#however comma it is objectively funny to think of

[bottomvalerius]

Just realized Damien would be one of those kids who like celebrate their parents’ anniversary, which as a child of parents who desperately needed a divorce, is such a foreign and whack concept LMAO

[lazuliquetzal]

Comedy Is A Lie: I’m Going To Explain The Joke And It’s Going To Make Everything Worse

A buddy asked me why I cut a good joke from one of my fics and my immediate answer was “it killed the tension,” which, upon reflection, is a pathetic answer that is mostly inaccurate and does not even come CLOSE to how much thought I put into comedy in my writing. So I guess I’m going to write this out and excise the demon of over-explanation. 

Part The First: What Is Funny

The biggest thing I try and keep in mind when writing editing comedy (and anything, really, but especially for comedy) is rhythm. Lots of parts to rhythm! Most obvious is the word-to-word/sentence-to-sentence flow. Timing is a really important aspect of verbal comedy, which is why performance is a good medium to use. You get to control the delivery of every sentence and the spaces in between. But when you’re writing, you have significantly less control over how a reader will interpret the rhythm: all you can do is word your sentences as best as you can and give them rhythm cues via punctuation. (This is why I use so many em dashes and commas… I'm working on that…)

The other part to rhythm is on a more macro scale. There are jokes that will roll along with the flow of a story. For me, these are jokes that don't deviate from the context of the scene too much. They connect one subject to the next, or they build off of each other (a ‘yes, and’ sequence, for example). Alternatively, the joke is delivered in a really understated way. Like passing off something objectively batshit as status quo. Either way, they flow!

Then there are jokes that will halt a scene in its tracks. These are jokes that recontextualize a situation, or make a particularly large leap from the current topic. Or, you've been setting up for this punchline for a while and this joke is payoff. Or the joke is just really, really funny. These are the kind of jokes where you need to give the characters (or the reader) a beat to process them. Sometimes. We’ll get back to that.

Part the Second: How Is Funny

So the point of all that rhythm stuff is that comedy has a flow! If every line is a witty one-liner, none of the lines are witty one-liners! If every joke is a one-hit-KO, you have left your reader unconscious. Basically, if you are constantly being #Funny, you become repetitive and predictable, and that is the death of tension (and humor is a tension-driven element). 

One way to think of comedic pacing is setup (AKA building tension) and punchline (AKA payoff). It’s a balancing act: the more you build up tension, the more satisfying the payoff is going to be, but if you spend too long building up, you start dragging. You want the reader to think, “I can’t wait for the punchline!” and not, “oh my god, PLEASE get to the punchline already.” 

Fun way to make the tension last longer is to put all those flow-y connector jokes along the way. The reader’s anticipating the Joke, so by giving them little jokes, it meets their expectations in little ways so that they don’t get too antsy.

Hey, what’s tension, you ask?

Part The Third: Why Is Funny

When I read a book, there are two emotions that get me to turn the page:

I don’t know what’s going to happen next, and I’m curious!

I know X is going to happen, and I’m anticipating it!

That’s tension. (Something something semantics—I’ve never taken a creative writing class, I don’t have a vocabulary) 

You can have the calmest, low-stakes fluffiest fic in the world but as long as your readers are experiencing either curiosity or anticipation, Congrats! You have tension! I, however, like putting readers on fast-paced rollercoasters, so that’s the lens through which I’m tackling this section, which is: how do I use jokes in a story structure context? What purpose does a clown serve?

I mentioned earlier that some jokes are bricks to the face: they demand to be processed. Most of the time, I put high-impact jokes in places where I need the story to “reset” in a way: force a beat so the reader can process both the joke and the plot. That’s using humor to release tension. Literally. Laughter relieves stress.

But! You can also use those jokes to make the tension even worse! If you drop a bomb and immediately press forward, no processing allowed, you get stressful comedy. You want to laugh, but also a bunch of other stuff is happening and it feels kind of rude to laugh, so you get stressed. Sometimes humor can undermine a climactic moment, but if you use the right joke in the right spot you create shrimp emotions. If you’ve read DotF ch8 you know what I’m talking about.

Jokes also just make for good plot points? A lot of jokes are built on recontextualization. Everybody loves a good twist/reversal/surprise in a plot. Just make a joke and re-frame it, and bam! You’ve plotted! (Everything I’ve ever written started off as a joke.)

Wait, What Was The Question?

Why did I cut the joke? It was a waste of a brick to the face. It was too referential, it required the audience to know/agree with something completely unrelated to the story, it didn’t build upon what I already established. It ruined the rhythm.

I need to emphasize that, despite all my Thoughts on this, the way I appraise my jokes is 80% vibe-based. I probably could have kept the joke, and it would have been totally fine. But I would know. I would know that my intended rhythm is broken… it would haunt me until the end of time…

[physalian]

What No One Tells You About Writing #7 —The Editing Edition

Today’s list is all about the post-draft process, as I slog through another round of it.

Part 6

Part 5

Part 4

1. No one cares about your book baby as much as you do

Trying to say this as objectively as possible, but it remains an ugly truth. Your WIP might very well be the most important project on your mind for months. Unless you have a significant other totally and completely invested in your writing journey, no one else will have the same priorities you do concerning your beta readers and editors. They all have their own lives and jobs to think about.

Whether it’s your editors not approaching your book with the same level of emotion as you do, or not working on your timetable as quickly as you’d want them to, your book’s biggest cheerleader will remain you, the author, and no one else. Doesn’t mean your book is bad, niche, or boring, it’s just not as special to anyone else as it is to you.

2. Your editors will have their arbitrary hills to die on

I have said this in other ways before, but editors aren’t robots (or at least they shouldn’t be), and we all have our own reasons for not liking books, and those reasons probably aren’t reflective of you as an author. You can have an editor with moral objections to some of your themes and characters, but who is still quite competent at critiquing pacing and flow.

Or one who just fundamentally dislikes a side character or a romantic subplot, while agreeing that it is well-written. Or one who does not agree with how a scene should be told, what elements it should include, what they deem offensive, etc. This is why it’s important to have as many eyes on it as you can for a full spectrum of opinions. One editor might hate a scene that five others love. You can’t please everyone.

3. This is where you will hate your own narrative the most

The amount of times you will read over the same lines of dialogue, the same jokes, the same introspective pining, the same gushy romantic scene, can be incredibly frustrating and demoralizing. You’ll second-guess yourself constantly. You’ll wonder if it really is that funny or that romantic or that compelling. You’ll convince yourself that it’s dumb or pedantic or pretentious and consider deleting entire scenes and characters.

When you’re neck-deep in cleaning up crutch words and fixing syntax and arguing with yourself over the placement of a period or a comma or whether or not to use “said” or a different verb, there’s not much fun to be had. Go slow, step away from the project when it gets too much, and come back with fresh eyes later. You do your book baby no favors editing with an attitude.

4. Your favorite elements will end up on the cutting room floor

This is why I think it's important to archive your deleted scenes. Some characters, important lines of dialogue, or themes and motifs get axed as a byproduct of deleting the scenes that contain them. You can either shuffle those beats around to other areas of your book, or save them for a later WIP, or a sequel.

Sometimes your book isn't what you thought it would be, and that doesn't make it any lesser for what it is.

5. However long you think it’s going to take, guess again

As mentioned above, no one works on your time table. Beta readers can be very hard to find as the definition of what beta reading looks like isn’t very set in stone. How I beta read is very different from the work delivered by some that I hire as we all have different elements that we focus on.

Some try to edit your book into a story they want to read, overriding your voice as an author. Some only give line-edit feedback where you’re looking for more big picture notes, or vice versa. Some give less feedback than you think the narrative warrants.

Some skip entire scenes and leave you unknowing if there was just nothing special to say about them. Some will miss important edits that later editors slap with valid criticisms. Some just quit, and you have to start over. Some will give you vague feedback, or contradictory feedback, or feedback that just isn’t helpful and you have to do your best with what’s been given to you.

Editing is a very long and tedious process and vetting editors can get mighty difficult when we all have our own stipulations for what we think a quality edit means. It costs a pretty penny, too, if you’re like me with WIPs that consistently top 100k words.

—

In the end, editing remains vital to any story, original or fanfic or otherwise, if you want it to be as successful as it can be. I don’t think there is a perfect, flawless narrative out there, even by the greats. You’ve already dedicated so much of your time and effort into your work, do it justice by giving it the TLC it deserves.

[crimsongrimoire]

what are some of your favorite tropes sentences sayings phrases reoccurring processions of words in fics, either to read or write? Specifically like how in my opinion "fuck me until I can't X" and "nestled until they fell asleep" have such vibes?

and, are there any that you want to throw right in the trash? Like how "fuck my womb" makes my stomach feel moist (derogatory)

i haven't read much of anything fic wise in a While but some things stick with you idk. I could ctrl + f through my fics to find in depth stuff regarding writing but ill just go off the cuff

Good™️:

the ones mentioned are also extremely good actually. the vibes are there

i was actually thinking the other night about how weirdly horny the word ache is? i have no idea how to articulate it. it just Is. throb also. the vibes.

"come over here and do something about it" about literally anything

usage of the phrase "getting [one's] knees dirty" in the context of like. oral. hear me out. there's something about it

pay attention/eyes on me/look at me kind of stuff. the inherent homoeroticism of redirecting the attention of the object of your affections idk

one calling the other Theirs to a third party

for a non horny one, "you really don't need to worry about me" / "I DONT CARE IF I NEED TO IM GOING TO CAUSE YOU CLEARLY DONT! BE CAREFUL!!"

for klk specifically. light/dark symbolism. sun/moon symbolism. star symbolism. drives me insane affectionate

"keep moaning my name like that" and related phrases

i never feel like i do them enough justice consistently to have posted one but like. soft aftercare is so everything

shovel talks are endearing tbh. as with anything it depends on the execution but like conceptually i like them

"I beg your pardon?" / "then beg" is it cheesy and kinda dumb. for sure. however. it's funny

trash:

that one too, mostly because. like. that aint how that works. that would Hurt. and any talk of pregnancy really. "im gonna knock you up" type shit. like... just. don't. it's not sexy, esp as someone who doesn't want kids nor the ability to have them really its just. why... i don't get what's sexy about it. and the fact that oftentimes it's never been something tagged in consideration of. like yall have fun however that kills my investment and would likely make me wish i didn't start whatever I was reading. cringe inducing at best

hot take: yanderes as a general concept. always has been severely not my thing. everyone have fun, i honestly just find it annoying. immediate filter out of any results of whatever im looking at, full stop. there's a handful in some games and such i like and i straight up ignore those characters unironically I have zero time for that in my life. i bring it up cause it tends to be shoehorned into like ANY big weeby fandom SOMEWHERE

ngl it's hard to think of specific phrases i really haven't read anything in a while. i personally dislike the word chuckle idk. i don't mind seeing it places but it feels weird in my own writing. same goes for Most Words For Pussy, The Biggest Reason Why I Haven't Written Basically Any Femslash, All The Words Just Suck And It Feels Weird.

minor grammatical pet peeve actually. slightly bothered when dialogue tags are misused. like. "dialogue," she smiled. putting an expression after a comma rather than articulating anything about how it was said at all. like either close the statement and have that be unrelated or add some kind of other descriptor to the speech. slight but noticeable to me

[mewmewnyaart]

I'm not very good at drawing horror and blood but I recently have been getting into OFF lately so I figured I'd try to draw batter to pratice lighting and shadows

I also made my own au where batter and hugo switch places but I doubt anyone would like it or even read it heck I couldn't even get a single like on any of my posts

But here I go anyway :

So common belief that the world of OFF isnt real and that its all happening inside Hugo's head because hugo is in a comma and that the batter resembles the father and the queen resembles the mother

And that the guardians are the boy's immune system and organs that are intolerant to the drug liquid plastic that is being experimented on hugo

The mother was always a working woman and never gave hugo attention while the dad was a straight forward and loving man (I also have a personal theory that he's religious)

The mother wants hugo to live but the father wants to let the boy die because he's tired of seeing his own child in pain everyday

Ok now that I have that out of the way here's my au:

In this au its the father that ends up in a comma and hugo is the one who tries to save him from dying

Backstory to how the dad ended up in a comma:

Hugo in this au is healthy and lives a normal life the father was once a baseball player (as a hobby) so hugo got inspired by his dad and started to take baseball classes at his school

One day the dad was dropping hugo off for baseball practice and while waving goodbye while slowly moving out of the parking lot a reckless older student who wasn't looking quickly backs up his truck hitting the father and sending him into a comma

Ok now for the characters:

We enter the game as hugo and we are greeted by the judge and we start our journey of "purifying" the world just like batter

The enemies represent different family members who dislike or or even hate the father and the father's phobias or fears as well as microbes or poisons in the father's system

Then we have other characters like pets,neighbors,friends who are good guys or people who side with hugo in the this au

Also the puzzles would changed in this au

Hugo is a child and the father would probably play alot with hugo and his games since the mother was always busy ,so instead of floating boxes we'd get more complicated versions of kids puzzles like connect the dots or fill in the shapes etc.

Now for who each character represents and then I'll move on to what the goal of the game is or what Hugo's mission is:

Hugo= he represents the son in real life but he also resembles a new antibiotic that's being experimented on the father

The judge = in real he's the family house cat named milk ingame he's a guide but I have my own head canon

so alot of people tend to draw batter with his eyes closed some draw 4 eyes some draw no eyes at all

I like to think that the father irl has bad eye sight or sensitive eyes so he wears special glasses but will not wear any glasses when at home because he doesn't like to so he will walk around with his eyes closed

So milk will guide him throughout the house by purring or meowing at him

As for the smile the judge has on his face hugo likes the movie Alice in wonderland over and over so the image of the Cheshire cat would be embedded in the dad's memory which is why the judge appears that way

He views the judge as someone who is helpful

The queen = the queen is his wife however they start to have alot of problems and arguments before the father fell in a comma

And the relatives try to convince her to turn off the life support and move on with life

Dedan= irl he's the father's brother in law with a snappy attitude and he hates the father alot and even objected in thier wedding day he will do anything to hurt the father or cause trouble

The father sees his brother in law nothing more than a all bark no bite a big mouth

Japhet= in real life is the lady that lives next door (yes I KNOW japhet is male but he's based off if her in the father's head)

She's is very controlling person who enjoys gossip and can't mind her own business always sticking her nose where she can as well as pushing everyone around she does everything she can to get attention and impress people and she's flirted with the father mutiple times but she's ignored her every time

She has very loud and noisy birds and has killed thier other family cat Venice saying that she did it as self defense (Venice is Valerie basically)

The father views her as a parasite

Enoch= he resembles another dad that takes his kid to baseball practice but is in bad terms with the mother and will constantly pick on hugo for fun

He assumes if the father approaches him its because his wife told him to do so

and will constantly say that his child and wife are happy ,living a life with no problems thinking that he's got life figured out

Even though its clear that his son isn't enjoying baseball at all, is quite over wieght as well as his wife ignores him all the time not to mention he's constantly eating meaning that he has some sort of food addiction it seems he sees no irony in his life at all

The father sees him as an irresponsible over wieght person who's always lying to himself and to blind to see the truth thinking that his life is ok when it's clearly not

Zacharie = irl he's the father's best friend since middle school and they've known each other for years he was the best man at the wedding he's bisexual and in a relationship with a girl named sweetie (please don't hate me batterie shippers QWQ!) He used to crush on the father and even confessed to him on the wedding day he was heartbroken but accepted that the relationship was never gonna happen and was even mad at his best friend but realized it was wrong of him to feel that way

He eventually moves on

He likes to bring and buy alot stuff and show them to his best pal later somegimes illegal stuff (he even brought weed over one time oh boy) he's like an uncle to hugo and is always happy to help and defend his best friend no matter what

He views him as a brother and family member aswell as a very optimistic chill dude and will jokingly refer to him as "the merchant"

Sugar: irl she's zacharie's gf (before her he had 2 toxic exes and she helped him out of those toxic relationships) she and the father don't really talk all that much so he knows little to absolutely nothing about her aside from the fact that she likes to talk funny sometimes and is really into dolls and aliens and a slight addiction to eating pixie straws (straws filled with powered candy or sugar)

He views her as a silent person nothing much

The elsens= they are the people that the father meets/sees/interacts with everyday/every once in a while but don't have much of a connection with (you know like a co worker you have small talk with or barely ever see)

Now for the plot :

After the father enters a comma the son starts to go from school to the hospital (they're very close to each other and you can say hugo is 5-7 years old and ) and visits his dad everyday and calls out to him hoping it'd wake him up

The mother scolds him for running off without super vision and that his dad won't wake up if he keeps calling him that whatever he does is useless that his father will remain to be a lifeless bag of meat on a bed

Hugo doesn't give up ignoring his mother's words

She realizes that hugo has an obsession with his unconscious father that is affecting his studies along with his social life

Zacharie doesn't make this any better because he offers to pick up hugo after school to prevent him from getting abducted or lost along with his jokes all the time

She slowly starts to Contemplate turning off the life support machine wondering if it would fix everything

Hugo hasn't been paying attention in class and thier marriage has been having a issues lately her family never liked or accepted him she sees zacharie and others as annoying and problems bringers and maybe they'd have less expenses if hugo didn't have to go to baseball pratice every day not to mention he'd less likely get hurt if he stopped playing

Everyone else started to convince her to turn off life support they discuss this next to the unconscious father

She prevents zacharie from seeing hugo and locks out any other connections the fatehr has

finally she becomes convinced however there's 1 barrier preventing her from doing that.....Hugo

The only person who truly gives hugo attention and love is his father without his father he'd feel lost and scared his mother is always working and doesn't give him much attention

Everyone tells him to give up on his dad and move on but hugo stands his ground

Alot of the arguments and conversations happen in the hospital room next to the father so he hears everything in his comma which leads to the creation of the world of OFF in his head

Therefore we play as hugo through out the game (dressed in a baseball outfit) solving puzzles and fighting enemies "purifying" the world

Not much changes the boss battles the add ons etc. Will remain the same in this au

Maybe there will be more rubber duck /duck/ bird themed stuff in this au aside from the pedalos (ex:move the boxes to make them look like a duck idk lol)

However the final boss will change

Canonly batter is stopped by the judge but in this au the judge sides with hugo because its the queen (the mother) who is trying to turn the switch off and hugo is trying to prevent that

So instead of the judge stopping hugo

Hugo will meet the queen, she will tell him to halt and not bother going any further that her intentions will not change hugo will begin to tell her off everything she's done wrong she will respond saying that she's doing it for thier sake (Hugo's and her's) but hugo calls her out and tells her its not true and she loses her patience with him leading to a boss fight if hugo wins then she will refer to him as "my little sweetheart" and fade into dust

"The room" will also change instead of hugo it'll be his dad (the batter)chained to a wall (basically a prisoner in his own mind) hugo will take 1 step forward activating a trap causing him to plummet down a tube and fall unconscious for a few minutes

When he wakes up he sees the queen and all the guardians standing before him the queen states that he can give up or die trying then she speaks to the puppeteer (the player) the you are given 2 options

1.aide with the queen

2.side with hugo

If you side with the queen you will have the guardians ok your side then Hugo's appearance will change as well he will appear to have a large head with a huge gaping mouth a baby rattle and apron and speech bubbles that say "wah wah" "whine whine" (stating that his mother sees him as a cry baby)

If you defeat hugo then the switch is immediately turned off and it gives 1 out of the 2 bad endings this ending is called "check mate" as a reference to a queen from chess

If you side with hugo then you will be defeated but you won't get a game over yet instead the queen will give you 1 last chance

Then you are given 3 options

1."surrender" 2."gasp for help" 3."cry"

If you choose surrender then you will get the 2nd bad ending in which in life support is turned off the father dies hugo becomes lonely with his mother busy all the time (and not allowing him out side the house and not trusting people) which leads to hugo growing up cold,plain and unloving

At some point there's a scene where adult hugo stares at his old mother laying on the kitchen floor in pain for a few minutes instead of helping her immediately indicating that he doesn't care

If you choose "gasp for help" then you will get the good ending "aye batta batta,strike!" In which hugo will call for help (while in deep pain from the fight) after a few calls judge,zacharie,sugar and a few elsens will come to the rescue and revive you fighting by your side allowing you to defeat the queen and guardians

Everything slowly starts to go back and the father wakes up from his comma everyone in the room stares in shock but hugo had the biggest smile on his face while standing next to his dad's bed "did...I miss something?"

"...daddy *breaks into tears*"

The 3rd ending called "better late than never" is triggered when you choose "cry"

Hugo will cry very loudly

The mother changes her mind and doesn't turn off life support but hugo stops visiting his dad and similar to the 2nd bad ending hugo grows up to be cold and unloving 13-16 years later hugo visits his father again and he finally wakes up from his comma and is discharged from the hospital after 1 year of rehabilitation therapy

By now the mother had remarried and the father missed his son's childhood so now he has to relive his life

However hugo meets a girl who is a complete opposite to him at work and church (rainbow hair,optimistic,enjoys music of various kinds,loves cute things,baking,jokes,and artist etc.) And is forced to work with her as well as she tries to get Hugo's attention so he asks his father for advice on how to get rid of this woman which leads to alot stuff going on and hugo allowing how to love and live life leading him to falling in love with the girl and becoming a new man

(This is personally my favorite ending lol and I MIGHT write fanfic of it on wattpad or here idk tbh )

Anyway this my OFF au I GUESS the name can change to the ON au or OFF/ON au lmao idk

Reblogs and feed back is appreciated

PLEASE DONT STEAL MY AU i worked hard on this thing spent 5 hours to write it all

Heh I sat this as of anyone is even gonna read whatever I dount it'll get noticed at all

[mothmanhamlet]

A Few Angsty Haikus

Analogical, 2584 words, high school au, fluffffffff, I don’t think there are any warnings to speak of.

Roman gets Virgil to use his services to ask out his crush. Bad poetry ensues.

Roman Prince was many things. He was a jock, a self proclaimed “Matchmaking God”, and the biggest theater nerd Virgil had ever known. Most importantly, Roman would be dead if he didn’t stop begging Virgil in the next 30 seconds.

“Come onnnnnn, please,” Roman begged. They were pinning flyers for Roman’s new “business” idea to the corkboard outside of their math class. Or rather, Roman was pinning flyers, Virgil was just there for moral support. Moral support apparently included attempts at making him Roman’s first customer.

“No,” Virgil said, crossing his arms and leaning on the wall.

“Listen, it benefits both of us! I need my services to get out into the world and you happen to be the perfect candidate!” Roman reasoned, moving his hands a concerning amount for someone who was holding sharp objects.

The services in question were a complicated list of steps Roman called a “confession session”. The idea was that someone filled out the application and Roman would plan out an elaborate display of something that he promised would be spectacularly romantic.  

“No. Absolutely not.” Virgil didn’t even bother looking at Roman, his eyes were too busy scanning around the hallway. School ended not even two minutes ago, so there were still people there. He looked to see who could see him, who could see the poster. Pitifully, Logan was still there, Virgil’s super-genius crush. If Logan saw that poster, his opinion of Virgil would immediately drop. He was too good for that kind of thing.

Roman, sadly, caught Virgil looking just a little too long at Logan and got a brilliant idea. “Well I say you should get a second opinion. Oh Lo-”

Virgil’s hand practically flew to Roman’s mouth, nearly tackling him in the process. Logan, thankfully, didn’t move an inch.

“Do it and you’re dead,” Virgil whispered through gritted teeth. Against his palm, Virgil heard a muffled noise that sounded something like “But can you stop me?”. He looked back at Logan, who was still trying to fit three books and a globe into his already full backpack, and then at Roman, who was looking at Virgil with his eyebrows raised as if to say, “Your move”. At least if he let Roman do this, the embarrassment would be delayed.

“I’ll say yes if you don’t yell when I remove my hand.” Roman nodded and Virgil released his grip on his face, slight red marks where he had pressed rather aggressively. Roman pulled out his phone and started typing.

“I’m emailing you a link to the website. Fill out the form so I can make it spectacular!” Roman said, all too cheery for someone who had to blackmail him into doing it. Virgil just rolled his eyes and started walking down the hallway, trying to shake the small bits of attention that their (rather loud) conversation had gained.

****

Virgil sat down on the purple bean bag chair in his cluttered room and reached for his computer. It was a light grey color and covered in various stickers, his headphones a permanent fixture in its side. He clicked on the link and was immediately redirected to a flashy red and gold website that used hearts like they were commas and used clip art that probably hadn’t seen the light of day since the 90’s. Roman was creative, but sometimes his execution was subpar and unfortunately this was one of those times. Virgil leaned back and read over the questions.  

          1. What is your prospective boyfriend/girlfriend/datemate’s favorite love song?

          2. What type of flower best encapsulates their personality?

          3. Balloons, streamers, confetti, or all?

The rest of the questions followed suit in a similar fashion, and there were a lot. Maybe 30 or so until Virgil got to the end of the application.  

“Who the hell has a favorite kind of sprinkle?” Virgil muttered to himself, trying to work through the questions. Even more surprising than how specific the questions were, was that Virgil actually knew most of the answers. He had never really bought into the whole pining-after-someone-he’d-never-met thing (pretending he even had a choice in the matter), so obviously he had to fall for his lab partner/project partner/person he sat next to in every class. Apparently the teachers thought it was funny to pair up the kid named “Sanders” and the one named “Saunders”. It was that, or just some alphabetization. Either way, it meant they had spent a lot of time together in their first three years of high school. Logan was distant at first, but after a while they opened up to each other. Which was a little weird because Virgil was pretty much the world’s worst lab partner, always assuming so strongly what would happen and planning to mess up, which in turn tended to mess them up. Now they seemed to talk about anything and everything, Virgil’s speaking ability permitted. Logan loved tea and Sherlock and classic literature (Victorianism not Romanticism) and jam and being right and debates and space. He really loved space. Whenever anyone brought up space his eyes lit up and it practically made Virgil’s heart do backflips. He was just glad one of the questions wasn’t “what do you like about them?” because Virgil could have written an essay. What was there, however, was far worse. 

          27. Write 10-20 poems about them.

Now Virgil was an emo nightmare of a person, but he did deviate from the trend in one key factor: He couldn’t write poems. No angsty sonnets for him, no haikus about suffering, no half-baked attempts to write his own songs. Nothing.

Virgil got up from his comfortable chair and started sifting through boxes on the floor, looking for something he’d rather forget. Underneath one particularly dusty pile of biology notes, he found what he’d been looking for, a beat up composition notebook that had served as his 6th grade English notebook. He flipped through the pages, stopping when he finally found the page labeled “poetry rules”. How he remembered this page, he had no idea, but was at least partially thankful for it.  

Haikus: 3 lines. 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables. Doesn’t have to rhyme.  

Well that seemed easy enough.

****

Your eyes look really nice  

Magnified by your glasses  

Blue as the ocean   

Your hair looks fluffy  

I want to touch it sometimes  

So soft and shiny  

****  

Logan anticipated a lot of things. He anticipated his AP World History teacher to say something dull or ignorant during class. He anticipated the way his earl grey would taste every morning, bitter with hints of citrus. He even, on occasion, anticipated the perpetrator in his mystery novels, attempting to figure it out before the detective did. What Logan did not anticipate was two of his friends running towards him before he could enter school for the day.

“Logan, something absolutely delightful happened inside,” Dolos said, dressed in a peculiar combination of a suit and rubber gloves. Remus nodded vigorously next to him, munching on what seemed to be frosting in an empty deodorant bottle.

“There’s something inside your locker Nerdy Wolverine!” Remus said, making an attempt at teasing out his own curiosity while simultaneously applying a neon green fake mustache to his upper lip.

“Remus, if it is rats again, I am really not interested, especially after last time-” Logan began, thinking back to the year they had decided to share a locker.

“Of course. Because we totally put it in there,” Dolos interrupted, rolling his eyes.

“I personally think it’s a jar full of angry hornets that’s set to break when you open your locker, releasing into the school and stinging everyone but Dolos says that’s “unrealistic” because he’s no fun,” Remus said, waving his hands around to simulate a hornet infestation.

“But if you didn’t put anything there, how do you know there is something in there to begin with?” Logan asked.  

“There was a sign on your locker,” Dolos said, gesturing to the door, “But don’t worry, it’s super tasteful.” With that, the two walked off, snickering. Despite the fact that school started in 20 minutes, they walked away from school.

Logan arrived at his locker, not knowing what exactly to prepare for. What he found, was his locker covered in dark blue paper hearts, “There’s a surprise inside” written on them. It was more distinctive    than he would have liked, but it certainly wasn’t the worst thing he could have come across. The hearts managed not to cover his lock, so he could easily open his locker, however what was on the inside proved the hearts correct, for it was definitely a surprise.

His locker was covered along the walls, flowers, candy, and streamers occupying any blank space along the sides. In the back of his locker, there was blue poster paper with words Logan didn’t bother to read. On the small shelf he had in his locker, he found sugar cookies in the pattern of the Microsoft logo, littered with little blue sprinkles.  

The most interesting thing however, was on the side of the door. Around twenty pieces of paper folded into little red paper hearts stuck with string onto the inside of his locker door. What was even more intriguing was the fact that there seemed to be words written on them. Carefully, he plucked one of them and unfolded it.

You smile so bright  

Your laugh makes me want to cry  

But in a good way  

Ok, so it wasn’t a great poem, but nevertheless Logan thought it had a particular quaint authenticity to it. He pulled them off, one by one, careful not to rip them. In every heart, he found a haiku of similar quality and theme. Virgil would probably enjoy them, and for a moment Logan considered giving him something like this. Virgil seemed to have a certain affection for particularly bad poetry, and Logan had an affection for Virgil. Besides, it seemed that some of the poems were just lyrics from some of Virgil’s favorite songs, something about falling boys and chemistry.  

When he had finished reading through the poems, Logan decided to have a better look at the poster in the back of his locker. Looking at the giant words on the paper answered some of his questions, but caused even more. Logan, I like you a lot. Go out with me? - Virgil.

 It made sense, that this whole display was a confession of sorts, however what didn’t make sense was the fact that it wasn’t, well, Virgil. Virgil was a little bit extra sometimes, but from what Logan knew of him, he was far too nervous to do something like this. And if it was Virgil, then where was he? Unless he had run off somewhere-

Virgil had definitely run off somewhere. He looked at his watch. He had fifteen minutes till class started, which was probably enough time to find him.

****

Virgil was, for lack of a better phrase, freaking the hell out. He got to school really early, early enough to intercept Logan, who got to school like half an hour before he really needed to. The night before, he realized he couldn’t go through with the showy confession. Logan would probably hate it and then maybe hate him, which would of course happen after Logan rejected him so then Logan would stop talking to him because Virgil embarrassed him with it and then Roman would hate him because it didn’t work and then his life would fall apart. So instead he decided to get to school early enough to intercept Logan and confess to him before he could see the giant confession, then explain what had happened when he got rejected and got it so Logan was never surprised with whatever Roman planned. He would wait in the empty classroom Logan spent study hall in (he worked out an arrangement with the science teachers) and wait for Logan, who usually came there before his locker. He felt like such a stalker knowing that, when in reality he just asked Logan’s friend Dolos.

Which would have worked out great, except Virgil couldn’t stop freaking out. He was just staring at the clock, anxiously waiting for him to come in, all the while mentally running through every worst case scenario. He had around 13 minutes before school started, which meant Logan had to be there. It would be any minute before-

“Hello?”

Logan was there, dressed formally as always, hair slicked back with a polo shirt and tie. Virgil was there too, but he was sitting on a table, staring at the clock above the door.

“Hi Logan,” Virgil said as calmly as he could, which happened to be not calmly at all. “I have, uh, something for you.”

Virgil reached behind him for the card he had made. He painted a swirly blue sky with Logan’s favorite constellation on it. Hopefully he would like it more than the giant display.

“It’s very nice looking,” Logan commented, looking at the front. “It even has Vega on it, my favorite.”

Logan probably didn’t even know what was going on. Virgil thought he was amazing, but even he had to admit Logan was clinically oblivious. Logan opened up the card, looking a little confused and surprised. But not angry or disappointed. So that was a step in the right direction.

Logan flipped around the card to show him the inside. Logan, would you like to maybe go out with me?  “Yes? Assuming you are asking what it seems you are asking, I would love to go out with you.”

What?

Virgil wasn’t sure if he was happy or confused or surprised, the emotions blending in the pit of his stomach. But he said yes. Logan said yes.  

“Y-yes? Are you sure?”

“Yes Virgil, I’m certain.”

Virgil let out a breath. He was in a calmer place and honestly a little light-headed. Logan sat next to him on the table, looking like he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Ok. In that case, be careful when you visit your locker. There’s something in there that’s a little, uh, extra,” Virgil said, trying to be as vague as possible. Logan’s face scrunched up in confusion.

“If you’re talking about the confession you made, I have already seen it. I apologize if I ruined any surprises.”

“You- But- You saw it? And you don’t hate me now?” Virgil asked, it a bit of a frenzy.

“No, not at all. I particularly liked the poems.”

Virgil was surprised. Flabbergasted. Betrayed. He could no longer tell if he wanted to punch or hug Roman. Maybe both.

“It was actually Roman’s idea, but I’m glad you don’t hate me,” Virgil said, wringing his hands and looking at Logan. “I also don’t have too much planned for the actual, um, date. I kind of assumed you’d say no.”

“You do like jumping to conclusions. Fortunately, I am prepared. There’s a new documentary on one of Jupiter’s moons, Callisto, and it will be playing Friday at seven thirty. Does that sound enjoyable?”

Virgil simply nodded with a smile.

“Perfect, I will pick you up at seven. It is, as they say, a date.” Logan said, surprisingly well prepared for someone who didn’t know he would be asked out. Both of them slid off the table, standing back on the ground. Just as Logan began to leave, Virgil reached out and tentatively caught his hand. Logan’s eyebrows raised for a moment, then turned more relaxed.

Slowly and happily, the two walked out together, hand in hand.

[comicsnoble]

Crowded #4 - Review

Do you like The Odd Couple, buddy cop movies, and badass ladies with really nice side shaves? Then you really should be reading Crowded, written by Christopher Sebela, penciled by Ro Stein, inked by Ted Brandt, and colored by Triona Farrell. The fourth issue just came out last Wednesday and it’s been a really fun ride. 

If you don’t know the premise, Crowded takes place in the very near future where even assassinations can be crowd sourced. Charlie, the pink haired bitch with the dick headband in the picture above, currently holds the honor of highest bounty ever placed on a single individual. At 2 million dollars and counting, a lot of people seem to want her dead, and are willing to chip in a fair chunk of change to make it happen. 

Enter Vita, a down on her luck body guard who doesn’t have much else going for her besides being almost too good at keeping other people alive (even though they tend to hate her afterwards), an old house that she inherited from this elderly lady that took a liking to her, and an ex girlfriend on the LAPD who happens to still have a giant soft spot for her.

Oh, and that really great side shave I was talking about earlier. And some big, sexy lesbian energy. Other than that, she’s not doing too hot. 

So far, Vita and Charlie have left a pile of bodies across Los Angeles. They also accidentally kidnapped a dog. Somehow, despite her best efforts, Charlie is still very much alive and ruining what’s left of Vita’s life one tent pole at a time. Buses have crashed. Buildings have been set on fire. Libraries have been slept in. A metric fuck ton of paperwork has been filed. 

And finally, finally, four issues in, Charlie is starting to confront the shit about herself that makes so many people want to wring her neck, including Vita at this point. 

Here’s the thing, Charlie is funny and almost charming. However, comma, she is literally the worst. Like, she doesn’t really have friends or loved ones because she’s objectively awful to anyone she spends even a few seconds with. Even, the poor waiter at the stripper bar she briefly ends up at:

Like, this comic goes out of its way to establish that Charlie is in no way a good person. She doesn’t consider the repercussions of her actions on other people and she honestly does not care about anyone’s feelings but her own. It doesn’t even register that this is something she should do. 

However, there’s something about her interactions with Vita that inspires Charlie to make an attempt at introspection. Even though laced with too much champagne, Charlie is finally getting to a place where she has to actually consider what it is about her that inspires homicidal rage in others. 

Meanwhile, we also spend a lot of time with these fools:  

A big time assassin and his manager. I honestly don’t remember either of their names and I don’t care enough about either of them to look it up. This guy is really my least favorite part of the series so far. I understand why he’s there. He’s an example of how even the winners of this assassination economy are slaves to the system and how even though he doesn’t want to, he has to keep going for bigger and bigger kills to keep his followers up and keep the public attention on himself so he can keep making money. He’s important to the world building, and I think Sebela did a pretty okay job of humanizing him. I just dislike him and not in the fun way that I dislike Charlie.

Oh, and there’s a tiny dog in a Faraday purse. Come on, you know you want to read this.

Issue #5 comes out December 5. No trade has been announced yet that I know of, but I’ll be sure to post about it if/when it happens. 

[hackersandslackers]

Dealing with Dirty Data

Adventures in Excel

In my last post, we discussed how what separates a true analyst (read: technical) from a project manager wearing the mask of an analyst like some Scott Snyder era Joker (I figure that there's a solid overlap between fans of comic books and fans of the real world application of data. Note that this is a study with an N = 1 so it bares no statistical significance, but I have a funny feeling...call it spidey sense). Full disclosure, this post comes mostly out of my inability to sleep in my hotel room in Chicago following a grueling day of doing the very things I discuss in this blog, and preceding a day where I'll have to literally explain my last post to the suits, but perhaps this is the best mindset to begin discussing the myriad ways in which you may encounter dirty data in the wild, and how a savvy analyst may pivot and match their way around it. However, if my prose isn't as on point as you have grown accustomed...blame it on the 4AM haze. Alas, let's begin by discussing the organizational structure of the majority of corporate entities that leverage data to some degree (note, this isn't all corporations...and what does that say about the state of business?) and how, at each step of abstraction in this process that you are from the data, the data gets dirtier and dirtier. Essentially, there's always going to be a group of about 5-10 fewer-than-necessary legitimately skilled data scientists and/or computer programmers/DBAs who are really solid at building and maintaining a database as well as and some sort of compiling language (nowadays, that's probably python, but not exclusively, nor does this matter). However, depending on your industry (unless of course your industry IS data), it's nearly impossible to recruit people who have these skills to the level necessary AND have some familiarity with why this data is needed, and/or the ability to explain how the internal products that they build can be used by an end user. As such, this team has their own project manager(s) who's sole job is to keep these guys from developing a sentient AI that's sole goal is the annihilation of unfolded laundry...when your industry is healthcare. This team should also have at least one analyst who will take the raw code base and do the first step of translation to a more user friendly form. This generally takes shape as either dashboards in a system like Tableau, or if your company has a group of particularly strong data/business analysts (or particularly weak programmers) an interface written in plain(enough) English on a Business Intelligence platform such as Microsoft BI/SAP Business Objects or whatever other system your company utilizes. As a fun little note, this team ALMOST ALWAYS is referred to by some sort of acronym such as QDAR! (Quality data and reporting!) or KMnR! (Knowledge management and reporting!) or Those Fucking Guys (who have something to do with data) (TFG(whstdwd)). On a less fun little note...neither you, nor seemingly ANYONE ELSE will have contact with this team. In light of this information, how do the reports that they build get chosen or who decides how these databases are built? The world may never know. So let's assume the first type of reporting: the Dataratti (which is how I will refer to the acronym defined team described above moving forward) produces dashboards utilizing a tool such as Tableau or Crystal Reports. You may be thinking to yourself: "hey, isn't my job taking the data and putting it in a form where people who are scared by more than two nested groups of parenthesis, and thus this renders my job unnecessary?" The answer to the question is twofold: Yes, and of course not! As mentioned previously, the decision to create these dashboards, the data contained therein, and how you want them to look is decided upon by a mythical creature who has full access and understanding of the data warehouse, AND has full access to and understanding of the stakeholders (AKA, Those Who Sit Above in Shadow ; that's a reference from a famous run of Thor comics that refers to to a mysterious cabal of gods who perpetuate the cycle of Ragnarok in order to subsist upon the energies created by this strife...which as I write this, is an almost disgustingly on-the-nose metaphor for upper management). Now, if you believe that you may be this mythical creature (as I do), I DARE you to apply for a job with this job description, and once you clinch it with the advice from this blog, rapidly realize that your job will involve either one of these job duties or the other. With that digression, even if somehow a useful dashboard for YOU is created, the limitations inherent in these dashboarding tools make one CRUCIAL issue omnipresent: one can only effectively illustrate up to 16 different variables at a time before the system breaks down (for example, Tableau's documentation specifically warns against this). So even if you have the nicest, most illustrative dashboards on the planet from the Dataratti, there is a nearly 100% chance that the information that you actually need will be scattered across 2-3 different dashboards...rendering the nice looking dashboards essentially useless for your purposes, and as previously stated, you have no contact with the Dataratti, nor do you have access to the underlying data from which these dashboards are created. So pop quiz hot shot, what DO you do? Well, mercifully, all of these dashboard tools allow an end user to download a "data dump" (our parlance for "a buncha numbers with headings"). Using Tableau as an example, one can download either a "crosstab" or a text file of the data represented by the dashboard (in both "summary" and "full data" format). Now, just to get the truly gifted in Tableau off my back, yes, the functionality does exist to build in the ability to download the data in the exact format necessary for your needs through a specific combination of custom web server views and Javascript, but... If the users of the dash are exclusively using this function, why do the dashboard at all? And... This forces the developers in the Dataratti to have decent web design skills on top of really high level Tableau skills, and it requires someone to anticipate exactly how the data will be used by the end user by the Dataratti (which is incredibly hard as it's impossible to speak to this department directly, and as previously stated, the lack of this knowledge on their end is the entire reason why my department exists). A few things to note before downloading data from Tableau: You must highlight at least one element of the dashboard before downloading a crosstab. Depending on what kind of dashboard you're working with, you may need to highlight the entirety of one column in order to capture the entirety of your data (click the first element in any column and then scroll down to the bottom of the report...which may be enormously long, hit shift and click the last element in the report) before downloading either the data or the crosstab. If you are downloading a crosstab, be wary, Tableau web server caps how many rows you can download in this method at a time, this can be avoided by downloading the text version of the data (by clicking data as opposed to crosstab). HOWEVER... If you are going the data route, it defaults to summary view. Look over all the headings, and ensure that this covers everything you need, otherwise click "full data" . Interestingly, this still isn't actually the entirety of your data, and continue to check to make sure all of your headings are covered, otherwise, click the display all columns box, and then download all the rows as a text file. Now, repeat these steps until all of the data that you need in your report is contained across these text files (.csv, AKA the Comma Separated Value file type). With all that lunacy completed, you now have several sheets with some common columns, but all with different information; only some of which you need, so what do you think you do? Simple, you use the tools given to you in the previous posts: you lookup on the common factors across the sheets and return the data that you want until you have all the data you need, in the correct order, on one sheet, and then depending on the ask, you may want to pivot that data out in order to summarize the whole mess of data. THIS IS YOUR FINAL PRODUCT well done. Another protip: if you want to reposition data that you've obtained via a lookup, highlight the whole column, hit control+C to copy the data and then hit control+V pause a second (press NOTHING else) and then press control FOLLOWED by V . This takes the values generated by a formula and replaces them with the values obtained. Functionally, this looks exactly the same, but now you can move the data around without affecting or being affected by other data. As explaining only one possible dirty data scenario took over 1500 words, next time, we'll discuss the other most common form of taking the dirty data from the Dataratti and making it useful to you: using business intelligence portals as opposed to dashboards in order to grab the data that you need. Also, if I don't get roasted on a spit for being half asleep for tomorrow's (today's?) meeting, I'll try and write up a companion post with an example of how this works out in practice. In summary, in this post we've learned: How data is generally siloed and sequestered within the corporate environment, leading to a bevy of unnecessary steps on behalf of the analyst in order to distill a functional report for the powers-that-be Two major methods in which data comes from the data team (henceforth known as the Dataratti) to your team: Dashboards and Business Intelligence interfaces, and... Assuming you get data in the form of dashboards, how to take these dashboards, download the underlying data, recombine and manipulate the data, and package it in a way acceptable for your needs. Congrats, you've just learned the crucial skill of the Slice n' Dice ! Quite sleepily, -Snacks

- Max Mileaf

[lit--bitch]

‘Hello’ by Crispin Best (2019)

(Disclosure, again: I don’t know Crispin Best, I know I’m “friends with him” on Facebook, but it’s one of those things where random poets/writers/artists add each other on social media platforms and there’s like a weird community in it but we still don’t actually speak to each other? That, basically. Hello is published by Partus Press, which is run by Vala Thorodds and Luke Allan. I don’t know either of them. They specialise in publishing Icelandic and international literature. Hello is a gorgeous book, the cover is like a pastel colour rainbow, I feel like it should taste of marshmallows. The paper is rich, the spine is strong af, it’s just a lovely, satisfying book. Also Partus Press’s website is incredibly pleasing to surf, it’s really slick, their interface is smooth. Buying books on there feels as good as having one of them in your hands. End of suck-up.) 

I have known and loved Crispin Best’s writing since I picked up his pamphlet from Faber New Poets, which my friend Lenni Sanders recommended to me. There was this one line I read and I just fell in love: 

‘I wish for you the perfect banana.’ 

It’s from Crispin’s poem, ‘is it still brunch if i am alone’, and of course it features in Hello. Every time I read it, I get such a great big smile on my face. Because there really is nothing more universally understood than the perfect banana, whatever the perfect banana is to you. (Side note: I like it when the banana’s skin starts to really freckle and yellow up). And images like these are totally emblematic of Crispin Best’s writing, because he has a gift for expressing feelings, in all their variations, within absurd, perfect metaphors that still somehow makes sense.

I mean this in poems like the very first in Hello’s collection, which incidentally is called, ‘Hello’. He writes, ‘i know that i’m here for the moment / that the pickles hit the plate / i’m here for good and to pair your socks / by windowlight’, it’s just so loving, so adoring, so doting. There is nothing more immediate and in-the-moment than pickles hitting the surface of a plate and yet it’s so random. I’m amazed by the assemblage of images in this collection, how the ordinary is so cleverly personified. 

Hello sets out to beautify the triteness of our day-to-day, to kiss the things we sometimes ignore, like the word ‘fireplace’ (p. 42), or how the wind brings your clothes to life (p. 29). It is totally modest in its appreciation of everything, and experiences just about everything as having impact. It is funny, it is sad, it is grateful. It is a kind book. 

There is an inherent “now-ness” in Hello. As I read each poem, I felt like I was in there, in every room, looking at every landscape, looking over the ‘I’s’ shoulder. It’s synonymous in the form that the poetry takes. 

A lot of Crispin’s work is rooted in Internet culture, and this is plain as day in Hello, you can see how the Internet permeates through into the language and formatting of the writing. Most of the poems read like you would if you were receiving texts from somebody. Grammatical rules are thrown out the window, capitalisation is minimal. For many of us, when we’re texting, we’re not adhering to the rules of language, y’know, we’re not punctuating every sentence with proper full stops, or commas. This is evident in ‘what do i know’: 

i love it when poems  are dead and the light  creeps under the door and not too far away something important is about to be crushed  by that beautiful truck 

There is a tightness to the work, which restricts where we look across the page. This technique, I think, recreates the action of the infinite scroll. We scroll down with our eyes, like we do with our thumbs, or fingers. Even the line-breaks mimic the dimensions of a phone screen, that rectangulation. It’s rare that sentences ever exceed half the length of this A5 book’s pages. 

Sometimes I think this SMS-written style in Crispin’s poetry intimates other characteristics of texting-culture. A lot his poems are a mish-mash of images and thoughts which are relative to the sometimes anomalous-ness of texting correspondence. Not every conversation we have with someone over text starts with hello, nor ends with goodbye, and a lot of the time, conversations are staggered by minutes, hours, even days. If you were to visually recreate this in real-time, it’d be the equivalent of somebody saying something to you, standing there for 5 hours or however long you don’t speak for, and then finally responding. It’s such an absurdity that Crispin contains within these non-sequitur images: ‘if you can’t do the crime / don’t do the crime / and don’t thank me for the birthday wishes / please / just let me grow my beans’ (from ‘don’t call it a dream’). It’s hilarious—I can’t always understand why one sentence follows its predecessor in the way it does—this is absolutely intentional, though it might not be for the reasons I’ve interpreted. These non-sequiturs mirror the jagged, staggered incontinuity of how we sometimes interact online. And whilst they can distort and confuse the readability of the poetry, these non-sequiturs are a cornerstone to the collection’s confessionalism. In masking oneself behind these blurted, odd utterances, the ‘I’s awkward disposition is revealed. It promises to open up, slowly, someday. And it makes these promises in wonderful, subtle ways. Like ‘poem at the dinner table’: 

here is the thing:  the real reason i don’t let people get close to me is this faux denim shirt i’m scared that  they will be able to tell [...]  here is the thing:  there are even tiny movements  of your fingers that i don’t  completely understand  [...] here is the thing:  between the boiler’s ticks  i hear you whisper that you had a hunch  about the shirt from this great distance i make my arms the perfect length

The realism in this poem really makes me smile. In just simple fragments, the ‘I’ says so much in a short, modest description. I understand the scene, simply denoted by the title, ‘poem at the dinner table’. The great thing about this stanza is how it’s prefaced by such seriousness: ‘here is the thing / the real reason i don’t let people / get close to me’. You’re misled into thinking that a sincere confession will follow, and it does, but not quite in the way you thought: ‘/ is this faux denim shirt’. The faux denim shirt—an analogy for the object of his insecurity in looking worth more than he actually is. The subversion is funny, but it equally intimates the personage’s insecurity about expressing what he really means, how he really feels, his shyness. By the end of the poem you find that the ‘I’ has acquainted himself with someone who understands, someone who helps him feel his wholeness again, and he jumps the distance. All of this is at the dinner table. And it’s in the spirit of the vernacular that Crispin Best does what he does, best, which is to take the ordinary and load it with meaningful subtexts, implying something much deeper is going on.

I was going to talk about ‘centralia’ last, because it’s my fav poem in the book. But there’s something about the structure of ‘centralia’ which intersects my previous point regarding the value in the ordinary. 

‘centralia’ feels more like a section of the collection, rather than a poem. It’s 20 pages long and yet it’s only 405 words... I think. Might be a couple more or less. I was sad enough to count (but I’m shit at counting). How does a 405-word poem last 20 pages? Well, ‘centralia’ is made up of ellipsis which to me have a dualistic function in this poem: firstly they recreate the action of texting in real-time. You know when somebody’s texting you back and that little bubble comes up with three dots? The ‘...’? It’s kind of like that, except that there’s a superfluous amount of ellipsis which take up the whole space of the page, and they’re structured in such a way to form shapes and undulating curves bound by short quips of writing. The function of ellipsis is to omit words, sentences or whole paragraphs from a text without compromising the overall meaning. They can indicate unfinished thoughts or pauses. In ‘centralia’ they illustrate the  series of written images which roll on from each other almost act like random, yet successive thoughts. But the ellipsis here doesn’t just precede the literary antecedent, it also succeeds it. The effect slows down the writing, and I read this piece very, very, slowly, as if to consider the ellipsis and the writing as inextricably bound, that the dots were were words in and of themselves. ‘centralia’ boasts some of my favourite lines in the work, like: 

‘....today we’re going to talk about.......... / / / ........ how it feels to be ......... / / / / / / ...........how even a low moon....................... / / / can paint a bridge on a lake...........’ 

 ‘........picture a passion fruit........ / / / ..........why is it called that name... / / / ..............my only kink................ / is having my clothes blown off.......... / ...........by a leaf blower.............’ 

and, 

‘..........i like things like...... / / ........how fast you climb the stairs.............. / / / like how werewolves............ / ..............don’t kill people................ / / / / / / .........full moons do............ / / / / / / / ............ like how ............. / / ........... you can just....... / / .............wear a pair................. / ............of trousers................ / / / ..........and people will assume............... / / .................they are................ / / / / .......................your trousers.......’

Obviously the way I’ve typed these particular parts out doesn’t do the format justice (you’ll have to buy the book to properly get a look) but I wonder if other people find themselves reading the text slowly as a consequence of this form. 

‘centralia’ makes such beautiful and original observations about the things in which we take for granted, or things we don’t necessarily think twice about. It unpicks clichés, employs humour, it thinks laterally, by this I mean lines like ‘what if cum is ghosts’ ...  'centralia’ is like a whole collection within itself. It also makes for great Twitter material. It comes back to appreciating the immediacy of things around you besides what flags up on a phone screen, and that’s inherent in the way Crispin speaks to ‘you’. You just have to stop and enjoy the writing, in the same way you ought to stop and enjoy the world around you, as fleeting as it is:

(from nature poem) we’re here realise that at every moment you’re the only visible part of        an almost infinite conga line  ok now imagine crying while wearing cargo shorts it’s hard to do  tonight we share a rocking chair toothpaste this blue-orange night sky

And you can’t help but feel as if you’re being directly addressed as a reader in the work, even though some poems are defined by their context; it’s clear some are break-up poems, lamentations on loss, or to Barack Obama. In some pieces, it seems like Hello is imploring us (the readers) to see reason, and catch up with ourselves, to contemplate the tangibility of what’s around us and remove ourselves from the artificialities of the virtual. I feel like this is evident in other poems like ‘🐬 but do dolphins want to swim with me ’ (the dolphin emoji in the book actually faces the other way and is a black silhouette). 

the cooking apples / have long gone brown / on the  countertop / nights arrive like iguanas in suits / and with  them the long dream / on a beach / where a pop-up notification / blocks the sunset / these poems are the kiddie pools / i inflate while i’m alive

We’re confronted by these sorts of messages about social media all the time, like “take a break from your phone”, and it’s sort of an overdone cliché now, like the way people talk about bubble baths and retail therapy as ‘self-care’. Crispin approaches these clichés in his work but he does it in an unexpected, refreshing way, like imagine if a pop-up notification actually blocked the sunset. Again, it’s like, ‘put down the fucking phone, stop letting it get in the way of other things, stop letting myself get in the way of things taking their natural course’. This piece is a case for living without the reminder of one’s phone, a dissuasion of our present-day lifestyle gripped by the constant need to notified by blue-light disturbances. It asserts that is what is most healthy to us is the stuff we can physically touch. Tangibility is our final currency over which nobody else has any jurisdiction. Some things are more tangible and real and specific than others, and it’s up to us to choose and define that for ourselves. 

Hello reminds me a lot of an ex I had a while ago. He didn’t have a lot of things, but he did hoard a lot of weird, random stuff, y’know like actual rubbish that needed to go in the bin, biscuit wrappers for example. When I stopped to observe why he kept these things, it seemed to me that it was because he’d glean more from a memory in a biscuit wrapper, than he might from a photograph of a loved one. He was invested in this vernacular trash we share together as human beings, rather than the typical artefacts we traditionally use to create memories, i.e. photo albums, or personal diaries. For him, it was like there was something much more profound, intimate, and vivid in sharing a packet of hobnobs together, than say taking a selfie at a pub. I feel like that’s something Crispin Best also shares in common with his “ode” in ‘io’: o tub girl in the rain / o modern american poetry / [...] / o fisher price / o fiddlesticks / [...] / o curly wurly wrapper / o nokia 3210 / o crepitating autumn leaf / o mars bar ice cream in september and the rain’. We can take comfort in these things, because they do, in a way, bring more order to our confusing truths, to the bewilderment of ourselves. We can confide in them and nourish ourselves in their familiarity, and keep on living, because like us, they too are objects and beings of impermanence in a trashy, ever-changing, impermanent world. 

This is best summed by two lines in Hello. Page 16, in ‘one good thing’: 

one good thing  about being alive is the view

and from ‘io’ again, page 92:

when i die  know that i died how i lived:  not wanting to die 

In life’s disposabilities, in the changing faces of the moon, in the oscillations between heartbreak, self-loathing, wheezing with laughter, eating pizza and sitting transfixed by a lover, life is still, well, life. Life is implied in these momentary consumptions and feelings. In fact, life is made better by them, as well as eggs and books, snowballs and party rings. Crispin Best’s poetry is contemplative, thankful and admirable. You can sit with his writing and appreciate it in the same way one might appreciate tulips or butterflies. You don’t necessarily have to understand it, but just be present with it, for now. It’s about taking stock, and loving every inch of your boring, amazing life.  Hello has made perfect timing in our current predicament, felt by the world all over. In times like these, you need books like Hello. You need these soft lamentations and appreciations. You need these written reassurances. Hello is like being gently stroked as you wake up from a weird dream. It’s comfort food writing, where when you’re caught up in the chaos of our present-day, you’re reminded to slow down and look, and I mean really look. It’s a wonderful debut collection that is a testament to Crispin Best’s talent. 

If this review’s won you over, then you can buy Hello from Partus Press here, follow them here and find Crispin Best all over the Internet via his website here. 

[innybby-blog]

dead dead dead

fare knew that selector’s mother had been through worse than this, knew that she had had cancer and come out on top (she didn’t know the specifics, wasn’t aware of the price tama paid) so fare knew that she it in her to fight this. the question was whether or not she wanted to. did she want to eat and regain her strength? did she want to get rest? did she even want to get better? she wasn’t sure anymore.

the sickness had been progressing fast this time, not like last time back in the other windclan: a racking cough that shook her whole being, her bones were protruding as she rapidly lost weight, she was constantly switching between hot and cold, and she was almost never able to fall asleep and stay asleep. it was tearing her apart piece by piece, ripping her up from the inside, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. after all, she was only able to sit and watch, because she knew the outcome: death. it would be a slow descent into agony, and then when she couldn’t take it anymore, she would take her own life.

she had known she was getting sick a couple days prior to when it had struck her down and rendered her unable to leave her bed. it had come out in her mood, in the way she handled things and spoke, how she reacted to situations with such violent rage. she took on a more dangerous aura, more predator-like. that had always been the first sign of this disease, so she had holed herself up in her cabin to avoid hurting anyone. it wasn’t contagious but she was worried about how her clanmates would take it: seeing their normally optimistic and kind leader reduced to a pile of bones that snarled at any moving object.

all this just meant that she’d had more than enough time to worry about everyone. concern dripped from every pore, making her shudder.

the first one her thoughts gravitated to was ruben. how was he holding up out there, outside these four walls? was he okay? she always seemed to be fretting over him in some part of her mind, whether it be the forefront or some corner. he seemed so sad and lonely and lost and like he just kept it all inside to where no one could see. she thought that she could maybe help him, if the circumstances were different. maybe in a different lifetime, she could have been his mother and raised him to be a light and be brave and to love because love was the most important thing. fare’s own mother had taught her that and sel’s mom had drilled it into the young canine. fare just wished she could impart some of her hope and strength to him. she wished he saw how amazing he truly was. she wasn’t really angry at him for not being around, she just expected more from someone who had been on a pedestal in her mind. “you’re so brave, ruben. i wish i could be like you.”

leo. they were a quiet individual most of the time, but fare would trust them with her life. she… she just hoped that they trusted her. she hadn’t put them in the advisor position because she wanted to, she had put them there because she knew they would give insightful input and help the clan. and now, they were a dawnchaser, an even bigger responsibility. fare hoped they could handle it, she hoped she hadn’t just put too much onto their shoulders. she knew they worried a lot, and she didn’t want that. she just hoped they forgave her for leaving circ in charge while she was gone. “don’t ever give up, leo, okay? you can always do something if you put your mind to it.”

she found tears welling up in her eyes as let her brain rest on this next individual: circusclown. evergreen had told selector stories of how circ had stolen redlipstick from her, had begged tama to kill him, had led the exiles. fare just thought he was misunderstood. he must feel so afraid and lonesome all the time in order to be drinking so often. (fare knew that she got paranoid whenever she drank.) honestly, she thought he was incredibly strong-willed, ferocious, and enduring. she felt like he wanted to help others but was maybe too scared by his past mistakes to do so. but at least he had family. if nothing else, he had his family. “i-i know everyone says you’re bad, but i know you aren’t. you’re so wholly good that i’m jealous. i’m jealous that you have family here and you form relationships, and i’m just sitting in the dust, lost. i know you’ll never hear these words, but i admire you a lot. you’re the kind of person i wanted to be, once. i went to blizzardclan from time to time and you were there and i don’t care what ev says, you’re a damn good guy, circ.”

her thoughts were swirling, little sobs being wrenched from her throat every now and then as she thought on. belladonna. “belladonna, i know you and i haven’t interacted much but you’re like a daughter to me, and i’d die for you in an instant if i had to. i wish you knew that, but there’s no way i could every say it to your face. just remember to slow down and take a breather every once in a while. it helps, okay?” she murmured, ears going flat against her head. she had high hopes for the young medic in training, and if ruben didn’t step up to train her, fare herself would fill that position and make sure bella knew what to do in case of any emergency.

something about shuuya felt familiar. selector had been told many times by a reminiscent evergreen of a male named kamen, and that’s who this individual reminded her of. “you’re hiding something, i can sense it. but i think that deep down, you’re really funny and happy. you remind me of someone selector’s mother used to talk about before everything went to shit. i think you’re pretty okay, shuuya.”

twinruins was a bit of a mystery, appearing out of nowhere and gasping out a name that sounded something akin to ‘ship’ when the other had come encroaching upon shadowclan soil. he made her recall memories of when she was human, of someone curled up in the shape of a comma with a coffee mug held firmly in his hands and his lips twitching up every so often as he read a book silently. twin was something nostalgic, something beautiful and mysterious, an enigma that fare couldn’t quite piece together. “i think you’re scared, twinruins.” she stated to the air in front of her, voice quiet. she felt like a wind-tossed thing in a sea of emotions. “i’m scared too, so i can understand if you are. i think you’re scared of being alone, just like me. i think we could learn to get along, if i ever met you face to face instead of just hearing about you through the grapevine. i think we could be friends.”

with that, the girl would stay quiet for a few moments more before getting to her paws with a pained noise. she shouldered her way out of her cabin and stared up at the stars before laying back down outside. it helped to get out of her cabin, away from the smell of sickness. pretty soon, she was asleep, legs quivering every so often.

it had started out as a calm night, the wind blowing through the carnival, the lights up above all aglow, the ferris wheel spinning as the sound of laughter carried to ev’s ears. however, the atmosphere did nothing to soothe her thoughts, her soul, the anger waiting just inside her being. the wrath had been there for as long as she could remember, but she had always hidden it surprisingly well considering everything that had happened to her. it had only come to light a few times, under certain circumstances.

things had been normal for selector. she had tired of hawkclan’s slow pace, tired of feeling adrift in her own life. she had decided to go see her mother, in order to inform her of her choice to leave hawkclan. she didn’t expect to find someone who was becoming more angry by the day, someone who wanted to hurt another being if they so much as looked at her. and now sel was here, bringing her the news of this next failure and her mother spun, eyes locking on her daughter.

“so now you’re gonna be a runaway, a loser? i thought i taught you better, selector! you gonna be like winterfell and run away from me, from your home and your clan just like she did? what a way to live! things get slow and boring and so you leave? nice, you fucking idiot!” evergreen would snarl, the anger immediately coming to the surface and making sel’s mother a fearsome and dangerous thing, a beast to be reckoned with. ev no longer felt sadness, but a heat that was all too familiar. it tore through her like an explosion, busting through windows and devouring everything in an instantaneous blast.

in slow motion, she could see her paw swinging towards selector, claws extended. the noise it made when it connected with her daughter’s face was reminiscent of a crack, a branch being irreparably broken. sel felt her jaw go slack right after the impact and then pain burst forth, lightning hot and sizzling. oh god, oh god, oh god, what had she been thinking by coming here?

ev and selector reeled away from each other, sel’s mind trying to take her to another place, another time. times where she spent time climbing on roofs, back when she was reaching for the rafters, back when she had been happy, back when she watched the sun rise and the stars fade, back when she was young, back when she was happy, she was happy, she had been so happy then. she just wanted to go back. ev was pinning her ears back and curling her lips once more in a snarl.

they were each frozen for a moment, and then both leaped forward at each other, growls pouring from their throats as the muscles under their skin rippled. sel’s teeth met ev’s face, her throat at the same time as her claws ripped into ev’s side. they were two warring beasts hellbent on destroying one another. ev went for the other’s eyes, the soft underbelly of her stomach, looking to gut her like a fish. in defense, sel twisted away, leaving ragged lines in her mother’s side and tearing a sizable chunk of her cheek and neck in the process. she wasn’t fast enough, though, and a thud could be heard as she slammed into the ground, bright red blood rushing from her mutilated stomach. ”mom! mom, please, stop! i’m not like winterfell, i won’t leave you!” the girl pleaded, but she could only watch as ev crept towards her, blood dripping from her ribcage and facial features.

sel didn’t want to hurt her mother, but she did the only thing she could. she got to her feet and sprang towards evergreen, lips drawn back in a grimace of pain as she went for her mom’s back. there was a brief commotion as something vital was cleaved from ev’s body, and a grunt as the five year old hit the ground.

sel stepped back, dragging a white, feathered mass that had crimson splattered near the base where it had been attached to ev. the older canine was currently laying on the ground, breath heaving in and out of her lungs, her body shaking as rage drained out. terror replaced it, agony tagging along for the ride. she saw sel move away, drop the ivory-colored object and ev realized, with a dim sense of numbness, that it was one of her wings. one of her wings was gone, just leaving a hole where it had been, white bone sticking out from the ragged space. “look what you’ve done to me! do you see this?!” ev said, shock moving and twisting around her brain, clouding her thoughts and actions. she was no longer fierce and full of wrath, but shivering and vulnerable. sel had taken something vital, something crucial from her, and she didn’t know what to do now. so she just layed there.

ev stayed still on the dirt as her daughter stepped through the puddle of blood forming around her, stayed still as selector whispered words of sad remorse, stayed still as sel limped off without a glance back at her mom, and she stayed still as the scarlet liquid ran from her body. she had never wanted anything more in this moment than to kill her daughter for taking away her flight, her freedom.

she just wanted to be normal and this was what she got? well damn her if she was going to sit here and bleed out. she had to get help, and quickly, or else it could be bye bye evergreen. so, she struggled to her paws and made her way back towards her home. and somewhere else, selector was already far off, limping heavily back to hawkclan, calling out for shining and littlepaw and colin. she would be alright, she promised herself. she’d make it somehow.

the dream stopped abruptly, seeming to fast forward so there were three beings there instead of just one. fare whined, very softly, in the back of her throat. this wasn’t her, this wasn’t her, this wasn’t her! she wanted to wake up but it was impossible now.

of course. of course it was him who was the first to show up. it had always been him, and it always would be. “colin,” she whispered, voice cracking, her form lurching forward. it was always going to be him, for every day for the rest of her life. he was the first one she thought about when she woke and the last one she thought about when she curled up to go to sleep, the one she wished was next her to sing her to sleep and be there when nightmares woke her up. she wanted him to be there for her and comfort her and not ever leave her. she wanted…. she wanted him, and that was a strange concept for her because she had never felt this way about anyone or anything and now she did. it was messing with her head.

do you know i dream of you sometimes? a dozen images flashed through her mind as soon as her mind processed this thought, all filtered in a dream-like haziness: them curled up together just dozing, them running away from a swarm of bees that selector had knocked from a tree - it was terrifying and exhilarating and they were both smiling and breathless by the time they’d stopped being pursued -, him teaching her how to read, them collapsing on the beach after a long day and letting the water tug at their fur ever so gently. she had dreamt so much of him that it was hard to come back and see that he wasn’t like that in real life. would he ever be that way?

she hadn’t meant to disappear without saying anything but she hadn’t felt right anywhere, so she had decided to wander around. she had thought that a clean break would be best for everyone than going and saying ‘hey i’m gonna leave for a few days ok bye’. it wouldn’t have been fair to them. but oh if she had known what it had done to colin, she would have stayed. she would have stayed for him. with him.

her vision was starting to get blurry, tears coming to her eyes. here he was, his voice calling her name before his form came rushing at her, crystalline liquid spilling from his own eyes. he was being so gentle and he was putting bandaids on her as if that would help and oh goddess she was sobbing now, crying because how could he be so kind and tender? it was these actions that made her break down, leaning forward to put her face against his shoulder. “i’m so sorry, colin, i’m sorry!” she whimpered, beginning to shake.

she loved him. the realization hit her before she was ready to accept it. she wasn’t even deserving of love, so what she doing going around loving him? what was she thinking?

“i’ve got it from here, colin.”

shining’s voice thankfully broke into her thoughts and she let herself be guided onto the ground and closed her eyes as shining went to work, trying not to breathe too hard in case it messed him up. “i’m sorry, i’m sorry this happened, she just went crazy on me, i’m sorry you guys, i just…. you said ichi’s coming, right?” she murmured softly, doing her best to keep the pain out of her voice. it was gonna be okay, right? right. ichi would be here soon and she could explain everything to him and tell him she was glad he was back and hug him.

fare managed to wrench herself out of the dream and she lay there, trying to catch her breath. what was wrong with her? why was she having these dreams? maybe… no, that wasn’t possible. but still…. no. fare pushed the thought out of her mind and gulped another lungful of air, squeezing her eyes shut. she’d be okay now that she was awake, right?

[riting]

Daniel Corral in conversation with Alexander Gedeon

In advance of the LAX Festival we asked twelve artists to profile the twelve pieces in the festival. Daniel’s performance POLYTOPE, runs on October 17th and 19th, 2018, at Think Tank Gallery in the Los Angeles Exchange [LAX] Festival. Details can be found here.

Daniel Corral is a composer and multi-instrumentalist born and raised in Eagle River, Alaska. I was previously aware of his work through several showings at REDCAT, and a very memorable performance of Circle Limit III for 8 guitars, presented on a downtown sidewalk as part of the LA Phil’s Noon-to-Midnight festival last year. On the occasion of his presentation of Polytope this week at the LAX festival, I was able to ask Daniel some questions about his rapidly evolving musical and theatrical language.

Polytope is a multimedia performance for MIDI quartet, but it’s also a standalone album, released by Orenda Records several weeks ago. As a recording, Polytope embodies ‘the gold standard’ of ambient music — it can hover in the background and cast a subtle vibe, but will also stand up to closer inspection: delicately layered overtones cascade and recede, forming a spellbinding latticework. In moments, it’s not unlike water drops on a windshield, dripping and streaking reflected light with each movement of the wiper.

For this week's performance, the audience sits in darkness as patterns of glowing light expand and contract in geometric sequence. The visual patterns become predictable in a way that’s oddly satisfying: one becomes seduced into thinking the music is as simple as the light show looks. But it’s not. Corral’s untraversed realms of microtonality create an uncanny, persistent tension. One reviewer compared the music to “Gamelan from Pluto”. In hearing particular harmonic relationships for the first time, I feel like I’m having unique, emotional responses I can’t quite pinpoint. It’s impressively weird.

AG: As I listened to Polytope, there were a handful of moments where I wasn't sure whether the sound was coming from outside on the street, or from my speaker. The sound seemed immediately like an organic part of the environment in my apartment. It kept distracting me from multi-tasking and making me give the record my undivided attention. How did that happen?

DC. I also found that to be true as I was listening to mixes of Polytope while driving around LA. Some of the low-frequency difference tones in Polytope interacted with the sounds of semi engines in fascinating ways. I think this happens because the monochrome sound world of Polytope is based on a sine tone, which is a simple type of sound wave that is often used to create more complex waveforms. Since the material is so basic, it can either draw attention to its own timbral austerity or latch onto the partials of other sounds in the environment.

I'm struck by how mindful you seem to be with the audience's overall encounter with your music -- and the music you've blogged about. Many of your pieces have an interactive component, you've written opera reviews, and your recent 'micro-tonal audio/visual series’ is a brilliant visual articulation of your musical language. What animates this sensitivity to the audience's experience? What are your influences in this regard?

My approach to music has been heavily influenced by public libraries and bargain bin CDs. As a kid I used to listen to stacks of CDs from the Anchorage public library, often chosen at random. Similarly, I found all sorts of incredible music in $1 bins at Borders or Sam Goody, stuff that apparently no one else wanted. These days, I think of it as a Jonathan Gold approach. Good music can be hiding anywhere. You just have to find it. To facilitate that process, I try to offer audiences multiple levels of engagement with my work.

In my microtonal audio/visual pieces like Polytope or Comma, someone might be drawn in by the rhythmic minimalism, the visual spectacle of the live feed video projections in the dark, by deciphering the pieces formal structures, or by the microtonal harmonies. However people are able to engage with it is OK, and sometimes that permission can open up even more unexpected doorways.

I think this care for the audience experience really began to manifest with Requiem for György Ligeti, my giant music box with 100 wind up musical movements built into it. When I display it, I make a point of letting people know that they can wind up a few of the movements, try to hear all 100 simultaneously, or just hang out and listen as others interact directly with the box. I originally did that because the box was a little bit fragile and I didn't want it to break. But, I found that approach really let people relax as they experienced it.

When you start composing a piece like Polytope, do you have an end-result in mind? I wonder if you could talk a bit about your explorations in microtonality and how they connect to your compositional process.

Writing music is often like approaching an object in a thick fog. At first you only see the hazy outline, but as you approach it, details slowly emerge until you eventually crash into the windmill. Writing Polytope was very much like that. There was a lot of conceptualizing and programming needed to get to the point where I could even just play with the instrument I had “built."

All of my microtonal multimedia pieces thus far are based on different tonality diamonds, which are ways of organizing microtonal pitches into a grid. Once the grid of notes is set up, the compositional process then involves creating visual metaphors to lay on top of those notes. To satisfy my own sensibilities, these need to be engaging aurally, visually, and conceptually. Because of this integration, the live feed projections are actually an important part of fully understanding Polytope. The lights that the audience sees projected are the score that the musicians follow, and they can watch as the shadows of the players' fingers perform the piece. The only end result that was clearly defined from the beginning is transparency.

There seems to be less emphasis on texture in Polytope than, say Diamond Pulses -- really dug, by the way!. What I hear, though, is an obsessive, laser-like attention to slow, prismatic shifts in microtonality. The experience is somehow illuminating as a listener -- particularly in the 'Pulses' movements. Would you say the circle of concentration is tightening in your compositional concerns? What's motivating that shift?

I’m glad you connected with Diamond Pulses! That was my first piece that explored microtonality in a way I felt confident in. I would say the sound of Diamond Pulses is a bit more representational and also involves more layered side chains. When I started developing Comma in 2016, the influence of minimalist music and art inspired me to streamline my materials even more. The influence of light and space art also looms large on all of my microtonal multimedia pieces, as do artists like Sol LeWitt and Bridget Riley. Their streamlined aesthetics manifest in both the sound and visuals of Polytope. I originally experimented with quite a few different sounds for Polytope, but ended up reverting back to the basic monochrome sine tone that I used for Comma, the eloquence of which reinforced Polytope's minimalism.

I wouldn't say that the circle of concentration is tightening in all of my music, but some of it is definitely going in that direction. I think the more focused branch of my music started with writing music for installations and public spaces, where an audience might pay attention for 5 seconds or stick around for 45 minutes. Both interactions are equally valid, and the challenge is in making both rewarding. To address this concern, I've thought a lot about the difference between what is Streamlined versus what is Simple (really, anything considered Simple has just not been fully understood, but that is a much longer conversation). The interface of a hammer is relatively simple, while a smartphone touchscreen is streamlined. So, I guess I try to shape my music into a smartphone that you can use as a hammer! Polytope leans that way, as does Circle Limit III, my recent guitar octet which was premiered by the Los Angeles Electric 8 in November and is being released as an album next year by MicroFest Records. My accordion ensemble piece Neotrope fits into this category, as does Dislike. I tried to make these pieces capable of being taken at face value or appreciated for the gradual processes at play. Again, it's a consideration of time as the medium of music.

On the other hand, I am currently working on a song cycle based on summit registers I've documented on peaks around the Angeles National Forest. That piece will be quite colorful, closer to my music for Timur and the Dime Museum or my string quartet Comic Book. As Whitman said, "I am large, I contain multitudes."

In one of your older reviews, you dropped this Morton Feldman quote about the 'duration' of a composition: "Up to one hour you think about form, but after an hour and a half it's scale. Form is easy: just division of things into parts. But scale is a different matter." As it stands, Polytope is seems deliberately formatted, and I definitely felt an 'arc' in the listening experience. What would Polytope look like if it was two hours long, or longer?

It’s funny that you mention that, because I originally intended for Polytope to be much longer. There are 15 structures in Polytope, each of which has about a dozen or so sections within it, and I use a foot switch to manually control the rate of progress through the piece. The form and tempo of each of these sections is consistent, but how the four players interact within each section is different in every performance. The rate of progression dictates the number of repetitions of each musical idea before moving on to the next section. So, if Polytope were two hours or more, it would basically look the same, and the tempos of each section would be the same, but the duration of each section would be longer, with more repetitions. I think it would be really lovely, actually. Maybe we'll do that on Friday night and make it a 3 hour performance. I wonder if the players in my group would be angry or ecstatic... As it is, I don't think I quite jumped the shark from form to duration in Polytope. But, I try to think of every piece as proof of concept for the next one, so stay tuned :)

I really do love music and art that is about duration, though. Under the hood, time is the medium of music. My favorite film maker is Béla Tarr, whose films often involve very long single shots, and the inescapable linearity makes you evaluate your own relationship to time. Though not exactly the same, that consideration of temporality is related to John Cage's As Slow as Possible. Another example is La Monte Young's Dream House, which is a steady state drone installation bathed in Marian Zazeela's lights. It just runs all day, and it's up to the visitor to curate their own experience within it. In contrast, many of the bagatelle-like pieces from John Zorn's Naked City go in the opposite direction, increasing temporal density with very short structures. In all of these cases, the audience is likely compelled to consider what baggage they've dragged into their own relationships with time.

Alexander Gedeon is an opera director, performer and songwriter. He will associate direct John Cage’s Europeras I & II at the LA Phil this November.

Now living in Los Angeles, Daniel Corral’s unique voice finds outlet in accordion orchestras, puppet operas, handmade music boxes, microtonal electronics, site-specific installations, chamber music, post-punk opera, and inter-disciplinary collaborations. His music has been commissioned by venues and festivals around the world, and recordings of his work have been released by Populist Records, Orenda Records, Innova Recordings, the wulf. records, and independently. He will be joined onstage at the LAX Festival by Erin Barnes, Cory Beers, and Andrew Lessman.

Photos supplied by the artist.

[russellthornton]

Are You a Sapiophile? 13 Traits that Make Someone a Lover of Wit

Turned on by their intelligence? If you’re turned on by a date with their nose in Shakespeare or Galileo, you are a sapiophile.

Would you prefer a date with Elon Musk over Ryan Gosling? Do you find her ability to deconstruct Sartre’s works sexier than the most revealing dress in her wardrobe? Or are you more likely to find your future spouse in a book convention than at a bar? If this is the flavor of your romance, then you most likely are a sapiophile.

What makes one a sapiophile?

Sapiophiles or more commonly, sapiosexuals, are people who find intelligence sexy and attractive above all else. Oh, they like physical beauty too. However, they place more weight on the quality of brains in choosing a romantic partner.

While attraction to intelligence has been here a long time, the term sapiosexuality and sapiophilia have seen a bout of popularity in online dating profiles. But do people really know what it means? What really makes for a certified sapiophile?

#1 You are most likely an intelligent person yourself. Chemistry class taught us the phrase “like dissolves like” for substances. In the same way, sapiophiles tend to attract their own kind. The minds of intelligent people work in a much more complex level than the average person.

That’s why their preferences and manner of socializing is a bit complicated for anyone below their intelligence level. Simply put: less smart people bore them. That is why they crave the company of someone with a comparable intellectual level. [Read: How to become an intellectual: Fake it ’til you make it]

#2 You crave intelligent conversation like how an average person craves sex. Not that sapiophiles don’t want sex. It’s just that intellectual and deep conversations excite them the same way sex does. Sapiophiles likely spend dates having long discussions about science, politics, art, or literature.

Gossip and showbiz inanities have no place in post-dinner talk and foreplay is probably a debate over a current political issue.

#3 You want someone who holds their own in a conversation. Be it your family members, that overbearing friend, or the other friend with outlandish political views, the sapiophile wants someone who converses with different types of people with different views and still manages to convey their own views without fear or prejudice. [Read: 12 meaningful topics that ignite an intellectual conversation]

#4 You look for a smart sense of humor. While it’s true that a sense of humor can be at your advantage when finding a romantic partner, sapiophiles prefer a deeper sense of humor. This humor involves witty remarks, wordplay, and clever repartees. It would be hard to make a sapiophile laugh if you only stick juvenile dick jokes. [Read: Dry sense of humor – 20 signs you’re mastered the dry funny bone]

#5 Blatant ignorance easily turns you off. There will be times when a beefy, overconfident guy or a superficial, airheaded girl comes your way and flirts with you. And no matter how physically attractive and trendy they get, you always have that primordial impulse to run for the hills rather than spend time with them.

#6 Wrong grammar rubs you in a bad way. Once in a while, you get message inviting you for a date of some sort. Sapiophiles immediately have their “grammar filter” on in screening those people noble enough to defy the 140-character limit.

They still manage to string up proper words punctuated with the Oxford comma from those shorthand, unintelligible slang that the person might as well be speaking in ancient Sumerian.

#7 You’re more interested in what’s in their bookshelf than in their wardrobe. Sapiophiles love themselves a wide reader. However, it doesn’t end there. The average sapiophile has a scrutinizing eye for the titles you read.

Are you for those cheaply-concocted vampire literature, or for some hardcore non-fiction that university professors wouldn’t even care to open? Because to a sapiophile, books are good topics for a deep conversation. [Read: Why is inner beauty more important than outer beauty?]

#8 You are familiar with the “Thinking Man/Woman’s Crumpet.” For you, the embodiment of perfection is a person as smart as they are beautiful and talented. The “thinking man/woman’s crumpet” is such a person, and you will be familiar with the names listed under this category: Brian Cox, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, and Bill Nighy for the ladies. Nigella Lawson, Gillian Anderson, and Carol Vorderman for the guys.

#9 You prefer people with taste. Sapiophiles prefer people who developed their own taste of fashion, music, and ideas rather than adhering to trends.

They are aware that like the Jedi mind trick, trends only affect the weak-minded. Sapiophiles know that cultivating a personal taste requires experiencing different aspects of culture first hand, complemented by curiosity.

#10 You’re attracted to people of substance rather than people who want popularity. Sapiophiles wouldn’t care much about the likes and followers people starve for social media. They want people who talk about things that matter.

In fact, they choose someone with unpopular yet realistic views rather than someone who says yes just to get the crowd to like them. [Read: What are twin souls? 16 signs to know if you found yours]

#11 Your dates will be intellectually engaging. Your ideal date will be somewhere in this list: independent film festivals, art galleries, spoken word poetry events, museums, old book libraries, planetariums, and even historical sites. Sure, you can go for a coffee or to a pub as long as it’s the place where Hemingway wrote “A Farewell to Arms.”

#12 The gifts you give and prefer to get are very nerdy. Forget the gadgets, clothes, and cutesy trinkets. Nothing delights you more than to be given a rare first edition of a book you searched for your whole life. Maybe the same pen used by Neil Gaiman, or a pendant forged from meteorite. [Read: Sapiosexual types and their clearly defined fantasies]

#13 You also value emotional intelligence as well as raw intelligence. Knowing facts is one thing, but having emotional restraint and the capacity to introspect one’s feelings will be the cherry on top of the object of your desire. Sapiophiles look for emotional intelligence in a potential partner. Or the ability to discern feelings and emotions appropriately.

[Read: Attracted to intelligence? 10 clues you might be sapiosexual]

Sapiophiles are the ones who look beyond the typical aspects that normal people tend to look for in a partner. Sure, beauty is good, as is a fat bank account, but for them, intelligence, common sense, and the innate curiosity in a person makes them an instant keeper.

The post Are You a Sapiophile? 13 Traits that Make Someone a Lover of Wit is the original content of LovePanky - Your Guide to Better Love and Relationships.

[innybby-blog]

a oneshot??

fare knew that selector’s mother had been through worse than this, knew that she had had cancer and come out on top (she didn’t know the specifics, wasn’t aware of the price tama paid) so fare knew that she it in her to fight this. the question was whether or not she wanted to. did she want to eat and regain her strength? did she want to get rest? did she even want to get better? she wasn’t sure anymore.

the sickness had been progressing fast this time, not like last time back in the other windclan: a racking cough that shook her whole being, her bones were protruding as she rapidly lost weight, she was constantly switching between hot and cold, and she was almost never able to fall asleep and stay asleep. it was tearing her apart piece by piece, ripping her up from the inside, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. after all, she was only able to sit and watch, because she knew the outcome: death. it would be a slow descent into agony, and then when she couldn’t take it anymore, she would take her own life.

she had known she was getting sick a couple days prior to when it had struck her down and rendered her unable to leave her bed. it had come out in her mood, in the way she handled things and spoke, how she reacted to situations with such violent rage. she took on a more dangerous aura, more predator-like. that had always been the first sign of this disease, so she had holed herself up in her cabin to avoid hurting anyone. it wasn’t contagious but she was worried about how her clanmates would take it: seeing their normally optimistic and kind leader reduced to a pile of bones that snarled at any moving object.

all this just meant that she’d had more than enough time to worry about everyone. concern dripped from every pore, making her shudder.

the first one her thoughts gravitated to was ruben. how was he holding up out there, outside these four walls? was he okay? she always seemed to be fretting over him in some part of her mind, whether it be the forefront or some corner. he seemed so sad and lonely and lost and like he just kept it all inside to where no one could see. she thought that she could maybe help him, if the circumstances were different. maybe in a different lifetime, she could have been his mother and raised him to be a light and be brave and to love because love was the most important thing. fare’s own mother had taught her that and sel’s mom had drilled it into the young canine. fare just wished she could impart some of her hope and strength to him. she wished he saw how amazing he truly was. she wasn’t really angry at him for not being around, she just expected more from someone who had been on a pedestal in her mind. “you’re so brave, ruben. i wish i could be like you.”

leo. they were a quiet individual most of the time, but fare would trust them with her life. she… she just hoped that they trusted her. she hadn’t put them in the advisor position because she wanted to, she had put them there because she knew they would give insightful input and help the clan. and now, they were a dawnchaser, an even bigger responsibility. fare hoped they could handle it, she hoped she hadn’t just put too much onto their shoulders. she knew they worried a lot, and she didn’t want that. she just hoped they forgave her for leaving circ in charge while she was gone. “don’t ever give up, leo, okay? you can always do something if you put your mind to it.”

she found tears welling up in her eyes as let her brain rest on this next individual: circusclown. evergreen had told selector stories of how circ had stolen redlipstick from her, had begged tama to kill him, had led the exiles. fare just thought he was misunderstood. he must feel so afraid and lonesome all the time in order to be drinking so often. (fare knew that she got paranoid whenever she drank.) honestly, she thought he was incredibly strong-willed, ferocious, and enduring. she felt like he wanted to help others but was maybe too scared by his past mistakes to do so. but at least he had family. if nothing else, he had his family. “i-i know everyone says you’re bad, but i know you aren’t. you’re so wholly good that i’m jealous. i’m jealous that you have family here and you form relationships, and i’m just sitting in the dust, lost. i know you’ll never hear these words, but i admire you a lot. you’re the kind of person i wanted to be, once. i went to blizzardclan from time to time and you were there and i don’t care what ev says, you’re a damn good guy, circ.”

her thoughts were swirling, little sobs being wrenched from her throat every now and then as she thought on. belladonna. “belladonna, i know you and i haven’t interacted much but you’re like a daughter to me, and i’d die for you in an instant if i had to. i wish you knew that, but there’s no way i could every say it to your face. just remember to slow down and take a breather every once in a while. it helps, okay?” she murmured, ears going flat against her head. she had high hopes for the young medic in training, and if ruben didn’t step up to train her, fare herself would fill that position and make sure bella knew what to do in case of any emergency.

something about shuuya felt familiar. selector had been told many times by a reminiscent evergreen of a male named kamen, and that’s who this individual reminded her of. “you’re hiding something, i can sense it. but i think that deep down, you’re really funny and happy. you remind me of someone selector’s mother used to talk about before everything went to shit. i think you’re pretty okay, shuuya.”

twinruins was a bit of a mystery, appearing out of nowhere and gasping out a name that sounded something akin to ‘ship’ when the other had come encroaching upon shadowclan soil. he made her recall memories of when she was human, of someone curled up in the shape of a comma with a coffee mug held firmly in his hands and his lips twitching up every so often as he read a book silently. twin was something nostalgic, something beautiful and mysterious, an enigma that fare couldn’t quite piece together. “i think you’re scared, twinruins.” she stated to the air in front of her, voice quiet. she felt like a wind-tossed thing in a sea of emotions. “i’m scared too, so i can understand if you are. i think you’re scared of being alone, just like me. i think we could learn to get along, if i ever met you face to face instead of just hearing about you through the grapevine. i think we could be friends.”

with that, the girl would stay quiet for a few moments more before getting to her paws with a pained noise. she shouldered her way out of her cabin and stared up at the stars before laying back down outside. it helped to get out of her cabin, away from the smell of sickness. pretty soon, she was asleep, legs quivering every so often.

it had started out as a calm night, the wind blowing through the carnival, the lights up above all aglow, the ferris wheel spinning as the sound of laughter carried to ev’s ears. however, the atmosphere did nothing to soothe her thoughts, her soul, the anger waiting just inside her being. the wrath had been there for as long as she could remember, but she had always hidden it surprisingly well considering everything that had happened to her. it had only come to light a few times, under certain circumstances.

things had been normal for selector. she had tired of hawkclan’s slow pace, tired of feeling adrift in her own life. she had decided to go see her mother, in order to inform her of her choice to leave hawkclan. she didn’t expect to find someone who was becoming more angry by the day, someone who wanted to hurt another being if they so much as looked at her. and now sel was here, bringing her the news of this next failure and her mother spun, eyes locking on her daughter.

"so now you’re gonna be a runaway, a loser? i thought i taught you better, selector! you gonna be like winterfell and run away from me, from your home and your clan just like she did? what a way to live! things get slow and boring and so you leave? nice, you fucking idiot!" evergreen would snarl, the anger immediately coming to the surface and making sel’s mother a fearsome and dangerous thing, a beast to be reckoned with. ev no longer felt sadness, but a heat that was all too familiar. it tore through her like an explosion, busting through windows and devouring everything in an instantaneous blast.

in slow motion, she could see her paw swinging towards selector, claws extended. the noise it made when it connected with her daughter’s face was reminiscent of a crack, a branch being irreparably broken. sel felt her jaw go slack right after the impact and then pain burst forth, lightning hot and sizzling. oh god, oh god, oh god, what had she been thinking by coming here?

ev and selector reeled away from each other, sel’s mind trying to take her to another place, another time. times where she spent time climbing on roofs, back when she was reaching for the rafters, back when she had been happy, back when she watched the sun rise and the stars fade, back when she was young, back when she was happy, she was happy, she had been so happy then. she just wanted to go back. ev was pinning her ears back and curling her lips once more in a snarl.

they were each frozen for a moment, and then both leaped forward at each other, growls pouring from their throats as the muscles under their skin rippled. sel’s teeth met ev’s face, her throat at the same time as her claws ripped into ev’s side. they were two warring beasts hellbent on destroying one another. ev went for the other’s eyes, the soft underbelly of her stomach, looking to gut her like a fish. in defense, sel twisted away, leaving ragged lines in her mother’s side and tearing a sizable chunk of her cheek and neck in the process. she wasn’t fast enough, though, and a thud could be heard as she slammed into the ground, bright red blood rushing from her mutilated stomach. ”mom! mom, please, stop! i’m not like winterfell, i won’t leave you!” the girl pleaded, but she could only watch as ev crept towards her, blood dripping from her ribcage and facial features.

sel didn’t want to hurt her mother, but she did the only thing she could. she got to her feet and sprang towards evergreen, lips drawn back in a grimace of pain as she went for her mom’s back. there was a brief commotion as something vital was cleaved from ev’s body, and a grunt as the five year old hit the ground.

sel stepped back, dragging a white, feathered mass that had crimson splattered near the base where it had been attached to ev. the older canine was currently laying on the ground, breath heaving in and out of her lungs, her body shaking as rage drained out. terror replaced it, agony tagging along for the ride. she saw sel move away, drop the ivory-colored object and ev realized, with a dim sense of numbness, that it was one of her wings. one of her wings was gone, just leaving a hole where it had been, white bone sticking out from the ragged space. “look what you’ve done to me! do you see this?!” ev said, shock moving and twisting around her brain, clouding her thoughts and actions. she was no longer fierce and full of wrath, but shivering and vulnerable. sel had taken something vital, something crucial from her, and she didn’t know what to do now. so she just layed there.

ev stayed still on the dirt as her daughter stepped through the puddle of blood forming around her, stayed still as selector whispered words of sad remorse, stayed still as sel limped off without a glance back at her mom, and she stayed still as the scarlet liquid ran from her body. she had never wanted anything more in this moment than to kill her daughter for taking away her flight, her freedom.

she just wanted to be normal and this was what she got? well damn her if she was going to sit here and bleed out. she had to get help, and quickly, or else it could be bye bye evergreen. so, she struggled to her paws and made her way back towards her home. and somewhere else, selector was already far off, limping heavily back to hawkclan, calling out for shining and littlepaw and colin. she would be alright, she promised herself. she’d make it somehow.

the dream stopped abruptly, seeming to fast forward so there were three beings there instead of just one. fare whined, very softly, in the back of her throat. this wasn’t her, this wasn’t her, this wasn’t her! she wanted to wake up but it was impossible now.

of course. of course it was him who was the first to show up. it had always been him, and it always would be. "colin," she whispered, voice cracking, her form lurching forward. it was always going to be him, for every day for the rest of her life. he was the first one she thought about when she woke and the last one she thought about when she curled up to go to sleep, the one she wished was next her to sing her to sleep and be there when nightmares woke her up. she wanted him to be there for her and comfort her and not ever leave her. she wanted.... she wanted him, and that was a strange concept for her because she had never felt this way about anyone or anything and now she did. it was messing with her head.

do you know i dream of you sometimes? a dozen images flashed through her mind as soon as her mind processed this thought, all filtered in a dream-like haziness: them curled up together just dozing, them running away from a swarm of bees that selector had knocked from a tree - it was terrifying and exhilarating and they were both smiling and breathless by the time they'd stopped being pursued -, him teaching her how to read, them collapsing on the beach after a long day and letting the water tug at their fur ever so gently. she had dreamt so much of him that it was hard to come back and see that he wasn’t like that in real life. would he ever be that way?

she hadn’t meant to disappear without saying anything but she hadn’t felt right anywhere, so she had decided to wander around. she had thought that a clean break would be best for everyone than going and saying ‘hey i’m gonna leave for a few days ok bye’. it wouldn’t have been fair to them. but oh if she had known what it had done to colin, she would have stayed. she would have stayed for him. with him.

her vision was starting to get blurry, tears coming to her eyes. here he was, his voice calling her name before his form came rushing at her, crystalline liquid spilling from his own eyes. he was being so gentle and he was putting bandaids on her as if that would help and oh goddess she was sobbing now, crying because how could he be so kind and tender? it was these actions that made her break down, leaning forward to put her face against his shoulder. "i’m so sorry, colin, i’m sorry!" she whimpered, beginning to shake.

she loved him. the realization hit her before she was ready to accept it. she wasn’t even deserving of love, so what she doing going around loving him? what was she thinking?

"i've got it from here, colin."

shining’s voice thankfully broke into her thoughts and she let herself be guided onto the ground and closed her eyes as shining went to work, trying not to breathe too hard in case it messed him up. "i’m sorry, i’m sorry this happened, she just went crazy on me, i’m sorry you guys, i just…. you said ichi’s coming, right?” she murmured softly, doing her best to keep the pain out of her voice. it was gonna be okay, right? right. ichi would be here soon and she could explain everything to him and tell him she was glad he was back and hug him.

fare managed to wrench herself out of the dream and she lay there, trying to catch her breath. what was wrong with her? why was she having these dreams? maybe… no, that wasn’t possible. but still…. no. fare pushed the thought out of her mind and gulped another lungful of air, squeezing her eyes shut. she’d be okay now that she was awake, right?