relates to our earlier mention of usefulness and uselessness. Convenience stores have in their bones the understanding that you might be able to find a better selection or a better price or a better match elsewhere, but that there’s enough here, it’s not too expensive and what could be a better match than you and it being in the same place at the same time? They are eminently useful and in their relative predictability reveal their differences more immediately than other species of spaces. Did you know about Thomas Kong’s work before visited Kim’s or did you stumble upon that store just looking for a snack or something to drink? Do you remember your first conversations with him?

DM: I didn’t know anything about Thomas’ work before I met him in his store, although certainly a few other artists in Chicago had been aware of him for a while. The ironic thing is that I was walking home from the grocery store when I first noticed Kim’s Corner Food—I’m much more inclined to go the extra distance to avoid paying above retail (although there are a lot of surprising bargains at Kim’s). But you’ve absolutely nailed it when it comes to ‘convenience’—there is something irrepressible about it. If there’s a convenience store on your block, not even an Amazon drone could deliver you a cold Pepsi faster than you could put on your slippers and shuffle down the street. So what is this thing called ‘convenience’ we’re all so willing to shell out for? Perhaps it’s a kind of surplus value—maybe the surplus value that some people claim art produces. Fundamentally, though, it’s the use of this revenue-generating peculiarity to create time and space for other things that interests me. Some of the best jobs I’ve ever had have been inside the galleries of art museums, working in pseudo-security guard roles. I was always good at my job, but I also got a lot of thinking done and even conceived a bunch of artworks while making sure visitors didn’t touch the expensive paintings. One thing is for sure: the museums never docked my pay for thinking.

JM: I tried a form of active Cartesian splitting once while doing a cater-waiter gig in which I actively kept my mind occupied by a specific art problem that I had while I was dropping dinners and refilling glasses. I found that it was easier for me to be doing two kinds of work at once (at least something like that, with specific rhythms and relatively low agency) if I was focused in my mind-wandering. I also held one of those museum non-guard jobs before and thought often of this line from a David Berman piece about that kind of position: After guarding masterpieces for weeks, it feels good to stand in my dentist’s office before this cheap painting of a ship. Now, re-reading that piece I remember another line that I love: What Duchamp did with the urinal no longer surprises me, what surprises me is the idea that they had urinals back then. I was thinking yesterday about a class clown alone and home from school or wondering how if your work was doing your work would you daydream about washing dishes and populating spreadsheets. The you/r there is everyone/’s. I’m in rural Vermont as we type and two days ago a few of us walked a few miles to the General Store, which is mostly germane to this moment because of the name. There’s also been an uptick in an urban/e, curated “General Store” that strikes me now as being very much a Specific Store. Should interviews have questions at the end of each paragraph?

DM: Wow, that David Berman piece brought back a lot of memories for me. The anecdote about the guard placing asbestos fragments on the floor is brilliant—being sent home with pay is pretty much the ultimate work fantasy. To answer your non-question, if my work was doing my work (let’s say I was sent home with pay forever), I have a feeling I would still be washing dishes and populating spreadsheets, since they seem to be two fairly essential parts of living these days. I certainly wouldn’t be fantasizing about them. Do you daydream about writing grants when you’re in the studio? I recently got to see a piece of antique furniture called a dry sink, from the days before running water. Wasn’t a urinal without water just a pan? What would a dry spreadsheet look like? I’m not a luddite since I think being a reactionary is the surest way to misery, but I do enjoy inconvenience. Doing things the hard way is part of my DNA. Despite the idiosyncrasy of the space of the convenience store, some part of me thinks being an artist should mean being against convenience. Or maybe just against standardization. Where I live now, my nearest ‘convenience store’ is one of those monolithic chains that practically owns all of us. When Žižek first came to America, he was famously shocked by the condition of the toilets. Me, I was shocked to discover that businesses readily sell postage stamps for more than their face value. Still, I wouldn’t hold gouging like that against a mom-and-pop hardware store/pharmacy/tobacconist if they had some exotic plants in the window and a few handmade signs behind the counter.

JM: There’s a very specific handwriting that I associate with that scale of capitalism. My grandfather—Poppa Clown—who ran a vacuum store, produced his own special rug shampoo and sold bric and brac at the Cloverdale Swap Meet in greater Vancouver, had a style of writing that I still see in bodegas and on occasional telephone poles. When I just googled “my grandfather’s handwriting” I felt class anxiety that apparently he wasn’t a member of the quill-squiggling epistolarati. I’d like to switch gears a little bit—though I could type about handwriting for days—to ask you about Plinth Projects. I am, of course, very interested in platformist projects and outré curatorial conceits. This one has particular resonance for me in this moment because of the on-going conversations about the removal of Confederate monuments in this country. Perhaps you could share with us a bit about that project and how it has or hasn’t impacted your own thinking surrounding monuments here and in Australia and beyond.

DM: That’s a timely question. In the past few weeks that there has been renewed focus on monuments in Australia that celebrate colonial victories and ‘heroes,’ as rallying points for ongoing work by indigenous activists and their non-indigenous allies. Monuments are excellent things around which to focus people’s attention in a time of struggle, but they also allow us to see the absurdity and cruelty of the nation-state and its myths. Plinth Projects took an empty pedestal in Edinburgh Gardens, a popular park in Melbourne, as a site for a series of public art interventions in 2013 and 2014. The original statue, of Queen Victoria, had gone missing some time in the early 1900s, and as an empty pedestal it was actually very beautiful—it seemed to suggest, “we don’t make those kinds of myths here any more.” It had an empowering quality. My first real experience of the plinth was standing on top of it and making out with a date, not long after I moved to Melbourne in around 2009. A group of friends who used to meet for picnics in the park referred to it as the “statue without a statue.” In 2011 some traditionalist members of the otherwise left-wing local city council proposed erecting a new statue of Queen Victoria, a harebrained idea that was scuttled on the basis that it would be too expensive. So when we came along in 2012 and suggested mounting a series of con/temporary art projects on the plinth for a fraction of the cost, they were very glad to take us up on it. I do regret that we didn’t work with any indigenous artists, but I would at least suggest that our efforts, and those of the artists we commissioned, were deliberately anti-monumental. Art is almost never able to enact change at a political level, but I hope that it can at least present propositions for different ways to work against the status quo.

JM: Just a bit away from where I grew up there was an interesting response to a newly erected monument to sadistic conquistador Juan de Oñate y Salazar: indigenous activists chopped the statue’s foot off in mirroring recompense to his own brutality four centuries prior. This is a different but related manner. In the span of a week I was reacquainted with Laszlo and Lazlo Toth. The former is the geologist who attacked Michelangelo’s The Pietà in 1972 and the latter is the nom de plume of Don Novello (better known as a whole other character, Father Guido Sarducci) which he’s used for any number of wonderfully frustrating and deflating epistolary relationships with corporations, politicians and other loci of power. I’ve been thinking about this in part because I’m interested in characters like Sarducci because through their persistence of being as they move from show to show to movie to newspaper to show they stitch together diegeses and reveal them as a (speculatively) unified universe. Considering how fictions overlap might seem like an academic or obtuse response to our ever-worsening political climate. I obviously don’t advocate for what Toth did to The Pietà, but there’s something striking about how easily, if we were inclined, we could damage art. As a culture we have such respect for these objects that I won’t even consider touching a commercially-produced and friend-designated sculpture’s plinth without clearance. But they’re very vulnerable in real terms. Have you ever used a pseudonym?

DM: Late last winter I walked into an exhibition opening at an artist-run space in Chicago, having just hopped off my bike and carrying a large backpack of stuff. The entrance to the exhibition space was narrowed by an inexplicably-placed empty pedestal, and just as I had squeezed past I turned to hug a friend and swiftly wiped—with my backpack—a small sculpture off a shelf on the opposite wall. It didn’t break, but the gasps were audible, and everybody turned to stare at me. Someone from the gallery came over to ‘handle’ me. Most people there continued to give me the side-eye for the rest of the evening, as though my presence as a human in the space was worth less than the artwork I had accidentally assaulted. I was puzzled by the reaction. Somehow it never occurred to me that the artwork might have value beyond its role as a prop for our gathering there. Or, to look at it another way, it was our gathering there that was the thing that gave the object meaning. I feel the same way about monuments and other objects that aspire to permanence—they are just taking up space until people decide that they have meaning in their moment. This is the difference between making history and receiving history. Personally, I am not someone who cares a lot for objects (my favorite kinds of pseudonymous public performances are more along the lines of Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping), but I appreciate the role of icons because without them there could be no iconoclasm. And no, I’ve never used a pseudonym, but I have such a common name that it happily often functions like one.

JM: We hear often about art “starting a conversation” or, as you just described it, as a prop for our gathering (I’ve found the idea and phrase MacGuffin useful too). Like any good octopus, I’m both seduced by this idea and can easily summon another seven counter- and comple-example of how I experience art both in public and private. I’m curious maybe to hear more about the types of sociality and conversation you’re thinking about both with your work and the work that most appeals to you. I’ve spent 93.5% of this conversation thinking about it in terms of the constraints we’ve laid out and what I want to read and write about than about its eventual (and not circumstantial) public-ness. This is a very specific type of public-ness and of conversation. The inanity of the questions on talk shows is forgettable if not forgivable because we seem to want to hear about a celebrity’s vacation or their co-star’s pranks. In this process I am trying to write to you as if we were just writing to each other but there are also moments when I have a sense of your answer or, even, when I’m curious what that answer looks like as we type from our cheated-out talk show chairs. I want also to interject now briefly with one of part of that Toth thing that I think is an interesting historical footnote: apparently the first person to subdue Toth after his attack was a young Bob Cassilly, the artist who later created St. Louis’ City Museum. What is the best painting to have a conversation in front of? Have we ever seen a social practice work built around conversation that ended up yielding objects because people were so talked out they just wanted to spend their social time more materially? Someone told me recently that someone less recently had told them that when orchestrating large events everyone benefits from a small but irritating shared experience—like a quick rainstorm—to bond over otherwise they’ll seek that same antagonism from something more integral to the occasion itself—the dreary groom or the bad wine—which event planners generally try to avoid. How many times has the word “iconoclastic” been engraved into a monument?

DM: I’m not arguing that art’s main function is to “start a conversation.” That is the kind of cliché we see used all the time in defense of the indefensible—witness the responses of multiple US institutions in the past year to outcries over their exhibition of racially offensive artworks. What I mean is that the public presentation of artwork—even if distributed privately—is always an attempt to engender a public of some kind. But your question about paintings is a good place to start. For me, the best paintings to converse in front of are anti-authoritarian and dark and delightful and often vulgar. To return for a moment to my home country, I think of paintings by artists like Juan Davila, Gordon Hookey, Helen Johnson, or Janenne Eaton. But when I think of the conversations that could be had in their presence, I imagine viewers who share something with the artist (a community, an inclination, a grudge, a species) and see that thing affirmed or tested in some way. With artworks like this, you could say that the social both precedes and follows the artwork.

I’ve never understood the idea of a social practice that was somehow divorced from material practice—like you suggest, I see plenty of so-called social practice that generates objects. But I also see plenty of material practices that generate sociality. Bob Cassilly is actually a fine example of a kind of social practice artist who was motivated by a fierce allegiance to the material world. I had a chance to visit his unfinished opus Cementland while in St. Louis earlier this year, and I have been haunted ever since by the mystery of how he imagined his audiences moving and conversing through that space. There are also great examples of artworks that acknowledge the co-dependence of the social and the material while not privileging ‘art’ as an unimpeachable realm of experience. I’m thinking here of much of Group Material’s work, in particular their project Democracy (1988-89). For me, even something as frivolous as having a cuppa in the ‘tea break’ room in Jeremy Deller’s British Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale was completely moving and concretely social. I like your pop-sociological hand-me-down fable about bonding with strangers. I am for an art that can be a “small but irritating shared experience,” but we shouldn’t forget that any shared experience is completely dependent on other previous mutual experiences. A quick rainstorm feels like it does because we all know what it’s like to wear clothes, move through public space, and be struck by falling water.

Walking to Mordor

EDITION #26

Anatomical Theatres of Mixed Reality: The Operature

The Rise of the Performance Art Festival in the USA

How We Work: An Interview With Sara Drake

Works of:  A Conversation with Dan Miller by Jesse Malmed published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

Works of:  A Conversation with Dan Miller by Jesse Malmed

When we have the internet—like we must right now—we find ourselves down any number of world-holes. I just tried to find a concrete answer as to how long after being born a baby can remain unnamed. There are states’ rights and rules about accent marks and banned names (a good enough band name, I think) and one source that says it’s 60 days in Australia and 42 in the UK. I’m typing this in Illinois and thinking both about the specificities of titles and sitting down for a job conversation and staging an argument and what you’re about to read. Dan Miller is relentlessly curious and critical, attuned both to the minutiae of our lived experiences and the systemic forces assigned to buffing them out. Before coming to Chicago in 2014 to attend Northwestern’s MFA program, Dan was living in Melbourne, where that critical curiosity and restless attentiveness began to find form in exhibitions, objects, situations and texts. The most visible component of his practice over the last few years—his ongoing, wildly generative collaboration with Thomas Kong—is finding new publics through a recent (and really excellent) publication with Half Letter Press. There’s a wry sleight of hand continually at play in Dan’s activities—somehow art about art about not art; hard work and hardly work; collaborative and singular. We both talk both about his work and then don’t. We barely mention his garden even though it was one of the things I thought about most when thinking about this, a slow conversation Dan and I had over the last few weeks. The images are all his.

Jesse Malmed: Let’s start somewhere in the middle: what were your cultural interests in your mid- to late-teens? And what would have been the obvious first question in an interview about your practice at that moment?

Dan Miller: I could conveniently bookend that period with two musical experiences: seeing Billy Joel and Elton John in concert as a fourteen-year-old, and seeing the anonymous art-rock band TISM play shortly before my nineteenth birthday. What I learned in those years is reflected in the enormous gap between the family-friendly Anglo-American über-culture and an Australian band who were wasting their university educations on writing vulgar anthems against the establishment. In those years it was music where I encountered ordinary people making things in response to their immediate worlds. This is the kind of culture I’m still interested in today. Back then, I gravitated to musicians and writers who understood our double isolation; suburbia at the “arse end of the world.” I was an enthusiastic spectator, but I completely failed to imagine producing anything other than good grades. If someone had asked me about my ‘practice’ then, I would have assumed they were asking what I was going to do when I finished law school.

JM: Transgressive/aggressive/soft/DIY/DIT/&c musics (and the communities surrounding them) seem to be the gateway for so many artists’ awakenings and interests in making culture. I think part of the ubiquity of this experience is reflected in your answer—conventional music is everywhere, so unconventional music has something obvious to bounce against, to camouflage itself as, to appear in stark relief against—in the way that maybe tens of thousands of people don’t assemble to watch a bloated but weak example of social practice on SPTV and then find their minds blown when they see a really killer sopra group playing in their cousin’s basement. Or maybe that’s what reality tv is. Did you ever play in bands? Are there other obvious or non-obvious ways that impacted your practice?

DM: You’re absolutely right. Although for many would-be artists I think music is the gateway but not the drug. I’ve never admitted this, but I was in a band in high school with a couple of friends for about five minutes. We practiced maybe twice, and we never played a show. Because I couldn’t play any instruments, I was designated as the singer. Because I couldn’t sing, we hit a wall pretty quickly (none of us appreciated the ideology of punk). There is a cassette tape in the bottom of a drawer somewhere that I really hope has been sitting next to a strong magnet this whole time. If anything from this experience influenced me it was the sheer terror of the idea of nakedly attempting to perform a talent in front of an audience. In recent years I’ve avoided repeated feats of virtuosity, and I’ve avoided being ‘on stage’ in various ways. I’ve explicitly shied away from working alone. Art is a place where—if you choose—you can be the singer, the guitarist, the roadie, the sound engineer, the pit photographer, the groupie, and the PR flack, all at the same time, while everyone else looks in every which direction. I love the messiness of this, and the unpredictability of a practice in which the author-spectator binary is abandoned or ignored.

JM: Maybe we could flip the old pedagogical saw and say that “those who can’t play instruments sing and those who can’t sing go on to make art”. I’m curious about how the “author-spectator binary” is contingent on some kind of spectacle (or text, I suppose). What does that relationship (or the breakdown of that binary) look like when there’s nothing else to look at? Or, if that question feels too obvious (or too opaque), could you offer some reflections on your experience in artists’ gardens?

DM: Well, it’s a truism that artists often “hide behind their work,” but I think the separation of artwork and author does little to avoid the extent to which the artist themself is also the thing offered up for consumption. The spectacle/text is all-encompassing. Thomas Pynchon may never give an interview until the day he dies, but we, loyal spectators, will forever be imbibing the Pynchonesque. What a breakdown of the author-spectator roleplay could bring is not necessarily “nothing else to look at,” but maybe “everything else to see.” A theorist whose work has influenced my thinking around this in the past couple of years is Stephen Wright, who argues that we should replace spectatorship with usership. What this implies is that art has to become more useful—perhaps so useful that it is indistinguishable from all the other useful things in the world. We should remember that ‘art’ as we know it is a set of conventions invented only in the last few hundred years. The ancient Greeks surely knew what to do with an oenochoe when they saw one on the dinner table.

JM: Do you remember in earlier days of the internet when email forwards or geocities pages would be filled with either lists of Steven Wright quotes that weren’t his or unattributed jokes that were his under the heading Head-Scratchers to make you go HMMMM? His work became useful in that context and functions pretty well as a voice and institution (let’s not say brand) such that it magnetizes ideas and phrases that feel like they could have been his. I would love to see him do a set of all the various jokes that have been speculatively attributed to him. The other Wright was my introduction to Bernard Brunon and a number of other artists whose practices he described as a kind of dark matter or, at least in my recollection, artists whose work is almost invisible unless you know what to look for. I’m curious about how your own interest in visibility (and in invisibility) deals with usefulness. I think it’s easy for us to see how a vessel can be doubly useful (I see what ewer doing there), but I’m curious about work that may be both useless (as art is sometimes described and proscribed to be) and invisible. We can easily make the argument that no art is truly useless but that its utility is bound up in our intellectual and sensorial experience, in its role as catalyst for thought and feeling—of course. Maybe there’s also something about the space between visibility and legibility that could be interesting to talk through.

DM: I would love to see Stewart Lee, my favorite meta-comedian, circle the wagons around Stephen Wright’s joke-magnetism. Or Yogi Berra’s, for that matter. I don’t know if The Other Wright has a funny bone, but my favorite anecdote of his is attributed to Brunon. Bernard Brunon is of course a very unwellknown artist who ran a house-painting business for 27 years, That’s Painting Productions, that was 100% a functioning house-painting business and 100% an ongoing artwork. I recall Wright mentioning in a talk he delivered to my laptop screen that Brunon often turned down invitations to exhibit in museums and galleries on the basis that he is “too busy working.” This is almost the diametric opposite of Duchamp’s boast that he had never worked a day in his life; that he had “never gotten wet.” Marcel, naturally, loved making the useful useless. If the readymade can said to be work, it is negative work. In the White Box, Duchamp asks “can works be made which are not “of art”?” This reads to me like a challenge that has never really been taken up. Let’s say that it was; would these “works” be invisible? I don’t think so—at least I believe that an artwork that is not visible (this is not to restrict visibility to the visual field alone) is not an artwork at all. But I agree with you that legibility is an important part of this—I’m interested in “works” that are legible as completely viable non-art to some people, and as completely viable art to others.

JM: I was once with a gaggle of artists at a small-town diner and there was curiosity about our presence there. “We’re residents just up the way,” one of us said something like. “Oh—you’re doctors?” they earnestly responded, trying to square our grubbiness with a concept of scrubs-iness. Like that, like practice, let’s shift in thinking about works to working. I’m always interested in how artists’ work impacts their work (and vice versa). An amount of your productive labor is given over to others in various ways. What other work have you done since you began making work? How have these works impacted your work? Are you interested, like Brunon, in fusing your work and your work in that capacity?

DM: Obviously art has an internal language and syntax, but we artists often don’t give non-artists enough credit for understanding what we do—or, worse, we relish the idea that what we do is somehow arcane. The classic “what kind of art do you do?” question can be a genuine invitation to dialogue, rather than eye-roll small-talk. Still, the possibility that a kind of double liberation can come from collocating (physically, conceptually) work and work is incredibly seductive. Ben Kinmont’s Sometimes a nicer sculpture is to be able to provide a living for your family (1998–ongoing) is a major inspiration. It’s no coincidence that many of these kinds of projects—Julia Bryan-Wilson named it ‘occupational realism’—occur at sites of commerce. Outside the work I’ve done in and around the art world, since I became an artist I’ve done all sorts of things for money—I’ve mowed lawns, moved furniture, hosted progressive dinners, ushered concert patrons, mounted televisions in fast food restaurants, and installed christmas decorations in shopping malls. Some of these jobs were fascinating (and many gave me ideas for artworks), but none seemed to offer the kind of structural stability needed for a true work-work fusion. But I keep thinking about it—I even wrote a manifesto last year calling for a group of artists to run a convenience store. This was heavily influenced by seeing Thomas Kong run his store Kim’s Corner Food over the past three years, but also by Chris Kraus’ book Kelly Lake Store, in which she applies (and is rejected) for a Guggenheim Fellowship to re-open a shuttered general store in one of those small Wisconsin towns you know so well.

JM: There’s something especially excellent about the convenience store as the site for these conceptual and physical experiments, as it relates to our earlier mention of usefulness and uselessness. Convenience stores have in their bones the understanding that you might be able to find a better selection or a better price or a better match elsewhere, but that there’s enough here, it’s not too expensive and what could be a better match than you and it being in the same place at the same time? They are eminently useful and in their relative predictability reveal their differences more immediately than other species of spaces. Did you know about Thomas Kong’s work before visited Kim’s or did you stumble upon that store just looking for a snack or something to drink? Do you remember your first conversations with him?

DM: I didn’t know anything about Thomas’ work before I met him in his store, although certainly a few other artists in Chicago had been aware of him for a while. The ironic thing is that I was walking home from the grocery store when I first noticed Kim’s Corner Food—I’m much more inclined to go the extra distance to avoid paying above retail (although there are a lot of surprising bargains at Kim’s). But you’ve absolutely nailed it when it comes to ‘convenience’—there is something irrepressible about it. If there’s a convenience store on your block, not even an Amazon drone could deliver you a cold Pepsi faster than you could put on your slippers and shuffle down the street. So what is this thing called ‘convenience’ we’re all so willing to shell out for? Perhaps it’s a kind of surplus value—maybe the surplus value that some people claim art produces. Fundamentally, though, it’s the use of this revenue-generating peculiarity to create time and space for other things that interests me. Some of the best jobs I’ve ever had have been inside the galleries of art museums, working in pseudo-security guard roles. I was always good at my job, but I also got a lot of thinking done and even conceived a bunch of artworks while making sure visitors didn’t touch the expensive paintings. One thing is for sure: the museums never docked my pay for thinking.

JM: I tried a form of active Cartesian splitting once while doing a cater-waiter gig in which I actively kept my mind occupied by a specific art problem that I had while I was dropping dinners and refilling glasses. I found that it was easier for me to be doing two kinds of work at once (at least something like that, with specific rhythms and relatively low agency) if I was focused in my mind-wandering. I also held one of those museum non-guard jobs before and thought often of this line from a David Berman piece about that kind of position: After guarding masterpieces for weeks, it feels good to stand in my dentist’s office before this cheap painting of a ship. Now, re-reading that piece I remember another line that I love: What Duchamp did with the urinal no longer surprises me, what surprises me is the idea that they had urinals back then. I was thinking yesterday about a class clown alone and home from school or wondering how if your work was doing your work would you daydream about washing dishes and populating spreadsheets. The you/r there is everyone/’s. I’m in rural Vermont as we type and two days ago a few of us walked a few miles to the General Store, which is mostly germane to this moment because of the name. There’s also been an uptick in an urban/e, curated “General Store” that strikes me now as being very much a Specific Store. Should interviews have questions at the end of each paragraph?

DM: Wow, that David Berman piece brought back a lot of memories for me. The anecdote about the guard placing asbestos fragments on the floor is brilliant—being sent home with pay is pretty much the ultimate work fantasy. To answer your non-question, if my work was doing my work (let’s say I was sent home with pay forever), I have a feeling I would still be washing dishes and populating spreadsheets, since they seem to be two fairly essential parts of living these days. I certainly wouldn’t be fantasizing about them. Do you daydream about writing grants when you’re in the studio? I recently got to see a piece of antique furniture called a dry sink, from the days before running water. Wasn’t a urinal without water just a pan? What would a dry spreadsheet look like? I’m not a luddite since I think being a reactionary is the surest way to misery, but I do enjoy inconvenience. Doing things the hard way is part of my DNA. Despite the idiosyncrasy of the space of the convenience store, some part of me thinks being an artist should mean being against convenience. Or maybe just against standardization. Where I live now, my nearest ‘convenience store’ is one of those monolithic chains that practically owns all of us. When Žižek first came to America, he was famously shocked by the condition of the toilets. Me, I was shocked to discover that businesses readily sell postage stamps for more than their face value. Still, I wouldn’t hold gouging like that against a mom-and-pop hardware store/pharmacy/tobacconist if they had some exotic plants in the window and a few handmade signs behind the counter.

JM: There’s a very specific handwriting that I associate with that scale of capitalism. My grandfather—Poppa Clown—who ran a vacuum store, produced his own special rug shampoo and sold bric and brac at the Cloverdale Swap Meet in greater Vancouver, had a style of writing that I still see in bodegas and on occasional telephone poles. When I just googled “my grandfather’s handwriting” I felt class anxiety that apparently he wasn’t a member of the quill-squiggling epistolarati. I’d like to switch gears a little bit—though I could type about handwriting for days—to ask you about Plinth Projects. I am, of course, very interested in platformist projects and outré curatorial conceits. This one has particular resonance for me in this moment because of the on-going conversations about the removal of Confederate monuments in this country. Perhaps you could share with us a bit about that project and how it has or hasn’t impacted your own thinking surrounding monuments here and in Australia and beyond.

DM: That’s a timely question. In the past few weeks that there has been renewed focus on monuments in Australia that celebrate colonial victories and ‘heroes,’ as rallying points for ongoing work by indigenous activists and their non-indigenous allies. Monuments are excellent things around which to focus people’s attention in a time of struggle, but they also allow us to see the absurdity and cruelty of the nation-state and its myths. Plinth Projects took an empty pedestal in Edinburgh Gardens, a popular park in Melbourne, as a site for a series of public art interventions in 2013 and 2014. The original statue, of Queen Victoria, had gone missing some time in the early 1900s, and as an empty pedestal it was actually very beautiful—it seemed to suggest, “we don’t make those kinds of myths here any more.” It had an empowering quality. My first real experience of the plinth was standing on top of it and making out with a date, not long after I moved to Melbourne in around 2009. A group of friends who used to meet for picnics in the park referred to it as the “statue without a statue.” In 2011 some traditionalist members of the otherwise left-wing local city council proposed erecting a new statue of Queen Victoria, a harebrained idea that was scuttled on the basis that it would be too expensive. So when we came along in 2012 and suggested mounting a series of con/temporary art projects on the plinth for a fraction of the cost, they were very glad to take us up on it. I do regret that we didn’t work with any indigenous artists, but I would at least suggest that our efforts, and those of the artists we commissioned, were deliberately anti-monumental. Art is almost never able to enact change at a political level, but I hope that it can at least present propositions for different ways to work against the status quo.

JM: Just a bit away from where I grew up there was an interesting response to a newly erected monument to sadistic conquistador Juan de Oñate y Salazar: indigenous activists chopped the statue’s foot off in mirroring recompense to his own brutality four centuries prior. This is a different but related manner. In the span of a week I was reacquainted with Laszlo and Lazlo Toth. The former is the geologist who attacked Michelangelo’s The Pietà in 1972 and the latter is the nom de plume of Don Novello (better known as a whole other character, Father Guido Sarducci) which he’s used for any number of wonderfully frustrating and deflating epistolary relationships with corporations, politicians and other loci of power. I’ve been thinking about this in part because I’m interested in characters like Sarducci because through their persistence of being as they move from show to show to movie to newspaper to show they stitch together diegeses and reveal them as a (speculatively) unified universe. Considering how fictions overlap might seem like an academic or obtuse response to our ever-worsening political climate. I obviously don’t advocate for what Toth did to The Pietà, but there’s something striking about how easily, if we were inclined, we could damage art. As a culture we have such respect for these objects that I won’t even consider touching a commercially-produced and friend-designated sculpture’s plinth without clearance. But they’re very vulnerable in real terms. Have you ever used a pseudonym?

DM: Late last winter I walked into an exhibition opening at an artist-run space in Chicago, having just hopped off my bike and carrying a large backpack of stuff. The entrance to the exhibition space was narrowed by an inexplicably-placed empty pedestal, and just as I had squeezed past I turned to hug a friend and swiftly wiped—with my backpack—a small sculpture off a shelf on the opposite wall. It didn’t break, but the gasps were audible, and everybody turned to stare at me. Someone from the gallery came over to ‘handle’ me. Most people there continued to give me the side-eye for the rest of the evening, as though my presence as a human in the space was worth less than the artwork I had accidentally assaulted. I was puzzled by the reaction. Somehow it never occurred to me that the artwork might have value beyond its role as a prop for our gathering there. Or, to look at it another way, it was our gathering there that was the thing that gave the object meaning. I feel the same way about monuments and other objects that aspire to permanence—they are just taking up space until people decide that they have meaning in their moment. This is the difference between making history and receiving history. Personally, I am not someone who cares a lot for objects (my favorite kinds of pseudonymous public performances are more along the lines of Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping), but I appreciate the role of icons because without them there could be no iconoclasm. And no, I’ve never used a pseudonym, but I have such a common name that it happily often functions like one.

JM: We hear often about art “starting a conversation” or, as you just described it, as a prop for our gathering (I’ve found the idea and phrase MacGuffin useful too). Like any good octopus, I’m both seduced by this idea and can easily summon another seven counter- and comple-example of how I experience art both in public and private. I’m curious maybe to hear more about the types of sociality and conversation you’re thinking about both with your work and the work that most appeals to you. I’ve spent 93.5% of this conversation thinking about it in terms of the constraints we’ve laid out and what I want to read and write about than about its eventual (and not circumstantial) public-ness. This is a very specific type of public-ness and of conversation. The inanity of the questions on talk shows is forgettable if not forgivable because we seem to want to hear about a celebrity’s vacation or their co-star’s pranks. In this process I am trying to write to you as if we were just writing to each other but there are also moments when I have a sense of your answer or, even, when I’m curious what that answer looks like as we type from our cheated-out talk show chairs. I want also to interject now briefly with one of part of that Toth thing that I think is an interesting historical footnote: apparently the first person to subdue Toth after his attack was a young Bob Cassilly, the artist who later created St. Louis’ City Museum. What is the best painting to have a conversation in front of? Have we ever seen a social practice work built around conversation that ended up yielding objects because people were so talked out they just wanted to spend their social time more materially? Someone told me recently that someone less recently had told them that when orchestrating large events everyone benefits from a small but irritating shared experience—like a quick rainstorm—to bond over otherwise they’ll seek that same antagonism from something more integral to the occasion itself—the dreary groom or the bad wine—which event planners generally try to avoid. How many times has the word “iconoclastic” been engraved into a monument?

DM: I’m not arguing that art’s main function is to “start a conversation.” That is the kind of cliché we see used all the time in defense of the indefensible—witness the responses of multiple US institutions in the past year to outcries over their exhibition of racially offensive artworks. What I mean is that the public presentation of artwork—even if distributed privately—is always an attempt to engender a public of some kind. But your question about paintings is a good place to start. For me, the best paintings to converse in front of are anti-authoritarian and dark and delightful and often vulgar. To return for a moment to my home country, I think of paintings by artists like Juan Davila, Gordon Hookey, Helen Johnson, or Janenne Eaton. But when I think of the conversations that could be had in their presence, I imagine viewers who share something with the artist (a community, an inclination, a grudge, a species) and see that thing affirmed or tested in some way. With artworks like this, you could say that the social both precedes and follows the artwork.

I’ve never understood the idea of a social practice that was somehow divorced from material practice—like you suggest, I see plenty of so-called social practice that generates objects. But I also see plenty of material practices that generate sociality. Bob Cassilly is actually a fine example of a kind of social practice artist who was motivated by a fierce allegiance to the material world. I had a chance to visit his unfinished opus Cementland while in St. Louis earlier this year, and I have been haunted ever since by the mystery of how he imagined his audiences moving and conversing through that space. There are also great examples of artworks that acknowledge the co-dependence of the social and the material while not privileging ‘art’ as an unimpeachable realm of experience. I’m thinking here of much of Group Material’s work, in particular their project Democracy (1988-89). For me, even something as frivolous as having a cuppa in the ‘tea break’ room in Jeremy Deller’s British Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale was completely moving and concretely social. I like your pop-sociological hand-me-down fable about bonding with strangers. I am for an art that can be a “small but irritating shared experience,” but we shouldn’t forget that any shared experience is completely dependent on other previous mutual experiences. A quick rainstorm feels like it does because we all know what it’s like to wear clothes, move through public space, and be struck by falling water.

Walking to Mordor

EDITION #26

Anatomical Theatres of Mixed Reality: The Operature

The Rise of the Performance Art Festival in the USA

How We Work: An Interview With Sara Drake

Works of:  A Conversation with Dan Miller by Jesse Malmed published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv