<html> <style> p.ex1 { margin-left: 305px; margin-right: 260px; } </style> <center> <img src="https://imgur.com/GiEuRiB.gif"alt="00"> </center><p class="ex1">(text-style: "underline")[**RAY CHARLES**] //...we are the children// There’s the image, for some reason, of a frog with its legs cut off (no blood). (click: "(no blood).")[Ray Charles transports his mindstate to //Known Space// and off in the distance, there’s the //Tower of Fear//.] (click: "mindstate")[The locals worship a thing they call gods of tomorrow (even tho it is only one thing).] (click: "gods of tomorrow")[Ray Charles inspects island madness fever and discovers—it’s a madness that’s all too deep & real.] (click: "real.")[Dark ocean physics & pyrotechnics and a future I Want to Believe poster, in a danq cellar.] (click: "danq cellar.")[ Ray Charles takes off his spectacles and swears he can taste pan dimensional beings and holes in the ceiling.] (click: "pan dimensional beings")[Steve Perry says something about a dripping sound coming from a couple houses over.] (click: "dripping")[ There’s something in the air and everything gives off the impression that it’s only meant to confuse.] (click: "confuse.")[After the static, the Bavarian Chanel.] (click: "Bavarian Chanel.")[God’s greatest gift to //manunkind//.] (click: "manunkind.")[ Ray Charles cries.] 1. Man servant.(click-replace: "Man servant.")[Ray Charles asks a man servant for a pillow but all he can feel are deep patterns beneath a low crimson sky.] (click: "crimson sky.")[There's an energy surging from the business card of a detective from San Diego who speaks only in ocean terms.] (click: "ocean terms.")[Eileen would say: “It’s the fear of the Known.”] 2. Billboard.(click-replace: "Billboard.")[Ray Charles excuses himself from the main room and walks by a //Cancel the Moment of No Return// billboard, right outside the window.] (click: "window.")[ He’s searching for the bathroom.] (click: "bathroom.")[The clouds outside feel thick and full of silk (froth at night).] (click: "clouds")[All these guests, and they have no idea; milk in their shoes.] (click: "milk in their shoes.")[And it’s a shame.] 3. The number twenty-five.(click-replace: "The number twenty-five.")[Ray Charles imagines, there's the number twenty-five and a dozen astronauts burning.] (click: "astronauts burning.")[The remains of a hundred human babies scattered about on a beach—the second worst oil spill disaster in the history of the United States of America of Earth.] (click: "oil spill disaster")[ Gravity suddenly becoming a situation inside the torpedo sub of lost souls.] [[x.->we_r_the_world]] </p> </html> <html> <style> p.ex1 { margin-left: 305px; margin-right: 260px; } </style> <center> <img src="https://imgur.com/H9L4Hzg.gif"alt="00"> </center><p class="ex1">(text-style: "underline")[**RAY CHARLES**] //...we are the children// You boot up the Ray Charles prototype. (click: "prototype.")[ Ray Charles v.(either:"1.0b","0.9f") is drawing the image, for some reason, of a frog with its legs cut off (no blood).] (click: "(no blood).")[He is using (either:"crayons","markers","paints").] (click: "using")[ You: Hi Ray, how are you doing? Remember me?] (click: "Remember me")[ Ray Charles transports his mindstate to Known Space and off in the distance, there’s the Tower of Fear.] (click: "mindstate")[ Ray Charles: The locals worship a thing they call gods of tomorrow (even tho it is only one thing).] (click: "gods of tomorrow")[ You: What do you mean by that?](click: "mean by that")[ Ray Charles inspects island madness fever and discovers—it’s a madness that’s all too deep & real.] (click: "real.")[Dark ocean physics & pyrotechnics and a future //I Want to Believe// poster, in a danq cellar.](click: "danq cellar.")[ You: (//wondering what is going on//).] (click: "going on")[ Ray Charles takes off his spectacles and swears he can taste pan dimensional beings and holes in the ceiling.] (click: "pan dimensional beings")[Steve Perry says something about a dripping sound coming from a couple houses over.] (click: "dripping")[ Ray Charles: There’s something in the air and everything gives off the impression that it’s only meant to confuse.] (click: "confuse.")[After the static, the Bavarian Chanel.] (click: "Bavarian Chanel.")[God’s greatest gift to //manunkind//.] (click: "manunkind.")[ Ray Charles cries.] 1. Man servant.(click-replace: "Man servant.")[Ray Charles asks a man servant for a pillow but all he can feel are deep patterns beneath a low crimson sky.] (click: "crimson sky.")[ Ray Charles: There's an energy surging from the business card of a detective from San Diego who speaks only in ocean terms.] (click: "ocean terms.")[ Eileen would say: It’s the fear of the Known.] 2. Billboard.(click-replace: "Billboard.")[Ray Charles excuses himself from the main room and walks by a //Cancel the Moment of No Return// billboard, right outside the window.] (click: "window.")[ He’s searching for the bathroom.] (click: "bathroom.")[The clouds outside feel thick and full of silk (froth at night).] (click: "clouds")[All these guests, and they have no idea; milk in their shoes.] (click: "milk in their shoes.")[And it’s a shame.] 3. The number twenty-five.(click-replace: "The number twenty-five.")[Ray Charles imagines, there's the number twenty-five and a dozen astronauts burning.] (click: "astronauts burning.")[The remains of a hundred human babies scattered about on a beach—the second worst oil spill disaster in the history of the United States of America of Earth.] (click: "oil spill disaster")[ Gravity suddenly becoming a situation inside the torpedo sub of lost souls.] //Notice: the YOU character has some pretty stupid dialogue right now, but it's just placeholder since I am just trying to see what the feel of this is like//... [[x.->we_r_the_world]] </p> </html> <style> p.ex1 { margin-left: 305px; margin-right: 260px; } </style> <center> <img src="https://imgur.com/WFQWVVD.png"alt="00"> </center><p class="ex1">(text-colour:navy)[WE R THE WORLD by Dan Hoy & Mike Kleine An interactive non-game. Copyright (c) ### 2019 by Dan Hoy & Mike Kleine. Please copy and play freely. Release 1 / Serial Number 112045] //Jan 28, 1985. The recording of (text-style: "underline")[We Are the World] at Quincy Jones’ mountain chateau in Topanga Canyon, after the American Music Awards. Quincy Jones has invited over 40 artists to record a benefit single, but the harmonics are coded to unlock another dimension and summon a great power. Each chapter focuses on one artist’s occult/horror experience while at the lodge//. Commence the ritual. (click: "ritual.")[ Six minutes ago, the sun died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire. She lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards. He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand. He says, The moon has just the one face. Her dress spirals into the future. It is January 28, 1985 and his aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] (click: "51 years.")[ He sees Kenny Rogers and says, Kenny you labyrinth—I have just the thing. Kenny Rogers stares at the scroll in his hand like a born again linguist. The birds cry about their homeland. To the Earth, it is always night.] (click: "labyrinth")[ Quincy kneels before the shadow of Tina Turner and offers her shadow a scroll.] (click: "shadow")[ He measures the parallax of John Oates and Daryl Hall and tosses a single scroll into the void they share. The air is a miracle to be destroyed. Every tree here is worth a continuous stream of human lifetimes. Suits the color of videotape.] (click: "void")[ Dionne Warwick shimmies a cape off her shoulders to reveal a lesser cape and Quincy gifts her a scroll wrapped in Soviet currency. The wind introduces pain and regret.] (click: "pain and regret.")[ The scroll Quincy gave Willie Nelson induces a world birth experience.] (click: "pain and regret.")[ Bob Dylan spills onto the red carpet like he’s washing up on a beach like a bottle with a rolled up scrap of paper inside. Quincy tells him exactly this and folds a scroll into his hand. Language is a biological weapon. Every mic is a hot mic. Somewhere, something.] </p> </html><center> <img src="https://imgur.com/mEcz7GQ.png"alt="00"> (text-colour:navy)[WE R THE WORLD by Dan Hoy & Mike Kleine An interactive non-game. Copyright (c) ### 2019 by Dan Hoy & Mike Kleine. Please copy and play freely. Release 1 / Serial Number 112045] //January 28, 1985. The recording of (text-style: "underline")[We Are the World] at Quincy Jones’ mountain chateau in Topanga Canyon, after the American Music Awards. Quincy Jones has invited over 40 artists to record a benefit single, but the harmonics are coded to unlock another dimension and summon a great power. Each chapter focuses on one artist’s occult/horror experience while at the lodge//. (if: $key1 is true)[ I. [[Quincy Jones->01]]]\ (else:)[I. [[Yuincq Ensoj->01]]] (if: $key2 is true)[ II. [[Lionel Richie->02]]]\ (else:)[II. Loien Liicher] (if: $key2 is true)[ III. [[Stevie Wonder->03]]]\ (else:)[III. Dreno Weevsti] (if: $key3 is true)[ IV. [[Paul Simon->04]]]\ (else:)[IV. Alup Minos] (if: $key3 is true)[ V. [[Kenny Rogers->05]]]\ (else:)[V. Nekny Gersro] (if: $key4 is true)[ VI. [[James Ingram->06]]]\ (else:)[VI. Semaj Ngmrin] (if: $key4 is true)[ VII. [[Tina Turner->07]]]\ (else:)[VII. Tina Turner] (if: $key5 is true)[ VIII. [[Billy Joel->08]]]\ (else:)[VIII. Billy Joel] (if: $key5 is true)[ IX. [[Michael Jackson->09]]]\ (else:)[IX. Michael Jackson] (if: $key6 is true)[ X. [[Diana Ross->09]]]\ (else:)[X. Diana Ross] (if: $key6 is true)[ XI. [[Dionne Warwick->09]]]\ (else:)[XI. Dionne Warwick] XII. Willie Nelson XIII. Al Jarreau XIV. Bruce Springsteen XV. Kenny Loggins XVI. Steve Perry XVII. Daryl Hall XVIII. Huey Lewis XIX. Cyndi Lauper XX. Kim Carnes XXI. Bob Dylan XXII. Ray Charles (if: $key13 is true)[ XIII. [[The Chrous->23]]]\ (else:)[XIII. The Chorus] </center>(if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**QUINCY JONES**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) The smell of smoke and fire. Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire. (Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross). Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards. He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand. Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face. Her dress spirals into the future. It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**QUINCY JONES**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**LIONEL RICHIE**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key3 to true) Lionel Richie, first of his name. When the waters recede from the cavern entrance, it is like a mouth gasping for eternal reparation. This life is a season in honor of a world without seasons. Every morning, the sun delivers an embarrassment of weapons, and the luminosity of a riot is measured by the scarcity of food and water. It is true that Lionel Richie’s belly is hollow. For breakfast, he swallows metal alloys dipped in fire and produces song. At night, he lies in bed in the Caribbean ocean and prays he won’t drown this time and drowns every time. We are telling you this because Lionel Richie can’t stop knocking on the door. He has been knocking for 47,000 years begging to be let in—but all this time he’s been knocking from the inside! Come, let us gather Lionel Richie like wildflowers we eat because we lack real food. It is Tuesday so it is ok to bury this morning star into the chest of an unarmed man. To be born is animal cruelty. The door of our mouth opens for Lionel Richie who squints and says, I remember when the sky was the earth beneath our feet. So do we. Our story begins with the creator that calls itself Quincy Jones assembling the coordinates and dimensions of material life and uttering a name we cannot repeat, but cannot refuse. So here we are, all wood and plaster and pipe. Utterance is a framework for disfiguring this alien world and its alien forms of life. What clings to the surface of a stillborn, globular god. A planet dripping with debris. Bodies rotating around the axis that pierces and pins them to the universal firmament. This is why we entered this realm without corporeal weight. To be wind is all exhale. To have a body is to hold your breath. We were the air that all things share and the future that all of us feel. Now we have bones that break, a heart that stutters, a stomach to feed: beams, furnace, fireplace. A tiny, unblemished fuzzy yellow moon in the palm of an Episcopalian youth. A sacred geometry bound by synthetic grass. The sun dying its best death over Tuskegee. The Atlantic ocean beaching itself in ‘68. Blind incantations with Kenny Rogers, Diana Ross, the preternatural spawn of Joseph Jackson. A saxophone. The lives of Lionel Richie are for ruminating. We tuck him into our second cheek. We never swallow. Lionel Richie, first of his name, is the first to arrive. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**LIONEL RICHIE**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**STEVIE WONDER**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key4 to true) The future is dilating and Stevie Wonder can feel it. He hears a spray of glass and a battering ram shatter his face. Touches the moist and incurious ridges of the Skyhole with an index finger. Holds the finger to his nose, presses his tongue to it: there’s no smell or taste. I am not all here yet. I’m there. I’m staring at this vibrant deathscape when really I should be staring at the no-scape. When I’m there, I’m not Stevie Wonder. I have no godtalent. I’m not catechetically generous. I have no aptitude for watersigns, metalwork, harmony or time. The sight of sights is terrifying. I ask this powdery bag of flesh for directions and it says, I’m just here to play the drums. Phil Collins as a transient form of life. I’m soul starving. There’re things you understand there you could never understand here. Higher dimensional realms bound by lower dimensional realities. How necromancy is about as effective a divinatory tool as an ice cream cone (because the dead are as clueless as the living). We have just the one word and we call our failure to utter it Language. Prostrate over the abyss of intonation. Every sentence sentenced to death. Telling people how much their clothes remind you of human life. The point is the harmony of the spheres on Earth was disrupted on December 3, 1984 with the release of the group charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas” and its quivering, continental politics. Ok. I’m remembering now. Here, Stevie Wonder was approached by Quincy Jones to help Africa by designing a cathectic vessel of sound. There, I lived in a world where technology is ideologically neutral. Here, tonight, Stevie Wonder will be reminded that the facts are not the truth of a situation; that the truth of a situation is how these facts are deployed. In any case I said, Sorry; I can’t drive this. And so Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson have somehow become the twin harbingers of world famine. I could play a piano made out of the consecrated bones of Shaka Kahn and Paul McCartney and salvation would still just be an offering idly pondered by the gods. I can be Stevie Wonder again if I can just bridge there and here. I have to try. It’s all about the breath. Every image needs a polarity to summon and stabilize it. The image our mind forms around. Stevie Wonder tracing a nine-foot diameter circle on the hardwood with a bag of pink salt. Breathwork. Gesticulations both sacred and heretical. He opens a channel toward Epsilon Eridani. Static. Turns the dial of time. Static. Smashes the dial with the nomina magica he was born with. Time howls. History is what we escape. I, Stevie Wonder, am telling you to run. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**STEVIE WONDER**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**PAUL SIMON**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key5 to true) When Paul Simon tells the story of his life, he always refers to himself as two entities: two lonely travelers (two individual spheres of light, travelling thru the cosmos). One day, in the near future, Paul Simon will even tell a crowd of young adults he is from a distant planet that no one’s ever seen or will ever see. His favourite phrase is holygoddamnfuckingshit (but that’s for friends & family only). Everyday is like the end of the world but without the end of the world happening (or something). Anytime a crowd gathers, Paul Simon panics and says, Seems like an ambush, even tho I know it’s not. Harp music is playing. Paul Simon turns and points to Tina Turner and says, I know her; she knows me. He sketches this image of a woman with three breasts. Again, he talks about his planet and says it is more green than it is blue. Usually, everyday is a ton of rain and a dense fog, but you get used to it. Paul Simon points to a car in this car magazine on the coffee table and says, I am getting this next month. It’s a blue Maserati. Lionel Richie says, Oooohhh—beaucoup dollars. Paul Simon says, I am a forgotten cave. Paul Simon and a few close cohorts all huddle up and gather in the noise projection room. They watch a silent documentary about a kid who has been lost forever. Bob Dylan spits, That’s just a legend. In the next room: the sound of someone’s soul escaping from the meatspace. Everytime lightning strikes, there’s the image of a jeep dangling from a cliff (intercut with static-y thunderous claps and boom-ed out bass sounds). Paul Simon stands up and says, Where’s Quincy Jones at? I want to tell him his house has creaky vents. Someone points to a room ensconced in purple light. There’s an escalator with a sign that reads, Mud from the past. Paul Simon takes the escalator and mutters to himself, It’s nearly the future yet it still looks like 1981. He thinks about what he is going to say to Quincy Jones and realizes it’s everything no one ever wants to talk about. There’s muzak playing and the singer is lamenting about burning oceans. As the escalator goes up, Paul Simon catches a glimpse of one of the slaves outside, escaping from the slave house, in the rain. He punches the red emergency stop button on the escalator and runs past the ceremony room to the steam room. Inside: Willie Nelson & Al Jarreau. Paul Simon says, The slaves are escaping. Willie Nelson & Al Jarreau both look at each other and say (almost simultaneously), Not on my watch! Paul Simon feels relaxed now and like he’s done a good deed. He whistles a tune (that will later turn into Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes). James Ingram keeps trying to start the chimney (even tho there is a sign that reads: Do not try and start the chimney. At the moment, all it does is bellow blood and spill out violence). Paul Simon yelps and James Ingram stops and looks. Paul Simon points at the sign and James Ingram smiles and says, Oh hey. Yeah. Of course. Thanks. Paul Simon wanders through hallways and tiptoes around the pools of mercury (this is near the black light and red light rooms). A reporter accosts him in the hallway and says, What’s next, for you, Mr. Simon? Paul Simon says, The American Dream of a planet in space, naturally. The reporter seems satisfied so he walks away. Paul Simon calls a film director and says, Make your next film about mountains and make sure there’s dolphins with explosives strapped to their undersides—like, their bellies! There’s a sculpture in the laundry room and Paul Simon swears he’s seen it before (he just cannot, for the life of him, remember where). A sign underneath reads: Metal & Rust from the Year 2077. There’s a forest of tubes and wires and oil and gunsmoke in the attic and for some reason, someone’s shoes by the door (they’re filled with orange sand). Paul Simon dials 1-800-DETECTIVE and asks for the best there is. He tells the secretary to tell the detective to call this case something like, Jellied Gasoline at the Lakehouse or the Forgotten Tombs of Osiris. There’s camouflaged crystal skulls near the saltwater fish tanks but Paul Simon can see right thru them. He crushes them (one by one) in his hands and inhales the dust. He says, A lesser daemon wouldn’t know better. A portal opens up, somewhere in the home—Paul Simon doesn’t know where, but somewhere, he can feel the power bubbling and surging and coursing through meatspace. Paul Simon points to Cyndi Lauper (referring to her as Woman on the Moon) and says, The cursed branches of the hanging tree have opened, relinquish your scroll, at once, for the forlorn peasants have abandoned their sinful ways! [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**PAUL SIMON**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**KENNY ROGERS**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key6 to true) This drink Bette Midler just handed me tastes like a gin & piss but I’ve got manners so I say Ah, refreshing. I walk around taking it all in. Most everybody here is cresting the wave and aside from a few outliers the aggregate aura is a pale tangerine. Quincy and I go way back. I remember him pulling me aside over a steam pit on the pink sands of Lysthantcia and telling me very pointedly, The birds sing because their home is still alive. Everybody is occupied with this elaborate yarn Dionne Warwick is spinning about a prison break in Qolqata so I take the opportunity to pour my drink into an overgrown terrarium. Paul Simon is laughing a little too hard and too long at what’s not even a punchline. The moon is a slice of rogue gyre devouring eleventeen dimensions. A baby alligator sits mouth agape in a corner pocket of the pool table. It terrifies me. It’s late so I flip the hourglass in my chest. I’m pouring myself a real drink when I hear a familiar voice and it makes me feel a stutter in the part of my amorous field that accrues temporal debt. I hear it again and now I’m standing in front of the hall closet and I say, Dolly that you? I open the closet. I reach between some furs and feel along the wall and click open a secret door. I’m feeling like I should renege on this idea (to walk thru a secret door and poke around) but it’s already happening. I’m standing in the unfinished bowels of this house. They’re lit by a string of xmas bulbs like radioactive polyps. Weird things in here, like a combination-locked suitcase with a tag that says don’t open ‘til Nov 9 1989 and a giant block of salt hanging by a chain over an elaborate matrix of PVC pipe. I see two eye-level holes in the wall so of course I walk up to them with my face and see what I can see. It’s the Apéritif room. Steve Perry is standing there saying something to Daryl Hall and then Daryl Hall says Shit here he comes act natural and then Dan Ackroyd shows up and says Hey guys! Daryl Hall says Hey and Steve Perry nods and says, Dan. Nobody really says anything and then Dan Ackroyd says, It’s weird how this painting looks like Kenny Rogers even though it’s not even a person. Daryl Hall says, Holy shit you’re right. Steve Perry says, It really does. They are all looking at my eyes so I duck away and walk around the corner to another set of holes. It’s the Darkroom but the lights are on. Bob Dylan is there looking totally lost, and Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder are taking turns mimicking his singing voice at him and saying things like, Now you try it! I move on to the next set of holes and I have no idea what room this is but most of the Jacksons who aren’t Michael are here. They’re wearing shimmery robes and Marlon is holding an action figure of Michael in that outfit he wore to last year’s Grammys, and a packet of McDonalds ketchup. I think, What the fuck is this. They swing their heads my direction so I’m like, Did I say that outloud? And then I’m like, Did I say that outloud? I run to the next holes and they’re looking out onto a balcony. The view is like a magazine of views. Sheila E. is holding a gigantic phone with an antenna that looks like a murder weapon. She’s backlit by the quarter-moon and a greenish mist. She’s telling the phone things like: Everything is going just like we said it would; and: Pretty sure it can just shed its skin like a snake; and: Fuck you Prince Rogers; and: Stop talking to me like I don’t know how to play the goddamn drums. She takes a forceful drag off a cigarette and says, Only thing more powerful than a god is the death of a god. The xmas lights flicker and there’s a deep, monstrous groan that I somehow know is coming from the house itself. There’s a gelatinous ooze on the floor I’ve got a bad feeling about. I need to get out of here. I don’t have a choice. I’m being expelled through some kind of peristalsis toward a small nautical window. I crash through it. Jesus Christ I’m in outer space. I’m staring at Earth. I think I’m on a satellite but maybe it’s space junk, I dunno. What’s the difference. I can already feel every fluid in my body simmering to a boil. This image pops in my head of me and Mr. Wizard talking about the human body and outer space and him saying how you should fight your instincts and just inhale the void if you want to extend your life from a few seconds to a few more seconds. I’m really aware right now how our lives are just the time it takes time to end. I let go of the junk/satellite with a push. For a moment I think it’s not enough, but it is. To reenter the atmosphere as a fiery sign of what’s to come. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**KENNY ROGERS**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**JAMES INGRAM**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key7 to true) From out of the ceiling, a grey whale stuck by the harpoon of time. There’s this guy playing guitar in a room that isn’t a room (with wood panel walls and all). He is singing a song about a man with a moustache on the sunburnt surface of Io. As Willie Nelson curses the waves, violet smokes erupts from volcanoes nestled & hidden behind the Hollywood Hills. James Ingram tugs at his jeans and points to the ceiling and says, Crystal jets in the sky! Silhouetted men wearing ski masks run across the backs & tops of mountains, in search of James Ingram. And James Ingram knows this. He buys a house made of glass and says to the real estate agent, I made a deal with someone I should have never made a deal with. There’s protein powder on the floor. The real estate agent’s assistant, she brushes at some of it with her stiletto & shows James Ingram her marbled index fingers and says, I used to close sales. A man in the street points to the house made of glass and James Ingram says, What? The man lifts up his shirt and on his stomach, the words stolen and history. There is a concierge bomb threat in Tokyo and a man named Ryoko keeps calling James Ingram so he can talk him through the crisis. Bruce Springsteen keeps sending James Ingram pigeon messages that say things like impeccable words and you are daft and nothing happens after it is all over. And Bruce Springsteen keeps laughing. Tina Turner is reading a book titled Mind Thesaurus and in six weeks, Bob Dylan will keep calling Mike Tyson on the phone to tell him to invest in dinosaur clay. There’s a dark film covering the bottom layer of the purple evening sky. There’s a show on the television about this place called the Goodlands. Lionel Richie slaps his knee and yells out, (to the room mostly) Ain’t no such thing! James Ingram walks by a bunch of debutantes and calls them the Goon Squad. He laughs while nobody else is laughing. Someone from the Goon Squad inhales squid. James Ingram looks up into the heavens and prays for powdered gloves and maybe a dirtied handkerchief. A red Ferrari zooms by and there’s a man on the side of the street and he says, People and their goats. In the Capricorn Room, there is a woman with one hand and Lionel Richie keeps saying, Where is your other hand? She appears distracted. There’s a shirt in a red case with emergency glass and it says, a dozen victories after nine hundred losses. Mustaff’ah the Somali pirate emerges from the cavernous basement. Tina Turner says, Mustaff’ah, what’s it been, something like nine years? Onyx fantasies inform a high rise in the middle of a tropical storm in Malaysia. Inanimate objects suddenly become sentient and infected palm trees walk the Earth. James Ingram feels the power of voodoo at the base of the floorboards and all he can do is keep chanting, to himself (mostly). That forever stain. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**JAMES INGRAM**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**TINA TURNER**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key8 to true) A light snow dusts her shoulders. The electromagnetic field that is her body’s body buzzes with nostalgic stratagems. She sticks out her tongue to taste a drifting snowflake and immediately dry heaves. It’s not snow—it’s ash! She feels a single, ambitious isotope burn a trail from her tongue through her bloodstream to the base of her spine, where it sprouts like a seed. Every seed is a future. Every future is death. Every death is what Tina Turner was born to absorb. The impenetrable darkness of the forest edge kneels before the impenetrable darkness she harbors inside her. She steps over the quivering body of Bruce Springsteen and out of reach of the pale light of Quincy Jones’ scale model for daemonic civilization. The forest is where life eats life. Tina Turner is here because she has a standing invitation. She walks: holding her arms out in offering to the wind and the retribution it carries. Tina Turner walks through the thinning trees and the fog and ash and moonlight. Stones shaped like feral children. A sickening mound of flowering tobacco. A metallic drip in her throat. Something buzzes and pops overhead. Insects swarm. She is walking and letting their collective need feed on her flesh. The seed at the base of her spine is now a sapling of fear. Every breath is taken from the future by force. Every step is a prison break. Tina Turner is not above boiling her own piss and inhaling the vapor to stay alive. Her synapses blister. Her skin chafes against her bones. She thinks, The moon is an obscure carcass reflecting the fire of creation. She walks. The trees that remain are petrified. There’s lightning, panic. Thunder shaking the leaves off the full-grown terror at the base of her spine. What’s left of this desolate nightscape scatters, but not Tina Turner. The electromagnetic field that is her body’s body heaves and bursts, annihilating all freestanding forms from the horizon of possibility. Tina Turner: traversing the code from which time is holographed. A tiny, dimensionless orb hovers just out of temporal potential. She renders a mind and plucks the orb into material being. She calculates its zero point. She stops walking and spins it with the seeds of her ur-breath. She calls it, Earth. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**TINA TURNER**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**BILLY JOEL**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key9 to true) Billy Joel wants to know which godname you use facing west at 3am on a Tuesday in the Northern Hemisphere in January. He turns to Eddie Murphy and says, I don’t really know how to snap necks so I’m just sawing off heads, is this right? But there is no Eddie Murphy. There’s the faint echo of Frida’s “I Know There’s Something Going On” rumbling through the valley. Billy Joel adjusts the pouches lining his utility belt. He tosses a fistful of cinnamon and turmeric to form a billowing, burnt orange cloud. He says, Every question is a shipwreck. The cloud responds, Every answer is a mutiny. The mob rule at the end of his mind cuts the rope. Billy Joel is roaming the forest with a thermal headset and a machete. He stumbles through a blue mindscape toward obscure splotches of yellowy phlox. Later he’s draining rabbit blood into a vat of fatty remains. There’s a scent in the air of off-brand flatulence. The vat overflows. Billy Joel wrings out the last rabbit carcass and says something Aramaic-sounding. He’s improv’ing. The sanctuary is in flames. Billy Joel circles it dancing a profane jig. He is sweating so hard right now. His hard hat keeps slipping over his eyes but this just makes him jig even more profanely. Huey Lewis joins him in a synchronized jig. Kim Carnes joins him and Huey Lewis in a synchronized jig. Kenny Loggins joins him and Huey Lewis and Kim Carnes in a synchronized jig. The night is a white blur of diminishment. All bodies orbit and are orbited. There’s vomit spraying from Billy Joel’s ecstatic maw. Now he’s stabbing at the ground with his face. The trees part, and the colossal form of Yah Q’gghrth steps forward. It towers over him. Billy Joel is prostrating. He says, I mUsT hAvE pAsSaGe! The form of Yah Q’gghrth shakes its head. Billy Joel says, HaVe I nOt DiSpLaYeD a PeNiTeNt PhYsIcS? Do I nOt EmBoDy ThE rEqUiSiTe DiSgRaCe AnD aCuMeN? BeHoLd ThE jIg! He gestures at the event horizon formed by the orbit of Huey Lewis and Kim Carnes and Kenny Loggins. He says, BeHoLd ThE cEnTeR fRoM wHiCh We’Ve AlL bEeN sPiT, iTs InFiNiTe GrAvItY! HoMe Is WhErE oBlIvIoN iS! TiMe Is ThE mOuTh ThAt SwAlLoWs Us! [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**BILLY JOEL**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**MICHAEL JACKSON**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key10 to true) Right now I have on corduroy pants with a big hole in the knee and a pink shirt and tie. Bette Midler is passing out cocktails but I’m buried in this crushed velvet chair Quincy got from I think Andre the Giant. Also, I don’t drink. Sundays I like to fast then dance for thirty minutes nonstop. I was talking shop earlier with Al Jarreau and The Pointer Sisters but this fireplace is really something else. I just had to sit in this huge chair and check it out. The carvings feel older than Egypt and it’s just so big, I swear you could dance with your dancers in it. The fire, is all the fire in the world. All the color of all the fire in the world. It whispers my middle name, Joseph, like a curse. I’m staring into the flames and it hurts but also I’m seeing things. Like right now I’m staring into the flames and I see the outline of a stage backlit by the cosmos. My brothers are swinging their instruments across the skyscape like scythes. I love my brothers, even Jermaine. We are towering, spectral demiurges captivating an alien planet in slow motion. I have never been as pure as I am right now in this black sequined silk jacket. I hike my trousers and spin in all 87 dimensions and descend the stairs. My socks will blind you if you’re a bad person. My spirit emanates and spirals off my body like poverty. The floor screams for the ceiling to join it. My orbit tilts. Something is wrong. I smell smoke. I smell hair burning. Oh my G-d: I’m on fire. Men who are not my brothers tackle me to the ground and lift me up. I’m coughing up pain and time. I’m in a hospital bed with a tube in my penis. I’m being wheeled into a courthouse holding a bottle of pills like a bomb threat. I’m wiping the contours of a hyperbaric chamber with a diaper. This is all happening in the flames. What am I watching. I’m peeing on the foyer floor of a land that will never be. I’m wearing some ridiculous wig because my earlobe is now the tip of my nose. I don’t understand. I ask for Fentanyl and they give me Pepsi. The sky behind the sun is black. I’m telling Steven Spielberg: Steven, I’m wiring $150,000 to a bank in Mali so the bank will sacrifice 42 cows because I want you, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg to die really bad deaths. What am I talking about! I love Steven. I cried making that storybook with E.T. As long as there are underprivileged children in the world, I will continue to wear this armband. The air goes dark and Jane Fonda is the most perfect silhouette floating in this pond with me and talking about all kinds of things, you name it: politics, philosophers, racism, Vietnam, acting, all kinds of things. It’s magic. I feel I’m Peter Pan as well as Methusalah, and a child. I tell her: I’m not an angel, I know. I’m not like a Mormon or an Osmond or something where everything’s straight. I love realism. I don’t like plastics. I cry out Oh Jane! but the pond swallows and spits me out of a manhole in downtown Los Angeles. It’s after midnight. I’m surrounded by rotting bodies draped in rags and a full moon. We are dead, and we are one. These are my people. Life is a syncopated problem we’re trying to solve. My date wants me to walk her home but we just want her brains. I’m telling John and Deborah Landis, What’s important is that I’m monochromatic and that I not look like my dad. I’m writing 100 MILLION on the bathroom mirror in blood-red lipstick, and blood. I just have to asphyxiate in this chair my entire adult life until my face becomes the latex. All children, except one, grow up. I love children so much. Thank God for children. Know what else I love? Mannequins. I like to surround myself with people I want to be friends with. I’m watching Bugs Bunny at Paul McCartney’s place with Paul McCartney because he understands that cartoons are unlimited. That when you’re unlimited, it’s the ultimate. I clap my hands overhead and there’s blue sparks and the night sky ruptures into a golden spray of light. Elizabeth Taylor’s private jet pirouettes above the clouds as she wipes the suicide from my eyes. There’s so much danger and joy in life that every time I call Boy George on the telephone I say, This is Houston Hawkins may I speak with Boy George please, and it is just so funny because you can tell he’s sure it’s me but he’s also not sure because I never break character. I’ve always hated the word acting—to say, I’m an actor. It should be more like, a believer. I just like to really forget. The smell of saline before the Propofol hits. Magic Johnson dressed up like Sun Ra. I’d hate to play my own life story. One minute I’m tucked under my Tiger Lily sheets, the next I’m pinned to a cold metal table via some kind of transdimensional psychokinesis. A tiny gray alien body with large eyes and no mouth touches me until I give it sperm. I cry a whisper: Billie Jean. The alien Billie Jean points at a giant television screen displaying images of London, Paris, Tokyo, New York. All of them lit with impossible, radioactive fire. I can’t stop weeping. Once the music plays, it creates me. The instruments move through me, they control me. My fans are the wave, and what’s crushed beneath wave. I care about starvation and I love children and I want to do something about the future. If I could, I would sleep onstage. My attitude is if fashion says it’s forbidden, I’m going to do it. I wrap myself in Muscles the boa constrictor and ask Bubbles the chimp what’s good in life. I just want Prince to get over himself and be my friend. Freddie Mercury will never forgive me. The phone rings. I pick it up and Andy Warhol says, I might go see an English rock group at the Ritz tonight called Duran Duran, do you know them? I say, No. I hang up. My life is made of straw. I collect interest on the gold bricks of the gold brick road until I can’t. In the fire, I do divination with David Bowie and the Elephant Man’s bones until our space suits cry space tears. The clouds part from the moon and my father howls. My father, the Universal monster. I panic through the trees like E.T. from the bad men but the fog is too thick. My father’s claws are pulling me out of the womb. He slays a tree in anger and spits through his fangs, You belong to History! I scream, Joseph, you are not my father, God the father is! I’m watching all this, stuffing popcorn in my face like it’s oxygen and knives and diazepam. The universe is a spaceship. I live here with the alien Billie Jean and our black-eyed star children. They are made with my sperm. All 4.85 billion of them. When they cry because of some indiscernible pain, the abyss of creation hears laughter. The asteroid Eros careens through the limitless void making a sound. The sound is: I am what my heart looks like. The sound says: ... in triumph. My brothers and I take the stage, for forever this time. Our outfits are cut from the flesh of outer space. My hair is flame. My face is wax and ashes. I am alone. I made a deal with myself if I win one more award, which is this award, which is seven, which is a record, I would take off my sunglasses. So I do, and it blinds you with the fire of a thousand black suns. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**MICHAEL JACKSON**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] <center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**QUINCY JONES**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire. Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire. (Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross). Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards. He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand. Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face. Her dress spirals into the future. It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years. He sees Kenny Rogers and says, Kenny you labyrinth—I have just the thing. Kenny Rogers stares at the scroll in his hand like a born again linguist. The birds cry about their homeland. To the Earth, it is always night. Quincy kneels before the shadow of Tina Turner and offers her shadow a scroll. He measures the parallax of John Oates and Daryl Hall and tosses a single scroll into the void they share. The air is a miracle to be destroyed. Every tree here is worth a continuous stream of human lifetimes. Suits the color of videotape. Dionne Warwick shimmies a cape off her shoulders to reveal a lesser cape and Quincy gifts her a scroll wrapped in Soviet currency. The wind introduces pain and regret. The scroll Quincy gave Willie Nelson induces a world birth experience. Bob Dylan spills onto the red carpet like he’s washing up on a beach like a bottle with a rolled up scrap of paper inside. Quincy tells him exactly this and folds a scroll into his hand. Language is a biological weapon. Every mic is a hot mic. Somewhere, something. Quincy does a calculation that renders him invisible as Madonna emerges from the firmament. Kenny Loggins is possessed by the scroll he now possesses. The surface of the moon withstands so much. Sugar as a vehicle of empire. Art deco and laser beams. Quincy spreads his wings for Cyndi Lauper and torches a scroll in her hands. Stevie Wonder co-scribing his own scroll. Lionel Richie pollinating his and everyone else’s scroll. Michael Jackson bingeing and purging his scroll with powdered sugar and honey. Behind every limousine, a limousine. Prince rolls his eyes and says to Sheila E., Here take this. Paul Simon shows up with a lapdog and Quincy pulls a scroll from behind Paul Simon’s ear and Paul Simon accepts it, astonished. Even with a scroll in his back pocket Huey Lewis feels naked without the News. A helicopter hovers beyond the soundscape. Steve Perry’s voice shredding souls not scrolls. The absence of even the idea of insects. His and her Corvettes. Al Jarreau adjusting his posture to align with the curvature of Earth and scroll. Kim Carnes showing up like a past life proselytizing the scrolls of tomorrow. James Ingram folding a scroll and folding it again and folding it one more time. Bruce Springsteen grips his scroll as if to say, Just say the word. The night makes no mistake. This is the end of the red carpet. Quincy slips Ray Charles a scroll from outside the crucible of time, inside the theater. Bodies cascade into patterns, patterns collapse into seats like a chorus: Harry Belafonte, Bette Midler, Lindsey Buckingham, Bob Geldof, La Toya Jackson, Jackie Jackson, Marlon Jackson, Randy Jackson, Tito Jackson, Waylon Jennings, Dan Aykroyd, Jeffrey Osborne, The Pointer Sisters, The News, Smokey Robinson. Billy Joel sweats alone in a bathroom stall. The light flickers. He touches a scroll to a mirror long enough to inhale and break the wax seal. He reads: Michael Jackson & Lionel Richie cordially invite you to a great summoning. Quincy Jones will lead the proceedings of this historic occurrence. Tonight. After the American Music Awards. [[x.->00]]<img src="https://imgur.com/Iiud6KQ.gif"alt="00"> (text-colour:navy)[WE R THE WORLD by Dan Hoy & Mike Kleine An interactive non-game Copyright (c) April 2019 by Dan Hoy & Mike Kleine Please copy and play freely v.1.0] //January 28, 1985. The recording of (text-style: "underline")[We Are the World] at Quincy Jones’ mountain chateau in Topanga Canyon, after the American Music Awards. Quincy Jones has invited over 40 artists to record a benefit single, but the harmonics are coded to unlock another dimension and summon a great power. Each chapter focuses on one artist’s occult/horror experience while at the lodge//. (if: $key1 is true)[ I. [[Quincy Jones->01_quincy_jones]]]\ (else:)[I. [[Yuincq Ensoj->01_quincy_jones]]] (if: $key1 is true)[ II. [[ Lionel Richie->02]]]\ (else:)[II. Loien Liicher] (if: $key2 is true)[ III. [[Stevie Wonder->03]]]\ (else:)[III. Dreno Weevsti] (if: $key2 is true)[ IV. [[Paul Simon->04]]]\ (else:)[IV. Alup Minos] (if: $key2 is true)[ V. [[Kenny Rogers->05]]]\ (else:)[V. Nekny Gersro] (if: $key2 is true)[ VI. [[James Ingram->06]]]\ (else:)[VI. Semaj Ngmrin] (if: $key2 is true)[ VII. [[Tina Turner->07]]]\ (else:)[VII. Inna Rutter] (if: $key2 is true)[ VIII. [[Billy Joel->08]]]\ (else:)[VIII. Boil Jelly] (if: $key2 is true)[ IX. [[Michael Jackson->09]]]\ (else:)[IX. Janacek Molisch] (if: $key2 is true)[ X. [[Diana Ross->10]]]\ (else:)[X. Dani Soars] (if: $key2 is true)[ XI. [[Dionne Warwick->11]]]\ (else:)[XI. AI Neck Windrow] (if: $key2 is true)[ XII. [[Willie Nelson->12]]]\ (else:)[XI. Lliiew Sonlen] (if: $key2 is true)[ XIII. [[Al Jarreau->13]]]\ (else:)[XIII. La Rajraue] (if: $key2 is true)[ XIV. [[Bruce Springsteen->14]]]\ (else:)[XIV. Cureb Eentsgingrs] (if: $key2 is true)[ XV. [[Kenny Loggins->15]]]\ (else:)[XV. Klingon Synge] (if: $key2 is true)[ XVI. [[Steve Perry->16]]]\ (else:)[XVI. Eevts Rr'yep] (if: $key2 is true)[ XVII. [[Daryl Hall->17]]]\ (else:)[XVII. Hally Lardl] (if: $key2 is true)[ XVIII. [[Huey Lewis->18]]]\ (else:)[XVIII. Luise Whey] (if: $key2 is true)[ XIX. [[Cindy Lauper->19]]]\ (else:)[XIX. Decay Lip Run] (if: $key2 is true)[ XX. [[Kim Carnes->20]]]\ (else:)[XX. Crams Nike] (if: $key2 is true)[ XXI. [[Bob Dylan->21]]]\ (else:)[XXI. DNA Lobby] (if: $key2 is true)[ XXII. [[Ray Charles->22]]]\ (else:)[XXII. Ashly Racer] (if: $key13 is true)[ XIII. [[The Chrous->23]]]\ (else:)[XIII. Cher Shout](if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**DIANA ROSS**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key11 to true) Harry Belafonte burns some tires and thinks, This planet is unfit for rule. He looks up at the anamorphic mind/screen the others call Sky. Something is happening. He has a feeling like a witness. Streaks of green and orange breach the mind/screen. The clouds drop to their knees. For Harry Belafonte this is basically it. The mountains surrounding the mountain chateau collapse as the body of Diana Ross collides with the body of Earth and the oceans cough up their dead. Diana Ross emerges from a Diana-shaped crater and mutters, You get what you pay for. She calls out to the nearby silhouettes of Lionel Richie and Smokey Robinson but they’ve already succumbed to a lotus-eating slumber. Through the iridium fog a team of sled-dogs pulling Empress Nagako surround her and lap at her loneliness. The Empress lets Diana Ross nurse on her imperial lifeforce and says, That’s enough. It will never be enough. Back in her crater Diana Ross summons the ghosts of Josephine Baker, Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters so they can answer her in unison: The Sun is a violation of the highest order (the Sky). Diana Ross is thinking of how to leverage this insight into a paying gig on B’arq’lajiin but the barometrics prove too much. Her flesh vessel becomes unmoored from its dimensional scaffold. For a prototype of some esteem this is a worst case scenario. Out of desperation she tries to imagine hate-fucking Gene Simmons but can only imagine love-fucking him. She gives up and drifts like flotsam on the mind/screen. Nearby, the white disc of anonymity orbits absolutely nothing. A newborn babe rests at its center as it spins relentlessly through the void. Diana Ross is in direct conflict with its centrifugal force. She crawls across the grooves of the disc toward the newborn babe who is now a young boy. The boy, now a teenager, tells her (in melodic falsetto), The fabric of time is out of style. The teenager, now a 22 year-old miracle, is too old to suckle stardust but this is exactly what he does. The sullen Mrth’uu-gw’h watch him churn deathcream into flesh, in disbelief. Their rapturous applause destroys worlds. From the Liqquid zone, Diana Ross cries out: Ladies and gentlemen, my baby, Eater of Dreams! [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**DIANA ROSS**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**DIONNE WARWICK**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key12 to true) I am that Dionne, who, vowed to Apollo from her infancy, was early initiated into all the arts of the dragon. Even before the age of seven I had already been introduced into the temple of Mithra. Three years later, my parents taking me to Athens to be received as citizen, I was permitted likewise to penetrate the mysteries of Ceres lamenting her daughter, and I also became the guardian of the Dragon in the Temple of Pallas. Ascending after that to the summit of Mount Olympus, the Seat of the Gods, as it is called, there too I was initiated into the sense, and the real meaning of their speeches and their clamorous manifestations. It is there that I was made to see in imagination those trees and all those herbs that operate such prodigies with the help of daemons. And I saw their dances, their warfares, their snares, illusions and promiscuities. I heard their singing. I saw finally, for forty consecutive days, the phalanx of the gods and goddesses, sending from Olympus, as though they were Kings, spirits to represent them on earth and act in their name among all the nations. At that time I lived entirely on fruit, eaten only after sunset, the virtues of which were explained to me by the seven priests of the sacrifices. When I was fifteen, my parents desired that I should be made acquainted, not only with all the natural laws in connection with the generation and corruption of bodies on earth, in the air and in the seas, but also with all the other forces grafted on these by the Prince of the World in order to counteract their primal and divine constitution. At twenty, I went to Memphis, where, penetrating into the Sanctuaries, I was taught to discern all that pertains to the communications of daemons with terrestrial matters, their aversion for certain places, their sympathy and attraction for others, their expulsion from certain places, certain objects and laws, their persistence in preferring darkness and their resistance to light. There I learned the number of the fallen Princes, and that which takes place in human souls and bodies they enter into communication with. I learnt the analogy that exists between earthquakes and rains, between the motion of the earth and the motion of the seas. I saw the spirits of the Giants plunged in subterranean darkness and seemingly supporting the earth like a man carrying a burden on his shoulders. When thirty, I travelled to Chaldea to study there the true power of the air, placed by some in the fire and by the more learned in light. I was taught to see that the planets were in their variety as dissimilar as the plants on earth, and the stars were like armies ranged in battle order. I knew the Chaldean division of Ether into 365 parts, and I perceived that every one of the daemons who divide it among themselves was endowed with that material force that permitted him to execute the orders of the Prince and guide all the movements therein. They explained to me how those Princes had become participants in the Council of Darkness, ever in opposition to the Council of Light. I got acquainted with the Mediators, and upon seeing the covenants they were mutually bound by, I was struck with wonder upon learning the nature of their oaths and observances. Believe me, I saw the Devil; believe me I have embraced him when I was yet quite young, and he saluted me by the title of the new Jambres, declaring me worthy of my ministry. He promised me continual help during life with a principality after death. Having become in great honour under his tuition, he placed under my orders a phalanx of daemons, and when I bid him good-bye, he exclaimed, “Courage, good success, excellent Dionne,” rising up from his seat to see me to the door, plunging thereby those present into a profound admiration. I am that Dionne who, by the end of her forty-fifth year, will be martyred by the Roman authorities. Beheaded on the banks of the river Gallus. I haven’t been this high since the Catholic Church excised me from the roll of Saints in ‘68. Take me to Damascus to be tortured. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**DIONNE WARWICK**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**WILLIE NELSON**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key13 to true) Half (Willie) Nelson from behind—sometimes after midnight in the pulpy greyness of the lenticular sky—a crepuscular murder near the Orient Express’ finite ghost—Fujiyoko insight (but broken for now)—the mind of a killer (bee)—suicide instinct at the harpoon store—kill yourself after you kill yourself (but don’t let them kill themselves)—bleed onto a tree & watch the tree grow into you—attempt to stop an immovable object; but only with the mind—break her kneecaps—inhale the dust—consume their flesh—erase the Ethiopian moon—forget how to speak (and remember how to sing)—invade her mind before the next Earth reaches apex (or dawn)—cancel the debutante & smear the blood of goats onto wood posts—transfix & conceal the top layer of flesh—the bottom of the ocean, so darq (yet so lovely)—a fog that comes only once every five years (and it’s not from San Fran)—angular mistakes at the angle of yaw—surround the castle & shit in the motes—pitchforks and squares—impregnate a crowd with one source—mind bullets—cancer feet—tight & swollen—I clap my hands and she disappears—I clap my hands and she re-appears—I re-read the book on Satan—Matisse disappears into the ground—double take—I crush his soul—Cyndi Lauper’s cursed soul—I clap my hands and she remains. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**WILLIE NELSON**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**AL JARREAU**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key14 to true) There’s a tv playing and there’s this hydra at the caves. I’m totally banking on society’s collapse--all iminent-like. Any day now. Any moment, tomorrow. Somebody who says she’s Billy Joel’s girl is in this tee shirt and it reads, the eventual ruin of the sultan of somewhere. On one of the speakers in the house, a woman keeps repeating: three-five-seven. A typical Monday in this neck of the woods, you could say. Pretty much, I look at this entire occasion as a barbeque for the wicked. A way to make us forget what’s been forgotten but then remembered, not long after. I envision a different party, where I am host, shouting, MORPHINE DRIPS FOR EVERYONE! I overhear a conversation about someone’s uncle, dead in Pasadena, but not bloating yet. And then in the corner of the room, northwest-like, Quincy’s poor pet scorpion, Spartacus--an entire life wasted inside a see-thru mason jar. You will rise again, in your next next life. Spartacus, I know it. And we will all have to face the firing squad. But I am ready. My fondest memory will forever be the warmth of the sun on my face in Tunisia. Summer of 1968. It took seventeen rounds, but then finally: that concussion! I know when to ask for more when there is no more to give, it is a special talent. I keep preaching at the rocks, for I have grown bored of Earthly socialites. Always walking, all elegant-like, toward the broken sun, with chapped hands. Someone stick a razor blade inside an amuse gueule and make this interesting already! I say nothing tho. Tina Turner saunters by. We nod in silence. Tomorrow, Black Tuesday! I am not prepared. I’ve nothing to wear. The terrible things I’ve done. One dose of applesauce (at night) to cure all problems. Applesauce and protein shakes. What keeps me up at night: the deep Earth rumblings, always because of magma and the green escaping from the forrest(sic). In an adjacent universe, I keep reliving the same loop, over and over and over again, where I abandon my children (and it feels so good). Then there’s that aerial shot of someone suiciding near the hills. A helmet is crushed. A waiter offers a cut of pigeon toast. Allah’akbar Jimji. Allah’akbar. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**AL JARREAU**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key15 to true) What life was like before Marduk raised up Imhullu the atrocious wind and grappled Tiamat alone and flung her down and straddled her carcass. Glory days, riot nights. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**KENNY LOGGINS**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key16 to true) Kenny Loggins taps the butler on the shoulder and says, Excuse me, there’s humans over there acting like dogs. The butler runs into the room adjacent, to take care of the problem. Kenny Loggins turns to Cyndi Lauper and excuses himself. He salivates at the thought of the planet Jupiter. He looks out a window, at the planet and says, You are truly O.G. After this song is done, Kenny Loggins thinks, I want to hire dolphins and bats and whales and create an album made entirely of echolocation sounds. Kenny Loggins pulls out his pocket journal and revises his notes for Camping on the Surface of a Destroyed Orb. He joins Stevie Wonder in the boiler room and they discuss dying again, for the seventeenth time. Stevie Wonder says, My left arm is hurting again. Kenny Loggins says, That makes sense. A television reporter says, A lunar eclipse is about to happen. Kenny Loggins fantasizes about breaking & entering into a home he knows he will own twelve years from now. There’s a quick break and someone Kenny Loggins has never seen in his life before says, Take fifteen everyone. Kenny Loggins runs outside and finds an alleyway. He shoots a woman for the first time (his hand in his left jacket pocket) and there’s the spray of sacred blood onto a brand new Lanvin mesh shearling jacket. The black god Gh’vxxvy Dh’ruum is summoned. Kenny Loggins says, I want a bomb threat in Tokyo and within five years, an art museum somewhere near my apartment, painted a cosmic latte. James Ingram saunters by and puts up five fingers and say, Tomorrow, daggers after five? Some people have stopped practicing singing and in Ballroom C, there’s DJ Ripped Face rapping into a microphone about the Vietnam war. One of the lyrics is Trippin’ on the soul of all those dead soldiers. John Oates is in the business room asking for forgiveness (for something that can probably never be forgiven). There’s a deadpan-sort of voice emitting from the theatre room and Kenny Loggins thinks, Who is that? He rounds the corner and sees the face of the voice but it’s so bright it’s blinding. A voice in his head keeps saying, All these people and no one will ever believe you. There’s the image of a lake that has dried out on the wall. Kenny Loggins inspects the colours and notices a woman (in the image) wearing a bonnet. She is also drinking Coca Cola (in the sun) instead of Pepsi. Kenny Loggins spits on the image and shouts, Glass bottles! There’s a projector playing a video of an elephant dancing in the middle of the street. It’s sometime after nine and all Kenny Loggins can see is the colour of the moon after midnight and how everything is just basked in this wonderful sort of blue. The curvature of the Earth, right now, allows for a majestic view of what it looks like when it is raining over Bangladesh. A servant appears and says, Anything, sir? Kenny Loggins says, Right now, I am breathing in the atmosphere, even though I’ve run out of of inhaler fuel. The servant laughs and says, Flanking the enemy is an underwater battle. Kenny Loggins lights a cigar and says, Give me some skin. They high five and Kenny Loggins lifts his shirt (to reveal another shirt) with the words, Terror in the Ganja. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**KENNY LOGGINS**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**STEVE PERRY**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key17 to true) It’s a desert of coagulated blood. Antennas on the roof of a house in Brasil, broadcasting pirate radio signals, in hopes of re-igniting the coup of 1978. Important people in important suits to a mountain that doesn’t care. A darkness of night that’s too easy. A hijab, all dirty and torn. Nothing you can do will fix that. Blood-soaked underwear in the hot tub. Broken fingers gripping a solo cup. On the end table, near all the rubies and ankhs and baroques and curve pendants and puff rings and stretch bracelets and talismans and x rings and morganites--there’s a syringe, still full of squid ink. Huey Lewis perhaps? But there’s suffering, still, even after it’s all over. In the sands of Egypt and the rays of Tunisia. Steve Perry spots the venomous snake that waits for all who attempt to exit the maze (prematurely). The minotaur is there too. But forget the hydra. That’s easy. This is the real fucking deal. Turbulent sky waves that posses the keys to all our hearts, confiscated at the door and then desecrated at the altar, in the basement (with goat’s milk, cheese and blood; semen too, some). Silk moments that still happen (every couple seconds). Instant gratisfaction at the expense of your tormentors; this costs seventeen insta-life points. Relief while the gauntlet still appears--sometimes lavender and sometimes taupe. Night Vision goggles—only the best—to try and catch a glimpse of the forever light and its exposures throughout night. A solid canteen (but with spilled pride). Septic tank stories to tell near the salt water fish tanks. It smells like milk. It stinks like water. Then again, it is summer. The sewer at dusk. They’ll call the laundry man and the man with all the brooms. An effigy of a push man, in Tokyo, and then Dionne Warwick, staring at the sky and clouds—tears, massive ones; because her eye drops, they’re somewhere in the Western hemisphere. Staring at the clock again: 22h56. Tesseract. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**STEVE PERRY**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**DARYL HALL**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key18 to true) Daryl Hall shuts his eyes and hates The Police as hard as he can and disintegrates and reintegrates in the hall closet. It’s a walk-in closet. He walks out. Asks Quincy Jones how much a restoration job like this will set you back and Quincy Jones says, Before Christ. The kitchen paint seethes with sexual confusion. Daryl Hall has been thirsty his whole life so he opens the fridge. Shards of ice blister his face and he feels his future break off the infinitude of the present like an iceberg. Where a Diet Pepsi should be, an entire windswept continent of despair. A tiny figure flees across the vast white landscape inside the refrigerator. The structural violence of climate control. A jealous god’s ambient fluorescence. Daryl Hall zooms in. The figure is dressed in mortal peril and a mammoth boa and boots cut from sabertooth hide. Its radiant terror forms a venn diagram with Daryl Hall’s body and soul. The void around which his self gestates is disturbed. This disturbance vibrates a feeling, which sprouts a thought Daryl Hall ponders, then mutters: This is a solitary extinction event. Daryl Hall realizes in this moment (the moment of his utterance) that the figure traversing this hellscape is none other than the partner with whom he’s crafted twenty-nine top 40 hits and six #1 singles: John Oates. He lunges into the refrigerator to aid his other half but Smokey Robinson catches his arm and says, Daryl you need a coat, a winter coat, not this windbreaker shit. This is why Daryl Hall is down the hall opening a guest room closet. This is how he finds a facsimile of Quincy Jones’ body hanging on a coat hanger like a dessicated sack of skin. Daryl Hall stares in horror at his own thought, which is: This is exactly what Quincy Jones would look like without a skeletal structure or eyeballs. He touches it as if sampling fabric then smells his fingers. They smell like fresh flesh. The safety of ceilings and walls is unsafe. There will be no more #1s. Daryll Hall turns to go and stops. Quincy Jones is leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, legs crossed at the ankles, body backlit, face in shadow. And the voice of Quincy Jones says, Daryl my motherfucker, did you find what you were looking for? [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**DARYL HALL**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**HUEY LEWIS**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key19 to true) PART I Really any drug is fine. As long as we’re not the wedding band on a yacht, is my criteria. So as one gentleman and professional to another, Quincy, my man, thank you for the invite. Can I help you with that. No it’s alright I got it. Man this is some place you have here, Quincy. From the outside you wouldn’t guess it. It’s by design. I told Bucky I wanted to approximate the infinite regression of my life. Infinite regression, huh. Will The News be joining us this evening? They’re not here? No. Huh. There’s no accounting for traffic. True, true. I took the helicopter. Wow is that a bear? It’s a yeti. A what? Bigfoot. No shit. Did you shoot him? Not exactly. Watch your step there. We’re still rolling in the equipment. The Pointer Sisters just arrived. You’ve met Bette Midler, right? You know it. Hey Bette. Is Madonna here? I would hope not. Copy that. Listen, Quincy, I had some ideas about the harmonies. The harmony is exact. No I know, it’s great. That’s why I’m here. Loved the demo with Stevie. But listen, I had some ideas. Himmler had some ideas. Point taken. Like I said, any drug is fine. Hey is that Bob Dylan? On the couch? Yeah. It’s a pile of coats. Right. Like I said. Any drug. I have just the thing. Just down the hall here. The door at the end. That’s a lot of deadbolts. It’s where I keep my session tapes, among other artifacts. Here, go ahead. Down these stairs? You got it. Man that’s some breeze. Feels like Antarctica. I can just wait up here. No go ahead. I’m cool. Huey. Understood, here I go. Down the stairs. You coming? Right behind you. Wow, these torches light themselves? Crazy. Never seen that before. This is a lot of stairs. Not far now. What time you think we’ll finish up tonight? The morning. Like, 10 a.m.? As the sun rises for the final time and annihilates all other light. Perfect, I’ve got a flight at noon. Promo stuff. We’re doing a soundtrack. Oh man. What’s that smell? This is it. This is wha—woah what just happened. Quincy? What happened to the torches? I can’t see a goddamn thing. Quincy? Quincy? Distant hiss of air as the door at the top of the stairs clicks shut. Are you kidding me? Hey! What the fuck! The thundering echo of one deadbolt, then another, then several at once. Fuck! Fuck you Quincy Jones! Fuck you! PART II [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**HUEY LEWIS**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**CYNDI LAUPER**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key20 to true) Cyndi Lauper cuts sacred shapes out of colored paper and sticks them to her face with eyelash glue. Cream-stick eyeliner. Day-glo eyeshadow for a plaid effect to the cheekbones. Lionel Richie said it was ok to go against time travelers and Cyndi Lauper plans to do exactly that. This mirror is spattered with human remains but that’s not a Cyndi problem: that’s a Quincy problem. She stumbles out of the bathroom like a German submarine. Her bracelets announce her arrival. But she’s like, Wait how is this another bathroom? There’s no sink or mirrors or toilet or towel ring and the floor is hardwood instead of tile but the focal point of the room is definitely a clawfoot porcelain tub. Cyndi Lauper’s throat tightens. She says, Fragrant days make for violent nights. Her kimono pools at her feet as she approaches the tub. The hardwood trembles. Downstairs, Kenny Loggins wrestles with a chandelier like a child of divorce. Bette Midler is breaking a sweat on a stationary bike. In one of the twenty-eight other bathrooms, Dan Aykroyd methodically picks the skin off his face so he can free the lizard underneath. Cyndi Lauper yanks a pair of dice from her belt and makes a saving throw. It is time for her surgery. The tub steams. She presses the blade to her skin and swipes right. Blood spurts from her throat. She staggers, horrified, but undeterred. She peels back the skin and makes a deeper cut. The blade clatters to the floor. The terror Cyndi Lauper feels in this moment is something she would not wish on her worst enemy (her stepfather). She gurgles and chokes on her fist as it grips her voicebox and cracks it free. She collapses, the voicebox skidding across the floor like a wilderness. Snow falls. Her dog Sparkle licks her face as they starve to death. She whispers telepathically: Sparkle, fetch, fetch my voicebox, and Sparkle barks once then bounds off into the Canadian darkness. Cyndi Lauper is flesh and blood and snow. She feels professional rage. She cries out to the farthest known galaxy. After 13 billion years, the farthest known galaxy hears her cries, and responds. It will take another 13 billion years for the response to reach her. Cyndi Lauper simply cannot bear it. Captain Lou Albano can’t save her. The adoration of the spheres in heaven is just making it worse. This life is aesthetic trash. Cyndi Lauper will die for as long as the Earth turns. The tortuous sound of toenails on the hardwood. A tongue waterboarding her face. A tail lapping at her blood. Sparkle barks. Cyndi Lauper touches her own voicebox in disbelief. She whispers telepathically, Sparkle I love you, and palms the rim of the tub with the strength of forty suns. She holds the voicebox underwater until the water is red. She steadies her throat, clicks the voicebox into place. Her mouth opens. Sparkle roars. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**CYNDI LAUPER**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**KIM CARNES**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key21 to true) Kim Carnes slays dragons near the gates. Jeeps explode and she tells security, I’ll buy more next week Monday. She covers her face in layers of grime before saying hi to anyone or talking about anything (even the mountain). A tape machine near the door is charging $2.99 to save the world from the apocalypse. Lionel Richie slaps the machine off a table and onto the floor and crushes it with his good foot and says, It’s a 2AM to 2PM-type rave tonite. There’s the Kentucky Monster on the television and Ray Charles says, What about the Godzilla? Kim Carnes walks by a room where there’s paint on the wall (still wet) and someone's written in toasted sesame brown, a room for two made for three. She recalls the tree that killed her father and momentarily lapses into what she will later explain as, Feeling like someone pointing a shotgun at my toes. The man they call Zarro is there and Willie Nelson keeps patting him on the back and saying, Company man! A hitman from Venezuela appears, but the Earth pressures aren’t right tonite so he waves and disappears (no one notices—except for Kim Carnes). There’s condensation inside a plastic bottle by the window sill; Kim Carnes suddenly realizes, I’m probably thirsty. On the way to the kitchen, she steps on shards of glass to prove a point. There’s a team of engineers all setup on the large kitchen island, producing some work from 1968. It’s like stealing from the rich & famous, one of them says. Kim Carnes finds a bottle of mineral volcano water. She drinks and stands by the window and watches, outside, as a group of masked humans douse a cheap car in gasoline and proceed to create flames. She feels like this is all caveman paintings and something to do with respecting the mountains. A documentary plays on the third kitchen television, talking about deep sea algae. A business man in business man clothes passes out pamphlets about the war of 1962 and Diana Ross is ingesting a heart-shaped candy. Kim Carnes says, No, definitely don’t do that, and puts out her arm to try and stop Diana Ross (but it’s too late). Diana Ross even says, Girl—don’t touch me! Now, someone’s bleeding onto a version of the American flag with inverted colours and Diana Ross is singing (out of turn). There’s something to be said about dishonouring your family, in front of a bunch of guests like that (no less). Kim Carnes thinks, After this song is done, I’ll probably just leave society. There’s a vintage EXPLORE MARS poster on the wall (in a frame with nice wood). Billy Joel is on his knees in one of the adjacent studies, creating a labyrinth (made of matchsticks) in the miniature replica zen garden from Tokyo, 1966. Billy Joel looks up at Kim Carnes and says, I feel like I am suddenly becoming the bad guy, all over again. Kim Carnes doesn’t say anything because she has nothing to say to Billy Joel. She walks out of the room and writes a note for herself on a piece of paper about producing films and directing even more movies (about women) and then creating escapist literature (for married women) after the year 1992. On the intercom, a voice says, This entire song just feels like everyone is showering each other in gifts. Nothing is genuine anymore. Kim Carnes says to a butler, I embrace the idea of being alone, forever. The butler says, We must all tackle Earth’s problems, two at a time, in our own way. There’s one of the dogs, eating a plastic plate off the ground. There’s food on the plate (still) and Kim Carnes scoffs and pictures the image of tofu, burning on the stove (with no smoke detector setup). Someone says, I want to become obese so I can die yesterday. Kim Carnes walks to a different window and traces the shadow of the moon with her left index finger. She says, Someday, I will conquer the land beyond the pines. Outside, another car explodes. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**KIM CARNES**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**BOB DYLAN**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key22 to true) Bob Dylan is sitting on one of the plush sofas, carving figurines of men made of soapstone. Al Jarreau walks by and says, You do that too? Bob Dylan looks up and says, I’m also writing a novel about the setting of the sun, if you’re interested. Al Jarreau walks away. Bob Dylan continues carving, imagining a life in Vienna (tying up women, but only at night). There’s this vivid image of throwing dead Africans’ wallets into a river, and pushing over a flipped car (after the fire has died down, of course). Bob Dylan recalls that one night, with Michael Jackson, in 1985 (1982?), when they almost crashed into a dangerous tree, running away from men in yellow masks. Bob Dylan never saw them but trusts Michael. He always says (to this day), if Michael saw them, then Michael saw them. A detective shows up to the party and asks for Bob Dylan. One of the servants brings him to Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan looks at the detective and says, Any news? The detective says, The man you thought was your father is not your father. Bob Dylan looks down at his hands. He says, You mean to tell me I have been having you trail the wrong man? The detective pauses, thinks about something, and says, That is what I mean to tell you. Bob Dylan stands from the sofa and says, Come, let’s go talk in the moon room. The detective says some things about holding the hands of complete strangers. Bob Dylan keeps mouthing the words to an ancient curse (but nothing happens). The detective says, All in all, I don’t think anyone’s ever said anything that truly matters. The man is not even human. Bob Dylan thanks the detective and says, I agree to all that--mostly, about wasting people and their time. As the detective excuses himself and leaves, Bob Dylan stops pretending to be Bob Dylan and returns to his natural form. He sets out wood blocks on a carpeted floor and writes out, onto a piece of paper, Arranging to die before 81. Billy Joel yells from across one of the rooms, Bob Dylan, what are you on about? Bob Dylan says, I am preparing the room for what is to come. Bob Dylan abandons the wood blocks and walks over to the bathroom. He opens the shower curtain and finds a skinsuit of Kenny Rogers soaking in the tub. He must have shed that two hours ago. Bob Dylan walks to the science fiction room (and forgets why). There’s swords and weapons on the wall. Bob Dylan opens one of the windows and begins walking on the ledge. He sings new lyrics and feels they best represent what it might feel like to tug at someone’s emotions. In the distance, a man throws an anchor into the sea. Bob Dylan writes this down onto his right hand with a Sharpie, anchor into the black ocean. There’s a photograph in one of the hallways of Quincy Jones and some woman, eating lobster and squid on a July afternoon in a restaurant, somewhere in New Orleans. A server offers Bob Dylan wine. He says, It’s Château Lafite Rothschild 1828. Bob Dylan drinks it, even though he hates it—this is show business after all. Bob Dylan smiles at something that doesn’t even make sense and gorges himself on appetizers (simply because he can). Tina Turner keeps trying to perform seppuku (in the observatory room) just to see what they’ll do. (No one is really doing much of anything to stop her). Bob Dylan walks by a conversation between Ray Charles and Lionel Richie and hears Ray Charles say, I want to kill her, but then bring her right back, you know? Because we can do that. Lionel Richie nods. He says, Yes, we certainly can. At least, yeah, now we can. Bob Dylan walks out to the parking garage and slashes James Ingrams’ tyres because he knows what he really is. He tips the attendant $500 and does the shhhh thing with his left hand. He tips the attendant more money but then changes his mind and instead asks for a driver. He says, Can I get a driver instead? Bob Dylan has the driver drive him to the airport. After this, Bob Dylan moves to Vietnam. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**BOB DYLAN**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] (if: $boy1 is true)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**RAY CHARLES**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key23 to true) There’s the image, for some reason, of a frog with its legs cut off (no blood). Ray Charles transports his mindstate to Known Space and off in the distance, there’s the Tower of Fear. The locals worship a thing they call gods of tomorrow (even tho it is only one thing). Ray Charles inspects island madness fever and discovers—it’s a madness that’s all too deep & real. Dark ocean physics & pyrotechnics and a future I Want to Believe poster, in a danq cellar. Ray Charles takes off his spectacles and swears he can taste pan dimensional beings and holes in the ceiling. Steve Perry says something about a dripping sound coming from a couple houses over. There’s something in the air and everything gives off the impression that it’s only meant to confuse. Ray Charles asks a servant for a pillow but all he can feel are deep patterns beneath a low crimson sky. There's an energy surging from the business card of a detective from San Diego who speaks only in ocean terms. Eileen would say, “It’s the fear of the Known.” Ray Charles excuses himself from the main room and walks by a Cancel the Moment of No Return billboard, right outside the window. He’s searching for the bathroom. The clouds outside feel thick and full of silk (froth at night). All these guests, and they have no idea; milk in their shoes. And it’s a shame. Ray Charles imagines, there's the number twenty-five and a dozen astronauts burning. The remains of a hundred human babies scattered about on a beach—the second worst oil spill disaster in the history of the United States of America of Earth. Gravity suddenly becoming a situation inside the torpedo sub of lost souls. After the static, the Bavarian Chanel. God’s greatest gift to manunkind. Ray Charles cries. [[x.->start_2]] </center>]\ (else:)[<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/RWBC1I2.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**RAY CHARLES**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $boy1 to true) The smell of smoke and fire.(click-replace: "The smell of smoke and fire.")[Six minutes ago, the (either:"sun","moon","planet") died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire.] (click: "human fire.")[(Quincy is pointing at Diana Ross).](click: "pointing")[ Diana Ross lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards.] (click: "red carpet")[He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "her hand.")[ Quincy Jones: (to Diana Ross) The moon has just the one face.] (click: "one face.")[ Her dress spirals into the future.] (click: "the future.")[ It is January 28, 1985 and Quincy Jone's aura has owned this planet for 51 years.] [[x.->start_2]] </center>] <img src="https://imgur.com/Iiud6KQ.gif"alt="00"> (text-colour:navy)[WE R THE WORLD by Dan Hoy & Mike Kleine An interactive non-game Copyright (c) April 2019 by Dan Hoy & Mike Kleine Please copy and play freely v.1.0] //January 28, 1985. The recording of (text-style: "underline")[We Are the World] at Quincy Jones’ mountain chateau in Topanga Canyon, after the American Music Awards. Quincy Jones has invited over 40 artists to record a benefit single, but the harmonics are coded to unlock another dimension and summon a great power. Each chapter focuses on one artist’s occult/horror experience while at the lodge//. (if: $key1 is true)[ I. [[Quincy Jones->01_quincy_jones]]]\ (else:)[I. [[Yuincq Ensoj->01_quincy_jones]]] (if: $key3 is true)[ II. [[ Lionel Richie->02_lionel_richie]]]\ (else:)[II. [[(either:"Loien Liicher","Lichen Oilier","Icier Hellion","Chillier One I")->02_lionel_richie]]] (if: $key4 is true)[ III. [[Stevie Wonder->03_stevie_wonder]]]\ (else:)[III. [[Dreno Weevsti->03_stevie_wonder]]] (if: $key5 is true)[ IV. [[Paul Simon->04_paul_simon]]]\ (else:)[IV. [[Alup Minos->04_paul_simon]]] (if: $key6 is true)[ V. [[Kenny Rogers->05_kenny_rogers]]]\ (else:)[V. [[Nekny Gersro->05_kenny_rogers]]] (if: $key7 is true)[ VI. [[James Ingram->06_james_ingram]]]\ (else:)[VI. [[Semaj Ngmrin->06_james_ingram]]] (if: $key8 is true)[ VII. [[Tina Turner->07_tina_turner]]]\ (else:)[VII. [[Inna Rutter->07_tina_turner]]] (if: $key9 is true)[ VIII. [[Billy Joel->08_billy_joel]]]\ (else:)[VIII. [[Boil Jelly->08_billy_joel]]] (if: $key10 is true)[ IX. [[Michael Jackson->09_michael_jackson]]]\ (else:)[IX. [[Janacek Molisch->09_michael_jackson]]] (if: $key11 is true)[ X. [[Diana Ross->10_diana_ross]]]\ (else:)[X. [[Dani Soars->10_diana_ross]]] (if: $key12 is true)[ XI. [[Dionne Warwick->11_dionne_warwick]]]\ (else:)[XI. [[AI Neck Windrow->11_dionne_warwick]]] (if: $key13 is true)[ XII. [[Willie Nelson->12_willie_nelson]]]\ (else:)[XI. [[Lliiew Sonlen->12_willie_nelson]]] (if: $key14 is true)[ XIII. [[Al Jarreau->13_al_jarreau]]]\ (else:)[XIII. [[La Rajraue->13_al_jarreau]]] (if: $key15 is true)[ XIV. [[Bruce Springsteen->14_bruce_springsteen]]]\ (else:)[XIV. [[Cureb Eentsgingrs->14_bruce_springsteen]]] (if: $key16 is true)[ XV. [[Kenny Loggins->15_kenny_loggins]]]\ (else:)[XV. [[Klingon Synge->15_kenny_loggins]]] (if: $key17 is true)[ XVI. [[Steve Perry->16_steve_perry]]]\ (else:)[XVI. [[Eevts Rr'yep->16_steve_perry]]] (if: $key18 is true)[ XVII. [[Daryl Hall->17_daryl_hall]]]\ (else:)[XVII. [[Hally Lardl->17_daryl_hall]]] (if: $key19 is true)[ XVIII. [[Huey Lewis->18_huey_lewis]]]\ (else:)[XVIII. [[Luise Whey->18_huey_lewis]]] (if: $key20 is true)[ XIX. [[Cindy Lauper->19_cyndi_lauper]]]\ (else:)[XIX. [[Decay Lip Run->19_cyndi_lauper]]] (if: $key21 is true)[ XX. [[Kim Carnes->20_kim_carnes]]]\ (else:)[XX. [[Crams Nike->20_kim_carnes]]] (if: $key22 is true)[ XXI. [[Bob Dylan->21_bob_dylan]]]\ (else:)[XXI. [[DNA Lobby->21_bob_dylan]]] (if: $key23 is true)[ XXII. [[Ray Charles->22_ray_charles]]]\ (else:)[XXII. [[Ashly Racer->22_ray_charles]]] (if: ($chorus1 is true) and ($chorus2 is true) and ($chorus3 is true) and ($chorus4 is true) and ($chorus5 is true) and ($chorus6 is true) and ($chorus7 is true) and ($chorus8 is true) and ($chorus9 is true) and ($chorus10 is true) and ($chorus11 is true) and ($chorus12 is true) and ($chorus13 is true) and ($chorus14 is true) and ($chorus15 is true) and ($chorus16 is true) and ($chorus17 is true) and ($chorus18 is true) and ($chorus19 is true) and ($chorus20 is true) and ($chorus21 is true) and ($chorus22 is true))[ XIII. [[The Chorus->23_the_chorus]]]\ (else:)[XIII. Cher Shout]|test1>[(link-reveal:"Test 1")[(replace: ?test2)[] |test1a>[(link-reveal:"Test 1a")[(replace: ?test1b)[]Blablabla]] |test1b>[(link-reveal:"Test 1b")[(replace: ?test1a)[]Blublublu]] ]] |test2>[(link-reveal:"Test 2")[(replace: ?test1)[] |test2a>[(link-reveal:"Test 2a")[(replace: ?test2b)[]Plaplapla]] |test2b>[(link-reveal:"Test 2b")[(replace: ?test2a)[]Plupluplu]] ]]A light snow dusts her shoulders. (click: "snow")[The electromagnetic field that is her body’s body buzzes with nostalgic stratagems. She sticks out her tongue to taste a drifting snowflake and immediately dry heaves. It’s not snow—it’s ash!] (click: "ash!")[ |tina1>[ (link: "CURSE")[ (replace: ?tina1)[ (display: "01_tt_curse") ] ] or (link: "SECRET")[ (replace: ?tina1)[ (display: "01_tt_secret") ] ] ]]She’s been standing in mud so long it’s a part of her, like her favorite rifle. (click: "mud")[The electromagnetic field that is her body’s body buzzes with nostalgic stratagems. She sticks out her tongue to taste a drifting snowflake and immediately dry heaves. It’s not snow—it’s ash!] (click: "ash!")[ |tina1>[ (link: "CURSE")[ (replace: ?tina1)[ (display: "01_tt_curse") ] ] or (link: "SECRET")[ (replace: ?tina1)[ (display: "01_tt_secret") ] ] ]]The sky reveals itself. There’s no structural difference between a promise and a curse. (click: "curse.")[She feels a single, ambitious isotope burn a trail from her tongue through her bloodstream to the base of her spine, where it sprouts like a seed.] (click: "sprouts")[Every seed is a future. Every future is death. Every death is what Tina Turner was born to absorb. The impenetrable darkness of the forest edge kneels before the impenetrable darkness she harbors inside her.](click: "kneels")[ |tina2>[ (link: "TIME")[ (replace: ?tina2)[ (display: "02_tt_time") ] ] or (link: "BLOOD")[ (replace: ?tina2)[ (display: "02_tt_blood") ] ] ]]Her mouth tastes like smoke. The smoke tastes like a family secret. (click: "secret.")[She feels a single, ambitious isotope burn a trail from her tongue through her bloodstream to the base of her spine, where it sprouts like a seed.] (click: "sprouts")[Every seed is a future. Every future is death. Every death is what Tina Turner was born to absorb. The impenetrable darkness of the forest edge kneels before the impenetrable darkness she harbors inside her.](click: "kneels")[ |tina2>[ (link: "TIME")[ (replace: ?tina2)[ (display: "02_tt_time") ] ] or (link: "BLOOD")[ (replace: ?tina2)[ (display: "02_tt_blood") ] ] ]]<center> <img src="https://imgur.com/EfSfVhz.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**TINA TURNER**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// [snow]<a1| | [mud]<a2| (click-replace: ?a1)[(display: "text 1")] (click-replace: ?a2)[(display: "text 2")] |tina>[ (link: "snow")[ (replace: ?tina)[ (display: "text 1") ] ] or (link: "mud")[ (replace: ?tina)[ (display: "text 2") ] ] ] [[x.->start]] </center><img src="https://imgur.com/g3UoS3y.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**TINA TURNER**] //(either:"queen of the mounds","ant city escapee","transparent forme")// |tina0>[ (link: "SNOW")[ (replace: ?tina0)[ (display: "00_tt_snow") ] ] or (link: "MUD")[ (replace: ?tina0)[ (display: "00_tt_mud") ] ] ] (set: $key8 to true) (set: $chorus7 to true)Time prostrates itself before her like a red sea. (click: "Time")[She steps over the quivering body of Bruce Springsteen and out of reach of the pale light of Quincy Jones’ scale model for daemonic civilization. The forest is where life eats life. Tina Turner is here because she has a standing invitation. She walks: holding her arms out in offering to the wind and the retribution it carries. Tina Turner walks through the thinning trees and the fog and ash and moonlight. Stones shaped like feral children. A sickening mound of flowering tobacco.] (click: "retribution")[A metallic drip in her throat.] (click: "metallic")[Something buzzes and pops overhead.](click: "buzzes")[ |tina3>[ (link: "EYE")[ (replace: ?tina3)[ (display: "03_tt_eye") ] ] or (link: "EGG")[ (replace: ?tina3)[ (display: "03_tt_egg") ] ] ]]A drop of blood falls from her nose like an offering to a lesser god. (click: "blood")[She steps over the quivering body of Bruce Springsteen and out of reach of the pale light of Quincy Jones’ scale model for daemonic civilization. The forest is where life eats life. Tina Turner is here because she has a standing invitation. She walks: holding her arms out in offering to the wind and the retribution it carries.] (click: "retribution")[Tina Turner walks through the thinning trees and the fog and ash and moonlight. Stones shaped like feral children. A sickening mound of flowering tobacco. A metallic drip in her throat.] (click: "metallic")[Something buzzes and pops overhead.](click: "buzzes")[ |tina3>[ (link: "EYE")[ (replace: ?tina3)[ (display: "03_tt_eye") ] ] or (link: "EGG")[ (replace: ?tina3)[ (display: "03_tt_egg") ] ] ]]The semantic weight of every constellation. The anticyclonic eye of Jupiter wandering its face forever like a sentient, gaping wound. (click: "eye")[Insects swarm. She is walking and letting their collective need feed on her flesh. The seed at the base of her spine is now a sapling of fear. Every breath is taken from the future by force. Every step is a prison break. Tina Turner is not above boiling her own piss and inhaling the vapor to stay alive.] (click: "vapor")[Her synapses blister. Her skin chafes against her bones. She thinks, The moon is an obscure carcass reflecting the fire of creation.] (click: "fire")[ |tina4>[ (link: "YEAR")[ (replace: ?tina4)[ (display: "04_tt_year") ] ] or (link: "BIRTH")[ (replace: ?tina4)[ (display: "04_tt_birth") ] ] ]]Something wet like a rancid egg washes over her. (click:"egg")[Insects swarm. She is walking and letting their collective need feed on her flesh. The seed at the base of her spine is now a sapling of fear. Every breath is taken from the future by force. Every step is a prison break. Tina Turner is not above boiling her own piss and inhaling the vapor to stay alive.] (click: "vapor")[Her synapses blister. Her skin chafes against her bones. She thinks, The moon is an obscure carcass reflecting the fire of creation.] (click: "fire")[ |tina4>[ (link: "YEAR")[ (replace: ?tina4)[ (display: "04_tt_year") ] ] or (link: "BIRTH")[ (replace: ?tina4)[ (display: "04_tt_birth") ] ] ]]The god armada behind the sun inches one Julian year closer to Earth. (click: "year")[She walks. The trees that remain are petrified. There’s lightning, panic. Thunder shaking the leaves off the full-grown terror at the base of her spine.] (click: "terror")[What’s left of this desolate nightscape scatters, but not Tina Turner. The electromagnetic field that is her body’s body heaves and bursts, annihilating all freestanding forms from the horizon of possibility.] (click: "annihilating")[ |tina5>[ (link: "EROS")[ (replace: ?tina5)[ (display: "05_tt_eros") ] ] or (link: "FLESH")[ (replace: ?tina5)[ (display: "05_tt_flesh") ] ] ]]She spits and gives thanks to the imaginary crow that’s been with her since birth. (click: "birth")[She walks. The trees that remain are petrified. There’s lightning, panic. Thunder shaking the leaves off the full-grown terror at the base of her spine.] (click: "terror")[What’s left of this desolate nightscape scatters, but not Tina Turner. The electromagnetic field that is her body’s body heaves and bursts, annihilating all freestanding forms from the horizon of possibility.] (click: "annihilating")[ |tina5>[ (link: "EROS")[ (replace: ?tina5)[ (display: "05_tt_eros") ] ] or (link: "FLESH")[ (replace: ?tina5)[ (display: "05_tt_flesh") ] ] ]]Micro-dreams. Eros. Androids. (click: "Eros.")[Tina Turner: traversing the code from which time is holographed. A tiny, dimensionless orb hovers just out of temporal potential. She renders a mind and plucks the orb into material being.] (click: "plucks")[She calculates its zero point.] (click: "calculate")[She stops walking and spins it with the seeds of her ur-breath. She calls it](click: "calls")[...Earth. [[x->start_2]].]Temporal, skeletal remains. The escape velocity of flesh vapor. (click: "flesh")[Androids. Tina Turner: traversing the code from which time is holographed. A tiny, dimensionless orb hovers just out of temporal potential. She renders a mind and plucks the orb into material being.] (click: "plucks")[She calculates its zero point.] (click: "calculate")[She stops walking and spins it with the seeds of her ur-breath. She calls it](click: "calls")[...Earth. [[x->start_2]].]<img src="https://imgur.com/wtw3NeB.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**QUINCY JONES**] //(either:"dark lorde vii","savage escape artiste","debutante")// |quincy0>[ (link: "SUN")[ (replace: ?quincy0)[ (display: "00_qj_sun") ] ] or (link: "MOON")[ (replace: ?quincy0)[ (display: "00_qj_moon") ] ] ] (set: $key1 to true) (set: $key2 to true) (set: $chorus1 to true)Six minutes ago, the sun died of natural causes and Diana Ross is human fire. (click: "sun")[She lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards. He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "scroll")[He says, The moon has just the one face. Her dress spirals into the future. It is January 28, 1985 and his aura has owned this planet for 51 years.](click: "51 years")[ |quincy1>[ (link: "LABYRINTH")[ (replace: ?quincy1)[ (display: "01_qj_labyrinth") ] ] or (link: "FORTRESS")[ (replace: ?quincy1)[ (display: "01_qj_fortress") ] ] ]]The moon falls from out of the sky and Diana Ross is human fire. (click: "moon")[She lights an imaginary cigarette as Quincy Jones strolls the red carpet outside the American Music Awards. He whispers in her ear and drops a tiny scroll into her hand.] (click: "scroll")[He says, The moon has just the one face. Her dress spirals into the future. It is January 28, 1985 and his aura has owned this planet for 51 years.](click: "51 years")[ |quincy1>[ (link: "LABYRINTH")[ (replace: ?quincy1)[ (display: "01_qj_labyrinth") ] ] or (link: "FORTRESS")[ (replace: ?quincy1)[ (display: "01_qj_fortress") ] ] ]]<img src="https://imgur.com/5ASuRWN.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**LIONEL RICHIE**] //(either:"death impersonator","cave-dependant","apocalypse-doer")// |lionel0>[ (link: "MACHINE")[ (replace: ?lionel0)[ (display: "00_lr_machine") ] ] or (link: "BOOK")[ (replace: ?lionel0)[ (display: "00_lr_book") ] ] ] (set: $key3 to true) (set: $chorus2 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/bd3o3Mk.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**STEVIE WONDER**] //(either:"sub daemon","derelict","enhanced being")// |stevie0>[ (link: "WINDSHIELD")[ (replace: ?stevie0)[ (display: "00_sw_windshield") ] ] or (link: "VELOCITY")[ (replace: ?stevie0)[ (display: "00_sw_velocity") ] ] ] (set: $key4 to true) (set: $chorus3 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/HIaXRUT.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**PAUL SIMON**] //(either:"buoy in the inky-black","buoy out in the inky-black","howling at the moon","lesser daemon")// |paul0>[ (link: "COSMOS")[ (replace: ?paul0)[ (display: "00_ps_cosmos") ] ] or (link: "MOONSTONE")[ (replace: ?paul0)[ (display: "00_ps_moonstone") ] ] ] (set: $key5 to true) (set: $chorus4 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/rfY8IZ1.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**KENNY ROGERS**] //(either:"boolean futurist","prophet of the ardvarks","corporeal christ")// |kenny0>[ (link: "MANNERS")[ (replace: ?kenny0)[ (display: "00_kr_manners") ] ] or (link: "PORTABLE")[ (replace: ?kenny0)[ (display: "00_kr_portable") ] ] ] (set: $key6 to true) (set: $chorus5 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/sfjxyrJ.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**JAMES INGRAM**] //(either:"misshapen hands","webbed toes","destroyed spirit")// |james0>[ (link: "BATHTUBS")[ (replace: ?james0)[ (display: "00_ji_bathtubs") ] ] or (link: "STAIRS")[ (replace: ?james0)[ (display: "00_ji_stairs") ] ] ] (set: $key7 to true) (set: $chorus6 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/XYDdTIF.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**BILLY JOEL**] //(either:"drip vision","tired eyes","oblong forehead")// |billy0>[ (link: "NORMAL")[ (replace: ?billy0)[ (display: "00_bj_normal") ] ] or (link: "LIGHT")[ (replace: ?billy0)[ (display: "00_bj_light") ] ] ] (set: $key9 to true) (set: $chorus8 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/efv0gF0.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**MICHAEL JACKSON**] //(either:"subterranean gilla-lizard thing","trans dimensional cube person","intra dimensional phasing expert","guttural wounds")// |michael0>[ (link: "SUNBURN")[ (replace: ?michael0)[ (display: "00_mj_sunburn") ] ] or (link: "BLISTER")[ (replace: ?michael0)[ (display: "00_mj_blister") ] ] ] (set: $key10 to true) (set: $chorus9 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/9nPNBxV.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**DIANA ROSS**] //(either:"tri-angle","reptilian soul","the gate xi")// |diana0>[ (link: "MELODIES")[ (replace: ?diana0)[ (display: "00_dr_melodies") ] ] or (link: "HONEY")[ (replace: ?diana0)[ (display: "00_dr_honey") ] ] ] (set: $key11 to true) (set: $chorus10 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/zTl8V6V.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**DIONNE WARWICK**] //(either:"psychic web fluid","bleeds-against-towers","nasal-spray-on-wallpaper-of-yellow-flowers")// |dionne0>[ (link: "INFANCY")[ (replace: ?dionne0)[ (display: "00_dw_infancy") ] ] or (link: "INCEPTION")[ (replace: ?dionne0)[ (display: "00_dw_inception") ] ] ] (set: $key12 to true) (set: $chorus11 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/FeSHTAg.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**WILLIE NELSON**] //(either:"architect of q'noor","fabricationist","inventor of the seventeen lies")// |willie0>[ (link: "HALF")[ (replace: ?willie0)[ (display: "00_wn_half") ] ] or (link: "FULL")[ (replace: ?willie0)[ (display: "00_wn_full") ] ] ] (set: $key13 to true) (set: $chorus12 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/7cQT15u.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**AL JARREAU**] //(either:"eater of positive energy","taciturn observer","miracle canceler")// |al0>[ (link: "BURN")[ (replace: ?al0)[ (display: "00_al_burn") ] ] or (link: "SUBSTITUTE")[ (replace: ?al0)[ (display: "00_al_substitute") ] ] ] (set: $key14 to true) (set: $chorus13 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/FhJdK79.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN**] //(either:"suspended liquid","plastics secretionist","solar flare apologist")// |bruce0>[ (link: "METEORITES")[ (replace: ?bruce0)[ (display: "00_bs_meteorites") ] ] or (link: "VOLCANO")[ (replace: ?bruce0)[ (display: "00_bs_volcano") ] ] ] (set: $key15 to true) (set: $chorus14 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/xCY8HDV.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**KENNY LOGGINS**] //(either:"cycle of torture","pacific ghost","spectre of the atlantic","eater of clouds")// |kenny0>[ (link: "DOGS")[ (replace: ?kenny0)[ (display: "00_kl_dogs") ] ] or (link: "ANACONDAS")[ (replace: ?kenny0)[ (display: "00_kl_anacondas") ] ] ] (set: $key16 to true) (set: $chorus15 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/c5enOKP.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**STEVE PERRY**] //(either:"melted rhizome","canned obslescence","masticated compost")// |steve0>[ (link: "PERFECT")[ (replace: ?steve0)[ (display: "00_sp_perfect") ] ] or (link: "PANIC")[ (replace: ?steve0)[ (display: "00_sp_panic") ] ] ] (set: $key17 to true) (set: $chorus16 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/0BfrSa9.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**DARYL HALL**] //(either:"impossible shapes enthusiast","canyons of ya'arssi","cave dweller","OG cavve dweller")// |daryl0>[ (link: "OZONE")[ (replace: ?daryl0)[ (display: "00_dh_ozone") ] ] or (link: "TOWEL")[ (replace: ?daryl0)[ (display: "00_dh_towel") ] ] ] (set: $key18 to true) (set: $chorus17 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/8UhEQv0.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**HUEY LEWIS**] //(either:"pale horse","messenger of blood","potentiator")// |huey0>[ (link: "DRUG")[ (replace: ?huey0)[ (display: "00_hl_drug") ] ] or (link: "PLANETS")[ (replace: ?huey0)[ (display: "00_hl_planets") ] ] ] (set: $key19 to true) (set: $chorus18 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/qa1yViW.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**CYNDI LAUPER**] //(either:"visions of a sonar lake","flightist","cosmoneer iii","sparkle unicorn")// |cyndi0>[ (link: "WALLPAPER")[ (replace: ?cyndi0)[ (display: "00_cl_wallpaper") ] ] or (link: "SHOWER")[ (replace: ?cyndi0)[ (display: "00_cl_shower") ] ] ] (set: $key20 to true) (set: $chorus19 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/i7kjfL8.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**KIM CARNES**] //(either:"cenobite queen","product of berlin's fall","void echo")// |kim0>[ (link: "MISTAKEN")[ (replace: ?kim0)[ (display: "00_kc_mistaken") ] ] or (link: "OVERHEARD")[ (replace: ?kim0)[ (display: "00_kc_overheard") ] ] ] (set: $key21 to true) (set: $chorus20 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/gaZPBhp.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**BOB DYLAN**] //(either:"crashed brain","rotted skull","petrified crater")// |bob0>[ (link: "THICK")[ (replace: ?bob0)[ (display: "00_bd_thick") ] ] or (link: "MARINATED")[ (replace: ?bob0)[ (display: "00_bd_marinated") ] ] ] (set: $key22 to true) (set: $chorus21 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/W9dpwsT.png"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**RAY CHARLES**] //(either:"fear monger","inept gash","product of a fallen civilisation","wounded alien")// |ray0>[ (link: "VISCOUS")[ (replace: ?ray0)[ (display: "00_rc_viscous") ] ] or (link: "LOGIC")[ (replace: ?ray0)[ (display: "00_rc_logic") ] ] ] (set: $key23 to true) (set: $chorus22 to true)<img src="https://imgur.com/k6YVVz8.gif"alt="00"> (text-style: "underline")[**THE CHORUS**] //(either:"darke elementals","band of hellscap-ers","brimstone eaters")// the sun rises for the final time and annihilates all other light (click: "rises")[candied fluorescence disintegrates the flesh to present a totally new angle and understanding on the hard limits of human time & space] (click: "flesh")[broken pieces of Earth rupture a part of the galaxy that is unknown to the human race] (click: "rupture")[the skeletal refraction of a Type III Civilisation being manifests itself in the living room for a few milliseconds; enough to cause the floor to erupt in an electrical fire and the caves outside to boil and crumble] (click: "milliseconds")[crude oil, deep beneath the Earth’s crust solidifies and kinetick(sic) energy turns into potential] (click: "solidifies")[a harsh summer is a test] (click: "summer")[the woods East of the cottage will need to eat] (click: "need")[the remaining human population will need to brace itself] (click: "brace")[men in loincloths descending from the heavens] (click: "descending")[where the atmosphere meets the ocean and kisses a blank spot into the memory of the sky] (click: "meets")[impractical scenarios of jungle giants erupting from out of the snow, to battle invisible foes that jump between dimension seven and dimension twelve] (click: "jungle")[entering the home of the catamite to destroy the theatre of slaves] (click: "catamite")[unspooling the mitigated sciences of an unsubstantiated colony of forensic pathologists, all holed up in a car because the real world is much too harsh and handling that which cannot be handled has become too much] (click: "forensic")[sacrificing the silhouettes of children unborn to steam goliaths and trench deamons] (click: "goliaths")[the sinister echo of palace guards’ gurgles at the bottom of the gorge] (click: "echo")[ineffable phantoms purging the land of debris] (click: "purging")[placing the tomb of the Sta’agg-Nach’tt in a place to end all places] (click: "Sta’agg-Nach’tt")[positive light theory in a dripping open space, tho lopsided] (click: "dripping")[bleeding faces crashing down into the sand, after the wavves] (click: "wavves")[a sign of things to come, when the water damage only causes a loss of three hit points] (click: "loss")[staggering through the sand dunes because society has ended and we are stuck in a moment that forever repeats itself] (click: "moment")[androids from a near-future melting and then freezing and shattering, in a crater made for other androids--from another future] (click: "melting")[swallowing the mother tongue] (click: "swallowing")[cold nursery rhymes around the childfire] (click: "childfire")[on the shores of invasion] (click: "shores")[making a pit in a holy place open to the skyscape, and making over the pit an altar of wood from herbaceous trees, and sacrificing an unblemished goose, and three roosters and three pigeons] (click: "herbaceous")[a curse made in haste with no crude yet meticulously crafted ransom note] (click: "ransom")[a soundtrack of screams] (click: "soundtrack")[body language but] (click: "language")[appetite] (click: "appetite")[sleep] (click: "sleep")[slab or operating table or the tree at the center of the alien homeworld] (click: "table")[souls taking the form of badly produced segments on universal secret themes] (click: "segments")[being bound by an atmosphere is an affliction] (click: "bound")[the asymmetric exchange rate of something to eat & blood] (click: "asymmetric")[a glass firmament reflecting a seemingly endless desert but concealing a dark & dimensionless landscape] (click: "concealing")[beyond colossal misallocations of planetary capital, beyond the limits of radiant inner beings & asteroid chains of cosmic, ethical love] (click: "radiant")[o starry agony] (click: "starry")[unfinished flesh templates cower before a rapt audience of chromosomal rogues] (click: "template")[we are the world] (click: "we are the world")[ [[x->start_2]].]Lionel Richie, first of his name. (click: "first")[When the waters recede from the cavern entrance, it is like a mouth gasping for eternal reparation. Every morning, the sun delivers an embarrassment of weapons. The luminosity of every riot is bound by the scarcity of food and water.] (click: "scarcity")[Life is a season endorsed by a world without seasons. And the god machine unspools its list of deeds and commands.] (click: "machine")[ |lionel1>[ (link: "BELLY")[ (replace: ?lionel1)[ (display: "01_lr_belly") ] ] or (link: "VACUUM")[ (replace: ?lionel1)[ (display: "01_lr_vacuum") ] ] ]]Lionel Richie, first of his name. (click: "first")[When the waters recede from the cavern entrance, it is like a mouth gasping for eternal reparation. Every morning, the sun delivers an embarrassment of weapons. The luminosity of every riot is bound by the scarcity of food and water.] (click: "scarcity")[Life is a season endorsed by a world without seasons. And the body is skinned and the book inscribed on the shape the skin leaves behind.] (click: "book")[ |lionel1>[ (link: "BELLY")[ (replace: ?lionel1)[ (display: "01_lr_belly") ] ] or (link: "VACUUM")[ (replace: ?lionel1)[ (display: "01_lr_vacuum") ] ] ]]I’m thinking about the windshield. (click: "windshield")[The future is dilating and Stevie Wonder can feel it. He hears a spray of glass and a battering ram shatter his face.] (click: "shatter")[Touches the moist and incurious ridges of the Skyhole with an index finger. Holds the finger to his nose, presses his tongue to it: there’s no smell or taste.] (click: "presses")[ |stevie1>[ (link: "UNIVERSE")[ (replace: ?stevie1)[ (display: "01_sw_universe") ] ] or (link: "GRAVITY")[ (replace: ?stevie1)[ (display: "01_sw_gravity") ] ] ]]I think there’s some kind of emotional velocity happening. (click: "velocity")[The future is dilating and Stevie Wonder can feel it. He hears a spray of glass and a battering ram shatter his face.] (click: "shatter")[Touches the moist and incurious ridges of the Skyhole with an index finger. Holds the finger to his nose, presses his tongue to it: there’s no smell or taste.] (click: "presses")[ |stevie1>[ (link: "UNIVERSE")[ (replace: ?stevie1)[ (display: "01_sw_universe") ] ] or (link: "GRAVITY")[ (replace: ?stevie1)[ (display: "01_sw_gravity") ] ] ]]When Paul Simon tells the story of his life, he always refers to himself as two entities: two lonely travelers (two individual spheres of light, travelling thru the cosmos). (click: "cosmos")[One day, in the near future, Paul Simon will even tell a crowd of young adults he is from a distant planet that no one’s ever seen or will ever see. His favourite phrase is holygoddamnfuckingshit (but that’s for friends & family only).] (click: "favourite")[Everyday is like the end of the world but without the end of the world happening (or something).] (click: "happening")[ |paul1>[ (link: "AMBUSH")[ (replace: ?paul1)[ (display: "01_ps_ambush") ] ] or (link: "INJUSTICE")[ (replace: ?paul1)[ (display: "01_ps_injustice") ] ] ]]When Paul Simon tells the story of his life, all the moonstones on Earth cry out to their namesake in the sky. (click: "moonstones")[One day, in the near future, Paul Simon will even tell a crowd of young adults he is from a distant planet that no one’s ever seen or will ever see. His favourite phrase is holygoddamnfuckingshit (but that’s for friends & family only).] (click: "favourite")[Everyday is like the end of the world but without the end of the world happening (or something).] (click: "happening")[ |paul1>[ (link: "AMBUSH")[ (replace: ?paul1)[ (display: "01_ps_ambush") ] ] or (link: "INJUSTICE")[ (replace: ?paul1)[ (display: "01_ps_injustice") ] ] ]]This drink Bette Midler just handed me tastes like a gin & piss but I’ve got manners so I say Ah, refreshing. (click: "manners")[I walk around taking it all in. Most everybody here is cresting the wave and aside from a few outliers the aggregate aura is a pale tangerine. Quincy and I go way back.] (click: "cresting")[I remember him pulling me aside over a steam pit on the pink sands of Lysthantcia and telling me very pointedly, The birds sing because their home is still alive.] (click: "birds")[ |kenny1>[ (link: "DOMINO")[ (replace: ?kenny1)[ (display: "01_kr_domino") ] ] or (link: "IMAGINARY")[ (replace: ?kenny1)[ (display: "01_kr_imaginary") ] ] ]]The nice thing about a beard is it’s portable. (click: "portable")[I walk around taking it all in. Most everybody here is cresting the wave and aside from a few outliers the aggregate aura is a pale tangerine. Quincy and I go way back.] (click: "cresting")[I remember him pulling me aside over a steam pit on the pink sands of Lysthantcia and telling me very pointedly, The birds sing because their home is still alive.] (click: "birds")[ |kenny1>[ (link: "DOMINO")[ (replace: ?kenny1)[ (display: "01_kr_domino") ] ] or (link: "IMAGINARY")[ (replace: ?kenny1)[ (display: "01_kr_imaginary") ] ] ]]Some people die in bathtubs. (click: "bathtubs")[From out of the ceiling, a grey whale stuck by the harpoon of time. There’s this guy playing guitar in a room that isn’t a room (with wood panel walls and all). He is singing a song about a man with a moustache on the sunburnt surface of Io.] (click: "sunburnt")[As Willie Nelson curses the waves, violet smokes erupts from volcanoes nestled & hidden behind the Hollywood Hills.] (click: "Hollywood")[James Ingram tugs at his jeans and points to the ceiling and says, Crystal jets in the sky!] (click: "jeans")[ |james1>[ (link: "WINDCHIME")[ (replace: ?james1)[ (display: "01_ji_windchime") ] ] or (link: "PROSPERITY")[ (replace: ?james1)[ (display: "01_ji_prosperity") ] ] ]]The stairs have an acid wash kind of vibe. (click: "stairs")[From out of the ceiling, a grey whale stuck by the harpoon of time. There’s this guy playing guitar in a room that isn’t a room (with wood panel walls and all). He is singing a song about a man with a moustache on the sunburnt surface of Io.] (click: "sunburnt")[As Willie Nelson curses the waves, violet smokes erupts from volcanoes nestled & hidden behind the Hollywood Hills.] (click: "Hollywood")[James Ingram tugs at his jeans and points to the ceiling and says, Crystal jets in the sky!] (click: "jeans")[ |james1>[ (link: "WINDCHIME")[ (replace: ?james1)[ (display: "01_ji_windchime") ] ] or (link: "PROSPERITY")[ (replace: ?james1)[ (display: "01_ji_prosperity") ] ] ]]It is true that Lionel Richie’s belly is hollow. (click: "belly")[For breakfast, he swallows metal alloys dipped in fire and produces song. At night, he lies in bed in the Caribbean ocean and prays he won’t drown this time and drowns every time.] (click: "prays")[We are telling you this because Lionel Richie can’t stop knocking on the door. He’s been knocking for 47,000 years begging to be let in—but all this time he’s been knocking from the inside!](click: "inside!")[ |lionel2>[ (link: "AXE")[ (replace: ?lionel2)[ (display: "02_lr_axe") ] ] or (link: "FLUTE")[ (replace: ?lionel2)[ (display: "02_lr_flute") ] ] ]]Horoscope cuttings on the floor. (click: "Horoscope")[Our story begins with the creator that calls itself Quincy Jones assembling the coordinates and dimensions of material life and uttering a name we cannot repeat, but cannot refuse.] (click: "repeat")[So here we are, all wood and plaster and pipe. Utterance is a framework for disfiguring this alien world and its alien forms of life. What clings to the surface of a stillborn, globular god.] (click: "clings")[A planet dripping with debris. Bodies rotating around the axis that pierces and pins them to the universal firmament.] (click: "pins")[ |lionel4>[ (link: "BEACH")[ (replace: ?lionel4)[ (display: "04_lr_beach") ] ] or (link: "CLOUDS")[ (replace: ?lionel4)[ (display: "04_lr_clouds") ] ] ]]The ground trembles from all the giants with solar axes hacking at solar flames. (click: "axes")[Come, let us gather Lionel Richie like wildflowers we eat because we lack real food. It is Tuesday so it is ok to bury this morning star into the chest of an unarmed man.] (click: "Tuesday")[To be born is animal cruelty. The door of our mouth opens for Lionel Richie who squints and says, I remember when the sky was the earth beneath our feet. So do we.] (click: "beneath")[ |lionel3>[ (link: "HOROSCOPE")[ (replace: ?lionel3)[ (display: "03_lr_horoscope") ] ] or (link: "BONES")[ (replace: ?lionel3)[ (display: "03_lr_bones") ] ] ]]Every shipwreck needs a beach. (click: "beach")[This is why we entered this realm without corporeal weight. To be wind is all exhale. To have a body is to hold your breath.] (click: "hold")[We were the air that all things share and the future that all of us feel. Now we have bones that break, a heart that stutters, a stomach to feed: beams, furnace, fireplace.](click: "furnace")[ |lionel5>[ (link: "TRAVELERS")[ (replace: ?lionel5)[ (display: "05_lr_travelers") ] ] or (link: "RETREAT")[ (replace: ?lionel5)[ (display: "05_lr_retreat") ] ] ]]We age because we are time travelers. (click: "travelers.")[A tiny, unblemished fuzzy yellow moon in the palm of an Episcopalian youth. A sacred geometry bound by synthetic grass.] (click: "geometry")[The sun dying its best death over Tuskegee. The Atlantic ocean beaching itself in ‘68. Blind incantations with Kenny Rogers, Diana Ross, the preternatural spawn of Joseph Jackson.] (click: "spawn")[ A saxophone. The lives of Lionel Richie are for ruminating. We tuck him into our second cheek. We never swallow. Lionel Richie, first of his name, is the first to arrive.] (click: "arrive")[ [[x->start_2]].]It’s true that Lionel Richie‘s interiority is piped in from the cavernous vacuum of outer space. (click: "vacuum")[For breakfast, he swallows metal alloys dipped in fire and produces song. At night, he lies in bed in the Caribbean ocean and prays he won’t drown this time and drowns every time.] (click: "prays")[We are telling you this because Lionel Richie can’t stop knocking on the door. He’s been knocking for 47,000 years begging to be let in—but all this time he’s been knocking from the inside!](click: "inside!")[ |lionel2>[ (link: "AXE")[ (replace: ?lionel2)[ (display: "02_lr_axe") ] ] or (link: "FLUTE")[ (replace: ?lionel2)[ (display: "02_lr_flute") ] ] ]]Children scatter at the first flute of Spring. (click: "flute")[Come, let us gather Lionel Richie like wildflowers we eat because we lack real food. It is Tuesday so it is ok to bury this morning star into the chest of an unarmed man.] (click: "Tuesday")[To be born is animal cruelty. The door of our mouth opens for Lionel Richie who squints and says, I remember when the sky was the earth beneath our feet. So do we.] (click: "beneath")[ |lionel3>[ (link: "HOROSCOPE")[ (replace: ?lionel3)[ (display: "03_lr_horoscope") ] ] or (link: "BONES")[ (replace: ?lionel3)[ (display: "03_lr_bones") ] ] ]]Bones should be divined just once then pulverized. (click: "Bones")[Our story begins with the creator that calls itself Quincy Jones assembling the coordinates and dimensions of material life and uttering a name we cannot repeat, but cannot refuse.] (click: "repeat")[So here we are, all wood and plaster and pipe. Utterance is a framework for disfiguring this alien world and its alien forms of life. What clings to the surface of a stillborn, globular god.] (click: "clings")[A planet dripping with debris. Bodies rotating around the axis that pierces and pins them to the universal firmament.] (click: "pins")[ |lionel4>[ (link: "BEACH")[ (replace: ?lionel4)[ (display: "04_lr_beach") ] ] or (link: "CLOUDS")[ (replace: ?lionel4)[ (display: "04_lr_clouds") ] ] ]]Clouds carrying the burden of daylight. (click: "Clouds")[This is why we entered this realm without corporeal weight. To be wind is all exhale. To have a body is to hold your breath.] (click: "hold")[We were the air that all things share and the future that all of us feel. Now we have bones that break, a heart that stutters, a stomach to feed: beams, furnace, fireplace.](click: "furnace")[ |lionel5>[ (link: "TRAVELERS")[ (replace: ?lionel5)[ (display: "05_lr_travelers") ] ] or (link: "RETREAT")[ (replace: ?lionel5)[ (display: "05_lr_retreat") ] ] ]]Our thoughts retreat deep inside the milky way. (click: "retreat")[A tiny, unblemished fuzzy yellow moon in the palm of an Episcopalian youth. A sacred geometry bound by synthetic grass.] (click: "geometry")[The sun dying its best death over Tuskegee. The Atlantic ocean beaching itself in ‘68. Blind incantations with Kenny Rogers, Diana Ross, the preternatural spawn of Joseph Jackson.] (click: "spawn")[ A saxophone. The lives of Lionel Richie are for ruminating. We tuck him into our second cheek. We never swallow. Lionel Richie, first of his name, is the first to arrive.] (click: "arrive")[ [[x->start_2]].]Just the background hum of the universe eclipsing the foreground. (click: "universe")[I am not all //here yet//. I’m //there//. I’m staring at this vibrant deathscape when really I should be staring at the no-scape.] (click: "deathscape")[When I’m there, I’m not Stevie Wonder. I have no godtalent. I’m not catechetically generous. I have no aptitude for watersigns, metalwork, harmony or time. The sight of sights is terrifying.](click: "harmony")[ |stevie2>[ (link: "HANDSHAKE")[ (replace: ?stevie2)[ (display: "02_sw_handshake") ] ] or (link: "EYE-CONTACT")[ (replace: ?stevie2)[ (display: "02_sw_eye-contact") ] ] ]]Every handshake feels like a tax. (click: "handshake")[I ask this powdery bag of flesh for directions and it says, I’m just here to play the drums. Phil Collins as a transient form of life. I’m soul starving. There’re things you understand //there// you could never understand here.] (click: "never")[Higher dimensional realms bound by lower dimensional realities.](click: "bound")[How necromancy is about as effective a divinatory tool as an ice cream cone (because the dead are as clueless as the living).] (click: "tool")[We have just the one word and we call our failure to utter it //Language//.] (click: "failure")[Prostrate over the abyss of intonation.] (click: "intonation.")[Every sentence sentenced to death.] (click: "death.")[Telling people how much their clothes remind you of human life.] (click: "human")[ |stevie3>[ (link: "RUSSIAN")[ (replace: ?stevie3)[ (display: "03_sw_russian") ] ] or (link: "FRENCH")[ (replace: ?stevie3)[ (display: "03_sw_french") ] ] ]]Just waking up in the morning is a game of Russian roulette. (click: "Russian")[The point is the harmony of the spheres on Earth was disrupted on December 3, 1984 with the release of the group charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas” and its quivering, continental politics.] (click: "quivering")[Ok. I’m remembering now.] (click: "remembering")[//Here//, Stevie Wonder was approached by Quincy Jones to help Africa by designing a cathectic vessel of sound.] (click: "vessel")[//There//, I lived in a world where technology is ideologically neutral.] (click: "neutral")[//Here//, tonight, Stevie Wonder will be reminded that the facts are not the truth of a situation; that the truth of a situation is how these facts are deployed.](click: "how")[ |stevie4>[ (link: "GAME")[ (replace: ?stevie4)[ (display: "04_sw_game") ] ] or (link: "STRUGGLE")[ (replace: ?stevie4)[ (display: "04_sw_struggle") ] ] ]]They wanted me to string myself up like fresh game. (click: "game")[In any case, I had a scheduling conflict. And so Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson have somehow become the twin harbingers of world famine. I could play a piano made out of the consecrated bones of Shaka Kahn and Paul McCartney and salvation would still just be an offering idly pondered by the gods.] (click: "piano")[I can be Stevie Wonder again if I can just bridge //there// and //here//. I have to try. It’s all about the breath. Every image needs a polarity to summon and stabilize it.] (click: "polarity")[The image our mind forms around.](click: "mind")[ |stevie5>[ (link: "STORIES")[ (replace: ?stevie5)[ (display: "05_sw_stories") ] ] or (link: "REGRET")[ (replace: ?stevie5)[ (display: "05_sw_regret") ] ] ]]A tripod as the foundation for transactional stories. (click: "stories")[Stevie Wonder tracing a nine-foot diameter circle on the hardwood with a bag of pink salt. Breathwork. Gesticulations both sacred and heretical. He opens a channel toward Epsilon Eridani.] (click: "opens")[Static.] (click: "Static.")[Turns the dial of time.] (click: "time.")[Static. Smashes the dial with the //nomina magica// he was born with. Time howls.] (click: "Smashes")[History is what we escape. I, Stevie Wonder, //am telling you to run//.](click: "escape")[ [[x->start_2]].]The sun collapses into a puddle of gravity. (click: "gravity")[I am not all //here yet//. I’m //there//. I’m staring at this vibrant deathscape when really I should be staring at the no-scape.] (click: "deathscape")[When I’m there, I’m not Stevie Wonder. I have no godtalent. I’m not catechetically generous. I have no aptitude for watersigns, metalwork, harmony or time. The sight of sights is terrifying.](click: "harmony")[ |stevie2>[ (link: "HANDSHAKE")[ (replace: ?stevie2)[ (display: "02_sw_handshake") ] ] or (link: "EYE-CONTACT")[ (replace: ?stevie2)[ (display: "02_sw_eye-contact") ] ] ]]Waving eye-contact around like a loaded gun. (click: "eye-contact")[I ask this powdery bag of flesh for directions and it says, I’m just here to play the drums. Phil Collins as a transient form of life. I’m soul starving. There’re things you understand //there// you could never understand here.] (click: "never")[Higher dimensional realms bound by lower dimensional realities.](click: "bound")[How necromancy is about as effective a divinatory tool as an ice cream cone (because the dead are as clueless as the living).](click: "tool")[We have just the one word and we call our failure to utter it //Language//.] (click: "failure")[Prostrate over the abyss of intonation.] (click: "intonation.")[Every sentence sentenced to death.](click: "death.")[Telling people how much their clothes remind you of human life.] (click: "human")[ |stevie3>[ (link: "RUSSIAN")[ (replace: ?stevie3)[ (display: "03_sw_russian") ] ] or (link: "FRENCH")[ (replace: ?stevie3)[ (display: "03_sw_french") ] ] ]]Radical friendship or french baguette. (click: "french")[The point is the harmony of the spheres on Earth was disrupted on December 3, 1984 with the release of the group charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas” and its quivering, continental politics.] (click: "quivering")[Ok. I’m remembering now.] (click: "remembering")[//Here//, Stevie Wonder was approached by Quincy Jones to help Africa by designing a cathectic vessel of sound.] (click: "vessel")[//There//, I lived in a world where technology is ideologically neutral.] (click: "neutral")[//Here//, tonight, Stevie Wonder will be reminded that the facts are not the truth of a situation; that the truth of a situation is how these facts are deployed.](click: "how")[ |stevie4>[ (link: "GAME")[ (replace: ?stevie4)[ (display: "04_sw_game") ] ] or (link: "STRUGGLE")[ (replace: ?stevie4)[ (display: "04_sw_struggle") ] ] ]]The struggle chamber needs another bullet. (click: "struggle")[In any case, I had a scheduling conflict. And so Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson have somehow become the twin harbingers of world famine. I could play a piano made out of the consecrated bones of Shaka Kahn and Paul McCartney and salvation would still just be an offering idly pondered by the gods.] (click: "piano")[I can be Stevie Wonder again if I can just bridge //there// and //here//. I have to try. It’s all about the breath. Every image needs a polarity to summon and stabilize it.] (click: "polarity")[The image our mind forms around.](click: "mind")[ |stevie5>[ (link: "STORIES")[ (replace: ?stevie5)[ (display: "05_sw_stories") ] ] or (link: "REGRET")[ (replace: ?stevie5)[ (display: "05_sw_regret") ] ] ]]Disregarding and discarding regret like plastic wrap. (click: "regret")[Stevie Wonder tracing a nine-foot diameter circle on the hardwood with a bag of pink salt. Breathwork. Gesticulations both sacred and heretical. He opens a channel toward Epsilon Eridani.] (click: "opens")[Static.] (click: "Static.")[Turns the dial of time.] (click: "time.")[Static. Smashes the dial with the //nomina magica// he was born with. Time howls.] (click: "Smashes")[History is what we escape. I, Stevie Wonder, //am telling you to run//.](click: "escape")[ [[x->start_2]].]A normal amount of bad time. (click: "normal")[Billy Joel wants to know which godname you use facing west at 3am on a Tuesday in the Northern Hemisphere in January. He turns to Eddie Murphy and says, I don’t really know how to snap necks so I’m just sawing off heads, is this right?] (click: "snap")[But there is no Eddie Murphy.](click: "there")[ |billy1>[ (link: "PURPLE")[ (replace: ?billy1)[ (display: "01_bj_purple") ] ] or (link: "DIATRIBE")[ (replace: ?billy1)[ (display: "01_bj_diatribe") ] ] ]]Sky like purple sequins. (click: "purple")[The faint echo of Frida’s “I Know There’s Something Going On” rumbling through the valley. Billy Joel adjusts the pouches lining his utility belt. He tosses a fistful of cinnamon and turmeric to form a billowing, burnt orange cloud. He says, Every question is a shipwreck.] (click: "question")[The cloud responds, Every answer is a mutiny.] (click: "answer")[The mob rule at the end of his mind cuts the rope.] (click: "cuts")[ |billy2>[ (link: "CHOICE")[ (replace: ?billy2)[ (display: "02_bj_choice") ] ] or (link: "CICADA")[ (replace: ?billy2)[ (display: "02_bj_cicada") ] ] ]]Praise and compliments are the choice of a good leader of men. (click: "choice")[Billy Joel is roaming the forest with a thermal headset and a machete. He stumbles through a blue mindscape toward obscure splotches of yellowy phlox.] (click: "obscure")[Later he’s draining rabbit blood into a vat of fatty remains. There’s a scent in the air of off-brand flatulence. The vat overflows. Billy Joel wrings out the last rabbit carcass and says something Aramaic-sounding.] (click: "last")[He’s improv’ing.] (click: "improv’ing.")[ |billy3>[ (link: "PRIVATE")[ (replace: ?billy3)[ (display: "03_bj_private") ] ] or (link: "RUMOR")[ (replace: ?billy3)[ (display: "03_bj_rumor") ] ] ]]His eyes are the entrance to a very private club. (click: "private")[The sanctuary is in flames. Billy Joel circles it dancing a profane jig.] (click: "circles")[He is sweating so hard right now. His hard hat keeps slipping over his eyes but this just makes him jig even more profanely.] (click: "profanely")[Huey Lewis joins him in a synchronized jig.] (click: "jig")[Kim Carnes joins him and Huey Lewis in a synchronized jig.] (click: "synchornized")[Kenny Loggins joins him and Huey Lewis and Kim Carnes in a synchronized jig.] (click: "joins")[The night is a white blur of diminishment. All bodies orbit and are orbited. There’s vomit spraying from Billy Joel’s ecstatic maw.] (click: "ecstatic")[Now he’s stabbing at the ground with his face.] (click: "stabbing")[ |billy4>[ (link: "BASIC")[ (replace: ?billy4)[ (display: "04_bj_basic") ] ] or (link: "POTATO")[ (replace: ?billy4)[ (display: "04_bj_potato") ] ] ]]Effectively pawning off his most basic emotions. (click: "basic")[The trees part, and the colossal form of Yah Q’gghrth steps forward. It towers over him.] (click: "towers")[Billy Joel is prostrating. He says, I mUsT hAvE pAsSaGe! The form of Yah Q’gghrth shakes its head.] (click: "shakes")[Billy Joel says, HaVe I nOt DiSpLaYeD a PeNiTeNt PhYsIcS? Do I nOt EmBoDy ThE rEqUiSiTe DiSgRaCe AnD aCuMeN? BeHoLd ThE jIg! He gestures at the event horizon formed by the orbit of Huey Lewis and Kim Carnes and Kenny Loggins.] (click: "gestures")[He says, BeHoLd ThE cEnTeR fRoM wHiCh We’Ve AlL bEeN sPiT, iTs InFiNiTe GrAvItY! HoMe Is WhErE oBlIvIoN iS! TiMe Is ThE mOuTh ThAt SwAlLoWs Us!] (click: "mOuTh")[ [[x->start_2]].]The light pollution is a thing. (click: "light")[Billy Joel wants to know which godname you use facing west at 3am on a Tuesday in the Northern Hemisphere in January. He turns to Eddie Murphy and says, I don’t really know how to snap necks so I’m just sawing off heads, is this right?] (click: "snap")[But there is no Eddie Murphy.](click: "there")[ |billy1>[ (link: "PURPLE")[ (replace: ?billy1)[ (display: "01_bj_purple") ] ] or (link: "DIATRIBE")[ (replace: ?billy1)[ (display: "01_bj_diatribe") ] ] ]]The air vibrates like a diatribe. (click: "diatribe")[The faint echo of Frida’s “I Know There’s Something Going On” rumbling through the valley. Billy Joel adjusts the pouches lining his utility belt. He tosses a fistful of cinnamon and turmeric to form a billowing, burnt orange cloud. He says, Every question is a shipwreck.] (click: "question")[The cloud responds, Every answer is a mutiny.] (click: "answer")[The mob rule at the end of his mind cuts the rope.] (click: "cuts")[ |billy2>[ (link: "CHOICE")[ (replace: ?billy2)[ (display: "02_bj_choice") ] ] or (link: "CICADA")[ (replace: ?billy2)[ (display: "02_bj_cicada") ] ] ]]Cicada-crusted tree trunks. (click: "Cicada")[Billy Joel is roaming the forest with a thermal headset and a machete. He stumbles through a blue mindscape toward obscure splotches of yellowy phlox.] (click: "obscure")[Later he’s draining rabbit blood into a vat of fatty remains. There’s a scent in the air of off-brand flatulence. The vat overflows. Billy Joel wrings out the last rabbit carcass and says something Aramaic-sounding.] (click: "last")[He’s improv’ing.] (click: "improv’ing.")[ |billy3>[ (link: "PRIVATE")[ (replace: ?billy3)[ (display: "03_bj_private") ] ] or (link: "RUMOR")[ (replace: ?billy3)[ (display: "03_bj_rumor") ] ] ]]His life is a rumor he heard once. (click: "rumor")[The sanctuary is in flames. Billy Joel circles it dancing a profane jig.] (click: "circles")[He is sweating so hard right now. His hard hat keeps slipping over his eyes but this just makes him jig even more profanely.] (click: "profanely")[Huey Lewis joins him in a synchronized jig.] (click: "jig")[Kim Carnes joins him and Huey Lewis in a synchronized jig.] (click: "synchornized")[Kenny Loggins joins him and Huey Lewis and Kim Carnes in a synchronized jig.] (click: "joins")[The night is a white blur of diminishment. All bodies orbit and are orbited. There’s vomit spraying from Billy Joel’s ecstatic maw.] (click: "ecstatic")[Now he’s stabbing at the ground with his face.] (click: "stabbing")[ |billy4>[ (link: "BASIC")[ (replace: ?billy4)[ (display: "04_bj_basic") ] ] or (link: "POTATO")[ (replace: ?billy4)[ (display: "04_bj_potato") ] ] ]]He feels like a charred potato so he knows he’s doing it right. (click: "potato")[The trees part, and the colossal form of Yah Q’gghrth steps forward. It towers over him.] (click: "towers")[Billy Joel is prostrating. He says, I mUsT hAvE pAsSaGe! The form of Yah Q’gghrth shakes its head.] (click: "shakes")[Billy Joel says, HaVe I nOt DiSpLaYeD a PeNiTeNt PhYsIcS? Do I nOt EmBoDy ThE rEqUiSiTe DiSgRaCe AnD aCuMeN? BeHoLd ThE jIg! He gestures at the event horizon formed by the orbit of Huey Lewis and Kim Carnes and Kenny Loggins.] (click: "gestures")[He says, BeHoLd ThE cEnTeR fRoM wHiCh We’Ve AlL bEeN sPiT, iTs InFiNiTe GrAvItY! HoMe Is WhErE oBlIvIoN iS! TiMe Is ThE mOuTh ThAt SwAlLoWs Us!] (click: "mOuTh")[ [[x->start_2]].]Bad melodies. (click: "melodies")[Harry Belafonte burns some tires and thinks, //This planet is unfit for rule//. He looks up at the anamorphic mind/screen the others call Sky. Something is happening.] (click: "Something")[He has a feeling like a witness. Streaks of green and orange breach the mind/screen. The clouds drop to their knees. For Harry Belafonte this is basically it.] (click: "basically")[The mountains surrounding the mountain chateau collapse as the body of Diana Ross collides with the body of Earth and the oceans cough up their dead.] (click: "cough")[ |diana1>[ (link: "TIMEZONES")[ (replace: ?diana1)[ (display: "01_dr_timezones") ] ] or (link: "SATELLITE")[ (replace: ?diana1)[ (display: "01_dr_satellite") ] ] ]]Timezones merge. (click: "Timezones")[Diana Ross emerges from a Diana-shaped crater and mutters, //You get what you pay for//. She calls out to the nearby silhouettes of Lionel Richie and Smokey Robinson but they’ve already succumbed to a lotus-eating slumber.] (click: "succumbed")[Through the iridium fog a team of sled-dogs pulling Empress Nagako surround her and lap at her loneliness. The Empress lets Diana Ross nurse on her imperial lifeforce and says, //That’s enough//.] (click: "nurse")[It will never be enough.](click: "never")[ |diana2>[ (link: "COFFEE")[ (replace: ?diana2)[ (display: "02_dr_coffee") ] ] or (link: "TRASH")[ (replace: ?diana2)[ (display: "02_dr_trash") ] ] ]]Everywhere the smell of coffee and ruined lives. (click: "coffee")[Back in her crater Diana Ross summons some ghosts who graffiti the crater-wall with //The Sun is a violation of the highest order (the Sky)//. She’s scheming how to leverage this insight into a paying gig on B’arq’lajiin but the barometrics prove too much.] (click: "gig")[Her flesh vessel becomes unmoored from its dimensional scaffold. For a prototype of some esteem this is a worst case scenario.] (click: "esteem")[Out of desperation she tries to imagine hate-fucking Gene Simmons but can only imagine love-fucking him. She gives up and drifts like flotsam on the mind/screen.] (click: "drifts")[ |diana3>[ (link: "DREAMS")[ (replace: ?diana3)[ (display: "03_dr_dreams") ] ] or (link: "CHOIR")[ (replace: ?diana3)[ (display: "03_dr_choir") ] ] ]]Some dreams leak out of other dreams. (click: "dreams")[Nearby, the white disc of anonymity orbits absolutely nothing. A newborn babe rests at its center as it spins relentlessly through the void.] (click: "spins")[Diana Ross is in direct conflict with its centrifugal force. She crawls across the grooves of the disc toward the newborn babe who is now a young boy.] (click: "grooves")[The boy, now a teenager, tells her (in melodic falsetto), //The fabric of time is out of style//.] (click: "melodic")[The teenager, now a 22 year-old miracle, is too old to suckle stardust but this is exactly what he does. The sullen Mrth’uu-gw’h watch him churn deathcream into flesh, in disbelief. Their rapturous applause destroys worlds.] (click: "applause")[From the Liqquid zone, Diana Ross cries out: //Ladies and gentlemen//, my baby, //Eater of Dreams//!] (click: "cries")[ [[x->start_2]].]Crystalized honey. (click: "honey.")[Harry Belafonte burns some tires and thinks, //This planet is unfit for rule//. He looks up at the anamorphic mind/screen the others call Sky. Something is happening.] (click: "Something")[He has a feeling like a witness. Streaks of green and orange breach the mind/screen. The clouds drop to their knees. For Harry Belafonte this is basically it.] (click: "basically")[The mountains surrounding the mountain chateau collapse as the body of Diana Ross collides with the body of Earth and the oceans cough up their dead.] (click: "cough")[ |diana1>[ (link: "TIMEZONES")[ (replace: ?diana1)[ (display: "01_dr_timezones") ] ] or (link: "SATELLITE")[ (replace: ?diana1)[ (display: "01_dr_satellite") ] ] ]]A Soviet satellite hovers and blinks. (click: "satellite")[Diana Ross emerges from a Diana-shaped crater and mutters, //You get what you pay for//. She calls out to the nearby silhouettes of Lionel Richie and Smokey Robinson but they’ve already succumbed to a lotus-eating slumber.] (click: "succumbed")[Through the iridium fog a team of sled-dogs pulling Empress Nagako surround her and lap at her loneliness. The Empress lets Diana Ross nurse on her imperial lifeforce and says, //That’s enough//.] (click: "nurse")[It will never be enough.](click: "never")[ |diana2>[ (link: "COFFEE")[ (replace: ?diana2)[ (display: "02_dr_coffee") ] ] or (link: "TRASH")[ (replace: ?diana2)[ (display: "02_dr_trash") ] ] ]]A trash fire illuminates. (click: "trash")[Back in her crater Diana Ross summons some ghosts who graffiti the crater-wall with //The Sun is a violation of the highest order (the Sky)//. She’s scheming how to leverage this insight into a paying gig on B’arq’lajiin but the barometrics prove too much.] (click: "gig")[Her flesh vessel becomes unmoored from its dimensional scaffold. For a prototype of some esteem this is a worst case scenario.] (click: "esteem")[Out of desperation she tries to imagine hate-fucking Gene Simmons but can only imagine love-fucking him. She gives up and drifts like flotsam on the mind/screen.] (click: "drifts")[ |diana3>[ (link: "DREAMS")[ (replace: ?diana3)[ (display: "03_dr_dreams") ] ] or (link: "CHOIR")[ (replace: ?diana3)[ (display: "03_dr_choir") ] ] ]]Her blood coagulates like a choir. (click: "choir")[Nearby, the white disc of anonymity orbits absolutely nothing. A newborn babe rests at its center as it spins relentlessly through the void.] (click: "spins")[Diana Ross is in direct conflict with its centrifugal force. She crawls across the grooves of the disc toward the newborn babe who is now a young boy.] (click: "grooves")[The boy, now a teenager, tells her (in melodic falsetto), //The fabric of time is out of style//.] (click: "melodic")[The teenager, now a 22 year-old miracle, is too old to suckle stardust but this is exactly what he does. The sullen Mrth’uu-gw’h watch him churn deathcream into flesh, in disbelief. Their rapturous applause destroys worlds.] (click: "applause")[From the Liqquid zone, Diana Ross cries out: //Ladies and gentlemen//, my baby, //Eater of Dreams//!] (click: "cries")[ [[x->start_2]].]I’m feeling like a sunburn, thanks for asking. (click: "sunburn")[Right now I have on corduroy pants with a big hole in the knee and a pink shirt and tie. Bette Midler is passing out cocktails but I’m buried in this crushed velvet chair Quincy got from I think Andre the Giant.] (click: "buried")[Also, I don’t drink.] (click: "drink.")[Sundays I like to fast then dance for thirty minutes nonstop.] (click: "thirty")[ |michael1>[ (link: "THANKSGIVING")[ (replace: ?michael1)[ (display: "01_mj_thanksgiving") ] ] or (link: "EASTER")[ (replace: ?michael1)[ (display: "01_mj_easter") ] ] ]]The sun always looks like a big blister to me. (click: "blister")[Right now I have on corduroy pants with a big hole in the knee and a pink shirt and tie. Bette Midler is passing out cocktails but I’m buried in this crushed velvet chair Quincy got from I think Andre the Giant.] (click: "buried")[Also, I don’t drink.] (click: "drink.")[Sundays I like to fast then dance for thirty minutes nonstop.] (click: "thirty")[ |michael1>[ (link: "THANKSGIVING")[ (replace: ?michael1)[ (display: "01_mj_thanksgiving") ] ] or (link: "EASTER")[ (replace: ?michael1)[ (display: "01_mj_easter") ] ] ]]Trying to imagine going through life with domino earrings. (click: "domino")[Everybody is occupied with this elaborate yarn Dionne Warwick is spinning about a prison break in Qolqata so I take the opportunity to pour my drink into an overgrown terrarium.] (click: "opportunity")[Paul Simon is laughing a little too hard and too long at what’s not even a punchline. The moon is a slice of rogue gyre devouring eleventeen dimensions. A baby alligator sits mouth agape in a corner pocket of the pool table.] (click: "agape")[It terrifies me.] (click: "terrifies")[ |kenny2>[ (link: "HOURGLASS")[ (replace: ?kenny2)[ (display: "02_kr_hourglass") ] ] or (link: "REBOOT")[ (replace: ?kenny2)[ (display: "02_kr_reboot") ] ] ]]It’s late so I flip the hourglass in my chest. (click: "hourglass")[I’m pouring myself a real drink when I hear a familiar voice and it makes me feel a stutter in the part of my amorous field that accrues temporal debt. I hear it again and now I’m standing in front of the hall closet and I say, Dolly that you?] (click: "Dolly")[I open the closet. I reach between some furs and feel along the wall and click open a secret door.] (click: "click")[I’m feeling like I should renege on this idea (to walk thru a secret door and poke around) but it’s already happening.] (click: "renege")[ |kenny3>[ (link: "PENCIL")[ (replace: ?kenny3)[ (display: "03_kr_pencil") ] ] or (link: "WHALE")[ (replace: ?kenny3)[ (display: "03_kr_whale") ] ] ]]It smells like pencil shavings. (click: "pencil")[I’m standing in the unfinished bowels of this house. They’re lit by a string of xmas bulbs like radioactive polyps. Weird things in here, like a combination-locked suitcase with a tag that says //don’t open ‘til Nov 9 1989// and a giant block of salt hanging by a chain over an elaborate matrix of PVC pipe.] (click: "elaborate")[I see two eye-level holes in the wall so of course I walk up to them with my face and see what I can see.] (click: "holes")[ |kenny4>[ (link: "APÉRITIF")[ (replace: ?kenny4)[ (display: "04_kr_aperitif") ] ] or (link: "BONANZA")[ (replace: ?kenny4)[ (display: "04_kr_bonanza") ] ] ]]It’s the Apéritif room. (click: "Apéritif")[I’m glad I’m not in it. Steve Perry is standing there saying something to Daryl Hall and then Daryl Hall says Shit here he comes act natural and then Dan Ackroyd shows up and says Hey guys and Daryl Hall says Hey and Steve Perry nods and says, Dan.] (click: "natural")[Nobody really says anything and then Dan Ackroyd says, It’s weird how this painting looks like Kenny Rogers even though it’s not even a person.] (click: "painting")[Daryl Hall says, Holy shit you’re right.] (click: "shit")[Steve Perry says, It really does.] (click: "does")[They are all looking at my eyes so I duck away and walk around the corner to another set of holes.] (click: "corner")[ |kenny5>[ (link: "DARKROOM")[ (replace: ?kenny5)[ (display: "05_kr_darkroom") ] ] or (link: "AQUARIUS")[ (replace: ?kenny5)[ (display: "05_kr_aquarius") ] ] ]]It’s the Darkroom but the lights are on. (click: "Darkroom")[Bob Dylan is there looking totally lost, and Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder are taking turns mimicking his singing voice at him and saying things like, Now you try it! I move on to the next set of holes and I have no idea what room this is but most of the Jacksons who aren’t Michael are here.] (click: "mimicking")[They’re wearing shimmery robes and Marlon is holding an action figure of Michael in that outfit he wore to last year’s Grammys, and a packet of McDonalds ketchup.] (click: "ketchup")[I think, //What the fuck is this//.] (click: "fuck")[They swing their heads my direction so I’m like, //Did I say// that //outloud//?] (click: "direction")[And then I’m like, Did I say that outloud? I run to the next holes and they’re looking out onto a balcony.] (click: "balcony")[ |kenny6>[ (link: "MAGAZINE")[ (replace: ?kenny6)[ (display: "06_kr_magazine") ] ] or (link: "CINEMATIC")[ (replace: ?kenny6)[ (display: "06_kr_cinematic") ] ] ]]The view is like a magazine of views. (click: "views.")[Sheila E. is holding a gigantic phone with an antenna that looks like a murder weapon. She’s backlit by the quarter-moon and a greenish mist.] (click: "backlit")[She’s telling the phone things like: Everything is going just like we said it would; and: Pretty sure it can just shed its skin like a snake; and: Stop talking to me like I don’t know how to play the goddamn drums.] (click: "goddamn")[She takes a forceful drag off a cigarette and says, Only thing more powerful than a god is the death of a god. G’night, Prince Rogers.] (click: "Prince")[ |kenny7>[ (link: "HEMISPHERIC")[ (replace: ?kenny7)[ (display: "07_kr_hemispheric") ] ] or (link: "BLADDER")[ (replace: ?kenny7)[ (display: "07_kr_bladder") ] ] ]]I’m feeling Sheila E. on a deep, hemispheric level right now. (click: "hemispheric")[The xmas lights flicker and there’s a gutteral, monstrous groan that I somehow know is coming from the house itself. There’s a gelatinous ooze on the floor I’ve got a bad feeling about. I need to get out of here.] (click: "gelatinous")[I don’t have a choice. I’m being expelled through some kind of peristalsis toward a small nautical window.] (click: "nautical")[I crash through it.] (click: "crash")[ |kenny8>[ (link: "CHRIST")[ (replace: ?kenny8)[ (display: "08_kr_christ") ] ] or (link: "SWEET")[ (replace: ?kenny8)[ (display: "08_kr_sweet") ] ] ]]Jesus Christ I’m in outer space. (click: "Christ")[I’m staring at Earth. I think I’m on a satellite but maybe it’s space junk, I dunno. What’s the difference. I can already feel every fluid in my body simmering to a boil.] (click: "simmering")[This image pops in my head of me and Mr. Wizard talking about the human body and outer space and him saying how you should fight your instincts and just inhale the void if you want to extend your life from a few seconds to a few more seconds.] (click: "inhale")[I’m really aware right now how our lives are just the time it takes time to end.] (click: "really")[I let go of the junk/satellite with a push. For a moment I think it’s not enough, but it is.] (click: "enough")[To reenter the atmosphere as a fiery sign of what’s to come.] (click: "fiery")[ [[x->start_2]].] I loosen the imaginary tie around my neck. (click: "imaginary")[Everybody is occupied with this elaborate yarn Dionne Warwick is spinning about a prison break in Qolqata so I take the opportunity to pour my drink into an overgrown terrarium.] (click: "opportunity")[Paul Simon is laughing a little too hard and too long at what’s not even a punchline. The moon is a slice of rogue gyre devouring eleventeen dimensions. A baby alligator sits mouth agape in a corner pocket of the pool table.] (click: "agape")[It terrifies me.] (click: "terrifies")[ |kenny2>[ (link: "HOURGLASS")[ (replace: ?kenny2)[ (display: "02_kr_hourglass") ] ] or (link: "REBOOT")[ (replace: ?kenny2)[ (display: "02_kr_reboot") ] ] ]]It’s late so I reboot the daisy-chained rig in my cerebellum. (click: "reboot")[I’m pouring myself a real drink when I hear a familiar voice and it makes me feel a stutter in the part of my amorous field that accrues temporal debt. I hear it again and now I’m standing in front of the hall closet and I say, Dolly that you?] (click: "Dolly")[I open the closet. I reach between some furs and feel along the wall and click open a secret door.] (click: "click")[I’m feeling like I should renege on this idea (to walk thru a secret door and poke around) but it’s already happening.] (click: "renege")[ |kenny3>[ (link: "PENCIL")[ (replace: ?kenny3)[ (display: "03_kr_pencil") ] ] or (link: "WHALE")[ (replace: ?kenny3)[ (display: "03_kr_whale") ] ] ]]Sounds like whale sounds in here. (click: "whale")[I’m standing in the unfinished bowels of this house. They’re lit by a string of xmas bulbs like radioactive polyps. Weird things in here, like a combination-locked suitcase with a tag that says //don’t open ‘til Nov 9 1989// and a giant block of salt hanging by a chain over an elaborate matrix of PVC pipe.] (click: "elaborate")[I see two eye-level holes in the wall so of course I walk up to them with my face and see what I can see.] (click: "holes")[ |kenny4>[ (link: "APÉRITIF")[ (replace: ?kenny4)[ (display: "04_kr_aperitif") ] ] or (link: "BONANZA")[ (replace: ?kenny4)[ (display: "04_kr_bonanza") ] ] ]]It’s the Bonanza room. (click: "Bonanza")[Everything is sepia. Steve Perry is standing there saying something to Daryl Hall and then Daryl Hall says Shit here he comes act natural and then Dan Ackroyd shows up and says Hey guys and Daryl Hall says Hey and Steve Perry nods and says, Dan.] (click: "natural")[Nobody really says anything and then Dan Ackroyd says, It’s weird how this painting looks like Kenny Rogers even though it’s not even a person.] (click: "painting")[Daryl Hall says, Holy shit you’re right.] (click: "shit")[Steve Perry says, It really does.] (click: "does")[They are all looking at my eyes so I duck away and walk around the corner to another set of holes.] (click: "corner")[ |kenny5>[ (link: "DARKROOM")[ (replace: ?kenny5)[ (display: "05_kr_darkroom") ] ] or (link: "AQUARIUS")[ (replace: ?kenny5)[ (display: "05_kr_aquarius") ] ] ]]You could attempt a particularly cinematic suicide here. (click: "cinematic")[Sheila E. is holding a gigantic phone with an antenna that looks like a murder weapon. She’s backlit by the quarter-moon and a greenish mist.] (click: "backlit")[She’s telling the phone things like: Everything is going just like we said it would; and: Pretty sure it can just shed its skin like a snake; and: Stop talking to me like I don’t know how to play the goddamn drums.] (click: "goddamn")[She takes a forceful drag off a cigarette and says, Only thing more powerful than a god is the death of a god. G’night, Prince Rogers.] (click: "Prince")[ |kenny7>[ (link: "HEMISPHERIC")[ (replace: ?kenny7)[ (display: "07_kr_hemispheric") ] ] or (link: "BLADDER")[ (replace: ?kenny7)[ (display: "07_kr_bladder") ] ] ]]It’s the Aquarius room but the ceilings are Scorpio. (click: "Aquarius")[Bob Dylan is there looking totally lost, and Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder are taking turns mimicking his singing voice at him and saying things like, Now you try it! I move on to the next set of holes and I have no idea what room this is but most of the Jacksons who aren’t Michael are here.] (click: "mimicking")[They’re wearing shimmery robes and Marlon is holding an action figure of Michael in that outfit he wore to last year’s Grammys, and a packet of McDonalds ketchup.] (click: "ketchup")[I think, //What the fuck is this//.] (click: "fuck")[They swing their heads my direction so I’m like, //Did I say// that //outloud//?] (click: "direction")[And then I’m like, Did I say that outloud? I run to the next holes and they’re looking out onto a balcony.] (click: "balcony")[ |kenny6>[ (link: "MAGAZINE")[ (replace: ?kenny6)[ (display: "06_kr_magazine") ] ] or (link: "CINEMATIC")[ (replace: ?kenny6)[ (display: "06_kr_cinematic") ] ] ]]I have that feeling you feel in your bladder when someone says your name but really it’s someone else’s name. (click: "bladder")[The xmas lights flicker and there’s a gutteral, monstrous groan that I somehow know is coming from the house itself. There’s a gelatinous ooze on the floor I’ve got a bad feeling about. I need to get out of here.] (click: "gelatinous")[I don’t have a choice. I’m being expelled through some kind of peristalsis toward a small nautical window.] (click: "nautical")[I crash through it.] (click: "crash")[ |kenny8>[ (link: "CHRIST")[ (replace: ?kenny8)[ (display: "08_kr_christ") ] ] or (link: "SWEET")[ (replace: ?kenny8)[ (display: "08_kr_sweet") ] ] ]]Sweet fucking God I’m in outer space. (click: "Sweet")[I’m staring at Earth. I think I’m on a satellite but maybe it’s space junk, I dunno. What’s the difference. I can already feel every fluid in my body simmering to a boil.] (click: "simmering")[This image pops in my head of me and Mr. Wizard talking about the human body and outer space and him saying how you should fight your instincts and just inhale the void if you want to extend your life from a few seconds to a few more seconds.] (click: "inhale")[I’m really aware right now how our lives are just the time it takes time to end.] (click: "really")[I let go of the junk/satellite with a push. For a moment I think it’s not enough, but it is.] (click: "enough")[To reenter the atmosphere as a fiery sign of what’s to come.] (click: "fiery")[ [[x->start_2]].]Eyeglass frames made of meteorites. (click:"meteorites.")[What life was like before Marduk raised up Imhullu the atrocious wind and grappled Tiamat alone and flung her down and straddled her carcass.](click:"straddled")[ |bruce1>[ (link: "GLORY")[ (replace: ?bruce1)[ (display: "01_bs_glory") ] ] or (link: "RIOT")[ (replace: ?bruce1)[ (display: "01_bs_riot") ] ] ]]Glory days, riot nights. (click:"Glory")[ [[x->start_2]].]For dinner, seared volcano belly. (click:"volcano")[What life was like before Marduk raised up Imhullu the atrocious wind and grappled Tiamat alone and flung her down and straddled her carcass.](click:"straddled")[ |bruce1>[ (link: "GLORY")[ (replace: ?bruce1)[ (display: "01_bs_glory") ] ] or (link: "RIOT")[ (replace: ?bruce1)[ (display: "01_bs_riot") ] ] ]]Glory days, riot nights. (click:"riot")[ [[x->start_2]].]The wallpaper blisters and coos. (click:"wallpaper")[Cyndi Lauper cuts sacred shapes out of colored paper and sticks them to her face with eyelash glue.] (click:"sacred")[Cream-stick eyeliner. Day-glo eyeshadow for a plaid effect to the cheekbones.] (click:"plaid")[Lionel Richie said it was ok to go against time travelers and Cyndi Lauper plans to do exactly that. This mirror is spattered with human remains. She stumbles out of the bathroom like a German submarine.] (click:"submarine")[ |cyndi1>[ (link: "OVERHEAD")[ (replace: ?cyndi1)[ (display: "01_cl_overhead") ] ] or (link: "ARRIVAL")[ (replace: ?cyndi1)[ (display: "01_cl_arrival") ] ] ]]The overhead light spits and flares. (click:"overhead")[And she’s like, Wait how is this another bathroom? There’s no sink or mirrors or toilet or towel ring and the floor is hardwood instead of tile but the focal point of the room is definitely a clawfoot porcelain tub. Cyndi Lauper’s throat tightens.] (click:"throat")[She says, Fragrant days make for violent nights.] (click:"violent")[Her kimono pools at her feet as she approaches the tub. The hardwood trembles.] (click:"trembles")[ |cyndi2>[ (link: "EUCLIDEAN")[ (replace: ?cyndi2)[ (display: "02_cl_euclidean") ] ] or (link: "PHEROMONE")[ (replace: ?cyndi2)[ (display: "02_cl_pheromone") ] ] ]]The window casts Euclidean shadow-patterns. (click:"Euclidean")[Downstairs, Kenny Loggins wrestles with a chandelier like a child of divorce. Bette Midler is breaking a sweat on a stationary bike. In one of the twenty-eight other bathrooms, Dan Aykroyd methodically picks the skin off his face so he can free the lizard underneath.] (click:"lizard")[Cyndi Lauper yanks a pair of dice from her belt and makes a saving throw.] (click:"saving")[It is time for her surgery.] (click:"surgery")[ |cyndi3>[ (link: "CENTURY")[ (replace: ?cyndi3)[ (display: "03_cl_century") ] ] or (link: "ESPIONAGE")[ (replace: ?cyndi3)[ (display: "03_cl_espionage") ] ] ]]The pipes rattle like 18th Century laughter. (click:"Century")[The tub steams. She presses the blade to her skin and swipes right. Blood spurts from her throat.] (click:"spurts")[She staggers, horrified, but undeterred. She peels back the skin and makes a deeper cut. The blade clatters to the floor.] (click:"blade")[The terror Cyndi Lauper feels in this moment is something she would not wish on her worst enemy (her stepfather). She gurgles and chokes on her fist as it grips her voicebox and cracks it free. She collapses, the voicebox skidding across the floor like a wilderness.] (click:"wilderness")[Snow falls.] (click:"Snow")[ |cyndi4>[ (link: "MONEY")[ (replace: ?cyndi4)[ (display: "04_cl_money") ] ] or (link: "PSYCHIC")[ (replace: ?cyndi4)[ (display: "04_cl_psychic") ] ] ]]Mountains the color of old money. (click:"money")[Her dog Sparkle licks her face as they starve to death. She whispers telepathically: Sparkle, fetch, fetch my voicebox, and Sparkle barks once then bounds off into the Canadian darkness.] (click:"Canadian")[Cyndi Lauper is flesh and blood and snow. She feels professional rage.] (click:"professional")[She cries out to the farthest known galaxy. After 13 billion years, the farthest known galaxy hears her cries, and responds. It will take another 13 billion years for the response to reach her. Cyndi Lauper simply cannot bear it.] (click:"simply")[Captain Lou Albano can’t save her. The adoration of the spheres in heaven is just making it worse. This life is aesthetic trash. Cyndi Lauper will die for as long as the Earth turns.] (click:"turns")[ |cyndi5>[ (link: "TOENAILS")[ (replace: ?cyndi5)[ (display: "05_cl_toenails") ] ] or (link: "TONGUE")[ (replace: ?cyndi5)[ (display: "05_cl_tongue") ] ] ]]The tortuous sound of toenails on the hardwood. (click:"toenails")[A tail lapping at her blood. Sparkle barks. Cyndi Lauper touches her own voicebox in disbelief.] (click:"disbelief.")[She whispers telepathically, Sparkle I love you, and palms the rim of the tub with the strength of forty suns. She holds the voicebox underwater until the water is red. She steadies her throat, clicks the voicebox into place.] (click:"steadies")[Her mouth opens.] (click:"mouth")[Sparkle roars.] (click:"roars")[ [[x->start_2]].]The shower curtain is translucent as a symbolic promise by the current regime that it won’t repeat the atrocities of the previous twenty-nine regimes. (click:"shower")[Cyndi Lauper cuts sacred shapes out of colored paper and sticks them to her face with eyelash glue.] (click:"sacred")[Cream-stick eyeliner. Day-glo eyeshadow for a plaid effect to the cheekbones.] (click:"plaid")[Lionel Richie said it was ok to go against time travelers and Cyndi Lauper plans to do exactly that. This mirror is spattered with human remains. She stumbles out of the bathroom like a German submarine.] (click:"submarine")[ |cyndi1>[ (link: "OVERHEAD")[ (replace: ?cyndi1)[ (display: "01_cl_overhead") ] ] or (link: "ARRIVAL")[ (replace: ?cyndi1)[ (display: "01_cl_arrival") ] ] ]]Her bracelets announce her arrival. (click:"arrival")[But she’s like, Wait how is this another bathroom? There’s no sink or mirrors or toilet or towel ring and the floor is hardwood instead of tile but the focal point of the room is definitely a clawfoot porcelain tub. Cyndi Lauper’s throat tightens.] (click:"throat")[She says, Fragrant days make for violent nights.] (click:"violent")[Her kimono pools at her feet as she approaches the tub. The hardwood trembles.] (click:"trembles")[ |cyndi2>[ (link: "EUCLIDEAN")[ (replace: ?cyndi2)[ (display: "02_cl_euclidean") ] ] or (link: "PHEROMONE")[ (replace: ?cyndi2)[ (display: "02_cl_pheromone") ] ] ]]A lost trickle of ants wander forever within a closed-loop pheromone trail. (click:"pheromone")[Downstairs, Kenny Loggins wrestles with a chandelier like a child of divorce. Bette Midler is breaking a sweat on a stationary bike. In one of the twenty-eight other bathrooms, Dan Aykroyd methodically picks the skin off his face so he can free the lizard underneath.] (click:"lizard")[Cyndi Lauper yanks a pair of dice from her belt and makes a saving throw.] (click:"saving")[It is time for her surgery.] (click:"surgery")[ |cyndi3>[ (link: "CENTURY")[ (replace: ?cyndi3)[ (display: "03_cl_century") ] ] or (link: "ESPIONAGE")[ (replace: ?cyndi3)[ (display: "03_cl_espionage") ] ] ]]The ceiling fan evokes a corporate espionage thriller. (click:"espionage")[The tub steams. She presses the blade to her skin and swipes right. Blood spurts from her throat.] (click:"spurts")[She staggers, horrified, but undeterred. She peels back the skin and makes a deeper cut. The blade clatters to the floor.] (click:"blade")[The terror Cyndi Lauper feels in this moment is something she would not wish on her worst enemy (her stepfather). She gurgles and chokes on her fist as it grips her voicebox and cracks it free. She collapses, the voicebox skidding across the floor like a wilderness.] (click:"wilderness")[Snow falls.] (click:"Snow")[ |cyndi4>[ (link: "MONEY")[ (replace: ?cyndi4)[ (display: "04_cl_money") ] ] or (link: "PSYCHIC")[ (replace: ?cyndi4)[ (display: "04_cl_psychic") ] ] ]]The trees form a psychic perimeter. (click:"psychic")[Her dog Sparkle licks her face as they starve to death. She whispers telepathically: Sparkle, fetch, fetch my voicebox, and Sparkle barks once then bounds off into the Canadian darkness.] (click:"Canadian")[Cyndi Lauper is flesh and blood and snow. She feels professional rage.] (click:"professional")[She cries out to the farthest known galaxy. After 13 billion years, the farthest known galaxy hears her cries, and responds. It will take another 13 billion years for the response to reach her. Cyndi Lauper simply cannot bear it.] (click:"simply")[Captain Lou Albano can’t save her. The adoration of the spheres in heaven is just making it worse. This life is aesthetic trash. Cyndi Lauper will die for as long as the Earth turns.] (click:"turns")[ |cyndi5>[ (link: "TOENAILS")[ (replace: ?cyndi5)[ (display: "05_cl_toenails") ] ] or (link: "TONGUE")[ (replace: ?cyndi5)[ (display: "05_cl_tongue") ] ] ]]A tongue waterboarding her face. (click:"tongue")[A tail lapping at her blood. Sparkle barks. Cyndi Lauper touches her own voicebox in disbelief.] (click:"disbelief.")[She whispers telepathically, Sparkle I love you, and palms the rim of the tub with the strength of forty suns. She holds the voicebox underwater until the water is red. She steadies her throat, clicks the voicebox into place.] (click:"steadies")[Her mouth opens.] (click:"mouth")[Sparkle roars.] (click:"roars")[ [[x->start_2]].]Somebody from Ozone Park is pounding on the door saying things like C’mon hurry up in there, a girl’s gotta go! (click:"Ozone")[Daryl Hall shuts his eyes and hates The Police as hard as he can and disintegrates and reintegrates in the hall closet.] (click:"reintegrates")[It’s a walk-in closet. He walks out. Asks Quincy Jones how much a restoration job like this will set you back and Quincy Jones says, Before Christ.] (click:"restoration")[ |daryl1>[ (link: "WONDERS")[ (replace: ?daryl1)[ (display: "01_dh_wonders") ] ] or (link: "WRISTWATCH")[ (replace: ?daryl1)[ (display: "01_dh_wristwatch") ] ] ]]This bathroom might as well have a man in it handing you a hand towel. (click:"towel")[Daryl Hall shuts his eyes and hates The Police as hard as he can and disintegrates and reintegrates in the hall closet.] (click:"reintegrates")[It’s a walk-in closet. He walks out. Asks Quincy Jones how much a restoration job like this will set you back and Quincy Jones says, Before Christ.] (click:"restoration")[ |daryl1>[ (link: "WONDERS")[ (replace: ?daryl1)[ (display: "01_dh_wonders") ] ] or (link: "WRISTWATCH")[ (replace: ?daryl1)[ (display: "01_dh_wristwatch") ] ] ]]He wonders who the fuck brought a pet monkey. (click:"wonders")[The kitchen paint seethes with sexual confusion. Daryl Hall has been thirsty his whole life so he opens the fridge.] (click:"thirsty")[Shards of ice blister his face and he feels his future break off the infinitude of the present like an iceberg. Where a Diet Pepsi should be, an entire windswept continent of despair.] (click:"windswept")[A tiny figure flees across the vast white landscape inside the refrigerator.] (click:"flees")[Daryl Hall zooms in.] (click:"zooms")[ |daryl2>[ (link: "VIOLENCE")[ (replace: ?daryl2)[ (display: "02_dh_violence") ] ] or (link: "AMBIENT")[ (replace: ?daryl2)[ (display: "02_dh_ambient") ] ] ]]A cat he’s never seen before hisses in solidarity. (click:"solidarity")[He lunges into the refrigerator to aid his other half but Smokey Robinson catches his arm and says, Daryl you need a coat, a winter coat, not this windbreaker shit.] (click:"windbreaker")[This is why Daryl Hall is down the hall opening a guest room closet.] (click:"opening")[This is how he finds a facsimile of Quincy Jones’ body hanging on a coat hanger like a dessicated sack of skin.] (click:"dessicated")[ |daryl4>[ (link: "SYSTEM")[ (replace: ?daryl4)[ (display: "04_dh_system") ] ] or (link: "BRICK")[ (replace: ?daryl4)[ (display: "04_dh_brick") ] ] ]]Whatever it is is subject to the structural violence of climate control. (click:"violence")[Dressed in mortal peril and a mammoth boa and boots cut from sabertooth hide. Its radiant terror forms a venn diagram with Daryl Hall’s body and soul. The void around which his self gestates is disturbed.] (click:"gestates")[This disturbance vibrates a feeling, which sprouts a thought Daryl Hall ponders, then mutters: //This is a solitary extinction event//.] (click:"sprouts")[Daryl Hall realizes in this moment (the moment of his utterance) that the figure traversing this hellscape is none other than the partner with whom he’s crafted twenty-nine top 40 hits and six #1 singles: John Oates.] (click:"hellscape")[ |daryl3>[ (link: "SOLIDARITY")[ (replace: ?daryl3)[ (display: "03_dh_solidarity") ] ] or (link: "GRANDFATHER")[ (replace: ?daryl3)[ (display: "03_dh_grandfather") ] ] ]]The HVAC system trembles under the weight of its own purpose. (click:"system")[Daryl Hall is staring in horror at his own thought, which is: //This is exactly what Quincy Jones would look like without a skeletal structure or eyeballs//. He touches it as if sampling fabric then smells his fingers. They smell like fresh flesh.] (click:"fresh")[The safety of ceilings and walls is unsafe. There will be no more #1s. Daryll Hall turns to go and stops.] (click:"turns")[Quincy Jones is leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, legs crossed at the ankles, body backlit, face in shadow.] (click:"ankles")[And the voice of Quincy Jones says, //Daryl my motherfucker, did you find what you were looking for//?] (click:"voice")[ [[x->start_2]].]His wristwatch beeps like the first day of Spring. (click: "wristwatch")[The kitchen paint seethes with sexual confusion. Daryl Hall has been thirsty his whole life so he opens the fridge.] (click:"thirsty")[Shards of ice blister his face and he feels his future break off the infinitude of the present like an iceberg. Where a Diet Pepsi should be, an entire windswept continent of despair.] (click:"windswept")[A tiny figure flees across the vast white landscape inside the refrigerator.] (click:"flees")[Daryl Hall zooms in.] (click:"zooms")[ |daryl2>[ (link: "VIOLENCE")[ (replace: ?daryl2)[ (display: "02_dh_violence") ] ] or (link: "AMBIENT")[ (replace: ?daryl2)[ (display: "02_dh_ambient") ] ] ]]In lieu of sunlight: godless, ambient fluorescence. (click: "ambient")[Dressed in mortal peril and a mammoth boa and boots cut from sabertooth hide. Its radiant terror forms a venn diagram with Daryl Hall’s body and soul. The void around which his self gestates is disturbed.] (click:"gestates")[This disturbance vibrates a feeling, which sprouts a thought Daryl Hall ponders, then mutters: //This is a solitary extinction event//.] (click:"sprouts")[Daryl Hall realizes in this moment (the moment of his utterance) that the figure traversing this hellscape is none other than the partner with whom he’s crafted twenty-nine top 40 hits and six #1 singles: John Oates.] (click:"hellscape")[ |daryl3>[ (link: "SOLIDARITY")[ (replace: ?daryl3)[ (display: "03_dh_solidarity") ] ] or (link: "GRANDFATHER")[ (replace: ?daryl3)[ (display: "03_dh_grandfather") ] ] ]]There’s also the temporal discharge of a grandfather clock going on. (click: "grandfather")[He lunges into the refrigerator to aid his other half but Smokey Robinson catches his arm and says, Daryl you need a coat, a winter coat, not this windbreaker shit.] (click:"windbreaker")[This is why Daryl Hall is down the hall opening a guest room closet.] (click:"opening")[This is how he finds a facsimile of Quincy Jones’ body hanging on a coat hanger like a dessicated sack of skin.] (click:"dessicated")[ |daryl4>[ (link: "SYSTEM")[ (replace: ?daryl4)[ (display: "04_dh_system") ] ] or (link: "BRICK")[ (replace: ?daryl4)[ (display: "04_dh_brick") ] ] ]]The closet wallpaper is a gold brick road going nowhere. (click:"brick")[Daryl Hall is staring in horror at his own thought, which is: //This is exactly what Quincy Jones would look like without a skeletal structure or eyeballs//. He touches it as if sampling fabric then smells his fingers. They smell like fresh flesh.] (click:"fresh")[The safety of ceilings and walls is unsafe. There will be no more #1s. Daryll Hall turns to go and stops.] (click:"turns")[Quincy Jones is leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, legs crossed at the ankles, body backlit, face in shadow.] (click:"ankles")[And the voice of Quincy Jones says, //Daryl my motherfucker, did you find what you were looking for//?] (click:"voice")[ [[x->start_2]].]Kenny Loggins taps the butler on the shoulder and says, Excuse me, there’s humans over there acting like dogs. (click:"dogs")[The butler runs into the room adjacent, to take care of the problem. Kenny Loggins turns to Cyndi Lauper and excuses himself. He salivates at the thought of the planet Jupiter.] (click:"salivates")[He looks out a window, at the planet and says, You are truly O.G.](click:"O.G.")[ |kenny1>[ (link: "ECHOLOCATION")[ (replace: ?kenny1)[ (display: "01_kl_echolocation") ] ] or (link: "CAR")[ (replace: ?kenny1)[ (display: "01_kl_car") ] ] ]]Kenny Loggins taps the butler on the shoulder and says, Excuse me, there’s humans over there acting like anacondas. (click:"anacondas")[The butler runs into the room adjacent, to take care of the problem. Kenny Loggins turns to Cyndi Lauper and excuses himself. He salivates at the thought of the planet Jupiter.] (click:"salivates")[He looks out a window, at the planet and says, You are truly O.G.](click:"O.G.")[ |kenny1>[ (link: "ECHOLOCATION")[ (replace: ?kenny1)[ (display: "01_kl_echolocation") ] ] or (link: "CAR")[ (replace: ?kenny1)[ (display: "01_kl_car") ] ] ]]After this song is done, Kenny Loggins thinks, I want to hire dolphins and bats and whales and create an album made entirely of echolocation sounds. (click:"echolocation")[Kenny Loggins pulls out his pocket journal and revises his notes for //Camping on the Surface of a Destroyed Orb//. He joins Stevie Wonder in the boiler room and they discuss dying again, for the seventeenth time. Stevie Wonder says, My left arm is hurting again. Kenny Loggins says, That makes sense. A television reporter says, A lunar eclipse is about to happen.] (click:"lunar")[Kenny Loggins fantasizes about breaking & entering into a home he knows he will own twelve years from now. There’s a quick break and someone Kenny Loggins has never seen in his life before says, Take fifteen everyone. Kenny Loggins runs outside and finds an alleyway.](click:"alleyway")[ |kenny2>[ (link: "SACRED")[ (replace: ?kenny2)[ (display: "02_kl_sacred") ] ] or (link: "TAINTED")[ (replace: ?kenny2)[ (display: "02_kl_tainted") ] ] ]]He shoots a woman for the first time (his hand in his left jacket pocket) and there’s the spray of sacred blood onto a brand new Lanvin mesh shearling jacket. (click:"sacred")[The (either:"black","white") god Gh’vxxvy Dh’ruum is summoned. Kenny Loggins says, I want a bomb threat in Tokyo and within five years, an art museum somewhere near my apartment, painted a cosmic latte.] (click:"bomb threat")[James Ingram saunters by and puts up five fingers and say, Tomorrow, daggers after five? Some people have stopped practicing singing and in Ballroom C, there’s DJ Ripped Face rapping into a microphone about the Vietnam war. One of the lyrics is Trippin’ on the soul of all those dead soldiers.] (click:"rapping")[John Oates is in the business room asking for forgiveness (for something that can probably never be forgiven). There’s a deadpan-sort of voice emitting from the theatre room and Kenny Loggins thinks, Who is that?] (click:"forgiveness")[ |kenny3>[ (link: "BLINDING")[ (replace: ?kenny3)[ (display: "03_kl_blinding") ] ] or (link: "DEAFENING")[ (replace: ?kenny3)[ (display: "03_kl_deafening") ] ] ]]He rounds the corner and sees the face of the voice but it’s so bright it’s blinding. (click:"blinding")[A voice in his head keeps saying, All these people and no one will ever believe you. There’s the image of a lake that has dried out on the wall.] (click:"dried out")[Kenny Loggins inspects the colours and notices a woman (in the image) wearing a bonnet. She is also drinking Coca Cola (in the sun) instead of Pepsi. Kenny Loggins spits on the image and shouts, Glass bottles! There’s a projector playing a video of an elephant dancing in the middle of the street.] (click:"elephant")[It’s sometime after nine and all Kenny Loggins can see is the colour of the moon after midnight and how everything is just basked in this wonderful sort of blue.] (click:"moon")[ |kenny4>[ (link: "BANGLADESH")[ (replace: ?kenny4)[ (display: "04_kl_bangladesh") ] ] or (link: "SUMATRA")[ (replace: ?kenny4)[ (display: "04_kl_sumatra") ] ] ]]The curvature of the Earth, right now, allows for a majestic view of what it looks like when it is raining over Bangladesh. (click:"Bangladesh.")[A servant appears and says, Anything, sir? Kenny Loggins says, Right now, I am breathing in the atmosphere, even though I’ve run out of of inhaler fuel. The servant laughs and says, Flanking the enemy is an underwater battle.] (click:"laughs")[Kenny Loggins lights a cigar and says, Give me some skin. They high five and Kenny Loggins lifts his shirt (to reveal another shirt) with the words, Terror in the Ganja.] (click:"Ganja.")[ [[x->start_2]].]After this song is done, Kenny Loggins thinks, I want to rent jeeps and sedans and trucks and create an album made entirely of car sounds. (click:"car")[Kenny Loggins pulls out his pocket journal and revises his notes for //Camping on the Surface of a Destroyed Orb//. He joins Stevie Wonder in the boiler room and they discuss dying again, for the seventeenth time. Stevie Wonder says, My left arm is hurting again. Kenny Loggins says, That makes sense. A television reporter says, A lunar eclipse is about to happen.] (click:"lunar")[Kenny Loggins fantasizes about breaking & entering into a home he knows he will own twelve years from now. There’s a quick break and someone Kenny Loggins has never seen in his life before says, Take fifteen everyone. Kenny Loggins runs outside and finds an alleyway.](click:"alleyway")[ |kenny2>[ (link: "SACRED")[ (replace: ?kenny2)[ (display: "02_kl_sacred") ] ] or (link: "TAINTED")[ (replace: ?kenny2)[ (display: "02_kl_tainted") ] ] ]]He shoots a woman for the first time (his hand in his left jacket pocket) and there’s the spray of tainted blood onto a brand new Lanvin mesh shearling jacket. (click:"tainted")[The (either:"black","white") god Gh’vxxvy Dh’ruum is summoned. Kenny Loggins says, I want a bomb threat in Tokyo and within five years, an art museum somewhere near my apartment, painted a cosmic latte.] (click:"bomb threat")[James Ingram saunters by and puts up five fingers and say, Tomorrow, daggers after five? Some people have stopped practicing singing and in Ballroom C, there’s DJ Ripped Face rapping into a microphone about the Vietnam war. One of the lyrics is Trippin’ on the soul of all those dead soldiers.] (click:"rapping")[John Oates is in the business room asking for forgiveness (for something that can probably never be forgiven). There’s a deadpan-sort of voice emitting from the theatre room and Kenny Loggins thinks, Who is that?] (click:"forgiveness")[ |kenny3>[ (link: "BLINDING")[ (replace: ?kenny3)[ (display: "03_kl_blinding") ] ] or (link: "DEAFENING")[ (replace: ?kenny3)[ (display: "03_kl_deafening") ] ] ]]He rounds the corner and sees the face of the voice but it’s so bright it’s deafening. (click:"deafening")[A voice in his head keeps saying, All these people and no one will ever believe you. There’s the image of a lake that has dried out on the wall.] (click:"dried out")[Kenny Loggins inspects the colours and notices a woman (in the image) wearing a bonnet. She is also drinking Coca Cola (in the sun) instead of Pepsi. Kenny Loggins spits on the image and shouts, Glass bottles! There’s a projector playing a video of an elephant dancing in the middle of the street.] (click:"elephant")[It’s sometime after nine and all Kenny Loggins can see is the colour of the moon after midnight and how everything is just basked in this wonderful sort of blue.] (click:"moon")[ |kenny4>[ (link: "BANGLADESH")[ (replace: ?kenny4)[ (display: "04_kl_bangladesh") ] ] or (link: "SUMATRA")[ (replace: ?kenny4)[ (display: "04_kl_sumatra") ] ] ]]The curvature of the Earth, right now, allows for a majestic view of what it looks like when it is raining over Sumatra. (click:"Sumatra.")[A servant appears and says, Anything, sir? Kenny Loggins says, Right now, I am breathing in the atmosphere, even though I’ve run out of of inhaler fuel. The servant laughs and says, Flanking the enemy is an underwater battle.] (click:"laughs")[Kenny Loggins lights a cigar and says, Give me some skin. They high five and Kenny Loggins lifts his shirt (to reveal another shirt) with the words, Terror in the Ganja.] (click:"Ganja.")[ [[x->start_2]].]Anytime a crowd gathers, Paul Simon panics and says, Seems like an ambush, even tho I know it’s not. (click: "ambush")[Harp music is playing. Paul Simon turns and points to Tina Turner and says, I know her; she knows me. He sketches this image of a woman with three breasts.] (click: "points")[Again, he talks about his planet and says it is more green than it is blue.] (click: "green")[Usually, everyday is a ton of rain and a dense fog, but you get used to it. Paul Simon points to a car in this car magazine on the coffee table and says, I am getting this next month.] (click: "magazine")[It’s a blue Maserati.] (click: "Maserati")[Lionel Richie says, Oooohhh—beaucoup dollars. Paul Simon says, I am a forgotten cave.] (click: "forgotten")[ |paul2>[ (link: "MELODIES")[ (replace: ?paul2)[ (display: "02_ps_melodies") ] ] or (link: "HARMONIC")[ (replace: ?paul2)[ (display: "02_ps_harmonic") ] ] ]]Old melodies drip from his nose. (click: "melodies")[Paul Simon and a few close cohorts all huddle up and gather in the noise projection room. They watch a silent documentary about a kid who has been lost forever. Bob Dylan spits, That’s just a legend.] (click: "legend")[In the next room: the sound of someone’s soul escaping from the meatspace.] (click: "escaping")[Everytime lightning strikes, there’s the image of a jeep dangling from a cliff (intercut with static-y thunderous claps and boom-ed out bass sounds). Paul Simon stands up and says, Where’s Quincy Jones at? I want to tell him his house has creaky vents.] (click: "creaky")[ Someone points to a room ensconced in purple light.] (click: "purple")[ |paul3>[ (link: "BONE")[ (replace: ?paul3)[ (display: "03_ps_bone") ] ] or (link: "LEATHER")[ (replace: ?paul3)[ (display: "03_ps_leather") ] ] ]]Waylon Jennings picks at his teeth with a tiny bone and spits pink spit in the sink. (click: "bone")[There’s an escalator with a sign that reads, Mud from the past. Paul Simon takes the escalator and mutters to himself, It’s nearly the future yet it still looks like 1981.] (click: "mutters")[He thinks about what he is going to say to Quincy Jones and realizes it’s everything no one ever wants to talk about.] (click: "everything")[There’s muzak playing and the singer is lamenting about burning oceans.] (click: "burning")[ |paul4>[ (link: "CLOCK")[ (replace: ?paul4)[ (display: "04_ps_clock") ] ] or (link: "CASTLES")[ (replace: ?paul4)[ (display: "04_ps_castles") ] ] ]]The clock strikes; the sky releases its reserve of aborted ur’god spines atop Mount Krujë. (click: "clock")[As the escalator goes up, Paul Simon catches a glimpse of one of the slaves outside, escaping from the slave house, in the rain. He punches the red emergency stop button on the escalator and runs past the ceremony room to the steam room.] (click: "emergency")[Inside: Willie Nelson & Al Jarreau. Paul Simon says, The slaves are escaping. Willie Nelson & Al Jarreau both look at each other and say (almost simultaneously), Not on my watch!] (click: "simultaneously")[Paul Simon feels relaxed now and like he’s done a good deed. He whistles a tune (that will later turn into Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes).] (click: "Diamonds")[ |paul5>[ (link: "PLACEHOLDER")[ (replace: ?paul5)[ (display: "05_ps_placeholder") ] ] or (link: "DIARY")[ (replace: ?paul5)[ (display: "05_ps_diary") ] ] ]]The rug in the center of the room is a placeholder for some irredeemable atrocity. (click: "placeholder")[James Ingram keeps trying to start the chimney (even tho there is a sign that reads: Do not try and start the chimney. At the moment, all it does is bellow blood and spill out violence).] (click: "violence")[Paul Simon yelps and James Ingram stops and looks. Paul Simon points at the sign and James Ingram smiles and says, Oh hey. Yeah. Of course. Thanks.] (click: "Thanks.")[Paul Simon wanders through hallways and tiptoes around the pools of mercury (this is near the black light and red light rooms).] (click: "mercury")[A reporter accosts him in the hallway and says, What’s next, for you, Mr. Simon? Paul Simon says, The American Dream of a planet in space, naturally.] (click: "naturally")[The reporter seems satisfied so he walks away.] (click: "satisfied")[ |paul6>[ (link: "EXPENSIVE")[ (replace: ?paul6)[ (display: "06_ps_expensive") ] ] or (link: "NORMAL")[ (replace: ?paul6)[ (display: "06_ps_normal") ] ] ]]Bob Geldof is cradling a box of expensive rocks under his arm and avoiding eye-contact. (click: "expensive")[Paul Simon calls a film director and says, Make your next film about mountains and make sure there’s dolphins with explosives strapped to their undersides—like, their bellies!] (click: "strapped")[There’s a sculpture in the laundry room and Paul Simon swears he’s seen it before (he just cannot, for the life of him, remember where). A sign underneath reads: Metal & Rust from the Year 2077.] (click: "underneath")[ |paul7>[ (link: "CORROSIVE")[ (replace: ?paul7)[ (display: "07_ps_corrosive") ] ] or (link: "DELUXE")[ (replace: ?paul7)[ (display: "07_ps_deluxe") ] ] ]]Harry Belafonte is sitting there designing cover art for a record that’s just the sound of corrosive rain on a biodome. (click: "corrosive")[There’s a forest of tubes and wires and oil and gunsmoke in the attic and for some reason, someone’s shoes by the door (they’re filled with orange sand).] (click: "orange")[Paul Simon dials 1-800-DETECTIVE and asks for the best there is. He tells the secretary to tell the detective to call this case something like, Jellied Gasoline at the Lakehouse or the Forgotten Tombs of Osiris.] (click: "Gasoline")[ |paul8>[ (link: "PLACEBO")[ (replace: ?paul8)[ (display: "08_ps_placebo") ] ] or (link: "NUMBER")[ (replace: ?paul8)[ (display: "08_ps_number") ] ] ]]He’s thinking, I just need the right placebo and I can make it thru this. (click: "placebo")[There’s camouflaged crystal skulls near the saltwater fish tanks but Paul Simon can see right thru them. He crushes them (one by one) in his hands and inhales the dust.] (click: "inhales")[He says, A lesser daemon wouldn’t know better.] (click: "daemon")[A portal opens up, somewhere in the home—Paul Simon doesn’t know where, but somewhere, he can feel the power bubbling and surging and coursing through meatspace.] (click: "meatspace")[Paul Simon points to Cyndi Lauper (referring to her as Woman on the Moon) and says, The cursed branches of the hanging tree have opened, relinquish your scroll, at once, for the forlorn peasants have abandoned their sinful ways!] (click: "forlorn")[ [[x->start_2]].]Anytime a crowd gathers, Paul Simon emanates a pale blue light, because blue is the color of every injustice that has ever been done to him or by him, put together. (click: "injustice")[Harp music is playing. Paul Simon turns and points to Tina Turner and says, I know her; she knows me. He sketches this image of a woman with three breasts.] (click: "points")[Again, he talks about his planet and says it is more green than it is blue.] (click: "green")[Usually, everyday is a ton of rain and a dense fog, but you get used to it. Paul Simon points to a car in this car magazine on the coffee table and says, I am getting this next month.] (click: "magazine")[It’s a blue Maserati.] (click: "Maserati")[Lionel Richie says, Oooohhh—beaucoup dollars. Paul Simon says, I am a forgotten cave.] (click: "forgotten")[ |paul2>[ (link: "MELODIES")[ (replace: ?paul2)[ (display: "02_ps_melodies") ] ] or (link: "HARMONIC")[ (replace: ?paul2)[ (display: "02_ps_harmonic") ] ] ]]His harmonic ambition collapses into a pile of thunder. (click: "harmonic")[Paul Simon and a few close cohorts all huddle up and gather in the noise projection room. They watch a silent documentary about a kid who has been lost forever. Bob Dylan spits, That’s just a legend.] (click: "legend")[In the next room: the sound of someone’s soul escaping from the meatspace.] (click: "escaping")[Everytime lightning strikes, there’s the image of a jeep dangling from a cliff (intercut with static-y thunderous claps and boom-ed out bass sounds). Paul Simon stands up and says, Where’s Quincy Jones at? I want to tell him his house has creaky vents.] (click: "creaky")[ Someone points to a room ensconced in purple light.] (click: "purple")[ |paul3>[ (link: "BONE")[ (replace: ?paul3)[ (display: "03_ps_bone") ] ] or (link: "LEATHER")[ (replace: ?paul3)[ (display: "03_ps_leather") ] ] ]]The floor is littered with leather shavings and tennis ball lint. (click: "leather")[There’s an escalator with a sign that reads, Mud from the past. Paul Simon takes the escalator and mutters to himself, It’s nearly the future yet it still looks like 1981.] (click: "mutters")[He thinks about what he is going to say to Quincy Jones and realizes it’s everything no one ever wants to talk about.] (click: "everything")[There’s muzak playing and the singer is lamenting about burning oceans.] (click: "burning")[ |paul4>[ (link: "CLOCK")[ (replace: ?paul4)[ (display: "04_ps_clock") ] ] or (link: "CASTLES")[ (replace: ?paul4)[ (display: "04_ps_castles") ] ] ]]Clouds shaped like castles cast shadows shaped like feudalism. (click: "castles")[As the escalator goes up, Paul Simon catches a glimpse of one of the slaves outside, escaping from the slave house, in the rain. He punches the red emergency stop button on the escalator and runs past the ceremony room to the steam room.] (click: "emergency")[Inside: Willie Nelson & Al Jarreau. Paul Simon says, The slaves are escaping. Willie Nelson & Al Jarreau both look at each other and say (almost simultaneously), Not on my watch!] (click: "simultaneously")[Paul Simon feels relaxed now and like he’s done a good deed. He whistles a tune (that will later turn into Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes).] (click: "Diamonds")[ |paul5>[ (link: "PLACEHOLDER")[ (replace: ?paul5)[ (display: "05_ps_placeholder") ] ] or (link: "DIARY")[ (replace: ?paul5)[ (display: "05_ps_diary") ] ] ]]He stretches his legs on an ottoman and says, Every page of my diary is a real fire starter. (click: "diary")[James Ingram keeps trying to start the chimney (even tho there is a sign that reads: Do not try and start the chimney. At the moment, all it does is bellow blood and spill out violence).] (click: "violence")[Paul Simon yelps and James Ingram stops and looks. Paul Simon points at the sign and James Ingram smiles and says, Oh hey. Yeah. Of course. Thanks.] (click: "Thanks.")[Paul Simon wanders through hallways and tiptoes around the pools of mercury (this is near the black light and red light rooms).] (click: "mercury")[A reporter accosts him in the hallway and says, What’s next, for you, Mr. Simon? Paul Simon says, The American Dream of a planet in space, naturally.] (click: "naturally")[The reporter seems satisfied so he walks away.] (click: "satisfied")[ |paul6>[ (link: "EXPENSIVE")[ (replace: ?paul6)[ (display: "06_ps_expensive") ] ] or (link: "NORMAL")[ (replace: ?paul6)[ (display: "06_ps_normal") ] ] ]]Bob Geldof is tasting a piece of chalk like this is a normal thing. (click: "normal")[Paul Simon calls a film director and says, Make your next film about mountains and make sure there’s dolphins with explosives strapped to their undersides—like, their bellies!] (click: "strapped")[There’s a sculpture in the laundry room and Paul Simon swears he’s seen it before (he just cannot, for the life of him, remember where). A sign underneath reads: Metal & Rust from the Year 2077.] (click: "underneath")[ |paul7>[ (link: "CORROSIVE")[ (replace: ?paul7)[ (display: "07_ps_corrosive") ] ] or (link: "DELUXE")[ (replace: ?paul7)[ (display: "07_ps_deluxe") ] ] ]]Harry Belafonte is sitting there with a deluxe coloring book refusing to color within the lines. (click: "deluxe")[There’s a forest of tubes and wires and oil and gunsmoke in the attic and for some reason, someone’s shoes by the door (they’re filled with orange sand).] (click: "orange")[Paul Simon dials 1-800-DETECTIVE and asks for the best there is. He tells the secretary to tell the detective to call this case something like, Jellied Gasoline at the Lakehouse or the Forgotten Tombs of Osiris.] (click: "Gasoline")[ |paul8>[ (link: "PLACEBO")[ (replace: ?paul8)[ (display: "08_ps_placebo") ] ] or (link: "NUMBER")[ (replace: ?paul8)[ (display: "08_ps_number") ] ] ]]He’s thinking, Somebody did a real number up in here. (click: "number")[There’s camouflaged crystal skulls near the saltwater fish tanks but Paul Simon can see right thru them. He crushes them (one by one) in his hands and inhales the dust.] (click: "inhales")[He says, A lesser daemon wouldn’t know better.] (click: "daemon")[A portal opens up, somewhere in the home—Paul Simon doesn’t know where, but somewhere, he can feel the power bubbling and surging and coursing through meatspace.] (click: "meatspace")[Paul Simon points to Cyndi Lauper (referring to her as Woman on the Moon) and says, The cursed branches of the hanging tree have opened, relinquish your scroll, at once, for the forlorn peasants have abandoned their sinful ways!] (click: "forlorn")[ [[x->start_2]].]half (Willie) Nelson from behind—(click: "half")[sometimes after midnight in the pulpy greyness of the lenticular sky—a crepuscular murder near the Orient Express’ finite ghost—](click: "ghost")[Fujiyoko insight (but broken for now)—the mind of a killer (bee)—suicide instinct at the harpoon store—](click: "store")[kill yourself after you kill yourself (but don’t let them kill themselves)—bleed onto a tree & watch the tree grow into you—](click: "bleed")[attempt to stop an immovable object; but only with the mind](click: "immovable")[ |willie1>[ (link: "KNEECAPS")[ (replace: ?willie1)[ (display: "01_wn_kneecaps") ] ] or (link: "TAILBONE")[ (replace: ?willie1)[ (display: "01_wn_tailbone") ] ] ]](either:"break","annihilate") her kneecaps—(click: "kneecaps")[inhale the dust—consume their flesh—erase the Ethiopian moon—](click: "Ethiopian")[forget how to speak (and remember how to sing)—invade her mind before the next Earth reaches apex (or dawn)—cancel the debutante & smear the blood of goats onto wood posts—](click: "goats")[transfix & conceal the top layer of flesh—the bottom of the ocean, so darq (yet so lovely)](click: "darq")[ |willie2>[ (link: "FOG")[ (replace: ?willie2)[ (display: "02_wn_fog") ] ] or (link: "MONSOON")[ (replace: ?willie2)[ (display: "02_wn_monsoon") ] ] ]]a fog that comes only once every five years (and it’s not from San Fran)—(click: "fog")[angular mistakes at the angle of yaw—surround the castle & shit in the motes—pitchforks and squares—](click: "pitchforks")[impregnate a crowd with one source—mind bullets—cancer feet—tight & swollen—I clap my hands and she disappears—](click: "cancer")[I clap my hands and she re-appears—I re-read the book on Satan—Matisse disappears into the ground—double take—](click: "double")[I crush his soul—Cyndi Lauper’s cursed soul—I clap my hands and she remains.](click: "crush")[ [[x->start_2]].]full (Willie) Nelson from behind—(click: "full")[sometimes after midnight in the pulpy greyness of the lenticular sky—a crepuscular murder near the Orient Express’ finite ghost—](click: "ghost")[Fujiyoko insight (but broken for now)—the mind of a killer (bee)—suicide instinct at the harpoon store—](click: "store")[kill yourself after you kill yourself (but don’t let them kill themselves)—bleed onto a tree & watch the tree grow into you—](click: "bleed")[attempt to stop an immovable object; but only with the mind](click: "immovable")[ |willie1>[ (link: "KNEECAPS")[ (replace: ?willie1)[ (display: "01_wn_kneecaps") ] ] or (link: "TAILBONE")[ (replace: ?willie1)[ (display: "01_wn_tailbone") ] ] ]](either:"break","destroy") her tailbone—(click: "tailbone")[inhale the dust—consume their flesh—erase the Ethiopian moon—](click: "Ethiopian")[forget how to speak (and remember how to sing)—invade her mind before the next Earth reaches apex (or dawn)—cancel the debutante & smear the blood of goats onto wood posts—](click: "goats")[transfix & conceal the top layer of flesh—the bottom of the ocean, so darq (yet so lovely)](click: "darq")[ |willie2>[ (link: "FOG")[ (replace: ?willie2)[ (display: "02_wn_fog") ] ] or (link: "MONSOON")[ (replace: ?willie2)[ (display: "02_wn_monsoon") ] ] ]]a monsoon that comes only once every five years (and it’s not from San Fran)—(click: "monsoon")[angular mistakes at the angle of yaw—surround the castle & shit in the motes—pitchforks and squares—](click: "pitchforks")[impregnate a crowd with one source—mind bullets—cancer feet—tight & swollen—I clap my hands and she disappears—](click: "cancer")[I clap my hands and she re-appears—I re-read the book on Satan—Matisse disappears into the ground—double take—](click: "double")[I crush his soul—Cyndi Lauper’s cursed soul—I clap my hands and she remains.](click: "crush")[ [[x->start_2]].]Feels like Thanksgiving in here. (click: "Thanksgiving")[I was talking shop earlier with Al Jarreau and The Pointer Sisters but this fireplace is really something else. I just had to sit in this huge chair and check it out.] (click: "check")[The carvings feel older than Egypt and it’s just so big, I swear you could dance with your dancers in it. The fire, is all the fire in the world. All the color of all the fire in the world. It whispers my middle name, Joseph, like a curse.] (click: "whispers")[I’m staring into the flames and it hurts but also I’m seeing things. Like right now I’m staring into the flames and I see the outline of a stage backlit by the cosmos.] (click: "backlit")[My brothers are swinging their instruments across the skyscape like scythes. I love my brothers, even Jermaine. We are towering, spectral demiurges captivating an alien planet in slow motion.] (click: "towering")[ |michael2>[ (link: "CAVERNOUS")[ (replace: ?michael2)[ (display: "02_mj_cavernous") ] ] or (link: "INFINITUDE")[ (replace: ?michael2)[ (display: "02_mj_cavernous") ] ] ]]The sky is a cavernous maw that loves me. (click: "cavernous")[I have never been as pure as I am right now in this black sequined silk jacket. I hike my trousers and spin in all 87 dimensions and descend the stairs.] (click: "descend")[My socks will blind you if you’re a bad person. My spirit emanates and spirals off my body like poverty. The floor screams for the ceiling to join it. My orbit tilts.] (click: "orbit")[Something is wrong.] (click: "wrong.")[I smell smoke. I smell hair burning. Oh my G-d: I’m on fire.] (click: "G-d")[Men who are not my brothers tackle me to the ground and lift me up. I’m coughing up pain and time. I’m in a hospital bed with a tube in my penis. I’m being wheeled into a courthouse holding a bottle of pills like a bomb threat. I’m wiping the contours of a hyperbaric chamber with a diaper.] (click: "diaper")[This is all happening in the flames.] (click: "happening")[ |michael3>[ (link: "OVERPASS")[ (replace: ?michael3)[ (display: "03_mj_overpass") ] ] or (link: "PAYCUT")[ (replace: ?michael3)[ (display: "03_mj_paycut") ] ] ]]I feel like an anchor dropped off an overpass. (click: "overpass.")[What am I watching. I’m peeing on the foyer floor of a land that will never be. I’m wearing some ridiculous wig because my earlobe is now the tip of my nose. I don’t understand. I ask for Fentanyl and they give me Pepsi.] (click: "Fentanyl")[The sky behind the sun is black. I’m telling Steven Spielberg: Steven, I’m wiring $150,000 to a bank in Mali so the bank will sacrifice 42 cows because I want you, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg to die really bad deaths.] (click: "sacrifice")[What am I talking about! I love Steven. I cried making that storybook with E.T. As long as there are underprivileged children in the world, I will continue to wear this armband.] (click: "underprivileged")[ |michael4>[ (link: "DEMARCATION")[ (replace: ?michael4)[ (display: "04_mj_demarcation") ] ] or (link: "CONSPIRACY")[ (replace: ?michael4)[ (display: "04_mj_conspiracy") ] ] ]]My breath is just a demarcation between this world and the next. (click: "demarcation")[The air goes dark and Jane Fonda is the most perfect silhouette floating in this pond with me and talking about all kinds of things, you name it: politics, philosophers, racism, Vietnam, acting, all kinds of things.] (click: "Vietnam")[It’s magic. I feel I’m Peter Pan as well as Methusalah, and a child. I tell her: I’m not an angel, I know. I’m not like a Mormon or an Osmond or something where everything’s straight. I love realism. I don’t like plastics.] (click: "plastics")[I cry out Oh Jane! but the pond swallows and spits me out of a manhole in downtown Los Angeles.] (click: "manhole")[It’s after midnight.] (click: "midnight")[I’m surrounded by rotting bodies draped in rags and a full moon. We are dead, and we are one. These are my people. Life is a syncopated problem we’re trying to solve.] (click: "syncopated")[My date wants me to walk her home but we just want her brains. I’m telling John and Deborah Landis, What’s important is that I’m monochromatic and that I not look like my dad.] (click: "monochromatic")[ |michael5>[ (link: "BATHROOM")[ (replace: ?michael5)[ (display: "05_mj_bathroom") ] ] or (link: "LATEX")[ (replace: ?michael5)[ (display: "05_mj_latex") ] ] ]]I’m writing 100 MILLION on the bathroom mirror in blood-red lipstick, and blood. (click: "bathroom")[All children, except one, grow up. I love children so much. Thank God for children. Know what else I love? Mannequins.] (click: "Mannequins")[I like to surround myself with people I want to be friends with. I’m watching Bugs Bunny at Paul McCartney’s place with Paul McCartney because he understands that cartoons are unlimited. That when you’re unlimited, it’s the ultimate.] (click: "ultimate")[I clap my hands overhead and there’s blue sparks and the night sky ruptures into a golden spray of light. Elizabeth Taylor’s private jet pirouettes above the clouds as she wipes the suicide from my eyes.] (click: "suicide")[ |michael6>[ (link: "CRUSTACEANS")[ (replace: ?michael6)[ (display: "06_mj_crustaceans") ] ] or (link: "VOLCANO")[ (replace: ?michael6)[ (display: "06_mj_volcano") ] ] ]]I have a dream about crustaceans & paparazzi washed up on a beach. (click: "crustaceans")[There’s so much danger and joy in life that every time I call Boy George on the telephone I say, This is Houston Hawkins may I speak with Boy George please, and it is just so funny because you can tell he’s sure it’s me but he’s also not sure because I never break character.] (click: "character")[I’ve always hated the word acting—to say, I’m an actor. It should be more like, a believer. I just like to really forget.] (click: "forget")[The smell of saline before the Propofol hits. Magic Johnson dressed up like Sun Ra.] (click: "dressed")[I hate playing my own life story. One minute I’m tucked under my Tiger Lily sheets, the next I’m pinned to a cold metal table via some kind of transdimensional psychokinesis. A tiny gray alien body with large eyes and no mouth touches me until I give it sperm.] (click: "mouth")[I cry a whisper: Billie Jean. The alien Billie Jean points at a giant television screen displaying images of London, Paris, Tokyo, New York. All of them lit with impossible, radioactive fire.] (click: "radioactive")[I can’t stop weeping.] (click: "weeping")[ |michael7>[ (link: "PINECONE")[ (replace: ?michael7)[ (display: "07_mj_pinecone") ] ] or (link: "OBEYS")[ (replace: ?michael7)[ (display: "07_mj_obeys") ] ] ]]My heart is a pinecone spray-glittered gold. (click: "pinecone")[Once the music plays, it creates me. The instruments move through me, they control me. My fans are the wave, and what’s crushed beneath the wave.] (click: "beneath")[I care about starvation and I love children and I want to do something about the future. If I could, I would sleep onstage. My attitude is if fashion says it’s forbidden, I’m going to do it. I wrap myself in Muscles the boa constrictor and ask Bubbles the chimp what’s good in life.] (click: "chimp")[I just want Prince to get over himself and be my friend. Freddie Mercury will never forgive me.] (click: "forgive")[ |michael8>[ (link: "MOVIE")[ (replace: ?michael8)[ (display: "08_mj_movie") ] ] or (link: "NURSERY")[ (replace: ?michael8)[ (display: "08_mj_nursery") ] ] ]]My entire life is a movie I watch alone. (click: "movie")[The phone rings. I pick it up and Andy Warhol says, I might go see an English rock group at the Ritz tonight called Duran Duran, do you know them? I say, No. I hang up.] (click: "hang")[My life is made of straw. I collect interest on the gold bricks of the gold brick road until I can’t. In the fire, I do divination with David Bowie and the Elephant Man’s bones until our space suits cry space tears.] (click: "divination")[The clouds part from the moon and my father howls. My father, the Universal monster.] (click: "Universal")[I panic through the trees like E.T. from the bad men but the fog is too thick. My father’s claws are pulling me out of the womb. He slays a tree in anger and spits through his fangs, You belong to History!] (click: "slays")[I scream, Joseph, you are not my father, God the father is! I’m watching all this, stuffing popcorn in my face like it’s oxygen and knives and diazepam.] (click: "oxygen")[ |michael9>[ (link: "REPTILE")[ (replace: ?michael9)[ (display: "09_mj_reptile") ] ] or (link: "GRAVITY")[ (replace: ?michael9)[ (display: "09_mj_gravity") ] ] ]]People need to stop using reptile as a pejorative. (click: "reptile")[The universe is a spaceship. I live here with the alien Billie Jean and our black-eyed star children. They are made with my sperm. All 4.85 billion of them.] (click: "billion")[When they cry because of some indiscernible pain, the abyss of creation hears laughter. The asteroid Eros careens through the limitless void making a sound.] (click: "limitless")[The sound is: //I am what my heart looks like//. The sound says: ... //in triumph//.] (click: "triumph")[My brothers and I take the stage, for forever this time. Our outfits are cut from the flesh of outer space. My hair is flame. My face is wax and ashes.] (click: "wax")[I am alone. I made a deal with myself if I win one more award, which is this award, which is seven, which is a record, I would take off my sunglasses.] (click: "sunglasses")[So I do, and it blinds you with the fire of a thousand black suns.] (click: "blinds")[ [[x->start_2]].]My thoughts are like an Easter egg hunt. (click: "Easter")[I was talking shop earlier with Al Jarreau and The Pointer Sisters but this fireplace is really something else. I just had to sit in this huge chair and check it out.] (click: "check")[The carvings feel older than Egypt and it’s just so big, I swear you could dance with your dancers in it. The fire, is all the fire in the world. All the color of all the fire in the world. It whispers my middle name, Joseph, like a curse.] (click: "whispers")[I’m staring into the flames and it hurts but also I’m seeing things. Like right now I’m staring into the flames and I see the outline of a stage backlit by the cosmos.] (click: "backlit")[My brothers are swinging their instruments across the skyscape like scythes. I love my brothers, even Jermaine. We are towering, spectral demiurges captivating an alien planet in slow motion.] (click: "towering")[ |michael2>[ (link: "CAVERNOUS")[ (replace: ?michael2)[ (display: "02_mj_cavernous") ] ] or (link: "INFINITUDE")[ (replace: ?michael2)[ (display: "02_mj_infinitude") ] ] ]]Not sure what infinitude smells like but something like this. (click: "infinitude")[I have never been as pure as I am right now in this black sequined silk jacket. I hike my trousers and spin in all 87 dimensions and descend the stairs.] (click: "descend")[My socks will blind you if you’re a bad person. My spirit emanates and spirals off my body like poverty. The floor screams for the ceiling to join it. My orbit tilts.] (click: "orbit")[Something is wrong.] (click: "wrong.")[I smell smoke. I smell hair burning. Oh my G-d: I’m on fire.] (click: "G-d")[Men who are not my brothers tackle me to the ground and lift me up. I’m coughing up pain and time. I’m in a hospital bed with a tube in my penis. I’m being wheeled into a courthouse holding a bottle of pills like a bomb threat. I’m wiping the contours of a hyperbaric chamber with a diaper.] (click: "diaper")[This is all happening in the flames.] (click: "happening")[ |michael3>[ (link: "OVERPASS")[ (replace: ?michael3)[ (display: "03_mj_overpass") ] ] or (link: "PAYCUT")[ (replace: ?michael3)[ (display: "03_mj_paycut") ] ] ]]I feel like a paycut. (click: "paycut.")[What am I watching. I’m peeing on the foyer floor of a land that will never be. I’m wearing some ridiculous wig because my earlobe is now the tip of my nose. I don’t understand. I ask for Fentanyl and they give me Pepsi.] (click: "Fentanyl")[The sky behind the sun is black. I’m telling Steven Spielberg: Steven, I’m wiring $150,000 to a bank in Mali so the bank will sacrifice 42 cows because I want you, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg to die really bad deaths.] (click: "sacrifice")[What am I talking about! I love Steven. I cried making that storybook with E.T. As long as there are underprivileged children in the world, I will continue to wear this armband.] (click: "underprivileged")[ |michael4>[ (link: "DEMARCATION")[ (replace: ?michael4)[ (display: "04_mj_demarcation") ] ] or (link: "CONSPIRACY")[ (replace: ?michael4)[ (display: "04_mj_conspiracy") ] ] ]] Everything I see is some kind of conspiracy against silence. (click: "conspiracy")[The air goes dark and Jane Fonda is the most perfect silhouette floating in this pond with me and talking about all kinds of things, you name it: politics, philosophers, racism, Vietnam, acting, all kinds of things.] (click: "Vietnam")[It’s magic. I feel I’m Peter Pan as well as Methusalah, and a child. I tell her: I’m not an angel, I know. I’m not like a Mormon or an Osmond or something where everything’s straight. I love realism. I don’t like plastics.] (click: "plastics")[I cry out Oh Jane! but the pond swallows and spits me out of a manhole in downtown Los Angeles.] (click: "manhole")[It’s after midnight.] (click: "midnight")[I’m surrounded by rotting bodies draped in rags and a full moon. We are dead, and we are one. These are my people. Life is a syncopated problem we’re trying to solve.] (click: "syncopated")[My date wants me to walk her home but we just want her brains. I’m telling John and Deborah Landis, What’s important is that I’m monochromatic and that I not look like my dad.] (click: "monochromatic")[ |michael5>[ (link: "BATHROOM")[ (replace: ?michael5)[ (display: "05_mj_bathroom") ] ] or (link: "LATEX")[ (replace: ?michael5)[ (display: "05_mj_latex") ] ] ]]I just have to asphyxiate in this chair my entire adult life until my face becomes the latex. (click: "latex")[All children, except one, grow up. I love children so much. Thank God for children. Know what else I love? Mannequins.] (click: "Mannequins")[I like to surround myself with people I want to be friends with. I’m watching Bugs Bunny at Paul McCartney’s place with Paul McCartney because he understands that cartoons are unlimited. That when you’re unlimited, it’s the ultimate.] (click: "ultimate")[I clap my hands overhead and there’s blue sparks and the night sky ruptures into a golden spray of light. Elizabeth Taylor’s private jet pirouettes above the clouds as she wipes the suicide from my eyes.] (click: "suicide")[ |michael6>[ (link: "CRUSTACEANS")[ (replace: ?michael6)[ (display: "06_mj_crustaceans") ] ] or (link: "VOLCANO")[ (replace: ?michael6)[ (display: "06_mj_volcano") ] ] ]]All it takes is one volcano. (click: "volcano")[There’s so much danger and joy in life that every time I call Boy George on the telephone I say, This is Houston Hawkins may I speak with Boy George please, and it is just so funny because you can tell he’s sure it’s me but he’s also not sure because I never break character.] (click: "character")[I’ve always hated the word acting—to say, I’m an actor. It should be more like, a believer. I just like to really forget.] (click: "forget")[The smell of saline before the Propofol hits. Magic Johnson dressed up like Sun Ra.] (click: "dressed")[I hate playing my own life story. One minute I’m tucked under my Tiger Lily sheets, the next I’m pinned to a cold metal table via some kind of transdimensional psychokinesis. A tiny gray alien body with large eyes and no mouth touches me until I give it sperm.] (click: "mouth")[I cry a whisper: Billie Jean. The alien Billie Jean points at a giant television screen displaying images of London, Paris, Tokyo, New York. All of them lit with impossible, radioactive fire.] (click: "radioactive")[I can’t stop weeping.] (click: "weeping")[ |michael7>[ (link: "PINECONE")[ (replace: ?michael7)[ (display: "07_mj_pinecone") ] ] or (link: "OBEYS")[ (replace: ?michael7)[ (display: "07_mj_obeys") ] ] ]]My soul obeys no chronological limit. (click: "obeys")[Once the music plays, it creates me. The instruments move through me, they control me. My fans are the wave, and what’s crushed beneath the wave.] (click: "beneath")[I care about starvation and I love children and I want to do something about the future. If I could, I would sleep onstage. My attitude is if fashion says it’s forbidden, I’m going to do it. I wrap myself in Muscles the boa constrictor and ask Bubbles the chimp what’s good in life.] (click: "chimp")[I just want Prince to get over himself and be my friend. Freddie Mercury will never forgive me.] (click: "forgive")[ |michael8>[ (link: "MOVIE")[ (replace: ?michael8)[ (display: "08_mj_movie") ] ] or (link: "NURSERY")[ (replace: ?michael8)[ (display: "08_mj_nursery") ] ] ]]My boredom is a burning bush reciting nursery rhymes. (click: "nursery")[The phone rings. I pick it up and Andy Warhol says, I might go see an English rock group at the Ritz tonight called Duran Duran, do you know them? I say, No. I hang up.] (click: "hang")[My life is made of straw. I collect interest on the gold bricks of the gold brick road until I can’t. In the fire, I do divination with David Bowie and the Elephant Man’s bones until our space suits cry space tears.] (click: "divination")[The clouds part from the moon and my father howls. My father, the Universal monster.] (click: "Universal")[I panic through the trees like E.T. from the bad men but the fog is too thick. My father’s claws are pulling me out of the womb. He slays a tree in anger and spits through his fangs, You belong to History!] (click: "slays")[I scream, Joseph, you are not my father, God the father is! I’m watching all this, stuffing popcorn in my face like it’s oxygen and knives and diazepam.] (click: "oxygen")[ |michael9>[ (link: "REPTILE")[ (replace: ?michael9)[ (display: "09_mj_reptile") ] ] or (link: "GRAVITY")[ (replace: ?michael9)[ (display: "09_mj_gravity") ] ] ]]I’m just trying to stop gravity from leaking out of me. (click: "gravity")[The universe is a spaceship. I live here with the alien Billie Jean and our black-eyed star children. They are made with my sperm. All 4.85 billion of them.] (click: "billion")[When they cry because of some indiscernible pain, the abyss of creation hears laughter. The asteroid Eros careens through the limitless void making a sound.] (click: "limitless")[The sound is: //I am what my heart looks like//. The sound says: ... //in triumph//.] (click: "triumph")[My brothers and I take the stage, for forever this time. Our outfits are cut from the flesh of outer space. My hair is flame. My face is wax and ashes.] (click: "wax")[I am alone. I made a deal with myself if I win one more award, which is this award, which is seven, which is a record, I would take off my sunglasses.] (click: "sunglasses")[So I do, and it blinds you with the fire of a thousand black suns.] (click: "blinds")[ [[x->start_2]].]One day the sun will burn thru its hope reserves and emanate no more. (click: "burn")[There’s a tv playing and there’s this hydra at the caves. I’m totally banking on society’s collapse--all iminent-like.] (click: "banking")[Any day now. Any moment, tomorrow.] (click: "moment")[Somebody who says she’s Billy Joel’s girl is in this tee shirt and it reads, //the eventual ruin of the sultan of somewhere//.] (click: "ruin")[On one of the speakers in the house, a woman keeps repeating: //three-five-seven//.] (click: "five")[A typical Monday in this neck of the woods, you could say. Pretty much, I look at this entire occasion as a barbeque for the wicked. A way to make us forget what’s been forgotten but then remembered, not long after.] (click: "forget")[I envision a different party, where I am host, shouting, MORPHINE DRIPS FOR EVERYONE!] (click: "MORPHINE")[ |al1>[ (link: "CRYSTALS")[ (replace: ?al1)[ (display: "01_al_crystals") ] ] or (link: "SURPRISE")[ (replace: ?al1)[ (display: "01_al_surprise") ] ] ]]Basically there are crystals and we are smoking them and smoking out of them. (click: "crystals")[I overhear a conversation about someone’s uncle, dead in Pasadena, but not bloating yet. And then in the corner of the room, northwest-like, Quincy’s poor pet scorpion, Spartacus--an entire life wasted inside a see-thru mason jar.] (click: "wasted")[You will rise again, in your next next life. Spartacus, I know it. And we will all have to face the firing squad.] (click: "firing")[But I am ready. My fondest memory will forever be the warmth of the sun on my face in Tunisia.] (click: "warmth")[Summer of 1968. It took seventeen rounds, but then finally: that concussion!] (click: "seventeen")[ |al2>[ (link: "STUFF")[ (replace: ?al2)[ (display: "02_al_stuff") ] ] or (link: "WHITES")[ (replace: ?al2)[ (display: "02_al_whites") ] ] ]]There’s all this moss-like stuff encroaching on everything we touch. (click: "stuff")[I know when to ask for more when there is no more to give, it is a special talent.] (click: "special")[I keep preaching at the rocks, for I have grown bored of Earthly socialites. Always walking, all elegant-like, toward the broken sun, with chapped hands. Someone stick a razor blade inside an amuse gueule and make this interesting already!] (click: "blade")[I say nothing tho. Tina Turner saunters by. We nod in silence.] (click: "nod")[Tomorrow, Black Tuesday!] (click: "Tuesday!")[ |al3>[ (link: "SKULL")[ (replace: ?al3)[ (display: "03_al_skull") ] ] or (link: "HEART")[ (replace: ?al3)[ (display: "03_al_heart") ] ] ]]I have a skull encased in flesh for a reason. (click: "skull")[I am not prepared. I’ve nothing to wear. The terrible things I’ve done.] (click: "terrible")[One dose of applesauce (at night) to cure all problems. Applesauce and protein shakes. What keeps me up at night: the deep Earth rumblings, always because of magma and the green escaping from the forrest(sic).] (click: "escaping")[In an adjacent universe, I keep reliving the same loop, over and over and over again, where I abandon my children (and it feels so good).] (click: "abandon")[Then there’s that aerial shot of someone suiciding near the hills.] (click: "suiciding")[A helmet is crushed.] (click: "helmet")[A waiter offers a cut of pigeon toast.] (click: "pigeon")[//Allah’akbar Jimji. Allah’akbar//.] (click: "Jimji.")[ [[x->start_2]].]The full moon is no substitute for the kind of presence you can harness gripping a knuckleduster in close combat. (click: "substitute")[There’s a tv playing and there’s this hydra at the caves. I’m totally banking on society’s collapse--all iminent-like.] (click: "banking")[Any day now. Any moment, tomorrow.] (click: "moment")[Somebody who says she’s Billy Joel’s girl is in this tee shirt and it reads, //the eventual ruin of the sultan of somewhere//.] (click: "ruin")[On one of the speakers in the house, a woman keeps repeating: //three-five-seven//.] (click: "five")[A typical Monday in this neck of the woods, you could say. Pretty much, I look at this entire occasion as a barbeque for the wicked. A way to make us forget what’s been forgotten but then remembered, not long after.] (click: "forget")[I envision a different party, where I am host, shouting, MORPHINE DRIPS FOR EVERYONE!] (click: "MORPHINE")[ |al1>[ (link: "CRYSTALS")[ (replace: ?al1)[ (display: "01_al_crystals") ] ] or (link: "SURPRISE")[ (replace: ?al1)[ (display: "01_al_surprise") ] ] ]]Mostly our lives are sebaceous trashfires but sometimes there’s a surprise. (click: "surprise")[I overhear a conversation about someone’s uncle, dead in Pasadena, but not bloating yet. And then in the corner of the room, northwest-like, Quincy’s poor pet scorpion, Spartacus--an entire life wasted inside a see-thru mason jar.] (click: "wasted")[You will rise again, in your next next life. Spartacus, I know it. And we will all have to face the firing squad.] (click: "firing")[But I am ready. My fondest memory will forever be the warmth of the sun on my face in Tunisia.] (click: "warmth")[Summer of 1968. It took seventeen rounds, but then finally: that concussion!] (click: "seventeen")[ |al2>[ (link: "STUFF")[ (replace: ?al2)[ (display: "02_al_stuff") ] ] or (link: "WHITES")[ (replace: ?al2)[ (display: "02_al_whites") ] ] ]]The real black holes of this universe are the whites of my eyes, seriously. (click: "whites")[I know when to ask for more when there is no more to give, it is a special talent.] (click: "special")[I keep preaching at the rocks, for I have grown bored of Earthly socialites. Always walking, all elegant-like, toward the broken sun, with chapped hands. Someone stick a razor blade inside an amuse gueule and make this interesting already!] (click: "blade")[I say nothing tho. Tina Turner saunters by. We nod in silence.] (click: "nod")[Tomorrow, Black Tuesday!] (click: "Tuesday!")[ |al3>[ (link: "SKULL")[ (replace: ?al3)[ (display: "03_al_skull") ] ] or (link: "HEART")[ (replace: ?al3)[ (display: "03_al_heart") ] ] ]]My heart is an actual fist. (click: "heart")[I am not prepared. I’ve nothing to wear. The terrible things I’ve done.] (click: "terrible")[One dose of applesauce (at night) to cure all problems. Applesauce and protein shakes. What keeps me up at night: the deep Earth rumblings, always because of magma and the green escaping from the forrest(sic).] (click: "escaping")[In an adjacent universe, I keep reliving the same loop, over and over and over again, where I abandon my children (and it feels so good).] (click: "abandon")[Then there’s that aerial shot of someone suiciding near the hills.] (click: "suiciding")[A helmet is crushed.] (click: "helmet")[A waiter offers a cut of pigeon toast.] (click: "pigeon")[//Allah’akbar Jimji. Allah’akbar//.] (click: "Jimji.")[ [[x->start_2]].]This time the massacre is perfect. (click:"perfect")[It’s a desert of coagulated blood. Antennas on the roof of a house in Brasil, broadcasting pirate radio signals, in hopes of re-igniting the coup of 1978.] (click:"pirate")[Important people in important suits to a mountain that doesn’t care. A darkness of night that’s too easy. A hijab, all dirty and torn.] (click:"dirty")[Nothing you can do will fix that. Blood-soaked underwear in the hot tub. Broken fingers gripping a solo cup.] (click:"solo")[ |steve1>[ (link: "EVOKE")[ (replace: ?steve1)[ (display: "01_sp_evoke") ] ] or (link: "AURA")[ (replace: ?steve1)[ (display: "01_sp_aura") ] ] ]]Birthmarks that evoke deathmarks. (click:"evoke")[On the end table, near all the rubies and ankhs and baroques and curve pendants and puff rings and stretch bracelets and talismans and x rings and morganites--there’s a syringe, still full of squid ink.] (click:"talismans")[Huey Lewis perhaps?] (click:"perhaps")[But there’s suffering, still, even after it’s all over. In the sands of Egypt and the rays of Tunisia. Steve Perry spots the venomous snake that waits for all who attempt to exit the maze (prematurely).] (click:"exit")[ |steve2>[ (link: "MAP")[ (replace: ?steve2)[ (display: "02_sp_map") ] ] or (link: "AMULET")[ (replace: ?steve2)[ (display: "02_sp_amulet") ] ] ]]Upon inspection the map is just a diner menu. (click:"map")[The minotaur is there too. But forget the hydra.] (click:"hydra")[That’s easy. This is the real fucking deal. Turbulent sky waves that posses the keys to all our hearts, confiscated at the door and then desecrated at the altar, in the basement (with goat’s milk, cheese and blood; semen too, some).] (click:"desecrated")[Silk moments that still happen (every couple seconds). Instant gratisfaction at the expense of your tormentors; this costs seventeen insta-life points. Relief while the gauntlet still appears--sometimes lavender and sometimes taupe.] (click:"lavender")[Night Vision goggles—only the best—to try and catch a glimpse of the forever light and its exposures throughout night.] (click:"forever")[ |steve3>[ (link: "SECRET")[ (replace: ?steve3)[ (display: "03_sp_secret") ] ] or (link: "COILED")[ (replace: ?steve3)[ (display: "03_sp_coiled") ] ] ]]Boots with a secret compartment in the sole, for chlorine tablets, or a push dagger, or cyanide. (click:"secret")[A solid canteen (but with spilled pride). Septic tank stories to tell near the salt water fish tanks. It smells like milk. It stinks like water.] (click:"stinks")[Then again, it is summer. The sewer at dusk. They’ll call the laundry man and the man with all the brooms.] (click:"brooms")[An effigy of a push man, in Tokyo, and then Dionne Warwick, staring at the sky and clouds—tears, massive ones; because her eye drops, they’re somewhere in the Western hemisphere. Staring at the clock again: 22h56.] (click:"clock")[Tesseract.] (click:"Tesseract.")[ [[x->start_2]].]The kind of panic you feel coming out of a womb or a rainforest. (click:"panic")[It’s a desert of coagulated blood. Antennas on the roof of a house in Brasil, broadcasting pirate radio signals, in hopes of re-igniting the coup of 1978.] (click:"pirate")[Important people in important suits to a mountain that doesn’t care. A darkness of night that’s too easy. A hijab, all dirty and torn.] (click:"dirty")[Nothing you can do will fix that. Blood-soaked underwear in the hot tub. Broken fingers gripping a solo cup.] (click:"solo")[ |steve1>[ (link: "EVOKE")[ (replace: ?steve1)[ (display: "01_sp_evoke") ] ] or (link: "AURA")[ (replace: ?steve1)[ (display: "01_sp_aura") ] ] ]]A dog coats its fur in the pungent aura of unidentifiable entrails. (click:"aura")[On the end table, near all the rubies and ankhs and baroques and curve pendants and puff rings and stretch bracelets and talismans and x rings and morganites--there’s a syringe, still full of squid ink.] (click:"talismans")[Huey Lewis perhaps?] (click:"perhaps")[But there’s suffering, still, even after it’s all over. In the sands of Egypt and the rays of Tunisia. Steve Perry spots the venomous snake that waits for all who attempt to exit the maze (prematurely).] (click:"exit")[ |steve2>[ (link: "MAP")[ (replace: ?steve2)[ (display: "02_sp_map") ] ] or (link: "AMULET")[ (replace: ?steve2)[ (display: "02_sp_amulet") ] ] ]]A skeleton clutching an amulet like a souvenir. (click:"amulet")[The minotaur is there too. But forget the hydra.] (click:"hydra")[That’s easy. This is the real fucking deal. Turbulent sky waves that posses the keys to all our hearts, confiscated at the door and then desecrated at the altar, in the basement (with goat’s milk, cheese and blood; semen too, some).] (click:"desecrated")[Silk moments that still happen (every couple seconds). Instant gratisfaction at the expense of your tormentors; this costs seventeen insta-life points. Relief while the gauntlet still appears--sometimes lavender and sometimes taupe.] (click:"lavender")[Night Vision goggles—only the best—to try and catch a glimpse of the forever light and its exposures throughout night.] (click:"forever")[ |steve3>[ (link: "SECRET")[ (replace: ?steve3)[ (display: "03_sp_secret") ] ] or (link: "COILED")[ (replace: ?steve3)[ (display: "03_sp_coiled") ] ] ]]A hammock tent coiled up like a snake. (click:"coiled")[A solid canteen (but with spilled pride). Septic tank stories to tell near the salt water fish tanks. It smells like milk. It stinks like water.] (click:"stinks")[Then again, it is summer. The sewer at dusk. They’ll call the laundry man and the man with all the brooms.] (click:"brooms")[An effigy of a push man, in Tokyo, and then Dionne Warwick, staring at the sky and clouds—tears, massive ones; because her eye drops, they’re somewhere in the Western hemisphere. Staring at the clock again: 22h56.] (click:"clock")[Tesseract.] (click:"Tesseract.")[ [[x->start_2]].]Huey Lewis: Really any drug is fine. (click:"drug")[As long as we’re not the wedding band on a yacht, is my criteria. So as one gentleman and professional to another, Quincy, my man, thank you for the invite.] (click:"professional")[ |huey1>[ (link: "HELP")[ (replace: ?huey1)[ (display: "01_hl_help") ] ] or (link: "BUTLER")[ (replace: ?huey1)[ (display: "01_hl_butler") ] ] ]]Huey Lewis: I think I can taste the planets. (click:"planets")[As long as we’re not the wedding band on a yacht, is my criteria. So as one gentleman and professional to another, Quincy, my man, thank you for the invite.] (click:"professional")[ |huey1>[ (link: "HELP")[ (replace: ?huey1)[ (display: "01_hl_help") ] ] or (link: "BUTLER")[ (replace: ?huey1)[ (display: "01_hl_butler") ] ] ]]It’s a quarter moon, just enough light to be mistaken for somebody else. (click:"mistaken")[Kim Carnes slays dragons near the gates. Jeeps explode and she tells security, I’ll buy more next week Monday. She covers her face in layers of grime before saying hi to anyone or talking about anything (even the mountain).] (click:"grime")[A tape machine near the door is charging $2.99 to save the world from the apocalypse.] (click:"save")[Lionel Richie slaps the machine off a table and onto the floor and crushes it with his good foot and says, It’s a 2AM to 2PM-type rave tonite.] (click:"crushes")[ |kim1>[ (link: "MYSTERY")[ (replace: ?kim1)[ (display: "01_kc_mystery") ] ] or (link: "LEAGUE")[ (replace: ?kim1)[ (display: "01_kc_league") ] ] ]]The clouds are just hanging there overhead like eyewitnesses. (click:"overhead")[Kim Carnes slays dragons near the gates. Jeeps explode and she tells security, I’ll buy more next week Monday. She covers her face in layers of grime before saying hi to anyone or talking about anything (even the mountain).] (click:"grime")[A tape machine near the door is charging $2.99 to save the world from the apocalypse.] (click:"save")[Lionel Richie slaps the machine off a table and onto the floor and crushes it with his good foot and says, It’s a 2AM to 2PM-type rave tonite.] (click:"crushes")[ |kim1>[ (link: "MYSTERY")[ (replace: ?kim1)[ (display: "01_kc_mystery") ] ] or (link: "LEAGUE")[ (replace: ?kim1)[ (display: "01_kc_league") ] ] ]]The air is thick with posterity. (click:"thick")[Bob Dylan is sitting on one of the plush sofas, carving figurines of men made of soapstone.] (click:"figurines")[Al Jarreau walks by and says, You do that too? Bob Dylan looks up and says, I’m also writing a novel about the setting of the sun, if you’re interested.] (click:"setting")[Al Jarreau walks away. Bob Dylan continues carving, imagining a life in Vienna (tying up women, but only at night). There’s this vivid image of throwing dead Africans’ wallets into a river, and pushing over a flipped car (after the fire has died down, of course).] (click:"fire")[Bob Dylan recalls that one night, with Michael Jackson, in 1985 (1982?), when they almost crashed into a dangerous tree, running away from men in yellow masks. Bob Dylan never saw them but trusts Michael.] (click:"trusts")[He always says (to this day), if Michael saw them, then Michael saw them.] (click:"always")[ |bob1>[ (link: "SODA")[ (replace: ?bob1)[ (display: "01_bd_soda") ] ] or (link: "AIRPLANES")[ (replace: ?bob1)[ (display: "01_bd_airplanes") ] ] ]]There’s a cheese board with marinated nightshades. (click:"marinated")[Bob Dylan is sitting on one of the plush sofas, carving figurines of men made of soapstone.] (click:"figurines")[Al Jarreau walks by and says, You do that too? Bob Dylan looks up and says, I’m also writing a novel about the setting of the sun, if you’re interested.] (click:"setting")[Al Jarreau walks away. Bob Dylan continues carving, imagining a life in Vienna (tying up women, but only at night). There’s this vivid image of throwing dead Africans’ wallets into a river, and pushing over a flipped car (after the fire has died down, of course).] (click:"fire")[Bob Dylan recalls that one night, with Michael Jackson, in 1985 (1982?), when they almost crashed into a dangerous tree, running away from men in yellow masks. Bob Dylan never saw them but trusts Michael.] (click:"trusts")[He always says (to this day), if Michael saw them, then Michael saw them.] (click:"always")[ |bob1>[ (link: "SODA")[ (replace: ?bob1)[ (display: "01_bd_soda") ] ] or (link: "AIRPLANES")[ (replace: ?bob1)[ (display: "01_bd_airplanes") ] ] ]]Everything feels coated in a kind of viscous fluidity. (click:"viscous")[There’s the image, for some reason, of a frog with its legs cut off (no blood). Ray Charles transports his mindstate to Known Space and off in the distance, there’s the Tower of Fear.] (click:"Tower")[The locals worship a thing they call gods of tomorrow (even tho it is only one thing). Ray Charles inspects island madness fever and discovers—it’s a madness that’s all too deep & real.] (click:"fever")[Dark ocean physics & pyrotechnics and a future //I Want to Believe// poster, in a danq cellar.] (click:"future")[ |ray1>[ (link: "BREAKS")[ (replace: ?ray1)[ (display: "01_rc_breaks") ] ] or (link: "SILENCING")[ (replace: ?ray1)[ (display: "01_rc_silencing") ] ] ]]Philanthropic logic is so different here. (click:"logic")[There’s the image, for some reason, of a frog with its legs cut off (no blood). Ray Charles transports his mindstate to Known Space and off in the distance, there’s the Tower of Fear.] (click:"Tower")[The locals worship a thing they call gods of tomorrow (even tho it is only one thing). Ray Charles inspects island madness fever and discovers—it’s a madness that’s all too deep & real.] (click:"fever")[Dark ocean physics & pyrotechnics and a future //I Want to Believe// poster, in a danq cellar.] (click:"future")[ |ray1>[ (link: "BREAKS")[ (replace: ?ray1)[ (display: "01_rc_breaks") ] ] or (link: "SILENCING")[ (replace: ?ray1)[ (display: "01_rc_silencing") ] ] ]]I am that Dionne, who, vowed to Apollo from her infancy, was early initiated into all the arts of the dragon. (click: "infancy")[Even before the age of seven I had already been introduced into the temple of Mithra.] (click: "Mithra.")[Three years later, my parents taking me to Athens to be received as citizen, I was permitted likewise to penetrate the mysteries of Ceres lamenting her daughter, and I also became the guardian of the Dragon in the Temple of Pallas.] (click: "lamenting")[ |dionne1>[ (link: "SUMMIT")[ (replace: ?dionne1)[ (display: "01_dw_summit") ] ] or (link: "CROWN")[ (replace: ?dionne1)[ (display: "01_dw_crown") ] ] ]]I am that Dionne, who, vowed to Druldumêch from her inception, was early initiated into all the arts of the nautilus. (click: "inception")[Even before the age of seven I had already been introduced into the temple of Kraboc.] (click: "Kraboc.")[Three years later, my parents taking me to Thugaros to be received as citizen, I was permitted likewise to penetrate the mysteries of Shomjael lamenting her daughter, and I also became the guardian of the Nautilus in the Temple of Ogchoniôn.] (click: "lamenting")[ |dionne1>[ (link: "SUMMIT")[ (replace: ?dionne1)[ (display: "01_dw_summit") ] ] or (link: "CROWN")[ (replace: ?dionne1)[ (display: "01_dw_crown") ] ] ]]A cloud breaks off another cloud like an iceberg. (click:"breaks")[Ray Charles takes off his spectacles and swears he can taste pan dimensional beings and holes in the ceiling.] (click:"spectacles")[Steve Perry says something about a dripping sound coming from a couple houses over. There’s something in the air and everything gives off the impression that it’s only meant to confuse.] (click:"impression")[Ray Charles asks a servant for a pillow but all he can feel are deep patterns beneath a low crimson sky.] (click:"crimson")[There's an energy surging from the business card of a detective from San Diego who speaks only in ocean terms. Eileen would say, “It’s the fear of the Known.”] (click:"would")[ |ray2>[ (link: "CONTINUUM")[ (replace: ?ray2)[ (display: "02_rc_continuum") ] ] or (link: "DENOUEMENT")[ (replace: ?ray2)[ (display: "02_rc_denouement") ] ] ]]When someone says “today” what he hears is a divine continuum that cannot be broken by the brutality of the human mind. (click:"continuum")[Ray Charles excuses himself from the main room and walks by a //Cancel the Moment of No Return// billboard, right outside the window.] (click:"billboard")[He’s searching for the bathroom. The clouds outside feel thick and full of silk (froth at night). All these guests, and they have no idea; milk in their shoes.] (click:"milk")[And it’s a shame. Ray Charles imagines, there's the number twenty-five and a dozen astronauts burning.] (click:"astronauts")[The remains of a hundred human babies scattered about on a beach—the second worst oil spill disaster in the history of the United States of America of Earth.] (click:"disaster")[Gravity suddenly becoming a situation inside the torpedo sub of lost souls.] (click:"torpedo")[After the static, the Bavarian Chanel.] (click:"static")[God’s greatest gift to manunkind. Ray Charles cries.] (click:"greatest")[ [[x->start_2]].]The sound of the wind silencing the grass. (click:"silencing")[Ray Charles takes off his spectacles and swears he can taste pan dimensional beings and holes in the ceiling.] (click:"spectacles")[Steve Perry says something about a dripping sound coming from a couple houses over. There’s something in the air and everything gives off the impression that it’s only meant to confuse.] (click:"impression")[Ray Charles asks a servant for a pillow but all he can feel are deep patterns beneath a low crimson sky.] (click:"crimson")[There's an energy surging from the business card of a detective from San Diego who speaks only in ocean terms. Eileen would say, “It’s the fear of the Known.”] (click:"would")[ |ray2>[ (link: "CONTINUUM")[ (replace: ?ray2)[ (display: "02_rc_continuum") ] ] or (link: "DENOUEMENT")[ (replace: ?ray2)[ (display: "02_rc_denouement") ] ] ]]The sun absconds and the insects announce their own arrival and denouement. (click:"denouement")[Ray Charles excuses himself from the main room and walks by a //Cancel the Moment of No Return// billboard, right outside the window.] (click:"billboard")[He’s searching for the bathroom. The clouds outside feel thick and full of silk (froth at night). All these guests, and they have no idea; milk in their shoes.] (click:"milk")[And it’s a shame. Ray Charles imagines, there's the number twenty-five and a dozen astronauts burning.] (click:"astronauts")[The remains of a hundred human babies scattered about on a beach—the second worst oil spill disaster in the history of the United States of America of Earth.] (click:"disaster")[Gravity suddenly becoming a situation inside the torpedo sub of lost souls.] (click:"torpedo")[After the static, the Bavarian Chanel.] (click:"static")[God’s greatest gift to manunkind. Ray Charles cries.] (click:"greatest")[ [[x->start_2]].]The scene is ruined by a windchime that’s somehow out of tune. (click: "windchime")[Silhouetted men wearing ski masks run across the backs & tops of mountains, in search of James Ingram. And James Ingram knows this. He buys a house made of glass and says to the real estate agent, I made a deal with someone I should have never made a deal with.] (click: "buys")[There’s protein powder on the floor. The real estate agent’s assistant, she brushes at some of it with her stiletto & shows James Ingram her marbled index fingers and says, I used to close sales.] (click: "marbled")[A man in the street points to the house made of glass and James Ingram says, What? The man lifts up his shirt and on his stomach, the words //stolen// and //history//.] (click: "stomach")[ |james2>[ (link: "RENT")[ (replace: ?james2)[ (display: "02_ji_rent") ] ] or (link: "GRASS")[ (replace: ?james2)[ (display: "02_ji_grass") ] ] ]]The truth is everybody’s body is rent to own. (click: "rent")[There is a concierge bomb threat in Tokyo and a man named Ryoko keeps calling James Ingram so he can talk him through the crisis.] (click: "crisis")[Bruce Springsteen keeps sending James Ingram pigeon messages that say things like //impeccable words// and //you are daft// and //nothing happens after it is all over//.] (click: "pigeon")[And Bruce Springsteen keeps laughing. Tina Turner is reading a book titled Mind Thesaurus and in six weeks, Bob Dylan will keep calling Mike Tyson on the phone to tell him to invest in dinosaur clay.] (click: "invest")[ |james3>[ (link: "FORGOTTEN")[ (replace: ?james3)[ (display: "03_ji_forgotten") ] ] or (link: "MUTILATED")[ (replace: ?james3)[ (display: "03_ji_mutilated") ] ] ]]A minor earthquake unearths a field of forgotten eggs. (click: "forgotten")[There’s a dark film covering the bottom layer of the purple evening sky. There’s a show on the television about this place called the Goodlands. Lionel Richie slaps his knee and yells out, (to the room mostly) Ain’t no such thing!] (click: "knee")[James Ingram walks by a bunch of debutantes and calls them the Goon Squad. He laughs while nobody else is laughing.] (click: "nobody")[Someone from the Goon Squad //inhales// squid.] (click: "inhales")[James Ingram looks up into the heavens and prays for powdered gloves and maybe a dirtied handkerchief. A red Ferrari zooms by and there’s a man on the side of the street and he says, People and their goats.] (click: "zooms")[ |james4>[ (link: "DENY")[ (replace: ?james4)[ (display: "04_ji_deny") ] ] or (link: "LEGACY")[ (replace: ?james4)[ (display: "04_ji_legacy") ] ] ]]Under duress, Paul Simon will deny ever knowing an exobiologist. (click: "deny")[In the Capricorn Room, there is a woman with one hand and Lionel Richie keeps saying, Where is your other hand? She appears distracted. There’s a shirt in a red case with emergency glass and it says, //a dozen victories after nine hundred losses//.] (click: "victories")[Mustaff’ah the Somali pirate emerges from the cavernous basement. Tina Turner says, Mustaff’ah, what’s it been, something like nine years?] (click: "years")[Onyx fantasies inform a high rise in the middle of a tropical storm in Malaysia. Inanimate objects suddenly become sentient and infected palm trees walk the Earth. James Ingram feels the power of voodoo at the base of the floorboards and all he can do is keep chanting, to himself (mostly).] (click: "floorboards")[That forever stain.] (click: "forever")[ [[x->start_2]].]There’s so much hope and prosperity in the exploitation of raw materials from people’s bodies. (click: "prosperity")[Silhouetted men wearing ski masks run across the backs & tops of mountains, in search of James Ingram. And James Ingram knows this. He buys a house made of glass and says to the real estate agent, I made a deal with someone I should have never made a deal with.] (click: "buys")[There’s protein powder on the floor. The real estate agent’s assistant, she brushes at some of it with her stiletto & shows James Ingram her marbled index fingers and says, I used to close sales.] (click: "marbled")[A man in the street points to the house made of glass and James Ingram says, What? The man lifts up his shirt and on his stomach, the words //stolen// and //history//.] (click: "stomach")[ |james2>[ (link: "RENT")[ (replace: ?james2)[ (display: "02_ji_rent") ] ] or (link: "GRASS")[ (replace: ?james2)[ (display: "02_ji_grass") ] ] ]]It’s that time of year when the grass is the color of sobbing. (click: "grass")[There is a concierge bomb threat in Tokyo and a man named Ryoko keeps calling James Ingram so he can talk him through the crisis.] (click: "crisis")[Bruce Springsteen keeps sending James Ingram pigeon messages that say things like //impeccable words// and //you are daft// and //nothing happens after it is all over//.] (click: "pigeon")[And Bruce Springsteen keeps laughing. Tina Turner is reading a book titled Mind Thesaurus and in six weeks, Bob Dylan will keep calling Mike Tyson on the phone to tell him to invest in dinosaur clay.] (click: "invest")[ |james3>[ (link: "FORGOTTEN")[ (replace: ?james3)[ (display: "03_ji_forgotten") ] ] or (link: "MUTILATED")[ (replace: ?james3)[ (display: "03_ji_mutilated") ] ] ]]A carpenter bee hovers over the nostril of some mutilated carcass. (click: "mutilated")[There’s a dark film covering the bottom layer of the purple evening sky. There’s a show on the television about this place called the Goodlands. Lionel Richie slaps his knee and yells out, (to the room mostly) Ain’t no such thing!] (click: "knee")[James Ingram walks by a bunch of debutantes and calls them the Goon Squad. He laughs while nobody else is laughing.] (click: "nobody")[Someone from the Goon Squad //inhales// squid.] (click: "inhales")[James Ingram looks up into the heavens and prays for powdered gloves and maybe a dirtied handkerchief. A red Ferrari zooms by and there’s a man on the side of the street and he says, People and their goats.] (click: "zooms")[ |james4>[ (link: "DENY")[ (replace: ?james4)[ (display: "04_ji_deny") ] ] or (link: "LEGACY")[ (replace: ?james4)[ (display: "04_ji_legacy") ] ] ]]Only one handkerchief remains from what was once a legacy of parlour games. (click: "legacy")[In the Capricorn Room, there is a woman with one hand and Lionel Richie keeps saying, Where is your other hand? She appears distracted. There’s a shirt in a red case with emergency glass and it says, //a dozen victories after nine hundred losses//.] (click: "victories")[Mustaff’ah the Somali pirate emerges from the cavernous basement. Tina Turner says, Mustaff’ah, what’s it been, something like nine years?] (click: "years")[Onyx fantasies inform a high rise in the middle of a tropical storm in Malaysia. Inanimate objects suddenly become sentient and infected palm trees walk the Earth. James Ingram feels the power of voodoo at the base of the floorboards and all he can do is keep chanting, to himself (mostly).] (click: "floorboards")[That forever stain.] (click: "forever")[ [[x->start_2]].]People are just like opening cabinets now looking for baking soda because you can use it for anything. (click:"soda")[A detective shows up to the party and asks for Bob Dylan. One of the servants brings him to Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan looks at the detective and says, Any news?] (click:"news")[The detective says, The man you thought was your father is not your father.] (click:"thought")[Bob Dylan looks down at his hands. He says, You mean to tell me I have been having you trail the wrong man? The detective pauses, thinks about something, and says, That is what I mean to tell you.] (click:"pauses")[Bob Dylan stands from the sofa and says, Come, let’s go talk in the moon room.] (click:"moon")[The detective says some things about holding the hands of complete strangers. Bob Dylan keeps mouthing the words to an ancient curse (but nothing happens).] (click:"ancient")[The detective says, All in all, I don’t think anyone’s ever said anything that truly matters. The man is not even human. Bob Dylan thanks the detective and says, I agree to all that--mostly, about wasting people and their time.] (click:"wasting")[ |bob2>[ (link: "WRESTLING")[ (replace: ?bob2)[ (display: "02_bd_wrestling") ] ] or (link: "LOYAL")[ (replace: ?bob2)[ (display: "02_bd_loyal") ] ] ]]Cyndi Lauper makes a face at the group of people making paper airplanes and drawing corporate logos on them. (click:"airplanes")[A detective shows up to the party and asks for Bob Dylan. One of the servants brings him to Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan looks at the detective and says, Any news?] (click:"news")[The detective says, The man you thought was your father is not your father.] (click:"thought")[Bob Dylan looks down at his hands. He says, You mean to tell me I have been having you trail the wrong man? The detective pauses, thinks about something, and says, That is what I mean to tell you.] (click:"pauses")[Bob Dylan stands from the sofa and says, Come, let’s go talk in the moon room.] (click:"moon")[The detective says some things about holding the hands of complete strangers. Bob Dylan keeps mouthing the words to an ancient curse (but nothing happens).] (click:"ancient")[The detective says, All in all, I don’t think anyone’s ever said anything that truly matters. The man is not even human. Bob Dylan thanks the detective and says, I agree to all that--mostly, about wasting people and their time.] (click:"wasting")[ |bob2>[ (link: "WRESTLING")[ (replace: ?bob2)[ (display: "02_bd_wrestling") ] ] or (link: "LOYAL")[ (replace: ?bob2)[ (display: "02_bd_loyal") ] ] ]]There’s a scent in the air that reminds Bob Dylan of wrestling with his umbilical cord. (click:"wrestling")[As the detective excuses himself and leaves, Bob Dylan stops pretending to be Bob Dylan and returns to his natural form. He sets out wood blocks on a carpeted floor and writes out, onto a piece of paper, //Arranging to die before 81//.] (click:"carpeted")[Billy Joel yells from across one of the rooms, Bob Dylan, what are you on about? Bob Dylan says, I am preparing the room for what is to come.] (click:"preparing")[Bob Dylan abandons the wood blocks and walks over to the bathroom. He opens the shower curtain and finds a skinsuit of Kenny Rogers soaking in the tub.] (click:"soaking")[//He must have shed that two hours ago//.] (click:"shed")[Bob Dylan walks to the science fiction room (and forgets why). There’s swords and weapons on the wall.] (click:"swords")[Bob Dylan opens one of the windows and begins walking on the ledge. He sings new lyrics and feels they best represent what it might feel like to tug at someone’s emotions.] (click:"tug")[In the distance, a man throws an anchor into the sea.] (click:"throws")[Bob Dylan writes this down onto his right hand with a Sharpie, //anchor into the black ocean//.] (click:"Sharpie")[ |bob3>[ (link: "AUDACITY")[ (replace: ?bob3)[ (display: "03_bd_audacity") ] ] or (link: "PHASE")[ (replace: ?bob3)[ (display: "03_bd_phase") ] ] ]]Everybody at this point is a loyal subject of an altered state. (click:"loyal")[As the detective excuses himself and leaves, Bob Dylan stops pretending to be Bob Dylan and returns to his natural form. He sets out wood blocks on a carpeted floor and writes out, onto a piece of paper, //Arranging to die before 81//.] (click:"carpeted")[Billy Joel yells from across one of the rooms, Bob Dylan, what are you on about? Bob Dylan says, I am preparing the room for what is to come.] (click:"preparing")[Bob Dylan abandons the wood blocks and walks over to the bathroom. He opens the shower curtain and finds a skinsuit of Kenny Rogers soaking in the tub.] (click:"soaking")[//He must have shed that two hours ago//.] (click:"shed")[Bob Dylan walks to the science fiction room (and forgets why). There’s swords and weapons on the wall.] (click:"swords")[Bob Dylan opens one of the windows and begins walking on the ledge. He sings new lyrics and feels they best represent what it might feel like to tug at someone’s emotions.] (click:"tug")[In the distance, a man throws an anchor into the sea.] (click:"throws")[Bob Dylan writes this down onto his right hand with a Sharpie, //anchor into the black ocean//.] (click:"Sharpie")[ |bob3>[ (link: "AUDACITY")[ (replace: ?bob3)[ (display: "03_bd_audacity") ] ] or (link: "PHASE")[ (replace: ?bob3)[ (display: "03_bd_phase") ] ] ]]Bob Dylan is having trouble imagining the audacity it takes to plant a flag on an entire planetoid, like the moon. (click:"audacity")[There’s a photograph in one of the hallways of Quincy Jones and some woman, eating lobster and squid on a July afternoon in a restaurant, somewhere in New Orleans.] (click:"July")[A server offers Bob Dylan wine. He says, It’s Château Lafite Rothschild 1828. Bob Dylan drinks it, even though he hates it—this is show business after all.] (click:"business")[Bob Dylan smiles at something that doesn’t even make sense and gorges himself on appetizers (simply because he can).] (click:"appetizers")[ |bob4>[ (link: "GIANT")[ (replace: ?bob4)[ (display: "04_bd_giant") ] ] or (link: "BURN")[ (replace: ?bob4)[ (display: "04_bd_burn") ] ] ]]The night is phase-shifting and estranged. (click:"phase")[There’s a photograph in one of the hallways of Quincy Jones and some woman, eating lobster and squid on a July afternoon in a restaurant, somewhere in New Orleans.] (click:"July")[A server offers Bob Dylan wine. He says, It’s Château Lafite Rothschild 1828. Bob Dylan drinks it, even though he hates it—this is show business after all.] (click:"business")[Bob Dylan smiles at something that doesn’t even make sense and gorges himself on appetizers (simply because he can).] (click:"appetizers")[ |bob4>[ (link: "GIANT")[ (replace: ?bob4)[ (display: "04_bd_giant") ] ] or (link: "BURN")[ (replace: ?bob4)[ (display: "04_bd_burn") ] ] ]]There’s a giant paper mâché shrimp in the corner and no one will own up to it. (click:"giant")[Tina Turner keeps trying to perform seppuku (in the observatory room) just to see what they’ll do. (No one is really doing much of anything to stop her).] (click:"much")[Bob Dylan walks by a conversation between Ray Charles and Lionel Richie and hears Ray Charles say, I want to kill her, but then bring her right back, you know? Because we can do that. Lionel Richie nods. He says, Yes, we certainly can.] (click:"certainly")[At least, yeah, now we can.] (click:"yeah")[Bob Dylan walks out to the parking garage and slashes James Ingrams’ tyres because he knows what he really is. He tips the attendant $500 and does the shhhh thing with his left hand.] (click:"left")[He tips the attendant more money but then changes his mind and instead asks for a driver. He says, Can I get a driver instead? Bob Dylan has the driver drive him to the airport.] (click:"airport")[After this, Bob Dylan moves to Vietnam.] (click:"Vietnam")[ [[x->start_2]].]Billy Joel absently covers a cigarette burn in the carpet with his foot. (click:"burn")[Tina Turner keeps trying to perform seppuku (in the observatory room) just to see what they’ll do. (No one is really doing much of anything to stop her).] (click:"much")[Bob Dylan walks by a conversation between Ray Charles and Lionel Richie and hears Ray Charles say, I want to kill her, but then bring her right back, you know? Because we can do that. Lionel Richie nods. He says, Yes, we certainly can.] (click:"certainly")[At least, yeah, now we can.] (click:"yeah")[Bob Dylan walks out to the parking garage and slashes James Ingrams’ tyres because he knows what he really is. He tips the attendant $500 and does the shhhh thing with his left hand.] (click:"left")[He tips the attendant more money but then changes his mind and instead asks for a driver. He says, Can I get a driver instead? Bob Dylan has the driver drive him to the airport.] (click:"airport")[After this, Bob Dylan moves to Vietnam.] (click:"Vietnam")[ [[x->start_2]].]The main vestibule smells like s’mores but this is a total mystery. (click:"mystery")[There’s the Kentucky Monster on the television and Ray Charles says, //What about the Godzilla//? Kim Carnes walks by a room where there’s paint on the wall (still wet) and someone's written in toasted sesame brown, //a room for two made for three//.] (click:"toasted")[She recalls the tree that killed her father and momentarily lapses into what she will later explain as, Feeling like someone pointing a shotgun at my toes.] (click:"tree")[The man they call Zarro is there and Willie Nelson keeps patting him on the back and saying, Company man!] (click:"Company")[A hitman from Venezuela appears, but the Earth pressures aren’t right tonite so he waves and disappears (no one notices—except for Kim Carnes).] (click:"hitman")[ |kim2>[ (link: "COFFEE")[ (replace: ?kim2)[ (display: "02_kc_coffee") ] ] or (link: "GARBAGE")[ (replace: ?kim2)[ (display: "02_kc_garbage") ] ] ]]Everybody maintains a respectful distance between their bodies and the serval cat reposing on a coffee table made entirely of African bloodstone. (click:"coffee")[There’s condensation inside a plastic bottle by the window sill; Kim Carnes suddenly realizes, //I’m probably thirsty//. On the way to the kitchen, she steps on shards of glass to prove a point.] (click:"shards")[There’s a team of engineers all setup on the large kitchen island, producing some work from 1968. It’s like stealing from the rich & famous, one of them says.] (click:"stealing")[Kim Carnes finds a bottle of mineral volcano water. She drinks and stands by the window and watches, outside, as a group of masked humans douse a cheap car in gasoline and proceed to create flames.] (click:"masked")[She feels like this is all caveman paintings and something to do with //respecting the mountains//.] (click:"caveman")[ |kim3>[ (link: "TAPESTRY")[ (replace: ?kim3)[ (display: "03_kc_tapestry") ] ] or (link: "WEATHER")[ (replace: ?kim3)[ (display: "03_kc_weather") ] ] ]]Nobody knows this but the behind the tapestry the words //THE UNIVERSE IS A PIECE OF SOMETHING EVEN WORSE// are scrawled in human blood. (click:"tapestry")[A documentary plays on the third kitchen television, talking about deep sea algae. A business man in business man clothes passes out pamphlets about the war of 1962 and Diana Ross is ingesting a heart-shaped candy.] (click:"pamphlets")[Kim Carnes says, No, definitely don’t do that, and puts out her arm to try and stop Diana Ross (but it’s too late). Diana Ross even says, Girl—don’t touch me!] (click:"touch")[Now, someone’s bleeding onto a version of the American flag with inverted colours and Diana Ross is singing (out of turn).] (click:"bleeding")[There’s something to be said about dishonouring your family, in front of a bunch of guests like that (no less). Kim Carnes thinks, //After this song is done, I’ll probably just leave society//.] (click:"society.")[ |kim4>[ (link: "MIRROR")[ (replace: ?kim4)[ (display: "04_kc_mirror") ] ] or (link: "MEDICINE")[ (replace: ?kim4)[ (display: "04_kc_medicine") ] ] ]]Daryl Hall is looking at the bathroom mirror making a transforming kind of noise. (click:"mirror")[There’s a vintage EXPLORE MARS poster on the wall (in a frame with nice wood). Billy Joel is on his knees in one of the adjacent studies, creating a labyrinth (made of matchsticks) in the miniature replica zen garden from Tokyo, 1966.] (click:"matchsticks")[ Billy Joel looks up at Kim Carnes and says, I feel like I am suddenly becoming the bad guy, all over again.] (click:"guy")[Kim Carnes doesn’t say anything because she has nothing to say to Billy Joel. She walks out of the room and writes a note for herself on a piece of paper about producing films and directing even more movies (about women) and then creating escapist literature (for married women) after the year 1992.] (click:"escapist")[ |kim5>[ (link: "ANNIHILATE")[ (replace: ?kim5)[ (display: "05_kc_annihilate") ] ] or (link: "HATRED")[ (replace: ?kim5)[ (display: "05_kc_hatred") ] ] ]]The lights flicker and dim and annihilate the mood. (click:"annihilate")[On the intercom, a voice says, This entire song just feels like everyone is showering each other in gifts. Nothing is genuine anymore.] (click:"genuine")[Kim Carnes says to a butler, I embrace the idea of being alone, forever. The butler says, We must all tackle Earth’s problems, two at a time, in our own way.] (click:"tackle")[There’s one of the dogs, eating a plastic plate off the ground. There’s food on the plate (still) and Kim Carnes scoffs and pictures the image of tofu, burning on the stove (with no smoke detector setup). Someone says, I want to become obese so I can die yesterday.] (click:"yesterday")[Kim Carnes walks to a different window and traces the shadow of the moon with her left index finger. She says, Someday, I will conquer the land beyond the pines.] (click:"beyond")[Outside, another car explodes.] (click:"explodes")[ [[x->start_2]].]Bruce Springsteen offers some Big League Chew to Harry Belafonte. (click:"League")[There’s the Kentucky Monster on the television and Ray Charles says, //What about the Godzilla//? Kim Carnes walks by a room where there’s paint on the wall (still wet) and someone's written in toasted sesame brown, //a room for two made for three//.] (click:"toasted")[She recalls the tree that killed her father and momentarily lapses into what she will later explain as, Feeling like someone pointing a shotgun at my toes.] (click:"tree")[The man they call Zarro is there and Willie Nelson keeps patting him on the back and saying, Company man!] (click:"Company")[A hitman from Venezuela appears, but the Earth pressures aren’t right tonite so he waves and disappears (no one notices—except for Kim Carnes).] (click:"hitman")[ |kim2>[ (link: "COFFEE")[ (replace: ?kim2)[ (display: "02_kc_coffee") ] ] or (link: "GARBAGE")[ (replace: ?kim2)[ (display: "02_kc_garbage") ] ] ]]Kenny Loggins goes outside for a smoke and makes eye-contact with a racoon eating garbage and turns around, out of respect. (click:"garbage")[There’s condensation inside a plastic bottle by the window sill; Kim Carnes suddenly realizes, //I’m probably thirsty//. On the way to the kitchen, she steps on shards of glass to prove a point.] (click:"shards")[There’s a team of engineers all setup on the large kitchen island, producing some work from 1968. It’s like stealing from the rich & famous, one of them says.] (click:"stealing")[Kim Carnes finds a bottle of mineral volcano water. She drinks and stands by the window and watches, outside, as a group of masked humans douse a cheap car in gasoline and proceed to create flames.] (click:"masked")[She feels like this is all caveman paintings and something to do with //respecting the mountains//.] (click:"caveman")[ |kim3>[ (link: "TAPESTRY")[ (replace: ?kim3)[ (display: "03_kc_tapestry") ] ] or (link: "WEATHER")[ (replace: ?kim3)[ (display: "03_kc_weather") ] ] ]]Some weather balloons dip below the horizon. (click:"weather")[A documentary plays on the third kitchen television, talking about deep sea algae. A business man in business man clothes passes out pamphlets about the war of 1962 and Diana Ross is ingesting a heart-shaped candy.] (click:"pamphlets")[Kim Carnes says, No, definitely don’t do that, and puts out her arm to try and stop Diana Ross (but it’s too late). Diana Ross even says, Girl—don’t touch me!] (click:"touch")[Now, someone’s bleeding onto a version of the American flag with inverted colours and Diana Ross is singing (out of turn).] (click:"bleeding")[There’s something to be said about dishonouring your family, in front of a bunch of guests like that (no less). Kim Carnes thinks, //After this song is done, I’ll probably just leave society//.] (click:"society.")[ |kim4>[ (link: "MIRROR")[ (replace: ?kim4)[ (display: "04_kc_mirror") ] ] or (link: "MEDICINE")[ (replace: ?kim4)[ (display: "04_kc_medicine") ] ] ]]Steve Perry opens the medicine cabinet and nods approvingly. (click:"medicine")[There’s a vintage EXPLORE MARS poster on the wall (in a frame with nice wood). Billy Joel is on his knees in one of the adjacent studies, creating a labyrinth (made of matchsticks) in the miniature replica zen garden from Tokyo, 1966.] (click:"matchsticks")[ Billy Joel looks up at Kim Carnes and says, I feel like I am suddenly becoming the bad guy, all over again.] (click:"guy")[Kim Carnes doesn’t say anything because she has nothing to say to Billy Joel. She walks out of the room and writes a note for herself on a piece of paper about producing films and directing even more movies (about women) and then creating escapist literature (for married women) after the year 1992.] (click:"escapist")[ |kim5>[ (link: "ANNIHILATE")[ (replace: ?kim5)[ (display: "05_kc_annihilate") ] ] or (link: "HATRED")[ (replace: ?kim5)[ (display: "05_kc_hatred") ] ] ]]Steve Perry burns some incense and everyone hates him for it so he can forgive them for their hatred. (click:"hatred")[On the intercom, a voice says, This entire song just feels like everyone is showering each other in gifts. Nothing is genuine anymore.] (click:"genuine")[Kim Carnes says to a butler, I embrace the idea of being alone, forever. The butler says, We must all tackle Earth’s problems, two at a time, in our own way.] (click:"tackle")[There’s one of the dogs, eating a plastic plate off the ground. There’s food on the plate (still) and Kim Carnes scoffs and pictures the image of tofu, burning on the stove (with no smoke detector setup). Someone says, I want to become obese so I can die yesterday.] (click:"yesterday")[Kim Carnes walks to a different window and traces the shadow of the moon with her left index finger. She says, Someday, I will conquer the land beyond the pines.] (click:"beyond")[Outside, another car explodes.] (click:"explodes")[ [[x->start_2]].]Ascending after that to the summit of Mount Olympus, the Seat of the Gods, as it is called, there too I was initiated into the sense, and the real meaning of their speeches and their clamorous manifestations. (click: "summit")[It is there that I was made to see in imagination those trees and all those herbs that operate such prodigies with the help of daemons.] (click: "prodigies")[And I saw their dances, their warfares, their snares, illusions and promiscuities.] (click: "snares")[I heard their singing.] (click: "singing.")[ |dionne2>[ (link: "KINGS")[ (replace: ?dionne2)[ (display: "02_dw_kings") ] ] or (link: "MAJESTIES")[ (replace: ?dionne2)[ (display: "02_dw_majesties") ] ] ]]I saw finally, for forty consecutive days, the phalanx of the gods and goddesses, sending from Olympus, as though they were Kings, spirits to represent them on earth and act in their name among all the nations. (click: "Kings")[At that time I lived entirely on fruit, eaten only after sunset, the virtues of which were explained to me by the seven priests of the sacrifices.] (click: "sunset")[When I was fifteen, my parents desired that I should be made acquainted, not only with all the natural laws in connection with the generation and corruption of bodies on earth, in the air and in the seas, but also with all the other forces grafted on these by the Prince of the World in order to counteract their primal and divine constitution.] (click: "grafted")[ |dionne3>[ (link: "SANCTUARIES")[ (replace: ?dionne3)[ (display: "03_dw_sanctuaries") ] ] or (link: "CAVES")[ (replace: ?dionne3)[ (display: "03_dw_caves") ] ] ]]At twenty, I went to Memphis, where, penetrating into the Sanctuaries, I was taught to discern all that pertains to the communications of daemons with terrestrial matters, their aversion for certain places, their sympathy and attraction for others, their expulsion from certain places, certain objects and laws, their persistence in preferring darkness and their resistance to light. (click: "Sanctuaries")[There I learned the number of the fallen Princes, and that which takes place in human souls and bodies they enter into communication with.] (click: "souls")[I learnt the analogy that exists between earthquakes and rains, between the motion of the earth and the motion of the seas.] (click: "earthquakes")[ |dionne4>[ (link: "GIANTS")[ (replace: ?dionne4)[ (display: "04_dw_giants") ] ] or (link: "CYCLOPES")[ (replace: ?dionne4)[ (display: "04_dw_cyclopes") ] ] ]]I saw the spirits of the Giants plunged in subterranean darkness and seemingly supporting the earth like a man carrying a burden on his shoulders. (click: "Giants")[When thirty, I travelled to Chaldea to study there the true power of the air, placed by some in the fire and by the more learned in light.] (click: "power")[I was taught to see that the planets were in their variety as dissimilar as the plants on earth, and the stars were like armies ranged in battle order.] (click: "armies")[I knew the Chaldean division of Ether into 365 parts, and I perceived that every one of the daemons who divide it among themselves was endowed with that material force that permitted him to execute the orders of the Prince and guide all the movements therein.] (click: "execute")[ |dionne5>[ (link: "PARTICIPANTS")[ (replace: ?dionne5)[ (display: "05_dw_participants") ] ] or (link: "ARBITERS")[ (replace: ?dionne5)[ (display: "05_dw_arbiters") ] ] ]]They explained to me how those Princes had become participants in the Council of Darkness, ever in opposition to the Council of Light. (click: "participants")[I got acquainted with the Mediators, and upon seeing the covenants they were mutually bound by, I was struck with wonder upon learning the nature of their oaths and observances.] (click: "covenants")[Believe me, I saw the Devil; believe me I have embraced him when I was yet quite young, and he saluted me by the title of the new Jambres, declaring me worthy of my ministry.] (click: "Devil")[He promised me continual help during life with a principality after death.] (click: "principality")[Having become in great honour under his tuition, he placed under my orders a phalanx of daemons, and when I bid him good-bye, he exclaimed, “Courage, good success, excellent Dionne,” rising up from his seat to see me to the door, plunging thereby those present into a profound admiration.] (click: "plunging")[ |dionne6>[ (link: "GALLUS")[ (replace: ?dionne6)[ (display: "06_dw_gallus") ] ] or (link: "UKIRI")[ (replace: ?dionne6)[ (display: "06_dw_ukiri") ] ] ]]I am that Dionne who, by the end of her forty-fifth year, will be martyred by the Roman authorities. Beheaded on the banks of the river Gallus. (click: "Gallus")[I haven’t been this high since the Catholic Church excised me from the roll of Saints in ‘68.] (click: "Saints")[Take me to Damascus to be tortured.] (click: "Damascus")[ [[x->start_2]].]Ascending after that to the crown of Mount Dtamaratz, the Divine Ingress, as it is called, there too I was initiated into the sense, and the real meaning of their speeches and their clamorous manifestations. (click: "crown")[It is there that I was made to see in imagination those trees and all those herbs that operate such prodigies with the help of daemons.] (click: "prodigies")[And I saw their dances, their warfares, their snares, illusions and promiscuities.] (click: "snares")[I heard their singing.] (click: "singing.")[ |dionne2>[ (link: "KINGS")[ (replace: ?dionne2)[ (display: "02_dw_kings") ] ] or (link: "MAJESTIES")[ (replace: ?dionne2)[ (display: "02_dw_majesties") ] ] ]]I saw finally, for forty consecutive days, the phalanx of the gods and goddesses, sending from Dtamaratz, as though they were Lord Majesties, spirits to represent them on earth and act in their name among all the nations. (click: "Majesties")[At that time I lived entirely on fruit, eaten only after sunset, the virtues of which were explained to me by the seven priests of the sacrifices.] (click: "sunset")[When I was fifteen, my parents desired that I should be made acquainted, not only with all the natural laws in connection with the generation and corruption of bodies on earth, in the air and in the seas, but also with all the other forces grafted on these by the Prince of the World in order to counteract their primal and divine constitution.] (click: "grafted")[ |dionne3>[ (link: "SANCTUARIES")[ (replace: ?dionne3)[ (display: "03_dw_sanctuaries") ] ] or (link: "CAVES")[ (replace: ?dionne3)[ (display: "03_dw_caves") ] ] ]]At twenty, I went to Balafac, where, penetrating into the Darq Caves, I was taught to discern all that pertains to the communications of daemons with terrestrial matters, their aversion for certain places, their sympathy and attraction for others, their expulsion from certain places, certain objects and laws, their persistence in preferring darkness and their resistance to light. (click: "Caves")[There I learned the number of the fallen Princes, and that which takes place in human souls and bodies they enter into communication with.] (click: "souls")[I learnt the analogy that exists between earthquakes and rains, between the motion of the earth and the motion of the seas.] (click: "earthquakes")[ |dionne4>[ (link: "GIANTS")[ (replace: ?dionne4)[ (display: "04_dw_giants") ] ] or (link: "CYCLOPES")[ (replace: ?dionne4)[ (display: "04_dw_cyclopes") ] ] ]]I saw the spirits of the Cyclopes plunged in subterranean darkness and seemingly supporting the earth like a man carrying a burden on his shoulders. (click: "Cyclopes")[When thirty, I travelled to Habnthalea to study there the true power of the air, placed by some in the fire and by the more learned in light.] (click: "power")[I was taught to see that the planets were in their variety as dissimilar as the plants on earth, and the stars were like armies ranged in battle order.] (click: "armies")[I knew the Habnthalean division of Ether into 365 parts, and I perceived that every one of the daemons who divide it among themselves was endowed with that material force that permitted him to execute the orders of the Prince and guide all the movements therein.] (click: "execute")[ |dionne5>[ (link: "PARTICIPANTS")[ (replace: ?dionne5)[ (display: "05_dw_participants") ] ] or (link: "ARBITERS")[ (replace: ?dionne5)[ (display: "05_dw_arbiters") ] ] ]]They explained to me how those Princes had become arbiters in the Board of Oblivion, ever in opposition to the Board of Flesh. (click: "arbiters")[I got acquainted with the Mediators, and upon seeing the covenants they were mutually bound by, I was struck with wonder upon learning the nature of their oaths and observances.] (click: "covenants")[Believe me, I saw the Destroyer; believe me I have embraced him when I was yet quite young, and he saluted me by the title of the new Falbunalich, declaring me worthy of my ministry.] (click: "Destroyer")[He promised me continual help during life with a principality after death.] (click: "principality")[Having become in great honour under his tuition, he placed under my orders a phalanx of daemons, and when I bid him good-bye, he exclaimed, “Courage, good success, excellent Dionne,” rising up from his seat to see me to the door, plunging thereby those present into a profound admiration.] (click: "plunging")[ |dionne6>[ (link: "GALLUS")[ (replace: ?dionne6)[ (display: "06_dw_gallus") ] ] or (link: "UKIRI")[ (replace: ?dionne6)[ (display: "06_dw_ukiri") ] ] ]]I am that Dionne who, by the end of her forty-fifth year, will be martyred by the Pyrezyn authorities. Beheaded on the banks of the river Ukiri. (click: "Ukiri")[I haven’t been this high since the Üth Mysterium excised me from the roll of Prophets in ‘68.] (click: "Prophets")[Take me to Kolqueytta to be tortured.] (click: "Kolqueytta")[ [[x->start_2]].]Quincy Jones: Can I help you with that. (click:"help")[Huey Lewis: No it’s alright I got it. Man this is some place you have here, Quincy. From the outside you wouldn’t guess it.] (click:"outside")[Quincy Jones: It’s by design.] (click:"design.")[I told Bucky I wanted to approximate the infinite regression of my life.] (click:"regression")[Huey Lewis: Infinite regression, huh.] (click:"Infinite regression")[Quincy Jones: Will The News be joining us this evening?] (click:"joining")[Huey Lewis: They are not here?] (click:"They")[Quincy Jones: No.] (click:"No.")[Huey Lewis: Huh.] (click:"Huh.")[Quincy Jones: There’s no accounting for traffic.] (click:"traffic.")[Huey Lewis: True, true. I took the helicopter.] (click:"helicopter.")[Wow is that a bear?] (click:"Wow")[Quincy Jones: It’s a yeti.] (click:"yeti.")[Huey Lewis: A what?] (click:"A what")[Quincy Jones: Bigfoot.] (click:"Bigfoot.")[Huey Lewis: No shit. Did you shoot him?] (click:"shoot")[Quincy Jones: Not exactly.] (click:"exactly.")[Watch your step there. We’re still rolling in the equipment. The Pointer Sisters just arrived. You’ve met Bette Midler, right?] (click:"equipment")[Huey Lewis: You know it.] (click:"know")[ |huey2>[ (link: "MADONNA")[ (replace: ?huey2)[ (display: "02_hl_madonna") ] ] or (link: "EDDIE MURPHY")[ (replace: ?huey2)[ (display: "02_hl_eddie_murphy") ] ] ]]Huey Lewis: Hey Bette. Is Eddie Murphy here? (click:"Eddie Murphy")[Bette Midler: I would hope not.] (click:"hope")[Huey Lewis: Copy that. Listen, Quincy, I had some ideas about the harmonies.] (click:"harmonies")[Quincy Jones: The harmony is exact.] (click:"harmony")[Huey Lewis: No I know, it’s great. That’s why I’m here. Loved the demo with Stevie. But listen, I had some ideas.] (click:"demo")[Quincy Jones: Himmler had some ideas.] (click:"Himmler")[Huey Lewis: Point taken. Like I said, any drug is fine. Hey is that Bob Dylan?] (click:"Bob Dylan")[Quincy Jones: On the couch?] (click:"couch")[Huey Lewis: Yeah, on the couch.] (click:"Yea")[Quincy Jones: It’s a pile of coats.] (click:"pile")[Huey Lewis: Right. Like I said. Any drug.] (click:"Right.")[Quincy Jones: I have just the thing.] (click:"thing")[ |huey3>[ (link: "DOOR")[ (replace: ?huey3)[ (display: "03_hl_door") ] ] or (link: "OPENING")[ (replace: ?huey3)[ (display: "03_hl_opening") ] ] ]]Huey Lewis: Hey Bette. Is Madonna here? (click:"Madonna")[Bette Midler: I would hope not.] (click:"hope")[Huey Lewis: Copy that. Listen, Quincy, I had some ideas about the harmonies.] (click:"harmonies")[Quincy Jones: The harmony is exact.] (click:"harmony")[Huey Lewis: No I know, it’s great. That’s why I’m here. Loved the demo with Stevie. But listen, I had some ideas.] (click:"demo")[Quincy Jones: Himmler had some ideas.] (click:"Himmler")[Huey Lewis: Point taken. Like I said, any drug is fine. Hey is that Bob Dylan?] (click:"Bob Dylan")[Quincy Jones: On the couch?] (click:"couch")[Huey Lewis: Yeah, on the couch.] (click:"Yea")[Quincy Jones: It’s a pile of coats.] (click:"pile")[Huey Lewis: Right. Like I said. Any drug.] (click:"Right.")[Quincy Jones: I have just the thing.] (click:"thing")[ |huey3>[ (link: "DOOR")[ (replace: ?huey3)[ (display: "03_hl_door") ] ] or (link: "OPENING")[ (replace: ?huey3)[ (display: "03_hl_opening") ] ] ]]Quincy Jones: Just down the hall here. The door at the end. (click:"door")[Huey Lewis: That’s a lot of deadbolts.] (click:"deadbolts.")[Quincy Jones: It’s where I keep my session tapes, among other artifacts. Here, go ahead.] (click:"artifacts.")[Huey Lewis: Down these stairs?] (click:"Down")[Quincy Jones: You got it.] (click:"got")[Huey Lewis: Man that’s some breeze. Feels like Antarctica. I can just wait up here.] (click:"breeze.")[Quincy Jones: No go ahead.] (click:"No")[Huey Lewis: I’m cool.] (click:"cool.")[Quincy Jones: Huey.] (click:"Huey.")[Huey Lewis: Understood, here I go. Down the stairs. You coming?] (click:"stairs.")[Quincy Jones: Right behind you.] (click:"behind")[ |huey4>[ (link: "TORCHES")[ (replace: ?huey4)[ (display: "04_hl_torches") ] ] or (link: "COBWEBS")[ (replace: ?huey4)[ (display: "04_hl_cobwebs") ] ] ]]Quincy Jones: Just down the hall here. The opening at the end. (click:"opening")[Huey Lewis: That’s a lot of deadbolts.] (click:"deadbolts.")[Quincy Jones: It’s where I keep my session tapes, among other artifacts. Here, go ahead.] (click:"artifacts.")[Huey Lewis: Down these stairs?] (click:"Down")[Quincy Jones: You got it.] (click:"got")[Huey Lewis: Man that’s some breeze. Feels like Antarctica. I can just wait up here.] (click:"breeze.")[Quincy Jones: No go ahead.] (click:"No")[Huey Lewis: I’m cool.] (click:"cool.")[Quincy Jones: Huey.] (click:"Huey.")[Huey Lewis: Understood, here I go. Down the stairs. You coming?] (click:"stairs.")[Quincy Jones: Right behind you.] (click:"behind")[ |huey4>[ (link: "TORCHES")[ (replace: ?huey4)[ (display: "04_hl_torches") ] ] or (link: "COBWEBS")[ (replace: ?huey4)[ (display: "04_hl_cobwebs") ] ] ]]Huey Lewis: Wow, these torches light themselves? Crazy. Never seen that before. This is a lot of stairs. (click:"torches")[Quincy Jones: Not far now.] (click:"far")[Huey Lewis: What time you think we’ll finish up tonight?] (click:"time")[Quincy Jones: The morning.] (click:"morning.")[Huey Lewis: Like, 10 a.m.?] (click:"10 a.m.")[Quincy Jones: As the sun rises for the final time and annihilates all other light.] (click:"final")[Huey Lewis: Perfect, I’ve got a flight at noon. Promo stuff. We’re doing a soundtrack. Oh man. What’s that smell?] (click:"Promo")[Quincy Jones: This is it.] (click:"This is it.")[Huey Lewis: This is wha—woah what just happened. Quincy? What happened to the torches? I can’t see a goddamn thing. Quincy? Quincy? (//Distant hiss of air as the door at the top of the stairs clicks shut//).] (click:"goddamn")[ |huey5>[ (link: "KIDDING")[ (replace: ?huey5)[ (display: "05_hl_kidding") ] ] or (link: "DAFT")[ (replace: ?huey5)[ (display: "05_hl_daft") ] ] ]]Huey Lewis: Are you kidding me? (click:"kidding")[Hey! What the fuck! (//The thundering echo of one deadbolt, then another, then several at once//). Fuck! Fuck you Quincy Jones! Fuck you!](click:"Fuck you")[ [[x->start_2]].]Quincy Jones: Do you need me to call the butler? (click:"butler")[Huey Lewis: No it’s alright I got it. Man this is some place you have here, Quincy. From the outside you wouldn’t guess it.] (click:"outside")[Quincy Jones: It’s by design.] (click:"design.")[I told Bucky I wanted to approximate the infinite regression of my life.] (click:"regression")[Huey Lewis: Infinite regression, huh.] (click:"Infinite regression")[Quincy Jones: Will The News be joining us this evening?] (click:"joining")[Huey Lewis: They are not here?] (click:"They")[Quincy Jones: No.] (click:"No.")[Huey Lewis: Huh.] (click:"Huh.")[Quincy Jones: There’s no accounting for traffic.] (click:"traffic.")[Huey Lewis: True, true. I took the helicopter.] (click:"helicopter.")[Wow is that a bear?] (click:"Wow")[Quincy Jones: It’s a yeti.] (click:"yeti.")[Huey Lewis: A what?] (click:"A what")[Quincy Jones: Bigfoot.] (click:"Bigfoot.")[Huey Lewis: No shit. Did you shoot him?] (click:"shoot")[Quincy Jones: Not exactly.] (click:"exactly.")[Watch your step there. We’re still rolling in the equipment. The Pointer Sisters just arrived. You’ve met Bette Midler, right?] (click:"equipment")[Huey Lewis: You know it.] (click:"know")[ |huey2>[ (link: "MADONNA")[ (replace: ?huey2)[ (display: "02_hl_madonna") ] ] or (link: "EDDIE MURPHY")[ (replace: ?huey2)[ (display: "02_hl_eddie_murphy") ] ] ]]Huey Lewis: Wow, that's a lot of cobwebs! Crazy. Never seen that many before. This is a lot of stairs. (click:"cobwebs")[Quincy Jones: Not far now.] (click:"far")[Huey Lewis: What time you think we’ll finish up tonight?] (click:"time")[Quincy Jones: The morning.] (click:"morning.")[Huey Lewis: Like, 10 a.m.?] (click:"10 a.m.")[Quincy Jones: As the sun rises for the final time and annihilates all other light.] (click:"final")[Huey Lewis: Perfect, I’ve got a flight at noon. Promo stuff. We’re doing a soundtrack. Oh man. What’s that smell?] (click:"Promo")[Quincy Jones: This is it.] (click:"This is it.")[Huey Lewis: This is wha—woah what just happened. Quincy? What happened to the torches? I can’t see a goddamn thing. Quincy? Quincy? (//Distant hiss of air as the door at the top of the stairs clicks shut//).] (click:"goddamn")[ |huey5>[ (link: "KIDDING")[ (replace: ?huey5)[ (display: "05_hl_kidding") ] ] or (link: "DAFT")[ (replace: ?huey5)[ (display: "05_hl_daft") ] ] ]]Huey Lewis: Are you fucking daft? (click:"daft")[Hey! What the fuck! (//The thundering echo of one deadbolt, then another, then several at once//). Fuck! Fuck you Quincy Jones! Fuck you!](click:"Fuck you")[ [[x->start_2]].]He sees Kenny Rogers and says, Kenny you labyrinth—I have just the thing. (click: "labyrinth")[Kenny Rogers stares at the scroll in his hand like a born again linguist. The birds cry about their homeland. To the Earth, it is always night. Quincy kneels before the shadow of Tina Turner and offers her shadow a scroll.] (click: "kneels")[He measures the parallax of John Oates and Daryl Hall and tosses a single scroll into the void they share. The air is a miracle to be destroyed. Every tree here is worth a continuous stream of human lifetimes. Suits the color of videotape.] (click: "stream")[ |quincy2>[ (link: "SOVIET")[ (replace: ?quincy2)[ (display: "02_qj_soviet") ] ] or (link: "FOREIGN")[ (replace: ?quincy2)[ (display: "02_qj_foreign") ] ] ]]Dionne Warwick shimmies a cape off her shoulders to reveal a lesser cape and Quincy gifts her a scroll wrapped in Soviet currency. (click: "Soviet")[The wind introduces pain and regret. The scroll Quincy gave Willie Nelson induces a world birth experience.] (click: "birth")[Bob Dylan spills onto the red carpet like he’s washing up on a beach like a bottle with a rolled up scrap of paper inside.] (click: "spills")[Quincy tells him exactly this and folds a scroll into his hand. Language is a biological weapon. Every mic is a hot mic. Somewhere, something. Quincy does a calculation that renders him invisible as Madonna emerges from the firmament.] (click: "firmament.")[Kenny Loggins is possessed by the scroll he now possesses. The surface of the moon withstands so much. Sugar as a vehicle of empire. Art deco and laser beams.] (click: "Sugar")[ |quincy3>[ (link: "WINGS")[ (replace: ?quincy3)[ (display: "03_qj_wings") ] ] or (link: "HORNS")[ (replace: ?quincy3)[ (display: "03_qj_horns") ] ] ]]Quincy spreads his wings for Cyndi Lauper and torches a scroll in her hands. (click: "wings")[Stevie Wonder co-scribing his own scroll.] (click: "co-scribing")[Lionel Richie pollinating his and everyone else’s scroll.] (click: "pollinating")[Michael Jackson bingeing and purging his scroll with powdered sugar and honey.] (click: "purging")[Behind every limousine, a limousine. Prince rolls his eyes and says to Sheila E., Here take this.] (click: "limousine")[Paul Simon shows up with a lapdog and Quincy pulls a scroll from behind Paul Simon’s ear and Paul Simon accepts it, astonished.] (click: "lapdog")[Even with a scroll in his back pocket Huey Lewis feels naked without the News. A helicopter hovers beyond the soundscape.] (click: "naked")[Steve Perry’s voice shredding souls not scrolls. The absence of even the idea of insects. His and her Corvettes.] (click: "insects.")[ |quincy4>[ (link: "CURVATURE")[ (replace: ?quincy4)[ (display: "04_qj_curvature") ] ] or (link: "ROTATION")[ (replace: ?quincy4)[ (display: "04_qj_rotation") ] ] ]]Al Jarreau adjusting his posture to align with the curvature of Earth and scroll. (click: "curvature")[Kim Carnes showing up like a past life proselytizing the scrolls of tomorrow.] (click: "proselytizing")[James Ingram folding a scroll and folding it again and folding it one more time.] (click: "time.")[Bruce Springsteen grips his scroll as if to say, Just say the word. The night makes no mistake. This is the end of the red carpet.] (click: "mistake.")[Quincy slips Ray Charles a scroll from outside the crucible of time, inside the theater.] (click: "crucible")[ |quincy5>[ (link: "CHORUS")[ (replace: ?quincy5)[ (display: "05_qj_chorus") ] ] or (link: "OPERA")[ (replace: ?quincy5)[ (display: "05_qj_opera") ] ] ]]Bodies cascade into patterns, patterns collapse into seats like a chorus: Harry Belafonte, Bette Midler, Lindsey Buckingham, Bob Geldof, La Toya Jackson, Jackie Jackson, Marlon Jackson, Randy Jackson, Tito Jackson, Waylon Jennings, Dan Aykroyd, Jeffrey Osborne, The Pointer Sisters, The News, Smokey Robinson. (click: "chorus")[Billy Joel sweats alone in a bathroom stall. The light flickers. He touches a scroll to a mirror long enough to inhale and break the wax seal.] (click: "sweats")[He reads: Michael Jackson & Lionel Richie cordially invite you to a great summoning.] (click: "cordially")[Quincy Jones will lead the proceedings of this historic occurrence. Tonight. After the American Music Awards.] (click: "Tonight.")[ [[x->start_2]].]He sees Kenny Rogers and says, Kenny you fortress—I have just the thing. (click: "fortress")[Kenny Rogers stares at the scroll in his hand like a born again linguist. The birds cry about their homeland. To the Earth, it is always night. Quincy kneels before the shadow of Tina Turner and offers her shadow a scroll.] (click: "kneels")[He measures the parallax of John Oates and Daryl Hall and tosses a single scroll into the void they share. The air is a miracle to be destroyed. Every tree here is worth a continuous stream of human lifetimes. Suits the color of videotape.] (click: "stream")[ |quincy2>[ (link: "SOVIET")[ (replace: ?quincy2)[ (display: "02_qj_soviet") ] ] or (link: "FOREIGN")[ (replace: ?quincy2)[ (display: "02_qj_foreign") ] ] ]]Dionne Warwick takes off a mask to reveal a lesser mask and Quincy gifts her a scroll wrapped in foreign currency. (click: "foreign")[The wind introduces pain and regret. The scroll Quincy gave Willie Nelson induces a world birth experience.] (click: "birth")[Bob Dylan spills onto the red carpet like he’s washing up on a beach like a bottle with a rolled up scrap of paper inside.] (click: "spills")[Quincy tells him exactly this and folds a scroll into his hand. Language is a biological weapon. Every mic is a hot mic. Somewhere, something. Quincy does a calculation that renders him invisible as Madonna emerges from the firmament.] (click: "firmament.")[Kenny Loggins is possessed by the scroll he now possesses. The surface of the moon withstands so much. Sugar as a vehicle of empire. Art deco and laser beams.] (click: "Sugar")[ |quincy3>[ (link: "WINGS")[ (replace: ?quincy3)[ (display: "03_qj_wings") ] ] or (link: "HORNS")[ (replace: ?quincy3)[ (display: "03_qj_horns") ] ] ]]Quincy spreads his horns for Cyndi Lauper and torches a scroll in her hands. (click: "horns")[Stevie Wonder co-scribing his own scroll.] (click: "co-scribing")[Lionel Richie pollinating his and everyone else’s scroll.] (click: "pollinating")[Michael Jackson bingeing and purging his scroll with powdered sugar and honey.] (click: "purging")[Behind every limousine, a limousine. Prince rolls his eyes and says to Sheila E., Here take this.] (click: "limousine")[Paul Simon shows up with a lapdog and Quincy pulls a scroll from behind Paul Simon’s ear and Paul Simon accepts it, astonished.] (click: "lapdog")[Even with a scroll in his back pocket Huey Lewis feels naked without the News. A helicopter hovers beyond the soundscape.] (click: "naked")[Steve Perry’s voice shredding souls not scrolls. The absence of even the idea of insects. His and her Corvettes.] (click: "insects.")[ |quincy4>[ (link: "CURVATURE")[ (replace: ?quincy4)[ (display: "04_qj_curvature") ] ] or (link: "ROTATION")[ (replace: ?quincy4)[ (display: "04_qj_rotation") ] ] ]]Al Jarreau adjusting his posture to align with the rotation of (either:"Jupiter","Mars","Saturn") and scroll. (click: "rotation")[Kim Carnes showing up like a past life proselytizing the scrolls of tomorrow.] (click: "proselytizing")[James Ingram folding a scroll and folding it again and folding it one more time.] (click: "time.")[Bruce Springsteen grips his scroll as if to say, Just say the word. The night makes no mistake. This is the end of the red carpet.] (click: "mistake.")[Quincy slips Ray Charles a scroll from outside the crucible of time, inside the theater.] (click: "crucible")[ |quincy5>[ (link: "CHORUS")[ (replace: ?quincy5)[ (display: "05_qj_chorus") ] ] or (link: "OPERA")[ (replace: ?quincy5)[ (display: "05_qj_opera") ] ] ]]Bodies cascade into patterns, patterns collapse into seats like at the opera: Harry Belafonte, Bette Midler, Lindsey Buckingham, Bob Geldof, La Toya Jackson, Jackie Jackson, Marlon Jackson, Randy Jackson, Tito Jackson, Waylon Jennings, Dan Aykroyd, Jeffrey Osborne, The Pointer Sisters, The News, Smokey Robinson. (click: "opera")[Billy Joel sweats alone in a bathroom stall. The light flickers. He touches a scroll to a mirror long enough to inhale and break the wax seal.] (click: "sweats")[He reads: Michael Jackson & Lionel Richie cordially invite you to a great summoning.] (click: "cordially")[Quincy Jones will lead the proceedings of this historic occurrence. Tonight. After the American Music Awards.] (click: "Tonight.")[ [[x->start_2]].]