#have word files of stories that one of my favorite artists wrote about five years ago (they was never published) if not earlier

[lorawant2sleep]

my favorite hobby is collecting personalities of people on internet

[felassan]

Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 1

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler played DAO, specifically the mage Origin. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, or personal accessibility reasons). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into DA2 and DAI. Some of it is info which is known having been out there already, some of it is new, and all of it imo was really interesting! It leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

Note on how future streams in this series are going to work: The streams are going to be every Friday night. Most likely, every week, they’re going to play DAO. Every second week it will be Liam and DG and they’ll be doing more of this developer commentary style/way of doing things, talking about how the game was made as they play through, covering quirks and quibbles etc. Every other week, it will be Liam and a guest playing a different campaign in DAO, and Liam will be talking with them about how DA changed their lives or led them into game development, to get other peoples’ thoughts on the series (as it’s now been like 10 years). Some of these guests we may know, some we won’t. When other DA devs are brought on, it’ll be in the DG sessions. They hope to have PW and Karin Weekes on at some point. Sometime they hope to have an episode where they spend the whole time going through the lore.

(Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

[wording and opinions DG’s, occasionally LE’s; paraphrased]

DAO’s development actually finished up around April 2009. They then put it on ice for around six months before release. Human Noble is DG’s favorite Origin. It’s one of the ones he wrote. He also wrote the Dalish Origin as well (Tamlen is his doing ;__;). DAO’s temp name during development was Chronicles. DG has never played any of the DA games after they were released. He played them pre-release loads of times, when they were half-broken or incomplete etc. This stream is his first time seeing everything played after completion.

NWN: Hordes of the Underdark was the first game where DG was a/the lead writer, in charge of other writers, as opposed to a senior writer. It was pretty well-received. In the fall of 2003, BW were just finishing up HotU when James Ohlen came to DG to talk. BW had been having issues during the development of NWN with the IP holder for D&D Wizards of the Coast, so they were interested in starting their own IPs that they would have ownership over (and also for financial reasons). JO said to DG that one of these new IPs would be fantasy and one would be sci-fi. He knew that DG was more fantasy-oriented, and so asked DG if he wanted to take this on. DG was down, and the first thing to figure out was what that fantasy IP was going to be.

JO gave DG an atlas of European history, which he still has, and said that he wanted him to make a fantasy world that is reminiscent of medieval Europe and reminiscent of D&D - “make it like D&D but not, file off the serial numbers really well”. This worked for DG because he was pretty familiar with D&D and there were also lots of things that he didn’t like about it and wanted to change. So DG went off and for the next six months worked on creating a setting, beginning with documentation and the map. This was kinda strange because they had no idea at that time what their story would be. JO was very interested in having a “genetically evil” enemy in the setting (like an equivalent to orcs). DG wasn’t a big fan of this and his initial go at the setting omitted this (i.e. darkspawn were not a thing) and was a lot more realistic. JO insisted on adding them later on.

This period of development wasn’t actually a good process. There were other people who were working on the project who were designing the combat side. Looking back, DG feels that they should have put their heads together a lot sooner. The combat designers had various ideas for various prestige classes and subclasses, and DG would be like “these are nowhere in the setting [lore]”. He tried his best to add a few of them after the fact, which is why we see things like DA’s version of the bard archetype. The combat designers and artists originally had a vision in mind of a game that was much more along the lines of the type of fantasy you’d find in the Conan the Barbarian world - bare-chested barbarians, sorceresses that show a lot of skin, a grimdark world with barbarian hordes. They were just assuming that’s what it was going to be. At this point in time DG had never thought, “Oh, maybe I’m responsible for communicating my ideas to them” - he’d never done this role before and was just told to go create the world. He created world-building documentation and would send out emails saying “I’m making this documentation, please go ahead and take a look”, not learning until later on that nobody outside of the writing team really likes reading such documentation. He learned tricks later on like making the docs more accessible, less dense and wordy, and overall easier to peruse.

There was no real ‘vision holder’ for DA. Mass Effect did a much better job of that. Casey Hudson was the project director and the vision holder for ME, and he had the power to enforce a set vision of what was and was not ME. ME therefore ended up having a bit more of a coherent vision. DG was in essence the vision holder for DA, but he didn’t really have the authority to enforce it on the artists. The DA teams ended up spending a good 3.5 - 4 years of the ~6 years of DAO dev time going in circles, not exactly sure what they were going to make, the various people working on it having different ideas of what ‘kind’ of fantasy they were going to make. The writing team were leaning towards LoTR; the artists were leaning towards Conan; at one point one of the project directors was leaning towards a point-and-click Diablo-style action adventure; and nobody was overriding anybody else.

The fans who hang out on the forums and in similar places have a very different idea about what kind of game they like and want to play versus the telemetry BW get from the public in general. As an example, fans on the forums tend towards playing non-humans and feeling that playing as a human is boring. Forum-polls reflected that, but BW’s general public-telemetry shows that around 75-80% of the playerbase played a human in DAO. Elves were at 15% and dwarves 5%. In contrast, in the core/forum-based fanbase, the human figure dropped down to 30%.

DG originally wanted Zevran to be a gay romance (he has talked about this before). He asked JO if he could do that pretty early on, thinking of Jade Empire which had same-gender romance options which were really popular. BW were surprised about that, and DG had no idea that the JE team were going to do this. For DAO, he had an idea for an assassin character. He had been reading about how the CIA and KGB would often recruit gay men to be their assassins, as they didn’t tend to have family ties. DG thought this was really interesting. JO was cool with the idea on a conceptual level, but thought that the work that would end up going into it would be better served if those characters could be romanced by both male and female PCs. Zevran and Leliana weren’t intended to be bi, they were “bi out of convenience”, but at the time these sorts of things (representation and such) didn’t enter into the equation as much as it does today. DG wrote Zevran in his head as being romanceable by men.

DG would ask the hair artists, “Why all the mullets?”, because he never understood that, and he’d get “a sort of shrug response”, and an indication that “it’s easier to model, I guess?” Having hair which is loose, in the face, in locks, coming over the shoulders etc wasn’t really supported at this point by the tech or the engine. Hence, they ended up with like five different versions of mullets. On the subject of the engine, for the first half of development they were using an upgraded version of the Aurora engine from NWN, and it was not good. Several years in they decided to switch. Trent Oster was in charge at the time of making a new proprietary BW engine. At the time it wasn’t ready yet, but the DA team decided to grab it, use it and hammer it into the DA engine. That engine had “so many little weird quirks”, like lighting on skin not working properly and looking bad, and one of the issues was hair. It was supposed to be BW’s proprietary engine but it really wasn’t optimized for RPGs and didn’t include a dialogue system. They had to custom-build the conversation system. (At the time Trent didn’t think BW should be doing RPGs anymore, which is a whole other story of its own). DG recalls programmers complaining about things in the engine that weren’t ready for ‘prime-time’. Even compared to games released concurrently, DAO’s graphics were a bit dated.

For the worldbuilding, they had an internal wiki and they kept everything on there. They ended up with a lot of legacy documentation on there very quickly. Eventually they solved this by hiring an editor whose sole job it was to wrangle the documentation. DG started work on the setting in the same manner in which he’d embark on starting a homebrew - ‘so like, first, here’s a map, oh, I like this name, vague ideas, a paragraph on each major nation, a rough timeline of the history, expanding, and it just growing from there’. After about six months, they brought on other writers, and by then he had around 50 pages of documentation. This 50 pages was a minute amount compared to the amount they had generated at the time of release. Originally, they weren’t sure where in the world specifically the story would take place, so DG made sure to seed potential and brewing conflicts throughout Thedas. They settled quite quickly on the new Blight starting in Ferelden. Once they established that, the writers went to town on taking Ferelden specifically and blowing it up detail-wise. Jennifer Hepler was in charge of the dwarves and Orzammar. Mary Kirby was on Fereldan customs and traditions.

The first version of the setting was more grounded in realism, almost like a post-fantasy. The dragons and griffons were extinct and a lot of the things that were thought to be fantastical were thought to be over with. During development, they started clawing these things back. They brought back dragons because the game was named Dragon Age (lol). DG was approached like, “Hey, we named the game DA, can you bring back dragons and weave them into the story more powerfully?” Wynne’s writer Sheryl Chee had a bit of an obsession with griffons and was often like ‘omg, griffons :D’, and this is the origin of Wynne’s dialogue with the Warden about griffons.

KotOR was the first time BW had tried to do a game that was fully voiced-over. For KotOR, BW sent the work of casting, direction and so on down to another studio in California called Technicolor. BW had little say in the process then and when they got it back, “it was what it was”. By the time they got to DA and the first ME, BW had a good system down for recording and VO had become an important thing in games at the time. BW are really one of the premieres for this, a lot of actors really like acting on BW games as they get a lot of space to act where they wouldn’t normally be able to do so otherwise. DG has learned a lot from Caroline Livingstone on how to encourage the best performance out of an actor. For DAO, DG worked together with the various lead designers and Caroline to decide on the auditions, casting etc. This was one of DG’s favorite things to do.

Gideon Emery as Fenris, GDL as Solas and Eve Myles as Merrill were times where DG had written the character and then went to Caroline and said “I have an actor in mind for them, can you check it out?” These were specific times where he was able to secure the actor he wanted. This didn’t always work out, for example there are times when actors aren’t interested or have no time due to scheduling conflicts or were too expensive etc. Eve and GDL were DG’s roommate Cori’s idea. Cori was a big fan of Torchwood/the actors from Torchwood, and worked as an editor at BW for a long time. Gideon was DG’s idea after playing FF12. For DAO, DG didn’t have any specific ideas in terms of actors. Casting Morrigan was the longest, most drawn out process.

The Circle went through a whooole process during worldbuilding. Initially, mages in the game weren’t supposed to have any “fighting magic”. The restrictions were originally such that in the lore, they didn’t teach mages that. Mages weren’t taught any magic that could kill people, only ‘indirect’ forms of magic that could support others. However, [during what sounds like] playtesting it was asked “Why can’t I cast a fireball? I just want to cast a fireball”, so the writers had to go back and rework how magic in the lore worked completely.

Flemeth was originally going to be voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo, and she was totally on-board, but unfortunately because of DAO’s development delays, she was unable to attend the new recording time as she had a conflict in her schedule (she was filming House of Sand and Fog). Shoreh was quite disappointed about this and her family had been so excited that she was going to be in a video game. When the movie was finished, Shoreh came back to BW and let them know that she was still available, and this is how she ended up in ME2. For a while they were trying to find an actress with an accent that authentically mirrored Shoreh’s. Out of the blue around this time, Claudia Black’s agent sent BW an audition tape of her. At the time Claudia hadn’t done any games but wanted to get into it. The tape was of Claudia doing a beat poet rendition of Baby Got Back. DG still has this tape. DG was a big fan of Farscape and on listening to the tape, it clicked right away in his head that Claudia would be perfect for Morrigan.

The Fade ended up being a big irritation for the writers. They wanted the PC to be able to assume different forms and such while in there. A lot of this stuff proved too difficult for the combat designers to work out, and so it ended up getting changed a lot. They had a hard time coming up with gameplay that could work in the Fade. The mage Origin is DG’s least favorite of the Origin stories, as he’s really dubious about the Fade section in it. It didn’t work out like how they had pictured it in their heads. By the time they got to DAI, that’s when the Fade really looks like how the writers first described/envisioned it. By this point the artists were more keen to give it a more specific feel. DAO was made at a time when ‘brown is realistic’ was a prevailing thing in games dev.

The experience of a mage in the world isn’t represented or conveyed very well to the player when the player is a mage. The experience of the player when they’re playing a mage or have a mage in their party doesn’t really match up with how the world lore tells them how dangerous mages can be - for example, how they can lose control and so on, we never really have an example of a PC mage struggling with being taken over by a demon. This was originally supposed to be a subplot in DA2 for mage Hawkes, in one of the last cuts. In Act 2, mage Hawke was originally slowly being tricked by a demon in their head that they thought was real, only to realize at the last minute. Mouse the Pride demon in the mage Origin is the only time in the entire series that they really ever properly demonstrated how demons can fuck with [PC] mages. Also, PC templars were originally supposed to have a permanent lyrium addiction that they needed to ‘feed’, but this was scrapped as the system designers weren’t keen on it and felt that it was essentially handicapping the player. 

Mages were originally also not supposed to be able to deal with pure lyrium (it would ‘overload’ them). There is a plot where mage PCs run around touching lyrium nodes to refill their mana bars. On this DG was like “Wtf is this?” The designers said that it works, and DG said “but it flies in the face of the lore”. This instance is an example of how the DA team was working where the various departments (writers, artists, designers etc) all had their own ideas about how the game and its world would work and never overrode each other (see above). DG feels that DAO is a little contradictory in that way. It’s only after the game came out that a lot of the people on the team really “bought into” what they’d put forward. This got easier as they went on, with people involved buying then into the things that make Dragon Age, Dragon Age. At one point, not everyone on the team was even aware of those things.

DG relates that originally, they would ask the artists, “Ok, can we get a village?” and said village once created would be quite generic and non-specific to DA. The writers would try to relate how things are in the DA world and list things that would be found in a village like this specific to the DA world, and the artists either didn’t read it or had their own ideas (DG isn’t sure which), and nobody was around to tell them not to do that and that they should do it differently. Everyone having their own ideas like this is why we ended up getting something that is this sort of “cobbled together half-Conan half-LotR mish-mash”, and after a while this sort of became DA’s “thing”.

Initially, BW had concepts drawn up for a lot more different creatures. After they went in circles for those years and consequently ran out of time to do all the models, they had to cut these concepts down more and more. Demons were among the ones that were the first to go (this is why we have situations like a bereskarn as the Sloth Demon in the mage Origin). The original concepts for things like spirits of Valor and Sloth demons were really good. Early on, JO made a list of D&D creatures that he liked. He picked the ones that they were thinking of doing, sent them to DG and said to make a “DA version of this”. For example, D&D succubi essentially became Desire Demons. Desire Demons were originally patterned off Sandman, neither male nor female yet really alluring, acting more like a genie and trying to ferret out mortals’ inner desires (which are not necessarily sexual in nature), without being overtly sexual. The artists’ version came back and that was basically the model seen in-game. The writers were like “What is this, this is nothing like the description?” and the artists responded that on the list from JO, it was included, in that you had to click on “succubus” to get to the Desire Demon description, so they had just read “succubus” and done their version of a succubus. The artists did loads of great work, but this was one of the instances were DG was like “???” By then, it was too late to change it. The writers were able to encourage them to make Desire Demons a little more fearsome, so that made it in at least.

The mage Origin was one of the more contentious Origin stories. It had like 4 different versions written of it over time. It was often the case that BW would hire someone, and writing an Origin story was their first test. Three different writers came in and wrote a version of the mage Origin and those versions just didn’t work. Finally they passed it to Sheryl Chee and she wrote it. The Origins were the parts of the game in general that were written/rewritten the most often. There were several others that got written that they discarded. 

Duncan was slated for death from Day 1. When DG writes a story, the thing he does first is pick out the big emotional beats that he wants, such as deaths. He decides these ahead of time and the stuff in-between comes later and is more often changed. Oghren was also originally supposed to die, but this ended up getting cut. DG related a story of how Oghren came to be: At the time, there was a phase JO went through when he thought everything had a formula that it could be done by. One of these ‘creative forumulas’ was that all such IPs had a two-word name that they’re known by, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Dragonlance (being Dragon-Lance). This is how ‘DA’ and ‘ME’ came to be. One of the formulas he wanted to implement was how to distill the ‘comedy character’, like Minsc or HK-47. These characters were very popular with the fans and JO was certain that there was a way to figure this out to create one for DA. At the time, DG argued with him a lot about this. JO insisted it could be done. DG was originally supposed to write this character but ended up not doing so. JO came up with a list of comedic archetypes and had DG write a blurb about what kind of character each could be. These were then sent out to the team who voted on which was their favorite. This process eventually resulted in an archetype basically called ‘The Buffoon’ (think Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin, the kind of guy people laugh at because he’s such an oaf).

At this point ‘The Buffoon’ wasn’t named or made a dwarf yet. JO came to DG to write him, but DG said there was a problem which is that he hates this archetype. Homer and Peter are characters that he despises. DG is a professional writer, but this was comedy (outside of his areas of strength), and he felt the best he would be able to do is write a character who makes fun of this archetype and lampshade that. Comedy is something that has to come from within the writer. Oghren was given to someone else, and he ended up getting rewritten again anyway. By the time they were working on Awakening, DAO had not yet come out, and the assumption prior to the game going out was that Oghren was still going to be the most popular character from among the followers. The comedic character that ended up being the most popular along these lines was Alistair, which was interesting as he wasn’t intended as a comedic character, “so shows what we know”. DG was dubious that Oghren was going to be popular, because “he was kind of pathetic, honestly”, but that was the thinking at the time. Thinking he would be well-loved is why he was in Awakening.

On Alistair, any character DG writes is going to be sarcastic. At the time DG had made it a sort of personal challenge to recreate Joss Whedon’s dialogue patterns in his characters. Alistair was a sort of mish-mash of Xander from Buffy and maybe Mal from Firefly. DG wanted to see if he could do it, so Alistair was kind of quippy and self-deprecating. DG never really considered this to be Alistair’s main personality feature, but when other writers wrote him, they often had him doing this, as they liked the trait so much, and so this is how Alistair ended up as he did.

On dwarves, the dwarves being cut off from the Fade is very much baked into who the dwarves are as a race. There’s a specific reason why. This has been hinted at so far and it’s likely to come up in the future. DG had various ideas for some things that he wanted to include with the races or the way the world works etc. Some of them ended up never happening or some are mentioned only as part of the lore (templar lyrium addiction never coming up in gameplay is an example of this). Dwarven history and the nature of the dwarves is one of the things that survived pretty well though. DG calls Jennifer Hepler “mistress of the dwarves” and says that she did a really detailed, amazing breakdown of their history. After Jennifer left it was Mary Kirby, and DG feels that they did a good job of maintaining how dwarves were, in terms of both how they’re often presented in fantasy and yet also quite different in DA. Orzammar is one of DG’s favorite plots all together. You can really tell that Jennifer Hepler really enjoyed the dwarves and brought a lot of love to that plot.

DG draws a distinction between DA fans and the unpleasant people who harassed Jennifer Hepler.

They managed to keep the Tranquil in. There was a while there where they were going to be cut. At the same time, DG regrets that they couldn’t solve the making of the player more aware of how mages are dangerous, thing. Players could make a cogent argument like “they’re not that dangerous, look at me [mage PC]” and the writers were like “well... yeah, that is fair”. It was a case of showing one thing and the player experience of it being another. DG feels that this made the templars come off worse than they are. DG feels that they are being massively unfair and too extreme in their approach to the problem, but the problem itself is a real thing. He feels that there’s some merit/truth in the argument that mages are oppressed, but he looks at it more like an issue like gun control rather than as treatment of oppressed people, saying that we don’t have an example in real life of oppressed people who can explode into demons and cast fireballs and so on.

There are some funny pronunciations that worked their way into DA, and the reason for a lot of them is as follows: the writers had to create a pronunciation guide for VO, because otherwise you end up with a lot of inconsistencies. (Some did still slip through). The guide was online, and if you clicked on a word, an audio file for it would play. Jennifer Hepler was in charge of this and did a great job, but has a really strong NY accent, and in some cases the ‘NY-ness’ of her pronunciation endearingly worked itself into things (the way Arlathan is sometimes said is an example of where this happened sometimes).

Sometimes the writers trying to communicate the “hotness” of a character to the artists didn’t go smoothly. The writers would sometimes say things like, ok, this character is a romance, they need to be hot, and the designs would come back looking “like Burt Reynolds”, and the writers would be like “???” And then a character that wasn’t particularly intended to be hot, as in that wasn’t mentioned at all in the descriptions of them, would come back “accidentally hot”, and the writers would be like “Why couldn’t you have done this when we were asking for a character that was meant to be hot”, and the artists would be like “What?? He’s not hot”. And this became a thing (lmao - this discussion was prompted by DG being asked “Was Duncan meant to be that hot?”, for context). Some of the artists were so paranoid about their [in]ability to judge actually-hot characters that when it was time to pick an appearance, like for Alistair, they gathered up all the women at BioWare, and DG (“resident gay”) into a room to show them an array of faces and bodies like “Is this hot? Is this hot?” DG and co would sit there like, “How can you not tell? Is this a straight man thing?!” Anyways, this is why oftentimes we ended up with characters who are accidentally hot.

Over time, the writers realized that the way they communicated to artists needed to be managed better. The words they would use would have different connotations to them the writers, than what they did to the artists. For example, for Anders’ design in DA2, he was supposed to be “a little haggard”. When DG thinks of haggard, he thinks ‘a little tired, mussed hair, looking like you’ve been through some shit’. But the artists based on that produced concepts with super sunken cheeks, looking like he’d been terribly starved. The writers needed to develop a specific vocabulary for communicating with the artists, as artists think in terms of how something looks, but writers are thinking in terms of what the character “is”. Anders’ description talked about his history a lot, and the one visual-type word that jumped out was “haggard” due to its visual connotations. “A lot it came down to the writers being up their/our own asses.”

When they got to DAI, they had figured out that the way to get best results on this front was /not/ to have the writer go off and develop a long description and pre-conceived notion of what the character looked like in their head. In such scenarios artists don’t feel that they have much to contribute to the process or an ability to put their own stamp on who this character is and make them interesting to them (the best, most interesting characters are when people at all stages of the pipeline properly get to feed into it). They learned that the better solution was to bring the artists in earlier, and to give them little blurbs, and not name the character but give them an ‘archetype’-sort of ‘name’. For example, Dorian was “the rockstar mage”, “cool”, “Freddie Mercury”. The writers wouldn’t be sure that a particular concept would ‘hit’, so at this stage they would offer an array of options and sit the artist down and walk them through the concepts. The artists would then provide a bunch of sketches and it would go back and forth, with both taking part in the character creation process together. For the first two games, the writers were “really hogging” this process to themselves. They got better at not doing this and better at communicating with the artists by DAI.

There were a lot of arguments about how mages in DAO had a lot of specific lore words like “Harrowing”, “phylactery”, “Rite of Tranquility” etc. There was concern that this would be too confusing for players to understand and that it was too complicated. DG says that thankfully he put his foot down and pushed for this stuff to be kept. A lot of fans assume that as lead writer DG had all this influence, way more influence than he could possibly exert on a team. He wasn’t even a lead, he was a sub-lead, under a lead designer. He only had so much say. If the lead designer or lead artist wanted to do something differently, often there was not much he could do. Hence he had to pick his battles carefully, choose the important ones to fight. The mage vocabulary thing was one of these.

Templar Greagoir’s name is pronounced “Gregor” and it comes from a place in Alberta near where DG lived.

Codex entries are usually one of the last things that get done in a project like this, and so all of that kind of textual lore comes in super late and is super punchy as by then the writers have written so much and are exhausted. They had to find a way to make this process cute or interesting or fun for themselves, which is why a lot of entries are quite fun to read. Sometimes a writer would make a joke for banter [irl], and it would end up making it into an entry.

Only Morrigan and Duncan got unique body models in DAO. The companions all have custom-morphed heads but not custom-morphed bodies (Morrigan not included here). This is why every model has a necklace or a collar right at the point where they had to be attached to be a body. These sometimes used assets that couldn’t be used by the PC but were not unique to that character. Duncan probably got a unique model because he was in a lot of marketing/promotional material. Qunari were originally conceived as having horns.

Most people didn’t even finish DAO once (public telemetry again here), only approximately 20-25% actually did. The devs try not to read too much into this kind of thing, but the telemetry does tell them where a lot of people stop playing the game permanently (they call these “drop-off points”). One of these points in DAO is the Fade during Broken Circle. Sometimes when people interpret this data they involve self-serving biases, but it was generally accepted that the Fade there was too long, too complex, not interesting enough, etc. [source]

[Part 2]

[Part 3]

[Part 4]

[Part 5]

[Part 6]

[‘Insights into DA dev from the Gamers For Groceries stream’ transcript]

[sorcieresque]

🎞

okay i was really tired when i answered this so i’m tidying it up, original rambling under the cut.

i had to think really fucking hard about what movies would give a better understanding of my writing of daisy, rather than what movies have characters like daisy, and while the two are difficult to completely separate here’s a very tentative list, which again, cannot account for everything my brain is forgetting:

1) black swan (2010): one of daisy’s core characteristics is how relentlessly she pushes herself to the point of self destruction, the kind of punishing, violent drive that controls her. like, lesbic ballerina slowly descents into self destructive madness to attain a single, ephemeral, arguably meaningless moment of complete perfection, hello? this is also the only move in this list that i watched before i wrote daisy, so it gets the first place.

2) a dark song (2016): this is probably not only one of my favourite horror movies but one of my favorite movies, period. it is so atmospheric as the dread slowly rises, and although it is a story about grief and loss it is also about a woman who is callous and strong and viciously determined to put herself through hell to do right by the one she loves. it hits that strange, beautiful note between love and horror. a huge deal of daisy’s magic is influenced by this movie.

3) skins gen 2 (2009-2010): OKAY yes, make fun of me! but like i actually missed skins the phenomena as a teenager and watched it maybe one or two years ago? and watching it as an adult is honestly an entirely different experience: yes, it is vapid and written basically in one-lingers but isn’t that the absolute fucking delight of it? skins gen 2 does such an artistic job of encapsulating an idyllic teenage experience that slowly but surely descents into a hellish landscape that reflects how end-of-the-world violently devastating it FEELS like to be a teenager (in this essay i will----). also, like, so much of daisy is being retroactively influenced by Known Bitch, effy, like, tough slutty too-smart-for-her-own-good, afraid-of-nothing sex-and-drugs teenage girl is completely destroyed to the point of a mental break down the moment she falls in love? hello? effy literally not speaking for the entirety of gen 1 but still being That Bitch? that scene where she stands in the middle of the road screaming “i’m not scared”? effy hiding under the bed crying? filed under super self indulgent? yes. absolutely valid? you decide

4) stoker (2013): this movie is enjoyed best completely spoiler free, but it is a very, very good essence of everything that makes daisy: unstable, resentful mother-daughter relationships, familial power dynamics, murder, intrigue, faux innocence and a teenage girl-shaped reckoning

5) gone girl (2014): last but not least. cool girl is hot, cool girl is game. cool girl never gets angry at her man, she only smiles in a chagrined loving manner and presents her mouth for fucking. will a piece of media ever again allow a crazy smart, cold, calculating woman to unleash the inner psycho that the patriarchy gestates in every single one of us, and not  punish her? i literally cannot contain how passionate i am about fictional women being allowed to maim and murder and fucking rage, and somehow, somehow, to get away with it.

6) the dreamers (2003): okay, yeah sorry i can’t do just five. the dreamers is so pretentious it is borderline ridiculous and that’s what makes it so delightful and a quintessential daisyism: incestous-ish twin brother and sister are too smart for their own good, absorb an outsider into the gravitational orbit of their extremely insulated bubble, and their their pseudo-intellectualism is all fun and games until they can no longer ignore the revolution happening outside their cluttered apartment, and their refusal to acknowledge the outside world eventually leads them to their downfall. very problematique!!!!

7) the OA (2016): a magical realism story about a woman who resurfaces after being missing for seven years. none of the characters are quite like daisy, but this series is very close to my heart and it highly influenced daisy’s magic, as well as the tender, softest parts of how daisy’s magic connects to her emotions. a distillation of tenderness in the face of sorrow. like, everything in brit marling’s filmography (the east (2013), another earth (2011), sound of my voice (2011)), is an influence for daisy one way or another.

honorable mentions: 

jennifer’s body (2009), i mean, iconic! and an absolute study on how daisy struggles with her relationships with other girls, but unfortunately a little too shallow in the characterization department to make it on the list. daisy is still about a solid 40% jennifer though. “you’re killing people” “no, i’m killing boys!” 

the little hours (2017) a comedy about nuns turning to witches in which aubrey plaza basically plays au daisy. 

heathers (1988), because bitchy one liners and six layers of offensive ironic humor going on at all times.  

killing eve (2018): too recently released to truly count as an influence, but villanelle is basically daisy and they fucking owe me royalties.

florence + the machine’s The Odyssey (2016): for abstract inspiration on daisy’s magic of movement, as well as violent tenderness.

honorable influences from shit i haven’t watched: 

cersei lannister from game of thrones

claire underwood from house of cards

 the entire nunsploitation genre

ok i love LOVE films so i can’t even categorize them, like:

gone girl, obviously, but it doesn’t really count because a) obvious and b) already used it in books. but of course, the revenge, the female rage, the power fantasy! of course! of course! of course!

and being on the gillian flynn train, sharp objects, the whole thing, is just! the epitome of female rage, of female rage that surges from patriarchy, how it breeds women that turn against each other and against themselves and suffer this silent, unspoken dread that they can’t put into words. all of it! it’s so good!

stoker, is like peak daisy content, and i can’t even really talk about it because you gotta experience it with absolutely no spoilers.  

ex machina, hannah, the vvitch (duh!). nurse 3d and american mary,  sympathy for lady vengeance, raw (2016), the neon demon. 

jenifer’s body, DUH!

ginger snaps,  the beguiled. i, tonya, matilda. alias grace, big little lies. the OA, because very deep down daisy is Soft. none of the characters are quite like her,  but the physical aspect of it, magic as movement, movement as something engaging, physical, magic that comes from the body is a huge influence on daisy’s core and heart and magic.

i haven’t watched game of thrones and don’t intend to, but like, all of cersei lannister’s plotline, and every character jessica lange has played in AHS

possession (1981),   the video “voodo in my blood” starring rosamund pike

im probably forgetting like six billion important movies and i’ll hate myself when i remember them

[yourscififanfl]

Author Spotlight Presents: Nicole Guidry and her debut novel, “Not Quite Broken”

On March 8, 2018, Nicole Guidry got a surprise.  Her debut novel, “Not Quite Broken”, was released a day early by Amazon.  The story of a Layla, young woman starting over in a new town with a new career after a family tragedy has already won the hearts of readers and received consistent Five Star Reviews.  A few days ago, I had the opportunity to ask her some intimate questions about her debut novel and her writing process.  

Q: What was your inspiration for “Not Quite Broken”?

A:  When I decided to write a book, I knew I wanted to write what I know. My life has evolved because of this one event in my life and that's my mom's death. I knew that if I wrote a book, I wanted to write someone who had been through something similar, but not exactly the same. When I began to plan it, I thought “What if I wrote a story about a woman who lost her entire family?” and kind of went from there. I knew I wanted to talk about grief and showcase how different it is for everyone, and that's why I had Colt experience loss as well. They both dealt with it differently, and I think that's beautiful. I wanted to show that love, more than anything, is healing and possible after you feel like you can't go on anymore. Because I experienced that and I felt that.

Q:  Have you always wanted to be a writer, or is it something you realized you wanted to do later in life?

I've had a love for books ever since I can remember that stems from my mother's love for books. I remember the first time I saw Pride & Prejudice (the one with Keira Knightley), I wanted to devour every romance novel and movie I could get my hands on. That's still my absolute favorite movie and I watch it every year on my mom's birthday and the anniversary of her death. It was her favorite movie, too. 

Q:  Do you share any of the characteristics of your protagonist, Layla?

It's kind of scary how similar Layla and I are. As I was writing her, I fleshed her character out and realized we shared a lot of characteristics. Our humor is probably the most similar, and our work ethic. Also, her avoidance technique when she's trying to figure things out? That has me all over it.

Q:  “Not Quite Broken” has some memorable supporting characters. Besides Layla and Colt, who did you like writing best?

I really enjoyed writing Megan. She's named after a very close friend of mine and her tenacious spirit and sense of knowing made me so happy to write anytime I was writing her. She's someone who struggles with things, but always puts other people first. That's my friend to a T, and I loved writing her. 

Q;   Although “Not Quite Broken” is a romance novel, there's a great theme of “family by choice” throughout the book, do you have a community of people in your life like that?”

I do. When I experienced a loss like Layla's but not as tragic (my mom passed away from brain cancer when I was 19), the remaining members of my immediate family grieved in different ways and we lost touch. I found my, as you put it, family by choice through my fiancé.

Q:  While you were writing, were there moments that surprised you during the process? 

So many moments. I wasn’t expecting it to be as challenging as it was to start or to change my prologue as many times as I did. And describing things? I never knew that could be so difficult. When I was writing the description for Colt's bar, my fiancé and I were pulling our hair out because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to word it. It was extremely difficult for me to put the pictures in my head on paper. Layla and I also share out lack of artistic creativity.

Q:  What was the most challenging part of writing “Not Quite Broken”? 

Is it weird if I say finding a place to write? I don't have a desk or anything, and often times I'd be lying in bed and trying to write while I have two dogs demanding my attention. As for the actual writing part, I'd have to say the parts when I had to write about grief. It's a tricky emotion to write and make sure the emotions are portrayed like I want them to be.

Q:  Are you a planner or a panster when it comes to your writing process? 

I am a panster, one hundred percent. I have an actual notebook with all my crazy ideas written down, as well as a white board filled with ideas. None of it was planned, and some of my best ideas for the story came while I was writing. My favorite unplanned scene was definitely the moment Colt and Layla shared in the kitchen with the water spray. I think life is unplanned, and if I plan things too much, I was afraid it'd take away from the story. That being said, I want to plan my next book much better than this one. It was a nightmare. I deleted the entire second half of the book when I was originally finished. There's still a word document with 80,000 words just sitting in my saved files, glaring at me. 

Q:  Did you listen to music during the writing process?

I did at the beginning, mostly during the planning stage and the first few chapters, but I'm someone who can't listen to music without singing along. I can't tell you how many times I wrote lyrics instead of what I meant to write. 

Q:  If you were to pick out a theme song for “Not Quite Broken”, what would it be?

If I had to pick a theme song, I'd probably say ”Grateful” by Rita Ora. It's a beautiful song with a beautiful meaning that helped me, and I think would help Layla and give people more of an insight to her feelings for Colt.

Q:  “Not Quite Broken” leaves some unresolved issues and hints at a possible sequel. Are you planning to explore more about Layla and the lives of her friends?

Unresolved issues? Where? ;) Yes. I wouldn't necessarily call it a “sequel”, but there will be another story in Layla's world, but not necessarily revolving around Layla and Colt. I hinted quite a bit at Joan and Aaron's past, and that's the next story I'm planning to tell.

Q:  Who are some of your favorite authors?

If you look at my Twitter page (@OlicityBex), it's glaringly obvious Mariana Zapata owns a piece of my soul. Her slow burn romances are absolute perfection and I could only hope to be half as good of a write as she is. Penny Reid is another author I love. 

Q:  Are you planning to do an audio version of your book?

It's not something I've looked into, but maybe? If the demand asks for it, I wouldn't be against it. Right now, I'm just trying to get the eBook and Paperback out there. But an audiobook would be amazing. 

Q:  How do you feel about the reception your book has received so far?

I don't know if words could encompass how I feel about how my book has done. It's exceeded my wildest dreams. While it's not a bestseller or anything, it's my debut novel and I couldn't have asked for the excitement I've gotten from people reading it. Family, friends, strangers... So much support has been thrown my way in the most surprising of places and I could never express my gratitude with words. I'm chasing my dream, and every time someone sends me a picture of them receiving my book or they tell me what Colt and Layla's story meant to them, I find myself close to tears. It'll never get old. 

“Not Quite Broken” is available now on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Not-Quite-Broken-Nicole-Guidry/dp/198627876X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1521374895&sr=8-2&keywords=not+quite+broken

[unsettlingshortstories]

The Road Virus Heads North

Stephen King (1999)

Richard Kinnell wasn't frightened when he first saw the picture at the yard sale in Rosewood.

He was fascinated by it, and he felt he'd had the good luck to find something which might be very special, but fright? No. It didn't occur to him until later ("not until it was too late," as he might have written in one of his own numbingly successful novels) that he had felt much the same way about certain illegal drugs as a young man.

He had gone down to Boston to participate in a PEN/New England conference tided "The Threat of Popularity." You could count on PEN to come up with such subjects, Kinnell had found; it was actually sort of comforting. He drove the two hundred and sixty miles from Derry rather than flying because he'd come to a plot impasse on his latest book and wanted some quiet time to try to work it out.

At the conference, he sat on a panel where people who should have known better asked him where he got his ideas and if he ever scared himself. He left the city by way of the Tobin Bridge, then got on Route 1. He never took the turnpike when he was trying to work out problems; the turnpike lulled him into a state that was like dreamless, waking sleep. It was restful, but not very creative. The stop-and-go traffic on the coast road, however, acted like grit inside an oyster-it created a fair amount of mental activity ... and sometimes even a pearl.

Not, he supposed, that his critics would use that word. In an issue of Esquire last year, Bradley Simons had begun his review of Nightmare City this way: "Richard Kinnell, who writes like Jeffery Dahmer cooks, has suffered a fresh bout of projectile vomiting. He has tided this most recent mass of ejecta Nightmare City."

Route 1 took him through Revere, Malden, Everett, and up the coast to Newburyport. Beyond Newburyport and just south of the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border was the tidy little town of Rosewood. A mile or so beyond the town center, he saw an array of cheap-looking goods spread out on the lawn of a two-story Cape. Propped against an avocado-colored electric stove was a sign reading YARD SALE. Cars were parked on both sides of the road, creating one of those bottlenecks which travelers unaffected by the yard sale mystique curse their way through. Kinnell liked yard sales, particularly the boxes of old books you sometimes found at them. He drove through the bottleneck, parked his Audi at the head of the line of cars pointed toward Maine and New Hampshire, then walked back.

A dozen or so people were circulating on the littered front lawn of the blue-and-gray Cape Cod. A large television stood to the left of the cement walk, its feet planted on four paper ashtrays that were doing absolutely nothing to protect the lawn. On top was a sign reading MAKE AN OFFER-YOU MIGHT BE SURPRISED. An electrical cord, augmented by an extension, mailed back from the TV and through the open front door. A fat woman sat in a lawn chair before it, shaded by an umbrella with CINZANO printed on the colorful scalloped flaps. There was a card table beside her with a cigar box, a pad of paper, and another handlettered sign on it. This sign read ALL SALES CASH, ALL SALES FINAL. The TV was on, turned to an afternoon soap opera where two beautiful young people looked on the verge of having deeply unsafe sex. The fat

woman glanced at Kinnell, then back at the TV. She looked at it for a moment, then looked back at him again. This time her mouth was slightly sprung.

Ah, Kinnell thought, looking around for the liquor box fined with paperbacks that was sure to be here someplace, a fan.

He didn't see any paperbacks, but he saw the picture, leaning against an ironing board and held in place by a couple of plastic laundry baskets, and his breath stopped in his throat. He wanted it at once.

He walked over with a casualness that felt exaggerated and dropped to one knee in front of it. The painting was a watercolor, and technically very good. Kinnell didn't care about that; technique didn't interest him (a fact the critics of his own work had duly noted). What he liked in works of art was content, and the more unsettling the better. This picture scored high in that department. He knelt between the two laundry baskets, which had been filled with a jumble of small appliances, and let his fingers slip over the glass facing of the picture. He glanced around briefly, looking for others like it, and saw none - only the usual yard sale art collection of Little Bo Peeps, praying hands, and gambling dogs.

He looked back at the framed watercolor, and in his mind he was already moving his suitcase into the backseat of the Audi so he could slip the picture comfortably into the trunk.

It showed a young man behind the wheel of a muscle car-maybe a Grand Am, maybe a GTX, something with a T-top, anyway - crossing the Tobin Bridge at sunset. The T-top was off, turning the black car into a half-assed convertible. The young man's left arm. was cocked on the door, his right wrist was draped casually over the wheel. Behind him, the sky was a bruise-colored mass of yellows and grays, streaked with veins of pink. The young man had lank blond hair that spilled over his low forehead. He was grinning, and his parted lips revealed teeth which were not teeth at all but fangs.

Or maybe they're filed to points, Kinnell thought. Maybe he's supposed to be a cannibal.

He liked that; liked the idea of a cannibal crossing the Tobin Bridge at sunset. In a Grand Am. He knew what most of the audience at the PEN panel discussion would have thought - Oh, yes, great picture for Rich Kinnell he probably wants it for inspiration, a feather to tickle his tired old gorge into one more fit of projectile vomiting-but most of those folks were ignoramuses, at least as far as his work went, and what was more, they treasured their ignorance, cossetted it the way some people inexplicably treasured and cossetted those stupid, mean-spirited little dogs that yapped at visitors and sometimes bit the paperboy's ankles. He hadn't been attracted to this painting because he wrote horror stories; he wrote horror stories because he was attracted to things like this painting. His fans sent him stuff - pictures, mostly - and he threw most of them away, not because they were bad art but because they were tiresome and predictable. One fan from Omaha had sent him a little ceramic sculpture of a screaming, horrified monkey's head poking out of a refrigerator door, however, and that one he had kept. It was unskillfully executed, but there was an unexpected juxtaposition there that lit UP his dials. This painting had some of the same quality, but it was even better. Much better.

As he was reaching for it, wanting to pick it up right now, this second, wanting to tuck it under his arm and proclaim his intentions, a voice spoke up behind him: "Aren't you Richard Kinnell?"

He jumped, then turned. The fat woman was standing directly behind him, blotting out most of the immediate landscape. She had put on fresh lipstick before approaching, and now her mouth had been transformed into a bleeding grin.

"Yes, I am," he said, smiling back.

Her eyes dropped to the picture. "I should have known you'd go right to that," she said, simpering. "It's so You."

"It is, isn't it?" he said, and smiled his best celebrity smile. "How much would you need for it?"

"Forty-five dollars," she said. "I'll be honest with you, I started it at seventy, but nobody likes it, so now it's marked down. If you come back tomorrow, you can probably have it for thirty." The simper had grown to frightening proportions. Kinnell could see little gray spit-buds in the dimples at the comers of her stretched mouth.

"I don't think I want to take that chance," he said. "I'll write you a check right now."

The simper continued to stretch; the woman now looked like some grotesque John Waters parody. Divine does Shirley Temple. "I'm really not supposed to take checks, but all right," she said, her tone that of a teenage girl finally consenting to have sex with her boyfriend. "Only while you have your pen out, could you write an autograph for my daughter? Her name is Michela?"

"What a beautiful name," Kinnell said automatically. He took the picture and followed the fat woman back to the card table. On the TV next to it, the lustful young people had been temporarily displaced by an elderly woman gobbling bran flakes.

" Michela reads all your books," the fat woman said. "Where in the world do you get all those crazy ideas?"

"I don't know," Kinnell said, smiling more widely than ever. "They just come to me. Isn't that amazing?. "

The yard sale minder's name was Judy Diment, and she lived in the house next door. When Kinnell asked her if she knew who the artist happened to be, she said she certainly did; Bobby Hastings had done it, and Bobby Hastings was the reason she was selling off the Hastings' things. "That's the only painting he didn't bum," she said. "Poor Iris! She's the one I really feel sorry for. I don't think George cared much, really. And I know he didn't understand why she wants to sell the house." She rolled her eyes in her large, sweaty face - the old can-you-imagine-that look. She took Kinnell's check when he tore it off, then gave him the pad where she had written down all the items she'd sold and the prices she'd obtained for them. "Just make it out to Michela," she said. "Pretty please with sugar on it?" The simper reappeared, like an old acquaintance you'd hoped was dead.

"Uh-huh," Kinnell said, and wrote his standard thanks-for-being-a-fan message. He didn't have to watch his hands or even think about it anymore, not after twenty-five years of writing autographs. "Tell me about the picture, and the Hastingses."

Judy Diment folded her pudgy hands in the manner of a woman about to recite a favorite story.

"Bobby was just twenty-three when he killed himself this spring. Can you believe that? He was the tortured genius type, you know, but still living at home." Her eyes rolled, again asking Kinnell if he could imagine it. "He must have had seventy, eighty paintings, plus all his sketchbooks. Down in the basement, they were." She pointed her chin at the Cape Cod, then looked at the picture of the fiendish young man driving across the Tobin Bridge at sunset. "Iris-that's Bobby's mother - said most of them were real bad, lots worse'n this. Stuff that'd curl your hair." She lowered her voice to a whisper, glancing at a woman who was looking at the Hastings' mismatched silverware and a pretty good collection of old McDonald's plastic glasses in a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids motif. "Most of them had sex stuff in them."

"Oh no," Kinnell said.

"He did the worst ones after he got on drugs," Judy Diment continued. "After he was dead-he hung himself down in the basement, where he used to paint-they found over a hundred of those little bottles they sell crack cocaine in. Aren't drugs awful, Mr. Kinnell?"

"They sure are."

"Anyway, I guess he finally just got to the end of his rope, no pun intended. He took all of his sketches and paintings out into the back yard-except for that one, I guess - and burned them. Then he hung himself down in the basement. He pinned a note to his shirt. It said, 'I can't stand what's happening to me.' Isn't that awful, Mr. Kinnell? Isn't that just the awfulest thing you ever heard?"

'Yes," Kinnell said, sincerely enough. "It just about is."

'Like I say, I think George would go right on living in the house if he had his druthers, " Judy Diment said. She took the sheet of paper with Michela's autograph on it, held it up next to Kinnell's check, and shook her head, as if the similarity of the signatures amazed her. "But men are different."

"Are they?"

"Oh, yes, much less sensitive. By the end of his life, Bobby Hastings was just skin and bone, dirty all the time-you could smell him - and he wore the same T-shirt, day in and day out. It had a picture of the Led Zeppelins on it. His eyes were red, he had a scraggle on his cheeks that you couldn't quite call a beard, and his pimples were coming back, like he was a teenager again. But she loved him, because a mother's love sees past all those things."

The woman who had been looking at the silverware and the glasses came over with a set of Star Wars placemats. Mrs. Diment took five I dollars for them, wrote the sale carefully down on her pad below "ONE DOZ. ASSORTED POTHOLDERS & HOTPADS," then turned back to Kinnell.

They went out to Arizona," she said, "to stay with Iris's folks. I know George is looking for work out there in Flagstaff-he's a draftsman-but I don't know if he's found any yet. If he has, I suppose we might not ever see them again here in Rosewood. She marked out all the stuff she wanted me to sell-Iris did - and told me I could keep twenty percent for my trouble. I'll send a check for the rest. There won't be much." She sighed.

"The picture is great," Kinnell said.

"Yeah, too bad he burned the rest, because most of this other stuff is your standard yard sale crap, pardon my French. What's that?"

Kinnell had turned the picture around. There was a length of Dymotape pasted to the back.

"A tide, I think."

"What does it say?"

He grabbed the picture by the sides and held it up so she could read it for herself This put the picture at eye level to him, and he studied it eagerly, once again taken by the simpleminded weirdness of the subject., kid behind the wheel of a muscle car, a kid with a nasty, knowing grin that revealed the filed points of an even nastier set of teeth.

It fits, he thought. If ever a title futted a painting, this one does.

" The Road Virus Heads North," she read. "I never noticed that when my boys were lugging stuff out. Is it the tide, do you think?"

"Must be." Kinnell couldn't take his eyes off the blond kid's grin. I know something, the grin said. I know something you never will.

"Well, I guess you'd have to believe the fella who did this was high on drugs," she said, sounding upset - authentically upset, Kinnell thought. "No wonder he could kill himself and break his mamma's heart."

"I've got to be heading north myself," Kinnell said, tucking the picture under his arm. "Thanks for-"

" Mr. Kinnell?"

"Yes?"

"Can I see your driver's license?" She apparently found nothing ironic or even amusing in this request. "I ought to write the number on the back of your check."

Kinnell put the picture down so he could dig for his wallet. "Sure. You bet."

The woman who'd bought the Star Wars placemats had paused on her way back to her car to watch some of the soap opera playing on the lawn TV. Now she glanced at the picture, which Kinnell had propped against his shins.

"Ag," she said. "Who'd want an ugly old thing like that? I'd think about it every time I turned the lights out."

"What's wrong with that?" Kinnell asked.

Kinnell's Aunt Trudy lived in Wells, which is about six miles north of the Maine - New Hampshire border. Kinnell pulled off at the exit which circled the bright green Wells water tower, the one with the comic sign on it (KEEP MAINE GREEN, BRING MONEY in letters four feet high), and five minutes later he was turning into the driveway of her neat little saltbox house. No TV sinking into the lawn on paper ashtrays here, only Aunt Trudy's amiable masses of flowers. Kinnell needed to pee and hadn't wanted to take care of that in a roadside rest stop when he could come here, but he also wanted an update on all the family gossip. Aunt Trudy retailed the best; she was to gossip what Zabar's is to deli. Also, of course, he wanted to show her his new acquisition.

She came out to meet him, gave him a hug, and covered his face with her patented little birdy-kisses, the ones that had made him shiver all over as a kid.

"Want to see something?" he asked her. "It'll blow your pantyhose off."

"What a charming thought," Aunt Trudy said, clasping her elbows in her palms and looking at him with amusement.

He opened the trunk and took out his new picture. It affected her, all right, but not in the way he had expected. The color fell out of her face in a sheet-he had never seen anything quite like it in his entire life. "It's horrible," she said in a tight, controlled voice. "I hate it. I suppose I can see what attracted you to it, Richie, but what you play at, it does for, real. Put it back in your trunk, like a good boy. And when you get to the Saco River, why don't you pull over into the breakdown lane and throw it in?"

He gaped at her. Aunt Trudy's lips were pressed tightly together to stop them trembling, and now her long, thin hands were not just clasping her elbows but clutching them, as if to keep her from flying away. At that moment she looked not sixty-one but ninety-one.

" Auntie?" Kinnell spoke tentatively, not sure what was going on here. "Auntie, what's wrong?"

"That." she said, unlocking her right hand and pointing at the picture. "I'm surprised you don't feel it more strongly yourself, an imaginative guy like you."

Well, he felt something, obviously he had, or he never would have unlimbered his checkbook in the first place. Aunt Trudy was feeling something else, though ... or something more. He turned the picture around so he could see it (he had been holding it out for her, so the side with the Dymotaped title faced him), and looked at it again. What he saw hit him in the chest and belly like a one-two punch.

The picture had changed, that was punch number one. Not much, but it had dearly changed. The young blond man's smile was wider, revealing more of those filed cannibal-teeth. His eyes were squinted down more, too, giving his face a look which was more knowing and nastier than ever.

The degree of a smile ... the vista of sharpened teeth widening slightly ... the tilt and squint of the eyes ... all pretty subjective stuff. A person could be mistaken about things like that, and of course he hadn't really studied the painting before buying it. Also, there had been the distraction of Mrs. Diment, who could probably talk the cock off a brass monkey.

But there was also punch number two, and that wasn't subjective. In the darkness of the Audi's trunk, the blond young man had turned his left arm, the one cocked on the door, so that Kinnell could now see a tattoo which had been hidden before. It was a vine-wrapped dagger with a bloody tip. Below it were words. Kinnell could make Out DEATH BEFORE, and he supposed you didn't have to be a big best-selling novelist to figure out the word that was still hidden. DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR was, after all, just the sort of a thing a hoodoo traveling man like this was apt to have on his arm. And an ace of spades or a pot plant on the other one, Kinnell thought.

"You hate it, don't you, Auntie?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, and now he saw an even more amazing thing: she had turned away from him, pretending to look out at the street (which was dozing and deserted in the hot afternoon sunlight), so she wouldn't have to look at the picture. "In fact, Auntie loathes it. Now put it away and come on into the house. I'll bet you need to use the bathroom."

Aunt Trudy recovered her savoir faire almost as soon as the watercolor was back in the trunk. They talked about Kinnell's mother (Pasadena), his sister (Baton Rouge), and his ex-wife, Sally (Nashua). Sally was a space-case who ran an animal shelter out of a double-wide trailer and published two newsletters each month. Survivors was filled with astral info and supposedly true tales of the spirit world; Visitors contained the reports of people who'd had close encounters with space aliens. Kinnell no longer went to fan conventions which specialized in fantasy and horror. One Sally in a lifetime, he sometimes told people, was enough.

When Aunt Trudy walked him back out to the car, it was fourthirty and he'd turned down the obligatory dinner invitation. "I can get most of the way back to Derry in daylight, if I leave now."

"Okay," she said. "And I'm sorry I was so mean about your picture. Of course you like it, you've always liked your ... your oddities. It just hit me the wrong way. That awful face. " She shuddered. "As if we were looking at him . . . and he was looking right back."

Kinnell grinned and kissed the tip of her nose. "You've got quite an imagination yourself, sweetheart."

"Of course, it runs in the family. Are you sure you don't want to use the facility again before you go?"

He shook his head. "That's not why I stop, anyway, not really."

"Oh? Why do you?"

He grinned. "Because you know who's being naughty and who's being nice. And you're not afraid to share what you know."

"Go on, get going," she said, pushing at his shoulder but clearly pleased. "If I were you, I'd want to get home quick. I wouldn't want that nasty guy riding along behind me in the dark, even in the trunk. I mean, did you see his teeth? Ag!"

He got on the turnpike, trading scenery for speed, and made it as far as the Gray service area before deciding to have another look at the picture. Some of his aunt's unease had transmitted itself to him like a germ, but he didn't think that was really the problem. The. problem was his perception that the picture had changed.

The service area featured the usual gourmet chow - burgers by Roy Rogers, cones by TCBY - and had a small, littered picnic and dogwalking area at the rear. Kinnell parked next to a van with Missouri plates, drew in a deep breath, let it out. He'd driven to Boston in order to kill some plot gremlins in the new book, which was pretty ironic. He'd spent the ride down working out what he'd say on the panel if certain tough questions were tossed at him, but none had been-once they'd found out he didn't know where he got his ideas, and yes, he did sometimes scare himself, they'd only wanted to know how you got an agent.

And now, heading back, he couldn't think of anything but the damned picture.

Had it changed? If it had, if the blond kid's arm had moved enough so he, Kinnell, could read a tattoo which had been partly hidden before, then he could write a column for one of Sally's magazines. Hell, a fourpart series. If, on the other hand, it wasn't changing, then ... what? He was suffering a hallucination? Having a breakdown? That was crap. His life was pretty much in order, and he felt good. Had, anyway, until his fascination with the picture had begun to waver into something else, something darker.

"Ah, fuck, you just saw it wrong the first time," he said out loud as he got out of the car. Well, maybe. Maybe. It wouldn't be the first time his head had screwed with his perceptions. That was also a part of what he did. Sometimes his imagination got a little ... well ...

"Feisty," Kinnell said, and opened the trunk. He took the picture out of the trunk and looked at it, and it was during the space of the ten seconds when he looked at it without remembering to breathe that he became authentically afraid of the thing, afraid the way you were afraid of a sudden dry rattle in the bushes, afraid the way you were when you saw an insect that would probably sting if you provoked it.

The blond driver was grinning insanely at him now-yes, at him, Kinnell was sure of it-with those filed cannibal-teeth exposed all the way to the gumlines. His eyes simultaneously glared and laughed. And the Tobin Bridge was gone. So was the Boston skyline. So was the sunset. It was almost dark in the painting now, the car and its wild rider illuminated by a single streetlamp that ran a buttery glow across the road and the car's chrome. It looked to Kinnell as if the car (he was pretty sure it was a Grand Am) was on the edge of a small town on Route 1, and he was pretty sure he knew what town it was-he had driven through it himself only a few hours ago.

"Rosewood," he muttered. "That's Rosewood. I'm pretty sure."

The Road Virus was heading north, all right, coming up Route 1 just as he had. The blond's left arm was still cocked out the window, but it had rotated enough back toward its original position so that Kinnell could no longer see the tattoo. But he knew it was there, didn't he? Yes, you bet.

The blond kid looked like a Metallica fan who had escaped from a mental asylum for the criminally insane.

"Jesus," Kinnell whispered, and the word seemed to come from someplace else, not from him. The strength suddenly ran out of his body, ran out like water from a bucket with a hole in the bottom, and he sat down heavily on the curb separating the parking lot from the dog-walking zone. He suddenly understood that this was the truth he'd missed in all his fiction, this was how people really reacted when they came face-to-face with something which made no rational sense. You felt as if you were bleeding to death, only inside your head.

"No wonder the guy who painted it killed himself," he croaked, still staring at the picture, at the ferocious grin, at the eyes that were both shrewd and stupid.

There was a note pinned to his shirt, Mrs. Diment had said. "I can't stand what's happening to me. " Isn't that awful, Mr. Kinnell?

Yes, it was awful, all right.

Really awful.

He got up, gripping the picture by its top, then strode across the dog-walking area. He kept his eyes trained strictly in front of him, looking for canine land mines. He did not look down at the picture. His legs felt trembly and untrustworthy, but they seemed to support him all right. just ahead, close to the belt of trees at the rear of the service area, was a pretty young thing in white shorts and a red halter. She was walking a cocker spaniel. She began to smile at Kinnell, then saw something in his face that straightened her lips out in a hurry. She headed left, and fast. The cocker didn't want to go that fast so she dragged it, coughing, in her wake.

The scrubby pines behind the service area sloped down to a boggy area that stank of plant and animal decomposition. The carpet of pine needles was a road litter fallout zone: burger wrappers, paper soft drink cups, TCBY napkins, beer cans, empty wine-cooler bottles, cigarette butts. He saw a used condom lying like a dead snail next to a torn pair of panties with the word TUESDAY stitched on them in cursive girly-girl script.

Now that he was here, he chanced another look down at the picture. He steeled himself for further changes even for the possibility that the painting would be in motion, like a movie in a frame - but there was none. There didn't have to be, Kinnell realized; the blond kid's face was enough. That stone-crazy grin. Those pointed teeth. The face said, Hey, old man, guess what? I'm done fucking with civilization. I'm a representative of the real generation X, the next millennium is tight here behind the wheel of this fine, high-steppin' mo-sheen.

Aunt Trudy's initial reaction to the painting had been to advise Kinnell that he should throw it into the Saco River. Auntie had been right. The Saco was now almost twenty miles behind him, but . .

"This'll do," he said. "I think this'll do just fine."

He raised the picture over his head like a guy holding up some kind of sports trophy for the postgame photographers and then heaved it down the slope. It flipped over twice, the frame caching winks of hazy late-day sun, then struck a tree. The glass facing shattered. The picture fell to the ground and then slid down the dry, needle-carpeted slope, as if down a chute. It landed in the bog, one comer of the frame protruding from a thick stand of reeds. Otherwise, there was nothing visible but the strew of broken glass, and Kinnell thought that went very well with the rest of the litter.

He turned and went back to his car, already picking up his mental trowel. He would wall this incident off in its own special niche, he thought ... and it occurred to him that that was probably what most people did when they ran into stuff like this. Liars and wannabees (or maybe in this case they were wannasees) wrote up their fantasies for publications like Survivors and called them truth; those who blundered into authentic occult phenomena kept their mouths shut and used those trowels. Because when cracks like this appeared in your life, you had to do something about them; if you didn't, they were apt to widen and sooner or later everything would fall in.

Kinnell glanced up and saw the pretty young thing watching him apprehensively from what she probably hoped was a safe distance. When she saw him looking at her, she turned around and started toward the restaurant building, once more dragging the cocker spaniel behind her and trying to keep as much sway Out of her hips as possible.

You think I'm crazy, don't you pretty girl? Kinnell thought. He saw he had left his trunk lid up. It gaped like a mouth. He slammed it shut. You and half the fiction-reading population of America, I guess. But I'm not crazy. Absolutely not. I just made a little mistake, that's all. Stopped at a yard sale I should have passed up. Anyone could have done it. You could have done it. And that picture

" What picture?" Rich Kinnell asked the hot summer evening, and tried on a smile. "I don't see any picture."

He slid behind the wheel of his Audi and started the engine. He looked at the fuel gauge and saw it had dropped under a half. He was going to need gas before he got home, but he thought he'd fill the tank a little further up the line. Right now all he wanted to do was to put a belt of miles - as thick a one as possible - between him and the discarded painting.

Once outside the city limits of Derry, Kansas Street becomes Kansas Road. As it approaches the incorporated town limits (an area that is actually open countryside), it becomes Kansas Lane. Not long after,, Kansas Lane passes between two fieldstone posts. Tar gives way to' gravel. What is one of Derry's busiest downtown streets eight miles east of here has become a driveway leading up a shallow hill, and on moonlit summer nights it glimmers like something out of an Alfred Noyes poem. At the top of the hill stands an angular, handsome barn-board structure with reflectorized windows, a stable that is actually a garage, and a satellite dish tilted at the stars. A waggish reporter from the Derry News once called it the House that Gore Built ... not meaning the vice president of the United States. Richard Kinnell simply called it home, and he parked in front of it that night with a sense of weary satisfaction. He felt as if he had lived through a week's worth of time since getting up in the Boston Harbor hotel that morning at nine o'clock.

No more yard sales, he thought, looking up at the moon. No more yard sales ever.

I "Amen," he said, and started toward the house. He probably should stick the car in the garage, but the hell with it. What he wanted right now was a drink, a light meal - something microwaveable - and then sleep. Preferably the kind without dreams. He couldn't wait to put this day behind him.

He stuck his key in the lock, turned it, and punched 3817 to silence the warning bleep from the burglar alarm panel. He turned on the front hall light, stepped through the door, pushed it shut behind him, began to turn, saw what was on the wall where his collection of framed book covers had been just two days ago, and screamed. In his head he screamed. Nothing actually came out of his mouth but a harsh exhalation of air. He heard a thump and a tuneless little jingle as his keys fell out of his relaxing hand and dropped to the carpet between his feet.

The Road Virus Heads North was no longer in the puckerbrush behind the Gray turnpike service area.

It was mounted on his entry wall.

It had changed yet again. The car was now parked in the driveway of the yard sale yard. The goods were still spread out everywhereglassware and furniture and ceramic knickknacks (Scottie dogs smoking pipes, bare-assed toddlers, winking fish), but now they gleamed beneath the light of the same skullface moon that rode in the sky above Kinnell's house. The TV was still there, too, and it was still on, casting its own pallid radiance onto the grass, and what lay in front of it, next to an overturned lawn chair. Judy Diment was on her back, and she was no longer all there. After a moment, Kinnell saw the rest. It was on the ironing board, dead eyes glowing like fifty-cent pieces in the moonlight.

The Grand Am's taillights were a blur of red-pink watercolor paint. It was Kinnell's first look at the car's back deck. Written across it in Old English letters were three words: THE ROAD VIRUS.

Makes perfect sense, Kinnell thought numbly. Not him, his car. Except for a guy like this, there's probably not much difference.

"This isn't happening," he whispered, except it was. Maybe it wouldn't have happened to someone a little less open to such things, but it was happening. And as he stared at the painting he found himself remembering the little sign on Judy Diment's card table. ALL SALES CASH, it had said (although she had taken his check, only adding his driver's license ID number for safety's sake). And it had said something else, too.

ALL SALES FINAL.

Kinnell walked past the picture and into the living room. He felt like a stranger inside his own body, and he sensed part of his mind groping for the trowel he had used earlier. He seemed to have misplaced it.

He turned on the TV, then the Toshiba satellite tuner which sat on top of it. He turned to V-14, and all the time he could feel the picture out there in the hall, pushing at the back of his head. The picture that had somehow beaten him here.

"Must have known a shortcut," Kinnell said, and laughed.

He hadn't been able to see much of the blond in this version of the picture, but there had been a blur behind the wheel which Kinnell assumed had been him. The Road Virus had finished his business in Rosewood. It was time to move north. Next stop

He brought a heavy steel door down on that thought, cutting it off before he could see all of it. "After all, I could still be imagining all this," he told the empty living room. Instead of comforting him, the hoarse, shaky quality of his voice frightened him even more. "This could be ... But he couldn't finish. All that came to him was an old song, belted out in the pseudo-hip style of some early '50s Sinatra done: This could be the start of something BIG ...

The tune oozing from the TV's stereo speakers wasn't Sinatra but Paul Simon, arranged for strings. The white computer type on the blue screen said WELCOME TO NEW ENGLAND NEWSWIRE. There were ordering instructions below this, but Kinnell didn't have to read them; he was a Newswire junkie and knew the drill by heart. He dialed, punched in his Mastercard number, then 508.

"You have ordered Newswire for [slight pause] central and northem Massachusetts," the robot voice said. "Thank you very m--"

Kinnell dropped the phone back into the cradle and stood looking at the New England Newswire logo, snapping his fingers nervously. "Come on," he said. "Come on, come on."

The screen flickered then, and the blue background became green. Words began scrolling up, something about a house fire in Taunton. This was followed by the latest on a dog-racing scandal, then tonight's weather - clear and mild. Kinnell was starting to relax, starting to wonder if he'd really seen what he thought he'd seen on the entryway wall or if it had been a bit of travel-induced fugue, when the TV beeped shrilly and the words BREAKING NEWS appeared. He stood watching the caps scroll up.

NENphAUG19/8:40P A ROSEWOOD WOMAN HAS BEEN BRUTALLY MURDER-ED WHILE DOING A FAVOR FOR AN ABSENT FRIEND. 38-YEAR-OLD JUDITH DIMENT WAS SAVAGELY HACKED TO DEATH ON THE LAWN OF HER NEIGHBOR'S HOUSE, WHERE SHE HAD BEEN CONDUCTING A YARD SALE. NO SCREAMS WERE HEARD AND MRS. DIMENT WAS NOT FOUND UNTIL EIGHT O'CLOCK, WHEN A NEIGHBOR ACROSS THE STREET CAME OVER TO COMPLAIN ABOUT LOUD TELEVISION NOISE. THE NEIGHBOR, DAVID GRAVES, SAID THAT MRS. DIMENT HAD BEEN DECAPITATED. "HER HEAD WAS ON THE IRONING BOARD," HE SAID. "IT WAS THE MOST AWFUL THING I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE." GRAVES SAID HE HEARD NO SIGNS OF A STRUGGLE, ONLY THE TV AND, SHORTLY BEFORE FINDING THE BODY, A LOUD CAR, POSSIBLY EQUIPPED WITH A GLASSPACK MUFFLER, ACCELERATING AWAY FROM THE VICINITY ALONG ROUTE ONE. SPECULATION THAT THIS VEHICLE MAY HAVE BELONGED TO THE KILLER

Except that wasn't speculation; that was a simple fact.

Breathing hard, not quite panting, Kinnell hurried back into the entryway. The picture was still there, but it had changed once more. Now it showed two glaring white circles - headlights - with the dark shape of the car hulking behind them.

He's on the move again, Kinnell thought, and Aunt Trudy was on top of his mind now - sweet Aunt Trudy, who always knew who had been naughty and who had been nice. Aunt Trudy, who lived in Wells, no more than forty miles from Rosewood.

" God, please God, please send him by the coast road," Kinnell said, reaching for the picture. Was it his imagination or were the headlights farther apart now, as if the car were actually moving before his eyes ... but stealthily, the way the minute hand moved on a Pocket watch? "Send him by the coast road, please."

He tore the picture off the wall and ran back into the living room with it. The screen was in place before the fireplace, of course; it would be at least two months before a fire was wanted in here. Kinnell batted it aside and threw the painting in, breaking the glass fronting-which he had already broken once, at the Gray service area - against the firedogs. Then he pelted for the kitchen, wondering what he would do if this didn't work either.

It has to, he thought. It will because it has to, and that's A there is to it.

He opened the kitchen cabinets and pawed through them, spilling the oatmeal, spilling a canister of salt, spilling the vinegar. The bottle broken open on the counter and assaulted his nose and eyes with the high stink.

Not there. What he wanted wasn't there.

He raced into the pantry, looked behind the door - nothing but a plastic bucket and an 0 Cedar - and then on the shelf by the dryer. There it was, next to the briquets.

Lighter fluid.

He grabbed it and ran back, glancing at the telephone on the kitchen wall as he hurried by. He wanted to stop, wanted to call Aunt Trudy. Credibility wasn't an issue with her; if her favorite nephew called and told her to get out of the house, to get out light now, she would do it ... but what if the blond kid followed her? Chased her?

And he would. Kinnell knew he would.

He hurried across the living room and stopped in front of the fireplace.

"Jesus," he whispered. "Jesus, no."

The picture beneath the splintered glass no longer showed oncoming headlights. Now it showed the Grand Am on a sharply curving piece of road that could only be an exit ramp. Moonlight shone like liquid satin on the car's dark flank. In the background was a water tower, and the words on it were easily readable in the moonlight. KEEP MAINE GREEN, they said. BRING MONEY.

Kinnell didn't hit the picture with the first squeeze of lighter fluid; his hands were shaking badly and the aromatic liquid simply ran down the unbroken part of the glass, blurring the Road Virus's back deck. He took a deep breath, aimed, then squeezed again. This time the lighter fluid squirted in through the jagged hole made by one of the firedogs and ran down the picture, cutting through the paint, making it run, turning a Goodyear Wide Oval into a sooty teardrop.

Kinnell took one of the ornamental matches from the jar on the mantel, struck it on the hearth, and poked it in through the hole in the glass. The painting caught at once, fire billowing up and down across the Grand Am and the water tower. The remaining glass in the frame turned black, then broke outward in a shower of flaming pieces. Kinnell crunched them under his sneakers, putting them out before they could set the rug on fire.

He went to the phone and punched in Aunt Trudy's number, unaware that he was crying. On the third ring, his aunt's answering machine picked up. "Hello," Aunt Trudy said, "I know it encourages the burglars to say things like this, but I've gone up to Kennebunk to watch the new Harrison Ford movie. If you intend to break in, please don't take my china pigs. If you want to leave a message, do so at the beep."

Kinnell waited, then, keeping his voice as steady as possible, he said:

"It's Richie, Aunt Trudy. Call me when you get back, okay? No matter how late."

He hung up, looked at the TV, then dialed Newswire again, this time punching in the Maine area code. While the computers on the other end processed his order, he went back and used a poker to jab at the blackened, twisted thing in the fireplace. The stench was ghastly - it made the spilled vinegar smell like a flowerpatch in comparison-but Kinnell found he didn't mind. The picture was entirely gone, reduced to ash, and that made it worthwhile.

Mat if it comes back again?

"It won't," he said, putting the poker back and returning to the TV. "I'm sure it won't."

But every time the news scroll started to recycle, he got up to check. The picture was just ashes on the hearth ... and there was no word of elderly women being murdered in the Wells-Saco-Kennebunk area of the state. Kinnell kept watching, almost expecting to see A GRAND AM MOVING AT HIGH SPEED CRASHED INTO A KENNEBUNK MOVIE THEATER TONIGHT, KILLING AT LEAST TEN, but nothing of the sort showed up.

At a quarter of eleven the telephone rang. Kinnell snatched it up. "Hello?"

"It's Trudy, dear. Are you all right?"

"Yes, fine."

"You don't sound fine," she said. "Your voice sounds trembly and funny. What's wrong? What is it?" And then, chilling him but not really surprising him: "It's that picture you were so pleased with, isn't it? That goddamned picture!"

It calmed him somehow, that she should guess so much ... and, of course, there was the relief of knowing she was safe.

"Well, maybe," he said. "I had the heebie-jeebies all the way back here, so I burned it. In the fireplace."

She's going to find out about Judy Diment, you know, a voice inside warned. She doesn't have a twenty-thousand-dollar satellite hookup, but she does subscribe to the Union-Leader and this'll be on the front page. She'll put two and two together. She's far from stupid.

Yes, that was undoubtedly true, but further explanations could wait until the morning, when he might be a little less freaked ... when he might've found a way to think about the Road Virus without losing his mind ... and when he'd begun to be sure it was really over.

"Good!" she said emphatically. "You ought to scatter the ashes, too!" She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was lower. "You were worried about me, weren't you? Because you showed it to me.

"A little, yes."

"But you feel better now?"

He leaned back and closed his eyes. It was true, he did. "Uh-huh. How was the movie?"

"Good. Harrison Ford looks wonderful in a uniform. Now, if he'd just get rid of that little bump on his chin . . ."

"Good night, Aunt Trudy. We'll talk tomorrow."

"Will we?"

"Yes," he said. "I think so."

He hung up, went over to the fireplace again, and stirred the ashes with the poker. He could see a scrap of fender and a ragged little flap of road, but that was it. Fire was what it had needed all along, apparently. Wasn't that how you usually killed supernatural emissaries of evil? Of course it was. He'd used it a few times himself, most notably in The Departing, his haunted train station novel.

"Yes, indeed," he said. "Bum, baby, bum."

He thought about getting the drink he'd promised himself, then remembered the spilled bottle of vinegar (which by now would probably be soaking into the spilled oatmeal-what a thought). He decided he would simply go on upstairs instead. In a book-one by Richard Kinnell, for instance - sleep would be out of the question after the sort of thing which had just happened to him.

In real life, he thought he might sleep just fine.

He actually dozed off in the shower, leaning against the back wall with his hair full of shampoo and the water beating on his chest. He was at the yard sale again, and the TV standing on the paper ashtrays was broadcasting Judy Diment. Her head was back on, but Kinnell could see the medical examiner's primitive industrial stitchwork; it circled her throat like a grisly necklace. "Now this New England Newswire update," she said, and Kinnell, who had always been a vivid dreamer, could actually see the stitches on her neck stretch and relax as she spoke. "Bobby Hastings took all his paintings and burned them, including yours, Mr. Kinnell ... and it is yours, as I'm sure you know. All sales are final, you saw the sign. Why, you just ought to be glad I took your check."

Burned all his paintings, yes, of course he did, Kinnell thought in his watery dream. He couldn't stand what was happening to him, that's what the note said, and when you get to that point in the festivities, you don't pause to see if you want to except one special piece of work from the bonfire. It's just that you got something special into The Road Virus Heads North, didn't you, Bobby? And probably completely by accident. You were talented, I could see that right away, but talent has nothing to do with what's going on in that picture.

"Some things are just good at survival," Judy Diment said on the TV. "They keep coming back no matter how hard you try to get rid of them. They keep coming back like viruses."

Kinnell reached out and changed the channel, but apparently there was nothing on all the way around the dial except for The Judy Diment Show.

" You might say he opened a hole into the basement of the universe," she was saying now. "Bobby Hastings, I mean. And this is what drove out. Nice, isn't it?"

Kinnell's feet slid then, not enough to go out from under him completely, but enough to snap him to.

He opened his eyes, winced at the immediate sting of the soap (Prell had run down his face in thick white rivulets while he had been dozing), and cupped his hands under the shower-spray to splash it away. He did this once and was reaching out to do it again when he heard something. A ragged rumbling sound.

Don't be stupid, he told himself. All you hear is the shower. The rest is only imagination.

Except it wasn't.

Kinnell reached out and turned off the water.

The rumbling sound continued. Low and powerful. Coming from outside.

He got out of the shower and walked, dripping, across his bedroom on the second floor. There was still enough shampoo in his hair to make him look as if it had turned white while he was dozing-as if his dream of Judy Diment had turned it white.

My did I ever stop at that yard sale? he asked himself, but for this he had no answer. He supposed no one ever did.

The rumbling sound grew louder as he approached the window overlooking the driveway-the driveway that glimmered in the summer moonlight like something out of an Alfred Noyes poem.

As he brushed aside the curtain and looked out, he found himself thinking of his ex-wife, Sally, whom he had met at the World Fantasy Convention in 1978. Sally, who now published two magazines out of

her trailer home, one called Survivors, one called Visitors. Looking down at the driveway, these two tides came together in Kinnell's mind like a double image in a stereopticon.

He had a visitor who was definitely a survivor.

The Grand Am idled in front of the house, the white haze from its twin chromed tailpipes rising in the still night air. The Old English letters on the back deck were perfectly readable. The driver's side door stood open, and that wasn't all; the light spilling down the porch steps suggested that Kinnell's front door was also open.

Forgot to lock it, Kinnell thought, wiping soap off his forehead with a hand he could no longer feel. Forgot to reset the burglar alarm, too . not that it would have made much difference to this guy.

Well, he might have caused it to detour around Aunt Trudy, and that was something, but just now the thought brought him no comfort.

Survivors.

The soft rumble of the big engine, probably at least a 442 with a four-barrel carb, reground valves, fuel injection.

He turned slowly on legs that had lost all feeling, a naked man with a headful of soap, and saw the picture over his bed, just as he'd known he would. In it, the Grand Am stood in his driveway with the driver's door open and two plumes of exhaust rising from the chromed tailpipes. From this angle he could also see his own front door, standing open, and a long man-shaped shadow stretching down the hall.

Survivors.

Survivors and visitors.

Now he could hear feet ascending the stairs. It was a heavy tread, and he knew without having to see that the blond kid was wearing motorcycle boots. People with DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR tattooed on their arms always wore motorcycle boots, just as they always smoked unfiltered Camels. These things were like a national law.

And the knife. He would be carrying a long, sharp knife - more of a machete, actually, the sort of knife that could strike off a person's head in a single sweeping stroke.

And he would be grinning, showing those filed cannibal-teeth.

Kinnell knew these things. He was an imaginative guy, after all.

He didn't need anyone to draw him a picture.

"No," he whispered, suddenly conscious of his global nakedness, suddenly freezing all the way around his skin. "No, please, go away." But the footfalls kept coming, of course they did. You couldn't tell a guy like this to go away. It didn't work; it wasn't the way the story was supposed to end.

Kinnell could hear him nearing the top of the stairs. Outside the Grand Am went on rumbling in the moonlight.

The feet coming down the hall now, worn bootheels rapping on polished hardwood.

A terrible paralysis had gripped Kinnell. He threw it off with an effort and bolted toward the bedroom door, wanting to lock it before the thing could get in here, but he slipped in a puddle of soapy water and this time he did go down, flat on his back on the oak planks, and what he saw as the door clicked open and the motorcycle boots crossed the room toward where he lay, naked and with his hair full of Prell, was the picture hanging on the wall over his bed, the picture of the Road Virus idling in front of his house with the driver's side door open.

The driver's side bucket seat, he saw, was full of blood. I'm going outside, I think, Kinnell thought, and closed his eyes.

[sliceannarbor]

Lauren Friedman

Artist/Stylist/Author Ann Arbor, Michigan laurenfriedman.com

Photo by Emma McAlary

Lauren Friedman is an artist, stylist, and the author/illustrator of 50 Ways to Wear a Scarf (2014), 50 Ways to Wear Denim (2016), and her newest title, 50 Ways to Wear Accessories, slated for release in July 2018, all published by Chronicle Books. She is also the creator of the My Closet in Sketches project, an illustrated-style blog launched in 2010. Lauren’s work as a professional illustrator has appeared in numerous publications, including Travel and Leisure, The Washington Post, and Lucky. Her books have been featured at the Museum of Modern Art, The Paper Source, Target, and other fine retailers globally. Lauren graduated from Wellesley College, where she studied political science and played on the varsity field hockey team. Upon graduation, Lauren moved to Washington, D.C., where she lived for over nine years. Lauren has worked in a variety of fields, including posts as a production assistant, operations manager, financial educator, optometry salesperson, yoga teacher, barista, chalk artist for restaurants/cafes/businesses, mural artist, stylist, closet consultant, and, finally, as a freelance fashion illustrator.  When she’s not working, you can find her reading, dancing, and taking long walks in the woods. A native of Ann Arbor, Lauren returned to her home town in May 2017 and lives on the West Side.  

(Click here to pre-order Lauren’s latest book) 

FAVORITES

Book: I could never pick just one, but I’m currently in the midst of rereading (and loving) The Clan of the Cave Bear series by Jean M. Auel.

Destination: A body of water within walking distance to a great place to grab good food and a cold beer.

Motto: Your reality is what you make of it.

Prized possession: Any of the number of accessories or clothing items passed down from my family members.

THE QUERY 

Where were you born?

Ann Arbor, Michigan.

What were some of the passions and pastimes of your earlier years?

I loved drawing clothes and people, trying on countless outfits, writing stories, reading stacks of books, and poring over magazines. I consider my life to be a success because my current passions and pastimes align closely with what I spent time doing as a kid. 

What is your first memory of art/illustration as an experience?

When I was five or six, I wrote and illustrated a book called The Miracle of the Rainforest through one of those services that turn your words and pictures into a real, hardcover-bound book. It is the tale of an unlikely friendship between a sloth and the daughter of a logger baron who ends up saving the future of the rainforest. I’m not sure I could write a better story today!

How did you begin to realize your intrigue with fashion and design?

Fashion and design has always been my reality, from birth. From the moment I could dress myself and hold a crayon or book, I had a burning desire to express myself through what clothes I wore and what art I created.

When/how did this segue into your entering the profession of illustration?

I created the blog My Closet In Sketches in 2010 in the middle of a creative drought. I’d just graduated from college and was working a 9-5 job as an operations manager. I found that the best part of my day was getting dressed for work, combining my own clothes with wonderful pieces passed down from my grandmother and mom. I began a nightly practice of dreaming up fun outfits and drawing them when I got home from work. Within a year of creating the site, (the now defunct) Lucky magazine approached me about illustrating a monthly beauty advice column. I’ll never forget how stressed I was during that first month’s batch of drawings, but I taught myself how to draw professionally through that two-and-one-half year experience.

Why does this form of artistic expression suit you?

It combines both of my passions of fashion and art. However, I still need to honor my creative desires through other fluid, non-professional expressions including collage, painting, clay, and whatever other mediums I can get my hands on.

What did you enjoy most about the illustration component of My Closet in Sketches?

The pursuit of excellence. As a self-taught illustrator, I always have more to learn. I enjoy acting as my own coach, boss, intern, and student. 

How did you approach the writing element of the series?

The art of writing is as important to me as the illustration component. The early concepts are always written by hand, and then, when it’s time to bring it to the computer, I do not allow my brain to filter any words as they are typed. Nothing is deleted. The editing will come later.

How would you describe your creative process?

Almost every idea starts as a scribble or doodle in my journal. These quick, unfiltered ideas may take days or years to germinate. I enjoy the process of witnessing my mind turn concepts around, both consciously and unconsciously. By the time of final creation, I generally have a good idea of what it will look like — but there is always room for surprise. The biggest discipline required is to learn when to step back and let something rest rather than belaboring it into overworked territory.

When/how did the concept for 50 Ways to Wear a Scarf take seed?

This is a true story about being careful what you wish for. When I struck out on my own as a professional illustrator in 2010, a friend suggested that I make a list of my one, five, and ten year goals. Boldly, I wrote, “publish a book with Chronicle Books” under my one year goals - I always loved their offerings, which are consistently colorful, informative, cheeky, and a pleasure to read. Fast forward a year and a half later - I received an email from an editor at Chronicle Books who had seen this post about how to wear a scarf, asking me if I would write and illustrate a book about scarves. I was shocked. I knew I couldn’t say no, even though I didn’t know the first thing about writing a book, but I had no choice but to give it a try. It combines my two biggest passions: art and words.

What did you find most challenging in creating your three books?

Each book takes me over a year of full-time dedicated work. My biggest challenge isn’t the motivation to undertake this work, but rather the daily transition back to the of the rest of my “real-life.” In many ways, while doing this work, I become like a god of my small universe - the only limits being the boundaries of the page. I imagine myself an astronaut, taking a daily journey through space, performing these acts of creation in an exultant, weightless, timeless manner. Figuring out how to land back down on the ground when the work day is done requires a constant vigilance of meditation, yoga, quiet walks, and lots of boundary setting.

Where do you do most of your work?

When I’m illustrating, I work from my home studio. When I’m writing, I do some of my best work at coffee shops or cafes.

What three tools of the trade can’t you live without?

Paper, pencil, and markers.

Is there a period/project along the way that has presented an important learning curve?

I had no experience illustrating professionally when Lucky magazine hired me. Through the tireless help of their art director, I learned how to ask the right questions, advocate for my work, and remain flexible when things (inevitably) change.

How has your aesthetic/style evolved over the years?

The only constant to my aesthetic and style is change.

Is there an artist /illustrator living today that you admire most?

If I could draw a line with half the grace of David Downton, I would die a very happy fashion illustrator.

Do you have a favorite artistic resource that you turn to? 

I tear out pages for my inspiration files from Vogue, Glamour, Teen Vogue, Seventeen, The New York Times Style Magazine, Elle, and The Gentlewoman. 

From where do you draw inspiration?

Inspiration comes from everywhere. I try to follow one of the main tenants from the book The Artist’s Way (by Julia Cameron) by taking myself on an artist date once a week. That could mean going to a museum, watching a film, or sitting on a street corner watching the fashion walk by. The important thing is to just keep feeding the creative fire with fresh kindling.

What three things can’t you live without?

A Moleskine unlined notebook, a Pentel .7mm mechanical pencil, and my eyeglasses.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

It’s never about what it’s about.

Is there a book or film that has changed you?

Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. Also Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion and Clueless.

Who in your life would you like to thank, and for what?

No amount of talent can prosper without a support system. My family, friends, and teachers all indelibly, persistently, unconditionally give me the space and encouragement to take my goals and creative instincts seriously.

What drives you these days?

Using my gifts to inspire change and inspiration in others.

[starkmaiden]

To celebrate Katie Cassidy as Black Siren in the main, I wrote a on shot.  The first non-multichapter I ever posted.  And it’s about Laurel-2 and Felicity, cause all my arrow stories are Felicity friendship with inverted commas.  If it sucks blame @chrissykins-for-the-win.

Link:http://archiveofourown.org/works/10477689

or read below:

Black Siren didn’t sit like Laurel.  Laurel sat like a lawyer, back straight and hands folded on the table, she sat like she was about to take on the world.  Black Siren slouched down, and stretched her legs out in front of her, and crossed her arms in front of her chest like a petulant teenager. The world could go down in flames, and Black Siren would accept it with apathy.  Yet, there she sat in Laurel’s favorite chair like she was Laurel.  She wasn’t Laurel, even if they looked exactly the same.  It’s been two weeks since Black Siren sat herself in Laurel’s seat, and claimed the name Laurel along with everything else in Laurel’s life. And Felicity hated having her around.

Felicity hated Black Siren.  She hated the way Black Siren talked, the bored and superior tone she had when she suggested the easiest, more violent option.  She hated the way she dressed, the ridiculous vintage punk style the Earth-2 villains favored.  She hated that she didn’t eat like Laurel, that she didn’t move her head like Laurel, she hated her nose piercing, she hated everything about Black Siren.  But most of all she hated the way Black Siren thought she could just decide to become Laurel. Sure, she worded as “wanting to try out the whole being a decent person thing,” but Felicity knew better.  Felicity hated the way the others so easily took to having Black Siren around.  And she really hated the way she sat.

Felicity especially hated the way Black Siren would sometimes look at Felicity, like-- well Felicity didn’t know what Black Siren wanted when she looked at Felicity like she did.  She could feel it now, Black Siren was blatantly staring a hole into Felicity’s nice new dress from her spot at the conference table.  Not that Felicity was going to give her the pleasure of turning around and acknowledging Black Siren.  She hadn’t once.  Not once has she spoke her, or directly addressed her.  And she wasn’t ever going to.

Black Siren wasn’t allowed to leave the Bunker yet, so she had to be babysat and it was Felicity’s turn whether she wanted it to be or not.  Felicity sighed and slammed on her mouse once more.  She didn’t have any work to do, but she wasn’t about to leave Black Siren alone with the team’s tech.  She could make blow it up, or leave a doorway for whoever she was working with to get through, or download weird Earth-2 porn, or get crumbs in her keyboard... or something!  She gave up on her busy work, and put her screen to sleep.  The team didn’t need her at the moment.  From the reflective screen she could see Black Siren, sitting in Laurel’s chair, slouching and filing her nails.  Who did she think she was Shego from Kim Possible? Was she even trying to be Laurel?  Of course not, Laurel wouldn’t sit like that, wouldn’t file her nails while in the Bunker.  Black Siren wasn’t Laurel.

“Geez, I can feel the glare from here.  Like a little angry kitten you are, Sissy,”  Black Siren had stopped her filing and looked over to where Felicity sat.  She wasn’t smiling, she wasn’t frowning.  She had that same bored look she had about everything.

“I wasn’t glaring,”  Felicity said, glaring at the computer screen.  She sighed and turned around in her chair.  She looked Black Siren, straight down.  That made Black Siren smirk, another trademark she had.  Laurel didn’t smirk, Laurel smiled.  Felicity never got the purpose of smirking.

“So you can talk to me.  You just actively chose to talk around me.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“You don’t like me.”

“I don’t trust you.”  Felicity wished she had kept at her busy work.

“It’s because I look like Laurel.  You hate that I’m not her.”  Black Siren sauntered over to the stairs and draped herself over the railing.  She was still smirking, Felicity contemplated walking over and smacking her smirk off.  Instead, Felicity stayed in her chair and glared.

“I don’t trust you, because you’re untrustworthy.  You have tried to kill us more than once.”  Black Siren moved from the railing to a sit on the stairs.  

“You don’t like me because I look like someone you care about,”  Black Siren stopped smiling, “Did you ever stop to think you might look like someone I care about?”

“What are you talking about?”  Felicity wasn’t having whatever made up story Black Siren was trying to push.

“Come here,”  Felicity gave her another suspicious look.  Black Siren rolled her eyes, “Well I could come up there if you’d rather stay on your throne.”  Felicity got out of her chair and walked over to the stairs.  She took a seat next to Black Siren, the closest she had been since she thought she was Laurel.  Black Siren reached into her leather jacket pocket, and pulled out one of those old-school wallet albums.  She skipped past a few pages and stopped at one in the middle.  She passed the picture over to Felicity.

It was a picture of Laurel and Felicity, but it wasn’t.  They were young, no older than twenty-three.  Felicity’s hair is platinum blonde and blue, and Laurel’s was dirty blonde and pink.  They pulled each other close, and had huge smiles on their faces.  They weren’t Felicity and Laurel.

“I was in New York City for the first time. Sara and I had just split, she wanted to stay in Ivy Town.  It wasn’t for me, the whole normal thing she was trying out.  I left my car, locked in some corner.  Except when I came back, it was gone.  All I had left was my father’s old leather jacket, maybe fifty bucks, and my iPod. So I started walking, and I ended up in this old 24-hour dinner.  I’m in the corner booth, trying to send out all my ‘don’t fuck with me’ vibes, when she came up to me.

“Her name was Felicity Smoak-Kuttler, but I didn’t find that out until later.  She introduced herself as ‘Sissy Smoak’ then decided to slip into my booth for no reason.  Nearly every other booth was open, and she found me.  And she introduced herself and asked me if I wanted to do something fun.  So I ask her for some of whatever she’s smoking, and she tells me ‘now, angel eyes, I’m high on life, but I do have some pot if that’s what you’re looking for’.  Against my better judgement, I tell her who I am.  I was trying out Laurel Lance, and she called me ‘Lo.’ And I just decided to go with her.”  Felicity was surprised to find Black Siren had stopped talking to look at the picture again.

“What happened after that?”  Felicity asked.  Laurel looked at her again, and Felicity thought maybe she was seeing Sissy.  She blinked and that look was gone.  Laurel smiled.

“She took me to this twenty-four hour movie theater.  We spent hours watching those movies, riffing movies MST3K style.  In between hiding from ushers, and seeing what Sissy could pull out of her purse,” Laurel laughed, “She was a bit of a klepto.  She would pull out snacks, clothes, wires, books, and whatever you could think of.  God, she made me laugh that first night.”

“Anyway, about fifteen hours later we fell asleep and promptly got caught.  So we’re running for our lives, and we end up… well I have no clue where we end up.  Sissy asks me where I’m spending the rest of the afternoon.  I tell her I have no where to say, and she says I could join her.  So what she does is pull a laptop from her bag, and makes a reservation at the nicest hotel she could think of.  I asked her how we’d be paying and she told me some dude named Eddie Fyers would be treating us, he just wouldn’t know until later.  We spent two weeks staying in that hotel.  Eddie gave us the best food, took us shopping, and let us have the time of our lives.  And we shared back stories.”

“I told her about my mother disappearing after my fifth birthday, and my dad getting shot by his no good partner when I was nineteen.  I told her about walking the country twice with my sister Sara for five years.  I told her about Sara meeting Ray, and staying behind I  Ivy Town to be boring.  I told her how I came to NYC, like every other struggling artist to be a singer.  Gave this nineteen year old girl I just met my entire life story.  But she gave hers too.  Wanna hear it?”

Felicity nodded her head quickly, wanting Laurel to get back to the story.  Instead Laurel got up and stretched.

“Maybe tomorrow.  It’s getting late, and the team will have work soon.”  Felicity looked over at her monitor to see nothing had changed.  She followed Laurel instead.

“I got a reminder on my phone if they need us.  Keep going.”

Laurel smiled, “Fine, but I’m getting coffee first.”  A cup of coffee and a doughnut later, Laurel was back to her tale.  “So, Sissy was the daughter of a hacker and thief, and she was both.  That’s the most she ever said about either.  She was from ‘everywhere’ as she put it, which basically meant she moved around a lot as a kid.  Around fifteen years old, she had met this boy named Coop and run off with him.  She traveled with him for a few years, before he tried to throw her under the bus during a heist.  Sissy tossed him down first, and went off to find a new partner.  She says I looked like a good one, despite the fact that at the point I hadn’t done more than petty crimes.  Either way, I decided spur of the moment, to go with her idea.  We’d be the new Thelma and Louise.  Sissy and Lo.  We spent five years together.  Ghost Fox and Song Bird.  Two of the greatest thieves in the world.  We made our own rules, went wherever we wanted, and didn’t have to listen to anyone but each other.  But then things changed.”

Laurel got really quiet, and looked down into her cup, “Sara had a baby, so went to see my new nephew in Ivy Town and Sissy decided to stay behind in Gotham.  I told her she should come with me.  Even the best thief shouldn’t be left alone in that hell hole that was Gotham.  But she say ‘Now, Lo,  I can manage to keep myself out of trouble for like a week.  I’ll stay in and watch a Red Dwarf marathon or something.’  I remember laughing.  Sissy always made me laugh.”

“What happened?”  Felicity asked.  Laurel didn’t say anything, she looked down at her coffee.  Felicity heard her sniffle.

“I didn’t take her call,  I wanted to surprise her with this really nice vase I pinched from Starling Museum on my way out.  The door was locked when I got there.  That was the first clue.  Sissy never remembered to lock our door, said she didn’t need to with all the security features it had. When she had it installed she said, ‘Think about it, Lo, if a door has four locks, a voice code, and a retinal scanner do you really think people will try the doorknob first?’  God, Sissy made me laugh.  The house was dark, another sign.”  She sniffled again, Felicity saw a tear fall into her coffee.

“She was still alive when I found her.  Sissy smiled when she saw me,  even covered in blood, she smiled at me and gave me that ‘don’t worry, Lo’ smile.  I took her to the hospital, and she fought.  Almost looked like she was going to pull through.  She made it four whole days before she flat lined.  I only went back to our place once after that.  I took her favorite laptop and whatever weapons I could find.  I figured out what happened while I was gone.  Coop had come back around, said she owed him.  She helped him out and he killed her for it.  He just stabbed her and left her there.  Left my friend bleeding on the floor, when she hadn’t done anything she wasn’t told to do.  Left her and walked off like he hadn’t just destroyed someone’s life.”

Laurel looked at her hands, “I had my best friend’s blood all over me.  I held my only friend, while she died.  She was still warm, sometimes I think maybe if I hadn’t stopped for the vase, maybe if I had come a few minutes earlier…”

“It’s not your fault, Laurel.”  Felicity took her hand and gave it a squeeze, “You know that.”

“Oh I know that, Lis.  It was Coop’s fault,”  Laurel gave a small smile, that seemed more sad than twisted, “I found the bastard, too.  He was holded up in Central City.  I made him suffer good.  Sissy would’ve liked that.  He died as the particle accelerator went off.  He screamed as he died, and I started to scream after.  I got the better end of the stick don’t you think?”  Laurel put her coffee cup down, and tried to clean away her tears without messing up her make-up more.

“So, I was a meta, and I was alone.  I hid out in this little bungalow me and Sissy had in the Caymans for a bit.  Figured out my powers.  After I was under control I visited Sara and Ray and little Quentin for a few weeks, but it still wasn’t for me.  So, I went back to what I was good at.  I stole whatever I wanted, but it wasn’t the same without Sissy.  Zoom came to me after a bit, and I became one of his lieutenants.  I became Black Siren, named after the first painting me and Sissy stole together.  That’s when I met Reverb, Killer Frost, and Deathstorm.  They were cool.  Sissy would’ve liked them.  I got really close with Reverb, sex close.  Thought I could even love him someday.  He was fun, but then he got called away.”

“Then Zoom comes to me and tells me Reverb is dead, Killer Frost and Deathstorm were too.  I was surprisingly hollow at the thought that all my friends had died again.  The Flash had killed them, and even then I knew better.  I knew it was Zoom, but I went along with it.  He told me to come to this world, and raise a little hell.  That was cake for me.  He told me all about dear recently departed Laurel Lance, and said if I do a good job I could say here.  Earth-Two wasn’t long for the multiverse, and it wasn’t like I had anything left.  All my friends were dead, and my family were mostly strangers.  So off I jumped.  And low and behold I find all my loved ones are heroes in this verse and I’m the villain.”

“I sent months in a small, soundproof box.  With nothing, but my thoughts and some netflix.  And this little voice in my head that sounded like Sissy said ‘well if we’re all heroes why can’t you be one?’ and that sounded pretty good really.  This dimension needed a Laurel, and I saw a Laurel.  But the little Reverb voice reminded me that they locked me up for just doing what I was told and liking my work.  So, as you probably guessed the first thing I needed to do was get out of that bird cage because I had started to dress my angel and devil as if they were two separate beings from myself.  And because you can only watch Stranger Things so many times, before it stops being as good as the first time.  The answer is twelve times, by the way.”

Laurel leaned back in her chair and Felicity copied.  “Then, shock of all shocks, this weird hooded man springs me and tells me to pretend to be Laurel.  And I tried I really did, but do you know how much of a saint Laurel was?  I swear I was her for like six hours, and I thought my eye was about to start twitching or I was going to get a nose bleed or something,”  she paused, “No offense to Laurel.”

“It’s okay, I think it would’ve made her laugh,”  Felicity smiled.

“Seriously, her posture alone was driving me nuts.  But yeah, I ended up in another cage.  Talking with a woman wearing the face of the person I care about most, who looked at me with so much disdain I kinda hit the bitch switch.”

Felicity sighed, “Yeah, that’s my fault.  I wasn’t having the best few months, and you were just a target to take it out on.”

“I’ve decided to forgive you, tentatively.  If I ever just push you off a building for no good reason, you know why.  So I have my little freak out, and you give me a hell of a punch.  And I’m in another cage with nothing but angel and devil, Sissy and Reverb, as company.  Until I literally somehow convinced Team Arrow for the third-ish chance.  Now here I am.  Filling in the roll of--- who am I anyway? I’m not Black Canary, Dinah is the Black Canary.  Am I the new Speedy?  Cause I should tell you I’m not very good with a bow and arrow.”

Felicity laughed, “You’re Black Siren.  We just have to figure out what that means in Earth-1.”  They cleaned up their mugs, and shut down the upper level of the bunker.  Felicity and Laurel walked to the elevator.  Felicity looked at her, “You’re staying down with Curtis and Rene?”

“Yeah, I don’t think they’re big on another team girl hanging around the bunk beds though.”

“Bunk Beds really?  You have your own little rooms.”

“They are beds, in a bunker.  What else are they called?”  The two shared a laugh.

“You’re welcome to stay in my guest room.  Until we invite an identical cousin named Laurel Lance for you to be.  It's got everything you need.”  Laurel stopped smiling.

“You know, just cause you unlocked my tragic backstory, doesn’t mean you can just pretend to be Sissy and everything will be okay,”  she said harshly.

Felicity frowned, “I’m not trying to be Sissy.  Just like you’re not trying to be Laurel.  We’re just two people with the same faces as them.  Doesn’t make us the same people.  I asked you if you wanted the guest room cause it seems like you could use a little privacy, and I’m not in my loft much.”

“What does that make us?  Lis and Elle?  Similar, but still a little different”

“It makes us, Laurel and Felicity.  We’ll just have to figure out what that means eventually.” Laurel smiled again.

“Well, if it’s just a roommate situation I guess I could handle that.  I will be getting my own identity soon though.  Maybe I’ll pretend to be Dinah’s daughter or something?”

“I’m sure she’ll love that.  Nah, you’ll be some distance Lance, who just got strangely lucky with genes.”  They got into the elevator and quietly left the bunker, “So, what will it be on your first night as an honest to good Earth-Oner.  Big Belly Burger and Game of Thrones?”

“Well that’s a yes to Big Belly, who would say no to that.  But you’re going to have to fill me in on the other thing?”

“They didn’t have Game of Thrones on Earth-Two?”

“Not to my knowledge.  And I have a great deal of presumably nerdy knowledge thanks to Sissy.”

“Oh you sweet summer child.  Let’s go pick up Big Belly.  We’ll be on that couch for awhile.”  Laurel laughed at Felicity’s enthusiasm.

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Genre Magazines, Mort Kunstler, Vampire Queen, Boris Dolgov

Publishing (Forbes): Today, the number of science fiction and fantasy magazine titles is higher than at any other point in history. That’s more than 25 pro-level magazines, according to a count from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, amid a larger pool of “70 magazines, 14 audio sites, and nine critical magazines,” according to Locus Magazine.

Publishing (Jason Sanford): For the last few months I’ve been working on #SFF2020: The State of Genre Magazines, a detailed look at science fiction and fantasy magazine publishing in this day and age.This report is available below and can also be downloaded in the following formats:  Mobi file for Kindle,     Epub file for E-book Readers, PDF file. For this report I interviewed the editors, publishers, and staff of the following genre magazines. Many thanks to each of these people. The individual interviews are linked below and also contained in the downloadable Kindle, Epub, and PDF versions of the report.

Science Fiction (New Yorker): In her heyday, Russ was known as a raging man-hater. This reputation was not entirely unearned, though it was sometimes overstated. Of one of her short stories, “When It Changed,” which mourns a lost female utopia, the science-fiction novelist Michael Coney wrote, “The hatred, the destructiveness that comes out in the story makes me sick for humanity. . . . I’ve just come from the West Indies, where I spent three years being hated merely because my skin was white. . . . [Now I] find that I am hated for another reason—because Joanna Russ hasn’t got a prick.”

Comic Books (ICV2): Blaze Publishing has reached an agreement with Conan Properties International that will allow it to publish U.S. editions of the Glénat bande dessinée series The Cimmerian, ICv2 has learned.  The Glenat series adapts Robert E. Howard Conan stories originally published in Weird Tales into comic stories that Ablaze describes as “the true Conan… unrestrained, violent, and sexual… just as Robert E. Howard intended.”

Fantasy (DMR Books): To cut straight to the one-line review: Jamie Williamson’s The Evolution of Modern Fantasy (Palgrave McMillan, 2015) is a must-read if you’re at all interested in how the popular genre now known as “fantasy” came about. Even if it’s a little difficult to obtain and get into. Williamson is both an academic and “one of us.” A senior lecturer in English at the University of Vermont, he’s taught a number of classes that I’d love to audit (Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Science Fiction & Fantasy Literature, King Arthur).

Historical Fiction (Jess Nevins): Hereward the Wake was written by the Rev. Charles Kingsley and first appeared in as a magazine serial in 1865 before publication as a novel in 1869. It is a fictionalization of the life of the historical Hereward the Wake (circa 1035-circa 1072), a rebel against the eleventh century Norman invasion and occupation of England. Although he became a national hero to the English and the subject of many legends and songs, little is known for certain about Hereward, and it is theorized that he was actually half-Danish rather than of Saxon descent.

Art (Mens Pulp Magazines): During the summer and fall of 2019, we worked with the great illustration artist Mort Künstler, his daughter Jane Künstler, President of Kunstler Enterprises, and Mort’s archivist Linda Swanson on an art book featuring classic men’s adventure magazine cover and interior paintings Mort did during the first major phase of his long career. That book, titled MORT KÜNSTLER: THE GODFATHER OF PULP FICTION ILLUSTRATORS, is now available on Amazon in the US and worldwide. It’s also available on the Barnes & Noble website and via the Book Depository site, which offers free shipping to anywhere in the world.

Gaming (Tim Brannon): Palace of the Vampire Queen. In the beginning, there was a belief that all DMs would naturally create all their own adventures and there was no market for pre-written ones.  The only printed adventure out at this time was “Temple of the Frog” in Blackmoor.  Seeing a need, the Palace of the Vampire Queen was written by Pete and Judy Kerestan. Yes, the very first adventure was co-written by a woman. The first edition was self-published, followed by a second and third edition by Wee Warriors (1976 and 1977) and distributed exclusively by TSR.

Fiction (DMR Books): Last summer, I was fortunate enough to acquire the copyrights to Merritt’s material from the previous owners.  Along with the rights, I received a few boxes of papers, which I’ve enjoyed going through during the past few months, and which I anticipate will provide me with many more enjoyable evenings perusing them.  Among these were papers relating to Merritt and the Avon reprints.  Some of this takes the form of correspondence between Merritt’s widow, Eleanor, and the literary agent she’d engaged for Merritt’s work, Brandt & Brandt.  Others are contracts with Avon, as well as Avon royalty statements.

Pournelle (Tip the Wink): Here, all of Pournelle’s best short work has been collected in a single volume. There are over a dozen short stories, each with a new introduction by editor and longtime Pournelle assistant John F. Carr, as well as essays and remembrances by Pournelle collaborators and admirers.” My take: I enjoyed this a lot. It had been a while since I read any Pournelle (and then almost always with Niven). I’m now tempted to reread The Mote In God’s Eye.

Gaming (Reviews From R’lyeh): Ruins of the North is an anthology of scenarios for The One Ring: Adventures over the Edge of the Wild Roleplaying Game, the recently cancelled roleplaying game published by Cubicle Seven Entertainment which remains the most highly regarded, certainly most nuanced of the four roleplaying games to explore Tolkien’s Middle Earth. It is a companion to Rivendell, the supplement which shifted the roleplaying game’s focus from its starting point to the east of the Misty Mountains, upon Mirkwood and its surrounds with Tales from Wilderland and The Heart of the Wild to the west of the Misty Mountains.

Art (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Being an artist for Weird Tales was not a fast track to fame and fortune. It is only in retrospect that names like Hugh Rankin, A. R. Tilburne, Hannes Bok, Lee Brown Coye and Vincent Napoli take on a luster of grandeur. At the time, the gig of producing illos for Weird Tales was low-paying and largely obscure. Some, like Lee Brown Coye, were able to establish their reputations in the art world after a long apprenticeship in the Pulps. Most are the select favorites of fans. Boris Dolgov was one of these truly brilliant illustrators who time has not been as kind to as should be.

Tolkien (Karavansara): But what really struck me in the whole thing was something that emerged from the debate: some fans said the novel should have been translated by a Tolkien fan, and by someone with a familiarity with fantasy. But other have pointed out that The Lord of the Rings is not fantasy. And my first reaction was, what the heck, with all those elves and orcs, wizards and a fricking magical ring and all the rest, you could have fooled me.

Tolkien (Sacnoth’s Scriptorium): So, I’ve been thinking back over Christopher Tolkien’s extraordinary achievements and wondering which was the most exceptional. A strong case can be made for the 1977 SILMARILLION. In retrospect, now that all the component pieces of that work have seen the light in the HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH series we can see just how difficult his task was, and how comprehensively he mastered it. Special mention shd be made of one of the few passages of that work which we know Christopher himself wrote, rather than extracted from some manuscript of his father: the death of Thingol down in the dark beneath Menegroth, looking at the light of the Silmaril.

Art (Illustrator Spotlight): Many of you have seen some of the pulp covers he created; most likely those for The Spider, Terror Tales, Dime Mystery or Dime Detective. I was recently reading a blog post about David Saunder’s book on DeSoto (I can’t find the link to the blog anymore), and one of the comments was about how the commenter didn’t believe that DeSoto deserved a book, having painted only garish, violent covers. My reaction was immediate; I felt like telling the commenter to go forth and multiply, in slightly different words of course.

Martial Arts (Rawle Nyanzi): Yesterday, I put up a blog post where I showed videos discussing Andrew Klavan’s comments regarding women and swordfighting (namely, that women are utterly useless at it.) As one would expect, this has been discussed all around the internet, but much of it involves virtue signalling. To cut through a lot of that fog, I will show you a video by medieval swordsmanship YouTuber Skallagrim, in which he discusses the comments with two female HEMA practitioners — one old, one young.

Fiction (Black Gate): Changa’s Safari began in 1986 as a concept inspired by Robert E. Howard’s Conan. I wanted to create a heroic character with all the power and action of the brooding Cimmerian but based on African history, culture and tradition. Although the idea came early, the actual execution didn’t begin until 2005, when I decided to take the plunge into writing and publishing. During its creation I had the great fortune to meet and become friends with Charles R. Saunders, whose similar inspiration by Howard led to the creation of the iconic Imaro. What was planned to be a short story became a five-volume collection of tales that ended a few years ago with Son of Mfumu.

Gaming (Sorcerer’s Skull): The Arimites have the gloomy environment of Robert E. Howard’s Cimmerians and elements of a number of hill or mountain folk. They’ve got a thing for knives like the Afghans of pulp tradition with their Khyber knives, though the Arimites mostly use throwing knives. They’re miners, and prone to feuding and substance abuse, traits often associated with Appalachian folk. I say play up that stuff and add a bit from the Khors of Vance’s Tshcai–see the quote at the start, and here’s another: “they consider garrulity a crime against nature.”

Sensor Sweep: Genre Magazines, Mort Kunstler, Vampire Queen, Boris Dolgov published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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Ray Dalio is a particular man. He founded Bridgewater, the world's largest hedge fund, which manages over $150 billion.As of right now, Ray is worth more than $15 billion, and also the author of Principles, the NYTimes best seller.But this story isn't about Ray - it's about how Principles became a book in the first place. It's a story about generosity and taking what resources you have to seek a more enriching life.PrinciplesRay gained fame after the 2008 market crash; he had shorted the market and made a killing.Following the market crashing and Ray's windfall, people hounded him to understand how he did it. People wanted to know the fundamentals on how Ray operated.Listening to the people, Ray wrote Principles.When I say write, I mean he wrote out his thoughts in Word and posted it online as a PDF. The information was substantial and novel. Quite a few would go so far as to say it was incredible.But: the production quality did not match.meh looking PDFYou know how an indie film can become a darling with the critics and subsequently a cult classic? That's what Principles became.The original PDF was a file you had to go looking for. The URL was something akin to bwater.com/file_upload/principlesdraft3.pdf and no official site or page existed. It was never marketed or promoted, but the wisdom contained within made it a viral hit. Eventually, over 3 million people would download that PDF on word-of-mouth alone.One of those readers was Phil Caravaggio. A man who would call that PDF extraordinary and life-changing would do something extraordinary himself.Meet Phil CaravaggioIf you open up Principles, you'll see this at the front of the book:acknowledgement"Whatever beauty you see in the book's design was the result of Phil Caravaggio's generosity and talent. After I put the original version of Principles online as a PDF, he came to me as a stranger bearing the gift of a gorgeously designed print edition, created with the help of the artistic book designer Rodrigo Corral."Phil is the co-founder of Precision Nutrition, a well-respected nutrition company that operates in three areas:Nutrition coaching via habit formationNutrition certification for health professionalsSaaS software that helps health professionals manage their clientsPhil's co-founder Dr. John Berardi is a leading figure in the health and fitness space - he advises companies such as Apple, Nike, and Equinox, and has worked with clients such as MMA fighter Georges St-Pierre.Their partnership is a marriage of complementary skills. John is the face and brings the nutrition knowledge, and Phil brings the underlying business and processes savvy.The company exemplifies bootstrapped success - 16 years old, reliable mid-8 figures revenue, and I often cite them as an example of "professionalism" (something severely lacking in the health and fitness space).I consider myself fortunate to count both Phil and John as my friend.Phil is the co-founder of Precision Nutrition, a powerhouse in the nutrition space.Never resist a generous impulseOne of Phil's favorite saying is "never resist a generous impulse."So back in 2014, Phil comes across a video featuring Ray (How the economic machine works). Blown away at the information presented, he goes seeking more information on Ray and comes across his PDF.Three pages in, Phil thinks to himself: "This is one of the best things I've ever read in my life."By the time he finishes reading, Phil has realized he's stumbled upon a goldmine of knowledge. Most people writing about business have never done what they're talking about, and here's this guy who, in the midst of running this business at the highest level, documented how they did it.For most people, this would mean sharing it on social media. For the more enamored, this may mean writing an email or article about it.Phil decided to leverage his assets and go one step further.So Phil goes out and hires a proofreader. He tells him to go through the PDF and to clean it up; the goal here was to clean it up a bit to make it timeless.Phil then turns to Rodrigo Corral, a famous and renowned book designer who has designed award-winning books for peeps like Jay-Z, Chuck Palahniuk (he of “Fight Club”), and more.Together, they produce the original book form of Principles.I'm kind of hand-waving over all of this, but it was hard work. Phil didn't just hand it off to them and let them run with it; he was actively engaged in cleaning it up and putting it all together.Originally thinking it would take a few months, it took Phil nearly a year to get a finished book in his hands.Phil found Principles so life-changing that, as an expression of thanks, he had it cleaned up, designed, and put together as a book.The easy part over, a bigger challenge awaited Phil: how the hell does he get the book in front of Ray Dalio himself?Phils spends months and months trying to find someone that might have a connection to Ray.Finally, after eight months, he finds a connection:Someone (Person A) who had applied for a job at Precision Nutrition heard of Phil's project. Via LinkedIn, Person A found another person (Person B), who had worked with someone (Person C), who had gone to school with someone (Person D), in Ray's office.(I had to letter the people so you'd see how stretched out and tenuous the connection was).To re-state: Phil Caravaggio → Person A → Person B → Person C → Person D (connection) → Ray DalioPerson D gets connected to Phil, and not knowing what to think, asks if they can meet in Connecticut.So Phil flies to Connecticut and meets her in a garden center that has a coffee shop.(I just want to pause and note the absurdity. Here's Phil flying to CT to meet some lady who has no clue who he is so that he can give her a book to give to Ray.)The person informs Phil that she cannot promise anything; she can get Ray to see the book, but what happens after that is entirely out of her control."That's fine; cool" says Phil. He just wants a shot to get the book in front of Ray.She then wanted to why what Phil was trying to do. Was he a publisher? What was his angle?"No, it's just a gift. This is the God's honest truth - it just really meant something to me."Phil wants to build a sizeable company, and how better to do it than receive mentorship from someone who has already done it?But that was a secondary concern. The primary goal was to show appreciation to someone who had fundamentally changed his outlook. It was about not resisting a generous impulse, no matter how crazy it seems.Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and Phil hears nothing. Phil assumes nothing will happen.I have to note again - I know Phil. We hang out regularly, and he'd previously told me that I needed to read Principles. At no point in time does he tell me he's made a physical copy of this. At no point does he tell me what great lengths he's gone to into spreading this book. At no point in time does he ever show even a modicum of bitterness...He keeps hammering away at me: "you need to read this book."One day, Phil is vacationing in Italy. His phone rings; caller id says the call is from Connecticut, and he picks up the phone to hear Ray's executive assistant on the other side. The reception is really weak, and as Phil tries to find a better connection, Ray gets on the phone.Ray was over the top complimentary. About how it's amazing and how beautiful it is. He tells Phil that he wants to do something with it, and Phil offers to help. Ray takes him up on it, and Phil and his wife fly down to Connecticut.And that is how Phil Caravaggio played a part in helping Principles go from a simple PDF to a legitimate NYT Best Seller.Bestseller bookPhil wanted to show his appreciation for something he valued highly; instead of thinking "this is crazy," he made it happen.But what about ME (aka you)?You may be reading this and think "well good for Phil - he has time, money, resources, and connections - and I have none of those."100% true.(Well 99% - as the CEO of Precision Nutrition, he was incredibly busy and short on time.)Phil spent over $50,000 converting that PDF into a book (his logic: if you're going to do it, do it right).That's not something I could afford to do without mulling it over.With that said, I did spend over $7000 making the NYC Chocolate Chip Cookie Off happen.You may see these numbers and think "hey asshole, I don't even have that much in savings, much less throw it into some other side project."It's not about the $50000. Or the $7000. It's not about the time or the people we know.The point is that we both used the skills and assets we had available to ourselves as leverage to make something we cared about happen.I mean, Phil had to go four-levels deep to find a way of just getting something to Ray... not even an actual introduction! And even that took months and months.We worked within the realms of our means.For example, anytime I come across something interesting, I share it. Not only that, I almost always reach out to the author (via email or twitter) to let them know how much I enjoyed it.That's me not resisting a generous impulse.Read a great book that you think someone will enjoy? Send it to them! Ryan Holiday and Shane Parrish have both talked about how often they buy books).It's not about the money; it's about the thought. A $10 cocktail or a five dollar chocolate can be very meaningful.> If it's within you means: never resist a generous impulse.A case study: #cookielifeThe entire #cookielife and subsequent charity food off madness started because I told my friend Kara "this cookie is amazing and you need to try it so I'm going to buy you one."I didn't just say it; I insisted we go and that it would be my treat.We went to Le Gourmand, and I spent a grand total of $6.00 to purchase two cookies.To use Phil's phrase, "I didn't resist the generous impulse" (mine: "this cookie is delicious and others need to experience the deliciousness").Subsequently, that lead to over 200 cookies sent to me via mail, over $50000 raised via charity food offs (in just 2017 - we should double that in 2018), and countless friendships and amazing memories formed...All from spending $6.00 (in Canadian dollars!) over two years ago.People come across my love for cookies and think I've got some ulterior motive; that my affinity for cookies is some exercise in personal branding. But then they meet me and then they understand - I just love sharing stuff I like. Cookies. Chocolates. Food. Dinners. Books. Stories. Connections. Random gifts.Hell, I just spent $300 taking a buddy's book (that had a positive impact on me) and getting a beautiful leatherbound version made of it.All because I ran across a company that does it, and thought to myself "man, [redacted] would look awesome as a leatherbound book."I got leatherbound booksIt's never about a master plan. It's never about "what will I get back?" It's about (and this will sound cliché and very life-coach-ish) giving back and making a positive impact.You don't need to have a grandiose plan to "change the lives of millions of people". You don't need to be some inspirational and aspirational figure that everyone adores and loves. Just a bit of generosity goes a long way.My buddy Nate (who has worked for Precision Nutrition) wrote about Phil and the genesis of the book and he summed it up perfectly:For me, it means trying to live every day with what the hippies and self-help gurus call an "abundance mindset." It means pushing away the feelings of insecurity, competition, fear, and scarcity, and embracing the fact that there's enough for everyone to go around. The pie is big enough for everyone to have a piece. And the only true way to get ahead is to give. Because the more I give, and the more gratitude I show, and the more I try to help, the happier I am.(One day I'll be half as eloquent as Nate.)It's not about karma. It's not about a balance sheet investment - "give, and you'll get 10x back." And it's not about showing off your generosity.It is about sharing whenever you want, and letting anything you get out of it be a byproduct, not the expected result.Never resist a generous impulse.

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Claes Oldenburg Is (Still) Changing What Art Looks Like

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Claes Oldenburg Is (Still) Changing What Art Looks Like

Yet when compared to the ice-cold irony of Warhol’s silkscreens or the colorful exuberance of paintings by James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann or Rosalyn Drexler, Oldenburg’s work, especially his enduring innovation — rendering sculpture literally soft, through re-creations of everyday things (ice cream cones, typewriters, toilets) that sag from the wall or bag on the floor — looked, and still look, like marvelous reprobates. In the Pop room of any museum gallery, they smirk and slouch and revel in playing at art, seeming to be both the comedians and the clinical depressives.

The latter half of his career, after he grew restless with the art world and moved into cartoonish public sculpture, collaborating with his second wife, the art historian Coosje van Bruggen (who died in 2009), has somewhat obscured his outré spirit — in part because many of the outdoor works, funny and toylike, have become so civically beloved. “Spoonbridge and Cherry,” a red cherry balanced on an enormous spoon, made in steel and aluminum and installed in 1988 in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, is among the most photographed artworks in America, the backdrop for untold thousands of silly selfies. Its fans would likely blanch to learn that among Oldenburg’s early public-art proposals was an idea even creepier than the hole: speakers that would have broadcast a piercing nightly scream through the streets of Manhattan at 2 a.m. As he wrote in one of the lesser-quoted passages from his most famous piece of writing, 1961’s half-satirical manifesto “I Am For …”: “I am for the art that comes up in fogs from sewer holes in winter. I am for the art that splits when you step on a frozen puddle. I am for the worm’s art inside the apple.”

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Oldenburg working out in his studio. Behind him is the work “Big Tools (Screwdriver, Pliers, Hammer),” 1985. Credit Pieter Hugo

THESE WORDS in mind, you don’t fully expect what greets you when you walk into the studio and home Oldenburg has kept on the still-gritty far west side of SoHo since 1971, a five-story warehouse where naval propellers were once manufactured. Inside, it’s as immaculate and organized as a museum. Surfaces gleam and light falls beautifully on the maquettes for public sculpture that line the walls. Slim in khakis and tennis shoes, Oldenburg was sitting in one of the large office spaces with an assistant and wasn’t able to get up to greet me. A fall last year broke his hip, forcing him to get around with a cane or by propelling himself across the floors on rolling office chairs. His daughter, Maartje Oldenburg, who spent most of her childhood in this rambling building and is now an expert on his career, had arrived just as I did, and we convened at a big table her father had piled with boxes of files, like a lawyer preparing for a deposition.

“I guess I was always an archivist,” he said, smiling, surveying the spread, his glasses and ponderous forehead giving him an owllike bearing.

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Unlike some overexamined artists of his generation, Oldenburg enjoys interviews, and he had been through this routine dozens of times before. But today he seemed to be in the mood for some serious retrospection: The first drawings he pulled from a folder were ones he made in middle school and high school in Chicago, where his father, Gosta, a Swedish diplomat, had moved the family in 1936 from Oslo upon being posted to the United States as a consul.

His daughter looked over the profusion of drawings protected by plastic sleeves and said: “I always think I’ve seen everything that’s here. But I’ve never seen these before.”

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Growing up in wartime Chicago gave Oldenburg, a bookish child of Europe, a firm purchase on America’s brashness, inseparable from its boorishness and brutality. That sense informed the ragtag, anxious nature of his early pieces, work that seems to gain political relevance with each passing year. His childhood drawings — schematics of war planes, storyboard cartoons, caricatures of classmates — aren’t anything special. But they immediately reveal three things: He was a preternaturally talented draftsman from the start; he was always wickedly funny; and he has always had an engineer’s passion for the built world. It’s no accident that many of his best drawings over the years have taken the form of grandly elaborate blueprints and architectural renderings, making him a charter member of what I like to think of as the schematic school of late Modernism (other members would include Bruce Nauman, Lee Lozano and Chris Burden).

Art didn’t really grab Oldenburg until he was an adult. “The Art Institute of Chicago was a mystery to me back in those years,” he said. “Where I’d go was the Field Museum and look at things rather than looking at art. I think I’ve really always been more interested in things than in anything else.”

At Yale, which he entered in 1946, he was drawn to literature and studied with the formalist critic Cleanth Brooks, but he was an eccentric student at best. “I actually left once before I graduated,” he said. “One day, I just got on a train and came to New York and sat on a park bench in front of City Hall and read ‘Moby-Dick.’ ” His early 20s were spent in a peripatetic drift that was equally Kerouacian: cub reporter in Chicago, sent to find bodies floating in the river; ad agency stint drawing insects for an insecticide company; dishwasher in Oakland, where he traded drawings for rent. In San Francisco he met the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and in Los Angeles he feared for his life. “I sat next to two guys at a diner who were plotting a murder, honest to God. L.A. was really a terrifying place for me that first time.”

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Oldenburg has lived on the far west side of SoHo since the early ’70s. Credit Pieter Hugo

But his wandering, he said, gave him the courage to try New York. He moved there in 1956, and it was as if the city had been waiting for him. The Abstract Expressionist revolution was running low on gas. The year before, Robert Rauschenberg had made “Bed,” one of his first so-called combines, a melding of painting and sculpture, by drawing and splashing paint on his pillow and his patchwork quilt and stretching them on a wooden frame. Not long before, Jasper Johns had begun his edge-to-edge American flags, rendering an icon not as an image in a painting but as an object in itself. Formal orthodoxies were being detonated in studios all over Manhattan, and Oldenburg could feel the tremors.

“I felt like the Ab Ex painters weren’t saying very much, and I wanted work that would say something, be messy, be a little mysterious,” he said. “Nineteen fifty-nine was the turning point. I was painting these brushy paintings — figurative — and then, thankfully, it all just fell apart.”

Drawing on a longstanding interest in the primitivism of Jean Dubuffet and thinkers about ritual and symbolism like Sigmund Freud and his pupil Wilhelm Stekel, he began making raw pieces that seemed to come straight from the id. They included the first iterations of Ray Gun, a mutable symbol for himself roughly in the shape of a toy laser pistol, a form that continues to fascinate him to this day. (On a visit to the studio’s second floor, he came across a piece of cardboard with three ray-gun shapes on it that appeared to be old raisin cookies nibbled into shape and then glued down. “Not sure what this was for,” he said, looking it over quizzically.) His other alter-ego, my favorite, is a geometrically minimalist mouse head that evokes Mickey and the reels of a film projector, as well as a kind of twilight-zone Modernist future. This symbol took its most improbable physical form in his “Mouse Museum.” An obsessive collection of small pieces and punning found objects (plastic bananas in conversation with dildos), the museum was born in his studio and eventually came to inhabit a snug, vitrine-filled, gallery-size structure shaped like the mouse head, designed by him and van Bruggen; the collection has been periodically exhibited, including a showing at Documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany, in 1972.

In the space of less than five years, in the short-lived but highly fertile gallery scene that sprung up in the East Village and at the legendary Green Gallery on 57th Street, he helped birth not only Pop Art but performance art as well, in maniacal productions with sculpture as props, staged with his first wife, Patty, now Patty Mucha, and compatriots who would later go on to fame as well, like Lucas Samaras and Carolee Schneemann. At one of these performances, “World’s Fair II” (1962), Oldenburg hung a soft sculpture depicting an upside-down New York City skyline from the ceiling in front of an audience in a rented storefront. Many performances consisted of the artist and Patty rolling around or dancing on a debris-covered floor. Writing at the time, the poet Frank O’Hara observed that Oldenburg “actually does what is most often claimed wrongly in catalog blurbs: transform his materials into something magical and strange.”

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AS HE APPROACHES his ninth decade, Oldenburg has slowed his once-furious pace of productivity, but he is still at work on public projects and large-scale sculpture. He’s finishing a private commission in California called “Dropped Bouquet,” a colorful maquette of which sits in his studio, and he’ll have a show of new works at Pace Gallery this month in N.Y.C. His energy — some of which goes into a stationary bike he is using to strengthen his legs — remains remarkable. Nearing the end of the third hour of our interview, he kept trying and failing to bring it to a close, spotting other things to talk about, ferrying me up and down in the building’s creaky old freight elevator, big enough to fit a small car.

“I like living in the studio,” he said. “You have the ability to see everything. And you can always change things any way you want them.”

Unlike some other old masters of the New York downtown scene (Jasper Johns, who now lives in Connecticut; Rauschenberg, who died in 2008 and spent much of the later part of his life in Florida) Oldenburg has remained resolutely in the city that nourished his work, with only a couple of periods away in Los Angeles and France, where he and van Bruggen bought and renovated a chateau.

“I don’t get out as much anymore, but I feel like the city is here when I want it,” he said. His daughter, who remembers the scavenged toys she and her brother were allowed to choose from the heaping garbage barrels her father amassed for his work, told me, “It’s always kind of a mystery to me how things still work their way in here. He’s very good at keeping things that he wants to use for later.”

As if to prove her point, he took us to see some small assemblage works he has been tinkering with, simple but unruly arrangements of inconsequential junk on small metal shelves. One in progress consisted of not much more than a cardboard figure of a pinup girl, a brown foam Berenstain Bears novelty headband, some paint-dipped stirrers and a piece of red rope. It looked unaccountably like a deconstructed view of Cezanne’s bathers.

“I put things here and I look at them for a long time and if they don’t belong, well, they’ll get up and walk.” He stared intently at a small plastic toy ladybug, perched tentatively on the edge of the conglomeration. “I told her to get lost,” he said, “but she’s still here.” Hopefully, he added, “Maybe she’ll stay.”

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EPILOGUE

Taylor stuffed his bag into the overhead compartment as best he could, squishing it in next to the massive bag of the lady one seat up, who apparently decided to bring a grand piano on her trip to California. Or maybe it was a hippopotamus. Either way, it took some effort, but Taylor finally managed it and plopped down into his seat beside his little sister. The dark-haired young man of Vietnamese descent had lanky limbs that left him plenty of leg room despite the airplane’s cramped seating.

           “I still can’t quite believe it”, his mother remarked from the seat in front of him.

           “Ma, we’re on the plane. It’s about to take off. Believe it”, Taylor said back.

           “Well really”, she said, “it’s just so wonderful to see you without having to use a cam chat. You’ve been spending so much time on that computer doing your online gaming, or storytelling, or whatever it is you do with your online friends that we barely see you anymore.”

           Taylor’s dad, seated beside his mother, turned in his seat to add his input to the mother’s claims. “I have to agree with your mother, Taylor. But as we’re here now, I suggest we all enjoy it.”  He placed a loving hand on his wife’s arm and smiled gently. It was his signal to her that she should let go of whatever she was dwelling on and enjoy the moment. “I am very glad that you suggested this trip so we could have some family time, son. It not only shows consideration, but maturity. I can think of no better way to use my accumulated vacation days.”

           Taylor tried not to roll his eyes. Even when he was paying a compliment, his dad was prone to lecturing. “Thanks, dad.”

           “And not by going to a theme park”, the mother emphasized, “or some big comic convention—“, she stressed the last two words with no small measure of annoyance. She was never going to let him live down the vacation fiasco of two years ago.

           “Mo-omm…”

           “But a scenic trip to California!” And here comes the gushing. “Visiting small towns, hiking, camping. I’m so excited.”

           “And let’s not forget the many tourist traps”, the dad added.

           “Oh foo, I like tourist traps.”

           “So does your Visa card”, the dad chided.

           The mom gave him a playful nudge and pulled out her collection of brochures for the eighteenth time since they took their seats. As she chittered away about their itinerary, Taylor took out his tablet and began swiping through pages and opening files. With a touch he was online, going straight to his bookmarked site he shared in secret with only four other people. His fellow players, artists, and storytellers. No new posts, no updates. That cinched it. Taylor knew what was up. Erin, Freddie, Kaitlyn and Aadesh had just up and disappeared without a word, and Taylor knew why. They had finally taken his ongoing suggestion to heart. They’d gone LARPing. He could see Aadesh as THE CHAMPION lycanthrope (as if anybody else could play that role), with Freddie as his wise-ass best friend THE DETECTIVE. Erin and Kaitlyn could easily take their pick of roles from THE ORACLE, THE HUNTRESS, or THE WARRIOR. The quartet of fast friends had gone on an extended outing of Live-Action Role Playing of their beloved characters, maybe reliving one of their favorite stories or even creating an original adventure of their own design…and they had left him out of it. The main reason he had brought the idea up in the first place was that it would finally give him the chance to spend time with his online friends in person. That, and he was aching to play the part of THE BROTHER.          

Taylor was heartbroken and felt more than a little betrayed. Sure, he wasn’t part of the original group that founded the site. The fantasy world of Lighthouse Knoll was already in place by the time he got there, but he had contributed as much to it as any of them. His art alone should have solidified his place in the group. But Taylor was on to them. He was sure of it.

Taylor tapped a folder and opened up the current list of characters. He scanned the names—or lack thereof—for the colorful cast. Kaytlin was so wrapped up in her archetype characters that she was big on not giving them any proper names. Taylor recalled that some of those archetype characters had been thought up and put in place just for back-story purposes. She was all about the details, that Kaytlin. Taylor had to admit, the characters were as original as they were compelling.

There was THE PSYCHOPATH (sometimes called THE SCHEMER), the Mentor’s deranged power-hungry uncle. THE CURSED, the cruel old man formerly ravaged by disease whose supernatural cure now left him in constant pain and coughing up sludge as black as his soul. THE WARPED, the young athlete who switched back and forth from trustworthy to untrustworthy (depending on who he was with and when) who later became a man-size lizard monster that evolved into a werewolf--if that makes any sense. THE LOST, the vengeful were-cheetah (or was she a leopard? Cheetah or leopard, it was one of those two). THE BROTHER, the tall werewolf with the tortured childhood and a thing for scarves. THE COACH, who was pretty much just a coach but awesome for comic relief. But out of the seemingly endless list, there was one other that stood out in Taylor’s mind. THE FALLEN. His roller coaster of a story fascinated him. Perhaps that’s why he picked up on what he did.

Taylor’s mom turned in her seat as the last stragglers and latecomers shuffled their way down the aisle to their seats and stuffed their bulging carry-ons under the seats in front of them. “Honey, put away the tablet. We’re on the trip you suggested. No computer and no internet, remember?”

Taylor closed everything down with a few quick taps and held up the black screen to reassure his mother. “All done. Just shutting all my online stuff down. It now goes in the bag.” He slid the tablet into a zippered sleeve on his backpack.

“I appreciate it, sweetie”, his mom smiled.

“If he’d been better organized”, the father observed, “he would have taken care of all that before we left the house.”

The mom gave him a look. “Don’t start.”

She then turned to see Taylor fishing around inside his backpack for something. “Honey, you just promised not five seconds ago.”

Taylor held up a finger. “It’s not my tablet.”

“No phones either”, she reminded him.

“No, it’s a surprise”, Taylor said. He then produced a small stack of oversized children’s softcover storybooks, which he offered to his little sister. “Aaannd who’s this?”

The little girl practically burst with excitement at the sight of her big brother’s offering. “Harry the Happy Husky!” That was when the begging began. “Please read them to me. Please please please—and do the voices! Do the voices otherwise it doesn’t count!”

Taylor smiled at her enthusiasm. “What do you think I brought ‘em for?”

The father leaned over and whispered to his wife. “Who is this imposter and what has he done with our son?”

As Taylor read to his little sister (and did the voices), introducing each character in turn with each silly storybook name, another name lingered at the forefront of his mind. It was the name that prompted this whole trip, the name that inspired his suggestion that they pack up and go to this particular part of the country.

Taylor was no idiot. Some of the characters from their story world were almost too convincing, too believable, and too extensively fleshed-out, even in their fantastic world. He knew they had to be based on actual people.

Kaitlyn was convinced that California where this character (yeah, right), the one named THE FALLEN, could be found. But Taylor was on to her. He knew that this was not just another character. He was another player in the game. And that was most likely where his friends were. With him. He just knew it. Now, chasing off after some other kid’s fictional character could seem pretty stupid. How was he supposed to find the character’s real-life counterpart?

But of course Taylor could do just that. Because Taylor knew THE FALLEN’s real name.

Kaitlyn had typed it out accidentally during a game session, and was very quick to delete it and replace it with his character archetype. But Taylor saw it. And he wrote it down. He knew it was important, otherwise Kaitlyn wouldn’t have been in such a rush to keep him from seeing it. Now he was headed right to the one—or at least to the general area of the one--who had that name.

Deucalion.

Whoever he was. Taylor was determined to find out.

[flauntpage]

The Immortal Life of John Tesh's NBA Anthem "Roundball Rock"

There's cowbell in "Roundball Rock," which I'd never noticed. You can hear it thonking along metronomically under the hyperactive arpeggiating strings and swelling synthesizers. The version I listened to is just one minute and nine seconds long, and I had come to believe that I knew every bright corner of it. This is not because I have spent much time listening to the song on purpose, because I have not. It's because I have never had to seek it out.

Whenever there was a NBA game on NBC between 1991 and 2002, some edit of "Roundball Rock" was played before the game and at the half and wherever else it would fit; in all, it was played more than 12,000 times during the 12-year period in which it was NBC's NBA theme song, which breaks down to something like 20 times per game. It became so ubiquitous during this period that it is easy to forget that "Roundball Rock" is no longer the NBA's theme song, and in fact has not been since George W. Bush's first term in office.

When the rights to broadcast NBA games transferred to ABC before the 2002-03 season, John Tesh—the leonine new age music composer and former Entertainment Tonight host who wrote the song—offered "Roundball Rock" to the network. They declined, and replaced it with a song called "Fast Break," which was composed by Non-Stop Music; the official YouTube upload of that song, from 2012, has been viewed more than 114,000 times, which is pretty impressive given how easy it is to hear it during basketball season. It is also not in the same universe as its predecessor.

There is a video of Tesh performing "Roundball Rock" in concert that was uploaded four years earlier, by Tesh's official account. The only word to describe this version of the song is "extravagant." Pacing the stage before a rapt crowd, Tesh pushes play on the first of two answering machine messages that he left for himself in July of 1990, when he was in the French city of Pau covering the Tour de France. The first message he left was "Roundball Rock"'s chorus, as Tesh told ESPN's Darren Rovell in 2002. In a second message, 30 minutes later, he scatted the verse.

In the video, Tesh is towering and lushly goateed and wears a glittering silver vest with seven buttons on it; he introduces the performance of the song by miming dribbling a basketball. A large corps of musicians, including a full string section, launch into an expansive version of the original; it features both a guitar solo, complete with Surprised At How Hot These Licks Are faces from the soloist, and some violin filigrees courtesy of a gamboling fiddler in an epaulet-adorned Napoleon-style coat. When I watched the video of this performance earlier this week, it was the 1,435,747th time someone pressed play on it.

Tesh's website mentions that he "claims that he made in the six figures from royalties each year it was used." It further mentions that Nelly sampled the song for "Heart Of A Champion," the first song on the Sweat half of Nelly's 2004 double album Sweat/Suit; because Tesh owns the song's copyright and publishing, he presumably made some money on that, too. (It does not mention that it has also been sampled by Ras Kass for a song called "NBA" or been subjected to three-and-a-half minute onslaught of NBA-related punchlines by Joe Budden.) Tesh has made the song available as a free download, and that 69-second version is the one that Tesh recorded on spec and sent to NBC executives. He paid an orchestra $15,000 to record it, sent the demo to NBC under an assumed name, and worked out a deal with the network that paid him a fee every single time the song was used. "Every five seconds—into commercials, out of commercials," Tesh told the Wall Street Journal's Jason Gay in 2011. "It definitely put one of my kids through college." Tesh told Rovell back in 2002 that he had offered the song to ABC for use on its broadcasts. "I'm also perfectly happy to sell it to the NBA if they want it," Tesh said.

None of that happened, which means that 15 years after it was last played during a NBA broadcast, the only place you can hear "Roundball Rock" is everywhere—in your head whenever you watch a NBA broadcast, echoing around the online spaces where basketball weirdos gather, in the collective memory of a generation that grew up associating the song with the experience of watching basketball on television. When I looked up the jazzy latin alternate version of the current ABC/ESPN theme, I had the strange experience of realizing that, despite having heard that rendition what now must be hundreds of times during NBA broadcasts, I had also somehow never heard it before. Every time I had heard it, something in my brain took it upon itself to remedy what it perceived as an oversight, and so simply plugged in "Roundball Rock." Tesh's song is vexingly catchy with marimba and horns, too, if you were wondering. Maybe you've heard it, too.

John Tesh sent me a link to a video and asked me not to share it. I can describe it, and so can tell you that it opens with a classic YouTube establishing shot: pallid indoor lighting, anonymous suburban paint job, a bespectacled man in a black-and-white windbreaker seated at a Yamaha piano. The man tears into the beginning of "Roundball Rock" and then gives way to another recognizable YouTube shot—wood floors, larger piano and better light, a man with a duckling's fluffy quiff—and then another keyboard, and then another. Then two bearded guys play it on electric guitars and a man in plaid shorts picks it up from there on a ukelele, and so on and on. Someone with an acoustic guitar explains how to play the song, to camera, as a graphic with the corresponding guitar appear behind him in a homemade graphic. That last one is Tesh's favorite part.

When he performs live, which Tesh still does 25 to 30 times per year at venues tending towards your larger casino-based performance spaces, he projects that video plays as a sort of introduction. "I wanted to do kind of a Storytellers thing, sort of inside the music, and I said let's bring projection with us, because we have a team of editors," he told me. "So I said 'why don't you search YouTube, just search for the song' and it turns out there's hundreds of people learning to play the song. I was ... this is crazy." At his shows, Tesh generally uses "Roundball Rock" as an encore. "When we play the song, at the end of our concerts, that's when the guys in the audience that have been dragged to a John Tesh concert by their wives or girlfriends, they're like 'holy crap, you did this?'" he said. "That's really fun for me."

If you know what Tesh looks like, it is probably either because of the decade he spent hosting Entertainment Tonight between 1986 and 1996 or because of his still-ubiquitous Live From Red Rocks PBS special, from 1995; the accompanying album, in which Tesh performs with the Denver Symphony Orchestra, went platinum several times over. His career sprawls across decades before and after that, and continues still—he presides over a rather startlingly vast multi-platform empire today, which includes a daily radio show that's on 300 stations in the United States and Canada, a weekly television show that's on 174 stations, and a podcast that he does with his wife and her adult son from a previous marriage. He is still making records and generally doing more or less what he wants. Everything except the albums comes from a studio that he built into his home. "We gave up on Los Angeles traffic," he told me. "And we got 15 hours of our lives back. We just took all that gas money and put it into building a studio."

All of which is to say that Tesh has had a fantastically successful career—a happy marriage and kids and grandkids, a successful run as a journalist and a lucrative stint as a host on Entertainment Tonight and millions of records sold as a New Age recording artist, which was always what mattered most to him. All of which is true, and all of which cannot be said without mentioning that Tesh has also spent much of his public life as a big, earnest, good-looking guy learning how to live with being a punchline. His albums have been hugely popular, but his records filed under the most readily mocked musical genre that exists; he is as recognizable as anyone in American life, but it's at least in part because he used to tell millions of Entertainment Tonight viewers that it was Dabney Coleman's birthday, whenever it was Dabney Coleman's birthday.

Tesh, at least as far as I could tell, is extremely cool with all this, and with the strange-but-habitable shape into which his fame has shaped his life. "Triumph [The Insult Comic Dog] came to my house, or my quote-unquote house, in Los Angeles, in one of those TMZ-style tour buses," Tesh told me. "And he's yelling, with a megaphone of course, out of the bus. And I peek my head out of the house and he goes, ' Teshy, Teshy, come out, come out.' And I say 'Triumph what do you want?' and he says 'I want you to stop playing that crappy music.' And then I got on the tour bus and he started humping everybody and it was very uncomfortable." The important things to know about how Tesh told this story is that his Triumph imitation was both extremely enthusiastic and pretty on-point, and that he laughed a big happy basso laugh at the end of it.

All of this is strange, but also this is Tesh's life: he has been successful and become famous in every field he ever endeavored to enter, and yet he is still someone Triumph does not hesitate to poop on. The strangest part of this supremely strange and strangely familiar Real Hollywood Story is that "Roundball Rock," which is almost certainly Tesh's most lasting contribution to the broader culture, is one that's not generally associated with him. It couldn't be any other way. Even people lucky and talented enough to get what they want in life never quite get it the way they imagine. No one ever gets in through the front door.

When Tesh came up with the founding theme for "Roundball Rock" he was spending most of his day in a van filled with synthesizers as an employee of CBS Sports. "I worked in local news for many years, in Orlando and Nashville and then in Manhattan at WCBS as a local news reporter," Tesh told me. "And then I got hired as what's called an anthology sports reporter—none of the basketball or baseball, but the downhill skiing and the figure skating and Mr. Universe. And I was assigned to the Tour de France and that's where the producer, David Michaels, who's Al Michaels' brother, he said 'let's do this MTV style.'"

What that meant, for Tesh, was more work. He would be not only writing about what happened on the Tour that day, but composing a soundtrack for the footage illustrating it; Michaels edited that footage, and then Tesh wrote and read his own narration over a musical score he composed more or less on the fly. "It was a truly collaborative process, but what happens with editing video like that—and you can see anybody like Hans Zimmer doing this, too, and doing a much better job of it—but you can't just write a song," Tesh told me. "It's odd time signatures, and it's more like colors than anything else. Deep Moog synthesizers when people are climbing up a mountain and really high-speed arpeggiators when they're descending at 60, 70 miles an hour. So what I would do, for two months before we'd even go to the Tour de France, I would write out little canvas pieces, 'I know I'm going to need this, I know I'm going to need that,' but I wouldn't set the tempos. I wouldn't commit it to anything except being in the computer. So then when I saw that, I could pull that out and adjust it so it would fit."

This was more or less the approach that Tesh took to composing a theme for the NBA on NBC. He had some ideas, which he sang into his answering machine from a hotel room in the small hours of the morning, and by now you know what those sound like. He knew, he says, because he was plugged into the broader sports media scene, that NBC was looking for a theme. He knew enough to not just record the theme but also to sync it to video. "In order for the guys at the network to buy in, you can't have them imagine it," he said. "So I edited together on VHS tape like 20 fast breaks, from the Bulls and the Lakers. And I would play the theme that I had, the rough theme, over that footage. Just to see, you know, how it worked. When I sent it to NBC, I sent them a copy of the VHS and also a copy of the mixed song, so they could see it with video. You want to remove any chance for imagination or work from people who are judging that kind of stuff. So I made sure it was the right tempo, so they didn't have to imagine it was 134 beats per minute, which is the tempo of a Michael Jordan fastbreak—I put it at that tempo. And then I re-edited the footage so it looked like it was already in the show."

Tesh also knew enough to submit the theme under an assumed name, because he already understood the gap between what he wanted to do and how he was perceived: "The guy that reads the celebrity birthdays on television isn't going to be writing our sports themes, you know? It ended up getting judged on its own merits, but definitely being a TV host stood in my way." What Tesh calls "renaissance-ing" was still anomalous in the business at that time, but also he was already figuring out how to be serious about his work even when precious few took him seriously in the way he wanted to be taken seriously.

No one has quite cracked the musicological science behind earworms, which is reassuring given how many steel-trap minds and proprietary algorithms have doubtless been loosed in pursuit of this answer. There was a CBS theme for NBA broadcasts that existed before Tesh's, and there is the Non-Stop Music theme that has now outlived his. In 2010, the classical conductor Marc Williams told ESPN's Kevin Arnovitz that he much preferred the old CBS theme to Tesh's, which he described as "'90s music with adrenaline," but ultimately "a one-trick pony."

I am not qualified to say whether Williams is right or wrong about any of this, although as I have already admitted the extent to which "Roundball Rock" has homesteaded my unconscious, I would probably have to recuse myself even if I were. Tesh told me that when he offered the song to ABC, he was told that the network wanted to go its own way, to avoid reminding viewers of NBC. "Which I actually get, you know," he said. "But it's really not like the rest of the world works. Otherwise, why would people buy songs and put them in commercials, you know? You want to use the most recognizable theme, so people hear it and are like, 'oh, basketball is on.'"

A decade and a half after it was last heard on television, "Roundball Rock" still rings out in that way for several generations of basketball fans. Whether it deserves that, or how it came to earn it, is secondary to the fact of it. In a 2013 Saturday Night Live sketch—a discrete bit of it shows up in Tesh's Storytellers reel—Jason Sudeikis and Tim Robinson play John and Dave Tesh, and perform a version of the song with lyrics that are, mostly, "ba-ba-ba-bas-ket-ball/gimme-gimme-gimme the ball/because I'm gonna dunk it!" It's a funny bit, but it's funnier when you remember that, when it aired, it had been 11 years since anyone had heard Tesh's theme during an NBA game.

And yet, because it never left, NBA fans still hear it all the time. There are no plans on the part of any of the NBA's current broadcast partners to bring it back, and Tesh is busy enough that he has not pushed for a reunion. "I don't really wake up every morning thinking about it," Tesh told me. "But what I'd really like to do is maybe at the Finals, one time, if they asked me, I would love to come, just right at midcourt, maybe with an eight-piece string section or something like that, and just play the theme right after the national anthem. That would be a fun thing for me."

Maybe you, as I did, found that very easy to imagine. Maybe you, as I did, realized that you had, in some way, already been imagining it.

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The Immortal Life of John Tesh's NBA Anthem "Roundball Rock" published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[house-for-musicians-blog]

RAW HOUSE #1: Yamir - Willingness to Experiment

“Raw House” is a series of interviews exploring, discovering and presenting new and unknown artist on the Bandcamp platform. Each interview is an insight and deep-dive into one particular artist chosen randomly though the selection of members of the House for /Mu/sicians Facebook group. Consider joining if you’re an artist yourself!

At times you see new faces on the various forums which struck you as something else entirely. When I first saw a vague lamppost in between some trees breathing a heavy light onto a distorted image I was in a stage where post-rock was beginning to plan a new seed in me and experimental music was deep into my subconscious. I put the release on and I could precisely remember when all gone black while music still remained in my ears... It was „I Stole This Riff”, the first EP by Puerto Rico-based musician Yamir. Today in the first ever Raw House we'll discuss the matter of his newly released LP „Mullväd” as well as dig into some background on his musical project, his ethereal love to Keiji Haino and a fear of failure on a small island in the Atlantic.

Listen while reading to the newest Yamir release entitled „Mullväd”

Mullväd by Yamir

I.  EFFECTS OF WAR

RAW HOUSE: Firstly, I wanted to congratulate you for releasing „Mullväd” which I find, in my honest opinion, a worthy successor to your self-titled LP way back when. Immediately when I've heard that title I had to check it out. However, much to my surprise, I couldn't really find a proper meaning to that title. Should a listener feel this sort of unknown behind your album names

YAMIR: Well, it doesn't really relate much at all to the album, mainly I picked it out because part of the inspiration for Mullväd and creating a five part track came from The Residents' album, Mark of the Mole. So I took the word mole and looked for a language it would look cool in, i.e. Swedish and I added the “ä” so it would look less plain. The Residents seem to be people I steal a lot of name ideas from, like Angakok and I Stole This Riff are both Residents songs as well.

RAW HOUSE: Would you say then that The Residents are one of these key artists that influenced you throughout your musical project?

YAMIR: Definitely, along with Branca and Haino, which are much more obvious influences.

RAW HOUSE: Your album starts with a very slow guitar-based ��A Study In Noise” with a very bleak progression, slowly building up to become this sculpture of noise. That slowly build up track really reminds me of more experimental rock based bands; the first example out of the hat would be Swans. How much these experimental bands made you came to realization that you want to do music of that nature?

YAMIR: I'm not too big on Swans outside of their self titled EP, but they were one of the bands that drove me in this direction. There's a few tracks I scrapped from the album because halfway through making them I realized they sounded almost identical to Oxygen or some other track of theirs. What really convinced me to try this out was Sonic Youth and Glenn Branca. I was reading this SY biography a few months back, and it had a lot of interviews with Branca and his music, so I thought to myself: "Hey, there really hasn't been anyone that's done Branca's style of guitar composition that I know of, I should try it out myself!". And from there I made A Study in Noise.

RAW HOUSE: Now „For Keiji” seems quite obvious for me – as somebody who recognizes you on the various forums by the picture of Keiji Haino giving feedback to other's musicians. It feels like there is a deeper connection with this artist. Why did you decide to dedicate that particular track to Keiji? What is his overall influence on your musical perspective?

YAMIR: Well, obviously I am a huge fan of him, mainly because of his willingness to experiment with any instrument and genre from psych rock to noise to a capella to DJ mixes, and just this mysterious aura that surrounds him. I dedicated that track to him because it sounds pretty similar to something you'd hear on his collabs with O'Rourke and Ambarchi, plus that style of improvisation and the guitar tone come straight from him.

RAW HOUSE: Another thing which put me on guard immediately – drumming. Now Ryan Sinclair isn't a new name in your project, he has been there since the first releases on your Bandcamp. How does the collaborative work like your releases influences you as a solo musician? What do you feel Ryan puts on the record with his work that you wouldn't otherwise?

YAMIR: Well, actually Ryan didn't really change much in terms of collaborative work, I'd just asked him for some drumming for a song on my s/t and he delivered. He actually didn't exactly contribute to this, either. I've been trying to message him since July of past year but he's nowhere to be found. He'd left me a few drum solos I had asked him for to use in another project I ended up scrapping. While making For Keiji, I came across the solos in my files and I realized they were perfect for the song. Drums is something I've always had a problem finding, so I'm really glad he left me some extra things to work with, because otherwise I would've just used a drum machine like on other tracks.

RAW HOUSE: Another contributor to the release is Prikc who I haven't heard before and his acoustic elements adds a very nice space in the release. In general you were trying to give other people some space on your releases. I remember some violin elements from Dear Laika, for example. How do you view collaboration, in general?

YAMIR: Well, Prikc is one of my best friends, and I've been meaning to make some proper releases collaborating with him. He is way better at doing improvisation in guitar so I decided to give him a space on the album to exercise it. I think collaborating, especially at these levels, is very important since it helps both of you gain more popularity from each other's fans and can give a very interesting twist to your music. I wouldn't say any of the people that have been featured in my music were "collaborations", but more that I just commissioned them to do some work that I needed for a track. I do hope to make some proper collaborations in the future, though.

RAW HOUSE: Then we come to „Mullväd” - what a beast! This almost look like something taken out the progressive rock band's book. It is staggeringly different from the first tracks you've made on your first EP. What was the intention behind pulling these five tracks together?

YAMIR: Like I said before, it was mainly the idea of creating a sort of small story around the album, which kinda came to me when I realized that three of the tracks I was working on at the moment would fit perfectly one after the other, and had a certain mood behind them that i could form into a story. And from there, I fixed those tracks a bit so they'd transition into each other and made the missing tracks fit into the missing parts of the story. I'd say they're very very loosely based on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, but that's because I used those interview samples.

RAW HOUSE: So, should we say that this album is about war? Or the suffering of existence? What did you tried to do say though these interview samples

YAMIR: Well, I'd say that the Mullväd tracks are more about the after effects of war than war itself. The interview samples I feel just help add to the theme of the tracks and I guess shed a little light on what the songs are supposed to be about to the listener.

RAW HOUSE: „Mullväd”, in general, features an array of different genre mixes. Somehow it feels like a one cohesive release though. How do you find a way to combine what seems like a different songs formed with a very different mold in mind?

YAMIR: It usually wasn't easy to come up with ways combine the tracks, I rarely write down what I have in mind to make, so it's more just spontaneous ideas I get while working on them or just by trial and error.

RAW HOUSE: Was this spontaneous nature also present when you were making your music ever since the beginning of your project?

YAMIR: Yup, the only song I ever really "penned" would be A Study in Noise, and even then I would change the things I wrote and add new things as I made it.

RAW HOUSE: So it all comes from emotions of the current moment?

YAMIR: Exactly.

RAW HOUSE: I really love the finale of your release. A blissful post-rock ambiance filled with some sort of „magic” behind it; that's probably my favorite track from you. The bleakness, the atmosphere of it all is really speaking to me. In addition, the words about Nagasaki in the interview provides no foot to really stand onto. What do you think gives a release a great atmosphere

YAMIR: I don't think it's too hard to create a great atmosphere, as long as your song is really good and it has a lot of detail to it, you can make most people get really immersed in it. 

II. MUSIC OF THE MOON

RAW HOUSE: Since we started talking about atmosphere, I want to track back to your beginnings. Yamir, as a name, refers to the moon which is featured on your profile picture and some glimpses of that moody, almost vague in my eyes, atmosphere is presented in your album covers. How did you decide to provide that art direction to your releases? Was it a conscious decision or more of the gut feeling inside yourself?

YAMIR: Okay, the moon profile picture was definitely a coincidence and not intentional at all, I never would've realized unless you'd told me! The art direction for my album covers is conscious, though. Up until this album, all the artwork were pictures I'd take and then play around with in whatever free editing program I could get my hands on. I always try to look for the best image that looks beautiful and at the same time lets you know what kind of music it's going to give you. I'm not as good with the latter, but I think it's very important, at least in my musical output.

RAW HOUSE: Has it been hard for you to start your music project?

YAMIR: At first, it was pretty easy, it was just me messing around with Audacity and having fun seeing what I could make. But as time went on, I started to get a bit more serious about it. I began to get very ambitious with the things I wanted to make, which has led to a lot of frustration. Making this album was pretty hard, especially with me now having pretty much only the weekends to record, but in the end, now matter how hard it is, it's definitely worth it just to see everyone's reaction to it, which is what's kept me going.

RAW HOUSE: Puerto Rico feels to me like a place which might be more open to experimentation than other countries. Yet you are placed next to Jamaica – a giant music juggernaut with it's reggae movement, and the US which, to be frank, was a culture pot producing a thousands and thousands hours of music daily. How one does find himself musically in the environment like this?

YAMIR: Here in Puerto Rico, the music scene is very similar to the US, since we were taken as bounty from Spain and then colonized. I think I'm stuck in between the two current underground scenes going on, one being the punk rock and metal scene, and the weird experimental electronic/noise scene. I don't exactly fit into either of those so it can be a bit hard to market myself to either side, plus I don't often get the chance to go to their events and get to know the scene, because everything's going on on the other side of the island and they like to do their events at odd times like 2AM on a Wednesday.

RAW HOUSE: So you think it is easy to cope with being an experimentalist there?

YAMIR: Yeah, there's definitely a market for experimental artists here, as small as it might be.

RAW HOUSE: What do you think about failure? Is this something which you conciser within the realms of your musical passion? How do you cope with it

YAMIR: Oh yeah, I think about it a lot. It worries me that I'm wasting away months on end working on something only for nobody to listen to it. I don't really have a ways to cope with it, I just try to push the thought out of my head and just look at my stats for comfort haha.

RAW HOUSE: What do you think of live performances in general? Do you, in general, prefer them over the studio environment? Do you want to present your music live in the future?

YAMIR: Living in a tropical island in the Caribbean, I don't get to see a lot of live shows often, cause all that comes over here are huge pop stars and old 80’s metal bands looking for a quick vacation and some tour money. The few that I've been to were mediocre Latino rock bands (Maná and Los Enanitos Verdes, for example) and they were definitely way more enjoyable live than on a studio recording. I don't really think that's the case for all artists, though, depending on what they do live, if they play only new material or just their hits. I would love to do my music live, but I'd be stuck to a pretty limited song selection, plus I'd need to find someone to help me out with all the other electronic noises while I'm playing guitar.

RAW HOUSE: What are you listening to right now? What would you personally recommend?

YAMIR: Recently I've been getting into electronic music, mainly just techno and most of its more minimal or ambient subgenres. Jazz is also something I'm quite big on, I'm digging through the ECM label and they have so much fantastic stuff. The other thing I've started getting into is my people's music, reggaeton. Now while Americans just see it as some lame fad from the early 2000s, there's a lot of backstory to it and it's even had a renaissance in recent years. I'd hate to recommend a reggaeton album, so I'll just go with Ricardo Villalobos - Fizheuer Zieheuer. It's what got me into microhouse and techno stuff. Definitely not for people who don't like repetition, though.

RAW HOUSE: As an artist, overall, how would you say you have progressed so far?

YAMIR: I've definitely progressed so much in terms of mixing and production. Looking back at those first songs I made, they were so cluttered and muddy, which was one of the biggest critiques I'd be getting. In general I've just gotten better at songwriting, guitar playing, and being a lot more resourceful with the limited amount of instruments and programs I have to work with.

RAW HOUSE: Finally - what's in store for Yamir in the not too distant future

YAMIR: Right now, I don't have any big plans for a follow up to Mullväd. I want to focus on getting my music around, especially here on the island. I have a few ideas and some side projects to toy around with, though. I'm hoping to put out a collaboration or two with Prikc, whatever we make is probably going to be the next thing I put out. If all goes well, I might even try to do a live show.

Interview conducted on 18th March, 2017 For more Yamir go to: https://yamir.bandcamp.com/ 

[yamirbc-blog]

RAW HOUSE #1: Yamir - Willingness to Experiment

Interview by Jakub Tabor, Saturday March 18th, 2017.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/house-for-musicians/raw-house-1-yamir-willingness-to-experiment/2212708738954864 [original article]

At times you see new faces on the various forums which struck you as something else entirely. When I first saw a vague lamppost in between some trees breathing a heavy light onto a distorted image I was in a stage where post-rock was beginning to plan a new seed in me and experimental music was deep into my subconscious. I put the release on and I could precisely remember when all gone black while music still remained in my ears... It was „I Stole This Riff”, the first EP by Puerto Rico-based musician Yamir. Today in the first ever Raw House we'll discuss the matter of his newly released LP „Mullväd” as well as dig into some background on his musical project, his ethereal love to Keiji Haino and a fear of failure on a small island in the Atlantic.

Listen while reading to the newest Yamir release entitled „Mullväd”: https://cbrcbr.bandcamp.com/album/mullv-d

I.  EFFECTS OF WAR

RAW HOUSE: Firstly, I wanted to congratulate you for releasing „Mullväd” which I find, in my honest opinion, a worthy successor to your self-titled LP way back when. Immediately when I've heard that title I had to check it out. However, much to my surprise, I couldn't really find a proper meaning to that title. Should a listener feel this sort of unknown behind your album names?

YAMIR: Well, it doesn't really relate much at all to the album, mainly I picked it out because part of the inspiration for Mullväd and creating a five part track came from The Residents' album, Mark of the Mole. So I took the word mole and looked for a language it would look cool in, i.e. Swedish and I added the “ä” so it would look less plain. The Residents seem to be people I steal a lot of name ideas from, like Angakok and I Stole This Riff are both Residents songs as well.

RAW HOUSE: Would you say then that The Residents are one of these key artists that influenced you throughout your musical project?

YAMIR: Definitely, along with Branca and Haino, which are much more obvious influences.

RAW HOUSE: Your album starts with a very slow guitar-based „A Study In Noise” with a very bleak progression, slowly building up to become this sculpture of noise. That slowly build up track really reminds me of more experimental rock based bands; the first example out of the hat would be Swans. How much these experimental bands made you came to realization that you want to do music of that nature?

YAMIR: I'm not too big on Swans outside of their self titled EP, but they were one of the bands that drove me in this direction. There's a few tracks I scrapped from the album because halfway through making them I realized they sounded almost identical to Oxygen or some other track of theirs. What really convinced me to try this out was Sonic Youth and Glenn Branca. I was reading this SY biography a few months back, and it had a lot of interviews with Branca and his music, so I thought to myself: "Hey, there really hasn't been anyone that's done Branca's style of guitar composition that I know of, I should try it out myself!". And from there I made A Study in Noise.

RAW HOUSE: Now „For Keiji” seems quite obvious for me – as somebody who recognizes you on the various forums by the picture of Keiji Haino giving feedback to other's musicians. It feels like there is a deeper connection with this artist. Why did you decide to dedicate that particular track to Keiji? What is his overall influence on your musical perspective?

YAMIR: Well, obviously I am a huge fan of him, mainly because of his willingness to experiment with any instrument and genre from psych rock to noise to a capella to DJ mixes, and just this mysterious aura that surrounds him. I dedicated that track to him because it sounds pretty similar to something you'd hear on his collabs with O'Rourke and Ambarchi, plus that style of improvisation and the guitar tone come straight from him.

RAW HOUSE: Another thing which put me on guard immediately – drumming. Now Ryan Sinclair isn't a new name in your project, he has been there since the first releases on your Bandcamp. How does the collaborative work like your releases influences you as a solo musician? What do you feel Ryan puts on the record with his work that you wouldn't otherwise?

YAMIR: Well, actually Ryan didn't really change much in terms of collaborative work, I'd just asked him for some drumming for a song on my s/t and he delivered. He actually didn't exactly contribute to this, either. I've been trying to message him since July of past year but he's nowhere to be found. He'd left me a few drum solos I had asked him for to use in another project I ended up scrapping. While making For Keiji, I came across the solos in my files and I realized they were perfect for the song. Drums is something I've always had a problem finding, so I'm really glad he left me some extra things to work with, because otherwise I would've just used a drum machine like on other tracks.

RAW HOUSE: Another contributor to the release is Prikc who I haven't heard before and his acoustic elements adds a very nice space in the release. In general you were trying to give other people some space on your releases. I remember some violin elements from Dear Laika, for example.  How do you view collaboration, in general?

YAMIR: Well, Prikc is one of my best friends, and I've been meaning to make some proper releases collaborating with him. He is way better at doing improvisation in guitar so I decided to give him a space on the album to exercise it. I think collaborating, especially at these levels, is very important since it helps both of you gain more popularity from each other's fans and can give a very interesting twist to your music. I wouldn't say any of the people that have been featured in my music were "collaborations", but more that I just commissioned them to do some work that I needed for a track. I do hope to make some proper collaborations in the future, though.

RAW HOUSE: Then we come to „Mullväd” - what a beast! This almost look like something taken out the progressive rock band's book. It is staggeringly different from the first tracks you've made on your first EP. What was the intention behind pulling these five tracks together?

YAMIR: Like I said before, it was mainly the idea of creating a sort of small story around the album, which kinda came to me when I realized that three of the tracks I was working on at the moment would fit perfectly one after the other, and had a certain mood behind them that i could form into a story. And from there, I fixed those tracks a bit so they'd transition into each other and made the missing tracks fit into the missing parts of the story. I'd say they're very very loosely based on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, but that's because I used those interview samples.

RAW HOUSE: So, should we say that this album is about war? Or the suffering of existence? What did you tried to do say though these interview samples?

YAMIR: Well, I'd say that the Mullväd tracks are more about the after effects of war than war itself. The interview samples I feel just help add to the theme of the tracks and I guess shed a little light on what the songs are supposed to be about to the listener.

RAW HOUSE: „Mullväd”, in general, features an array of different genre mixes. Somehow it feels like a one cohesive release though. How do you find a way to combine what seems like a different songs formed with a very different mold in mind?

YAMIR: It usually wasn't easy to come up with ways combine the tracks, I rarely write down what I have in mind to make, so it's more just spontaneous ideas I get while working on them or just by trial and error.

RAW HOUSE: Was this spontaneous nature also present when you were making your music ever since the beginning of your project?

YAMIR: Yup, the only song I ever really "penned" would be A Study in Noise, and even then I would change the things I wrote and add new things as I made it.

RAW HOUSE: So it all comes from emotions of the current moment?

YAMIR: Exactly.

RAW HOUSE: I really love the finale of your release. A blissful post-rock ambiance filled with some sort of „magic” behind it; that's probably my favorite track from you. The bleakness, the atmosphere of it all is really speaking to me. In addition, the words about Nagasaki in the interview provides no foot to really stand onto. What do you think gives a release a great atmosphere? YAMIR: I don't think it's too hard to create a great atmosphere, as long as your song is really good and it has a lot of detail to it, you can make most people get really immersed in it. 

II. MUSIC OF THE MOON

RAW HOUSE: Since we started talking about atmosphere, I want to track back to your beginnings. Yamir, as a name, refers to the moon which is featured on your profile picture and some glimpses of that moody, almost vague in my eyes, atmosphere is presented in your album covers. How did you decide to provide that art direction to your releases? Was it a conscious decision or more of the gut feeling inside yourself?

YAMIR: Okay, the moon profile picture was definitely a coincidence and not intentional at all, I never would've realized unless you'd told me! The art direction for my album covers is conscious, though. Up until this album, all the artwork were pictures I'd take and then play around with in whatever free editing program I could get my hands on. I always try to look for the best image that looks beautiful and at the same time lets you know what kind of music it's going to give you. I'm not as good with the latter, but I think it's very important, at least in my musical output.

RAW HOUSE: Has it been hard for you to start your music project?

YAMIR: At first, it was pretty easy, it was just me messing around with Audacity and having fun seeing what I could make. But as time went on, I started to get a bit more serious about it. I began to get very ambitious with the things I wanted to make, which has led to a lot of frustration. Making this album was pretty hard, especially with me now having pretty much only the weekends to record, but in the end, now matter how hard it is, it's definitely worth it just to see everyone's reaction to it, which is what's kept me going.

RAW HOUSE: Puerto Rico feels to me like a place which might be more open to experimentation than other countries. Yet you are placed next to Jamaica – a giant music juggernaut with it's reggae movement, and the US which, to be frank, was a culture pot producing a thousands and thousands hours of music daily. How one does find himself musically in the environment like this?

YAMIR: Here in Puerto Rico, the music scene is very similar to the US, since we were taken as bounty from Spain and then colonized. I think I'm stuck in between the two current underground scenes going on, one being the punk rock and metal scene, and the weird experimental electronic/noise scene. I don't exactly fit into either of those so it can be a bit hard to market myself to either side, plus I don't often get the chance to go to their events and get to know the scene, because everything's going on on the other side of the island and they like to do their events at odd times like 2AM on a Wednesday.

RAW HOUSE: So you think it is easy to cope with being an experimentalist there?

YAMIR: Yeah, there's definitely a market for experimental artists here, as small as it might be.

RAW HOUSE: What do you think about failure? Is this something which you consider within the realms of your musical passion? How do you cope with it?

YAMIR: Oh yeah, I think about it a lot. It worries me that I'm wasting away months on end working on something only for nobody to listen to it. I don't really have a ways to cope with it, I just try to push the thought out of my head and just look at my stats for comfort haha. RAW HOUSE: What do you think of live performances in general? Do you, in general, prefer them over the studio environment? Do you want to present your music live in the future?

YAMIR: Living in a tropical island in the Caribbean, I don't get to see a lot of live shows often, cause all that comes over here are huge pop stars and old 80’s metal bands looking for a quick vacation and some tour money. The few that I've been to were mediocre Latino rock bands (Maná and Los Enanitos Verdes, for example) and they were definitely way more enjoyable live than on a studio recording. I don't really think that's the case for all artists, though, depending on what they do live, if they play only new material or just their hits. I would love to do my music live, but I'd be stuck to a pretty limited song selection, plus I'd need to find someone to help me out with all the other electronic noises while I'm playing guitar.

RAW HOUSE: What are you listening to right now? What would you personally recommend?

YAMIR: Recently I've been getting into electronic music, mainly just techno and most of its more minimal or ambient subgenres. Jazz is also something I'm quite big on, I'm digging through the ECM label and they have so much fantastic stuff. The other thing I've started getting into is my people's music, reggaeton. Now while Americans just see it as some lame fad from the early 2000s, there's a lot of backstory to it and it's even had a renaissance in recent years. I'd hate to recommend a reggaeton album, so I'll just go with Ricardo Villalobos - Fizheuer Zieheuer. It's what got me into microhouse and techno stuff. Definitely not for people who don't like repetition, though.

RAW HOUSE: As an artist, overall, how would you say you have progressed so far?

YAMIR: I've definitely progressed so much in terms of mixing and production. Looking back at those first songs I made, they were so cluttered and muddy, which was one of the biggest critiques I'd be getting. In general I've just gotten better at songwriting, guitar playing, and being a lot more resourceful with the limited amount of instruments and programs I have to work with.

RAW HOUSE: Finally - what's in store for Yamir in the not too distant future?

YAMIR: Right now, I don't have any big plans for a follow up to Mullväd. I want to focus on getting my music around, especially here on the island. I have a few ideas and some side projects to toy around with, though. I'm hoping to put out a collaboration or two with Prikc, whatever we make is probably going to be the next thing I put out. If all goes well, I might even try to do a live show.

RAW HOUSE: Thank you for your time!

Interview conducted on 18th March, 2017 For more Yamir go to: https://yamir.bandcamp.com/