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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 5 months ago

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Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 4: Read Between The Lines]

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes, Jace is here unfortunately.

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams” by Green Day.

Word count: 5.6k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

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It is your first week of basic training at Great Lakes on the north side of Chicago, and as you lie in the top bunk of your assigned bed you wonder what the hell you’ve done. You enlisted right out of high school, eighteen, no driver’s license, no work history, never been more than fifty miles outside of Soft Shell, Kentucky. The drill sergeants are always yelling and you’re bad at push-ups; you can’t understand the recruits from big cities like Los Angeles, Miami, Las Vegas, Detroit, Houston, and they don’t seem to get you either, and aren’t interested enough to try. Sometimes you wish you hadn’t signed that five-year contract, but where would you be if you weren’t here? Home is not words but textures, colors, fumes that still burn in your sinuses: cigarette ash on rose pink carpets, red embers glowing in the wood stove, Hamburger Helper and Mountain Dew, coffee creamer in Hungry Jack potatoes, laughter and heavy footsteps and slamming doors, scratch-off games, dogs barking, collecting coins from couch cushions for gas money, scrubbing clothes in the bathtub when the washer quits, Mama taking gulps from her favorite cup—plastic, Virginia Beach, filled with equal parts Hawaiian Punch and vodka—when she thinks no one is looking, blue shows flickering on the television, Family Feud, Maury, Good Morning America, WWE SmackDown. For as long as you can remember you’ve known you couldn’t stay. Now you’re getting out, but nothing in life is free.

You are at Class A Technical School in Gulfport, Mississippi, and even though it’s hotter than some noxious, volcanic hellscape—Mercury, Venus, Io—you are beginning to like it. You taste the salt of sweat when you lick your lips, sugar in the sweet tea they serve in the chow hall. There’s a magic in building something where there was only empty space before, in patching roofs and painting walls. Here being quiet and watchful is exactly what they want from you: head down, hammer striking nails, measurements and angles and long hours under the sun with no complaints. You’re not just running away anymore. You are creating something new.

You are sitting beneath swaying palm trees and a full moon on Diego Garcia, draining cans of Guinness with Rio, and he’s telling you things he shouldn’t, too personal, too honest: Sophie wants to try for a baby next time he’s home on leave, and part of him wants that too but he’s terrified. As thunder rumbles in the distance and raindrops begin to patter on the waves of the Indian Ocean, you tell Rio you think he’d be a good father. He wonders how you figure that, and you say because he’s not like any of the men from home. He gives you one of his crooked smiles—a flash of teeth, knowing dark eyes—and doesn’t ask what you mean.

But of course, when you swim up from the inky currents of sleep you are in none of these places. You are curled up on the floor of a bowling alley in Shenandoah, Ohio, cheap worn black carpet peppered with stars and swirls in neon green, pink, blue. You stretch out with a yawn. Someone has left a Lemon Tea Snapple within reach; you twist it open and guzzle it, hoping to extinguish the pounding in your skull, a rhythmic thudding of warm maroon, half Captain Morgan and half misery. The music isn’t helping. From the green Toshiba CD player, a man is singing in Spanish. Aegon and Rio are sitting at the nearest table and playing Uno.

Aegon says as he ponders his cards: “You know Enrique Iglesias, right Rio?”

“You are so racist.” Rio puts down a wild. “And the new color is red. Racist.”

“So what’s he saying?”

“Aegon, buddy, I told you, I was born here. My grandparents came over in the 60s. I don’t speak Spanish.”

“You can’t understand any of it?” Aegon is skeptical. He plays a skip, a reverse, and a seven. “My dad never taught me a word of Greek but I can recognize plenty of phrases. Vlákas means idiot. Spatáli chórou is a waste of space.”

Rio sighs, relenting. He puts down a two. “The song is called Súbeme La Radio, Turn Up The Radio For Me. Bring me the alcohol that numbs the pain… I don’t care about anything anymore…You’ve left me in the shadows…”

“Damn, now I’m sad. Draw four, bitch.”

“When the night comes and you don’t answer, I swear to you I’ll stay waiting at your door…” Rio studies his cards. “What’s the new color?”

“Green.”

“Yes!” Rio slams down a skip. “Fleeing from the past in every dawn, I can’t find any way to erase our history…”

Everyone else is awake already. As muted late-morning daylight streams in through the small tinted windows, Aemond is weaving between tables, pointedly checking on each person. He glances at you, says nothing, turns around and walks the other way.

“That’s tough,” Rio says sympathetically, popping open the tab on a can of Chef Boyardee and shoveling ravioli into his mouth with a plastic fork.

Aegon gives you a smirk. “You want to fake date now?”

“I’ll think about it.” No you won’t.

Helaena appears, a prairie girl vision in a modest blue sundress and with her hair tied back with a matching scarf. She reaches into her burlap messenger bag and offers you a choice between a ranch-flavored tuna pouch or a silvery pack of Pop-Tarts. “Strawberry,” she tells you.

“I’ll take the Pop-Tarts.”

Helaena gives them to you and then shakes a bottle of Advil. You’re so groggy it takes you a few seconds to figure out what she wants, then you obediently hold out a hand. Helaena lays two tablets in the center of your palm and moves on, soundlessly like a rabbit or a spider.

You wash the pills down with Snapple. As you nibble half-heartedly on a Pop-Tart—trying not to look at Aemond, multicolored sprinkles falling down onto the carpet—your eyes drift to the tattoo on the underside of Aegon’s forearm. It’s not over ‘til you’re underground. You’ve spotted it before. Only now do you remember where you recognize the lyric from. “Is that Green Day?”

“Yeah,” Aegon says, enthused that you noticed. “Letterbomb.”

“I love that whole album.”

“Me too. I could sing it front to back if you asked me to.”

“I’m not asking.”

Aegon cackles and resumes his Uno game with Rio. Baela is wearing denim shorts and a crop top, slathering her belly with Palmer’s cocoa butter from Walmart as she chats with Rhaena and eats Teddy Grahams. Daeron is waxing the string of his compound bow. Jace is gnawing on a Twizzler as he scrutinizes Aegon’s map, annotated with Xs and circles and arrows in sparkling gel pen green.

“I’m going to be a thousand years old by the time we get there,” Jace mutters.

Aegon hits the table with his fist. The discard pile collapses and cascades, an avalanche of Uno cards. Rio, undisturbed, continues contemplating his next move. “You know what, Jace? The cities are full of zombies, the interstates are blocked by fifty-car pileups, if we bump into anyone else who’s still alive they’re just as likely to rob and murder us as want to be friends, and on top of all that I’m trying to do you the favor of preventing you from getting so irradiated you turn into Spider-Man. If you have a better route in mind, I’d love to hear it.”

“Spider-Man…? You’re such a dumbass, what are you talking about?!”

Luke says from where he stands by a window: “Aemond, someone’s outside.”

“What?” Aemond stares at him. “Zombies?”

“No. People.”

Aemond bolts to the doors, the rest of you close behind him. Rhaena turns off the CD player. You, Rio, and Aegon squeeze together to peer out of one of the windows. There are men—three of them, no, four, all appearing to be in their forties—passing by on the main road through town. They are armed with what are either AR-15s or M16s, you can’t tell which.

Rio whistles. “If you get shot by one of those, the exit wound will be the size of an orange.” Everyone looks at him. This was not an encouraging thing to say.

You elaborate: “Thirty-round magazines. Semiautomatic, assuming they’re AR-15s for civilian use. I guess they could have gotten ahold of M16s somehow. Those have a fully automatic setting.”

“So regardless, we’re out-gunned,” Jace says.

“If they know how to use them. Some men think guns are wall decorations, like deer heads or fish.”

Aegon recoils. “Fish?! What the fuck. I’m glad the colonies left.”

“Maybe they’ll keep walking,” Daeron says hopefully. One of the men stops and points at the bowling alley, saying something to his companions. They laugh and begin crossing the small parking lot. They are less than two minutes from the door. “Oh, great…”

“There’s an emergency exit in the back,” Baela says.

Aegon snorts. “Yeah, that we stacked about twenty boxes of bowling pins in front of to zombie-proof.”

“We won’t be able to get out before they hear us,” Aemond says. Then he abruptly orders: “Grab your guns, let’s go. Helaena, Baela, Rhaena, you’re staying here.” Aemond’s remaining eye—briefly, reluctantly—skates over you as Rio, Aegon, Jace, Luke, and Daeron scatter to obey him. “You too.”

“But I’m the best shot.”

“I don’t want them to know we have women with us.”

“I’m of more use to you outside.”

Aemond rips his Glock out of its holster, pointing it at the floor. His frustration is palpable, an electric shock, heat that refracts light rays until they become mirages on the horizon. “You’re going to stay here, and if a stranger comes through those doors you’re going to kill them. Okay?”

His urgency stuns you; his eye is blue-white summer storm lightning. “Okay.”

“Now get back.”

You soar to the nearest table, duck under it, reach for your Beretta M9 and double-check the clip, fully loaded. You click off the safety.

“Aemond, wait, let me go first,” Aegon is saying by the door. “I’m better at de-escalation, I’m less…uh…intimidating.”

“Less socially incompetent, you mean,” Jace quips.

“I’ll lead,” Aemond insists. “Aegon can talk. Rio, you’re up front with me.”

Rio pumps his Remington 12 gauge. “I’d be delighted.”

Jace is amused. “I’ve been demoted, huh?”

“He’s bigger,” Aemond replies simply, then opens the door and vanishes through a blinding curtain of daylight. The others follow closely; Daeron, the last one out—his compound bow in hand, the strap of his Marlin .22 slung over his shoulder—shuts the door behind him.

Very faintly, you can hear Aegon: “Hey, guys! What’s happening? How’s the apocalypse treating you…?”

Baela, Rhaena, and Helaena are under the table with you. They deserve to have options. You tell them: “If you want to go hide behind the lanes or try to get out the back door, now’s your chance.”

Helaena shakes her head, clutching your t-shirt: black, Star Wars, pawed off a shelf at the Walmart. “I want to stay with you.”

“Same,” Baela says determinedly, gripping her Ruger. She barely knows how to use it, but she’ll try. Rhaena is shaking, her eyes filling up her face, small fragile bones like a bird’s.

You can’t hear voices from outside anymore, but there are no gunshots either. You keep your M9 aimed at the doors, your breathing slow and deep, your heart rate low. Your hands are steady. Your eyes hunt for the slightest movement, for the momentary shadow of someone passing by a window. Against your will, your thoughts wander to Aemond. I hope Aegon is on his left side. Aemond can’t see there.

“Rhaena, get your gun out,” Baela says sharply. “Come on. Turn the safety off. What if you were alone right now? What if we weren’t here to protect you?”

Rhaena nods, fumbling to free her revolver from its holster. “I’m sorry…I’m trying…”

Now there is a stranger’s voice, gruff and deep. He must be just beyond the door, the farthest one to the right. There is a creak of hinges, a sliver of sunlight. “That’s just too damn bad, fellas. You got a nice little hideout here, and you’re gonna have to share it—”

The door opens. Two unfamiliar faces, too shellshocked to raise their rifles in time. You close an eye, line up your sights, fire twice, and that’s all it takes: one headshot, one in the throat, blood like a fountain, spurting scarlet ruin, thuds against the carpet strewn with neon stars, gurgling and spasms as their brains send out those final electrical impulses: danger, catastrophe, apocalypse. Rhaena is screaming. Helaena is covering her ears with both hands.

You run to the doorway; there are more booms of gunfire out in the parking lot. You cross into the late-morning light to see the other two men on the pavement: one with an arrow through the eye, the other with a gaping, hemorrhaging hole where his heart once was. Rio is admiring his work, holding his shotgun aloft. He scoops a handful of Cheddar Whales out of his shorts pocket and shovels them into his mouth.

“Goddamn, I love Remington Arms Company.”

“Oh, that was awesome,” Aegon says, wan and panting, hands on his waist. “Yeah, that was…that was…” He bends over and vomits Snapple and Cool Ranch Doritos onto the asphalt.

“Everyone okay in there?” Rio asks you.

“Yeah.” Behind you, Baela, Rhaena, and Helaena are stepping through the doorway. Your thoughts are whirling sickly: I killed someone. I killed someone. “They wouldn’t leave?”

“We told them the bowling alley was ours,” Aemond says, not looking at you. “We asked them very politely to keep moving. They chose to try to intimidate us into letting them stay. They weren’t good people, and these are the consequences.”

You click on the safety and re-holster your M9. You’re wearing Rio’s on your other hip. They seem to weigh so much more than they did ten minutes ago. I’m not supposed to be a killer. I’m a builder.

“Aegon, are you okay?” Daeron asks, a palm on his brother’s back.

Aegon retches again. “Shut up. You can’t even buy fireworks.”

“Zombies.” Luke is peering through his binoculars. “Not many, just two. Way up the road.”

“There will be more.” Baela’s cradling her belly; you don’t even think she’s aware of it. “They heard the gunshots, the sound carries for miles.”

“We’re leaving,” Aemond says. “Right now. Everyone get your things.”

As backpacks are hastily zipped and Daeron and Aegon stand guard in the parking lot, you kneel down beside the men you murdered and check their rifles. They are M16s, either stolen or illegally purchased: there’s a little switch by the trigger to choose between semi-automatic or the so-called machine gun mode.

“They barely had any bullets left,” you tell Rio. Just like us when we were trapped on that transmission tower.

“Yeah, same story for the other two guys. Four bullets in one magazine, a half dozen in the other. But it only takes once. We don’t have any ammo that will work with M16s, do we?”

“No, we definitely don’t.”

“Fantastic. Well, we’ll throw them in a Walmart cart and take them with us just in case.”

You’re staring down at the man you shot through the head. His eternal resting place is a puddle of blood and brains in a bowling alley in rural Ohio; surely no one deserves that. “He was a real person,” you say, dazed. “Not a zombie. Just a person.”

“Hey.” Rio grabs your shoulders and spins you towards him. From where he is helping Luke gather up the remaining food, Aemond’s head snaps up to watch. “You hurt him before he could hurt us. You did the right thing.”

“Sure.”

“I killed a dude too. I blew his heart right out of his chest. You think I’m going to hell for that?”

“No,” you admit, smiling. “And if you’d be there with me, I guess I wouldn’t mind so much.”

Rio grins, wide and toothy. “Well alright then. Let’s finish packing.”

The ten of you depart from Shenandoah, Ohio heading northwest on Route 603 just like Aegon marked on his map, Jace chauffeuring Baela in one shopping cart, Rio pushing another loaded high with food and M16s.

“It looks like rain,” Helaena says.

Everyone else peers up into a clear, cerulean sky, wondering what she means.

~~~~~~~~~~

You’re a few miles north of Shiloh when the storm rolls in, cold rain and furious wind, daylight that vanishes behind dark churning thunderheads, jagged scars of lightning in an opaque sky. The road is only two lanes, surrounded by fields of wildflowers and ravaged crops and untilled earth; it would look like the patchwork of a quilt if you were gazing down from an airplane, but of course the FAA grounded all flights over a month ago when the world went mad: Revelations, Ragnarök, the fabric of the universe unweaving as death burned through families, cities, nations like a fever, like plague.

“Maybe we should cut across one of these fields,” Jace says, pointing. He is soaked with rain; it drips from his curls, runs into his eyes. Baela is in her cart again; each time she tries to get out and walk, she’s gasping and can’t keep up within half an hour. You’ve all taken turns pushing her, much to Baela’s dismay. She’d be humiliated if she wasn’t too exhausted to keep her eyes open.

“Here, let me do it,” you offer, and Jace gratefully relinquishes the cart. Baela gives you a frail wave of appreciation.

“We stay on the road,” Aemond insists, flinching as rain pelts his scarred face. “Farmhouses have driveways and mailboxes, we’ll pass one eventually. If we lose the road, we might not be able to find it again. We’ll end up wandering around in circles in the woods.”

“Just like the Blair Witch Project,” Aegon says glumly, his Sperry Bahama sneakers audibly soggy.

“There!” Luke announces, spotting something with his binoculars. “Up ahead on the left. Past the bridge.”

You can’t see what Luke does until there is an especially brilliant flash of lightning: a farmhouse, old but seemingly not derelict, and with a number of accompanying buildings, guest houses and stables and barns and towering silos.

“Home sweet home!” Rio says. “And I don’t care if I have to kill a hundred of those undead bastards to get in, it’s mine.”

“Well, hopefully not a hundred,” you reply, in better spirits now that a sanctuary has been found. Aemond keeps glancing back at you as you push Baela’s cart. If he wants to say something, he’s doing a good job of resisting the temptation. “We don’t have that much ammo.”

There is a concrete bridge over a river, probably unremarkable and only five or ten feet deep normally but now torrential with rain. Water rushes by beneath, a muddy incline on each side as the earth rises back up to meet the road. A reflective green sign proclaims that you are only two miles from Plymouth, which Aegon plans to skirt along the edges of. It’s a decent-sized town; he thinks you might be able to find a car to steal there, something with gas in the tank and keys on a hook just inside the house.

“I call the master bedroom,” Jace says craftily, rubbing his palms together. You’re near the center of the bridge now, another ten yards to go. “Nice big bed, warm cozy blankets, and I was up for half of last night keeping watch so tonight I am off duty, I am a free man, it’s going to just be me and my girl and eight glorious uninterrupted hours of sleep—”

Rhaena shrieks, and then you hear it over the noise of the storm, pounding rain and rumbling thunder: moans, growls, hisses like snakes. Not one zombie. A lot more than one. They’re crawling up from under the bridge, from the filthy quagmire at both ends. There was a hoard of them waiting, aimless, dormant, almost hibernating. But now they are awake. They are grasping for you with bony, dirt-covered claws. They are snapping with jaws that leak blood and pus and bile as their organs curdle to a putrid soup.

“Get off the bridge!” Aemond is shouting. He has his Glock in his right hand, a baseball bat in his left. He’ll shoot until he’s out of bullets, and then, and then…

Rio helps you get Baela out of the cart, then opens fire. His Remington doesn’t just pierce skulls, it vaporizes them. When he’s out of shells—there are more in his backpack, but no time to reload—he yanks the M16s out of the other Walmart cart and empties each of them, mowing down zombies as the rest of you scramble across the bridge. All around you are explosions of gunshots, thunder, lightning, zombie skulls crushed by bullets and blunt force trauma. Baela is firing her Ruger as you half-drag her, one arm hooked beneath hers and around her back. When the last M16 is empty, Rio starts clubbing zombies with the butt of it. You’ve all reached the north side of the bridge, except…

“Fuck off, you freaks!” Jace is screaming. They’ve backed him up against the guardrail, a swarm of ten or more. His Remington shotgun is out of ammo; he’s swinging it wildly, but he doesn’t even have enough room to maneuver. There are still more zombies emerging from under the bridge. You can hear them snarling and groaning. You swipe an M9 off your belt and put a bullet in the brain of a zombie as its fingers close around your ankle, then you start picking off the ones mobbing Jace. You aren’t fast enough. As they lean in to bite him, teeth gnashing at the delicious throbbing heat of his jugular, Jace throws himself over the barrier and into the surging water below.

“No!” Baela cries. She careens off the road and into the field, running parallel to the river as swiftly as she can. You are helping her, steadying her, firing at any zombies you have a clear line of sight on. The others are here too: slipping in the muck of the flooding earth, shouting for Jace. He surfaces through the frothing current, flails pitifully, disappears beneath the water again. You glimpse a white hand, a shadow of his dark hair, a kicking shoe. There are more zombies on the opposite side of the river, trailing after Jace, lurching and slobbering viscous, gory saliva. They cannot swim, but they can follow him until he washes ashore.

Jace bursts up through the waves, gasping. “Help! Aemond…Aemond, for the love of God, help me…” He blubbers and then is dragged under. Aemond and Luke are continuing frantically after him. Baela is hysterical, sobbing, trembling with adrenaline. Aegon is yowling as he swings at zombies with his bloodied golf club. Helaena is darting around almost invisibly, always cowering behind Daeron or Aegon or Rio.

You glance north towards the farmhouse, growing not closer but farther away. We can’t leave shelter. We can’t leave the road. You lock eyes with Rio. He’s thinking the same thing.

“Aemond, we have to go,” Rio says, but in the midst of the rain and the turmoil it barely registers.

“Jace, we’re coming to get you!” Aemond swears. The ground is increasingly sodden, deep, difficult to trudge through. Jace resurfaces, coughing and sputtering.

“Jace!” Aegon wails. He caves in the skull of a zombie who was once a registered nurse as Helaena crouches behind him. “Jace, I’m sorry! I’m gonna miss you, man!”

Jace splashes in the rising river, his arms flailing helplessly. He is being swept away far faster than any of you can move on foot. “Aegon, you dumb bitch!” Jace manages, then slips beneath the water and doesn’t reappear.

“Where is he?!” Baela is saying. “Aemond, where…?”

You are trying to soothe her, to bring her back to reality. She was always so pragmatic before; you have to wake her up. “Baela, listen, we can’t stay here, he would want you and the baby to be safe—”

“Aemond! Aemond, we have to go!” Rio catches him, wrenches him around, roars into his face as driving rain pummels them both: “We have to go, or we’re going to die here too!”

It hits Aemond all at once; he understands, horror and agony in his sole blue eye. “We have to go,” he agrees. And then louder, to everyone: “Get to the farmhouse!”

Baela collapses into the mud, howling, tears flooding down her face. “No, he’s still alive, he’s still alive, we can’t leave him!”

You and Rhaena are trying to haul Baela to her feet. Now Aemond is here, pulling you away from her—his fingers tight and urgent around your wrist—as he and Luke take your place. “Go,” he commands. “You run. Don’t wait for us. Rio?”

“I got her,” Rio replies, grabbing your free hand with an iron grip. Gales of wind rip at you; every millimeter of your skin is soaked with rain. As you flee across the fields towards the farmhouse, dozens of zombies pursue you. More are still staggering along the banks of the river, swept up in the hoards chasing Jace and the promise of his waterlogged corpse when it reaches its final destination. Daeron has run out of arrows and is shooting with his .22, which is very much not his preference. Aegon trips, getting covered in mud as he rolls, and Rio stops to help him. While he is distracted, you look back at Aemond. He, Luke, and Baela are moving quickly, but not quickly enough. A drove of zombies is closing in on them. You have a spare few seconds at last. You yank your backpack off, grab a box of ammo inside, and reload your M9.

“Chips?!” Rio calls over his shoulder.

“I’m fine.”

He knows you well enough to listen. The world goes quiet as your finger settles on the trigger. There’s a rhythm one slips into, an impassionate lethal efficiency. It’s easier to keep going than to stop and have to find it again. You fire over and over, dropping eight zombies. You sheath your M9 and whip Rio’s out of your other holster, the sights finding grotesque decaying faces illuminated by lightning. You pull the trigger: blood, bones, brains, corpses jerking and convulsing as they fall harmlessly to the mud. Aemond is here; when did he get here?

“I told you to run!” he’s shouting through the storm, furious. He’s shoving you towards the farmhouse. You resist him.

“Let me kill as many as I can—”

“Go! Now!” Aemond orders over the clashing thunder, and then sprints with you all the way to the front porch to make sure you listen. Everyone else is already there. Helaena has fetched a spare key from under the doormat and is turning it in the lock.

Daeron observes her anxiously. “We don’t know if it’s safe in there, Helaena.”

“Not in,” she says, insistent. “Through.” Through this building, and maybe through the next one too. The average zombie is not terribly clever. If they lose sight of you, without the benefit of the momentum of a hoard they are lost. Helaena opens the door. The living rush inside, and she locks it behind you. As you are bursting out the back door, you can hear zombies pounding their rotting palms against the front one. You soar through a stable full of dead horses and donkeys, leaving the doors open; this should keep the zombies distracted if they make it this far. Then you race to the farthest guest house. Luke, swiveling with his binoculars, spies no zombies approaching as you steal inside. There is no spare key this time; Rio punches out a first-floor window for you to climb through. Once everyone is inside, he and Aegon move a bookshelf to cover the opening.

You all stand in the living room, gasping and shivering, dripping rain down onto the rug and the hardwood floor. The air is dusty but clean of any trace of vile, swampy decay. Outside, thunder booms and lightning flashes bright enough to illuminate the lightless house. The sky is so dark it might as well be nightfall. Baela sinks to her knees, clamping both hands over her mouth so she won’t sob loudly enough for a zombie to hear. Rhaena and Luke are beside her, both weeping quiet rivulets of tears, trying to comfort her in whispers. Helaena is rummaging around searching for candles; she has already taken a lighter out of her soaked burlap messenger bag.

“Daeron, bro, come over here,” Aegon chokes out. He embraces Daeron, clutches him tightly and desperately, doesn’t let go. Rio is reloading his Remington 12 gauge.

Jace is dead. Jace is dead.

Aemond says to you, his voice low but seething: “What the fuck was that?”

You blink the raindrops out of your eyes as you stare at him, bewildered. “You needed help.”

“I told you to run.”

“I’m an asset, I have skills that can keep you alive, why am I here if I’m not going to be useful—?”

“You’re not in the fucking Navy anymore!” he hisses. “When I tell you to run, you run, you don’t stop, you don’t look back, because I can’t worry about you and take care of everyone else.”

“Nobody asked you to worry about me.”

“But I do.”

“Aemond,” Aegon pleads, waving him over. Aegon’s plump sunburned cheeks are glistening with rain and tears. “Man, it doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters now. Please come here.”

“I’m going to clear the house,” Aemond says instead.

Rio raises an eyebrow at you—this is one fucked up guy, Chips—and then pumps his shotgun. “Me too.” He sweeps with Aemond through the main floor and then vanishes up the staircase.

Helaena is lightning candles she found in the kitchen and arranging them around the living room. Daeron starts gathering food from the pantry. Rhaena and Baela are murmuring to each other softly, mournfully. It doesn’t feel like something you should intrude on. Luke is peeking out of a window with his binoculars, vigilant for threats. Aegon sniffles, wanders over to you with large, sad, shimmering eyes, pats your shoulder awkwardly.

“Hey, Chocolate Chip. You doing okay?”

“No,” you answer honestly.

“Yeah. Me either.” Then he flops down on the hideous burnt orange couch and lies there motionless until Daeron brings him a can of Dr. Pepper. Aegon pops the tab, slurps up foam, and then begins singing to himself very quietly, a song so old you can remember your grandfather saying it was one of his favorites as a boy: A Tombstone Every Mile.

When Rio comes back downstairs—heavy footsteps, he can’t help that—you meet him at the bottom of the steps. “The house is good,” Rio says. “And Aemond’s in the big bedroom on the right if you’d like to go up there and talk to him.”

“I don’t think he wants to see me right now.”

“I could not disagree more,” Rio says with a miserable, exhausted smile. Then he goes to the couch to check on Aegon.

You pick up one of the flickering candles, white and scentless, and ascend the staircase. You find Aemond in the master bedroom, the same accommodations that Jace laid claim to when he was still alive. He is sitting at the edge of the bed and staring at the wall, at nothing. Tentatively, you sit down beside him, placing the candle on the nightstand.

“Aemond…what happened to Jace…it wasn’t your fault.”

“Criston said I was in charge, that’s the very last thing he told me. They might be the last words I ever hear from him, and I just…” His voice breaks; he wipes the rain and tears from his face with open palms. “I really wanted to get everyone home.”

“I’m so sorry about what I said at the bowling alley,” you confess, like it’s a dire secret. “I don’t want to fight with you, Aemond, I…I want to help you. I can see what you’ve done for everyone here, me and Rio included, and I believe in you. I want to be a part of this.”

He nods, an acceptance of peace, but he still doesn’t look at you.

“Can we start over? I’ll never bring it up again, okay? I wasn’t trying to guilt you or upset you or anything. I should have just dropped it. I overreacted. And I understand why being with someone like me maybe wouldn’t be…super appealing.”

“It’s not about that.”

“Then what’s it about?”

Aemond wrings his hands, shakes his head, at last turns to you, golden candlelight reflected in his eye, his scar cloaked in shadows. His words are hushed, clandestine, soft powerless surrender. “I’m already so afraid of losing you.”

He cares, he hopes, he wants me too? “I’m here right now, Aemond. I don’t know what else I can say. I’d promise you more if I could.”

He reaches out to touch you, to ghost his thumb across your cheekbone, wet with rain. Then he kisses you, so gently you cannot help but imagine the wispy borders of calm white summer clouds, the rustle of leaves as wind blows down the Appalachian Mountains. You don’t have to ask him what he’s thinking, what it feels like. You can read it in the startled, firelit wonder on his face.

You taste like the beginning of something, here at the end of the world.

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond x you #aemond targaryen #aemond one eye #aemond x reader #aemond x y/n #aemond targaryen x you #aemond targaryen x y/n

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tomorrowusa · 1 year ago

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Billboards supporting women seeking abortions are popping up along I-55 heading north

"People make mistakes," says Queen, a Memphis hairstylist whose clients often confide those mistakes in her. [ ... ] Today, Queen says distance has become the biggest hurdle to getting the procedure in the southern United States. Hundreds of miles and multiple state lines can separate women from providers, which is why she's an enthusiastic proponent of a new abortion-rights billboard campaign along one stretch of rural Interstate 55 running across eastern Arkansas from Memphis, Tenn., to Southern Illinois. "Yes!" she shouts when she sees the first billboard, which reads "GOD'S PLAN INCLUDES ABORTION." [ ... ] The new billboard is one of six paid for by Seattle-based Shout Your Abortion. Its founder Amelia Bonow says this route in particular — leading to the only legal providers within hundreds of miles — needed a counterpoint to the billboards opposing abortion. "I-55 is just covered with these hateful, judgmental, shaming, intentionally traumatizing anti-abortion billboards," says Bonow of why the group focused on this segment of highway. Some anti-abortion rights billboards invoke the Bible. Others, like those placed by Minnesota-based Pro-Life Across America, have pictures of smiling babies and a phone number. [ ... ] "That's what these laws do," contends Bonow. "They don't actually stop people from having abortions, but they make people struggle in order to have abortions." Other Shout Your Abortion billboards say "Abortion is okay," and "Abortion is normal, you are loved." Some former abortion providers now offer what are called "navigational services." Ashley Coffield, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, says for some young clients living in poverty it's their first time ever traveling beyond the city limits. "We're handing out gas cards," she says. "We're making hotel arrangements. We're buying plane tickets, train tickets, bus tickets, whatever works best for the individual. We're meeting them where they are."

In the days of slavery Illinois was a North Star of freedom and featured many stops along the Underground Railroad. Since the Dobbs decision it has assumed a somewhat similar role for reproductive freedom.

Interstate 55 runs from New Orleans to Chicago. Illinois is the only state along I-55 which offers reproductive freedom.

Of course it's not necessary to go all the way up to Chicago for healthcare. If you are driving north on I-55, get on I-57 at Sikeston, Missouri and then exit I-57 at Illinois Route 13 westbound to Carbondale. Carbondale is the largest town in the southern tip of Illinois. It has several women's health clinics and a fully staffed hospital. It's also home to Southern Illinois University.

#abortion #i-55 #billboards #tennessee #arkansas #missouri #shout your abortion #women's healthcare #a woman's right to choose #reproductive freedom #illinois #roe v. wade #dobbs v. jackson women's health organization #wkno #npr #election 2024

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sweetdreamsjeff · 6 months ago

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RAIDER OF THE LOST ARTS

Jeff Buckley Revisited

by Simeon FlickMarch 2023

Remember me, but oh, forget my fate. ––Henry Purcell, “Dido’s Lament”

Jeff Buckley

When Jeff Buckley drowned in the Wolf River tributary of the Mississippi on May 29, 1997, just as his band was arriving at the Memphis airport to start helping him finally nail down the long-awaited and already agonized-over second album, music lost not only one of its most singular and revolutionary of raw talents, but also the most mythologized—even during his lifetime—since Kurt Cobain’s death just three years prior. Buckley bore the boon and bane of being the scion of an also semi-famous and ill-fated folk/jazz/soul singer named Tim, and spent his entire life and career—following a single week-long reunion just before Tim’s 1975 death from an accidental heroin overdose—futilely trying to distance himself from the wayward father he never knew apart from the music of nine mostly half-baked studio albums. That an ever-growing number of people, the majority having discovered Jeff’s music post-mortem, feel they know the son better than he or anyone else knew his father, and still feel his loss as acutely as one would a dear family member, is a testament to the unparalleled emotional conveyance and lasting legacy of Jeff’s music despite having released only one official studio album during his lifetime (1994’s hauntingly gorgeous, seamlessly diverse Grace, which has found a home on innumerable “Greatest” lists and has been declared a personal favorite by many of his idols). Jeff Buckley’s influence lives on in the burgeoning underground cult of posthumous acolytes, and in the hyper-emotive, falsetto- and vibrato-laden, multi-octave vocal histrionics of so many subsequent singers, which only seem to come off as pale and obvious allusions that smack more of imitation than assimilation, much less embodiment, and we may never see his like again.

**************

Jeff Buckley entered the world during a meteor shower on the evening of November 17, 1966, the son of an already absent father and a mother, Mary Guibert, who at 18 wasn’t much more than a child herself. Like Cobain, who would arrive only three months later, Jeff had a typical Gen X childhood, replete with divorce, paternal estrangement and maternal domination, often violently reinforced alienation from his formative peers and unstable itinerancy (Mary dragged him through virtually every backwater town in California for all too short stints before he finally put his foot down in Anaheim, where both parents had grown up, and where extended family awaited). The sole refuge, besides the brief but stabilizing presence of the occasional father figure like stepdad Ron Moorhead, was the music men like him turned Jeff onto: Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and countless others who would seemingly become part of his DNA. Music became his north star, his raison d’être, and when things went wrong, which was all too often (Jeff had to be a rock for flighty mother Mary, taking on too many of her responsibilities too young), he would escape into it for hours.

This would compound once he took up the guitar. Like many children of musicians do, in order to carve out a distinct musical identity (and to maintain a healthy generation gap), Jeff—or Scotty, as he was known by his middle name then––gravitated towards Gen-X’s chosen instrument: the electric guitar, to the exclusion of his mother’s classical piano and his father’s acoustic guitar and vocalizations. Aside from the occasional lead vocal in a high school cover band, mostly for the high-ranged prog-rock and new wave classics none of his other bandmates could pull off, he considered himself just a guitar player in the ’80s. But not just any player; with Al DiMeola as one of many paragons, Jeff threw himself headlong into the world of virtuosic technique, teaching himself complicated licks by ear as he worked diligently to master not just the instrument but music itself.

This trajectory was maintained after his 1984 high school graduation with a stint at the derided Los Angeles organization, MIT (Musician’s Institute of Technology), with its many specialized subsidiaries, including GIT (Guitar Institute of Technology), where Jeff continued his musical edification. After obtaining his virtually useless professional certificate from GIT but with his gun-slinging reputation solidified a year later, he gigged in various area bands and worked as a studio rat, arranging and recording demos for other aspiring artists. But the lead vocalist in him remained as of yet dormant.

Jeff’s father, Tim Buckley.

By the late ’80s it was already soul-crushingly evident that Los Angeles was a dead-end cesspool of intolerable immersion in other people’s music, and that a drastic change was required to sweep away the bad influences and external white noise to finally get him in touch with his own muse. New York City beckoned—just as it had to Tim in the ’60s—as a locus were people could become the epitome of themselves, get as weird as they wanted, and be unconditionally accepted or ignored as merely part of the scenery, and reach their full, rewarded potential in whatever their chosen field. Jeff tested the waters for a few months in 1990, but his money and options ran out, and he reluctantly returned to Los Angeles.

It wasn’t until April 26, 1991, when he performed as part of the Hal Willner-curated Greetings from Tim Buckley tribute show at Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Church that he was able to lay the groundwork for a permanent relocation, having garnered the interest of several music industry types offering tangible professional succor, not to mention his first real girlfriend. That night marked the beginning of Jeff’s mythology-building not only as an artist in his own right, but also as an inextricable extension of his father’s legacy; many of the concert’s attendees were blown away not just by Jeff’s supposedly similar voice and delivery, but also by his physical resemblance (apparently there were some eerie backlit cheekbone shadows cast against the church hall walls that heightened the drama).

That there was so much defensiveness and/or mandated avoidance in so many subsequent interviews seems very bite-the-hand-that-feeds, but everyone has to break free from their parents at some point; that it often requires the assistance of those selfsame parents is a frustratingly ironic aspect of adulthood most of us have to face and embrace. Jeff simply had the misfortune of doing it in a highly scrutinized industry with zero—or even negative—expectations or tolerance of rock star progeny. He was also not only abandoned by his father, to whose funeral he was not even invited, but also projected on by Tim-obsessed fans and former love interests expecting the son to deliver on the father’s failed promise(s).

Jeff set up shop, and with the assistance of a demo tape of original songs he had recorded while still languishing in Los Angeles (courtesy of father Tim’s old manager, Herb Cohen), and a threadbare press kit (the only news clipping being a photocopied review of the Tim memorial show), he began beating the Manhattan pavement to drum up gigs and busk on the streets.

As of yet, short on original material, he leaned on sophisticated covers that resonated with his emphatically empathic and emotive spirit as he wall-pasta’d in search of a unique artistic identity. Songs by more recently assimilated influences like Nina Simone, Edith Piaf, and Leonard Cohen stood side by side with pitch-perfect deep-cut gems by Van Morrison and the beloved Zeppelin, with all-inclusive guitar arrangements that cast his different-every-time performances in full-blown Technicolor. His self-accompaniment on electric guitar as opposed to the acoustic form usually favored by the often excessively earnest—if not outright cheesy—solo folk artists of the past (including early-phase Tim), differentiated him from obsolete traditions, and it also broadcast the implicit message that this lone performer would eventually have a band behind him.

But the comprehensive guitar skill was just a tripod for the potent weapon his voice was becoming.

It’s difficult for most laypeople to differentiate between learned technique and natural timbre. Jeff didn’t inherit his father’s vocal gift; his was high-ranged and effeminate instead, with a thick palate and some huskiness occasionally muddying up his tone production. But what he did with it despite or because of the confines of those “limitations” is absolutely astounding. Instead of self-consciously diluting his delivery, he threw the book at it, almost as a diversionary tactic, like a magician smoke-and-mirror distracting his audience from an otherwise debunkable prestige move. With his uncanny imitative abilities and concomitant penchant for self-pedagogy, he adopted a rapid vibrato in accordance with essential influences (Simone, Piaf, Garland, and even father Tim, as was his undeniable birthright), nicked tricky classical and R&B trills and phrasing, turned his angelic upper register into a strength by frequently, often breathily leaning into his falsetto, incorporated various operatic (chromatic glissandos) and jazz (scatting) effects, learned how to push a full chest voice into his higher register like Robert Plant (and Tim) and to raggedly scream like Cobain and others of his generation. He ran sustain drills as he traveled across the city in cabs or on foot, drawing out his notes as long as possible to hone his deftly rationed breath support (just try holding out along with the 25-second E4 at the end of Grace’s “Hallelujah”). Tim had set the bar high for the younger Buckley, and Jeff rose mightily to the challenge, developing a comprehensive technique that kept pace with his guitar mastery, which had been pared down to unassailable jazz progressions and Hendrixian blues tropes and, like Cobain, would feature downplayed––if any––solos for the duration. If Jeff’s musical continuo was a haunted house, his voice had become the ghost that lingered within it.

(There’s something more compelling about the resulting output of singer/songwriters who start out exclusively as instrumentalists; it makes for more effective and meaningful musical accompaniment and better structured songs, and they tend to work more diligently and eruditely at mastering vocal technique. Tim leaned almost exclusively on his phenomenal voice, and insufficient thought was given to structure and harmony in his songs, and the lyrics were by turns predominantly unremarkable or unwieldy, the main drawback of being able to sing the phonebook. The resulting chord changes and accompaniment were more limited, derivative, yet ironically more obtrusive. Jeff had harnessed hooks, vivid and compelling lyrical imagery, and upper harmony into underlying works that left room for everything important, but especially the vocals. Thus, Jeff managed to achieve with one album what Tim failed to do in nine; he produced a timeless classic.)

Jeff’s most crucial influence––his self-declared Elvis––was the Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Qawwali singing introduced Jeff not only to its mystical eastern harmony, which was a subtle but unmistakable undercurrent in his guitar parts and his music in general, but also to a highly freeing ilk of vocal improvisation he would use to sparing but profound effect in his live performances, most notably in his wordless vocal warm-ups for things like “Mojo Pin” and “Dream Brother,” and in the way he would subtly tweak the songs’ melodies from show to show.

With all of this gelling within and beginning to burst out of him, Jeff flogged his wares at many a Manhattan venue, but he would find his symbiotic Shangri La at Sin-é, a hole-in-the-wall café run by a fellow man of Irish descent, ex-pat Shane Doyle. Jeff crystalized into the self-accompanying male diva he had been striving to become there at Sin-é and found a home away from home not only on the small stage, where he reveled in an unparalleled, as-of-yet anonymous freedom within the material, but also behind the counter, where he could often be found washing dishes.

This is where Jeff’s buzz began to build, thanks to his Monday night residency, the impression he had made on the industry folk at Tim’s memorial concert (including several Columbia employees who started showing up on the regular), and the steadily growing crowds comprised predominantly of young women. As word of mouth spread and audiences began to overflow onto the sidewalk, the higher-ups at several major labels started circling to investigate the fresh blood in the water. A hilarious bidding war ensued, with record company execs actually trying to make table reservations at the tiny walk-in café, and the street’s curbs clogging with limousines. Jeff would end up signing with Columbia, a Sony subsidiary that was home to many of his heroes, and that made all the right overtures and promises to this hot young talent who was desperately intent on accomplishing the impossible feat of using and defeating the music industry from the inside, as opposed to being consumed by it like his father had been.

**************

Jeff’s “million dollar” deal––consisting of a $100,000 advance, a higher than normal royalty rate, and a three-album guarantee––was unusual for a solo artist of that time, considering there were scant few original songs, no band, and no official demo tape to speak of (the L.A. recordings, which Jeff in his humorously nihilistic cups had dubbed The Babylon Dungeon Sessions, technically fulfilled the applicable criteria but weren’t aurally suitable). Columbia knew they had a hot property on their hands, the Gen-X manifestation of a Dylan or Springsteen-esque heritage artist, and Jeff made sure they knew, mostly through intentional late arrivals to countless business meetings. But because his talents spanned so deep and wide, everyone was initially at a loss as to what form his recorded output should take. What the hell do you do with an artist that has the chops and versatility to go in any direction??

The logical first step was to try and capture the solo version of Jeff on tape and issue it as a soft introduction. Live At Sin-é was culled from two performances recorded during the summer of 1993 and released on November 23 as a perfunctory, slightly disappointing four-song EP consisting of two originals (“Mojo Pin,” and “Eternal Life,” both of which would get definitive, full-band versions on Grace), and two covers (a rhapsodically incendiary rendition of Van Morrison’s “The Way Young Lovers Do” and a transcendent reading of Edith Piaf’s “Je N’en Connais Pas La Fin,” complete with a fingerpicked merry-go-round guitar waltz for the French-sung refrain).

In Columbia’s posthumous ambition to exploit remaining vault caches to continue paying down Jeff’s sizable debt to the label, the original release’s felonious dearth was rectified with 2003’s Legacy Edition, a two-disc, one DVD set that was a much more complete representation of Jeff not just as an artist during that pre-fame period, but as a person. Along with scads more songs from the same shows, the expanded set includes between-song banter that manages to do what his scant, more visceral studio work couldn’t: put his pronouncedly nerdy, madcap, sometimes salacious sense of humor on full display.

Meanwhile, Jeff had also begun working toward his only completed studio LP. Sony had brought him in to record the lion’s share of his repertoire in February of ’93 as a way to gently kick off the A&R cataloguing and selection process for the album (these were later released as part of the 2016 compilation You And I), and recording sessions were scheduled for September at Bearsville Studios, which was located near Woodstock in upstate New York. The only problem––and it was a big one––was that he didn’t have a band. Like so many other aspects of Jeff’s career, this got rectified at the last possible moment; he met and connected with bassist Mick Grondahl first, then drummer Matt Johnson less than a month out from the initial recording dates.

A tall, dark, and handsome Dane, Grondahl had an ideal combination of low-key receptiveness and musical adventurousness that allowed him to be the perfect on- and offstage wingman: he was interesting in an unobtrusive way. Johnson was a wet-eared Texan who had the ideal balance of power and precision (a slight and diminutive presence, Johnson’s physicality was bolstered by his construction day job) and the breadth of taste and experience to match the extreme dynamic variations of Jeff’s sonic palette (Johnson could crush it like Bonzo or play pindrop-soft like a seasoned jazz pro––whatever the music required).

Columbia was less than pleased that Jeff had recruited a rhythm section with virtually no stage or studio experience, but he would eventually be proven right in his selection of introverted, lump-of-clay rookies that doubled as a gang of friends who could hang with him in every sense, especially through all the spontaneous twists and turns he threw at them. This was one of many battles he would actually win for the better against Sony, though he would initially come off as the loser (it took a few months for the band to get up to speed on the Grace repertoire, because they rarely if ever played the album’s songs during rehearsals or soundchecks, preferring to fill that time with “jamming,” since they needed to build an intuitive rapport. They also knew they would be playing the same emotionally demanding songs night after night for the next year or two).

The trio began work on Grace at Bearsville Studios, which had been pre-rigged with several different recording environments to spontaneously capture whatever came out of Jeff and his band in any permutation and style, whether it was solo, low-key jazz combo or full-on rock group. Andy Wallace, who had dialed in the mixes for Nirvana’s Nevermind, wore the coproducing and engineering hats for these sessions, along with providing a regimented lens through which to focus and refract Jeff’s chaotic genius. Recording proceeded slowly and steadily, without too much fanfare, but then, again at the last minute there was an explosion of prodigious productivity. Among other developments, German vibraphone prodigy Karl Berger was in town, and with the assistance of a local quartet, he and Jeff co-arranged string parts for “Grace,” “Last Goodbye,” and “Eternal Life.”

The eleventh-hour burst of creativity suddenly began transforming Jeff’s modest debut into something more akin to the fully produced masterpiece that usually doesn’t happen until later in a discography. More studio time was booked for intensive overdubbing of additional layers, which pushed costs beyond the initial budget, and though Columbia held Jeff in high esteem and generally handled him with kid gloves (full artistic control was implicit), the majority of expenses went into his recoupable fund, which had to be paid down by Jeff through album sale royalties. Though Grace would eventually prove itself beyond worthy of the investment, this was one of the first major manifestations of Jeff’s Sony-sourced headache that would plague him for the duration.

Grace, which was finally released on August 23, 1994, tends to vex the neophyte at first blush. There’s so much to unpack, the resulting bottleneck can be off-putting. Only through repeated listens will it reward those who “wait in the fire,” as the title track has it. Once that rote assimilation has inured you to Jeff’s eccentric voice and anachronistically innovative affectations, and Grace has dilated your emotional receptivity wider than you ever thought possible, you will tend to listen obsessively for a while before you realize you need to take a break so your strung-out, wrung-out heart can snap back to normal. You will probably only be able to listen to it every once in a while thereafter, as the lachrymose music makes demands of your psyche that require exceptional equanimity to withstand (the irony is that while Grace might help you grieve a breakup or death, listening to its ten tracks can also exhume that grief long past the time you have worked through it). The fact that Jeff is no longer here but still sounds undeniably alive in the speakers, and that the making of this album led to insurmountable expectations for a satisfactory follow-up that added to his pre-death stress, only augments the album’s haunting intensity.

The sonic progeny of Robert Johnson, Nina Simone, Edgar Allan Poe, and John Dowland, Jeff comes off as the wide-amplitude, tragic-romantic, card-carrying Scorpio that he was, irresistibly obsessed with love and death, singing often of the moon and rain (and yet also of burning and fire), and bedroom-as-sanctuary-and-wellspring, and a melancholic, nearly heart-rending yearning for absent lovers past and present. All of this can’t help but feed into his steadily growing mythology, not to mention strike he’s-all-alone-and-vulnerable-go-save-him reverberations of longing through the heartstrings of every heterosexual female within earshot, while also getting straight men of all walks gratefully as in touch with their feminine side as he was. In the age of grunge––which force-fed emotion through intimidating volume and distortion––Grace was an anomaly, delivering a wider range of feeling through a listener’s induced surrender to its heightened peaks and valleys, with Jeff’s by turns angelic and demonic voice keeping pace, and, unlike Cobain, with absolutely no irony to lean on, hide behind, or use as disclaimer.

“Mojo Pin” is the perfect overture for an audiophile quality album with such wide yet still somehow cohesive style and dynamic oscillations, with softly looping guitar harmonics fading in, followed by a wordless melody delicately sung over a fingerpicked folk/jazz guitar pattern. The music rollercoasters from there, with dramatic stops featuring vocal melismas that proceed into straight 4/4 time, finally crescendoing in a loud, climactic buildup, and a ragged scream from Jeff that tapers seamlessly back into the jazz feel.

The first stanzas tell us so much about the author:

I’m lying in my bed, the blanket is warm This body will never be safe from harm Still feel your hair, black ribbons of coal Touch my skin to keep me whole

Oh, if only you’d come back to me If you laid at my side I wouldn’t need no mojo pin To keep me satisfied

Here we find a vividly lovelorn artist who tends to compose from the subconscious (as with many of his original songs, “Mojo Pin” was inspired by a dream he had had) has already begun confronting his mortality, equates love with addiction like so many troubadours before him (“mojo pin” is a euphemism for a shot of heroin, which, inspired in part by his father, Jeff used for a short time during the tour in support of Grace), and feels hopelessly separated from it all, with a heightened sense of longing that can’t help but garner the listener’s sympathies.

The title track picks up the thread in more ways than one; along with “Mojo Pin” it is the second of two pre-Sony songwriting collaborations with former Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas—as part of his short-lived Gods and Monsters project (that’s Lucas’s guitar-noodle wizardry on both). And with lines like “Oh, drink a bit of wine––we both might go tomorrow,” it ups the mortality-as-enabler-and-aphrodisiac ante.

With its churning 6/8 groove, and with Jeff starting the song in typical fashion––toward the bottom of his discernable vocal range (D3), “Grace” culminates cathartically on a sustained, heavily vibrato’d, full-chest E5 bad-assedly blasting from his manic larynx and also marks the first of several ominous allusions to being harmed by water (“…And I feel them drown my name…”).

“Last Goodbye” was supposed to be the big first single. It even got an MTV video treatment (just look at his dour expression as he and the exhausted band take a precious day off from a European tour to do this exorbitantly expensive production of a compromised artistic concept in a despised medium), but with no real chorus to speak of, its chart success was modest at best. A Delta blues slide glides across an open-tuned electric 12-string guitar before dropping into a mid-tempo dance groove and a lyric full of bittersweet memories of a failed relationship with an older woman in L.A.

Not only was Jeff a bit shorthanded when it came to filling an entire 52-minute album with originals, but it also would have been a shame not to round out the running order with some well-chosen and interpreted covers in emulation of the intimate immediacy of Jeff’s Sin-é days. The first of these appearing on Grace is “Lilac Wine,” a torch-song standard written by James Shelton and adopted by Nina Simone. Jeff gives the distant-lover-as-intoxicant lyrics the hyper-emotive treatment, with perfectly sustained vibrato on the drawn-out notes and with his voice occasionally breaking into a heartrending sob, especially on the line, “…Isn’t that she, or am I just going crazy, dear?”

“Lilac Wine” is a significant indication of the barely fathomable depth of Jeff’s––and by extension, the band’s––versatility and their ability to do exactly right by the artist and repertoire (it’s difficult, in that sense, to listen to any of Tim’s records without taking umbrage with the musicians in the various band incarnations smothering Tim’s voice and stepping all over his 12-string guitar with their ego-fulfilling and poorly––if at all––thought-out parts).

“So Real” represents not only the successful search for a second guitarist, but also a tenacious battle fought and won against Columbia for the very soul of the album.

Michael Tighe, a mutual friend of Jeff and his ex Rebecca Moore (the one he had met and fallen in love with at the Tim tribute, and whom “Grace”s lyrics supposedly feature) joined the band on second guitar after most of the work on the album had been completed, and he brought an intriguing set of chord changes with him. When it came time to record B-sides and possible non-album singles (a cover of Big Star’s “Kangaroo”, which, to Sony’s consternation would often stretch out to 15 or 20 minutes in concert, was also laid down), Tighe’s progressions, which were inordinately sophisticated considering he hadn’t been playing guitar for very long, were dusted off, tracked with engineer Cliff Norrell, and Jeff did the lead vocal in one take after a last-minute walk to finish the lyric.

Distinguished by the verses’ seamless changes in meter (back and forth from duple to triple time), its by-now standard mélange of tragic-romantic imagery in the lyrics (“I love you / But I’m afraid to love you,” and the foreboding “And I couldn’t awake from the nightmare that sucked me in and pulled me under…”), another wildly climactic E5 at the end, and a massive chorus hook, the song fit Jeff’s MO––accessible innovation and wide-amplitude expression––perfectly.

So much so that it quickly shed its B-side status and usurped a coveted spot on the record from another, highly contested original: The excessively personal and harsh “Forget Her,” which in retrospect would have been the sole manifestation of irony on the album. Jeff was justifiably dissatisfied with this disingenuously caustic 12/8 blues-pop dirge waltz he had allegedly penned about the aforementioned, hapless Moore, upon whom the lyric displaced Jeff’s own culpability for the relationship’s dissolution. But the label was head over heels with it, as the song’s melodramatic, Michael Bolton-esque chorus made it the one and only potential crossover smash in their minds. Columbia exec Don Ienner, who was essentially Jeff’s boss, tried everything short of bribery to futilely sweet-talk Jeff into keeping it on the album, which, in itself, was a tangible reason for Jeff to dig in, though he also feared that the slightly smarmy song would be a one-way ticket to One-Hit-Wonder-ville. As it turned out, “So Real”s chorus was hookier anyway, enough to warrant its own video treatment, though its subsequent commercial impact was also negligible.

A plaintive sigh kicks off what is now widely regarded as the definitive recording of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” the second cover of the album, performed solo and glued together from multiple takes into a solemn paean to the ecstatic pain of long-term relationships. Inspired by John Cale’s 1991 reading, Jeff sticks to the ultra-romantic verses that find love and suffering linked in paradox, and the guitar tone and reverb augment the song’s church hymn vibe, almost as though it was recorded at a service or funeral. If you’ve heard this recording or noticed it in myriad movies and TV shows and haven’t cried at least once, you’re not human.

“Lover, You Should Have Come Over” is a classic swinging blues adagio, perhaps the best known and most covered original on the album. Water and death are linked once again (“Looking out the door, I see the rain fall upon the funeral mourners / Parading in a wake of sad relations as their shoes fill up with water…”), and then Jeff abruptly breaks that train of thought to do right by Moore in recognizing his role in their breakup (“…Maybe I’m too young / To keep good love from going wrong”). Again, his vocal starts low and builds to another E5 at the end. In the hands of another artist, all of this would have sounded forced and over the top, but somehow Jeff was able to make it work. That’s his genius/madness; he himself was fully dilated and committed in a way that wasn’t healthy or sustainable, but damn, did it make for visceral listening.

“Corpus Christi Carol” reaches even further back than 1950’s “Lilac Wine” and completely blows the listener away with its expectation-defying display of musical depth. He becomes a bona fide classical singer here, exhibiting total immersion in the anonymous 16th-century lyric that the aptly named English composer Benjamin Britten incorporated into 1933’s Choral Variations for Mixed Voices (“A Boy Was Born”), Op. 3, finally arriving at Jeff’s adolescent ears through the version for high voice recorded by Janet Baker in 1967. Jeff completely inhabits the allegory of a bedridden, Christ-like knight endlessly bleeding, witnessed by love and the purity of his cause, with the empathic delicacy that was already his trademark. The stark arrangement for electric guitar and scant overdubs is superbly matched by the lamenting vocal, which ends on a ghostly, falsetto’d E5 that is utterly cathartic in its climactic glory.

Jeff wanted to make an album that compelled rock fans to forget about Zeppelin II, and “Eternal Life” delivers on the heavier side of that promise. Written during his time in L.A., the creepy intro stops on a dime before a bludgeoning, yet highly danceable groove drops in and a reactive lyric confronts applicable listeners to wake up and smell the mortal coffee:

Eternal life is now on my trail Got my red-glitter coffin, man––just need one last nail While all these ugly gentlemen play out their foolish games There’s a flaming red horizon that screams our names…

Racist everyman, what have you done? Man, you made a killer of your unborn son Oh, crown my fear your king at the point of a gun All I want to do is love everyone…

There’s no time for hatred––only questions What is love, where is happiness What is alive, where is peace? When will I find the strength to bring me release?

With distorted bass as well as guitar alongside complementary strings and a killer groove featuring a highly effective, accelerating hi-hat pattern from Johnson on the verses, the song successfully proselytizes for universally incontestable causes, and reinforces Jeff’s projected mythology as a doomed soul whose seemingly relished fate awaits him sooner rather than later.

“Dream Brother” may be the last song on the album, but it was the very first idea Jeff and the band had worked up together. At the risk of overusing the word, and just like the album as a whole, it is haunting from start to finish, with a droney, string-cranking intro giving way to an eastern-inflected guitar motif. Jeff’s more static but no less sublime vocal melody goes beyond complementary; it builds tension by hanging on or around the fifth for most of the verse stanzas before resolving to the tonic on the last note of the phrase. Grondahl’s bass line, as with all his work on the album, is a sublime treat; here we find him working his way through the exotic Phrygian mode, recasting the guitar parts into a harmonically complex, emotionally compelling accompaniment that perfectly underpins the vocal.

The song features another penned-and-sung-at-the-last-possible-minute lyric, the chorus of which admonishes dear L.A. friend Chris Dowd (of Fishbone) not to abandon his new family like Tim had Jeff and Mary: “Don’t be like the one who made me so old / Don’t be like the one who left behind his name / ‘Cause they’re waiting for you like I waited for mine / And nobody ever came.” Grace’s only allusion to Jeff’s father builds in intensity to an instrumental bridge with wordless Qawwali wailings that are utterly bone chilling in their echoing-into-eternity saturation. The album’s final line puts an ominous capstone on the pyramid of the untimely-death-by-water preoccupation: “Asleep in the sand, with the ocean washing over…”

PART TWO

Jeff Buckley

From ’94 to ’96, both solo and with the band, Jeff Buckley toured the world and elsewhere. Those two years were highly transformative; he met and/or was lauded by so many of his personal heroes (including Zeppelin’s Page and Plant, Paul and Linda McCartney, U2’s Bono and The Edge, David Bowie, and he had a brief affair with Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil, who had covered Tim’s “Song to the Siren” [for aural proof of the romance, go to YouTube and check out their unfinished, embarrassingly smitten PDA duet on “All Flowers in Time”]), picked up an all but unshakeable smoking habit as a late-blooming extension of delayed formative-year rebellion and as a temporary, self-harming relief from the stresses of touring and just-shy-of-A-list fame (he managed to make People magazine’s 50 most beautiful list in May of ’95, which mostly appalled him, and also had an eye-opening night out with Courtney Love), turned down numerous primetime opportunities—SNL, Letterman, and acting roles and commercial placements—in favor of “underground” platforms like MTV’s “120 Minutes,” and was constantly at odds with his record label.

Australia and France embraced him like a returning hero, with the latter country’s Académie Charles Cros presenting Jeff with the rarely-awarded-to-an-American Grand Prix International Du Disque in honor of Grace on April 13, 1995 (two live shows, the second representing a career peak, were recorded during a French leg of the tour and later released as 1995’s Live at the Bataclan EP and 2001’s Live à l’Olympia).

The tank ran dry on March 1, 1996, which marked not only the final date of a hastily booked Australian/New Zealand tour to capitalize on Jeff’s surging popularity there and subsequently the last in official support of Grace, but also the final show with percussionist Matt Johnson, who had reached his hard limit with the band leader’s exacerbated lifestyle excesses and reckless behavior, not to mention Jeff’s escalating hazing of him.

Drummerless and exhausted, a different Jeff Buckley returned to a different New York. Though it suited his dysfunctionally nomadic, reactively noncommittal spirit, touring is not conducive to one’s mental or physical well-being nor is any level of fame, which is unfortunately what moves the units at the cost of anonymous normalcy. As a result, Jeff could no longer frequent any of his old haunts without being recognized and approached by strangers who thought they knew and deserved a piece of him beyond his timeless music. But then even his friends couldn’t help but feel jilted in their wanting a less ephemeral friendship with him, as he made them feel like the undeniably corroborated center of the universe when he was around, having given of himself interpersonally as completely and unadvisedly as he did in his music.

With inchoate fame now cutting him off from his usual decompression options, Jeff couldn’t recharge his psychic batteries. That coupled with the fact that Columbia and the press had been persistently hounding him regarding a follow-up to Grace piled even more pressure on the stress heap, further hampering his creative process and making The Big Apple taste more of the cyanide within the seeds than the once novel fruit of clandestine self-discovery.

There’s an industry saying: a recording artist has their entire life to make the first album and six months to make the second. Already no stranger to writer’s block under normal circumstances (he was inherently a better interpreter than a composer and understandably loath to commit to locked-in versions of anything), Jeff found himself hitting the creative wall in the midst of his increasingly stifling paradigm. The new songs were coming, albeit more slowly than everyone preferred, and in a different, more current vein than Grace. Having kept an ever-vigilant ear to the cultural ground, Jeff had met the Grifters and the Dambuilders while on tour, gaining a new love interest—Joan Wasser, to whom he related early on that he was going to die young—from the latter band and befriended Nathan Larson of Shudder to Think, and their contemporary alternative rock vibes ignited a light bulb over Jeff’s head, giving him the inspiration to pursue a rawer sound, much as Cobain had for Nevermind’s 1993 follow-up—In Utero.

It wasn’t necessarily Sony’s cup of tea. Though the label was by no means dead-set on putting out Son of Grace, they were a bit befuddled by the significant shift in musical mores away from the classic heritage artist sound toward the aural marriage of the Smiths and Soundgarden evident in the newer material. His sagacious selection of classic solo repertoire, and Grace by extension, had gotten Jeff’s foot in the door, as their sophisticated old-school values were arguably a premeditated affectation on Jeff’s part to woo the industry’s boho Boomer gatekeepers into signing and unconditionally supporting him. Now that he was more or less ensconced on the inside, and having gained more than a little leverage from all the hard work of the past year and a half, Jeff wanted to change things up to reflect more of what he’d been listening to and writing as an artist of his own generation. Though jumping high through Jeff’s hoops was by now second nature, Columbia was nevertheless befuddled.

This vexation next manifested as bewilderment over the choice of legendary Television alum Tom Verlaine (RIP) to aid and abet his alt-rock vision as the inexperienced coproducer for the second album. No one at Sony thought Verlaine was the right man for the job; they would just as soon have gone with Andy Wallace again rather than someone who, as with Grondahl, Johnson, and Tighe, didn’t have a track record to speak of. Whether or not Jeff’s choice was ill informed was irrelevant; it became his new crusade against the label, a pyrrhic war waged solely on the principle of getting his way even if it ended up biting him in the ass.

Columbia green-lit some bet-hedging recording with Verlaine to humor Jeff, but also to surreptitiously gather leverage as a failed, debt-enlarging investment, as the odds were slim that he could pull another rabbit out of his hat within the limited, impossible-for-Jeff parameters. Two brief as they were dissatisfying sessions occurred at various New York studios in 1996 and then a third at Memphis’s Easley McCain studios with Johnson’s permanent replacement, Parker Kindred, in early 1997. Jeff had become interested in recording at Easley through Grifters guitarist and Memphis resident Dave Shouse, and in relocating to that hallowed town for its legendary status in the history of blues and rock ‘n roll, and yet also as an escape from the lost anonymity, label pressure, and detrimental distractions of New York.

Jeff began striving for—and was at least able to temporarily reclaim—some semblance of a normal life in Memphis; he settled in at 91 Rembert Street, where he could often be found lying in the overgrown grass of his front yard, staked out all the good local restaurants, got a Sin-é-reminiscent Monday night residency at a downtown venue called Barrister’s, proposed marriage to Joan Wasser, and spent time with local friends who didn’t treat him like a rock star. At the time of his death, and as this evidence indicates, Jeff was trying to settle down, but he also felt ready to finally nail the landing on the second album, which he earnestly hoped would not only eclipse Grace but would frighten people as well. He was also noticeably uneasy.

The iteration of what was going to be called My Sweetheart the Drunk that came out almost too soon in May of 1998, not the barely attainable one Jeff would have overworked himself to complete had he lived, is the version the label should have agreed to put out had he been willing and able to play the long game. Though disc 2, with the exception of “Haven’t You Heard” and the cover of “Satisfied Mind,” is mainly for diehards (it contains sloppily recorded and produced home recordings that only hint at greatness, as well as superfluous original mixes of select disc 1 material), the ten Verlaine tracks are nothing to scoff at. In fact, the minimally but still excellently arranged and produced songs not only sound surprisingly finished, but would have also found Jeff paving the way for the future of alternative rock/pop in a manner that was more in touch with the times but still rang true to Jeff’s old-school tragic-romantic sophistication. Hindsight finds these recordings nothing to be ashamed of, the natural, expectation-managing and yet still promise-fulfilling continuation of Jeff’s artistic journey, though he didn’t—and wouldn’t—agree with that assessment (the tracks probably could have used just a little more tightening up… At the very least, and as it stands, disc 1 of My Sweetheart the Drunk could have been a highly respectable and acceptable “sophomore flop”). Jeff would have had to ease up on the malignant perfectionism had he lived, and in that light it both does and doesn’t seem strange that he continued massaging these recordings—with additional overdubs and polishing occurring at Easley after the band’s return to New York—despite his clearly declared intention to abandon what he had already recorded, concede defeat regarding Verlaine (who urged Jeff to erase the tapes), and start from scratch with Andy Wallace.

Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk has plenty of wide-amplitude thrills (“Vancouver,” which started life as an instrumental break on the Grace tour, now featured a soaring vocal that found him suddenly clued in to the detriments of giving too much of himself: “I need to be alone / To heal this bleeding stone…”), lots of tragic-romantic flair (the beautiful, minimally orchestrated ballads “Morning Theft” and “Opened Once,” the swinging caveat “Witches Rave,” and the macabre, “Come as You Are”-ish “Nightmares by the Sea” are by turns self-castigating and wary), more struggle over suitable repertoire (Jeff harbored hypocritical paranoia that the set-apart, slinky R&B slow-jam, “Everybody Here Wants You” would be chosen as a single against his wishes [it was], even though the song is an instant classic, and the album could have done without the cover of the Nymphs’ “Yard of Blonde Girls,” though he didn’t trust Columbia to agree), two Qawwali nods (the mantra jam “New Year’s Prayer”, and the utterly harrowing “You And I”), and plenty of fodder for precognition-of-untimely-death speculators (“Stay with me under these waves tonight / Be free for once in your life tonight…” from “Nightmares By The Sea”, and “Ah, the calm below that poisoned river wild…” from the goosebump-evincing “You And I”).

**************

Recording contracts have always been a Faustian bargain for the artist, especially at the onset, when it is weighted heavily in the card-holding label’s favor. Art and commerce often meet in the cultural-industrial ring as irreconcilable spouses who stay together for the kids, with the artist wanting to make a unique, challenging, and hopefully timeless statement for theirs and successive generations, and the label needing to make a profit, not lose their shirt, or just break even. The latter often requires innocuous music that has been dumbed down or otherwise compromised for mass consumption, usually the antithesis of the former. The artist, though, according to the standard contract they signed, is legally beholden to the label, which owns the master recordings and the right to exploit them until such a time, often years or even decades down the road, when the artist has gained enough cachet through account-balancing sales and accumulated cultural pertinence to renegotiate the contract into a more equitable form that befits their too-hard-earned stature. As with life in general, and back when labels were still labels, one had to play a patient, penitent, somewhat circumspect long game, with eyes intent on the future prize in order to succeed as a recording and touring artist, and to eventually win out over the label.

Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, now in or on the cusp of their 80s respectively, managed to successfully undergo and even control their fame-reconciling heritage artist transformations and break through to the other side. Jeff Buckley, who realized too late and too far out to sea that he had given up essential access to a normal life, and whose DNA and hardship-forged personality was geared for fleeting, heightened moments of impulsive escape and unrealistic levels of emotional outpouring during which there was no tomorrow, did not. After an itinerant childhood in a chaotic, single-parent household, neither of which allowed him any bonded, bolstering long-term friendships or gave him the necessary emotional support to instill enough confidence to enable him to pace, self-nurture, and recharge as an adult, Jeff was predestined for burnout. Add to this the looming legacy of his father’s similarly self-inflicted and untimely doom, the demoralizing fiscal and creative debt to—and incongruent association with—a major label, and pervasive generational nihilism, and you have the recipe for a death by misadventure.

The world generally eats pure-heart-on-sleeve empaths like Jeff Buckley for breakfast, and just like house-always-wins Vegas casinos, record labels are particularly good at exploiting, devouring, and then remorselessly shitting out their charges no matter how vigilant the artist may have been to the contrary. In Jeff and Columbia’s case, it’s difficult to pick a winner; dying got him out of both having to deliver on a second album and pay off his way-in-the-red recoupable, but his absence-generated popularity and Sony’s dogged determination to monetize ample vault caches in the aftermath may have balanced the ledger by now anyway. Either way you slice it, and for what it’s worth, the artist is gone, and Columbia is a tawdry shadow of its former self, but Jeff’s timeless music remains.

Trying to imagine how Jeff would have navigated the post-5/29/97 waters is not challenging, considering the comprehensive changes already in motion that would herald not only the end of his generation’s all-too-brief moment in the sun, but also the beginning of the end of the record industry as he had known it. Jeff probably would have seen Sony’s support slowly dwindle, becoming even more isolated until his contract came up for renewal and he was then most likely dropped from the label, as its various employee archetypes, which were industry-wide revolving doors, would have inevitably jumped ship for higher positions elsewhere. This exodus would have severed nurtured—and nurturing—connections, leaving Jeff in the hands of green, bottom-line-focused reps that had had nothing to do with scouting or signing him and were subsequently less inclined to offer the kind of largesse and preferential treatment to which he had been accustomed.

A new generation was also coming of age, one that sought shallower, more effervescent thrills to match their innate, well-nurtured ebullience. Soundgarden, Jeff’s now fellow-in-untimely-death friend Chris Cornell’s band, which was the first of the Seattle grunge era to sign to a major label, broke up almost on cue that year. Groups like Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, N’Sync, Hanson, and solo artists like Brittney Spears, Ricky Martin, and Christina Aguilera were prepared to replace grunge’s locked-up engine in the zeitgeist car, with already emergent, transitionally mellower sounds from the likes of Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler, Phish, Spin Doctors, and Hootie and the Blowfish having paved the way. Autotune was introduced that year, with computer-based digital recording having begun its ascendant journey to becoming the analog-supplanting, music-devaluing standard.

Within a decade, for better and worse, the industry as Jeff knew it would no longer exist, nor would the focus on organically profound music on which he had been brought up and of which he had become a part. With no plan B (he endearingly applied for what would have been a meagerly if at all remunerated position at the Memphis zoo’s butterfly exhibit), Jeff would have been hard-pressed to maintain a subsistent income—let alone pay down his debt to Columbia—inside or outside the new, less tolerant manifestation of the industry, which would have scoffed derisively and dismissively at his to-date album sales. And he probably would have recoiled from the rising popularity of bubblegum pop and nü-metal buffoonery in disgust.

Kurt Cobain once said he wished he had paced himself better, played more of a long game by holding back some of Nevermind’s material for subsequent albums, and a general feeling persists that Jeff had similarly neglected any thought of the future by putting everything he had into Grace, and there wasn’t enough left to create something new to match its grandeur, at least not within his unsustainable paradigm. It seems as though he was done, that his music’s true moment in the sun could only begin after he had disappeared somehow. Amassing cachet would have to rely on his premature-demise-as-career-move absence, the removal of his chronic perfectionism that allowed Sony to put out whatever was in the vaults without his opposition (albeit in full, duly diligent cooperation with next-of-kin trustee, supposed legacy preserver / promoter, and posthumous stage mother Mary), and amassing fin de siècle malaise that would find solace in Grace. But Jeff’s death feels wrong as well, redolent of the same sense of tragedy as JFK’s assassination, as if we had truly lost one of the good ones, and the subsequent sensation of all hope for a fair and just future having been annihilated in a flash, regardless of whether or not either of them actually deserved that idolization.

The grief-sourced application of culpability gets complicated when someone who has deeply affected strangers and loved ones alike is directly responsible for their own death, but it can’t exactly be called a suicide. And though we have plenty of lyrical and anecdotal evidence that could easily be construed as self-fulfilling prophecy (like Cobain, Jeff had consistently and insistently telegraphed his denouement), it is otherwise difficult to substantiate rumors that Jeff had been dreaming of his demise just weeks—if not longer—beforehand. But as with the cinematic portrayal of Mozart obsessively composing what would become his own requiem in Amadeus, if someone persistently gives thought and voice to fatal intent, walks that fine line long enough, the border between this world and the next will begin to blur and smudge until it finally wears thin enough for one to cross over without even noticing. Freud may have said it best: “Until you make the subconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”

Unlike influencee Rufus Wainwright, whose songs are also emotive but restrained in comparison, Jeff never developed the necessary filters to mitigate the harmful aspects of his heightened sensitivity and permeability, preferring instead to empty his emotional ballast onstage night after night to the adulation of interchangeable, undemanding strangers (though some of them often clamored annoyingly for renditions of Tim’s songs), as if each show were his last (which he had hypocritically accused Tim of in a 1993 interview). In all of Jeff’s 30 years, he had never learned the kind of self-love that would awaken and bolster the basic long-term survival instincts to enable him to throw off the chains of his deeply ingrained fatalism. With his pallid, fey appearance, alluring gender-balanced charisma, heart-rending empathy, unregulated outflow of emotional energy, and foolhardily unshielded vulnerability, he seemed to many as though he was marked for an early end no matter what evasive action he might’ve taken.

Though Jeff had been exhibiting unstable, borderline bipolar behavior in the weeks prior to his drowning, he didn’t consciously intend to die that night (a nearby witness apparently heard a single cry for help), but his willful ignorance of the dangers of his impulsive and fatalistic nature and the whimsical flouting of the perils of his immediate surroundings would be the co-conspirators of his mortal undoing.

Fully clothed at twilight, Jeff waded backward into a notoriously dangerous river despite a lifetime aversion to water—and in denial of all the overt signals his subconscious and conscious had sent him. Doing the recently learned backstroke to the braggadocio boom-box strains of Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” in a roiling river all but universally avoided for its severe, passing-boat-generated undercurrents was supposed to be a spontaneous trip to and from the edge to take his mind off of life’s untenable pressures for a short while. But instead, and to his torch-carrying fans’, friends’, and family’s ongoing bereavement, it lasted forever.

**************

England’s annual Meltdown Festival consists of a series of concerts given over several days by contemporary artists and is curated by a celebrity participant with an ear toward the high-minded performance of unconventional repertoire. Jeff was invited by 1995’s chosen Master of Ceremonies—Elvis Costello—to take part on July 1, which serendipitously coincided with that year’s European tour in support of Grace, though it was inconveniently sandwiched between concert dates across the channel.

Along with collaborations in mixed ensembles comprised of co-billed artists, Jeff did a four-song solo set that featured the apropos “Corpus Christi Carol” (the song that had originally piqued Costello’s interest), Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman,” and “Grace.”

He began with an absolutely devastating rendition of “Dido’s Lament,” which Costello had personally requested from the setting of Dido and Aeneas by 16th century British composer Henry Purcell. Jeff was indistinguishable from a fully trained, operatic countertenor as he delivered the moribund lines with innate familiarity:

Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me On thy bosom let me rest More I would, but Death invades me Death is now a welcome guest

When I am laid in earth May my wrongs create No trouble in thy breast Remember me, but oh, forget my fate

Costello came out after the last of the four songs and accompanying ovation had died down and following some gracious comments recognizing the young artist’s overflowing docket, he essentially summed up Jeff’s contribution—and the debt of gratitude music owes him—with his closing salutation that now stands as a fitting epitaph:

“He gave everything. Thanks, Jeff.”

#Jeff Buckley Revisited #jeff buckley #jeffbuckley #by Simeon FlickMarch 2023 #simeon flick #Remember me #but oh #forget my fate.#––Henry Purcell #“Dido’s Lament”

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bullet-prooflove · 1 year ago

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The North Star - Part Twenty Three: Long Term - Terry Bruno x Reader (Final Part)

Welcome to mine and @the-hinky-panda The Bronx universe featuring our favs Terry Bruno & Mike Duarte.

This story takes place several years after ‘Blood Out’. Terry still lives in the Bronx and works in Manhatten SVU.

Following on from @the-hinky-panda story 'The Dog' Mike has retired from the NYPD on medical grounds due to seizures causes by the attack. He has a therapy dog called Bono and lives with @the-hinky-panda character Meredith.

Tagging: @legit9thlunaticwarrior @the-adzukibean @beardedbarba @wooshwastaken @justreblogginfics @im-just-a-mississippi-girl @storiesofsvu @anime-weeb-4-life @witches-unruly-heart @spaghettificationandpretzels @chavez-ashley @kiwiithecrazybird @proceduralpassion @crazy4chickennuggets @callsignartemis @kmc1989

The North Star Series - Part of The Bronx Universe

Part One: Moments (NSFW)

Part Two: Case of the Ex

Part Three: Her Worse Half

Part Four: Always

Part Five: Ask Me Again (NSFW)

Part Six: Degas

Part Seven: The Heist

Part Eight: A Part to Play

Part Nine: Home

Part Ten: Safe Space

Part Eleven: Weak

Part Twelve: Got Your Back

Part Thirteen: Familia

Part Fourteen: Gunplay

Part Fifteen: Friendly Fire

Part Sixteen: Alive (NSFW)

Part Seventeen: Karma

Part Eighteen: Lucky

Part Nineteen: Fucked Up

Part Twenty: Orchard Beach

Part Twenty One: Tuscany

Part Twenty Two: New York

Terry’s unpacking when he finds it, the picture of the two of you in a wooden frame. It’s the one from his desk in the precinct, it’s in the box along with the stress balls you’d gotten him and other bits and pieces that he’d left. He’d asked Fin to send it over after he’d handed in his papers. He sits down as he looks at it, his thumb trailing over your features.

It had been Meredith’s birthday; Duarte had thrown a party in the back yard, and you were wearing that navy blue wrap dress with the daisies on. The one that he had taken off you later that night. He remembers his fingers fumbling with the knot, how you’d tipped your head back and laughed because the two of you had been drinking diet coke all night in case you got a call out. He remembers the way the fabric had fluttered from your body, the way you stood before him wearing nothing but a smile on your face and that compass, your North Star glinting in the lamp light. He’d made love to you that night to the sound of rain pattering against the windows.

It's been over almost two months now, and he still feels the agony acutely. It’s a constant ache in his chest, a wound he carries around with him no matter where he goes. Sometimes he’ll be in the market, and he’ll pick something up, something small that he knows you’ll love, and he has to remind himself that you aren’t in his life anymore, that he can’t show you the trinket in his hand.

He’s thought about calling you, he’s spent nights staring at this phone, his thumb hovering over the button but he never goes through with it. You made your decision, and he made his. He doesn’t want to draw this shit out, he wants you to be happy wherever you are, whatever you’re doing.

He puts the picture down when he hears the knock on his door. He’s expecting more boxes, he’d asked Mike to organise shipping the rest of his stuff. The other man had grumbled but he was proficient, most of it had arrived meticulously wrapped and still in one piece. He had no intention of returning to New York, the thought of it leaves a sour taste in his mouth. He’s given notice on his lease and signed his papers electronically; he has no reason to return to US.

When he opens the door, he’s surprised because never in his wildest dreams does he expect to see you standing there. You look good considering you’ve just come off a nine-hour flight, you’re dressed in leggings and a light grey tunic top, sunglasses on up on the top of your head. He notes your wheelie suitcase propped up alongside of you. It’s not the small one you used last time, it’s bigger and for a second, he allows himself to hope.

“Vacation or long-term stay?” He finds himself asking.

“Long term stay.” You tell him, before gesturing at the villa. “You know if you’ve got the space.”

“Always.” He says with a smile as he opens the door to let you in. “I’ve always got room for you.”

Love Terry Bruno? Don’t miss any of his stories by joining the taglist here.

Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

#detective terry bruno #terry bruno #terry bruno fic #terry bruno x you #terry bruno x reader

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zzeldasnowward · 1 year ago

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BDay Quiz Answers - 2023

Spoilers under the cut!!

Moorland Quiz Who owns the Moorland Stables? 1- The Moorland Family What are the names of all the Soul Riders? 1- Alex, Linda, Lisa and Anne What is the name of the mine next to Moorland? 3- Demascus Mine Which of the following people is a witch? 3- Mrs. Holdsworth What is the Bobcat Girls club color? 2- Pink What is the name of the Moorland Stables stablehand? 3- Maya Who is Loretta’s best friend? 2- Tan

Fort Pinta Quiz Fort Pinta was originally which color? 2- Buttercup Yellow When did Jon Jarl arrive in Jorvik? 2- 1218 What is the name of the other fort in Jorvik? 1- Fort Maria What colours are on the Jorvik flag? 1- Green, white & blue Who arrived latest to Jorvik? 1- Jon Jarl What is the name of James’s sister? 1- Alex What is the name of James’s plush toy dragon? 2- Token

Nilmers Highland Quiz Which of these is not a power possessed by the Soul Riders? 2- Ice Magic Where is Ydris from? 2- Pandoria Ydris has been known to entertain the masses by turning people into what animal? 3- Golden Horse What is Fripp? 3- A cosmic being What breed of horse is Zee? 2- Pandorian Horse Who hasn’t imprisoned Galloper Thompson? 2- The Vala Witches Which of these is not a power possessed by the Dark Riders? 3- Conjuring Illusions (star stable thats incorrect jays 'puppets' are illusions)

Silverglade Village Quiz What is the name of the great castle outside of the village? 2- Silverglade Castle Which breed is known for its royal history? 3- Knabstrupper Who is the current owner of the Great castle outside the village? 1- The Baroness What is the name of Katja’s very first released song? 1- Dark Riders What is the name of the resident tailor? 2- Daxton What is Marley’s last name? 1- Summers Who is the current Queen of Jorvik? 1- There is no queen

Firgrove Quiz Why does Firgrove have a large wooden walls? 1- Wolves Who was Mississippi Jones? 3- An adventurer What was the name of the bear that used to live just south in the Bear Cave? 1- Bjorn What trail ride is known to go up the large mountain near Firgrove? 1- The Red String Trail What region is believed to have talking horses? 1- Wildwoods What is the name of Firgrove’s Shepherd? 1- Andy What is the name of the valley north of Valedale? 3- Valley of the Hidden Dinosaur

Starshine Ranch Quiz Which horse is known for running the fastest quarter-mile race? 1- American Quarter Horse Who founded Starshine Ranch? 1- Carl Peterson Which of these horses are usually NOT associated with Western Riding? 1- English Thoroughbred How many barrels are used in a barrel race? 2- 3 (Three) What is the name of Josh’s horse? 3- Pearl Hart What’s the name of the adventurous dog that used to hang around Starshine Ranch? 3- Atlas What is the name of the big black bull who guards the ranch animals against wolves? 2- Bulgore (the trans icon we love bulgore on this blog)

#reblogs appreciated!!#ssoblr #horse game #sso #starstableonline #sso spoilers #sso bday quiz #birthday quiz sso #sso bday #star stable birthday

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goalhofer · 4 months ago

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2024 MLB American League All-Stars Roster

Pitchers

#00 Tyler Anderson (Los Angeles Angels/Las Vegas, Nevada)

#19 Mason Miller (Oakland Athletics/Bethel Park, Pennsylvania)

#29 Tarik Skubal (Detroit Tigers/Kingman, Arizona)

#39 Corbin Burnes (Baltimore Orioles/Bakersfield, California)

#45 Garrett Crochet (Chicago White Sox/Ocean Springs, Mississippi)

#48 Emmanuel Clase (Cleveland Guardians/Río San Juan, DR)

#52 Clay Holmes (New York Yankees/Slocomb, Alabama)

#55 Cole Ragans (Kansas City Royals/Tallahassee, Florida)

#67 Jacob Lugo (Kansas City Royals/Bossier City, Louisiana)

#75 Andrés Muñoz (Seattle Mariners/Los Mochis, Mexico)

#89 Tanner Houck (Boston Red Sox/Collinsville, Illinois)

#93 Kirby Yates (Texas Rangers/Kauai County, Hawaii)

Catchers

#13 Salvador Pérez (Kansas City Royals/Valencia, Venezuela)

#35 Adley Rutschman (Baltimore Orioles/Sherwood, Oregon)

Infielders

#2 Gunnar Henderson (Baltimore Orioles/Selma, Alabama)

#5 Corey Seager (Texas Rangers/Kannapolis, North Carolina)

#6 David Fry (Cleveland Guardians/Grapevine, Texas)

#7 Bobby Witt; Jr. (Kansas City Royals/Colleyville, Texas)

#10 Marcus Semien (Texas Rangers/Berkeley, California)

#11 José Ramírez (Cleveland Guardians/Baní, Dominican Republic)

#12 Jordan Westburg (Baltimore Orioles/New Braunfels, Texas)

#17 Isaac Paredes (Tampa Bay Rays/Hermosillo, Mexico)

#21 Joshua-Douglas Naylor (Cleveland Guardians/Mississauga, ON)

#27 Vladimir Guerrero; Jr. (Toronto Blue Jays/Santiago, DR)

#50 Willi Castro (Minnesota Twins/San Juan, Puerto Rico)

Outfielders

#16 Jarren Duran (Boston Red Sox/Cypress, California)

#22 Juan Soto; Jr. (New York Yankees/Santo Domingo, DR)

#25 Anthony Santander (Baltimore Orioles/Ciudad Agua Blanca, VZ)

#31 Riley Greene (Detroit Tigers/Oviedo, Florida)

#38 Steven Kwan (Cleveland Guardians/Fremont, California)

#44 Yordan Álvarez (Houston Astros/Ciudad Las Tunas, Cuba)

#99 Aaron Judge (New York Yankees/San Joaquin County, CA)

Manager

Bruce Bochy (Texas Rangers/Melbourne, Florida)

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spann-stann · 2 years ago

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Setting Blurb: The Texan MacroCommunity (Reworked)

As society began to break down within the United States leading up to, and during World War Three, the New Tribal Movement emerged and called for the recreation of tribes as socio-political units. The most and prominent of these was the Hispano-Gaels, an organization that blended pre (and post) Columbian Latin American and Gaelic Celtic culture. The Hispano-Gaels were the most vocal of the and aided like-minded groups across the United States as WW3 broke out. Eventually, the federal government began to pull support from all states west of the Mississippi, and then dissolved anticlimactically during the Leave Riots.

During the twenty year gap between WW3 and the Warlords' Wars, three cities formed the cores of new protostates in the former Lone Star State: Houston and the Hispano-Gaels, San Antonio and the Tejano Republic, with Austin and the "old regime loyalist" Texas in the middle. The Hispano-Gaels spent those twenty years "Tribalizing" their territory in the greater Houston area, with some expansion north into Dallas-Fort Worth. It was around this time that a young Ignacio Rotthey was inducted into the Hispano-Gaelic leadership, and he quickly made a name for himself with his diplomatic skills. Convincing the Tejanos that the Austin were calling for aid in subduing the rest of Texas (which wasn't incorrect, Austin had sent feelers out to Cascadia and New England), Ignacio was able to form an alliance between the Hispano-Gaels and Tejanos, and then conquer Austin. Patronage of the "right" leaders made San Antonio a Hispano-Gaelic client in all but name, and Texas, excluding the Panhandle, was theirs.

Several decisions and policies of the Hispano-Gaels made in regards to what Texan society would become would later be used in the future CorpEmp. Parents were incentivized to train their children how to perform their work (what would later develop into the Great Class System), and the territory controlled by Austin was carved up into smaller and more manageable clients (predecessor to the National Delimitation Zones). The city of Austin itself, a bombed and shelled wreck, was used as a dumping ground for "noncompliants" until they were later expelled to the independent Cordons Sanitaire.

The Texan Tribal Federation, as it was called at the time, began to consolidate its borders and reach out to the rest of Post-America. The Grand State of Virginia, an expansionist protostate under the Kellam dynasty, was the first to answer to Ignacio's calls for cooperation. Their first act of mutual aid and friendship was their intervention in the American South, ensuring that there were only allies and clients between the two. Other like-minded groups requested aid in the Mid and Southwestern portions of the former United States, as well as a few in what used to be Canada and Mexico. After solidifying the formation of the "League of Corporate Communities" and putting down a rival alliance in Cascadia and the New England. It was also around this time that the Tribal Federation completed talks the Panhandle's Comanche, Apache and Hispano communities in New Mexico, and a Native American-led Oklahoma. The Texan Federation would annex New Mexico and Oklahoma (much like Virginia annexing Maryland and the Carolinas).

This League further expanded to the rest of the Americas, Europe, Russia, and China. Ignacio's calls for greater cooperation resulted in the League transforming from a defensive alliance to a federation with its own governing body. Ignacio would become the elected head of state, and would then be later crowned Emperor following the new Corporate Empire (CorpEmp)'s expansion into Africa and the rest of Asia. As a way of not showing favoritism to any one member of CorpEmp, Ignacio abdicated his position as ruler of Texas in favor of creating an itinerant court.

Adelsverein Standestaat: One of two provinces created from the former Austinite territory, the Adelsverein Standestaat was formed around central Texas' German heritage. As the titular culture of the region, Texasdeutsch is now the primary language spoken. They make really good kolaches.

Cimmerian Tribal Zone: The second province carved out of occupied Austin was awarded to one of the Hispano-Gael's subordinate tribes, the Cimmerians. Interestingly enough, the home of Robert E. Howard was within the borders of the Cimmerian's new territory. Many of the tribe took this as a sign. These adopted sons of Conan the Barbarian have a few daughter colonies across CorpEmp space.

Comanche Corporate Republic: The homeland of the Comanche was restored after the sublimation of the United States, with their borders recognized by the Hispano-Gaels during their absorption of the Texas panhandle. The Comanche have become the both an energy and martial powerhouse within Texas, second only to the Hispano-Gaels in their contribution to the Imperial Armed Forces.

The Hispano-Gaelic Tribal Zone: The core territory of the Hispano-Gaels, their Tribal Zone serves as the capital province of Texas. Although Hispano-Gaels are the titular tribe, their Tribal Zone has a large amount of smaller vassal tribes concentrated in the metropolitan areas of Dallas and Corpus Christi. Despite the Rotthey's passing of the dynastic torch, the Hispano-Gaelic people are diehard supporters of CorpEmp.

Hispano-Gaelic Septs: As they incorporated New Mexico and Oklahoma into their Tribal Federation, the Hispano-Gaels elected to settle a warband or two in those ares as Septs of the tribe. Over time, these Septs would help the locals assimilate into Hispano-Gaelic culture (or at least into the New Tribal Movement), and create new sources of manpower for the Imperial Armed Forces.

Land Force Demesne Hood: While it had been looted by various warlords and militias following the collapse of the American Government, the old Fort Hood was reconstituted first as a staging area for the conquest of Austin, and then as a land hold for the newly created Imperial Army. As a Land Force Demesne, Hispano-Gaelic warriors and other martial peoples residing in Texas arrive to prove their worth in the Austin proving grounds and become members of the Imperial Armed Forces.

Neo-Mescalero Tribal Zone: One of the two restored homelands for the Apache within the Texan MacroCommunity. The Neo-Mescalero took control of the territory along the southern Texan-New Mexican border.

Neo-Jicarilla Tribal Zone: The second restored Apache homeland in Texas. The Neo-Jicarilla concentrated in the northwestern corner of New Mexico that wasn't seized by the Navajo-Hopi .

Nuevomexicano Corporate Republic: When the United States went *poof*, the Hispano population of New Mexico seized the northeastern corner of New Mexico as their "homeland". They really like to put turquoise on everything over there.

Sequoyah Corporate Republic: The Sequoyah Corporate Republic was incorporated into Texas following the annexation of Oklahoma. While still home to many Native American tribes that were forcibly relocated to the state, many have begun to migrate to their former homelands in neighboring Dixica, or to the many orbital habitats constructed across Imperial space.

Tejano Corporate Republic: The first protostate to ally with the Hispano-Gaels, San Antonio and south Texas serves as the homeland for Texas' early Hispanic settlers. Alamo Armorworks, the premier manufacturer of ground combat vehicles, has its headquarters in San Antonio.

#setting #my setting #worldbuilding #setting blurb

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krispyweiss · 3 months ago

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Darkstarathon Ep. 6 Crashes

The thing about experiments is they don’t always pan out. And a bunch of musicians getting together for the first time and trying to conjure groupthink on demand is the very example of experimentation.

For Episode 6 of Phil Lesh’s ongoing “Darkstarathon,” the former Grateful Dead bassist was accompanied by North Mississippi All Stars Luther (guitar) and Cody (drums) Dickinson; guitarists Stu Allen and Grahame Lesh; pianist Holly Bowling; and singer Elliott Peck. And despite the massive combination of talent in the kitchen, their stew was thin and unsatisfying.

More riffing than jamming, more noodling than steering toward a musical finish line, the hourlong session is punctuated by long stretches of wordless sound - not necessarily a bad thing, but boring in this case - interrupted by such vocal train wrecks as “Viola Lee Blues,” “China Doll” and a turgid “Smokestack Lightning.”

“(Turn on Your) Lovelight” and “Deep Elem Blues,” sung by Peck and Luther Dickinson, respectively, are simply amateurish, though Bowling, as has often happened in these Clubhouse Sessions, in again in top form.

Lesh the elder had a good idea in putting this group together. The experiment, unfortunately, didn’t pan out as expected.

Read Sound Bites’ previous “Darkstarathon” coverage here.

8/2/24

#Youtube #phil lesh & friends #phil lesh #grateful dead #darkstarathon #terrapin clubhouse #north mississippi all stars #luther dickinson #cody dickinson #grahame lesh #elliott peck #midnight north #stu allen #holly bowling #viola lee blues #china doll #smokestack lightning #turn on your lovelight #deep elem blues

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spacefinch · 9 months ago

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Finch's Rambles, MSB edition

A few months ago, one of my mutuals suggested that Walkerville Magic School Bus is not located in any one place, but changes location periodically. Rather like Howl's Moving Castle. That being said, here is where I think Howl's Moving City happened to be for each MSB episode.

(If it's marked as n/a, there either wasn't enough information to decide where the city was at the time or it wasn't important.)

Gets Lost in Space: n/a

For Lunch: n/a

Inside Ralphie: n/a

Gets Eaten: California

Hops Home: Eastern US

Meets the Rot Squad: Southeastern US

All Dried Up: California (at the school); Arizona (in the desert)

In the Haunted House: n/a

Gets Ready, Set, Dough: n/a

Plays Ball: n/a

Goes to Seed: Minnesota

Gets Ants in its Pants: Oregon

Kicks Up a Storm: California

Blows Its Top: California

Flexes Its Muscles: n/a

The Busasaurus: Montana or Wyoming

Going Batty: Eastern or Midwestern US

Butterfly and the Bog Beast: Louisiana

Wet All Over: Midwest

In a Pickle: n/a

Revving Up: Colorado or Idaho

Taking Flight: n/a

Getting Energized: California (specifically, the Sierra Nevadas)

Out of this World: Great Plains (in D.A.'s dream, the asteroid is headed straight for the middle of the US.)

Cold Feet: Florida

Ups and Downs: Minnesota

In a Beehive: New England

In the Arctic: NORTHERN Minnesota

Spins a Web: Southeastern US (Florida, Louisiana, eastern Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, or North Carolina). While orb spiders and trapdoor spiders can be found all over the US, Deinopis spiders are only found in the aforementioned states in the US part of their range.

Under Construction: n/a

Gets a Bright Idea: n/a

Shows and Tells: n/a (but New England would be a good bet.)

Makes a Rainbow: n/a

Goes Upstream: Oregon or Washington State, assuming the salmon are Pacific salmon. If they're Atlantic salmon, then this episode takes place off the New England coast.

Works Out: n/a

Gets Planted: n/a

In the Rainforest: n/a

Rocks and Rolls: Colorado

Holiday Special: Northern Minnesota or New England

Meets Molly Cule: n/a

Cracks a Yolk: Definitely not Rhode Island.

Goes to Mussel Beach: Southern California

Goes on Air: Eastern US (based on the presence of the blue jay that pokes its head into the pickle jar)

Gets Swamped: either Minnesota or the Northeast.

Goes Cellular: n/a

Sees Stars: n/a

Gains Weight: n/a

Gets Charged: n/a

Gets Programmed: n/a

In the City: Eastern US

Takes a Dive: n/a

#magic school bus #headcanons #finch rambles

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bearterritory · 1 year ago

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12 Talented Transfers Bolster Cal Football

Golden Bears Solidify 2023 Roster with Experienced Veterans

BERKELEY – The California football team has officially added a dozen players to its roster since the end of spring football with the signings of QB Luke Bottari (Utah), WR Taj Davis (Washington), RB King Doerue (Purdue), WR Marquez Dortch (Mississippi State), QB Ben Finley (North Carolina State), RB Isaiah Ifanse (San Jose State/Montana State), OL Barrett Miller (Stanford), P Thomas Lee (Cal Poly), DB Patrick McMorris (San Diego State), DB Marcus Scott II (Missouri), OL Matthew Wycoff (Texas A&M), and OLB Tidiane Jalloh (Independence Community College)

Below are highlights on each of the signees: Luke Bottari – QB, 5-10, 205, R-Jr., 5th Collegiate Season San Mateo, CA (Utah/College of San Mateo/Serra HS) – Completed 338-of-550 passes for 4,673 yards with a school career-record 46 touchdowns and 13 interceptions for a quarterback rating of 155.7 at College of San Mateo – Named the Northern California Player of the Year while adding All-State honors as a 2019 freshman – Led Serra High School to its first state title as a 2017 prep junior Taj Davis – WR, 6-1, 205, R-Jr., 5th Collegiate Season Upland, CA (Washington/Upland HS) – Played in 24 games with 10 starts in his final two seasons as a 2021 redshirt freshman and 2022 sophomore at Washington – Contributed two-year career totals of 47 receptions, 606 yards receiving and four touchdown catches, while also playing on special teams and adding six tackles all as a 2022 sophomore – Ranked as the nation's No. 54 wide receiver according to Rivals in the 2019 high school recruiting class

King Doerue – RB, 5-10, 205, R-Jr., 5th Collegiate Season Amarillo, TX (Purdue/Tascosa HS) – Played in 32 games with 16 starts in four seasons at Purdue from 2019-22 – Rushed 309 times for 1,145 yards and 10 touchdowns, while adding 47 receptions, 381 yards receiving and three touchdown catches Marquez Dortch – WR, 6-0, 170, R-Fr., 2nd Collegiate Season Lucedale, MS (Mississippi State/George County HS) – Played in one game and recorded one reception for one yard in a single campaign at Mississippi State in 2022 but did not use a season of collegiate eligibility – A consensus four-star recruit in the 2021 class who was ranked the nation's No. 24 wide receiver by 247Sports

Ben Finley – QB, 6-3, 205, R-So., 4th Collegiate Season Phoenix, AZ (North Carolina State/Paradise Valley HS) – Played in eight games at NC State with two starts over three campaigns, completing 83-of-152 passes for 912 yards with four touchdown tosses – Led the Wolfpack to a 30-27 double-overtime win at No. 18 North Carolina as a 2022 redshirt freshman in his first career start in North Carolina State's regular-season finale, connecting on 27-of-40 passes for 271 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions Isaiah Ifanse – RB, 5-9, 205, R-Sr., 6th Collegiate Season Bellevue, WA (San Jose State/Montana State/Bellevue HS) – Played in 40 games in four seasons at Montana State (2018-19, 2021-22) and finished as the school's all-time leading rusher with 3,742 yards and scored 25 touchdowns on the ground to rank sixth on Montana State's all-time list on 630 carries for a program that posted a 43-14 overall record, made the FCS Playoffs each season including a trip to the title game during his 2021 junior campaign, and won a share of the Big Sky title as a 2022 senior – Became Montana State's first All-American running back since 1982 (second-team AFCS, Associated Press, Hero Sports, Stats Perform) and All-Big Sky running back since 2011 as a junior in 2021, when he established a single-season school-record with 1,623 yards rushing and scored 10 touchdowns on the ground on 280 carries that were the second most in school history

Barrett Miller – OL, 6-5, 315, Sr., 5th Collegiate Season Aurora, CO (Stanford/Eaglecrest HS) – Played in 38 games with 30 starts (26 at left guard and four at right guard) over four seasons at Stanford from 2019-22 including all 18 starts possible during both his COVID-shortened 2020 and 2021 sophomore seasons – A four-star recruit in the prep class of 2019 according to 247Sports

Thomas Lee, P, 5-11, 185, R-Sr., 6th Collegiate Season San Ramon, CA (Cal Poly/Dougherty Valley HS) – A member of the Cal Poly football program for his final three years – Became the team's starting punter for the final nine games of his 2022 senior season and punted 31 times for 1,152 yards (37.2 ypp) – Finished his career with 33 punts for 1208 yards (36.6 ypp) with his 2 longest punts for 56 yards Patrick McMorris, DB, 6-0, 210, Sr., 5th Collegiate Season Santa Ana, CA (San Diego State/Santa Ana HS/Godinez Fundamental HS) – Played in 42 games with 27 starts at San Diego State from 2019-22 and contributed 162 tackles, 6.5 tackles for loss (-14 yards), five interceptions that he returned for 61 yards, 15 pass breakups, 20 passes defended and two fumble recoveries, including one that he returned 30 yards for his lone career touchdown – Earned first-team All-Mountain West Conference as both a 2021 sophomore and 2022 junior to become just the second San Diego State safety to pick up spots on two All-MWC first-team squads – A team captain as a 2022 junior who was named the preseason Mountain West Co-Defensive Player of the Year and also was a member of preseason first-team All-MWC teams by four publications, as well as on watch lists for the Senior Bowl and for the Chuck Bednarik Award and Bronko Nagurski Award given to the nation's top defensive player – Listed as a four-star transfer by 247Sports

Marcus Scott II – DB, 6-0, 180, R-Fr., 2nd Collegiate Season Houston, TX (Missouri/Conroe HS/College Park HS) – Did not see any game action or use a season of collegiate eligibility as a 2022 true freshman at Missouri – Totaled 55 tackles, four interceptions, 18 pass breakups, three forced fumbles and two fumble recoveries as a prep during his 2020 junior at College Park High School and 2021 senior campaign at Conroe High School, while picking up three touchdowns in his career on a pick six, a 75-yard scoop and score, and an onside kick that he returned 65 yards – A four-star recruit of Rivals both in the 2023 transfer portal class and 2022 high school class, while also being listed as the No. 34 cornerback coming out of high school Matthew Wykoff – OL, 6-6, 330, R-So., 3rd Collegiate Season Magnolia, TX (Texas A&M/Magnolia HS) – Played in 16 games with nine starts over two campaigns as a 2021 true freshman and 2022 redshirt freshman at Texas A&M – Earned a spot on the SEC's All-Freshman squad – Ranked as the No. 34 offensive tackle in the 2021 recruiting class according to Rivals

Tidiane Jalloh, OLB, 6-5, 270, So., 2nd Collegiate Season Toulon, France (Independence Community College) – Contributed eight tackles with 0.5 tackles for loss (-2 yards) in six games off the bench as a 2022 true freshman in his first season of American football –Ranked as the nation's No. 9 defensive lineman in the 2023 junior college recruiting class by 247Sports Composite

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desidesidesi · 10 months ago

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The first liveblogging of the excitement of The Box TM was getting out of control so I'm making a new post and sharing a new story.

So! My mother and her friends live in a poor backwater of Mississippi. Like we visited during Thanksgiving and the "City Square" which is the heart of the city was either cute, kitschy gift stores or buildings that are literal husks with caved in rooves. So they are permanently B O R E D and have picked up the art......... Of Dumpster Diving in the extremely rich college town north of them (not naming it cuz I don't wanna dox my mom or ruin their weird side hussle. @banahbanah you know where I'm talking about)

Apparently they heard tale that all the rich college kids and stores just throw out perfectly good furniture, clothing, anything under the sun at the end of the semester. Sure enough she's told me about a giant 65in TV that was "broken" (a 50$ repair got it working again) basically a new wardrobe, perfectly good food (Star Bucks throws away so much shit), Coach Bags, and knick-knacks galore!

This is all relevant because half of the stuff in The Box are goodies from one of her outings!

First pic!

In this picture (Professor Juniper for Scale) we have a Bento Box, a Tea Cup (which she worried would break but thankfully did not), and two different gift sets of tea (both thrown out well before their expi date) all gotten from the HomeGoods Dumpster in said rich college town.

Now, I know what you're thinking: Desi. Isn't this a little privileged and problematic that a bunch of Southern White Women can go around dumpster diving and basically not get in trouble with the police? And I say... Like, duh? But they kinda do a Robin Hood approach to their little operation and share with everyone in their friend group anything and everything they find! They're basically using their privilege to stick it to corporate America and even MORE privileged white people!

Also in this pictures are crystals from an old chandelier in my childhood room. Mom was replacing it and asked if I wanted it? I'm renting, I don't have any place to put it lol so I just said "Can I have the crystals to make Sun Catchers with?" She didn't quite get it, but she sent them anyway so yay!

And of course, my delicious Milex (powdered milk for those that don't know what the hell I'm talking about) 💖💖💖 I know I'm a weirdo for basically using it as a cereal additive by making things extra milk, but I fucking love it and it tastes of childhood. 💖 We have to get friends to "import" it from Honduras cuz the company that makes it doesn't sell online anywhere??? It's fucking wild how hard it is to find this stuff!!! Gotta ration better this time. I literally used the last bag she got me in a few weeks 😅

Also? Cute cows on the packaging!

And finally! The Purse-My-Aunt-Saw-And-Thought-I-Would-Appreciate-It-Best!

Look at this thing! It was "Made in Nepal" with "environmentally friendly products" and is bigger than my damn torso??? I can fit my full-sized sketch book in this dang thing lol! It's very... Hippy dippy lol. I definitely see why she got it for me 🤣 Will have to wear it around Colorado and see if I get any Crunchy Moms lusting after it.

BUT YES. I did an unboxing on Facebook Messenger with my mom and dad and it was silly fun. Hope this random hobby my mom has taken up nets me more random bullshit lol.

#story time #my mom ladies theydies and gentlemen #dumpster diving #milex

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mywifeleftme · 10 months ago

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284: Celestine Ukwu & His Philosophers National // No Condition is Permanent

No Condition is Permanent Celestine Ukwu and His Philosophers National 2022, Mississippi Records (Bandcamp)

Celestine Ukwu was an Igbo highlife singer from eastern Nigeria (the region briefly known as Biafra) who became a significant star in the late ‘60s and ‘70s by turning the genre’s broad gestures inward. Highlife’s clean and nimble guitar work, jittering rhythms, and splashy horns have always made for ebullient dance music, but the selections on No Condition is Permanent find Ukwu abstracting the genre into something dreamier and more contemplative. The comparison is probably inane, but if highlife were alternative rock you could think of Ukwu as sort of a Jesus & Mary Chain or Yo La Tengo figure. You can certainly still dance to his music, but even as it evokes the sweet sensations African guitar pop is known for, it also feels blue, like a grown man reflecting on the music of his youth. Lyrically too, the music is concerned with tribulation, a philosophical acceptance of suffering, and the certainty of redemption. I’m not sure I’ve heard anything quite like “Okwukuwe na nchekwube” (“Faith and Hope”), which moves like shadows cast by a flickering bonfire, all weeping slide guitars, shuffling percussion, and jazzy horns with a North African/Andalusian flair. Nearly as good is “Onwunwa” (“Light”), which has some exceptionally moving guitar playing, a twinkling verse figure that gives over in the latter half of the song to a staccato solo that puts me in mind of the stop-start tempo of a hand writing a passionate love letter—“Life comes like the world / is blessed. Life comes like / the world ends,” Ukwu muses in Igbo.

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No Condition is Permanent is a short compilation at just 32 minutes—jealously, I’d have liked another song or two from the three albums it surveys (True Philosophy [1971], Tomorrow is So Uncertain [1973], Ilo Abu Chi [1974]). Despite this, the folks at Mississippi Records (and Timothy Stollenwerk at Stereophonic Sound) have done a spectacular job with the remaster and pressing, and it’s a compilation I can easily leave on my table for ages.

284/365

#celestine ukwu #mississippi records #high life #nigerian music #igbo music #west african music #african music #biafra #'70s music #music review #vinyl record

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cljordan-imperium · 2 years ago

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Cruz and Thinius manifested in New Orleans, French Quarter. While there were places that those with magical abilities gathered all across the globe, one of the hot spots was NOLA. It was also one of the few places that they could walk around clothed as they normally were accustomed and no one would look askance at them. Next stop would be Edinburgh, but this was also the closest city to Brie’s home base in Vacherie, Louisiana. Even though her soul had been stolen when she was in Vienna, both males had a feeling that it all originated here.

Walking down Royal street, they passed behind the St. Louis Cathedral. They were getting ready to head into the less touristy part of The Quarter. The part where the stars lived, and those who held true power. Most of the mortals around them could not feel the vibration of power emanating from this part of The Quarter like they could. There would be a reckoning, and both males knew that they would be busy for hours, if not days with those who lived here.

Why was this area of the city more concentrated with magic practitioners and beings than the others? The proximity to the great power source of the Mississippi River. Water was always an attractor to those who possessed magic, but the flowing of the mighty river provided even more power. It was a conduit that ran through the length of the United States. There was no greater concentration of that power than in New Orleans. Second was the city of St. Louis, but it was far weaker in comparison. Only on the Canadian side of the Niagra Falls could similar power be found on the North American continent. That would be their next stop.

Black leather boots made soft crunching sounds on the uneven and well-worn pavement as they crossed an unseen barrier. Wards flared all over the Quarter as the pair walked. Cruz stood a solid and intimidating seven feet in height, Thinius was only two inches shorter, but with the difference in heel heights of their boots the males were even. Their strides were long and purposeful, in step and giving off an air of not being two you wanted to fuck with. Even mortals who had no clue who the two were seemed to part and let them through, their subconscious sensing that these were not two that you wanted to get in the way of in the least.

Leviathan’s words still ate at a part of Thinius. Had the Prince been right that he was being replaced after eons of servitude to Abbadon? In all those years, Abbadon had never showed the kind of care and concern that he was for that female back in his bed. Shit, hardly ever in the last few millennia had there just been one female in his bed. Something was changing, and Thinius wasn’t sure of his place in it. He wasn’t ready to turn completely on his boss, but that didn’t mean it was all sitting well.

“Mine sister is his bride and he is the Fifth Horseman.” Cruz’s heavily accented voice was low, meant only for Thinius to hear. Most mortals would have missed it, but he knew the demon had far better hearing than even devices devised by mortal hands.

“What?” Thinius looked over at the Nephilim, wondering how the fuck he heard his thoughts. Even his boss couldn’t do that. What the hell was this male?

“Empath, Horseman of War, and I’m damn old. One dost learn to read those things left unsaid. You hast been thinking on Leviathan’s words.” Cruz stopped now that the street was empty and walked over to lean against the wall of one of the buildings. “There are things he did not tell you. Leviathan holds the deed to Brie’s soul, sold by our mother to save mine own soul. That she should choose Abbadon is an affront for which he has taken great offense. That is why twas him that stole her soul and that we now track since he fled Hell. If Abbadon did not fully trust and hold faith in you, you would not be on this mission. “ His arms crossed over his chest as he looked at the other male, crossing one ankle over the other as he leaned against the building.

Facing the Nephilim, Thinius’s mind was tumbling over everything that he had just said. “He said she’s Death and a Grigori…holy shit!” It all dawned on Thinius now and anger started to swell within him. Now he understood Abbadon’s reaction when he had told him that her soul was missing. “So I bet Leviathan won’t be the last Prince to come and try to turn me…or any of us.” Cruz nodded solemnly.

“Mine own mother desired for me to be the harbinger of mine sister’s death so that Leviathan could own her soul, as did Lucifer. Tis why he is currently attached to the wall in the great hall of the Palace.” Thinius started laughing, causing Cruz’s brow to rise.

“Wait, it was you…no Brie? Damn! Remind me to never fuck with your sister! There isn’t a demon or being in Hell that hasn’t heard about that. They still can’t get Lucifer off of that wall. Maybe we should pay him a visit before we head up to Niagra. It’s still fucking cold up there and the old bastard might be able to give us some intel that would keep us from having to go up there.” He chuckled as she shook his head.

Cruz cracked an amused smirk. “Brie. Pissing off mine sister is far from smart.” He pushed off of the wall and the two males started walking down the street again.

At the next cross street, they turned left towards Rampart. Both were on guard, they could feel the magical wards they were crossing. Still there was a lot of swagger in their strides as the two broad and tall makes walked the street. Backs straight, shoulders back, they looked as serious and lethal as they truly were. Neither could help but think that they had never dreamed in their long lives of fighting alongside a being such as the other. War can create strange bedfellows, and that is exactly what this was. It was WAR. Leviathan had fired a shot at Abbadon and Brie. Neither Thinius, the Horsemen, or the Angels were going to back down.

Finally the number that they were looking for came into view. The men stopped, looked at each other, then turned and in unison hit the door with their feet. The hinges squealed as they broke free from the doorframe and the door fell inward. Cruz took point as they climbed the old and worn staircase. Their shoulders brushed the sides of the narrow stairway, each footfall sounding like it was going to send the stair crashing into the floor below. Still the men didn’t pause. They weren’t hiding their entry, which meant the warlock had time to prepare for them. If he was smart, he would just tell them what they wanted to know.

The ball of energy that hit the wall, barely missing Cruz’s head, as he rounded the top of the staircase told him that this was not going to be easy. Sensing no one but the Warlock ahead, Cruz misted behind him and quickly had the other male in a headlock as Thinius sauntered down the hallway towards them. The warlock was too busy clawing at Cruz’s arm to cast a spell towards Thinius, but his eyes spoke volumes regarding how much he realized he was screwed. Kicking the door closed behind him as he entered the home of the warlock, Thinius cast a ward that would silence any sounds from being heard by the mortals and would block all that transpired from view of anyone outside the windows.

Kneeling down to where the warlock had gone to his knees from lack of Oxygen, Thinius grinned. “Now, now Gerard. You should know better than to try and attack a Horseman. One with a demon in tow? Now, that was the supreme act of idiocy. You see, he and I are on the same team now and my boss…well, he wants to know where yours is. So are you gonna make this shit easy, or do we have to do this the hard way?”

Cruz’s arm lessened it’s hold some to let the warlock draw in breath. “Fuck…you…” the warlock ground out before Thinius raised an eyebrow and looked at Cruz.

“Looks like he’s gonna make us do it the hard way bro.” An evil grin formed on Thinius’s lips before his fist drew back and hit the warlock with enough force in the guy to lacerate his liver and kidney. In a mortal, they would have blead out in minutes, but this would just be exceedingly painful to the warlock. More damage was to come though and it was doubtful whether he would be breathing at the end.

The warlock screamed out, but the wards Thinius had cast held. Cruz yanked the male to his feet and drug him over to a chair. Throwing him into it, both Cruz and Thinius used magic to create bindings to hold him there. “Gerard, this is thine last chance to cooperate. Thine boss has committed a grievous act against mine sister. There is no torture so obscene that I shalt not deign to employ it to find the information that I do seek. I did participate in the Inquisitions, so mine repertoire of torture is quite vast.” A dark and devious glint formed in Cruz’s eye as a smirk formed on his lips.

Thinius tried not to show his shock. How the fuck old was this dude? His language was definitely archaic, but he was beginning to wonder exactly what Abbadon had gotten him into. Most of the Nephilim that he had met were 700-800 years old tops; this one, he was far older. And a Guardian, he had only heard of rumors of the few that had been created. He looked over to the warlock, “Gerard, bro you gotta see you’re gonna loose here. If I don’t kill your ass, this dude here will.” He leaned forward to put his hands on his thighs, back straight as he looked in Gerard’s eyes. “Dude, he’s War. Yeah…I see that dawning in your eyes. He’s that War. And he’s now kinda family to my boss. So, ya might want to play nice.”

Gerard’s eyes alternated between Cruz and Thinius. He certainly liked breathing, and not being in immense pain, but he knew that if Leviathan found out he’d betrayed him that he would suffer exponentially worse for all of eternity. This was not a position that he wanted to be in. What made it worse was that he had no clue what Leviathan had done to piss Abbadon and the Horsemen off, but if they had teamed up and Abbadon was family to War? Shit! This was not a good situation and he was on the wrong side of this.

“Go. To. Hell.” Gerard spit out, his face a mask of defiance. He knew that he was about to experience pain that few could ever imagine, but he hoped in death he would be released. What he had no idea about was how long they could keep him alive and in pain, just because he had now pissed them off royally.

13 hours later, Cruz and Thinius exited the building. No trace they had ever been there remained, and they had taken care of Gerard’s body. Unfortunately they were no closer to finding Leviathan. The warlock hadn’t known where he was, or even that he had fled Hell. They did get some good information on some who might know.

“Right or left bro?” Thinius asked as he vanished the last of the gore off of his hands.

“Left, and then to Esplanade. Let’s go see the priestess.” Cruz answered as he started walking down the sidewalk. Dawn was just breaking over the city, a haze of fog hung in the air as the two dark males formed intimidating shadows as they moved. Anyone coming across them in this ambiance was going to hastily turn and head the other direction. In the mood that the two males were in, that was a very wise move

@dogmomwrites - not during the 20's, but this is the previous time they went and had some fun together. This was Chapter 19 over 100+ previously written. And...as you can see..Cruz's previous FC was used for the pic.

THE IMPERIUM CHRONICLES TAG LIST - @ceph-the-ghost-writer @kjscottwrites @writingpotato07 @saltysupercomputer @careful-pyromancer @late-to-the-fandom @autumnalwalker @perasperaadastrawriting @fearofahumanplanet @jessica-writes22 @dogmomwrites @mjjune @verba-writing

Let me know if you'd like +/-

#the imperium chronicles #past writing #my writing #my ocs #fantasy #fiction #writeblr #writing #new orleans

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sweetdreamsjeff · 10 months ago

Text

Jeff Buckley Revisited

by Simeon FlickMarch 2023

Remember me, but oh, forget my fate. ––Henry Purcell, “Dido’s Lament”

**************

y the late ’80s it was already soul-crushingly evident that Los Angeles was a dead-end cesspool of intolerable immersion in other people’s music, and that a drastic change was required to sweep away the bad influences and external white noise to finally get him in touch with his own muse. New York City beckoned—just as it had to Tim in the ’60s—as a locus were people could become the epitome of themselves, get as weird as they wanted, and be unconditionally accepted or ignored as merely part of the scenery, and reach their full, rewarded potential in whatever their chosen field. Jeff tested the waters for a few months in 1990, but his money and options ran out, and he reluctantly returned to Los Angeles.

But the comprehensive guitar skill was just a tripod for the potent weapon his voice was becoming.

**************

The first stanzas tell us so much about the author:

I’m lying in my bed, the blanket is warm This body will never be safe from harm Still feel your hair, black ribbons of coal Touch my skin to keep me whole

Oh, if only you’d come back to me If you laid at my side I wouldn’t need no mojo pin To keep me satisfied

“So Real” represents not only the successful search for a second guitarist, but also a tenacious battle fought and won against Columbia for the very soul of the album.

Racist everyman, what have you done? Man, you made a killer of your unborn son Oh, crown my fear your king at the point of a gun All I want to do is love everyone…

There’s no time for hatred––only questions What is love, where is happiness What is alive, where is peace? When will I find the strength to bring me release?

PART TWO

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Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me On thy bosom let me rest More I would, but Death invades me Death is now a welcome guest

When I am laid in earth May my wrongs create No trouble in thy breast Remember me, but oh, forget my fate

“He gave everything. Thanks, Jeff.”

#jeff buckley #jeffbuckley #simeon flick #san diego troubadour #march 2023

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