Welcome to the online studio of Francisco Mattos, built w/ printed pieces, experiments, souvenirs, personal projects.
-| September 2021 |-
ERRAND
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IRIS was hosting a small party when Hera sent word to deliver a message to Hypnos. HARPALYKE innocently proposed that the rainbow goddess bring everyone with; this proved fateful for the birthday girl, who came back as a night bird. AUTONOE (daughter to Harmonia), pleiade TAYGETE and maze-whiz ARIADNE all said “what a great idea”. Dark-winged UMBRIEL thrummed and gave Iris, his companion since 1851, one of his gnomic looks.
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The house of Hypnos is a permanent structure made of shadow-matter, in a pocket of Erebus which cannot be discerned.
Round the corner from an implied valley is a wide-open entranceway, leading to a vast room. The god of sleep reclines in the center, on a pedestal of black ebony brimming w/ black-plumes on the rim, the whole festooned in sheer black-velvet veils descending from the mile-high ceiling. Strewn everywhere are slumbering shapes.
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Her rainbow robe shimmers as the daughter to Ge and Pontos nimbles over sleeping dreams, stirring them to obligingly roll to make a path for her party. The sister to the harpies leans in and whispers into Hypnos’ ear: “Tranquilizer of minds, soother of care-worn hearts, gentlest of gods,” etc.
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Mission accomplished, the group departs hastily, but not before the episode where Harpalyke paid the fare.
❧ Astronomer William Herschel spots fairy royalty through his telescope and tries to catch them all w/ his butterfly-net, TITANIA and OBERON, Queen MAB, others.
1808 Act I Scene 1 – Forest, daylight ❧ Although it is 1948, MIRANDA isn’t aware because she’s lost in Time, and she absent-mindedly perturbs a rotation rite being initiated by ARIEL, PUCK. A cosmic cave materializes in the lower air; inside the witch SYCORAX and her spawn CALIBAN are seen to mumble and hum.
1829 Act I Scene 2 – Forest, twilight ❧ Fashion-plate BELINDA strolls on in 1986 to introduce a cavalcade of stars. Venetian heriess PORTIA is sharing a joke w/ ROSALIND , daughter to a banished duke; CORDELIA and OPHELIA are linking fingers, touching foreheads, laughing softly; BIANCA is being practical watching her step while giving life tips to CRESSIDA; DESDEMONA and JULIET whisper and act distraught. Slowpokes MARGARET and PERDITA bring up the rear.
1850 Act II Scene 1 – Forest, evening ❧ Male voices from 1990 approach. Shy inquiries are proffered by prince of Naples FERDINAND and his lord FRANCISCO on the who, what, when, where, and why. Meanwhile jester TRINCULO is lending support to drunk-asleep STEPHANO, who now wants to mingle. Chit-chat strums the air and blends w/ sonic spells from the cosmic cave as the Sun starts to sink.
1871 Act II Scene 2 – Forest, midnight ❧ Both parties are now asleep. Sprites and fairies flit across the air. A glint “no bigger than an agate-stone” arrives w/ news for the pained planet Ouranos. The sound of her voice is the signal for Puck to begin matching Ariel’s trajectory and speed before taking charge and bringing the rotation:rite to its conclusion. SETEBOS begins a slow descent onto stage, IXION turns down the stage lights, and the double-voice of DIDYMOS intones the concluding conjuration. Bringing the curtain down on Prospero’s Play, written as a medicinal for an ailing aboriginal, prescribed by the patient’s physician Asclepius.
In 1872, Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), the daughter of Quaker abolitionists, walked into a polling station in Albany New York and voted. She was fined $100 on the charge of illegal voting, and she refused to pay. Four years earlier, together w/ Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), she had founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. Her examples made possible the eventual adoption of the Nineteenth Amenement, fourteen years after her death.
FIRST DAY
THE PROSECUTION
D.A. Richard Crowley:
May it please the Court and Gentlemen of the Jury: ... The defendant, Miss Susan B. Anthony ... voted for a representative in the Congrees of the United States, to represent the 29th Congressional District of this State, and also for a representative at large for the State of New York to represent the State in the Congresss of the United States. At that time she was a woman. I suppose there will be no question about that ... whatever Miss Anthony’s intentions may have been - whether they were good or otherwise - she did not have a right to vote upon that question, and if she did vote without having a lawful right to vote, then there is no question but what she is guilty of violating a law of the United States ...
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Conceded, that on the 5th day of November 1872, Miss Susan B. Anthony was a woman.
THE INSPECTORS’ TESTIMONY
Q: Did you see her vote?
A: [Beverly W. Jones]: Yes, sir ...
Q: She was not challenged on the day she voted?
A: No, sir.
Cross-examination by Defense Attorney, Judge Henry Selden.
Q: Prior to the election, was there a registry of voters in that district made?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: Were you one of the officers engaged in making that registry?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: When the registry was being made did Miss Anthony appear before the Board of Registry and claim to be registered as a voter?
A: She did.
Q: Was there any objection made, or any doubt raised as to her right to vote?
A: There was.
Q: On what ground?
A: On the ground that the Constitution of the State of New York did not allow women to vote.
Q: What was the defect in her right to vote as a citizen?
A: She was not a male citizen.
Q: That she was a woman?
A: Yes, sir ...
Q: Did the Board consider the question of her right to registry, and decide that she was entitled to registry as a voter?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: And she was registered accordingly?
A: Yes, sir ...
Q: Won’t you state what Miss Anthony said, if she said anything, when she came there and offered her name for registration?
A: She stated that she did not claim any rights under the Constitution of the State of New York; she claimed her right under the Constitution of the United States.
Q: Did she name any particular Amendment?
A: Yes, sir; she cited the 14th amendment.
Q: Under that she claimed her right to vote?
A: Yes, sir...
SECOND DAY
THE DEFENSE ATTORNEY
Judge Henry R. Selden:
The only alleged ground of illegality of the defendant's vote is that she is a woman.
“If the same act had been done by her brother under the same circumstances, the act would have been not only innocent, but honorable and laudable; but having been done by a woman it is said to be a crime. ... I believe this is the first instance in which a woman has been arraigned in a criminal court merely on account of her sex. ... Another objection is, that the right to hold office must attend the right to vote, and that women are not qualified to discharge the duties of responsible offices. I beg leave to answer this objection by asking one or more questions. How many of the male bipeds who do our voting are qualified to hold high offices? ... Another objection is that engaging in political controversies is not consistent w/ the feminine character. Upon that subject, women themselves are the best judges, and if political duties should be found inconsistent w/ female delicacy, we may rest assured that women will either effect a change in the character of political contests, or decline to engage in them. ...”
THE JUDGE
The Court: The question, gentlemen of the jury ... is wholly a question or questions of law, and I have decided as a question of law, in the first place, that under the 14th Amendment, which Miss Anthony claims protects her, she was not protected in a right to vote. And I have decided also that her belief and the advice which she took do not protect her in the act which she committed. If I am right in this, the result must be a verdict on your part of guilty, and I therefore direct that you find a verdict of guilty.
Mr. Selden: That is a direction no Court has power to make in a criminal case.
The Court: Take the verdict, Mr. Clerk. ...
Susan B. Anthony after casting her first vote, she was a 26 year-old school teacher in upstate New York, the year was 1848.
THE NEXT DAY
The Court: The prisoner will stand up. Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?
MISS Anthony: Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled underfoot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor’s verdict, doomed to political subjection under this so-called Republican government.
JUDGE Hunt: The Court can not listen to a rehearsal of arguments the prisoner's counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.
MISS Anthony: May it please your honor, I am not arguing the question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence can not, in justice, be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen's right to vote is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against the law, therefore, the denial of my sacred rights to life, liberty, property, and-
JUDGE Hunt: The court can not allow the prisoner to go on.
MISS Anthony: But your honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time that either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury–
JUDGE Hunt: the prisoner must sit down; the Court can not allow it.
MISS Anthony: All my prosecutors, from the 8th Ward corner grocery politician, who entered the complaint, to the United States Marshal, Commissioner, District Attorney, District Judge, your honor on the bench, not one is my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns; and had your honor submitted my case to the jury, as was clearly your duty, even that I should have had just cause of protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or foreign, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, awake or asleep, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. ...
JUDGE Hunt: The Court must insist - the prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of law.
MISS Anthony: Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women; and hence, your honor’s ordered verdict of guilty, against a United States citizen for the exercise of “that citizen’ s right to vote,” simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man. But, yesterday, the same manmade forms of law declared it a crime punishable w/ $1,000 fine and six months’ imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or a night’s shelter to a panting fugitive as he is tracking his way to Canada. And every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing. As then the slaves who got ther freedom must take it over, or under, or through the unjust forms of law, precisely so now must women, to get their right to a voice in this Government, take it; and I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every possible opportunity.
JUDGE Hunt: The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow another word
MISS Anthony: When I was brought before your honor for trial, I hoped for a broad and liberal interpretation of the Constitution and its recent amendments, that should declare all United States citizens under its protecting aegis - that should declare equality of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. But failing to get this justice - failing, even, to get a trial by a jury not of my peers - I ask not leniency at your hands - but rather the full rigors of the law.
JUDGE Hunt: The Court must insist - [Here the prisoner sat down.] The prisoner will stand up. [Here Miss Anthony arose again.] The sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of $100 and the costs of the prosecution.
MISS Anthony: May it please your honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper - The Revolution - four years ago, the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, that tax, fine, imprison, and hang women, while they deny them the right of representation in the Government; and I shall work on with might and main to pay every dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim that “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”
JUDGE Hunt: Madam, the Court will not order you committed until the fine is paid.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY NOTES:
[1.]
From A Patroit’s Handbook (2003): songs, poems, stories, and speeches celebrating the land we love, selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy.
[2.]
On November 26 2017, the trial of Miss Susan B. Anthony was reenacted at the James T. Foley U.S. Courthouse in Albany New York. Starting time was 6pm, and it was hosted by the Federal Court Bar Association of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.
2017 San Francisco Women’s March
|¶| Two separate and interconnected
limestone cave, spanning just more than 5.5 miles. One of the top fourteen finalists for the New 7 Wonders of Nature competition.
✈¦ Japan
OSAKA
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Night view of Osaka shows the
Yodo River winding through, on its way to Osaka Bay and the Pacific Ocean.
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The megalopolis of Osaka is a confluence of cities and suburbs in the Kansai region in Japan. With an extensive warren of underground shipping arcades as well as the largest slum in the county, the “nation‘s kitchen” is where 19 million people call home.
✈¦ Western Australia
PERTH
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Going on 38,000 years, the Whadjuk people have lived on the Swan Coastal Plain in the south-western region of Australia. Today, they share the land w/ an administrative center for the Swan River Colony, set up in 1829 and growing into present-day Perth, the capital of Western Australia and the western-most capital in the world.
Super Moon over Perth.
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Aerial view of Western Australia.
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Geode from Mammoth Cave, a limestone cavern about 1600-feet long and 98-feet deep, and first explored in 1895.
Yagan Square is a new area built to honor the Aboriginal beginnings of Perth.
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A repurposed building on William Street downtown, preserving the original facade and building out modernized additions.
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Plaque on building for
J. Crothers Perth, constructing Western Australia since 1896.
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Outdoor sculpture (Spanda) of carbon fiber by Christian de Vietri, Elisabeth Quay, Swan River.
✈¦ Papua New Guinea
PORT MORESBY
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Harbor view and on the horizon is the Coral Sea, in southwestern Pacific Ocean.
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Papua New Guinea is a country swept by periods wherein high levels of rape, robbery and murder occur, and Port Moresby is its capital.
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Amongst a rampant gang culture of the Raskol, PNG’s population cope w/ poor healthcare and poverty. Currently Port Moresby ranks as being the worst capital to live in in the world.
▶ Errol Flynn lived in PNG
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In his autobiography “My Wicked, Wicked Ways”, the actor Errol Flynn describes seeing Port Moresby for the first time, in 1930: “We piloted our ship into the rather fine harbor of Port Moresby. We arrived during the rainy season and the whole area was brilliant green. The region seemed beautiful to me and I poked around searching its resources. About thirty miles from the port the Laloki River flowed through an emerald countryside. I fell in love w/ it. My partners made their way back to Australia, but I decided to settle there. ... Around me, from Laloki to Port Moresby, was a territory plentiful w/ nutmeg, rattan cane, the okari nut, bananas, mangrove, coconuts, and sandalwood. There was fish in the river, and the natives brought food to my door. For a pence or two I could have the fruit of the region.”
✈¦ Prague
CHARLES BRIDGE
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Dating to the 14th Century, when it was the only means of crossing the Vitava River, and holding that distinction until 1841.
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This unique “solid-land” connection made Prague supreme as a city on the trade route between eastern and western Europe. Three-minute animation of the 45 years to took to build Charles Bridge in the 14th-c.
✈¦ Oceania
AUCKLAND
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The port city as seen from atop one of the numerous extinct volcanoes ringing it. Towards the horizon the Hauraki Gulf shows the way to the South Pacific. Auckland is located where the sea route incoming from the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific group of islands incl. Fiji, New Caledonia and Tonga, the port of Auckland has long been regarded as the “hub of waterways in all directions” (-Margaret McClure-).
✈¦
Hollywood
GRAUMAN’S CHINESE THEATRE
|¶| Designated an historic cultural monument in 1968, but built as a movie theater by Sid Grauman in the 1920s, adorned w/ a fantastical façade of oriental-dream motifs, amalgamating several landscapes into an intimate space of spotlight proportions — every step can feel like treading the boards.
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Gate posts from the sidewalk open onto a forecourt showcasing a water feature cascading into a fish pond, a hut, a scholar’s rock. Guarded by a pair of lions at the front entrance, the visitor is ever seduced to be given access to this enduring edifice’s real purpose. ¶ On April 30, 1927, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks placed their hands and feet prints in wet cement at the newly opened theatre, inaugurating a tradition of cement immortality.
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Two weeks later, the curtains came up for the first time, the projector was switched on, the audience subdued as the lights dimmed and Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings was given its inaugural showing.
✈¦ India
GOA
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An early photograph (c.1975 or earlier) of the crown of
hippie flea markets, Anjuna in Goa.
HOUSES OF THE HOLY In the aftermath of the trojan war, olympians carried on the fight w/ each other. This brief theomachia roused mother Earth, once more, into open revolt. Egypt disappeared into a ‘screaming wind’. Ge then vomited out the contents of her vaults. Most were prisoners kept there by Zeus. These freed-again monsters (fourth class) then attacked Olympus to set in motion the second gigantomachia.
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Up north, another aesir-vanir conflict was brewing when Ragnarok 5.0 was triggered by this nearby havoc -- sending nine worlds and twelve hells toppling into a winnowing wormhole.
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Ge then picked up Mount Olympus and threw it at Ouranos -- giving father Sky his famous black-eye. Perturbed unto his hydrogen heart, first-gen titan Hyperion left of his own volition, and in 1948 the solar god would cede the gravity:throne. First, it went to that ‘container of multitudes’, complex god Apollon, then to Helius.
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And long before that the Earth had already curled up and succumbed to catatonia -- atomic bomb testing done during the 20th century did her further harm.
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What didn’t climb out of mother Earth was finally shaken off in spasms, clearing out her caverns and emptying all of the hells that she knew about. The last to depart Tartarus w/ the keys were Haides and Hekate, making sure all gates were left open and unguarded.
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Nereus had actually felt little when the Earth performed her cosmic cough, and so the ‘Mediterranean’ had remained placid. His aboriginal root matter being H-two-oh, ‘the old one’ soon began splashing some of it over the exposed parts of Ge, initiating a tidal rite to soothe his beloved, his grandmother, his only home.
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Marooned on a chunk when Pangea broke apart -- then began to drift south, indigenes clung on and ended up on another shore under another sun. Looking at summer skies w/ wintry eyes, these originals saw the physical, spiritual and mortal planes clearer and earlier than most of their lost brethren. Now they are Ge’s best friends and help prepare her bedding every evening.
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Before going separate ways, Hyperion held a meeting w/ dog-headed death goddess Hekate. The senior sun knew that she was the real ruler of Tartarus, and sought advice from the goddess of necromancy on the next aeon. Together they conjured up a hypothetical heaven searchable by taxonomy. Each spherical body paying heed to the gravity:throne is a ‘wanderer’; and the rest, ‘drfiters’.
Then the ‘dweller on high’ and the ‘crone of the underworld’ took their leave.
❝ To ensure no favored location in space, the cosmologist postulates spatial isotropy and spatial homogeneity, which is Edwin Hubble’s way of saying the universe must be pretty much alike everywhere and in all directions. ❞
– Ronald W Clark (1971)
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As the latest geomachia began to subside, tumbling thrones had to be steadied. Some needed a hand, others just a mend. Wrecks got tossed. Soon enough, a four-dimensional mythological map of the sky began to make clearer sense. Whereas the ancient order had adhered to the ‘invariable plane’ when paying homage to the Sun, newcomers need no longer do so. Established courts were delighted -- or not, to locate kin, meet oddballs, greet faded goddesses, share secret handshakes w/ progenitors, gawk at their carbon copies.
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In the beginning was love, so this house tour begins w/ Aphrodite. Stung by the treatment mother Earth meted out to her brood, the love goddess had no recourse but to leave, becoming the last olympian to do so.
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The ‘one who postpones old age’ moved her foam:throne closer to Helius and, in 2002, gathered mothers to graces Eurydome and Euanthe to her love:court. Now they share advice and guidance w/ the sex goddess and sit on the ancient:throne and mirror:throne.
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Their neice Pasithee had previously awoken to a planetary party still in full swing. She had called her aunts seeking some peace and quiet. Pasithee was married to Hypnos, and the grace of relaxation always carries sachets of daydreams. Knowing this, Euanthe and Eurydome said Yes, come over.
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Kale had become unhinged by the expulsion from Earth, and so the tender:throne was offered to the grace to beauty until she can find closure.
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Taking baby steps is Eros-x4, the first form to step out of oblivion and greet Khaos. The love god’s name is spelled differently by different scribes.
His latest iteration is a jigsaw puzzle of four asteroids. Shattered like he’s shattered hearts, the ‘first born’ mutters sweet-nothing rites while resting his golden wings sitting on the soul:throne, in hopes of achieving a home once more in mortal breasts.
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In 1999, Lempo returned to the nektar:throne. Of undetermined sex, this finnish love deity was seen to pass near Aphrodite, murmur “once bitten twice shy” in her general direction.
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The ‘handsome one’ had set up a love:embassy. Adonis insisted, even though scientists say he’s a potentially hazardous asteroid and his exes claim that he is an extinct comet and a source of meteor showers, but that was before Helene came in 1980, a dione trojan gone awol.
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Known to ancient sky watchers, during a time when the hard-to-spot ‘guide’ was easier to locate, his elusive nature suits Hermes’ well as the nearest house to the Sun.
The ‘trickster god’ is awash in sulfer w/ a temperature hot enough to melt lead, finishing an orbit every 88 days while pirouetting every sixteen, long enough to cause seasons.
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As cyclope lensii scan the skies w/ rainbow eyes (and sees machines of every shape and size), the ‘shepherd of men’ hosts a missing-divine bureau, staffed w/ refusniks from IAU’s minor planet center, and sprouting degrees in dark matter 3.0, artificial atoms, time leakage, littoral linguistics, the roots of rap.
Prowess shown by these latter-day saints allow ‘messenger of the gods’ to roam and see everyone, meet everything; the
‘patron to the home’ is
seldom at home.
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Jennyblue has run the bureau since 1982.
She is the gazetteer of planetary nomenclature for the International Astronomical Union, and the publisher of Who’s World.
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Icarus surfs outer space w/ glued-on wings finding ‘drifter’ not yet catalogued, and looking for star shepherd Hesperus, who vanished while on assignment.
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Second-gen titan Atlas lifts up worlds to look beneath. Bro Epimetheus likes to rehash stuff to sift out clues, and Sisyphus retraces steps to glean origin stories.
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Since 1999, none can assign a proper myth to an amnesiac. Until then, Setebos is their sole “wayfinder of wanderers and drifters”.
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A piece of Hermes came back in 1937 as an apollo asteroid.
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Paying heed to the measure of duration and the reel of the zodiac, the moon:crown currently rests on the brow of Artemis,
granting mortals a glimpse and gargling “how the air unlit before glows”.
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‘She of the wild’ had to fill three (rotating) placements: full:throne, old:throne, and new:throne. The ‘virgin goddess’ cuts the lunar deck and picks faded lunar goddess Phoebe.
Artemis cuts again and uncovers cretan harvest goddess Carme. A third pick produces Diana. There was a small problem. The visible moon goddess is currently locked in Time and cannot be detected – she is undetectable as a new moon and considered a phased phantom.
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The breach is currently filled by Eos, the winged dawn goddess who pulls back the curtain of Night. Bringing to an end the latest balancing act that is life in house of a triple-mooon goddess.
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A viscuous veil has draped the purity:throne when in 1845 innocence goddess Astraea sat down.
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The ideal arrived in 2002, ascending to the triple:throne on four legs. Tarvos is (sole) male carbon to the triple-mooon goddess. He is also a divine bull, among other eyebrow raisers.
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Pan spent the waning days of the 20th-c. checking out the house of the Moon and now the rustic god is very much at home. Delirious w/ desire, surrounded by dwarf moons, moonlets, moonmoons; sported w/ by packs of ring shepherds holding hands w/ shepherd moons. “Where the bee sips there sip I. In a cow slip’s lips I die.”.
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In 1610,
Ganymede came out as the largest satellite in Neopolis, and therefore a shoo-in to run the moon:embassy.
In his down time, the deified son of Tros will take a walk w/ Skoll, to re-acquaint the norse wolf to night.
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The werewolf:throne went to moon god Tarqeq; he’s good to animals, sweet-natured, and knows a lot about inuit fertility.
•❚-❚-❚• Sitting on the bow:throne since 2000 is Mundilfari, father to the norse moon god.
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In solidarity w/ the hexed and mighty vexed Diana, embassy invites always go out to her niece Pasiphäe, cousin Hekate, and BFF Hera.
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Each evening Artemis dons a monotone-&-mottled bodysuit shimmering w/ crater rays. Before stepping on the moon:chariot, she puts on a sheer cape w/ an upside-down waterfall perpetually shedding dust.
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Under an injured sky mortals had clung on to mother Earth and prayed for mercy. She must have relented because the human race survived, too insignificant to be shaken off.
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Resolutely reimagining how temples looked and restoring important altars first, elder goddess Dione was the first to be enticed to come back. The second-gen titaness and oak goddess laid out the house of Ge in 1684, and sits now on the oracle:throne.
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Faded jötunn Bestla was reasoned w/ to also come back and sit on the mountain:throne, while the anxious one awaits news on missing son Odin.
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Nereus, who invented hydrotherapy, is now plain tuckered. The ‘first man’ has been tending to the rehabilitation of Ge and can often be seen splayed on the aborigine:throne.
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All the while, paramount pantheon pharaoh Amun gleams and twits unobtrusively on the dust:throne.
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Sedna had hesitated to sit on the winter:throne only ’cause the inuit sea goddess had to come closer to the Sun. Already her skin of tightly-grouped nitrogen icicles and reflective methane scales, fixed w/ dark tholin thread, has turned beet red.
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Prosperity goddess Orthosie is sometimes busy, sometimes not, shedding tawny seeds from the autumn:throne.
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Dionysus knows there’s hope for Ge. The mad god is now a binary-being and sits on the serpent:throne, the “price of a bend sinister many generations back”.
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Persephone would rather be w/ her mom than here at the 4seasons:court.
But the vegetation goddess would rather be here on the spring:throne than w/ her husband in hell and be known as ‘queen of the damned’.
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Weywot stepped out of the Kuiper belt in 2007. Now this native-american sky god gets to taken in an exponential view from the summer:throne.
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In 1980, ‘first woman’ came back home and set up the 4seasons:embassy. Twelve years later, ‘first man’ of the north joined her. Theirs is a mobile office, so Pandora and Ymir can go questing to verify a site map they were given by Hekate and Hyperion.
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Mother Earth spends her days outdoors and nights on the chthon:throne. She seems okay, and occupies herself building a genealogy for Aither and wrting a bio on atmosphere.
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First her roman-half came in 1867; then a greek-fragment followed in 1917. At that point Athene went ahead w the accretion rite and, w/ Minerva and Pallas, wholly the ‘gray-eyed’ goddess of wisdom.
The goddess of crafts calls her house the Olympia Academy, graduating space cadets since 1953 in disciplines of mind, body and soul, w/ emphasis on tech-chthonics, the emergent metaverse, and why obscure dimensions lurk.
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Skill requiring dexterity is taught by Dactyl, a fused presence able to separate back into ten siblings – brothers and sisters adept in metallurgy and magick.
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Lutetia was insubstantial when found, originally sent to the morgue for parts. Until a proble revealed ‘primordial paris’ under the mantle.
Now this asteroid houses the library, founded in 1904 by golden age historian Himalia.
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‘Father of history’ Herodotos is somewhere in the stacks; sometimes he“s a crater, sometimes a lunar mountain.
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Faded sun god Hyperion still has his star:throne, yet the patron saint of astronomy prefers it here, shedding light into obscure passages and untangling conjugal conjecturals.
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With eyes wide shut, dream god Morpheus wanders the library, never bumps into anything.
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Patroclus stopped by in 1906 to build and run the gymnasium; then Menoetius was outed as his satellite in 2001.
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And maybe it’s true that Jarnsaxa rose in rank by sleeping w/ Thor, yet her prowess as a warrior is second to none; the jötunn now teaches warcracft.
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Hylonome was recruited in 1995 to give lessons in archery and horseback riding.
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When Hideo Itokawa showed up in 1998, no one paid much heed. Now the rocket scientist has a launchpad and a lab on the roof.
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Scholar Zhongguo arrived in 1928 toting mountains of chinese scrolls and occupies a wing.
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An amorphous cradle court found harbor in a forgotten nook stacked to the rafters w/ old globes. Granted seclusion while these river deities adjust to their new situation are Euphrates and Tigris, gleaming still from the embers of the 20th-c.
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In 1884, nymph to a baby god Ida was admitted to the infirmary, injured and living a half-life. When Zeus found out his nurse was alive he went to fetch the mountain maid, now mended, seated her on the oak:throne.
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Then the thunder god came across wife Juno and they made up and now the sky goddess has agreed to return to the marriage:throne and resume her title as ‘queen of the gods’.
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But before that Zeus stumbled into Europa, floating by aimlessly. Promising not to transform in front of her again, Zeus persuaded the princess of Tyre to claim the azure:throne.
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Callisto established the sky:embassy in 1610. Elder muses Aoede and Thelxinoë showed up, 400 years later, to clear up backlogs and stuffed inboxes. Seasons spirit Sponde joined in 2003, imposed lunch breaks.
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They are joined by mother to wine god Dionysus, who sits on the rain:throne when not lending a hand. Born mortal, Thyone is now a goddess who presides over dionysian displays.
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A tempestuous sky:court re-opened in 1979 when faded goddess of wisdom Metis convened the first meeting from her blessed:throne; now the first wife to Zeus has fallen into a trance.
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Zeus has a complex ionosphere tuned to his liking while sitting on the eagle:throne, where a planet-encasing electric field ratchets up the magnetic field to produce 400,000 electron volts.
In 1988 a chunk of Zeus buzzed the earth, and 5731-Zeus has now been identified as an apollo asteroid.
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This house is a courthouse, and
Kronos is its chief justice. Consort Rhea is now a binary being, sharing the mountain:throne w/ her roman half Cybele. In 1966, they warmly welcomed roman god of good beginnings Janus to the duty:throne. The twin-faced god who gave his name to the first month opens the judiciary season.
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Holding degrees in truth and zoroastrian light, galaxy god Mithra was brought to the seasons:throne in 1987. It only took Themis 34 years to find her roman-half Justitia and perform the accretion rite. Now the goddesses of divine justice share the seed:throne.
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Elder memory muse Mneme came out of retirement to run the law library, assisted by Hermione, mortal daughter to Helen of Troy and Menelaus.
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Fate goddess Tyche got her law license in 1886, for precision goddess Praxidike, it took much longer.
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Young aten asteroid Ra-Shalom, spiffy in a smooth carbonaceous outfit, interns as law clerk.
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The time:embassy dispenses legal counsel, and staff constantly juggle worn volumes for titles and parsing multi-culti edits, looking up one-offs, and ‘misc’.
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Kronos hosts 62 satellites and it makes him a grump on the flint:throne. The king of the titans wears a ginormous stole of frozen helium and iced hydrogens, hiding lashings by wet methane winds and seasonal hurricanes of methane mists.
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Wounded in a minimachia between Zeus and Kronos, Ouranos hoarded sanity and had sense remaining to locate complex Hathor and bring the destined one to her sky:throne.
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The egyptian sky goddess has smart dial, and that is how mother to Atlas Klymene came to the dome:throne, while venezuelan rain god Huya hovers nearby on the cloud:throne.
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Before fully succumbing to his malaise, Ouranos managed also to locate Arrokoth for the empyrean:throne, knowing the powhatan personification of the sky can summon clouds, the least of his aether abilities.
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Ouranos has been under physician care since 1781. His house has no embassy.
This doctor commissioned magician Prospero to devise a therapeutic play for his primordial patient.
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Which led to father to Loki Farbauti being impressario of the production, hiring Ixion as lighting director, even though the ex-king was caked in tholins and ice.
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An ending conjuration required a dual-voice. Director Didymos will perform the role, guiding post-polyphonics gently back to roots in tragic theater.
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Puck and Ariel designed the special effects, while Sycorax and her spawn Caliban handled all subterranean spells. This for a play that takes 84 years to perform.
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Poseidon chose the date of his resurfacing into history by sending a dream, in 1846, to a sleeping mathematician. The woke mortal entered a new set of coordinates into the New Berlin Observatory and found the liquid liege sitting on his trident:throne.
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It was first-gen titaness Tethys, though, who first arrived, in 1684. And in her role as female ‘sovereign of the sea’ Tethys established the sea court. The ancient marine goddess sits on the sea:throne and is semi-retired, running a cell of neptune trojans beholden only to her.
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Primeval marine goddess Siarnaq, mother to all inuit sea life, now rests on the whale:throne.
•❚-❚-❚• Aegir swam by to take “only a peek”. He was then persuaded to stay by Tethys, by Siarnaq, by the entire embassy staff. The germanic god now holds a set of hurricane keys and is on the storm:throne.
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Triton runs the sea:embassy. The mer-god first surfaced in 1846, encrusted in barnacles, showcasing cryovolcanism and cantaloupe-colored boils, spewing nitrogen five miles into space from frigid fingertips of methane.
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The ‘messenger of the sea’ is sick w/ an unknown malady. But Salacia does. Since 2004, the ‘queen of the sea’ has been testing and correcting local salinity levels, bringing much needed knowhow to demi seagoddess Lysithea to get it just so since 1938.
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Day-to-day is handled by by demi seagoddess Hermippe, oceanide Telesto, and river spirits Io and Callirrhoe.
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Nereid glimmered under the surface of Night, in 1949, a drop only 210 miles, clad in neutral-ices and silicates. Troubling then to know that this amalgam of 50 sibling sea goddesses is also a potentially hazardous object headed for impact w/ the sea:embassy.
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Like Ouranos, Haides lies on his back; unlike his great-grandfather, the king of the underworld is in command of his senses; he reigns once more from the black:throne.
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Showing off a young mantle, as befits his status as the first trans-neptune object, the ‘great renewer’ goes about in a liquid-cape of frozen nitrogen stained w/ landscapes of ruddy pinks and moldy yellows.
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The dead:throne belongs to fury Tisiphone, she of the scorpion whip. Often awol, the primitive vengeance goddess likes to visit BFF Hekate.
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Haides had spared two brothers from their fate in the aftermath of the gigantomachia, when a hundred brothers attacked Olympus. Now Enceladus encased in complex organic molecules, and Mimas – fitted out in dreams, have repaid the king of the dead by running the death:embassy, constructed from the substructure of space and having capacity for many-sided folds.
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Juggling w/ pulsar power since 2000 is inuit Ijiraq.
When not on the wealth:throne
the shapeshifter is elusive in a sulphurous smoke jacket, bounding from comet to asteroid while flinging out mirages left and right.
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Charon only became apparent in 1978, the god of hell lounges on the blood:throne.
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Complex deity Osiris, silent and still on the shadow:throne.
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Fenrir crouches at the foot of the black: throne, munching on thanatos leaves.
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An aeon in Tartarus had caused a set of siblings, as they were hurled into space, to begin a meld:rite and, in 1655, return as a colossal composite. Now back in comfortable surroundings again, Titan has grown star-fat and nova-lazy. This slovenness vanishes when his secret name is uttered. Then the fused thing sits upright on the unseen:throne; and resumes his role as monster third-class.
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The pond of Pontos is a multiple axis inert spacial facility where serpent spawns from water worlds can find safe harbor – and malevolent vipers suitably penned.
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Its longest inhabitant is Medusa, marooned on a spit since 1875. Her nurse is demi-serpent Herse, who gets to milk the gorgon. Medusa’s blood is taken back to the infirmary where it is an ingredient for end-of-life syrups.
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The egyptian carbon to Khaos had escaped during the early dawn of the 21st-c. That was when ‘uncreator’ assumed in form an aten asteroid. Now Apophis is threatening to invade Ge in 2029 before attacking the Sun again. To bring back this sand serpent supreme, the house of Egypt dispatched lioness fire goddess Sekmet (who’s pregnant), and magick goddess Selquet.
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Aegaeon has been pond shepherd since 2008, this monster fourth-class (although some claim he’s really first-), has now poured all his wealth into Sea 2.0.
The primitive marine god oversees “Force;4”, staffed w/ post-fledglings from stellar kindergartens and polygon-flight schools.
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The pond is a favorite haunt of Hippocamp. Driver to the sea chariot, the binary:beast pays visits w/ Hydra and seems to do the many-headed serpent some good. This animal amalgam has gone mad; harms only itself, hops on claws then slithers, undergoing a chaotic rotation w/ a flip every ten hours.
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The newest inmate is ducktaped w/ reverse-relativity adhesive, preventing Gonggong 龚工 from powering up his malignant core.
This metal-headed monster was caught trying to knock mother Earth’s axis off center -- again. Now the chinese marine god is the subject of study by atomic-physics.
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The wannabe planet killer has been guarded since 2007 by husband-&-wife team Phorcys and Ceto. He grey-haired and fish-tailed, w/ a crustacean-cape of crab claws. She daughter to Pontos and crone goddess to sea monsters.
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In 2018, an undersea ex-palace was requisitioned as the unofficial house of Pontos. Diamond-shaped w/ good japanese bones, Ryugu is capacious enough to have offices, guard quarters, private apartments.
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Draped in seaweed, crowned w/ turrets and towers, a rudder his staff, Pontos is seawater’s root matter. He now stirs Sea 2.0, concocted w/ a thimble of his blood, the entire Aegean sea, a steady drip from the river of hate, a healthy pour of unadulterated reptilian consciousness; and trickles from the river Styx.
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To ensure safety, the pond is potted w/ skeletal time chambers. To nice things up, infernal goddess Styx had trained a ribbon from her river of oaths to follow her and so became patron to the pond of Pontos.
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After the meeting w/ Hyperion, Hekate took her leave, dragging ‘darkness’ behind. The supreme goddess of magick only stopped when the gravity:throne was barely glimpsed.
She flung Erebus beneath her, unfolded the crone:throne and set it down on the dark primitive god.
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Hekate is darker than Tartarus, where she had lived, is invisible at night, can see in pitch black.
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Ananke came first, in 1951, swathed in ‘constraint’, ‘force’ and ‘necessity’.
‘One before time’ uncoils her luxuriant serpent tail and gets to wind down on the potency-throne.
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A son to Loki perches on the ghost:throne. Narvi is father to norse night Nótt and has returned as dark matter of indeterminate size.
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Tottering on the spindle:throne is night goddess Nyx, whose star-spangled mantle cannot hide a bandage-wrapped form w/ obvious ancient red stains. Something is wrong, now unfamiliar gravity floods the daughter to Khaos and causes her to twirl backwards every 45 minutes.
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In 2004, etruscan infernal god
Orcus showed up to claim the victory:throne, oblique in faint tholins, sewn w/ iced crystal water and featuring a high collar shooting dew drops of amonia up.
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When the three-headed hell hound saw Erebus, his dearest doghouse, being dragged off, Kereberos trotted behind; now he patrols his new home every 32 days, flips every five, in vain efforts to shake off filament fleas.
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As Ge shook and coughed, Aἴtnē survived, as befits one of nine foundational mountain nymphs. She’s been host to an aboriginal fire god for a long long time. Hephaistos had suffered some diminishment otherwise is unharmed.
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In 2006, Surtur, wielder of the fire sword, showed up. Following notebooks and using legacy tools, the jötunn worked w/ Hephaistos and got the forge going again. Now the norse behemoth tends to business from his spot on the foundry:throne.
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Pasiphäe is daughter to the sea and the sun, and is only one of the reasons the mistress of herbal magick can keeps busy on the cauldron:throne.
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The geomachia had casualties, but Hestia was not one of them.
The primal fire goddess gingerly cupped ‘first flame’ w/ her palm, slipped into sensible shoes, and stepped off the face of the Earth.
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In the Asteroid belt she found her sister Ceres, who was seeding the second Garden of Apollon, and Hygiea, performing triage by herself. So this was where Hestia sat her charge down and soon enough kindled a fire.
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Together the three goddesses set up a clinic; by 1807 it had grown to become an infirmary. Then, in 1992, while live coverage of the first space rock found in the Kuiper belt was broadcast, Hestia took a closer look and recognized Albion. The domestic goddess then went and fetched ‘mythological britain’ back and that was how she found a foundation to a house, w/ herself its administrator, medicine goddess Hygiea its nurse, and agrarian goddess Ceres its groundskeeper.
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Resident chaplain duties falls on the shifting shoulders of fiction-into-fact inuit shaman Paaliaq.
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Newly dislodged norse fire god Loge was admitted in 2006 for hypothermia. Therapy w/ ‘first flame’, his root matter, ensured recovery and the norse fire god has stayed on as a therapist.
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Asclepius was admitted as a wounded apollo asteroid in 1989; now the medicine god is partly repaired and can assume head physician, allowing daughter Hygiea to fuse w/ her roman-half Valetudo as well as resume research into evolutionary vaccines.
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Celtic childbirth goddess Bebhionn showed up in 2000 and now there is a maternity ward.
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Eight of Poseidon’s satellites are in intensive care.
Faded sea goddess Thalassa wobbles and paces her bed every eight hours, knowing her form will end up as a rubble ring.
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Galatea and her water-nymph siblings are all of unreliable form; they’ve re-accreted once too often, and now Sao, Neso, Laomedeia, Helimede, Psamathe might all end up as rubble rings too.
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Priestess Despina is missing parts, and has set aside mysteries of arkadian cults for now.
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Hawai‘ian birth goddess Haumea and her daughter-moons were admitted in 2004. This ‘collisional family’ has reached the danger point of offing each other.
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The first patient was admitted in 1983. Phaethon had fallen off his father’s sun:chariot.
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Founder of modern nursing Florence Nightingale came back in 2017 to set up the nurses station. Eager to learn modern methods are ancient nurses to baby gods Cyllene, Kallichore, Helike, and Kalke.
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The grounds of the second Garden to Apollon, begun in 1801 to surround the infirmary, now has pasture enough for goat nurse to a baby god Amalthea to retire in tranquility since arriving in 1892. Her minder is mountain nymph Daphnis. •❚-❚-❚•
Come autumn they will help seasonal goddess Carpo and native-american corn goddess Atira assess the bounty from Nature 2.1. •❚-❚-❚•
And when the granaries are full autumn grace Hegemone will moan the closing rites. •❚-❚-❚•
Harvest was possible because Flora had first tended to every petal and abundance goddess Euporie to every stalk.
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Creator god Quaoar was helping out in 2005 when he caught a flu. Now the father to the native-american sky shivers and tosses every seventeen hours, wrapped in red rocks ribbed in carbon monoxide sewn w/ methane threads, buttoned w/ nitrogen and studded w/ stalagtites of iced ethane.
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Aitolian princess Leda oversees the garden. Otherwise she has been helping Demeter run tests, since 1801, to gague, exactly how many seasons now exist.
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A fused nation of freshwater nymphs, Naiad, maintains the water features on the grounds, while demi sea goddesses Isonoe and Sinope swim in its boundary.
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Frost giant Suttungr will wait until he”s brewed enough mead of poetry to fill a thousand space ships before coming by to replenish the well.
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An unrecognizable queen of Egypt came to the Intensive Care Unit in 1880, and after Kleopatra was put back together she remained and, w/ her moon-children Cleoselene and Alexhelios, set up a pharmacy. •❚-❚-❚•
Pharaoh Khufu came in 1984 and claims he’s watched enough priests grind gold and think up immortality tinctures to consider himself a pharmacist too, and stayed. •❚-❚-❚•
Pan drops by and sings w/ Aretha Franklin, who appeared in 2018 w/ a piano. The queen of soul also duets w/ spirit of lamentation Linus in finding closure notes. •❚-❚-❚•
Poetry muse Erato used to wander the corridors strumming; now she has an office and better hours.
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In 1980, a morgue was founded by Prometheus as a laboratory to develop human:being 2.0. The titan of forethought was at the time delving into mystikal graeco-egy proto-chem while practising old-school alchemy; he tinkers now w/ two corpses. •❚-❚-❚•
Primeval sky goddess Theia has been dead a long time and missing parts. The first-gen titan still has bits of Ge imbedded in her body. •❚-❚-❚•
Jötunn Greip came in 2006 and is good only for parts. •❚-❚-❚•
Assisting is young frost giant Bergelmir, descended from aboriginals. The grandson to the first norse man knows about creating new life. •❚-❚-❚•
Home to Proteus since 1989, the marine god donates his root matter for parts, even though the shapeshifter has parchment skin containing transparencies and pockmarked w/ polyhedron-shaped ices and pinkish-red boils.
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Beginning in 1918 and spending the next 14 years performing an accretion:rite, Helios had attracted sufficient material to return as the apollo asteroid named Apollo, the first of his kind. The ‘sun’ then continued to evolve and has now ascended to the gravity:throne as the ‘eldest flame’.
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Galaxy being Varuna spends 282 years on an orbit rite while on the blind:throne, pivoted outwards to greet vedic cosmic creed.
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When this mythic bird flew down to perch on the arrow:throne in 1999, Bennu was still an apollo asteroid; now he’s the nexus between. egyptian rebirth, creation and the gravity:throne.
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Complex easter island deity Makemake arrived in 2005 to occupy the singular gold:throne, and was seen toting a charcoal-dark satellite from his spacecraft.
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In 1998, aten asteroid Akhenaten opened the sun:embassy. Competency in dusty dynasties shows – he continually posts welcomes to unexpected deities showing up to greet the gravity:throne.
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The post-pharaoh can pronounce the Sun’s name in gallic and celtic, inuit, sanskrit, finnish, mandarin and egyptian-arabic, his native tongue.
Soon a course in japanese and spanish, a brush up on latin. He’s onto rumors of a pan-oceanic family coalescing around the 2016 discovery of Kamo‘oalewa ‘oscillating fragment’. Still figuring Venezuela out.
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Akhenaten is lucky to have found Arche in 2004. The origins muse knows where the skeletons lie – and where they lived).
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Norse wolf Hati accompanies her, making sure all skeletons behave.
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Second-gen titaness Leto has the sun:throne, and since 1861 the mother to a sun and a moon has enacted a solar rite, every fifteen hours, to the ‘the supreme light’.
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The House of Mars defends the celestial court and is responsible for
Fortress Pallas, sited on the circumference. At the “crown” is a co-command of gallic and roman military gods. Albiorix will make a 783-day patrol guarding the Sun, clad in ghost-red armor. Ares turns and patrols interstellar space. The fortress faces outer space.
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“Trunks” watch the four quadrants. Hoary frost giant Fornjot. The sire to norse immortals, scans the unknown diligently every seven to nine hours for missing kin. •❚-❚-❚•
Eris has a lonely patrol lasting 558 years. The sister to Ares is large enough to fit all on the Asteroid belt in her mantle; is easy to spot in her white-white frigid methane armor caped w/ trailing gasses.
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Humongous jötunn Thrymr, king of the norse giants, has a sense of humor.
He likes to share a good joke w/ Cruithne, tiniest of space rocks but whose stature in pict legend is also humongous.
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“Barks” handle logistics and coordinate the day-to-day. Hyrrokkin is capable of launching a thousand probes before breakfast, if the norse giantess so wishes. •❚-❚-❚•
Freya, BFF w/ the valkyries, rides into war on a chariot drawn by cats. On the battlefield the love goddess claims half the fallen and is a favorite among the troops. •❚-❚-❚•
Primeval gaul Erriapus oversees a quiet quadrant in a pale-red battlesuit; while god of the norse north wind Kari howls into his portion of the void.
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“Branches” explore, and a special team now is following magnetoplasma pulsing back to its source. Battle-tested sons to Ares began service in 1877 higher up in command, but chafing at peacetime ennui have been demoted. These bad-boy bros wear their combat wounds proudly. •❚-❚-❚•
Deimos looks spiffy clad in smooth rock but it’s to protect his porous frame; he knows one day he’ll go awol. Pbobos is slowly dying; wearing nothing but rubble held together by the thinnest of mantles. •❚-❚-❚•
Their cousin anarchy goddess Dysnomia wears a dark-red battlesuit blending well w/ her background. While norse winter goddess Skathi gets to patrol the most frigid corner.
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“Twigs” traverse the metaverse, perform data reduction, compile cross-genealogy reports. •❚-❚-❚•
Kiviuq has been confronting creatures since before 2000; and is knowledgeable in i.d.-ing unknowns. Twins Romulus and Remus have brought along notes in order to finish a user’s guide to roman ways. •❚-❚-❚•
The founder-bros of Rome are a tad weary of Polydeuces, greek carbon to Remus, whose voice echo in space hits too close to home.
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“Leaves” cover the territory and carry the colors, led by two trojans and a pair of centaurs. •❚-❚-❚•
Cantering into view in 1977, married centaurs Cheiron and Chariklo led a comet corps of some 44,000 centaurs: each on a scattershot orbit, all trying to achieve escape velocity using nearby gravity as slingshots. Sporting irradiated armor under high-collared ices crinkling and shedding dew; each centaur has a lifespan lasting a few million years. •❚-❚-❚•
Clad in wine-red uniforms strung along two elongated curves, trojan asteroids marched into view in 1906 behind Achilles and Hektor.
•❚-❚-❚•
Fortress Pallas has a “seed bank” in the Olympia Academy, and a “root system” into various houses.
•❚-❚-❚•
Harmonia is daughter to Ares and runs his house, happy to be near cousin Dysnomia, brothers Deimos and Phobos, and aunt Eris.
•❚-❚-❚•
The cyclopes were not flung into space, having instinct enough to cling on. The second race of monsters born to the ‘primordial couple’ flourished by evolving the craft of lens-polishing.
At the birth of the 21st century these three one-eyed brothers downloaded their DNA into artificial intelligence vats. Now the cyclopes race exist mainly as rows of lensii arrayed in patterns and spending time inside telescopes.
Telescopes sit on an equatorial mount, where a clock-drive moves the telescope at the same rate as planetary rotation.
•❚-❚-❚•
The house of the ‘round eye’ has been run by its blinded host Polyphemus (long story) since 2013.
•❚-❚-❚•
A unique egyptian sun disk came in 1976, after rehabilitation by Hephaistos. Now Aten is fully rehabilitated from a stony sub-mile space rock to a source of intelligent light.
•❚-❚-❚•
Muse of astronomy Eukalade arrived in 2003 ensure quality control and have a web presence.
...
Then, development of lens technology led to a vaster view of the “mysterious universe”.
•❚-❚-❚•
In 1924, using the 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory, astronomers Edwin Powell Hubble and George Ellery Hale observed individual stars some 800,000 light-years away; then billions of light-years away.
HYPOTHETICAL HEAVEN
•❚-❚-❚• Leaving mother Earth had proven traumatic for Ares, so he unleashed his rage and demolished the nearest planet. The military god buried the remains in the backyard, the cemetery known as the
Asteroid belt (1801).
•❚-❚-❚•
By 1845, four of these remains had been spotted by telescopes. Each was dubbed a planet at the time. Then their tiny size, less than 500 miles wide – smaller than the Moon, lead to a new classification of such irregular space rocks as an
asteroid.
•❚-❚-❚•
Another kind of irregular space rock whips through space on a a unique orbit around the Sun, iced rocks enveloped in dust and trailing gas, the nimble
comet .
•❚-❚-❚•
An asteroid or a comet caught in Ge’s gravity field becomes a
meteor ‘high in the air’. It remains a meteor if it doesn’t land, and becomes a meteorite if it does.
•❚-❚-❚•
In 1950, Hekate and Haides showed up at the house of the Sun and told everyone there what they had seen in their backyards in 1992. Each a
trans-neptune object, billions of them. They had come to the gravity:throne to announce the demise of the old order. A new aeon was descending and the adamantine age was over.
•❚-❚-❚•
Quite by accident Zeus had a spat w/ Kronos over throne placements. This mini-machia flipped Ouranos on his back and caused the trident:throne to rock and roll. Casualties from this tussle all have missing chunks and bloody cuts. They are the ‘frozen forgots’, marinating in blue-grey bruises and strewn about in a region called the
Kuiper belt
(1992).
•❚-❚-❚•
As Ouranos toppled over Poseidon threw out a life line, but it was too late. The ‘earth shaker’ instead whipped wavelengths into a froth and the resultant fury crashed against his trident:throne, carrying what flaked off into a sparse province inhabited by unstable iced comets called the
Scattered disc (1966).
•❚-❚-❚•
Haides had been exploring his backyard as early as 2004. In his golden chariot drawn by four black horses, the infernal god crossed the Kuiper belt and encountered termination shock -- before settling into a (brief) standstill during heliopause. The king of shadows then unsheathed his sword to cleave the hydrogen wall to get to the other side. Then was stunned by bow shock which sent the god of wealth plunging through the
Interstellar medium
(1904) until the Oort cloud began to cushion his landing.
•❚-❚-❚•
As the trident:throne was tossed about it had smacked into something substantial and shattered this obstruction. Parts now populate the Kuiper belt, fragments share room inside the Scattered disc, and the bits, frozen filaments of water and methane, flew even further out and is credited as the
Oort cloud (1950).
•❚-❚-❚•
A space rock that is spherical and containing gravity and an electro-magnetic field is a
planet
. Most planets host a satellite or more, and eight planets follow the 'invariable plane' and constitute venerable houses represented at the celestial court.
•❚-❚-❚•
Made of ambient matter and having no definite boundary, Helius the
Sun is a star w/ the capacity to shed root matter as energy, released rapidly enough as to seem solid, and can assume diverse forms. Earth’s Sun undergoes ongoing combustion, and has gravitational sway over a small swaddle of space, it’s
heliosphere.
•❚-❚-❚•
2012-VP113 nicknamed
‘Biden’ is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt located by a dark energy camera mounted on a telescope in Chile, enlarging the boundaries of the celestial court overnight.
❧ Astronomer William Herschel spots fairy royalty through his telescope and tries to catch them all w/ his butterfly-net, TITANIA and OBERON, Queen MAB, others.
1808 Act I Scene 1 – Forest, daylight ❧ Although it is 1948, MIRANDA isn’t aware because she’s lost in Time, and she absent-mindedly perturbs a rotation rite being initiated by ARIEL, PUCK. A cosmic cave materializes in the lower air; inside the witch SYCORAX and her spawn CALIBAN are seen to mumble and hum.
1829 Act I Scene 2 – Forest, twilight ❧ Fashion-plate BELINDA strolls on in 1986 to introduce a cavalcade of stars. Venetian heriess PORTIA is sharing a joke w/ ROSALIND , daughter to a banished duke; CORDELIA and OPHELIA are linking fingers, touching foreheads, laughing softly; BIANCA is being practical watching her step while giving life tips to CRESSIDA; DESDEMONA and JULIET whisper and act distraught. Slowpokes MARGARET and PERDITA bring up the rear.
1850 Act II Scene 1 – Forest, evening ❧ Male voices from 1990 approach. Shy inquiries are proffered by prince of Naples FERDINAND and his lord FRANCISCO on the who, what, when, where, and why. Meanwhile jester TRINCULO is lending support to drunk-asleep STEPHANO, who now wants to mingle. Chit-chat strums the air and blends w/ sonic spells from the cosmic cave as the Sun starts to sink.
1871 Act II Scene 2 – Forest, midnight ❧ Both parties are now asleep. Sprites and fairies flit across the air. A glint “no bigger than an agate-stone” arrives w/ news for the pained planet Ouranos. The sound of her voice is the signal for Puck to begin matching Ariel’s trajectory and speed before taking charge and bringing the rotation:rite to its conclusion. SETEBOS begins a slow descent onto stage, IXION turns down the stage lights, and the double-voice of DIDYMOS intones the concluding conjuration. Bringing the curtain down on Prospero’s Play, written as a medicinal for an ailing aboriginal, prescribed by the patient’s physician Asclepius.
PANTHEONS
•❚-❚-❚•
The latest Ragnarok was precipitated by the Ge’s cosmic cough. When the dust settled, out of an impressive wreck a chasm appeared, and Niflheim once more took a peek at Muspelheim.
•❚-❚-❚•
In the first moments of the 21st century, Mundilfari, father to a sun and a moon, slowly shifted inside the frozen depth and took a good gulp of space vacuum. Then he hoisted himself out of the crevice, he managed to also yank out root-matter Ymir from his prison. Breaking up enough ice to expose chief-giant Thrymr. Snow goddess Skathi and frost giant Suttungr were harder to make out; they themselves were made of frozen water.
•❚-❚-❚•
Then these remnants of the long-unseen norse court presented themselves at the house of Kronos, seeking shelter, and were immediately given a wing. In 1886, the god of time deputized fate goddess Tyche to set about freeing the others. She led a rescue team of ring-shepherds carrying their own satellites and returned, in 2019, w/ 14 alives and 17 parts.
MACHIA FILES
1 ...
The first war
ever waged involved norse gods battling each other at the dawning of time. The root cause could well have been lax magick capitalizing on auguries to determine an end result for one’s destiny. Truce ended the
Aesir-Vanir War
and resulted in a pooled pantheon spanning nine realms.
2 ...
By the time Ge and Ouranos, the primordial couple,
drew close and birthed their third brood, mother Earth had been nursing revenge on father Sky for nixing her previous two litters. Now the aboriginal earth goddess took the youngest under her tutelage, bestowing on Kronos his destiny to perform the dirty deed with a sickle and take over the adamantine throne. After committing patricide, Kronos married sister Rhea and the union produced three daughters and three sons -- who would overthrow their parents in the ten-year
Titanomachia, fought alongside earthquakes and volcanoes -- and prequel to the age of Olympus.
3 ...
When Saturn cut Uranos w/ the sickle blood splashed onto Gaia,
trickled down to Tartarus and birthed one hundred giants, w/ serpents for feet. They climbed out of their mother and warred against Olympus. Formidable and capable of hurling entire mountains into the air; by so doing formed a ladder to the top. Breaking off oak trees and using them as torches, these giants climbed up and flung them at Zeus, igniting the
Gigantomachia
. One by one, the olympians put down their gigantic sibling’ revolt, offing or impaling them w/ mountains.
4 ...
Upset her giants were defeated, Gaia rubbed Tartarus and soon birthed Typhöeus, tall enough to graze the stars, sporting wings which blotted out light, having a hundred dragon heads spewing flames w/ mouths that yelled out human curses or shrieking and hissing as animals. Two hundred hands all ending in snake-fingers. Loose snakes slithered and covered the final monster’s frame, from the thighs down this singular serpent was nothing but trunks and feet of coiled snakes. Alone, the largest monster ever born launched
Typhomachia and attacked Zeus, who defeated him in single combat and chained the volcano demon, belcher of venomous fumes and all-round trouble maker to sky deities, in deepest Tartarus.
5 ...
As the trojan war unspooled
Olympus took sides and soon a battle between the immortal family had erupted. This brief
Theomachia ended when the war happening on Earth did too, and every deity survived the ordeal.
6 ...
Fracking was driving Ge bonkers.
She could bare it no more. Swallowing rocks and imprisoning monsters she had performed in the primitive past. Now mother Earth had a fever and required a deep cleanse. She coughed, ejecting her bowels and flushing out her bad blood, in her latest
Geomachia.
7 ...
Foretold as a repeatable occurrence, the twilight of the gods arrives when several severe blizzard storms one after the next are loosened on the world. Norse sun goddess Sól’s brief re-emergence will signal the beginning of the end as
Ragnarok commences. The midgard serpent will then crawl from hell followed by her brother the wolf Fenrir. Soon, Surtur’s flame sword will have set the universe ablaze, “the sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea, hot stars fall from the sky, and fire leaps high about heaven itself ”. In time a new Earth. Another Sun. Different stars. Same pantheon.
“As revealed in the song
Ziggy Stardust, Ziggy was not
a spider - he was the fly.”
-- Steele Savage
Outside the musical world he inhabits, David Bowie can usually be found in the company of artists. These adventures in the art world found expression in the 1990s when, fooling around on his computer, Bowie ended up w/ a short piece concerning blood and art. This, havg recently chatted w/ Brian Eno on fin-de-siècle malaise and what that might involve. They went on to produce a concept album concerning “this rather dark, satirical idea of where art could go”. Musicians take cues from Eno into which meadow the sound ought to roam in, while Bowie stitches words into the result, seeking fits or juxtaposition until a concept coheres. Eno fiddles w/ the elusives and imbues proceedings w/ more propositions. Lyrics then separate to become distinct voices, then characters. A murder victim has been turned into art. An assortment of suspects. A detective following a lead. A minotaur.
What emerges from the labyrinth is the album 1.Outside, a disjointed and dispirited dystopia featuring violence and death, sex and rock ’n roll.
★ David Robert Jones died from liver two days after his 69th birthday, on January 9 2016. His ashes were scattered on the island of Bali, in a buddhist ceremony. He left behind wife Iman Muhammid Abdulmadjid, daughter Alexandria, son Duncan Jones, Duncan’s ex-nanny Marion Skene, and long-time personal assistant, Corinne Coco Schwab.
-|- FIVE YEARS
The cosmic Chameleon and the chance Corinthian lash themselves together, in the lab – on the slab – and bring forth “… a gothic drama hyper-cycle”.
❝ [Brian and I] had already started a whole set of improvisations in the studio around March, 1994. Out of that came dialogue and landscape that was tied together, not even tenuously. All the elements were fairly disparate. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance, by a narrative device, to chronicle the final five years of the millennium. The over-ambitious intention is to carry this through to the year 2000.
❝ What Brian and I are trying to do is develop a series of albums. [Outside] is the first in this cycle of albums. [The diary is] only the subject matter, it’s not the content of the album. The content is very much the atmosphere and texture of the music, that strange place that music indeed puts you which cannot be articulated. The story itself is semi-linear, so if you want to, follow it in a linear fashion, but it”s not absolutely necessary. The pieces themselves can be autonomous, they are pieces of music on their own.
❝ Well, Brian, very cleverly, because of being what he is, which is basically a conceptualist, turned everything into a series of games once we got into the studio: To allow the musicians to not be who they are for short periods of time.
❝ As for musicians, it was important to choose those who were not weighed down with musical cliché, who had terrific control over their abilities. Yet were a bit loony.
❝
A piece that shows the extreme it could get to is “A Small Plot of Land”. That piece in particular was a first class indication of what happens when you put people in a strange place like that.
❝ Eno would create little flash cards for them in the mornings. He would create situations they would have to put themselves in mentally, intellectually, and then start playing from that point of view. On each one, a character was written, like (You are the disgruntled member of a South African rock band. Play the notes that were suppressed). ... Because that set the tone for the day, the music would take on all those obscure areas. And it would very rarely lapse into the cliché. So we changed the status of the beginning of these pieces and they came into them like aliens from another place. It opened up a whole area of improvisation. ... It’s very hard to explain [laughs], you should have been there.
❝ The lyric writing itself was fairly hazardous. What I did, I took a lot of areas of subject matter I’m interested in and wrote short paragraphs or pieces of poetry around those subjects and fed them into this Macintosh computer I have. I have a random key on it and it will randomize what I have written. So it was basically the Macintosh’s choice that it was New Jersey. But it was also a bit of England, too, with New Oxford Town. [Then decide] whether I was going to sing, do a dialogue, or become a character. I would improvise with the band, really fast on my feet, getting from one line to another and seeing what worked.
❝ There’s no intent in it, there’s no meaning. I’m not a meaner. I don’t have this great thing that I have to say. It’s a collection of fragments of information, of ideas, that are assembled and produce a certain atmosphere.
❝ Next year, we’ll develop a whole new slew of other characters or maybe re-introduce some of these or even negate some of them. Maybe we’ll never find Baby Grace. Maybe [Detective Nathan] Adler will become the next victim. I don’t know. And that’s what’s kind of interesting. Maybe we’ll just get bored with murder as art and move into another area of our society. It’s all up for grabs. So I‘m quite interested in the future of this thing.
❝ I think [the album is] a confluence of events. First, we definitely perceive murder now as entertainment. It’s used to a massive extent in cinema. And pretty much it’s a space filler in TV. There’s the whole gladiatorial arena spectacle of somehow appeasing gods or looking at the fears and anxieties of the public.
❝ [Brian and I] were both interested in nibbling at the periphery of the mainstream rather than jumping in. We sent each other long manifestoes about what was missing in music and what we should be doing. We decided to really experiment and go into the studio with not even a gnat of an idea.
❝ The momentum gathers as we approach the end of this cycle of 100 years, a huge anguish that everything will change. I wanted to make a record that reflected those anxieties, a state of moral, spiritual and emotional panic. With people breaking off into small groups to feel some sense of community.
❝ Plus this growing momentum in body art, which has been precipitated over the last 15 years or so with people like
Kiki Smith and
Damian Hirst and
Ron Athey and
Chris Burden. The idea of using the body as yet another medium, like wood or metal or glass or stone – almost the politicizing of the body itself. Almost extrapolating on that in an allegorical fashion to have this rather dark, satirical idea of where art could go.
❝ Dalí ... knew exactly what he was doing. He knew what all the objects meant ... The attitude that says the artist should paint only things the proletarian can understand, I think, is the most destructive thing possible.
❝ About 20 percent of what I put in [the album] are fictional and the rest are real, but it’s very hard to tell the difference. But the most surprising one, like the Korean cutting off pieces of himself in the late ’70s in New York, was not apocryphal. I checked back with Art Forum.
❝ I’m sure you know a writer, Thomas de Quincy. For those of us who grew up in the ’60s, his
Confessions of an Opium Eater was a kind of bible. At that time, in 1820, he wrote a small piece for Blackwoods, a London magazine, called Murder Considered as a Fine Art which laid down exactly that theory.
❝
Sort of that classic idea of taking a life as something sort of ritualized. Lots of things came into it. It wasn’t a simple, direct journey. Even the surrealists, like André Breton, who said in the ’20s, probably one of the greatest acts of art would be to go out into a crowd and shoot a revolver into it.
❝ ... the other things that went into [Outside], Brian and I are both fans of a form of art known as Outsider Art. I, for the last 15 years, have lived next to the holy shrine of outsider art, an art museum in Switzerland called Le Brut, set up by Dubuffet. He set it up because he felt he was terribly influenced by the kinds of art that were made by people who lived an unstructured life – in institutions, or hermits, or were ostracized by society for one reason or another. He collected the art that they made and toward the late years of his life opened this museum and put their work in it. That actually was a source of inspiration when we went in for our last three albums in the late 70s. ... The lesson to learn from outsider art was that the artist should be primal. Technique or virtuosity didn’t matter; that which was unformed and screaming inside of you, waiting to be released, was the real essence of the creativity. ... The idea of working without knowledge or judgement, either self-judgement or of how the outside world perceives what you’re doing.
❝ I’ll tell you something which happened subsequently to recording the album which was disturbing in itself. There’s a Dutch artist, Rob Scholte, who’s pretty well-known in Europe. One day, in December 1994, he came down from his apartment and got in his car w/ his wife and he heard a ticking sound. Needless to say, his car seat blew up and he was left without legs. Within a week following that, one of his contemporaries had been down to the attempted assassination spot and filmed the wreckage, the crash area, and was using it as a performance piece in a gallery in Amsterdam. That’s not a hair’s breadth away from what was satirical. And of course now Rob Scholte is doing performance shows where he makes great play over the fact that he no longer has a pair of legs. They still haven’t found out who blew him up, but there are all kind of theories ranging from a drug connection to a jealous artist.
❝ The morality of any society is quite strange. In the finality, it’s decided by law what happens. People change their network of comfort by changing laws to make things acceptable or unacceptable.
❝ I think that our religious philosophies trail so far behind the way that we actually live today that we find ourselves in a spiritual void, and I think it affects the young very much indeed. ... We continually try and find ritual, but we have no religious order to connect that ritual to. ... So we have to reinvent God, I think, in our own new way of life to give ourselves another form of spiritual sustenance.
❝ Oh, I’ve got the fondest hopes for the fin de siècle. I see it as a symbolic sacrificial rite. I see it as a deviance, a pagan wish to appease gods, so we can move on. There’s a real spiritual starvation out there being filled by these mutations of what are barely remembered rites and rituals. To take the place of the void left by a non-authoritative church. We have this panic button telling us it’s gonna be a colossal madness at the end of this century.
❝ I think the idea of becoming comfortable with the idea of chaos is how we are progressing – that life and the universe are extremely untidy. Anything that pulls back the veil on that chaos is a step nearer a more realistic understanding of what our state is – so I embrace chaos. I’m a child of the ’70s, reember. I’m pluralistic by nature. I always had the unfortunate facility of being able to see both sides of every picture. It wasn’t a question of not being able to determine which side I was on, but seeing that things didn’t have sides. It wasn’t as simple as that.
❞
| EXTRAS: Diary Lyrics Credits Photos
▶ [1] William Burroughs
The concept album Outside is based, in part, on Bowie learning on his new computer. Coming across an app à la The Cut-up Method, the cosmic chameleon stitched together digital words, becoming “virtually the entire genesis” of his nineteenth album and fourth collaboration w/ Brian Eno.
Bowie had just stepped away from finishing the soundtrack to 1993’s Buddha of Suburbia mini-series for BBC Televsion. -|- ▶ [2] ContaminationOutside was just one of several albums, a set, that Bowie started to work on w/ Brian Eno. The next one was to be Contamination, peopled w/ “17th century characters”. The day after Bowie’s death, Eno recalled: “About a year ago [David and I] started talking about Outside – the last album we worked on together. We both liked that album a lot and felt that it had fallen through the cracks. We talked about revisiting it, taking it somewhere new. I was looking forward to that.” -|- ▶ [3] Album-|- Producers: David Bowie,
Brian Eno-|- David Richards (co-producer) -|- Mixing and additional treatments: David Richards, David Bowie -|- Mastering: David Richards, Kevin Metcalfe -|- Assistant Engineers: Ben Fenner, Andy Grassi, Jon Goldberger, Domonik Tarqua -|- Album Design & Image Manipulation: Denovo -|- Photography: John Scarisbrick -|- Stylist: Jennifer Elster -|- Recorded at Mountain Studios, Switzerland. -|- Mixed and additional treatments by David Ricahrds, assisted by David Bowie. -|- Mastered by David Ricahrds and Kevin Metcalfe at The TownHouse Digital Mastering Studios, London.
-|- ▶ [4] Musicians-|- David Bowie: vocals, saxophone, guitar, keyboards -|- Brian Eno: synthesizers, treatments, oblique strategies -|- Reeves Gabrels: guitar -|- Erdal Kızılçay: bass, keyboards
-|- Mike Garson: grand piano -|- Sterling Campbell: drums
-|- Carlos Alomar: rhythm guitar -|- Joey Baron: drums -|- Yossi Fine: bass -|- Tom Frish: additional guitar on “Strangers When We Meet” -|- Kevin Armstrong: additional guitar on “Thru’ These Architects Eyes”
-|- Bryony, Lola, Josey and Ruby Edwards: background vocals on “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson”
and “I Am With Name”
-|- ▶ [5] Outtakes
Includes, among others: “Enemy is Fragile” – “I’d Rather Be Chrome” – “Dead Men Don’t Talk” – “Inside the Motel” – “Baby Fingers” – – “Hide Me We Creep Together Part 1” – “Hide Me We Creep Together Part 2 – “The First Time” – “Hello Leon” – “OK Riot”.
-|- ▶ [6] Tour
On the Outside tour,
Bowie and his band would come onstage while opening act Nine Inch Nails was finishing, and both bands performed “Subterraneans”, “Hallo Spaceboy” and “Scary Monsters”,
followed by 2 NIN songs (“Reptile” and “Hurt”), after which NIN decamped and Bowie’s set played on. -|- ▶ [7 Lyrics] Leon Takes Us Outside: Leon Blank
Valentines Day - 25 - June - 16th - Wednesday - July 6th - 20 - 0 - 20 - 15 - Martin Luther King Day - June 18th - June 6th - Wednesday - August 18th - 9th - 1999 - 12 - Nicholas - August - Wednesday - 13th - Sunday - 5th - March - October - January - October 13th - Wednesday - Martin Luther King Day - Afternoon - In view of nothing - 20 - 0 - 1 - Late winter - Martin Luther King Day - 12 - 16 - August - Wednesday - 13th - Friday - 7 - June.
-|- ▶ [8 Lyrics] Outside: Prologue
Now. Not tomorrow. Yesterday, not tomorrow. It happens today, the damage today. They fall on today - they beat on the outside, and I'll stand by you. - Now. Not tomorrow. It's happening now, not tomorrow. It’s happening now. The crazed in the hot-zone. The mental and diva’s hands. The fisting of life to the music outside, to the music outside. It happens outside, the music is outside. It’s happening outside, the music is outside. It’s happening now, not tomorrow. Yesterday. Not tomorrow. The music is outside. It’s happening outside. The music is outside. Outside. -|- ▶ [9 Lyrics] The Heart’s Filthy Lesson: Detective Nathan Adler
(Heart’s filthy lesson) There’s always the Diamond friendly, sitting in the Laugh Motel. The Heart’s filthy lesson, with her hundred miles to hell. Oh, Ramona, if there was only something between us, other than our clothes. Something in our skies. Something in our blood. Paddy, Paddy, who’s been wearing Miranda’s clothes? It's the Heart’s filthy lesson - falls upon deaf ears. (Heart’s filthy lesson) Falls upon deaf ears. (Heart’s filthy lesson) Oh Ramona, if there was only some kind of future. And these cerulean skies: Something in our skies - something in our blood. Paddy, Paddy? Paddy, oh Paddy, I think I’ve lost my way. (Heart’s filthy lesson) I’m already five years older I’m already in my grave. (Heart’s filthy lesson) Will you carry me? Oh Paddy, I think I’ve lost my way. Paddy, what a fantastic death abyss. (Heart’s filthy lesson) It’s the Heart’s filthy lesson. Tell the others.
-|- ▶ [10 Lyrics] A Small Plot of Land: Citizens of Oxford Town
Poor soul. Spit upon that. Poor soul, he never knew what hit him - and it hit him so. Poor dunce. He pushed back the pigmen. The Barbs laughed - the fool is dead. Poor dunce. He’s less than within us. The brains talk but the will to live is dead. And prayer can’t travel so far these days. The talk of your life, standing so near - to innocent eyes. Poor dunce. Swings thru the tunnels and claws his way. Is small life so manic? Are these really the days. Poor dunce, poor soul. -|- ▶ [11 Lyrics] (Segue) Baby Grace (a Horrid Cassette): Baby Grace Blue
Test, testing, testing - This, hmmm, Grace is my name - And and I was...um... - It was that photo... a fading photograph of a patch..., a patchwork quilt. - And they’ve put me on these ... - Ramona put me on these interest drugs - So I’m thinking very too bit too fast like a brain hatch - And ah they won’t let me see anybody - If I want to sometimes ... and I ask - I can still hear some pop...popular musics and aftershocks. (Ahhh-choo) See I’ve been watching a television of um... in the homelands - That’s the new homelands and um that’s all I can remember - And now they just want me to be quiet - And I think something is going to be horrid. -|- ▶ [12 Lyrics] Hallo Spceboy: Paddy
(Hallo) Spaceboy - you’re sleepy now - Your silhouette is so stationary - You’re released but your custody calls - And I want to be free - Don’t you want to be free - Do you like girls or boys - It’s confusing these days - But Moondust will cover you - Cover you - This chaos is killing me - So bye bye love - Yeah bye bye love - Bye bye love - Yeah bye bye love - This chaos is killing me - And the chaos is calling me - Yeah bye bye love - Yeah bye bye love - Bye bye love - Good time love - Be sweet sweet dove - Bye bye spaceboy - Bye bye love. -|- ▶ [13 Lyrics] The Motel:
Leon Blank
For we’re living in a safety zone don’t be holding back from me. We’re living from hour to hour down here and we’ll take it when we can. It’s a kind of living which recognises the death of the odourless man. When nothing is vanity nothing’s too slow. It’s not Eden but it’s no sham. There is no hell there is no shame. There is no hell like an old hell. There is no hell and it’s lights up, boys. Lights up boys. Explosion falls upon deaf ears while we’re swimming in a sea of sham. Living in the shadow of vanity - a complex fashion for a simple man. And there is no hell and there is no shame and there is no hell like an old hell. There is no hell and the silence flies on its brief flight. A razor sharp crap shoot affair and we light up our lives. And there’s no more of me exploding you. Re-exposing you. Like everybody do. Re-exploding you. I don’t know what to use. Make somebody move. Me exploding. Me exploding you. -|- ▶ [14 Lyrics] I Have Not Been to Oxford Town: Leon Blank
Baby Grace is the victim, she was 14 years of age. And the wheels are turning, turning, for the finger points at me. All's well but I have not been to Oxford Town - all’s well no I have not been to Oxford Town. Toll the bell pay the private eye. All’s well - 20th century dies. And the prison priests are decent, my attorney seems sincere. I fear my days are numbered - Lord get me out of here. All’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town - all’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town. This is your shadow on my wall. This is my flesh and blood. This is what I could’ve been. And the wheels are turning and turning, as the 20th century dies. If I had not ripped the fabric, if time had not stood still, if I had not met Ramona, if I’d only paid my bill. All’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town - all’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town. This is my bunk with two sheets, this is my food though foul, this is what I could have been. -|- ▶ [15 Lyrics] No Control: Detective Nathan Adler
Stay away from the future, back away from the light, it’s all deranged - no control. Sit tight in your corner, don’t tell God your plans, it’s all deranged - no control. If I could control tomorrow’s haze, the darkened shore wouldn’t bother me. If I can’t control the web we weave, my life will be lost in the fallen leaves. Every single move’s uncertain, don’t tell God your plans, it’s all deranged - no control. I should live my life on bended knee if I can’t control my destiny. You’ve gotta have a scheme, you’ve gotta have a plan, in the world of today, for tomorrow’s man. No control. Stay away from the future, don’t tell God your plans, it’s all deranged - no control. Forbidden words, deafen me in memory - no control. See how far a sinful man burns his tracks, his bloody robes. -|- ▶ [16 Lyrics] (Segue) Algeria Touchshriek: Algeria Touchshriek
My name is Mr. Touchshriek, of Touchshriek, with mail over and fantasy. My shop sells egg shells off the shesores and empty females. I’m thinking of leasing the room above my shop to a Mr. Walloff Domburg - a reject from the world wide Internet. He’s a broken man; I’m also a broken man. It would be nice to have company. We could have great conversations. Looking through windows for demons, and watching the young advance in - all electric. Some of the houses around here still have inhabitants in them. I’m not sure if they’re from this country or not. I don’t get to speak much to anyone or that sort of thing. If I had another broken name - oh, I dream of something like that. -|- ▶ [17 Lyrics] The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (as Beauty): Artist / Minotaur
I shake - at the mother’s brutal vermin. I shake - and stare at the watery moon. With the same desire, as the sober Philistine. And I shake (turn and turn again) worm, the pain and blade - turn and turn again. The screw is a tightening atrocity - I shake. For the reeking flesh is as romantic as hell. The need to have seen it all: the voyeur of utter destruction - as beauty. I shake - turn and turn again - I shake - turn and turn again - I shake. Research has pierced all extremes of my sex. Call it a day - call it a day. Needle point life blinds the will to be next - call it a day. Today. -|- ▶ [18 Lyrics] (Segue) Ramona A. Stone / I Am With Name: Ramona A. Stone + her Acolytes
I was Ramona A. Stone. I started with no enemies of my own. I was an artiste in a tunnel. But I’ve been having a mid-life crisis, and I’ve been dreaming in a sleep. And ape men with metal parts, I’ve spat upon deeply felt age. I’ve hid my hearts in, and I hate the funny colored english. We’ll creep together you and I, for I know who the small friends are. I am with name, I am with name, I am Ramona A Stone. A night fear female. Good timing drone. I am with name, I am with name, I am Ramona A Stone. (She should say: twitch & stream - it’ll end in chrome - night of the female - good time drone.) A person who loses a name, feels anxiety descending. Left at the crossroads, between the centuries - a millenium fetish. (Give it to me one more time!) Anxiety descending. -|- ▶ [19 Lyrics] Wishful Beginnings: Artist / Minotaur
Cruising around me - the flames burn my body. Wishful beginnings - does this remind them again and again? You’re a sorry little girl. You’re a sorry little girl. Please hide - for the pain must feel like snow. You’re a sorry little girl. Sorry, little girl. Please hide from the kiss and the bite - shame burns. Breathing in, breathing out. Breathing in only doubt - the pain must feel like snow. I’m no longer your golden boy. Sorry little girl, I’m sorry little girl. The pain must feel like snow, there you go. Cover me, cover me. We flew on the wings. We were deep in the dead air, and this one will never go down. We had such wishful beginnings, but we lived unbearable lives. I’m sorry little girl. Sorry, little girl. So so sorry little girl. The pain must feel like snow. There you go, there you go. -|- ▶ [20 Lyrics] We Prick You: Members of the Court of Justice
White boys falling on the fires of night
(I wish you’d tell). Flesh punks burning in their glue. Revolution comes in the strangest way (I wish you’d tell). I’d rather be inside you. Tell the truth - we prick you. (You show respect even if you disagree - you show respect.) Mama can I kiss you daddy can I ***you (We wish you well). Innocence passed me by. Wanna be screwing when the nightmare comes (I wish you well). Wanna come quick and die. All the little rose-kissed foxy girls - shoes, shoes, little white shoes; where have all the flowers gone? All the little fragile champion boys - toys, toys, little black toys; dripping on the end of a gun (Even if you disagree).
-|- ▶ [21 Lyrics] (Segue) Nathan Adler: Detective Nathan Adler
Old Touchschriek was the main nameserver. Suspected of being a shoulder surfer, but he didn’t know from shit about challenge response systems. Now Ramona A Stone we know was selling interest drugs. She got males all hung up on her mind filters. She was if you don't mind me saying so an update demon. Now Leon, he couldn’t wait for 12 o’clock midnight. He jumps up on the stage with a criss criss machete and slashes around cutting a zero on everything. I mean a zero - in the fabric of time itself. Was this a suspect? I says to myself - Woa! “Quelle courage!” - Oh wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me take you back to when it all began– -|- ▶ [22 Lyrics] I’m Deranged: Artist / Minotaur
Funny how secrets travel, I’d start to believe - if I were to bleed. Thin skies, the man chains his hands held high. Cruise me blond cruise me babe. A blond belief beyond beyond beyond. No return no return. I’m deranged. Deranged, my love. I’m deranged down down down. So cruise me babe cruise me baby. And the rain sets in, it’s the angel-man - I’m deranged. Cruise me cruise me cruise me babe. The clutch of life and the fist of love - over your head - big deal Salaam. Be real deranged Salaam, before we reel. I’m deranged. -|- ▶ [23 Lyrics] Thru These Architect’s Eyes: Leon Blank
Stomping along on this big Phillip Johnson, is delay just wasting my time? Looking across at Richard Rogers, scheming dreams to blow both their minds. It’s difficult you see, to give up baby, to leave a job, when you know you know the money’s from day to day. All the majesty of a city landscape. All the soaring days in our lives. All the concrete dreams in my mind’s eye. All the joy I see thru these architect’s eyes. Cold winter bleeds on the girders of Babel. This stone boy watching the crawling land. Rings of flesh and the towers of iron. The steaming caves and the rocks and the sand. Stomping along on this big Phillip Johnson, is delay just wasting my time? It’s difficult you see to give up baby, these summer scumholes, this goddamned starving life. -|- ▶ [24 Lyrics] (Segue) Nathan Adler: Detective Nathan Adler ▶ [25 Lyrics] Strangers When We Meet: Leon Blank
All our friends now seem so thin and frail. Slinky secrets - hotter than the sun. No peachy prayers, no trendy rechauffé. I’m with you, so I can’t go on. All my violence raining tears upon the sheet. I’m bewildered for we’re strangers when we meet. Blank screen TV, preening ourselves in the snow. Forget my name, but I’m over you. Blended sunrise, and it’s a dying world. Humming Rheingold, we scavenge up our clothes. All my violence raining tears upon the sheet. I’m resentful for we’re strangers when we meet. Cold tired fingers, tapping out your memories. Halfway sadness, dazzled by the new. Your embrace was all that I feared. That whirling room, we trade by vendue. Steely resolve is falling from me. My poor soul, all bruised passivity. All your regrets ride rough-shod over me. I’m so glad that we’re strangers when we meet. I’m so thankful that we’re strangers when we meet. I’m in clover for we’re strangers when we meet. Heel head over, but we’re strangers when we meet. -|- ▶ [26 Credits]
Based on reports from, among others,
Nick DeRiso,
David Fricke, Kev Geoghegan, Paul Gorman, Edna Gundersen, Larry Katz, Peter–R. Koenig, George A. Paul, Chris Roberts, Emma Saunders, Steele Savage,. And Internet searches, thank yous to:
bowiesongs; The National; Jason Lundberg; One Half of the Bowlettes; lo-fi noise makers; wn; john b; Mauro B. C.; sonyakossta; Timetakesafag; SenseOfDoubt1; bowiechick; Beco2103; theMusicofmyLife1; BOWIElover; Jorge Gago Lopez; Matt Chamberlain; joymarr; KyOdar; BlueM2012; Halloweenjack84; Anna Dennis; david bowie tin machine.
▶ [28] The Diary of Nathan Adler
aka THE ART-RITUAL MURDER OF BABY GRACE BLUE A
non-linear
Gothic
Drama
Hyper-cycle
|-¶-|It was at precisely 5:47am on the morning of Friday 31 of December 1999 that a dark spirited pluralist began the dissection of 14-year-old “Baby Grace.”
The arms of the victim were pin-cushioned w/ 16 hypodermic needles, pumping in four major preservatives, colouring agents, memory information transport fluids and some kind of green stuff. From the last and 17th, all blood and liquid was extracted. The stomach area was carefully flapped open and the intestines removed, disentangled and re-knitted as it were, into a small net or web and hung btw. the pillars of the murder-location, the grand damp doorway of Oxford Town Museum of Modern Parts, New Jersey. |-¶-| The limbs of Baby were then severed from the torso. Each limb was implanted w/ a small, highly sophisticated, binary-code translator which in turn was connected to small speakers attached to far ends of each limb. The self-contained mini amplifiers were then activated, amplifying the decoded memory info-transport substances, revealing themselves as little clue haikus, small verses detailing memories of other brutal acts, well documented by the ROMbloids. |-¶-|
The limbs and their components were then hung upon the splayed web, slug-like prey of some unimaginable creature. The torso, by means of its bottom-most orifice, had been placed on a small support fastened to a marble base. It was shown to varying degrees of success depending upon where one stood from behind the web but in front of the museum door itself, acting as both signifier and guardian to the act. It was definitely murder – but was it art?|-¶-|All this was to be the lead-up to the most provocative event in the whole sequence of serial-events that had started around November of tha same year, plunging me into the most portentous chaos-abyss that a quiet lone-hacker like myself could comprehend.
|-¶-|My name is NATHAN ADLER, or Detective Professor Adler in my circuit. I’m attached to the division of Art-Crime Inc., the recently instigated corporation funded by an endowment from the Arts Protectorate of London, it being felt that the investigation of art-crimes was in itself inseparable from other forms of expression and therefore worthy of support from this significant body. |-¶-| Nicolas Serota himself had deemed us, the small-fry of the division, worthy of an exhibit at last year’s Biennale in Venice, three rooms of evidence and comparative study work which conclusively proved that the cow in Mark Tansey’s “The Innocent Eye Test” could not differentiate btw. Paulus Potter’s “The Young Bull” of 1647 (exactly 300 years before I was born, incidentally) and one of Monet’s grain stack paintings of the 1890s. The traditional art press deemed this extrapolation “bullshit” and removed itself to study the more formal ideas contained in Damien Hirst’s “Sheep In a Box.” Art’s a farmyard. It’s my job to pick thru the manure heap looking for peppercorns.
Friday - 12-31-99 – 10:15a|-¶-| As in any crime, my first position is to peruse the motive-gag. The recent spate, thru ’98-’99, of concept-muggings pretty much had me pulling breath for an art-murder. It was a crime whose time was now. The precedents were all there. It had probably its beginnings in the ’70s w/ the Viennese castrationists and the blood-rituals of Nitsch. Public revultion put the lid on that episode, but you can’t keep a good ghoul down. |-¶-|Spurred on by Chris Burden’s having himself shot by his collaborator in a gallery, tied up in a bag, thrown on a highway and then crucified upon the top of a Volkswage, stories circulated thru the nasty-neon of NY night that a young Korean artist was the self-declared patient of wee-hours surgery in cut and run operations at not-so-secret locations in the city. If you found out about it, you could go and watch this guy having bits and pieces removed under anaesthetic.|-¶-| A finger-joint one night, a limb another. By the dawning of the ’80s, rumour had it that he was down to a torso and one arm. He’d asked to be left in a cave in the Catskills, fed every so often by his acolytes. He didn’t do much after that, I guess he read a lot. Maybe wrote a whole bunch. I suppose you can never tell what an artist will do once he’s peaked. |-¶-| Round this same time, Bowie the singer remarked on a coupla goons who frequented the Berlin bars wearing full surgery regalia: caps, aprons, rubber gloves and masks. The cutting edge. |-¶-| Then came Damien Hirst w/ the Shark-Cow-Sheep thing. No humans, palatable ritual for the worldwide public. The acceptable face of gore. Meanwhile in the US, 1994, I was in town on the night of the Athey scarifications.
Thursday - 10.27.94 – 122 E. Village, Manhattan|-¶-| Ron Athey, performance artist not for the squeamish - former heroin addict-HIV positive, pushes what looks like a knitting needle repeatedly into his forehead, a crown of blood, must hurt like hell. Stream red dribble-dribble. No screams. Face moves in pain. Carried upstage and scrubbed down in his own blood. Then water. Now dresses in nice suit and tie. Now in the black T-shirt and jeans, carving, w/ a disposable salpel, patterns, into the back of Daryl Carlton, a black man. Bloody blotted paper towels then hung on a washing line suspended over the heads of the audience. Blood-prints from life. An extremely limited edition. When it was first performed back in March, “Four Scenes in a Harsh Life” exploded controversy shrapnel through-out the National Endowment for the Arts. “We have taken every precaution w/ our disposal systems,” An Athey spokes-person said. “The towels containing the blood are immediately deposited in hazardous-waste bags. Each evening, the material will be driven to a hospital for final disposal.” Athey says he is dealing w/ issues of self-loathing, suffering, healing and redemption.
Friday – 12-31-99 – 10:30a – Museum of Modern Parts|-¶-| I’m drinking up the Oxford Town. New Jersey fume. Salty and acid. Maybe I can get a handle on this thing back in Soho at the bureau. It used to be Rothko’s studio, now the playground for all us Art-Crime folk, AC’s or “the daubers” as we’re dubbed. Rothko himself, in a deep-dark-drunk one night, carefully removed his clothes, folded them up neatly, placing them upon a chair, lay upon the floor in a crucified position and after several attempts, found the soft blue pump of his wrists and checked out He’d held the razor blades btw. wads of tissue paper so that he wouldn’t cut his fingers. Deep thinker. Always was.
11:00am - “Dauber” HQ, Soho|-¶-| The only names the Data bank can associate w/ Baby Grace are Leon Blank, Ramona A. Stone and Algeria Touchshriek. The rundowns are brief but not to the point:
|-¶-| RAMONA A. STONE: Female. Caucasian. Mid-40s. Assertive maintenance interest-drug dealer and Tyrannical Futurist. No convictions. Contacts: Leon Blank, Baby Grace Blue, Algeria Touchshriek.
|-¶-| LEON BLANK: Male. Mixed race. 22 years. Outsider. Three convictions for petty theft, appropriation w/ plagiarism w/out license. Contacts: Baby Grace Blue, Algeria Touchshriek.
|-¶-| ALGERIA TOUCHSHRIEK : Male. Caucasian. 78 years. Owner of small establishment on Rail Yard. Oxford Town, NJ. Deals in art-drugs and DNA prints. Fence for all apparitions of any medium. Harmless, lonely.
|-¶-| Small cog, no wheels. Not much to go on but R.A. Stone weighs heavy on my memory. No problem, it’ll come back. Best thing to do now is feed all relevant pieces into the Mack-Verbasiser, the Metarandom programme that re-strings real life facts as im-probable virtual-fact. I may get a lead or two from that. ... 11:15a|-¶-| Jesus Who. I hate typing. Anyhow, we’ve got some real interesting solvents from Mack-random. How about this! Verbasiser down-load, first block:
No convictions of assertive saints believed Caucasian way-out tyrannical evoked no images described – Christian saints questions no female cristian machine believed no work is caucasian assertive saints believed female described christian tyrannical questions – R. A. Stone convictions martyrs and tyrannicals are evoked Female described sado-masochist questions – I am suicide described the fabric machine – Slashing way out saints and martyrs and thrown downstairs.
|-¶-| Now the swirl begins. Now the image stack backs up and takes center stage. Ramona A. Stone, I remember this thickness, this treacly liquid thought. But wait, I’m ahead of myself. 6-15-77 – Kreutzburg, Berlin|-¶-| It’s two in the morning. I can’t sleep for the screaming of some poor ostracised Turkish immigrant screaming his guts out from over the street. His hawking shriek sounds semi-stifled like he’s got a pillow over his mouth. But the desperation comes through the spongy rubber like a knife. It cuts the breeze and bangs my eardrums. I take a walk past the fabric machine, turn left onto a street w/ no name. The caucasian suicide center, naked and grimy, silhouetted by fungus yellow street lamps female slashing way-out saints for a dollar a time thrown downstairs if you can’t take any more. Pure joy of retreat into death, led by the shepherdess. Anti mixed-race posters pasted upon their altar of pop-death icons party people.
|-¶-| A zero w/ no name looks dull-eyed to Ms. Stone, the drone that says “in the future, everything was up to itself.” Yea.|-¶-| I remember Ramona. She set herself up as the no-future priestess of the Caucasian Suicide Temple, vomiting out her doctrine of death-as-eternal-party into the empty vessels of Berlin youth. The top floor rooms were the gateways to giving up to the holy ghost. She must have overseen more than 30 or 40 check-outs before the local squad twigged what was going down.
10-28-94|-¶-|New Yorker magazine, advance copy celebrating fashion. It’s a first of its kind since Tina Brown took over as editor. One look is all it took. It took the look and wrote a new book on what sophi-staplites would take and bake. Guy Bourdin featured heavily in this new eDISHion. Since the advent of AIDS and the new morality, and, of course his death, his dark sexy fatal style had fallen out of Vogue.
|-¶-| An uncompromising photographer, he had found a twisty avenue through desire and death. A white female leg sticking gloomily out of a bath of black liquid enamel. Two glued up babes covered in tiny pearls. The glue prevented their skins from breathing and they pass out. “Oh it would be beautiful,” he is to have said, “to photograph them dead in bed.”
|-¶-|He was a French Guy. He had known Man Ray. Loved Lewis Carroll. His first gig was doing hats for Vogue. He’d place dead flies or bees on the faces of the models, or, female head wears hat crushed btw. three skinned calves heads, tongues lolling. What was this? Fine Arts? The surrealists might even think his work passé. Well, it was the ’50s, that's what it was. The tight-collar ’50s seen through unspeakable hostility. He wanted but he couldn’t paint. So he threw globs of revengeful hatred at his nubile subjects. He would systematically pull the phone cord out of the wall. He was never to be distrubed. Distrubed. Never. Everything and everyone died round him. |-¶-| One shoot focusing upon a woman lying in bed was said to be a reconstruction of his estranged wife’s death. Another picture has woman in a phone booth making some frantic call. Her hand is pressed whitely against the glass. Behind her and outside are two female bodies partially covered by the autumn leaves. His dream, so he told friends, was to do shoots in the morgue, w/ the stiffs as mannequins. I don’t know. I just read this stuff. Now his spirit was being resurrected. We’re mystified by blood. It’s our enemy now. We don’t understand it. Can’t live w/ it. Can’t, well ... y’know?
Friday - 12-31-99 - 11:30a|-¶-|After surgery and investment in a bullet-proof mask, Ramona turned up in London, Canada as owner of a string of body-parts jewellery stores. Lamb penis necklaces, goat-scrotum purses, nipple earrings, that sort of thing. The word on the street, however, suggested that it was not in the best of interests to become one of her clients as occassionally, a customer would step into her shop and not come out again.
|-¶-| The whistle blew after a much-loved and highly respected celebrity, known for being known, failed to show for a gallery-hanging of her mirrors. Other celebrities, equally known for being known, some only to each other, thought it the most profound exhibit in years and couldn’t take their eyes off the works. All the pieces sold within an hour, many for record prices. |-¶-| When the critic for Tate magazine asked for an interview w/ the celebrity-artist, the gallery owner recalled that he hadn't seen her since earlier that day. She’d mentioned that she would be going shopping for a diamond-encrusted unbilical cord as a celebratory thing to announce her pregnancy. She would be back in an hour. Just a quick stop at the “Gallstone.” |-¶-|1986. That pregnancy would have been produced a being that would be around 14 years of age. If it was still alive.
|-¶-| To be continued...
-|- Also,
The Annotated Diary of Nathan Adler
❝One could make an animal, a tissue, transparent! One could make it invisible! All except the pigments — I could be invisible!❞ – Jack Griffin
Based on sight gags and stagecraft, The Invisible Man and its sequels helped nudge theatre to keep up w/ the maturing motion pictures behemoth. Based on a victorian fantasia on the consequences of scientific frontiers.
1. The Invisible Man (1933)
A scientist’s unholy experiments into invisibility is realized, and now he regrets it.
Claude Rains is the Invisible Man, slowly turning homicidal due to the formula’s side effect. “… a few murders here and there.” Gloria Stuart as his fiancée, E.E. Clive is the constable, Una O’Connor the innkeeper.
2. The Invisible Man Returns (1940)
In an altruistic moment, the mad scientist’s brother re-creates the invisibility formula in order to release a man on death row and to find the real killer. “I can’t find peace in the underworld.” Vincent Price is the brother who becomes the second Invisible Man, w/ Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Alan Napier, Nan Grey.
3. The Invisible Woman (1940)
Kitty Carroll answers an ad to be a subject in a science experiment, and is bombarded by an invisibility ray. “I’m nothin’ but a nothin’.” Blackie and his gang get word of this miracle and become interested. John Barrymore is the mad scientist, w/ Oskar Homolka, Shemp Howard, Maria Montez, Anne Nagel.
4. Invisible Agent (1942)
When axis agents arrive to steal the invisibility formula, the grandson to the scientist runs off w/ the notebooks. Jon Hall then ingests the formula and parachutes into Berlin, to bring the war home, as the Invisible Agent. “I can’t tell you people apart.” Screenplay by Curt Siodmak. With Peter Lorre, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Albert Basserman, Ilona Massey, J. Edward Bromberg, Key Luke.
5. The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944)
A mad scientist succeeds in stabilizing the invisibility formula and turns ghoulish. John Carradine is Dr Drury. “Pioneers have always to contend w/ fools.” Jon Hall returns again as the invisible one, w/ Gale Sondergaard, Lester Mathews, Halliwell Hobbes.
When a nearly intact tomb belonging to egyptian royalty was discovered in 1922, foreign correspondent John L. Balderston was there covering it for the New York World. The world then became somewhat familiar w/ the ancients’ belief in immortality as well as the science of embalming, an operation taking 70 days to achieve and presided over by Anubis. Balderston was later hired to produce the screenplay for a fantasia based on a fiction, fashioned from a backstory by Nina Wilco Putnam, on the life of 18th-c. french hypnotist Caliostro. The result dipped romance into ungodly goo that only Hollywood could concoct.
1. The Mummy (1932)
As the 1921 field expedition season opens in Egypt, members of the British Museum discover a coffin and a body inside. “The gods of Egypt still live in these hills, in their ruined temples.” Boris Karloff is the mummy Imhotep, awakened by tomb-hunters and pursuing the reincarnation of his princess Anck-es-en-Amon – in flapper-era London.
2. The Mummy’s Hand (1940)
Following a map, archaeologists find the tomb of the princess Ananka, and by breaking the seal of the seven jackals unleash a terror that has waited 3,000 years to be reborn. “We search for the tomb of a princess, and all we find is the mummy of a man.” Tom Tyler is the reanimated Kharis – imparting to the role his famous lurch and one dead arm. Eduardo Cianelli plays the high priest.
3. The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)
Opening his eyes for the first time as the mummy Kharis, Lon Chaney Jr will seek vengeance for the tomb desecration of his princess Ananka. “The curse on that tomb extends to the blood relations of all who entered it.” Turhan Bey is Mehemet Bey.
4. The Mummy’s Ghost (1944)
Ramsay Ames is the american reincarnation of the princess Ananka, and Lon Chaney Jr again plays the mummy Kharis, crossing the Atlantic Ocean to court her. “First it’s the Mummy. Now it’s a reincarnated woman!” John Carradine plays Yousef Bey, and George Zucco is Andoheb.
5. The Mummy’s Curse (1944)
Lon Chaney Jr is revived a third time as the mummy Kharis, and finds reason to wade into the Louisiana bayou where a crypt holds dead princess Ananka, his beloved Virginia Christine. “I can never get too much sun.” Peter Coe is Dr Ilzor Zandaabm, and Dennis Moore is Dr Halsey.
HOUSES OF THE HOLY In the aftermath of the trojan war, olympians carried on the fight w/ each other. This brief theomachia roused mother Earth, once more, into open revolt. Egypt disappeared into a ‘screaming wind’. Ge then vomited out the contents of her vaults. Most were prisoners kept there by Zeus. These freed-again monsters (fourth class) then attacked Olympus to set in motion the second gigantomachia.
•❚-❚-❚•
Up north, another aesir-vanir conflict was brewing when Ragnarok 5.0 was triggered by this nearby havoc -- sending nine worlds and twelve hells toppling into a winnowing wormhole.
•❚-❚-❚•
Ge then picked up Mount Olympus and threw it at Ouranos -- giving father Sky his famous black-eye. Perturbed unto his hydrogen heart, first-gen titan Hyperion left of his own volition, and in 1948 the solar god would cede the gravity:throne. First, it went to that ‘container of multitudes’, complex god Apollon, then to Helius.
•❚-❚-❚•
And long before that the Earth had already curled up and succumbed to catatonia -- atomic bomb testing done during the 20th century did her further harm.
•❚-❚-❚•
What didn’t climb out of mother Earth was finally shaken off in spasms, clearing out her caverns and emptying all of the hells that she knew about. The last to depart Tartarus w/ the keys were Haides and Hekate, making sure all gates were left open and unguarded.
•❚-❚-❚•
Nereus had actually felt little when the Earth performed her cosmic cough, and so the ‘Mediterranean’ had remained placid. His aboriginal root matter being H-two-oh, ‘the old one’ soon began splashing some of it over the exposed parts of Ge, initiating a tidal rite to soothe his beloved, his grandmother, his only home.
•❚-❚-❚•
Marooned on a chunk when Pangea broke apart -- then began to drift south, indigenes clung on and ended up on another shore under another sun. Looking at summer skies w/ wintry eyes, these originals saw the physical, spiritual and mortal planes clearer and earlier than most of their lost brethren. Now they are Ge’s best friends and help prepare her bedding every evening.
•❚-❚-❚•
Before going separate ways, Hyperion held a meeting w/ dog-headed death goddess Hekate. The senior sun knew that she was the real ruler of Tartarus, and sought advice from the goddess of necromancy on the next aeon. Together they conjured up a hypothetical heaven searchable by taxonomy. Each spherical body paying heed to the gravity:throne is a ‘wanderer’; and the rest, ‘drfiters’.
Then the ‘dweller on high’ and the ‘crone of the underworld’ took their leave.
❝ To ensure no favored location in space, the cosmologist postulates spatial isotropy and spatial homogeneity, which is Edwin Hubble’s way of saying the universe must be pretty much alike everywhere and in all directions. ❞
– Ronald W Clark (1971)
❡
As the latest geomachia began to subside, tumbling thrones had to be steadied. Some needed a hand, others just a mend. Wrecks got tossed. Soon enough, a four-dimensional mythological map of the sky began to make clearer sense. Whereas the ancient order had adhered to the ‘invariable plane’ when paying homage to the Sun, newcomers need no longer do so. Established courts were delighted -- or not, to locate kin, meet oddballs, greet faded goddesses, share secret handshakes w/ progenitors, gawk at their carbon copies.
•❚-❚-❚•
In the beginning was love, so this house tour begins w/ Aphrodite. Stung by the treatment mother Earth meted out to her brood, the love goddess had no recourse but to leave, becoming the last olympian to do so.
•❚-❚-❚•
The ‘one who postpones old age’ moved her foam:throne closer to Helius and, in 2002, gathered mothers to graces Eurydome and Euanthe to her love:court. Now they share advice and guidance w/ the sex goddess and sit on the ancient:throne and mirror:throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Their neice Pasithee had previously awoken to a planetary party still in full swing. She had called her aunts seeking some peace and quiet. Pasithee was married to Hypnos, and the grace of relaxation always carries sachets of daydreams. Knowing this, Euanthe and Eurydome said Yes, come over.
•❚-❚-❚•
Kale had become unhinged by the expulsion from Earth, and so the tender:throne was offered to the grace to beauty until she can find closure.
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Taking baby steps is Eros-x4, the first form to step out of oblivion and greet Khaos. The love god’s name is spelled differently by different scribes.
His latest iteration is a jigsaw puzzle of four asteroids. Shattered like he’s shattered hearts, the ‘first born’ mutters sweet-nothing rites while resting his golden wings sitting on the soul:throne, in hopes of achieving a home once more in mortal breasts.
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•❚-❚-❚•
In 1999, Lempo returned to the nektar:throne. Of undetermined sex, this finnish love deity was seen to pass near Aphrodite, murmur “once bitten twice shy” in her general direction.
•❚-❚-❚•
The ‘handsome one’ had set up a love:embassy. Adonis insisted, even though scientists say he’s a potentially hazardous asteroid and his exes claim that he is an extinct comet and a source of meteor showers, but that was before Helene came in 1980, a dione trojan gone awol.
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Known to ancient sky watchers, during a time when the hard-to-spot ‘guide’ was easier to locate, his elusive nature suits Hermes’ well as the nearest house to the Sun.
The ‘trickster god’ is awash in sulfer w/ a temperature hot enough to melt lead, finishing an orbit every 88 days while pirouetting every sixteen, long enough to cause seasons.
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As cyclope lensii scan the skies w/ rainbow eyes (and sees machines of every shape and size), the ‘shepherd of men’ hosts a missing-divine bureau, staffed w/ refusniks from IAU’s minor planet center, and sprouting degrees in dark matter 3.0, artificial atoms, time leakage, littoral linguistics, the roots of rap.
Prowess shown by these latter-day saints allow ‘messenger of the gods’ to roam and see everyone, meet everything; the
‘patron to the home’ is
seldom at home.
•❚-❚-❚•
Jennyblue has run the bureau since 1982.
She is the gazetteer of planetary nomenclature for the International Astronomical Union, and the publisher of Who’s World.
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Icarus surfs outer space w/ glued-on wings finding ‘drifter’ not yet catalogued, and looking for star shepherd Hesperus, who vanished while on assignment.
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Second-gen titan Atlas lifts up worlds to look beneath. Bro Epimetheus likes to rehash stuff to sift out clues, and Sisyphus retraces steps to glean origin stories.
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Since 1999, none can assign a proper myth to an amnesiac. Until then, Setebos is their sole “wayfinder of wanderers and drifters”.
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A piece of Hermes came back in 1937 as an apollo asteroid.
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Paying heed to the measure of duration and the reel of the zodiac, the moon:crown currently rests on the brow of Artemis,
granting mortals a glimpse and gargling “how the air unlit before glows”.
•❚-❚-❚•
‘She of the wild’ had to fill three (rotating) placements: full:throne, old:throne, and new:throne. The ‘virgin goddess’ cuts the lunar deck and picks faded lunar goddess Phoebe.
Artemis cuts again and uncovers cretan harvest goddess Carme. A third pick produces Diana. There was a small problem. The visible moon goddess is currently locked in Time and cannot be detected – she is undetectable as a new moon and considered a phased phantom.
•❚-❚-❚•
The breach is currently filled by Eos, the winged dawn goddess who pulls back the curtain of Night. Bringing to an end the latest balancing act that is life in house of a triple-mooon goddess.
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A viscuous veil has draped the purity:throne when in 1845 innocence goddess Astraea sat down.
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The ideal arrived in 2002, ascending to the triple:throne on four legs. Tarvos is (sole) male carbon to the triple-mooon goddess. He is also a divine bull, among other eyebrow raisers.
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Pan spent the waning days of the 20th-c. checking out the house of the Moon and now the rustic god is very much at home. Delirious w/ desire, surrounded by dwarf moons, moonlets, moonmoons; sported w/ by packs of ring shepherds holding hands w/ shepherd moons. “Where the bee sips there sip I. In a cow slip’s lips I die.”.
•❚-❚-❚•
In 1610,
Ganymede came out as the largest satellite in Neopolis, and therefore a shoo-in to run the moon:embassy.
In his down time, the deified son of Tros will take a walk w/ Skoll, to re-acquaint the norse wolf to night.
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The werewolf:throne went to moon god Tarqeq; he’s good to animals, sweet-natured, and knows a lot about inuit fertility.
•❚-❚-❚• Sitting on the bow:throne since 2000 is Mundilfari, father to the norse moon god.
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In solidarity w/ the hexed and mighty vexed Diana, embassy invites always go out to her niece Pasiphäe, cousin Hekate, and BFF Hera.
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Each evening Artemis dons a monotone-&-mottled bodysuit shimmering w/ crater rays. Before stepping on the moon:chariot, she puts on a sheer cape w/ an upside-down waterfall perpetually shedding dust.
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Under an injured sky mortals had clung on to mother Earth and prayed for mercy. She must have relented because the human race survived, too insignificant to be shaken off.
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Resolutely reimagining how temples looked and restoring important altars first, elder goddess Dione was the first to be enticed to come back. The second-gen titaness and oak goddess laid out the house of Ge in 1684, and sits now on the oracle:throne.
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Faded jötunn Bestla was reasoned w/ to also come back and sit on the mountain:throne, while the anxious one awaits news on missing son Odin.
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Nereus, who invented hydrotherapy, is now plain tuckered. The ‘first man’ has been tending to the rehabilitation of Ge and can often be seen splayed on the aborigine:throne.
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All the while, paramount pantheon pharaoh Amun gleams and twits unobtrusively on the dust:throne.
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Sedna had hesitated to sit on the winter:throne only ’cause the inuit sea goddess had to come closer to the Sun. Already her skin of tightly-grouped nitrogen icicles and reflective methane scales, fixed w/ dark tholin thread, has turned beet red.
•❚-❚-❚•
Prosperity goddess Orthosie is sometimes busy, sometimes not, shedding tawny seeds from the autumn:throne.
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Dionysus knows there’s hope for Ge. The mad god is now a binary-being and sits on the serpent:throne, the “price of a bend sinister many generations back”.
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Persephone would rather be w/ her mom than here at the 4seasons:court.
But the vegetation goddess would rather be here on the spring:throne than w/ her husband in hell and be known as ‘queen of the damned’.
•❚-❚-❚•
Weywot stepped out of the Kuiper belt in 2007. Now this native-american sky god gets to taken in an exponential view from the summer:throne.
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In 1980, ‘first woman’ came back home and set up the 4seasons:embassy. Twelve years later, ‘first man’ of the north joined her. Theirs is a mobile office, so Pandora and Ymir can go questing to verify a site map they were given by Hekate and Hyperion.
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Mother Earth spends her days outdoors and nights on the chthon:throne. She seems okay, and occupies herself building a genealogy for Aither and wrting a bio on atmosphere.
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First her roman-half came in 1867; then a greek-fragment followed in 1917. At that point Athene went ahead w the accretion rite and, w/ Minerva and Pallas, wholly the ‘gray-eyed’ goddess of wisdom.
The goddess of crafts calls her house the Olympia Academy, graduating space cadets since 1953 in disciplines of mind, body and soul, w/ emphasis on tech-chthonics, the emergent metaverse, and why obscure dimensions lurk.
•❚-❚-❚•
Skill requiring dexterity is taught by Dactyl, a fused presence able to separate back into ten siblings – brothers and sisters adept in metallurgy and magick.
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Lutetia was insubstantial when found, originally sent to the morgue for parts. Until a proble revealed ‘primordial paris’ under the mantle.
Now this asteroid houses the library, founded in 1904 by golden age historian Himalia.
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‘Father of history’ Herodotos is somewhere in the stacks; sometimes he“s a crater, sometimes a lunar mountain.
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Faded sun god Hyperion still has his star:throne, yet the patron saint of astronomy prefers it here, shedding light into obscure passages and untangling conjugal conjecturals.
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With eyes wide shut, dream god Morpheus wanders the library, never bumps into anything.
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Patroclus stopped by in 1906 to build and run the gymnasium; then Menoetius was outed as his satellite in 2001.
•❚-❚-❚•
And maybe it’s true that Jarnsaxa rose in rank by sleeping w/ Thor, yet her prowess as a warrior is second to none; the jötunn now teaches warcracft.
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Hylonome was recruited in 1995 to give lessons in archery and horseback riding.
•❚-❚-❚•
When Hideo Itokawa showed up in 1998, no one paid much heed. Now the rocket scientist has a launchpad and a lab on the roof.
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Scholar Zhongguo arrived in 1928 toting mountains of chinese scrolls and occupies a wing.
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An amorphous cradle court found harbor in a forgotten nook stacked to the rafters w/ old globes. Granted seclusion while these river deities adjust to their new situation are Euphrates and Tigris, gleaming still from the embers of the 20th-c.
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In 1884, nymph to a baby god Ida was admitted to the infirmary, injured and living a half-life. When Zeus found out his nurse was alive he went to fetch the mountain maid, now mended, seated her on the oak:throne.
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Then the thunder god came across wife Juno and they made up and now the sky goddess has agreed to return to the marriage:throne and resume her title as ‘queen of the gods’.
•❚-❚-❚•
But before that Zeus stumbled into Europa, floating by aimlessly. Promising not to transform in front of her again, Zeus persuaded the princess of Tyre to claim the azure:throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Callisto established the sky:embassy in 1610. Elder muses Aoede and Thelxinoë showed up, 400 years later, to clear up backlogs and stuffed inboxes. Seasons spirit Sponde joined in 2003, imposed lunch breaks.
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They are joined by mother to wine god Dionysus, who sits on the rain:throne when not lending a hand. Born mortal, Thyone is now a goddess who presides over dionysian displays.
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A tempestuous sky:court re-opened in 1979 when faded goddess of wisdom Metis convened the first meeting from her blessed:throne; now the first wife to Zeus has fallen into a trance.
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Zeus has a complex ionosphere tuned to his liking while sitting on the eagle:throne, where a planet-encasing electric field ratchets up the magnetic field to produce 400,000 electron volts.
In 1988 a chunk of Zeus buzzed the earth, and 5731-Zeus has now been identified as an apollo asteroid.
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This house is a courthouse, and
Kronos is its chief justice. Consort Rhea is now a binary being, sharing the mountain:throne w/ her roman half Cybele. In 1966, they warmly welcomed roman god of good beginnings Janus to the duty:throne. The twin-faced god who gave his name to the first month opens the judiciary season.
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Holding degrees in truth and zoroastrian light, galaxy god Mithra was brought to the seasons:throne in 1987. It only took Themis 34 years to find her roman-half Justitia and perform the accretion rite. Now the goddesses of divine justice share the seed:throne.
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Elder memory muse Mneme came out of retirement to run the law library, assisted by Hermione, mortal daughter to Helen of Troy and Menelaus.
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Fate goddess Tyche got her law license in 1886, for precision goddess Praxidike, it took much longer.
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Young aten asteroid Ra-Shalom, spiffy in a smooth carbonaceous outfit, interns as law clerk.
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The time:embassy dispenses legal counsel, and staff constantly juggle worn volumes for titles and parsing multi-culti edits, looking up one-offs, and ‘misc’.
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Kronos hosts 62 satellites and it makes him a grump on the flint:throne. The king of the titans wears a ginormous stole of frozen helium and iced hydrogens, hiding lashings by wet methane winds and seasonal hurricanes of methane mists.
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Wounded in a minimachia between Zeus and Kronos, Ouranos hoarded sanity and had sense remaining to locate complex Hathor and bring the destined one to her sky:throne.
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The egyptian sky goddess has smart dial, and that is how mother to Atlas Klymene came to the dome:throne, while venezuelan rain god Huya hovers nearby on the cloud:throne.
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Before fully succumbing to his malaise, Ouranos managed also to locate Arrokoth for the empyrean:throne, knowing the powhatan personification of the sky can summon clouds, the least of his aether abilities.
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Ouranos has been under physician care since 1781. His house has no embassy.
This doctor commissioned magician Prospero to devise a therapeutic play for his primordial patient.
•❚-❚-❚•
Which led to father to Loki Farbauti being impressario of the production, hiring Ixion as lighting director, even though the ex-king was caked in tholins and ice.
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An ending conjuration required a dual-voice. Director Didymos will perform the role, guiding post-polyphonics gently back to roots in tragic theater.
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Puck and Ariel designed the special effects, while Sycorax and her spawn Caliban handled all subterranean spells. This for a play that takes 84 years to perform.
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Poseidon chose the date of his resurfacing into history by sending a dream, in 1846, to a sleeping mathematician. The woke mortal entered a new set of coordinates into the New Berlin Observatory and found the liquid liege sitting on his trident:throne.
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It was first-gen titaness Tethys, though, who first arrived, in 1684. And in her role as female ‘sovereign of the sea’ Tethys established the sea court. The ancient marine goddess sits on the sea:throne and is semi-retired, running a cell of neptune trojans beholden only to her.
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Primeval marine goddess Siarnaq, mother to all inuit sea life, now rests on the whale:throne.
•❚-❚-❚• Aegir swam by to take “only a peek”. He was then persuaded to stay by Tethys, by Siarnaq, by the entire embassy staff. The germanic god now holds a set of hurricane keys and is on the storm:throne.
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Triton runs the sea:embassy. The mer-god first surfaced in 1846, encrusted in barnacles, showcasing cryovolcanism and cantaloupe-colored boils, spewing nitrogen five miles into space from frigid fingertips of methane.
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The ‘messenger of the sea’ is sick w/ an unknown malady. But Salacia does. Since 2004, the ‘queen of the sea’ has been testing and correcting local salinity levels, bringing much needed knowhow to demi seagoddess Lysithea to get it just so since 1938.
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Day-to-day is handled by by demi seagoddess Hermippe, oceanide Telesto, and river spirits Io and Callirrhoe.
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Nereid glimmered under the surface of Night, in 1949, a drop only 210 miles, clad in neutral-ices and silicates. Troubling then to know that this amalgam of 50 sibling sea goddesses is also a potentially hazardous object headed for impact w/ the sea:embassy.
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Like Ouranos, Haides lies on his back; unlike his great-grandfather, the king of the underworld is in command of his senses; he reigns once more from the black:throne.
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Showing off a young mantle, as befits his status as the first trans-neptune object, the ‘great renewer’ goes about in a liquid-cape of frozen nitrogen stained w/ landscapes of ruddy pinks and moldy yellows.
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The dead:throne belongs to fury Tisiphone, she of the scorpion whip. Often awol, the primitive vengeance goddess likes to visit BFF Hekate.
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Haides had spared two brothers from their fate in the aftermath of the gigantomachia, when a hundred brothers attacked Olympus. Now Enceladus encased in complex organic molecules, and Mimas – fitted out in dreams, have repaid the king of the dead by running the death:embassy, constructed from the substructure of space and having capacity for many-sided folds.
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Juggling w/ pulsar power since 2000 is inuit Ijiraq.
When not on the wealth:throne
the shapeshifter is elusive in a sulphurous smoke jacket, bounding from comet to asteroid while flinging out mirages left and right.
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Charon only became apparent in 1978, the god of hell lounges on the blood:throne.
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Complex deity Osiris, silent and still on the shadow:throne.
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Fenrir crouches at the foot of the black: throne, munching on thanatos leaves.
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An aeon in Tartarus had caused a set of siblings, as they were hurled into space, to begin a meld:rite and, in 1655, return as a colossal composite. Now back in comfortable surroundings again, Titan has grown star-fat and nova-lazy. This slovenness vanishes when his secret name is uttered. Then the fused thing sits upright on the unseen:throne; and resumes his role as monster third-class.
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The pond of Pontos is a multiple axis inert spacial facility where serpent spawns from water worlds can find safe harbor – and malevolent vipers suitably penned.
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Its longest inhabitant is Medusa, marooned on a spit since 1875. Her nurse is demi-serpent Herse, who gets to milk the gorgon. Medusa’s blood is taken back to the infirmary where it is an ingredient for end-of-life syrups.
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The egyptian carbon to Khaos had escaped during the early dawn of the 21st-c. That was when ‘uncreator’ assumed in form an aten asteroid. Now Apophis is threatening to invade Ge in 2029 before attacking the Sun again. To bring back this sand serpent supreme, the house of Egypt dispatched lioness fire goddess Sekmet (who’s pregnant), and magick goddess Selquet.
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Aegaeon has been pond shepherd since 2008, this monster fourth-class (although some claim he’s really first-), has now poured all his wealth into Sea 2.0.
The primitive marine god oversees “Force;4”, staffed w/ post-fledglings from stellar kindergartens and polygon-flight schools.
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The pond is a favorite haunt of Hippocamp. Driver to the sea chariot, the binary:beast pays visits w/ Hydra and seems to do the many-headed serpent some good. This animal amalgam has gone mad; harms only itself, hops on claws then slithers, undergoing a chaotic rotation w/ a flip every ten hours.
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The newest inmate is ducktaped w/ reverse-relativity adhesive, preventing Gonggong 龚工 from powering up his malignant core.
This metal-headed monster was caught trying to knock mother Earth’s axis off center -- again. Now the chinese marine god is the subject of study by atomic-physics.
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The wannabe planet killer has been guarded since 2007 by husband-&-wife team Phorcys and Ceto. He grey-haired and fish-tailed, w/ a crustacean-cape of crab claws. She daughter to Pontos and crone goddess to sea monsters.
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In 2018, an undersea ex-palace was requisitioned as the unofficial house of Pontos. Diamond-shaped w/ good japanese bones, Ryugu is capacious enough to have offices, guard quarters, private apartments.
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Draped in seaweed, crowned w/ turrets and towers, a rudder his staff, Pontos is seawater’s root matter. He now stirs Sea 2.0, concocted w/ a thimble of his blood, the entire Aegean sea, a steady drip from the river of hate, a healthy pour of unadulterated reptilian consciousness; and trickles from the river Styx.
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To ensure safety, the pond is potted w/ skeletal time chambers. To nice things up, infernal goddess Styx had trained a ribbon from her river of oaths to follow her and so became patron to the pond of Pontos.
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After the meeting w/ Hyperion, Hekate took her leave, dragging ‘darkness’ behind. The supreme goddess of magick only stopped when the gravity:throne was barely glimpsed.
She flung Erebus beneath her, unfolded the crone:throne and set it down on the dark primitive god.
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Hekate is darker than Tartarus, where she had lived, is invisible at night, can see in pitch black.
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Ananke came first, in 1951, swathed in ‘constraint’, ‘force’ and ‘necessity’.
‘One before time’ uncoils her luxuriant serpent tail and gets to wind down on the potency-throne.
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A son to Loki perches on the ghost:throne. Narvi is father to norse night Nótt and has returned as dark matter of indeterminate size.
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Tottering on the spindle:throne is night goddess Nyx, whose star-spangled mantle cannot hide a bandage-wrapped form w/ obvious ancient red stains. Something is wrong, now unfamiliar gravity floods the daughter to Khaos and causes her to twirl backwards every 45 minutes.
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In 2004, etruscan infernal god
Orcus showed up to claim the victory:throne, oblique in faint tholins, sewn w/ iced crystal water and featuring a high collar shooting dew drops of amonia up.
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When the three-headed hell hound saw Erebus, his dearest doghouse, being dragged off, Kereberos trotted behind; now he patrols his new home every 32 days, flips every five, in vain efforts to shake off filament fleas.
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As Ge shook and coughed, Aἴtnē survived, as befits one of nine foundational mountain nymphs. She’s been host to an aboriginal fire god for a long long time. Hephaistos had suffered some diminishment otherwise is unharmed.
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In 2006, Surtur, wielder of the fire sword, showed up. Following notebooks and using legacy tools, the jötunn worked w/ Hephaistos and got the forge going again. Now the norse behemoth tends to business from his spot on the foundry:throne.
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Pasiphäe is daughter to the sea and the sun, and is only one of the reasons the mistress of herbal magick can keeps busy on the cauldron:throne.
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The geomachia had casualties, but Hestia was not one of them.
The primal fire goddess gingerly cupped ‘first flame’ w/ her palm, slipped into sensible shoes, and stepped off the face of the Earth.
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In the Asteroid belt she found her sister Ceres, who was seeding the second Garden of Apollon, and Hygiea, performing triage by herself. So this was where Hestia sat her charge down and soon enough kindled a fire.
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Together the three goddesses set up a clinic; by 1807 it had grown to become an infirmary. Then, in 1992, while live coverage of the first space rock found in the Kuiper belt was broadcast, Hestia took a closer look and recognized Albion. The domestic goddess then went and fetched ‘mythological britain’ back and that was how she found a foundation to a house, w/ herself its administrator, medicine goddess Hygiea its nurse, and agrarian goddess Ceres its groundskeeper.
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Resident chaplain duties falls on the shifting shoulders of fiction-into-fact inuit shaman Paaliaq.
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Newly dislodged norse fire god Loge was admitted in 2006 for hypothermia. Therapy w/ ‘first flame’, his root matter, ensured recovery and the norse fire god has stayed on as a therapist.
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Asclepius was admitted as a wounded apollo asteroid in 1989; now the medicine god is partly repaired and can assume head physician, allowing daughter Hygiea to fuse w/ her roman-half Valetudo as well as resume research into evolutionary vaccines.
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Celtic childbirth goddess Bebhionn showed up in 2000 and now there is a maternity ward.
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Eight of Poseidon’s satellites are in intensive care.
Faded sea goddess Thalassa wobbles and paces her bed every eight hours, knowing her form will end up as a rubble ring.
•❚-❚-❚•
Galatea and her water-nymph siblings are all of unreliable form; they’ve re-accreted once too often, and now Sao, Neso, Laomedeia, Helimede, Psamathe might all end up as rubble rings too.
•❚-❚-❚•
Priestess Despina is missing parts, and has set aside mysteries of arkadian cults for now.
•❚-❚-❚•
Hawai‘ian birth goddess Haumea and her daughter-moons were admitted in 2004. This ‘collisional family’ has reached the danger point of offing each other.
•❚-❚-❚•
The first patient was admitted in 1983. Phaethon had fallen off his father’s sun:chariot.
•❚-❚-❚•
Founder of modern nursing Florence Nightingale came back in 2017 to set up the nurses station. Eager to learn modern methods are ancient nurses to baby gods Cyllene, Kallichore, Helike, and Kalke.
•❚-❚-❚•
The grounds of the second Garden to Apollon, begun in 1801 to surround the infirmary, now has pasture enough for goat nurse to a baby god Amalthea to retire in tranquility since arriving in 1892. Her minder is mountain nymph Daphnis. •❚-❚-❚•
Come autumn they will help seasonal goddess Carpo and native-american corn goddess Atira assess the bounty from Nature 2.1. •❚-❚-❚•
And when the granaries are full autumn grace Hegemone will moan the closing rites. •❚-❚-❚•
Harvest was possible because Flora had first tended to every petal and abundance goddess Euporie to every stalk.
•❚-❚-❚•
Creator god Quaoar was helping out in 2005 when he caught a flu. Now the father to the native-american sky shivers and tosses every seventeen hours, wrapped in red rocks ribbed in carbon monoxide sewn w/ methane threads, buttoned w/ nitrogen and studded w/ stalagtites of iced ethane.
•❚-❚-❚•
Aitolian princess Leda oversees the garden. Otherwise she has been helping Demeter run tests, since 1801, to gague, exactly how many seasons now exist.
•❚-❚-❚•
A fused nation of freshwater nymphs, Naiad, maintains the water features on the grounds, while demi sea goddesses Isonoe and Sinope swim in its boundary.
•❚-❚-❚•
Frost giant Suttungr will wait until he”s brewed enough mead of poetry to fill a thousand space ships before coming by to replenish the well.
•❚-❚-❚•
An unrecognizable queen of Egypt came to the Intensive Care Unit in 1880, and after Kleopatra was put back together she remained and, w/ her moon-children Cleoselene and Alexhelios, set up a pharmacy. •❚-❚-❚•
Pharaoh Khufu came in 1984 and claims he’s watched enough priests grind gold and think up immortality tinctures to consider himself a pharmacist too, and stayed. •❚-❚-❚•
Pan drops by and sings w/ Aretha Franklin, who appeared in 2018 w/ a piano. The queen of soul also duets w/ spirit of lamentation Linus in finding closure notes. •❚-❚-❚•
Poetry muse Erato used to wander the corridors strumming; now she has an office and better hours.
•❚-❚-❚•
In 1980, a morgue was founded by Prometheus as a laboratory to develop human:being 2.0. The titan of forethought was at the time delving into mystikal graeco-egy proto-chem while practising old-school alchemy; he tinkers now w/ two corpses. •❚-❚-❚•
Primeval sky goddess Theia has been dead a long time and missing parts. The first-gen titan still has bits of Ge imbedded in her body. •❚-❚-❚•
Jötunn Greip came in 2006 and is good only for parts. •❚-❚-❚•
Assisting is young frost giant Bergelmir, descended from aboriginals. The grandson to the first norse man knows about creating new life. •❚-❚-❚•
Home to Proteus since 1989, the marine god donates his root matter for parts, even though the shapeshifter has parchment skin containing transparencies and pockmarked w/ polyhedron-shaped ices and pinkish-red boils.
•❚-❚-❚•
Beginning in 1918 and spending the next 14 years performing an accretion:rite, Helios had attracted sufficient material to return as the apollo asteroid named Apollo, the first of his kind. The ‘sun’ then continued to evolve and has now ascended to the gravity:throne as the ‘eldest flame’.
•❚-❚-❚•
Galaxy being Varuna spends 282 years on an orbit rite while on the blind:throne, pivoted outwards to greet vedic cosmic creed.
•❚-❚-❚•
When this mythic bird flew down to perch on the arrow:throne in 1999, Bennu was still an apollo asteroid; now he’s the nexus between. egyptian rebirth, creation and the gravity:throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
Complex easter island deity Makemake arrived in 2005 to occupy the singular gold:throne, and was seen toting a charcoal-dark satellite from his spacecraft.
•❚-❚-❚•
In 1998, aten asteroid Akhenaten opened the sun:embassy. Competency in dusty dynasties shows – he continually posts welcomes to unexpected deities showing up to greet the gravity:throne.
•❚-❚-❚•
The post-pharaoh can pronounce the Sun’s name in gallic and celtic, inuit, sanskrit, finnish, mandarin and egyptian-arabic, his native tongue.
Soon a course in japanese and spanish, a brush up on latin. He’s onto rumors of a pan-oceanic family coalescing around the 2016 discovery of Kamo‘oalewa ‘oscillating fragment’. Still figuring Venezuela out.
+
•❚-❚-❚•
Akhenaten is lucky to have found Arche in 2004. The origins muse knows where the skeletons lie – and where they lived).
•❚-❚-❚•
Norse wolf Hati accompanies her, making sure all skeletons behave.
•❚-❚-❚•
Second-gen titaness Leto has the sun:throne, and since 1861 the mother to a sun and a moon has enacted a solar rite, every fifteen hours, to the ‘the supreme light’.
•❚-❚-❚•
The House of Mars defends the celestial court and is responsible for
Fortress Pallas, sited on the circumference. At the “crown” is a co-command of gallic and roman military gods. Albiorix will make a 783-day patrol guarding the Sun, clad in ghost-red armor. Ares turns and patrols interstellar space. The fortress faces outer space.
•❚-❚-❚•
“Trunks” watch the four quadrants. Hoary frost giant Fornjot. The sire to norse immortals, scans the unknown diligently every seven to nine hours for missing kin. •❚-❚-❚•
Eris has a lonely patrol lasting 558 years. The sister to Ares is large enough to fit all on the Asteroid belt in her mantle; is easy to spot in her white-white frigid methane armor caped w/ trailing gasses.
•❚-❚-❚•
Humongous jötunn Thrymr, king of the norse giants, has a sense of humor.
He likes to share a good joke w/ Cruithne, tiniest of space rocks but whose stature in pict legend is also humongous.
•❚-❚-❚•
“Barks” handle logistics and coordinate the day-to-day. Hyrrokkin is capable of launching a thousand probes before breakfast, if the norse giantess so wishes. •❚-❚-❚•
Freya, BFF w/ the valkyries, rides into war on a chariot drawn by cats. On the battlefield the love goddess claims half the fallen and is a favorite among the troops. •❚-❚-❚•
Primeval gaul Erriapus oversees a quiet quadrant in a pale-red battlesuit; while god of the norse north wind Kari howls into his portion of the void.
•❚-❚-❚•
“Branches” explore, and a special team now is following magnetoplasma pulsing back to its source. Battle-tested sons to Ares began service in 1877 higher up in command, but chafing at peacetime ennui have been demoted. These bad-boy bros wear their combat wounds proudly. •❚-❚-❚•
Deimos looks spiffy clad in smooth rock but it’s to protect his porous frame; he knows one day he’ll go awol. Pbobos is slowly dying; wearing nothing but rubble held together by the thinnest of mantles. •❚-❚-❚•
Their cousin anarchy goddess Dysnomia wears a dark-red battlesuit blending well w/ her background. While norse winter goddess Skathi gets to patrol the most frigid corner.
•❚-❚-❚•
“Twigs” traverse the metaverse, perform data reduction, compile cross-genealogy reports. •❚-❚-❚•
Kiviuq has been confronting creatures since before 2000; and is knowledgeable in i.d.-ing unknowns. Twins Romulus and Remus have brought along notes in order to finish a user’s guide to roman ways. •❚-❚-❚•
The founder-bros of Rome are a tad weary of Polydeuces, greek carbon to Remus, whose voice echo in space hits too close to home.
•❚-❚-❚•
“Leaves” cover the territory and carry the colors, led by two trojans and a pair of centaurs. •❚-❚-❚•
Cantering into view in 1977, married centaurs Cheiron and Chariklo led a comet corps of some 44,000 centaurs: each on a scattershot orbit, all trying to achieve escape velocity using nearby gravity as slingshots. Sporting irradiated armor under high-collared ices crinkling and shedding dew; each centaur has a lifespan lasting a few million years. •❚-❚-❚•
Clad in wine-red uniforms strung along two elongated curves, trojan asteroids marched into view in 1906 behind Achilles and Hektor.
•❚-❚-❚•
Fortress Pallas has a “seed bank” in the Olympia Academy, and a “root system” into various houses.
•❚-❚-❚•
Harmonia is daughter to Ares and runs his house, happy to be near cousin Dysnomia, brothers Deimos and Phobos, and aunt Eris.
•❚-❚-❚•
The cyclopes were not flung into space, having instinct enough to cling on. The second race of monsters born to the ‘primordial couple’ flourished by evolving the craft of lens-polishing.
At the birth of the 21st century these three one-eyed brothers downloaded their DNA into artificial intelligence vats. Now the cyclopes race exist mainly as rows of lensii arrayed in patterns and spending time inside telescopes.
Telescopes sit on an equatorial mount, where a clock-drive moves the telescope at the same rate as planetary rotation.
•❚-❚-❚•
The house of the ‘round eye’ has been run by its blinded host Polyphemus (long story) since 2013.
•❚-❚-❚•
A unique egyptian sun disk came in 1976, after rehabilitation by Hephaistos. Now Aten is fully rehabilitated from a stony sub-mile space rock to a source of intelligent light.
•❚-❚-❚•
Muse of astronomy Eukalade arrived in 2003 ensure quality control and have a web presence.
...
Then, development of lens technology led to a vaster view of the “mysterious universe”.
•❚-❚-❚•
In 1924, using the 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory, astronomers Edwin Powell Hubble and George Ellery Hale observed individual stars some 800,000 light-years away; then billions of light-years away.
HYPOTHETICAL HEAVEN
•❚-❚-❚• Leaving mother Earth had proven traumatic for Ares, so he unleashed his rage and demolished the nearest planet. The military god buried the remains in the backyard, the cemetery known as the
Asteroid belt (1801).
•❚-❚-❚•
By 1845, four of these remains had been spotted by telescopes. Each was dubbed a planet at the time. Then their tiny size, less than 500 miles wide – smaller than the Moon, lead to a new classification of such irregular space rocks as an
asteroid.
•❚-❚-❚•
Another kind of irregular space rock whips through space on a a unique orbit around the Sun, iced rocks enveloped in dust and trailing gas, the nimble
comet .
•❚-❚-❚•
An asteroid or a comet caught in Ge’s gravity field becomes a
meteor ‘high in the air’. It remains a meteor if it doesn’t land, and becomes a meteorite if it does.
•❚-❚-❚•
In 1950, Hekate and Haides showed up at the house of the Sun and told everyone there what they had seen in their backyards in 1992. Each a
trans-neptune object, billions of them. They had come to the gravity:throne to announce the demise of the old order. A new aeon was descending and the adamantine age was over.
•❚-❚-❚•
Quite by accident Zeus had a spat w/ Kronos over throne placements. This mini-machia flipped Ouranos on his back and caused the trident:throne to rock and roll. Casualties from this tussle all have missing chunks and bloody cuts. They are the ‘frozen forgots’, marinating in blue-grey bruises and strewn about in a region called the
Kuiper belt
(1992).
•❚-❚-❚•
As Ouranos toppled over Poseidon threw out a life line, but it was too late. The ‘earth shaker’ instead whipped wavelengths into a froth and the resultant fury crashed against his trident:throne, carrying what flaked off into a sparse province inhabited by unstable iced comets called the
Scattered disc (1966).
•❚-❚-❚•
Haides had been exploring his backyard as early as 2004. In his golden chariot drawn by four black horses, the infernal god crossed the Kuiper belt and encountered termination shock -- before settling into a (brief) standstill during heliopause. The king of shadows then unsheathed his sword to cleave the hydrogen wall to get to the other side. Then was stunned by bow shock which sent the god of wealth plunging through the
Interstellar medium
(1904) until the Oort cloud began to cushion his landing.
•❚-❚-❚•
As the trident:throne was tossed about it had smacked into something substantial and shattered this obstruction. Parts now populate the Kuiper belt, fragments share room inside the Scattered disc, and the bits, frozen filaments of water and methane, flew even further out and is credited as the
Oort cloud (1950).
•❚-❚-❚•
A space rock that is spherical and containing gravity and an electro-magnetic field is a
planet
. Most planets host a satellite or more, and eight planets follow the 'invariable plane' and constitute venerable houses represented at the celestial court.
•❚-❚-❚•
Made of ambient matter and having no definite boundary, Helius the
Sun is a star w/ the capacity to shed root matter as energy, released rapidly enough as to seem solid, and can assume diverse forms. Earth’s Sun undergoes ongoing combustion, and has gravitational sway over a small swaddle of space, it’s
heliosphere.
•❚-❚-❚•
2012-VP113 nicknamed
‘Biden’ is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt located by a dark energy camera mounted on a telescope in Chile, enlarging the boundaries of the celestial court overnight.
❧ Astronomer William Herschel spots fairy royalty through his telescope and tries to catch them all w/ his butterfly-net, TITANIA and OBERON, Queen MAB, others.
1808 Act I Scene 1 – Forest, daylight ❧ Although it is 1948, MIRANDA isn’t aware because she’s lost in Time, and she absent-mindedly perturbs a rotation rite being initiated by ARIEL, PUCK. A cosmic cave materializes in the lower air; inside the witch SYCORAX and her spawn CALIBAN are seen to mumble and hum.
1829 Act I Scene 2 – Forest, twilight ❧ Fashion-plate BELINDA strolls on in 1986 to introduce a cavalcade of stars. Venetian heriess PORTIA is sharing a joke w/ ROSALIND , daughter to a banished duke; CORDELIA and OPHELIA are linking fingers, touching foreheads, laughing softly; BIANCA is being practical watching her step while giving life tips to CRESSIDA; DESDEMONA and JULIET whisper and act distraught. Slowpokes MARGARET and PERDITA bring up the rear.
1850 Act II Scene 1 – Forest, evening ❧ Male voices from 1990 approach. Shy inquiries are proffered by prince of Naples FERDINAND and his lord FRANCISCO on the who, what, when, where, and why. Meanwhile jester TRINCULO is lending support to drunk-asleep STEPHANO, who now wants to mingle. Chit-chat strums the air and blends w/ sonic spells from the cosmic cave as the Sun starts to sink.
1871 Act II Scene 2 – Forest, midnight ❧ Both parties are now asleep. Sprites and fairies flit across the air. A glint “no bigger than an agate-stone” arrives w/ news for the pained planet Ouranos. The sound of her voice is the signal for Puck to begin matching Ariel’s trajectory and speed before taking charge and bringing the rotation:rite to its conclusion. SETEBOS begins a slow descent onto stage, IXION turns down the stage lights, and the double-voice of DIDYMOS intones the concluding conjuration. Bringing the curtain down on Prospero’s Play, written as a medicinal for an ailing aboriginal, prescribed by the patient’s physician Asclepius.
PANTHEONS
•❚-❚-❚•
The latest Ragnarok was precipitated by the Ge’s cosmic cough. When the dust settled, out of an impressive wreck a chasm appeared, and Niflheim once more took a peek at Muspelheim.
•❚-❚-❚•
In the first moments of the 21st century, Mundilfari, father to a sun and a moon, slowly shifted inside the frozen depth and took a good gulp of space vacuum. Then he hoisted himself out of the crevice, he managed to also yank out root-matter Ymir from his prison. Breaking up enough ice to expose chief-giant Thrymr. Snow goddess Skathi and frost giant Suttungr were harder to make out; they themselves were made of frozen water.
•❚-❚-❚•
Then these remnants of the long-unseen norse court presented themselves at the house of Kronos, seeking shelter, and were immediately given a wing. In 1886, the god of time deputized fate goddess Tyche to set about freeing the others. She led a rescue team of ring-shepherds carrying their own satellites and returned, in 2019, w/ 14 alives and 17 parts.
MACHIA FILES
1 ...
The first war
ever waged involved norse gods battling each other at the dawning of time. The root cause could well have been lax magick capitalizing on auguries to determine an end result for one’s destiny. Truce ended the
Aesir-Vanir War
and resulted in a pooled pantheon spanning nine realms.
2 ...
By the time Ge and Ouranos, the primordial couple,
drew close and birthed their third brood, mother Earth had been nursing revenge on father Sky for nixing her previous two litters. Now the aboriginal earth goddess took the youngest under her tutelage, bestowing on Kronos his destiny to perform the dirty deed with a sickle and take over the adamantine throne. After committing patricide, Kronos married sister Rhea and the union produced three daughters and three sons -- who would overthrow their parents in the ten-year
Titanomachia, fought alongside earthquakes and volcanoes -- and prequel to the age of Olympus.
3 ...
When Saturn cut Uranos w/ the sickle blood splashed onto Gaia,
trickled down to Tartarus and birthed one hundred giants, w/ serpents for feet. They climbed out of their mother and warred against Olympus. Formidable and capable of hurling entire mountains into the air; by so doing formed a ladder to the top. Breaking off oak trees and using them as torches, these giants climbed up and flung them at Zeus, igniting the
Gigantomachia
. One by one, the olympians put down their gigantic sibling’ revolt, offing or impaling them w/ mountains.
4 ...
Upset her giants were defeated, Gaia rubbed Tartarus and soon birthed Typhöeus, tall enough to graze the stars, sporting wings which blotted out light, having a hundred dragon heads spewing flames w/ mouths that yelled out human curses or shrieking and hissing as animals. Two hundred hands all ending in snake-fingers. Loose snakes slithered and covered the final monster’s frame, from the thighs down this singular serpent was nothing but trunks and feet of coiled snakes. Alone, the largest monster ever born launched
Typhomachia and attacked Zeus, who defeated him in single combat and chained the volcano demon, belcher of venomous fumes and all-round trouble maker to sky deities, in deepest Tartarus.
5 ...
As the trojan war unspooled
Olympus took sides and soon a battle between the immortal family had erupted. This brief
Theomachia ended when the war happening on Earth did too, and every deity survived the ordeal.
6 ...
Fracking was driving Ge bonkers.
She could bare it no more. Swallowing rocks and imprisoning monsters she had performed in the primitive past. Now mother Earth had a fever and required a deep cleanse. She coughed, ejecting her bowels and flushing out her bad blood, in her latest
Geomachia.
7 ...
Foretold as a repeatable occurrence, the twilight of the gods arrives when several severe blizzard storms one after the next are loosened on the world. Norse sun goddess Sól’s brief re-emergence will signal the beginning of the end as
Ragnarok commences. The midgard serpent will then crawl from hell followed by her brother the wolf Fenrir. Soon, Surtur’s flame sword will have set the universe ablaze, “the sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea, hot stars fall from the sky, and fire leaps high about heaven itself ”. In time a new Earth. Another Sun. Different stars. Same pantheon.
“As revealed in the song
Ziggy Stardust, Ziggy was not
a spider - he was the fly.”
-- Steele Savage
Outside the musical world he inhabits, David Bowie can usually be found in the company of artists. These adventures in the art world found expression in the 1990s when, fooling around on his computer, Bowie ended up w/ a short piece concerning blood and art. This, havg recently chatted w/ Brian Eno on fin-de-siècle malaise and what that might involve. They went on to produce a concept album concerning “this rather dark, satirical idea of where art could go”. Musicians take cues from Eno into which meadow the sound ought to roam in, while Bowie stitches words into the result, seeking fits or juxtaposition until a concept coheres. Eno fiddles w/ the elusives and imbues proceedings w/ more propositions. Lyrics then separate to become distinct voices, then characters. A murder victim has been turned into art. An assortment of suspects. A detective following a lead. A minotaur.
What emerges from the labyrinth is the album 1.Outside, a disjointed and dispirited dystopia featuring violence and death, sex and rock ’n roll.
★ David Robert Jones died from liver two days after his 69th birthday, on January 9 2016. His ashes were scattered on the island of Bali, in a buddhist ceremony. He left behind wife Iman Muhammid Abdulmadjid, daughter Alexandria, son Duncan Jones, Duncan’s ex-nanny Marion Skene, and long-time personal assistant, Corinne Coco Schwab.
-|- FIVE YEARS
The cosmic Chameleon and the chance Corinthian lash themselves together, in the lab – on the slab – and bring forth “… a gothic drama hyper-cycle”.
❝ [Brian and I] had already started a whole set of improvisations in the studio around March, 1994. Out of that came dialogue and landscape that was tied together, not even tenuously. All the elements were fairly disparate. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance, by a narrative device, to chronicle the final five years of the millennium. The over-ambitious intention is to carry this through to the year 2000.
❝ What Brian and I are trying to do is develop a series of albums. [Outside] is the first in this cycle of albums. [The diary is] only the subject matter, it’s not the content of the album. The content is very much the atmosphere and texture of the music, that strange place that music indeed puts you which cannot be articulated. The story itself is semi-linear, so if you want to, follow it in a linear fashion, but it”s not absolutely necessary. The pieces themselves can be autonomous, they are pieces of music on their own.
❝ Well, Brian, very cleverly, because of being what he is, which is basically a conceptualist, turned everything into a series of games once we got into the studio: To allow the musicians to not be who they are for short periods of time.
❝ As for musicians, it was important to choose those who were not weighed down with musical cliché, who had terrific control over their abilities. Yet were a bit loony.
❝
A piece that shows the extreme it could get to is “A Small Plot of Land”. That piece in particular was a first class indication of what happens when you put people in a strange place like that.
❝ Eno would create little flash cards for them in the mornings. He would create situations they would have to put themselves in mentally, intellectually, and then start playing from that point of view. On each one, a character was written, like (You are the disgruntled member of a South African rock band. Play the notes that were suppressed). ... Because that set the tone for the day, the music would take on all those obscure areas. And it would very rarely lapse into the cliché. So we changed the status of the beginning of these pieces and they came into them like aliens from another place. It opened up a whole area of improvisation. ... It’s very hard to explain [laughs], you should have been there.
❝ The lyric writing itself was fairly hazardous. What I did, I took a lot of areas of subject matter I’m interested in and wrote short paragraphs or pieces of poetry around those subjects and fed them into this Macintosh computer I have. I have a random key on it and it will randomize what I have written. So it was basically the Macintosh’s choice that it was New Jersey. But it was also a bit of England, too, with New Oxford Town. [Then decide] whether I was going to sing, do a dialogue, or become a character. I would improvise with the band, really fast on my feet, getting from one line to another and seeing what worked.
❝ There’s no intent in it, there’s no meaning. I’m not a meaner. I don’t have this great thing that I have to say. It’s a collection of fragments of information, of ideas, that are assembled and produce a certain atmosphere.
❝ Next year, we’ll develop a whole new slew of other characters or maybe re-introduce some of these or even negate some of them. Maybe we’ll never find Baby Grace. Maybe [Detective Nathan] Adler will become the next victim. I don’t know. And that’s what’s kind of interesting. Maybe we’ll just get bored with murder as art and move into another area of our society. It’s all up for grabs. So I‘m quite interested in the future of this thing.
❝ I think [the album is] a confluence of events. First, we definitely perceive murder now as entertainment. It’s used to a massive extent in cinema. And pretty much it’s a space filler in TV. There’s the whole gladiatorial arena spectacle of somehow appeasing gods or looking at the fears and anxieties of the public.
❝ [Brian and I] were both interested in nibbling at the periphery of the mainstream rather than jumping in. We sent each other long manifestoes about what was missing in music and what we should be doing. We decided to really experiment and go into the studio with not even a gnat of an idea.
❝ The momentum gathers as we approach the end of this cycle of 100 years, a huge anguish that everything will change. I wanted to make a record that reflected those anxieties, a state of moral, spiritual and emotional panic. With people breaking off into small groups to feel some sense of community.
❝ Plus this growing momentum in body art, which has been precipitated over the last 15 years or so with people like
Kiki Smith and
Damian Hirst and
Ron Athey and
Chris Burden. The idea of using the body as yet another medium, like wood or metal or glass or stone – almost the politicizing of the body itself. Almost extrapolating on that in an allegorical fashion to have this rather dark, satirical idea of where art could go.
❝ Dalí ... knew exactly what he was doing. He knew what all the objects meant ... The attitude that says the artist should paint only things the proletarian can understand, I think, is the most destructive thing possible.
❝ About 20 percent of what I put in [the album] are fictional and the rest are real, but it’s very hard to tell the difference. But the most surprising one, like the Korean cutting off pieces of himself in the late ’70s in New York, was not apocryphal. I checked back with Art Forum.
❝ I’m sure you know a writer, Thomas de Quincy. For those of us who grew up in the ’60s, his
Confessions of an Opium Eater was a kind of bible. At that time, in 1820, he wrote a small piece for Blackwoods, a London magazine, called Murder Considered as a Fine Art which laid down exactly that theory.
❝
Sort of that classic idea of taking a life as something sort of ritualized. Lots of things came into it. It wasn’t a simple, direct journey. Even the surrealists, like André Breton, who said in the ’20s, probably one of the greatest acts of art would be to go out into a crowd and shoot a revolver into it.
❝ ... the other things that went into [Outside], Brian and I are both fans of a form of art known as Outsider Art. I, for the last 15 years, have lived next to the holy shrine of outsider art, an art museum in Switzerland called Le Brut, set up by Dubuffet. He set it up because he felt he was terribly influenced by the kinds of art that were made by people who lived an unstructured life – in institutions, or hermits, or were ostracized by society for one reason or another. He collected the art that they made and toward the late years of his life opened this museum and put their work in it. That actually was a source of inspiration when we went in for our last three albums in the late 70s. ... The lesson to learn from outsider art was that the artist should be primal. Technique or virtuosity didn’t matter; that which was unformed and screaming inside of you, waiting to be released, was the real essence of the creativity. ... The idea of working without knowledge or judgement, either self-judgement or of how the outside world perceives what you’re doing.
❝ I’ll tell you something which happened subsequently to recording the album which was disturbing in itself. There’s a Dutch artist, Rob Scholte, who’s pretty well-known in Europe. One day, in December 1994, he came down from his apartment and got in his car w/ his wife and he heard a ticking sound. Needless to say, his car seat blew up and he was left without legs. Within a week following that, one of his contemporaries had been down to the attempted assassination spot and filmed the wreckage, the crash area, and was using it as a performance piece in a gallery in Amsterdam. That’s not a hair’s breadth away from what was satirical. And of course now Rob Scholte is doing performance shows where he makes great play over the fact that he no longer has a pair of legs. They still haven’t found out who blew him up, but there are all kind of theories ranging from a drug connection to a jealous artist.
❝ The morality of any society is quite strange. In the finality, it’s decided by law what happens. People change their network of comfort by changing laws to make things acceptable or unacceptable.
❝ I think that our religious philosophies trail so far behind the way that we actually live today that we find ourselves in a spiritual void, and I think it affects the young very much indeed. ... We continually try and find ritual, but we have no religious order to connect that ritual to. ... So we have to reinvent God, I think, in our own new way of life to give ourselves another form of spiritual sustenance.
❝ Oh, I’ve got the fondest hopes for the fin de siècle. I see it as a symbolic sacrificial rite. I see it as a deviance, a pagan wish to appease gods, so we can move on. There’s a real spiritual starvation out there being filled by these mutations of what are barely remembered rites and rituals. To take the place of the void left by a non-authoritative church. We have this panic button telling us it’s gonna be a colossal madness at the end of this century.
❝ I think the idea of becoming comfortable with the idea of chaos is how we are progressing – that life and the universe are extremely untidy. Anything that pulls back the veil on that chaos is a step nearer a more realistic understanding of what our state is – so I embrace chaos. I’m a child of the ’70s, reember. I’m pluralistic by nature. I always had the unfortunate facility of being able to see both sides of every picture. It wasn’t a question of not being able to determine which side I was on, but seeing that things didn’t have sides. It wasn’t as simple as that.
❞
| EXTRAS: Diary Lyrics Credits Photos
▶ [1] William Burroughs
The concept album Outside is based, in part, on Bowie learning on his new computer. Coming across an app à la The Cut-up Method, the cosmic chameleon stitched together digital words, becoming “virtually the entire genesis” of his nineteenth album and fourth collaboration w/ Brian Eno.
Bowie had just stepped away from finishing the soundtrack to 1993’s Buddha of Suburbia mini-series for BBC Televsion. -|- ▶ [2] ContaminationOutside was just one of several albums, a set, that Bowie started to work on w/ Brian Eno. The next one was to be Contamination, peopled w/ “17th century characters”. The day after Bowie’s death, Eno recalled: “About a year ago [David and I] started talking about Outside – the last album we worked on together. We both liked that album a lot and felt that it had fallen through the cracks. We talked about revisiting it, taking it somewhere new. I was looking forward to that.” -|- ▶ [3] Album-|- Producers: David Bowie,
Brian Eno-|- David Richards (co-producer) -|- Mixing and additional treatments: David Richards, David Bowie -|- Mastering: David Richards, Kevin Metcalfe -|- Assistant Engineers: Ben Fenner, Andy Grassi, Jon Goldberger, Domonik Tarqua -|- Album Design & Image Manipulation: Denovo -|- Photography: John Scarisbrick -|- Stylist: Jennifer Elster -|- Recorded at Mountain Studios, Switzerland. -|- Mixed and additional treatments by David Ricahrds, assisted by David Bowie. -|- Mastered by David Ricahrds and Kevin Metcalfe at The TownHouse Digital Mastering Studios, London.
-|- ▶ [4] Musicians-|- David Bowie: vocals, saxophone, guitar, keyboards -|- Brian Eno: synthesizers, treatments, oblique strategies -|- Reeves Gabrels: guitar -|- Erdal Kızılçay: bass, keyboards
-|- Mike Garson: grand piano -|- Sterling Campbell: drums
-|- Carlos Alomar: rhythm guitar -|- Joey Baron: drums -|- Yossi Fine: bass -|- Tom Frish: additional guitar on “Strangers When We Meet” -|- Kevin Armstrong: additional guitar on “Thru’ These Architects Eyes”
-|- Bryony, Lola, Josey and Ruby Edwards: background vocals on “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson”
and “I Am With Name”
-|- ▶ [5] Outtakes
Includes, among others: “Enemy is Fragile” – “I’d Rather Be Chrome” – “Dead Men Don’t Talk” – “Inside the Motel” – “Baby Fingers” – – “Hide Me We Creep Together Part 1” – “Hide Me We Creep Together Part 2 – “The First Time” – “Hello Leon” – “OK Riot”.
-|- ▶ [6] Tour
On the Outside tour,
Bowie and his band would come onstage while opening act Nine Inch Nails was finishing, and both bands performed “Subterraneans”, “Hallo Spaceboy” and “Scary Monsters”,
followed by 2 NIN songs (“Reptile” and “Hurt”), after which NIN decamped and Bowie’s set played on. -|- ▶ [7 Lyrics] Leon Takes Us Outside: Leon Blank
Valentines Day - 25 - June - 16th - Wednesday - July 6th - 20 - 0 - 20 - 15 - Martin Luther King Day - June 18th - June 6th - Wednesday - August 18th - 9th - 1999 - 12 - Nicholas - August - Wednesday - 13th - Sunday - 5th - March - October - January - October 13th - Wednesday - Martin Luther King Day - Afternoon - In view of nothing - 20 - 0 - 1 - Late winter - Martin Luther King Day - 12 - 16 - August - Wednesday - 13th - Friday - 7 - June.
-|- ▶ [8 Lyrics] Outside: Prologue
Now. Not tomorrow. Yesterday, not tomorrow. It happens today, the damage today. They fall on today - they beat on the outside, and I'll stand by you. - Now. Not tomorrow. It's happening now, not tomorrow. It’s happening now. The crazed in the hot-zone. The mental and diva’s hands. The fisting of life to the music outside, to the music outside. It happens outside, the music is outside. It’s happening outside, the music is outside. It’s happening now, not tomorrow. Yesterday. Not tomorrow. The music is outside. It’s happening outside. The music is outside. Outside. -|- ▶ [9 Lyrics] The Heart’s Filthy Lesson: Detective Nathan Adler
(Heart’s filthy lesson) There’s always the Diamond friendly, sitting in the Laugh Motel. The Heart’s filthy lesson, with her hundred miles to hell. Oh, Ramona, if there was only something between us, other than our clothes. Something in our skies. Something in our blood. Paddy, Paddy, who’s been wearing Miranda’s clothes? It's the Heart’s filthy lesson - falls upon deaf ears. (Heart’s filthy lesson) Falls upon deaf ears. (Heart’s filthy lesson) Oh Ramona, if there was only some kind of future. And these cerulean skies: Something in our skies - something in our blood. Paddy, Paddy? Paddy, oh Paddy, I think I’ve lost my way. (Heart’s filthy lesson) I’m already five years older I’m already in my grave. (Heart’s filthy lesson) Will you carry me? Oh Paddy, I think I’ve lost my way. Paddy, what a fantastic death abyss. (Heart’s filthy lesson) It’s the Heart’s filthy lesson. Tell the others.
-|- ▶ [10 Lyrics] A Small Plot of Land: Citizens of Oxford Town
Poor soul. Spit upon that. Poor soul, he never knew what hit him - and it hit him so. Poor dunce. He pushed back the pigmen. The Barbs laughed - the fool is dead. Poor dunce. He’s less than within us. The brains talk but the will to live is dead. And prayer can’t travel so far these days. The talk of your life, standing so near - to innocent eyes. Poor dunce. Swings thru the tunnels and claws his way. Is small life so manic? Are these really the days. Poor dunce, poor soul. -|- ▶ [11 Lyrics] (Segue) Baby Grace (a Horrid Cassette): Baby Grace Blue
Test, testing, testing - This, hmmm, Grace is my name - And and I was...um... - It was that photo... a fading photograph of a patch..., a patchwork quilt. - And they’ve put me on these ... - Ramona put me on these interest drugs - So I’m thinking very too bit too fast like a brain hatch - And ah they won’t let me see anybody - If I want to sometimes ... and I ask - I can still hear some pop...popular musics and aftershocks. (Ahhh-choo) See I’ve been watching a television of um... in the homelands - That’s the new homelands and um that’s all I can remember - And now they just want me to be quiet - And I think something is going to be horrid. -|- ▶ [12 Lyrics] Hallo Spceboy: Paddy
(Hallo) Spaceboy - you’re sleepy now - Your silhouette is so stationary - You’re released but your custody calls - And I want to be free - Don’t you want to be free - Do you like girls or boys - It’s confusing these days - But Moondust will cover you - Cover you - This chaos is killing me - So bye bye love - Yeah bye bye love - Bye bye love - Yeah bye bye love - This chaos is killing me - And the chaos is calling me - Yeah bye bye love - Yeah bye bye love - Bye bye love - Good time love - Be sweet sweet dove - Bye bye spaceboy - Bye bye love. -|- ▶ [13 Lyrics] The Motel:
Leon Blank
For we’re living in a safety zone don’t be holding back from me. We’re living from hour to hour down here and we’ll take it when we can. It’s a kind of living which recognises the death of the odourless man. When nothing is vanity nothing’s too slow. It’s not Eden but it’s no sham. There is no hell there is no shame. There is no hell like an old hell. There is no hell and it’s lights up, boys. Lights up boys. Explosion falls upon deaf ears while we’re swimming in a sea of sham. Living in the shadow of vanity - a complex fashion for a simple man. And there is no hell and there is no shame and there is no hell like an old hell. There is no hell and the silence flies on its brief flight. A razor sharp crap shoot affair and we light up our lives. And there’s no more of me exploding you. Re-exposing you. Like everybody do. Re-exploding you. I don’t know what to use. Make somebody move. Me exploding. Me exploding you. -|- ▶ [14 Lyrics] I Have Not Been to Oxford Town: Leon Blank
Baby Grace is the victim, she was 14 years of age. And the wheels are turning, turning, for the finger points at me. All's well but I have not been to Oxford Town - all’s well no I have not been to Oxford Town. Toll the bell pay the private eye. All’s well - 20th century dies. And the prison priests are decent, my attorney seems sincere. I fear my days are numbered - Lord get me out of here. All’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town - all’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town. This is your shadow on my wall. This is my flesh and blood. This is what I could’ve been. And the wheels are turning and turning, as the 20th century dies. If I had not ripped the fabric, if time had not stood still, if I had not met Ramona, if I’d only paid my bill. All’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town - all’s well but I have not been to Oxford Town. This is my bunk with two sheets, this is my food though foul, this is what I could have been. -|- ▶ [15 Lyrics] No Control: Detective Nathan Adler
Stay away from the future, back away from the light, it’s all deranged - no control. Sit tight in your corner, don’t tell God your plans, it’s all deranged - no control. If I could control tomorrow’s haze, the darkened shore wouldn’t bother me. If I can’t control the web we weave, my life will be lost in the fallen leaves. Every single move’s uncertain, don’t tell God your plans, it’s all deranged - no control. I should live my life on bended knee if I can’t control my destiny. You’ve gotta have a scheme, you’ve gotta have a plan, in the world of today, for tomorrow’s man. No control. Stay away from the future, don’t tell God your plans, it’s all deranged - no control. Forbidden words, deafen me in memory - no control. See how far a sinful man burns his tracks, his bloody robes. -|- ▶ [16 Lyrics] (Segue) Algeria Touchshriek: Algeria Touchshriek
My name is Mr. Touchshriek, of Touchshriek, with mail over and fantasy. My shop sells egg shells off the shesores and empty females. I’m thinking of leasing the room above my shop to a Mr. Walloff Domburg - a reject from the world wide Internet. He’s a broken man; I’m also a broken man. It would be nice to have company. We could have great conversations. Looking through windows for demons, and watching the young advance in - all electric. Some of the houses around here still have inhabitants in them. I’m not sure if they’re from this country or not. I don’t get to speak much to anyone or that sort of thing. If I had another broken name - oh, I dream of something like that. -|- ▶ [17 Lyrics] The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (as Beauty): Artist / Minotaur
I shake - at the mother’s brutal vermin. I shake - and stare at the watery moon. With the same desire, as the sober Philistine. And I shake (turn and turn again) worm, the pain and blade - turn and turn again. The screw is a tightening atrocity - I shake. For the reeking flesh is as romantic as hell. The need to have seen it all: the voyeur of utter destruction - as beauty. I shake - turn and turn again - I shake - turn and turn again - I shake. Research has pierced all extremes of my sex. Call it a day - call it a day. Needle point life blinds the will to be next - call it a day. Today. -|- ▶ [18 Lyrics] (Segue) Ramona A. Stone / I Am With Name: Ramona A. Stone + her Acolytes
I was Ramona A. Stone. I started with no enemies of my own. I was an artiste in a tunnel. But I’ve been having a mid-life crisis, and I’ve been dreaming in a sleep. And ape men with metal parts, I’ve spat upon deeply felt age. I’ve hid my hearts in, and I hate the funny colored english. We’ll creep together you and I, for I know who the small friends are. I am with name, I am with name, I am Ramona A Stone. A night fear female. Good timing drone. I am with name, I am with name, I am Ramona A Stone. (She should say: twitch & stream - it’ll end in chrome - night of the female - good time drone.) A person who loses a name, feels anxiety descending. Left at the crossroads, between the centuries - a millenium fetish. (Give it to me one more time!) Anxiety descending. -|- ▶ [19 Lyrics] Wishful Beginnings: Artist / Minotaur
Cruising around me - the flames burn my body. Wishful beginnings - does this remind them again and again? You’re a sorry little girl. You’re a sorry little girl. Please hide - for the pain must feel like snow. You’re a sorry little girl. Sorry, little girl. Please hide from the kiss and the bite - shame burns. Breathing in, breathing out. Breathing in only doubt - the pain must feel like snow. I’m no longer your golden boy. Sorry little girl, I’m sorry little girl. The pain must feel like snow, there you go. Cover me, cover me. We flew on the wings. We were deep in the dead air, and this one will never go down. We had such wishful beginnings, but we lived unbearable lives. I’m sorry little girl. Sorry, little girl. So so sorry little girl. The pain must feel like snow. There you go, there you go. -|- ▶ [20 Lyrics] We Prick You: Members of the Court of Justice
White boys falling on the fires of night
(I wish you’d tell). Flesh punks burning in their glue. Revolution comes in the strangest way (I wish you’d tell). I’d rather be inside you. Tell the truth - we prick you. (You show respect even if you disagree - you show respect.) Mama can I kiss you daddy can I ***you (We wish you well). Innocence passed me by. Wanna be screwing when the nightmare comes (I wish you well). Wanna come quick and die. All the little rose-kissed foxy girls - shoes, shoes, little white shoes; where have all the flowers gone? All the little fragile champion boys - toys, toys, little black toys; dripping on the end of a gun (Even if you disagree).
-|- ▶ [21 Lyrics] (Segue) Nathan Adler: Detective Nathan Adler
Old Touchschriek was the main nameserver. Suspected of being a shoulder surfer, but he didn’t know from shit about challenge response systems. Now Ramona A Stone we know was selling interest drugs. She got males all hung up on her mind filters. She was if you don't mind me saying so an update demon. Now Leon, he couldn’t wait for 12 o’clock midnight. He jumps up on the stage with a criss criss machete and slashes around cutting a zero on everything. I mean a zero - in the fabric of time itself. Was this a suspect? I says to myself - Woa! “Quelle courage!” - Oh wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me take you back to when it all began– -|- ▶ [22 Lyrics] I’m Deranged: Artist / Minotaur
Funny how secrets travel, I’d start to believe - if I were to bleed. Thin skies, the man chains his hands held high. Cruise me blond cruise me babe. A blond belief beyond beyond beyond. No return no return. I’m deranged. Deranged, my love. I’m deranged down down down. So cruise me babe cruise me baby. And the rain sets in, it’s the angel-man - I’m deranged. Cruise me cruise me cruise me babe. The clutch of life and the fist of love - over your head - big deal Salaam. Be real deranged Salaam, before we reel. I’m deranged. -|- ▶ [23 Lyrics] Thru These Architect’s Eyes: Leon Blank
Stomping along on this big Phillip Johnson, is delay just wasting my time? Looking across at Richard Rogers, scheming dreams to blow both their minds. It’s difficult you see, to give up baby, to leave a job, when you know you know the money’s from day to day. All the majesty of a city landscape. All the soaring days in our lives. All the concrete dreams in my mind’s eye. All the joy I see thru these architect’s eyes. Cold winter bleeds on the girders of Babel. This stone boy watching the crawling land. Rings of flesh and the towers of iron. The steaming caves and the rocks and the sand. Stomping along on this big Phillip Johnson, is delay just wasting my time? It’s difficult you see to give up baby, these summer scumholes, this goddamned starving life. -|- ▶ [24 Lyrics] (Segue) Nathan Adler: Detective Nathan Adler ▶ [25 Lyrics] Strangers When We Meet: Leon Blank
All our friends now seem so thin and frail. Slinky secrets - hotter than the sun. No peachy prayers, no trendy rechauffé. I’m with you, so I can’t go on. All my violence raining tears upon the sheet. I’m bewildered for we’re strangers when we meet. Blank screen TV, preening ourselves in the snow. Forget my name, but I’m over you. Blended sunrise, and it’s a dying world. Humming Rheingold, we scavenge up our clothes. All my violence raining tears upon the sheet. I’m resentful for we’re strangers when we meet. Cold tired fingers, tapping out your memories. Halfway sadness, dazzled by the new. Your embrace was all that I feared. That whirling room, we trade by vendue. Steely resolve is falling from me. My poor soul, all bruised passivity. All your regrets ride rough-shod over me. I’m so glad that we’re strangers when we meet. I’m so thankful that we’re strangers when we meet. I’m in clover for we’re strangers when we meet. Heel head over, but we’re strangers when we meet. -|- ▶ [26 Credits]
Based on reports from, among others,
Nick DeRiso,
David Fricke, Kev Geoghegan, Paul Gorman, Edna Gundersen, Larry Katz, Peter–R. Koenig, George A. Paul, Chris Roberts, Emma Saunders, Steele Savage,. And Internet searches, thank yous to:
bowiesongs; The National; Jason Lundberg; One Half of the Bowlettes; lo-fi noise makers; wn; john b; Mauro B. C.; sonyakossta; Timetakesafag; SenseOfDoubt1; bowiechick; Beco2103; theMusicofmyLife1; BOWIElover; Jorge Gago Lopez; Matt Chamberlain; joymarr; KyOdar; BlueM2012; Halloweenjack84; Anna Dennis; david bowie tin machine.
▶ [28] The Diary of Nathan Adler
aka THE ART-RITUAL MURDER OF BABY GRACE BLUE A
non-linear
Gothic
Drama
Hyper-cycle
|-¶-|It was at precisely 5:47am on the morning of Friday 31 of December 1999 that a dark spirited pluralist began the dissection of 14-year-old “Baby Grace.”
The arms of the victim were pin-cushioned w/ 16 hypodermic needles, pumping in four major preservatives, colouring agents, memory information transport fluids and some kind of green stuff. From the last and 17th, all blood and liquid was extracted. The stomach area was carefully flapped open and the intestines removed, disentangled and re-knitted as it were, into a small net or web and hung btw. the pillars of the murder-location, the grand damp doorway of Oxford Town Museum of Modern Parts, New Jersey. |-¶-| The limbs of Baby were then severed from the torso. Each limb was implanted w/ a small, highly sophisticated, binary-code translator which in turn was connected to small speakers attached to far ends of each limb. The self-contained mini amplifiers were then activated, amplifying the decoded memory info-transport substances, revealing themselves as little clue haikus, small verses detailing memories of other brutal acts, well documented by the ROMbloids. |-¶-|
The limbs and their components were then hung upon the splayed web, slug-like prey of some unimaginable creature. The torso, by means of its bottom-most orifice, had been placed on a small support fastened to a marble base. It was shown to varying degrees of success depending upon where one stood from behind the web but in front of the museum door itself, acting as both signifier and guardian to the act. It was definitely murder – but was it art?|-¶-|All this was to be the lead-up to the most provocative event in the whole sequence of serial-events that had started around November of tha same year, plunging me into the most portentous chaos-abyss that a quiet lone-hacker like myself could comprehend.
|-¶-|My name is NATHAN ADLER, or Detective Professor Adler in my circuit. I’m attached to the division of Art-Crime Inc., the recently instigated corporation funded by an endowment from the Arts Protectorate of London, it being felt that the investigation of art-crimes was in itself inseparable from other forms of expression and therefore worthy of support from this significant body. |-¶-| Nicolas Serota himself had deemed us, the small-fry of the division, worthy of an exhibit at last year’s Biennale in Venice, three rooms of evidence and comparative study work which conclusively proved that the cow in Mark Tansey’s “The Innocent Eye Test” could not differentiate btw. Paulus Potter’s “The Young Bull” of 1647 (exactly 300 years before I was born, incidentally) and one of Monet’s grain stack paintings of the 1890s. The traditional art press deemed this extrapolation “bullshit” and removed itself to study the more formal ideas contained in Damien Hirst’s “Sheep In a Box.” Art’s a farmyard. It’s my job to pick thru the manure heap looking for peppercorns.
Friday - 12-31-99 – 10:15a|-¶-| As in any crime, my first position is to peruse the motive-gag. The recent spate, thru ’98-’99, of concept-muggings pretty much had me pulling breath for an art-murder. It was a crime whose time was now. The precedents were all there. It had probably its beginnings in the ’70s w/ the Viennese castrationists and the blood-rituals of Nitsch. Public revultion put the lid on that episode, but you can’t keep a good ghoul down. |-¶-|Spurred on by Chris Burden’s having himself shot by his collaborator in a gallery, tied up in a bag, thrown on a highway and then crucified upon the top of a Volkswage, stories circulated thru the nasty-neon of NY night that a young Korean artist was the self-declared patient of wee-hours surgery in cut and run operations at not-so-secret locations in the city. If you found out about it, you could go and watch this guy having bits and pieces removed under anaesthetic.|-¶-| A finger-joint one night, a limb another. By the dawning of the ’80s, rumour had it that he was down to a torso and one arm. He’d asked to be left in a cave in the Catskills, fed every so often by his acolytes. He didn’t do much after that, I guess he read a lot. Maybe wrote a whole bunch. I suppose you can never tell what an artist will do once he’s peaked. |-¶-| Round this same time, Bowie the singer remarked on a coupla goons who frequented the Berlin bars wearing full surgery regalia: caps, aprons, rubber gloves and masks. The cutting edge. |-¶-| Then came Damien Hirst w/ the Shark-Cow-Sheep thing. No humans, palatable ritual for the worldwide public. The acceptable face of gore. Meanwhile in the US, 1994, I was in town on the night of the Athey scarifications.
Thursday - 10.27.94 – 122 E. Village, Manhattan|-¶-| Ron Athey, performance artist not for the squeamish - former heroin addict-HIV positive, pushes what looks like a knitting needle repeatedly into his forehead, a crown of blood, must hurt like hell. Stream red dribble-dribble. No screams. Face moves in pain. Carried upstage and scrubbed down in his own blood. Then water. Now dresses in nice suit and tie. Now in the black T-shirt and jeans, carving, w/ a disposable salpel, patterns, into the back of Daryl Carlton, a black man. Bloody blotted paper towels then hung on a washing line suspended over the heads of the audience. Blood-prints from life. An extremely limited edition. When it was first performed back in March, “Four Scenes in a Harsh Life” exploded controversy shrapnel through-out the National Endowment for the Arts. “We have taken every precaution w/ our disposal systems,” An Athey spokes-person said. “The towels containing the blood are immediately deposited in hazardous-waste bags. Each evening, the material will be driven to a hospital for final disposal.” Athey says he is dealing w/ issues of self-loathing, suffering, healing and redemption.
Friday – 12-31-99 – 10:30a – Museum of Modern Parts|-¶-| I’m drinking up the Oxford Town. New Jersey fume. Salty and acid. Maybe I can get a handle on this thing back in Soho at the bureau. It used to be Rothko’s studio, now the playground for all us Art-Crime folk, AC’s or “the daubers” as we’re dubbed. Rothko himself, in a deep-dark-drunk one night, carefully removed his clothes, folded them up neatly, placing them upon a chair, lay upon the floor in a crucified position and after several attempts, found the soft blue pump of his wrists and checked out He’d held the razor blades btw. wads of tissue paper so that he wouldn’t cut his fingers. Deep thinker. Always was.
11:00am - “Dauber” HQ, Soho|-¶-| The only names the Data bank can associate w/ Baby Grace are Leon Blank, Ramona A. Stone and Algeria Touchshriek. The rundowns are brief but not to the point:
|-¶-| RAMONA A. STONE: Female. Caucasian. Mid-40s. Assertive maintenance interest-drug dealer and Tyrannical Futurist. No convictions. Contacts: Leon Blank, Baby Grace Blue, Algeria Touchshriek.
|-¶-| LEON BLANK: Male. Mixed race. 22 years. Outsider. Three convictions for petty theft, appropriation w/ plagiarism w/out license. Contacts: Baby Grace Blue, Algeria Touchshriek.
|-¶-| ALGERIA TOUCHSHRIEK : Male. Caucasian. 78 years. Owner of small establishment on Rail Yard. Oxford Town, NJ. Deals in art-drugs and DNA prints. Fence for all apparitions of any medium. Harmless, lonely.
|-¶-| Small cog, no wheels. Not much to go on but R.A. Stone weighs heavy on my memory. No problem, it’ll come back. Best thing to do now is feed all relevant pieces into the Mack-Verbasiser, the Metarandom programme that re-strings real life facts as im-probable virtual-fact. I may get a lead or two from that. ... 11:15a|-¶-| Jesus Who. I hate typing. Anyhow, we’ve got some real interesting solvents from Mack-random. How about this! Verbasiser down-load, first block:
No convictions of assertive saints believed Caucasian way-out tyrannical evoked no images described – Christian saints questions no female cristian machine believed no work is caucasian assertive saints believed female described christian tyrannical questions – R. A. Stone convictions martyrs and tyrannicals are evoked Female described sado-masochist questions – I am suicide described the fabric machine – Slashing way out saints and martyrs and thrown downstairs.
|-¶-| Now the swirl begins. Now the image stack backs up and takes center stage. Ramona A. Stone, I remember this thickness, this treacly liquid thought. But wait, I’m ahead of myself. 6-15-77 – Kreutzburg, Berlin|-¶-| It’s two in the morning. I can’t sleep for the screaming of some poor ostracised Turkish immigrant screaming his guts out from over the street. His hawking shriek sounds semi-stifled like he’s got a pillow over his mouth. But the desperation comes through the spongy rubber like a knife. It cuts the breeze and bangs my eardrums. I take a walk past the fabric machine, turn left onto a street w/ no name. The caucasian suicide center, naked and grimy, silhouetted by fungus yellow street lamps female slashing way-out saints for a dollar a time thrown downstairs if you can’t take any more. Pure joy of retreat into death, led by the shepherdess. Anti mixed-race posters pasted upon their altar of pop-death icons party people.
|-¶-| A zero w/ no name looks dull-eyed to Ms. Stone, the drone that says “in the future, everything was up to itself.” Yea.|-¶-| I remember Ramona. She set herself up as the no-future priestess of the Caucasian Suicide Temple, vomiting out her doctrine of death-as-eternal-party into the empty vessels of Berlin youth. The top floor rooms were the gateways to giving up to the holy ghost. She must have overseen more than 30 or 40 check-outs before the local squad twigged what was going down.
10-28-94|-¶-|New Yorker magazine, advance copy celebrating fashion. It’s a first of its kind since Tina Brown took over as editor. One look is all it took. It took the look and wrote a new book on what sophi-staplites would take and bake. Guy Bourdin featured heavily in this new eDISHion. Since the advent of AIDS and the new morality, and, of course his death, his dark sexy fatal style had fallen out of Vogue.
|-¶-| An uncompromising photographer, he had found a twisty avenue through desire and death. A white female leg sticking gloomily out of a bath of black liquid enamel. Two glued up babes covered in tiny pearls. The glue prevented their skins from breathing and they pass out. “Oh it would be beautiful,” he is to have said, “to photograph them dead in bed.”
|-¶-|He was a French Guy. He had known Man Ray. Loved Lewis Carroll. His first gig was doing hats for Vogue. He’d place dead flies or bees on the faces of the models, or, female head wears hat crushed btw. three skinned calves heads, tongues lolling. What was this? Fine Arts? The surrealists might even think his work passé. Well, it was the ’50s, that's what it was. The tight-collar ’50s seen through unspeakable hostility. He wanted but he couldn’t paint. So he threw globs of revengeful hatred at his nubile subjects. He would systematically pull the phone cord out of the wall. He was never to be distrubed. Distrubed. Never. Everything and everyone died round him. |-¶-| One shoot focusing upon a woman lying in bed was said to be a reconstruction of his estranged wife’s death. Another picture has woman in a phone booth making some frantic call. Her hand is pressed whitely against the glass. Behind her and outside are two female bodies partially covered by the autumn leaves. His dream, so he told friends, was to do shoots in the morgue, w/ the stiffs as mannequins. I don’t know. I just read this stuff. Now his spirit was being resurrected. We’re mystified by blood. It’s our enemy now. We don’t understand it. Can’t live w/ it. Can’t, well ... y’know?
Friday - 12-31-99 - 11:30a|-¶-|After surgery and investment in a bullet-proof mask, Ramona turned up in London, Canada as owner of a string of body-parts jewellery stores. Lamb penis necklaces, goat-scrotum purses, nipple earrings, that sort of thing. The word on the street, however, suggested that it was not in the best of interests to become one of her clients as occassionally, a customer would step into her shop and not come out again.
|-¶-| The whistle blew after a much-loved and highly respected celebrity, known for being known, failed to show for a gallery-hanging of her mirrors. Other celebrities, equally known for being known, some only to each other, thought it the most profound exhibit in years and couldn’t take their eyes off the works. All the pieces sold within an hour, many for record prices. |-¶-| When the critic for Tate magazine asked for an interview w/ the celebrity-artist, the gallery owner recalled that he hadn't seen her since earlier that day. She’d mentioned that she would be going shopping for a diamond-encrusted unbilical cord as a celebratory thing to announce her pregnancy. She would be back in an hour. Just a quick stop at the “Gallstone.” |-¶-|1986. That pregnancy would have been produced a being that would be around 14 years of age. If it was still alive.
|-¶-| To be continued...
-|- Also,
The Annotated Diary of Nathan Adler
•❚-❚-❚•
IRIS was hosting a small party when Hera sent word to deliver a message to Hypnos. HARPALYKE innocently proposed that the rainbow goddess bring everyone with; this proved fateful for the birthday girl, who came back as a night bird. AUTONOE (daughter to Harmonia), pleiade TAYGETE and maze-whiz ARIADNE all said “what a great idea”. Dark-winged UMBRIEL thrummed and gave Iris, his companion since 1851, one of his gnomic looks.
•❚-❚-❚•
The house of Hypnos is a permanent structure made of shadow-matter, in a pocket of Erebus which cannot be discerned.
Round the corner from an implied valley is a wide-open entranceway, leading to a vast room. The god of sleep reclines in the center, on a pedestal of black ebony brimming w/ black-plumes on the rim, the whole festooned in sheer black-velvet veils descending from the mile-high ceiling. Strewn everywhere are slumbering shapes.
•❚-❚-❚•
Her rainbow robe shimmers as the daughter to Ge and Pontos nimbles over sleeping dreams, stirring them to obligingly roll to make a path for her party. The sister to the harpies leans in and whispers into Hypnos’ ear: “Tranquilizer of minds, soother of care-worn hearts, gentlest of gods,” etc.
•❚-❚-❚•
Mission accomplished, the group departs hastily, but not before the episode where Harpalyke paid the fare.
❧ Astronomer William Herschel spots fairy royalty through his telescope and tries to catch them all w/ his butterfly-net, TITANIA and OBERON, Queen MAB, others.
“Finish the Fight!” 
Super Moon over Perth.
Yagan Square is a new area built to honor the Aboriginal beginnings of Perth.
