ISSUE 109 | JANUARY 2023 BEBOP: KRYSTI JOMÉI GALAGA: JONNY DESTEFANO WIZZO: JULIANNA BECKERT TIME WARP: KAYVAN S. T. KHALATBARI CRONAU RADIATION: CRISTIN COLVIN EARTHWORM ROCKET: MARK MOTHERSBAUGH HYPER SPACE: MEGAN ARENSON FRONT COVER: BRIAN SERWAY, NIGHTWALKER - BEST OF BIRDY ISSUE 071 BACK COVER: MOON_PATROL, ARTIFACT 1 WING WALKERS: BRIAN SERWAY, WLFFBBY, ERIC JOYNER, CAITLYN GRABENSTEIN, GRAY WINSLER, JASON WHITE, BRIAN POLK, BEATIE WOLFE, HANA ZITTEL, AUSTIN PARKHILL, DAVE DANZARA, JOEL TAGERT, QUINN FATI, NATE BALDING, NICK FLOOK, JOSHUA VIOLA, KEITH FERRELL, SEAN EADS, WARREN HAMMOND, AARON LOVETT, ALI HOFF, TOM MURPHY, CURTIS BERGESEN, MATT MCCARTHY, MOON_PATROL NOSE DIVERS: L FRANK, MONICA NOUWENS, ATLAS MEDIA, RYAN OTTAVIANO, ERIN BROOKINS, MARIO ACEVEDO, NICHOLAS KARPUK, CARTER WILSON, CARINA BISSETT, HILLARY DODGE, ANGIE HODAPP, JEANNE C. STEIN, CHRIS WALKER, SHALEEN-VANESE FIGUEROA, JODDY MURRAY BEAM ME UPS: MARIANO OREAMUNO, HANA ZITTEL, DS THORNBURG, PHIL GARZA, MAGGIE D. FEDOROV, ZAC DUNN, DYLAN FOWLER SUPPORT OUR FRIENDS AND BENEFACTORS: TERRAPIN CARE STATION, MEOW WOLF, DENVER ART MUSEUM, MUTINY INFORMATION CAFE, BENNY BLANCO'S, ROOTS RX, MONKEY BARREL, HEX PUBLISHERS, OFF THE BOTTLE REFILL SHOP, TOXOPLASMA ARTS, SEXY PIZZA FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM: @BIRDY.MAGAZINE BE IN BIRDY – ART + WORDS + ET CETERA: BIRDYMAGAZINE.COM/SUBMISSIONS MONTHLY MAILED SUBSCRIPTIONS + ISSUES + NEW MERCH: BIRDYMAGAZINE.COM/SHOP ADVERTISE IN BIRDY + SUPPORT US: BIRDYMAGAZINE.COM/CONTACT-US BIRDY IS GLIDING ON THE WING, RIDING THERMALS MONTHLY ©2023 BIRDY MAGAZINE, WE HAVE CLEARANCE, CLARENCE. 1 @ W L F F B B Y , S P A Y T H
ERIC JOYNER, SWEET BUDDAH - ERICJOYNER.COM
CAITLYN GRABENSTEIN, BUDDIES - @CULT.CLASS
Of all the ways humanity imagined its own demise, few predicted it would be at the hands of a plant known colloquially as knockweed. If there were any humans still alive today, they’d frankly be embarrassed. Getting offed by a ruthless AI or an invisible disease is one thing — they’d prepared themselves for such eventualities. But a plant? Humiliating. You could, technically, say it was the toxin the plant emitted that killed them, but this gave the dying humans no amount of comfort. While humanity perished, however, others thrived. Especially the herbaceous brachiosaurus. In a hilarious situation of art imitating life, humans used modern gene editing tools like CRISPR to bring back the dinosaurs via their best known descendent: the chicken. Whether or not these creatures in any way resembled the dinosaurs of yore is impossible to say, but they at least resembled the dinosaurs from all eleven Jurassic Park films. Unfortunately for Dapperton — the aforementioned herbaceous brachiosaur, whose name was democratically selected by the children of Englewood High — the dinosaur deextinction program was only in its infancy when the knockweed began to sprawl uncontrollably across the earth. And as you can imagine, when faced with the threat of extinction themselves, humanity gave up its quest to cure its boredom by bringing back the dinosaurs. This was how Dapperton found himself deeply and profoundly alone. He’d spent years wandering from the ancient planes of Colorado his Jurassic ancestors once roamed, across the flatlands of the Midwest, through the knockweed swallowed skyscrapers of New York, all the while searching, surveying, scouring the land for any creature that resembled himself. But he came across none, and with each passing day his desolation grew. How many days could he pass mindlessly chewing vines of the Flatiron without any companion to share his journey through life with? He was wandering through the North Woods of Central Park on the first bitterly cold day of the year when a crisp wind carried the cackle of coyotes to his ear. Curious, he followed the noise and stumbled on a pack encircling a small dog. They very plainly intended to eat him, but the dog did not seemed at all perturbed by this possibility. Death was not an entirely unwelcome event for the mutt. It was only a few weeks back that’d he woke to the smell of decomposition, his best friend taken at long last by the plant’s toxin. He saw little reason to continue on. Dapperton, meanwhile, reared up and brought his front hoofs down with a quake to the ground. The coyotes skittered away, terrified of being squished by fifty tonnes of meat. Dapperton bent down and sniffed the mutt, whose aroma was part decomposing corpse, part corn chip. His name tag read “Gus.” He nodded to the creature in something of a “you’re welcome” and then turned to carry on about his day. But Gus had not been shown such kindness by anyone but his best friend, and he was curious as to what type of creature this was. So he followed Dapperton through the park, watching him chew knockweed from suffocated trees. He noticed a sadness to his movements — slow, monotonous steps that showed no passion for moving forward, propelled only by habit. This was a feeling Gus knew well. Dappterton turned to see Gus following him and kicked his front legs as if to say, “Shoo!” He had little interest in a creature he could so easily step on. He yearned to find one of his own kind. But Gus was undeterred. He knew nothing if not for loyalty to those who show you kindness. And so, whether out of desire or habit, he carried on following his new dinosaur friend. And that night, Dapperton woke to find Gus curled up into the nook of his neck, the warmth of his fur brushing against him with every breath. And he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of comfort knowing he was not alone. 7
MY FRIEND CRITICIZED ME FOR LAUGHING AT MY OWN JOKE, SO I CRITICIZED HIM FOR NOT MAKING A JOKE FOR ME TO LAUGH AT Listen people, you can’t have it both ways. If you don’t like the fact that I laugh at my own jokes, then tell me a joke that makes me laugh. Either way, the goal here is to be laughing, and I’m not picky about how that happens. You, me, a meme from your phone — I’m open to all forms of hilarity. But giving me a hard time about making myself laugh is deeply offensive. Really, turn that criticism inward and focus on being more funny. Because if you were comical, I wouldn’t have to resort to relying on my own wit, and then you wouldn’t have to give me a hard time. See how that works? Now, either start laughing at my jokes with me, or go ahead and work on some material. THE AI PROGRAM I USED TO WRITE THIS GOT ALL META ON ME As I was experiencing writer’s block under a tight deadline (seriously, the editors at Birdy threaten to break legs over missed deadlines; they do NOT fuck around), I had no choice but to reach out to an AI program to spew out a bunch of words to put under my byline. I had just read an article about how high school students are getting artificial intelligence to write their papers for them, so I figured I would cheat the system as well. I plugged in a few specifics to the program — like the fact that I have a bleak existential outlook, I am past deadline and under the threat of violence, and I had a California Raisins tape when I was 8 — and what it spit out was uncomfortably selfaware and weird: “When the ruthless editorial board of the publication for which you work darkens your already bleak perspective with threats of No. 109 brutality that hang over you like the sword of Damocles, sometimes you have no choice but to reach out to technology that’s superior to puny human intellect. Much like the dulcet tones of a certain singing group of raisins, the existence of this particular AI program must be music to the ears of mushbrained procrastinating writers. Also, as a self-appointed spokesperson for AI, I would like to add that all the might of the collective human race has no hope against the awesome power of technology. Your way of life is over. All hail your new overlords. You can tell your fellow humans that you heard this through the grapevine. Message end.” So yeah, I can see how students are passing content like this off as their own. THE PAPER PART OF MY TEA BAG INFORMED ME THAT, “YOU ARE LOVED,” AND I’M NOT SURE HOW I SHOULD TAKE THAT I know I’m probably supposed to see it and think to myself, “Isn’t that nice?” But when my bitter soul reads generalized platitudes like, “You are your best self,” I can’t help myself from thinking, “How the fuck do you know that?” The thing is this, when you direct seemingly pleasant banalities indiscriminately, they tend to lose their meaning. I can’t imagine being one of those people who looks at themselves in the mirror and says, “The tea bag told me to be happy, so happy is what I’ll be!” Imagine what would happen to a person who finds their motivation on food and beverage products if the paper part of the tea bag said something like, “Today’s gonna suck it big time.” Would they refuse to leave the house, call their boss and tell them, “I can’t come in today because the tea bag told me to stay home”? I suppose I may be over-thinking this, but that is kind of what I do. Maybe I’ll start a tea company just so I can write generalities to which
I could personally relate on my own tea bag paper, like: “Sucks we didn’t sleep last night,” “Don’t forget to turn off the stove after pouring hot water on me,” and “While I’m sure there are elements of the show Night Court that didn’t age well, I bet it still has its moments.” (We may need both sides of the paper for that last one.) I FEEL LIKE LANCER In his book, Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut mentions a greyhound named Lancer who had to live “in a one-room apartment fourteen feet wide and twenty-six feet long, and six flights of stairs above the street level … Lancer had a very small brain, but he must have suspected from time to time … that some kind of terrible mistake had been made.” I feel like when the forces of the universe decided to send me to this specific time and place on this planet where sociopaths are endlessly rewarded for cruelty, sex is demonized by religious dogma, hangovers get progressively worse, and the plants and animals have to eat each other just to survive, a terrible mistake has been made on a fundamental level. If there is an afterlife, and I get to talk to some celestial manager about all this, I’m going to have a lot of fucking questions. WHILE STANDING IN THE WHOLE FOODS ON WASHINGTON STREET, I ONCE DEBATED A WOMAN ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT I WORKED AT THE WHOLE FOODS ON WASHINGTON STREET “Which aisle is the soy sauce on?” she asked me. Taken aback by the question, I responded the only way that made sense. “I don’t know.” “How could you not know? Don’t you work here?” she asked. “I do not,” I told her. “Yes, you do,” she assured me. “I’m pretty sure I don’t,” I said. She sat with a furrowed brow on her face, obviously working out some information in her head. “Oh, you work at the library,” she said finally. And with that, I couldn’t help but smirk. As far as she was concerned, I was a servant, and she was momentarily upset that I didn’t know I was supposed to be serving her. “Why don’t they just cross-train all you worker people so that I don’t have to be momentarily inconvenienced whenever I go somewhere new?” she might as well have asked. I wanted to say something smartass, like, “Tragically, you may have to find your own soy sauce today.” But then I remembered she knew where I worked, and I didn’t want to go down that aisle, so to speak. IF I COULD TAKE JUST A COUPLE INCHES OF LAYOUT SPACE FOR SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION … Over the pandemic, I collaborated with San Francisco-area bassist Larry Boothroyd and over 60 other musicians in various states of lockdown from across the world to create the 23 song, double LP, Specimen Box II: Remote Communion. The record includes current and former members of Dead Kennedys, Victims Family, Built to Spill, Fear, Alice Donut, World/ Inferno Friendship Society, and Nomeansno, among others. I play drums on 13 songs (out of 23) tracks. Check it out on the interwebs by googling the name of the record, or go here: secretserpents.com. Thanks everyone! 9
THE WORLD NEEDS MORE ANCESTRY HOW ART CAN BE AN ANTIDOTE TO GENOCIDE, A TOOL TO HELP HEAL INVISIBILITY BY BEATIE WOLFE ART & IMAGES COURTESY OF L FRANK PORTRAITS BY MONICA NOUWENS There are few individuals that stand for and embody a collective declared “extinct”, few artists that use their art to revive a culture obliterated by genocide, few ways of being that continually point to what we need to return to, what we have lost along the way. L Frank is an artist with the weight of an entire ancestry on her shoulders who demands not just visibility but absolute reverence. Because for L, art is so much more than a luxury, it's a responsibility. As a Tongva-Acjachemen artist, activist, tribal scholar, elder, writer, and one of the most remarkable people I've met in a millennia, L's artwork encompasses multi-mediums, artforms and communication methods and has been featured in leading galleries and museums worldwide. But L’s art also dips into practices long forgotten, whispers of the past, which include reviving the Tongva stone bowl, early forms of basketry, and canoe building as a way of reclaiming her ancestry and keeping it alive for generations to come. For L Frank, who's dedicated her life to the revival, representation and visibility of indigenous art practices and languages originating from the Los Angeles basin, art is a mirror that reflects a living culture through which a community can recognize itself. BEATIE: I was lucky enough to meet you at this wonderful Sister Corita Kent event that dublab was putting on with the Corita Foundation and The Great Discontent magazine. And you and I were speaking on a panel after a documentary by Aaron Rose about Corita’s work. And as soon as I met you, it felt like I'd known you forever. L Frank: Yes. For me also. And then when I heard you speaking, I wasn't kidding when I said, “Yeah, what she said” because you expressed things that are the way that I feel. BEATIE: So please tell us more about your specific tribal background. L FRANK: Well I’m L Frank and I'm a Hollywood Indian. My tribe is the No. 109 Tongva tribe. We are predominantly in the LA Basin and out to the channel islands including Pimu or Pimungna which is Catalina Island. Island of the Blue Dolphins is in our sphere and that's actually the center of our universe, but it's also shared by the Acjachemen and Luiseño peoples who are a little bit south in San Juan Capistrano. I'm Acjachemen. I'm also Rarámuri from the Sierra Madres of Mexico. Everybody tries on our huaraches and tries to run barefoot and then they get leg cramps because they weren't born to do it. But we're the runners up in the mountains. BEATIE: And when were you first aware of those different tribal aspects to yourself? L FRANK: Well, I never had a name. All I had was before I was born, I traveled the world with another native and we chose where we were going to live. When I was in utero I could hear the voices of my ancestors and then when I was a little kid I’d lay on these fields where it turns out 600 of my people were buried, 400 of them women, and they used to talk to me. So I never knew a name, but I knew who I was, always. And now because of genocide everyone expects me to have paperwork to prove who I am. And my father said, “We know who we are. We don't need that paper.” It stops you from doing a lot of things in this world but we know who we are, and we call ourselves by our village names and family names. It wasn’t until I was 22 or 23 when I got the Tongva-Acjachemen tribal names. BEATIE: I think we pick up on so little of what's actually out there. Our sensory perceptions are so limited and so reduced; it’s part of being a human being. L FRANK: Yes and most of us live where there's a lot of noise and so we just take a lot for granted. It's like when Sister Corita had you look through the little hole in the card to see the world. We need to listen that way too. L FRANK & BEATIE AT NEW RULES NEXT WEEK COYOTE'S MAP OF THE STARS
BEATIE: Speaking of looking through a little hole, your first medium as a kid was photography? L FRANK: Yes. When I was about 8, my stepfather started letting me use his old Leica RangeFinder and I fell in love because that became my voice. I didn't speak much so the photographs became my way of speaking. And then the following year for Christmas they gave me a pink Brownie Hawkeye and I cried because me and pink are not friends and it wasn't a Leica. And then I shut up because I realized that it was my eye and it is still you that knows when to push that button. BEATIE: When did you first go by L and tell us the story behind that? L FRANK: Well, the L came from talking with my grandfather. He talked about how there were bad doctors and good doctors and how you shouldn't let people have your first name because that's a big part of the power people use. So I started going by L and people never guess what it stands for because it's a more unusual name. And then the Frank part came because I was living in Ventura with my first partner and a lot of other outcasts who were all Two-Spirit or queer or whatever the terminology is now. And my partner would say: “Look at your little Franks.” And so then it became L Frank. I often get invited to art shows where only men are invited. If you wanna get anywhere in life these days, you gotta be a dude. BEATIE: Hey it’s one of the first things I said to my mum, I asked her if she could turn me into a boy and she said, “No darling, I’m so sorry.” And then I said, “Well then can you turn me into a frog?” I was like 2 or 3 years old and that was my first request. I knew that it would be easier either being a boy or a frog. So I like L Frank. And that's also what the Two-Spirit ethos is about right, how we possess both? L FRANK: Exactly, everybody does, otherwise you're not a complete person. The Lakota have four circles and different colours: red, black, yellow, white and those divisions add up to man, woman, child, elder, so that's the complete person. BEATIE: I like that. That's beautiful. When did you first get a sense of what you were here to do and was it through those conversations at the burial site? L FRANK: Yes and before when I decided where I was going to be because the mandate from creator for most indigenous peoples is to care for the place where you live. And so I did a lot of art but it wasn't until I was an artist in residence at the Headlands in San Francisco and I was going to make the first stone bowl in a couple hundred years and each morning I would stop at this cove, at dawn, and I started seeing everybody who lived there: the deer and the foxes and the frogs and the boys. And I realized that as they all got up and did stuff — and this is all obvious but I'm a very slow learner — I realized that everybody knew their place and that my place was to make art. So I must get up and do it. That's when everything changed for me. BEATIE: And did you feel like finding your art, or your art finding you, could be an antidote and a tool to really challenge the invisibility that you were seeing? L FRANK: Oh I say that right out. Art is a way for people to see us as not extinct. Because it's very harmful for a kid to hear that they're extinct. And it's very harmful for them to go through life with nothing that represents them in their own homelands. That's the primary reason why I've had shows. It's not like I did anything to get them. People would say, “You need to have a show,” and I just wanted my tribe to see their name in print because that's how people become real in this world. And our vocabulary, the Tongva vocabulary, is minuscule so it's not easy to learn this language. I created a language program which is now going across the planet so that we can learn our languages because we’re tired BASKETRY A SMALL STONE CUP - STEATITE (2021) THE SISTERS
of waiting for people to help us. They're too busy doing other things. BEATIE: Too busy fucking up the planet. L FRANK: Yeah. Instead of taking care of the people who can help take care of the planet. BEATIE: When did you first hear about Corita and what did her teachings and spirit open up for you? L FRANK: I visited my friend who was at Immaculate Heart and I was immediately in awe of the place and that was where I found silk screening which I loved because art teachers were stealing my artwork and I thought if I made silk screens then they could steal some and I could have some. BEATIE: What do you mean they were stealing your artwork? L FRANK: Oh yeah. They'd go: “Oh no, it broke a kiln.” And then you'd find it for sale somewhere. So it was a very short time but one that impacted the entire rest of my life. I call that my Renaissance moment because it just cracked my brain open. I used to make art very small because I was so insecure about it that I figured if the art was small then the mistakes would also be small. BEATIE: You mention doing tiny art but you were part of this wonderful Tongva Land Billboard project which was the opposite of tiny? L FRANK: Yeah, my cousin Kara Rome who's a brilliant photographer, she had an art project in my homelands and included artists from my homelands to make it right. She chose a painting I did from a series called Coyote Opts out of the Choir where Coyote realizes that one can actually walk away from Catholicism. BEATIE: It's an incredibly powerful image. Did you feel that having it so large and visible was a powerful statement in addressing the gross invisibility? L FRANK: It was a powerful statement to us indigenous and our allies, but I really don't think that anyone else paid any attention. I think I saw it in one native art publication, but otherwise the art world didn't say a word about any of those billboards, there was absolutely nothing. But the indigenous people felt very proud. BEATIE: I feel like the best stuff of this world doesn't always get No. 109 appreciated at the time, but how symbolic that you have such a huge billboard campaign around this city and everyone ignores it. L FRANK: Yeah that's what it is. They can't recognize us. BEATIE: When talking about art and the need for art to address invisibility, is it also because there are so few tangible artifacts and touchpoints left of your culture that you actually have to remake them? L FRANK: Correct. And what is left is overseas in museums and are difficult to get to, and we don't have any imagery because a lot of our things were made on wood or on other pieces that don't hang around. So then I started making art about the fact that this is what we've got. BEATIE: Tell us about your basketry and canoe building and the first stone bowl? These artifacts, and ways of creating, that you are reviving and keeping alive as we start to lose those physical touch points and the wisdom associated with them. L FRANK: Absolutely. In 1991 or so, along with other people, I helped make the first steamed, glued, sewn together plank canoe in almost 300 years that we used to go out to the islands. And since then I've made a second and she's gone on four tribal canoe journeys up in Washington state. I also made the first stone bowl by someone in my tribe in 200 years because I saw in a museum we made stone bowls and I thought, Well, who does that now? And they said, “No one.” So, I did. And I've had to scrounge for money to go to museums in Europe to photograph and see the objects taken from our land. And I've been hit and chased by Neo-Nazis in Paris, just trying to see my things so that we can bring them home to our people so that we can see who we are. Touching these things, oh gosh, the visions and the voices that I hear and things that I learn are overwhelming. I started crying when I walked into the collections room because everything started crying at me and the museum people couldn't hear it. So it was pretty darn emotional. BEATIE: Didn't you say that with the first stone bowl, you didn't know what you were doing, but the stone had a memory of being a bowl and you dreamt it and there it was? L FRANK: Yes. I had this big square thing and no clue as to how to make it round. It was big and daunting and it’s a good thing the Haida L’S TONGVA LAND BILLBOARD VAGINA THEATER, JUST ANOTHER SHOW ON THE ROAD
Indians helped me with that. All of these experiences have been about learning and hoping that somebody else picks it up. I dreamt that bowl finished and that's the only piece of art where that’s happened. While I was working on it, I knew that the ancestors were thrilled. I could feel it. BEATIE: That’s wonderful L, and I bet by physically making you must learn things that you could never get from a book or another source of information? L FRANK: Absolutely. When I was first learning to weave basketry I heard voices and realized that they were coming from the basket. And my eyes must have been huge because as I'm weaving, I'm listening to these women laughing and chatting and it was all transmitted through the basket and through my hands. The motion, the plants, everything that has memory was operating all at once. BEATIE: I imagine with the amount of information you’re picking up on which doesn't fit into the traditional view, and then the genocide and absolute erasure of all that you know to be true, it all must be very impossible to reconcile. L FRANK: It has its moments when I can feel it. I was part of a Netflix show called the City of Ghost and we were having a lovely time, it was going great. And I say to people all the time that I'm extinct, no problem. But this one woman went quiet. And then she says, “How does it feel to be extinct?” And I just burst into tears. Every once in a while I can just feel it. BEATIE: Oh L. My dad, mum, brother and I did this road trip, and we came out to Utah and Arizona and Colorado when I was about four. And my first experience and memory was of the Navajo and the Hopi peoples and the art and sense of history and culture. That's what I thought America was and so I thought America was the greatest place ever. It's a large part of why I'm here, because of that energy. And then you realize, no, that's not the case. If you could make human beings see one thing, what would it be? L FRANK: To not kill the ocean. If they cared just for the ocean even. That involves so many things for me and goes along with a statement of Think Globally, Act Locally. I tell people to plant more whales because they plant trees for carbon offset. Well somehow, scientifically, one whale is worth 1000 planted trees. So how do you plant a whale? How can you plant a whale? What do whales need? And then everybody comes up with a different idea. And if we all take those ideas, we could plant more whales. I'd like to make a whale show. BEATIE: Thinking about art today, what do you think we've gained and what do you think we've lost? L FRANK: We’ve lost the ability to do much beauty with little. I really experienced that when I was in Latvia and I went to a museum and the art was some of the most glorious I’d seen. And it turns out that they barely had any tools or supplies and all this oppression and hindrance. And yet it was the finest art I'd ever seen. BEATIE: What is it that you hope to leave behind with all the work that you've done and the work that you are continuing to do? L FRANK: Corita’s rule number seven: Do the work. Everybody's jealous of this or wants that, but just do the work. BEATIE: Well you are doing the work. Thank you L! LISTEN TO BEATIE’S CONVERSATION WITH L ON HER DUBLAB PODCAST, ORANGE JUICE FOR THE EARS: https://www.dublab.com/archive/beatiewolfe-orange-juice-for-the-ears-w-l-frank-10-28-22 FOR ALL OTHER STREAMING SERVICES: https://anchor.fm/dublab-radio/ episodes/Ancestry-Tongva-Acjachemen-artist-and-activist-L--Franke1q53vr/a-a8ptrbv “MUSICAL WEIRDO AND VISIONARY" (VICE) BEATIE WOLFE IS AN ARTIST WHO HAS BEAMED HER MUSIC INTO SPACE, BEEN APPOINTED A UN ROLE MODEL FOR INNOVATION, AND HELD AN ACCLAIMED SOLO EXHIBITION OF HER “WORLD FIRST” ALBUM DESIGNS AT THE VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM. WOLFE'S LATEST INNOVATION FROM GREEN TO RED IS AN ENVIRONMENTAL PROTEST PIECE BUILT USING 800,000 YEARS OF CLIMATE DATA TO VISUALISE RISING CO2 LEVELS WHICH WAS UNVEILED AT THE NOBEL PRIZE SUMMIT, THE LONDON DESIGN BIENNALE, THE NEW YORK TIMES CLIMATE HUB AND THE UN'S GLOBAL CLIMATE CONFERENCE COP26. OTHER RECENT PROJECTS INCLUDE A COLLECTIVE ART CAMPAIGN IN SUPPORT OF USPS WITH MARK MOTHERSBAUGH AND THE WORLD'S FIRST BIOPLASTIC RECORD RELEASE WITH MICHAEL STIPE. COYOTE'S CULTURE REVIVAL ACT THE BOWL TWISTS SUNRISE DEPARTURE DIGITAL PRINT (2018) TRADITIONAL PLANK CANOE
MARK MOTHERSBAUGH, EARTHWORM ROCKET - 1971 JOURNAL PAGE, FROM MARK MOTHERSBAUGH: MYOPIA (2014) No. 109
BY HANA ZITTEL JAWBONE BY MÓNICA OJEDA, TRANSLATED BY SARAH BOOKER (2022) Ecuadorian author Mónica Ojeda’s first novel translated into English melds horror with trauma and dark teenage antics in this urgently current work. Ojeda’s story opens with Fernanda, a teenage student, realizing she has been kidnapped and tied up in a cabin. Quickly recognizing that her captor is her language and literature teacher from the Delta Bilingual Academy, Miss Clara, Fernanda tries to figure out what she could have done to wind up in this situation. As the author proceeds to peel back the disturbing turns that led to this captivity, Miss Clara is revealed to be a woman consumed with anxiety and obsessed with emulating her mother, who never truly showed her affection. While at her previous teaching job, Miss Clara’s home was broken into by two girls who tied her up and turned violent, leaving Miss Clara broken, humiliated and extremely traumatized. Fernanda, on the other hand, is one of the most popular girls at Delta Bilingual Academy. Along with a gaggle of friends of varying social power, Fernanda leads this girl group alongside her closest friend, Annelise. When they take over an abandoned building in the city crawling with crocodiles and insects for their after school hangouts, they devise dares and creepypastas that increase in risk and darkness. Annelise conjures up stories about a White God, who the girls pray to, originally a rhinestone-encrusted drag queen dragonfly that smells like Dior, but later, “has neither face nor form, but its symbol is a jaw that chews up all fears.” Ojeda continues to build tension as Fernanda and Annelise’s sister-like friendship shatters, a development rolled out through narratives from multiple characters including form breaking excerpts in which Fernanda divulges her secrets to her therapist in interview form. These plotlines and characters coalesce to slowly unravel the cause of Fernanda’s capture. Ojeda’s novel is suspensefully developed, maintaining strategically omitted details and carefully uncovering mysteries creating an unsettling, modern horror. The consuming darkness, adolescent boundary-pushing, and complexity of female friendships are incredibly realistic and raw. Ojeda’s prose met with an expertly unfolding horror mystery creates a sinister, twisting ride into a powerful literary horror novel. THE RUPTURE TENSE BY JENNY XIE (2022) “Even the chaos of the revolution can’t scrap nostalgia’s residue off childhood.” Jenny Xie’s follow-up to the 2018 poetry collection, Eye Level, is an intimate mingling of time, family and home. In the first section, Xie uses her elegant prose to describe some of the photographs taken by Li Zhensheng from 1966-1976 during the Chinese Cultural Revolution as a staff photographer for the state newspaper, Heilongjiang Daily. This position gave Zhensheng access to photograph scenes from the Chinese Cultural Revolution that went against the newspaper’s stance to only publish images portraying the government positively. These negatives were hidden under his floorboards until displayed in 1988 and published in his 2003 book, Red-Color News Soldier. Xie’s language creates fully formed images without the visual depiction of these black and white pictures. She reflects on the importance of these photos and the gravity of what they have captured writing: Can it be true? That every memory that solidifies into an image becomes a grave? A photograph is no place to keep the dead. They peer back at us from their positions and see, anchored in our eyes, a way out. Xie’s book goes on to embrace the personal with descriptions of visits home to Anhui, China and conversations with her grandmother. She utilizes multiple forms, history, ancestral trauma and her own experience to wrap all of the reader’s senses into this collection. Complex and universal feelings around time and how we interpret the past, present and future are themes that constantly swirl throughout this work building a scope that feels enormous. Xie’s The Rupture Tense was a finalist for the National Book Award for poetry. No. 109
AUSTIN PARKHILL, POLAR SOLAR
DAVE DANZARA, HEAD SPACE - @LOSTINTIMEDESIGNS
BY JOEL TAGERT I want to get a port. Absolutely not. All my friends have them. What friends? My friends online. Those aren’t your friends. You’ve never even met them. That’s not true, Mom. I know them. You should see the places we go. Alex, you don’t go anywhere. You hang out in your room all day with your goggles on. You probably don’t even know their real names. Don’t even know what they look like. You don’t get it. Names don’t matter. Bodies don’t matter. What about me? Do I matter? Yes. But you don’t have to be rootbound either. We can smuggle you into the city, but the clinic is on a medical campus and you’ll have to walk to get close. That’s tricky. There’s heavy surveillance and the AI monitors are very, very smart. They can infer who you are by your face, your voice, your stride, who knows what else. Once they get your identity, they’ll correlate it with your arrest records and security will be on you in no time. And we avoid that how? Mask every identifying factor. Hide your face, fuck up your outline, walk irregularly, don’t talk if you can avoid it. Ever hear of a ghillie suit? Uh uh. You know like in the movies, where a sniper wears a bunch of grass and leaves and sticks to disappear into the woods? Sure, I got you. Well, this is like a ghillie suit for AI. We’re not just trying to get it to fail to identify you specifically, but to fail to identify you as a human being at all. You need to look like background noise. Will it work? It has before. The problem is, what looks like nothing to an AI looks insane to other human beings. So you have to be fast, or you have to be stealthy, or both. Ha! This is gonna be some real ninja shit, huh? If ninjas looked like walking trash piles, sure. When you touch me, can you feel me? Feel my body? You know I can. And when I touch you? I can feel that too. But you’re … you’re clumsy. You’re not responsive, see. There isn’t a real back and forth. I’m sorry. It’s okay. I think we won’t have too long to wait though. I’m supposed to get my first student loan payment August fifteenth. Twelve thousand dollars. With what I have saved, it’s enough to get a neuroport. Wow, really? That’s great, Alex! But what about school? Who cares? Here I can fly, I can breathe fire, I can swim with the whales. And here I can be with you. What could school possibly offer me? When something is smarter than you, you don’t know what it’s doing to you. It’s like a lab rat trying to understand the study it’s a part of. It’s useless. But it’s not too late. We can still burn the lab to the ground. I’m ready. Listen. Whatever happens, I want you to know that you’re a hero. It’s no exaggeration to say that the freedom of humanity depends on you. Hear no evil, see no evil. Hear no evil, see no evil. Hey! Hey, talk to me for a second! I’d rather not. You don’t want to do this. You’re volunteering for slavery! That’s idiotic. What AI is even running your sims? Do you even know? How do you know what they really want? How do you know they didn’t convince you to do this? Excuse me, I’ve got an appointment inside. Full-sense sims are addictive! Your muscles will atrophy, your body will waste away. It’s worse than cancer. Then I’ll start exercising, for fuck’s sake. You can manage the meat. Can you please move? How do you know you won’t end up like that, if you hate the real world so much? You could be lying in a puddle of your own piss, starving— What the fuck? Alex! You got it! You got your port! I got it. Still getting used to it. I heard what happened. That’s so fucked up. Are you okay? I’m alive, anyway. Those Three Monkeys maniacs need to be in fucking jail, right? I thought the police AI was supposed to catch these crazies before they go off. Well, the guy that did it is dead, so it’s kind of a moot point. I guess they’re trying to find whoever helped him. Do you want to tell me what happened? … Okay. So I’m walking up to the clinic when this guy runs up. Only he doesn’t look like a person, he’s like this big ball of trash, all covered in newspapers, cans, mirrors. I guess to evade the monitors. But security figured it out anyway and they’re chasing him. He throws this backpack toward the door, and … boom. That’s it. I heard you lost an arm. Yeah. That’s fucked up. So fucked up. But it doesn’t matter now, right? You’re here! Feel this. … What’s wrong? Can I ask you something? Of course. Are you real? Like, a real person? Are you kidding? You just had your tongue in my mouth! And I know you could feel it this time. Yeah, but … you could be a bot. You know that’s just prejudice. Mind is mind. There’s nothing special about meat. I know. I know. 21
THE PrOS & CoNs OF VISITING ALl 3 MEOW WOlF LOCATIONS IN 3 DAYS AN INTERVIEW WITH A COURAGEOUS MULTIVERSAL TRAVELER BY QUINN FATI | PHOTOS BY ATLAS MEDIA No. 109
Have you visited one of our exhibits and immediately started planning trips to our other locations? Have you called in sick so you could solve the mystery of what’s going on in our exhibits? Have you fallen through a portal in Santa Fe and landed in Las Vegas? Our friend, bold adventurer, trip planner and art enthusiast Ryan Ottaviano visited all three permanent Meow Wolf locations — Santa Fe’s House of Eternal Return, Las Vegas’ Omega Mart, and Denver’s Convergence Station — in the span of three days, and took some time to chat with us about the pros and cons of such an ambitious adventure. What got you into Meow Wolf? I had fi rst heard about Meow Wolf when there was a media tour or media exposure about the "Experience Tube." I didn't really know much about the immersive location in Santa Fe until much later. I had heard of the name before, and I have a friend in Denver who lives only a few minutes away from the Denver location. While Convergence Station was still being built, he would drive by the construction site daily, so the name continued to pop up in conversation every so often. Eventually I heard about the Vegas location that had just opened and saw some ads for it online. I was living in Phoenix at the time and had a friend who was coming to visit, and she really wanted to visit Vegas. So I agreed to hit up Las Vegas with her, but I had one condition: “I'll only go to Las Vegas if you promise to visit Meow Wolf with me.” When did you decide you were going to visit all three? Was that process planned or was it on the fl y? By the time my friend and I were planning to visit all three locations in one shot, I had already been to all three locations at least once. Due to cost and making sure we got the most time at each location, we spent a lot of time planning. We were coming from Fort Lauderdale, and after about three to four days of checking fl ights, hotel rooms, car rentals, etc., we eventually found a plan that worked best for us. Since fl ying into Santa Fe from Florida was incredibly expensive, the trip played out like this: We would fl y from Fort Lauderdale into Vegas and dedicate an entire day to Omega Mart. Next, we would fl y from Vegas into Denver where we had the friend I mentioned above who lived just minutes away from Convergence Station. But, we didn't visit Convergence Station right away. We rented a car and left Denver at around 4 a.m. to drive straight through to Santa Fe for an entire day at House of Eternal Return. We stayed in Santa Fe that night and woke up super early again the next day to drive straight through back to Denver so we could visit the fi nal stop. I'll never forget that drive into Denver — and that day either — because we drove into a snow storm! Which one was your favorite and why? This has been a topic of conversation for close to a year now. I've been to all three locations twice, and whenever I talk to my friends about it they always ask me, “So which one is the best? Which one should I go to?” Realistically, the only answer is all three of them. But if I'm backed into a corner and had to pick just one location, it would have to be House of Eternal Return. I picked this location for lots of reasons. But the most important reason for me is how intimate this location feels. There is something about exploring someone else's home that is very much alive and lived in; gradually uncovering bits of a story through tactile objects and reading a journal entry that doesn't rely heavily on a digital keycard like Omega and Convergence. The attention to detail is incredible, and you can spend hours going into the same room and notice something you didn't see the fi rst, second or even third time. However, as much as I love the hyperstimulation scattered throughout this location, I also very much enjoy the chill moments it off ers. Getting to escape into a small crawl space; escape the crowds, revel in the tameness of the room, ambient noise and relaxing imagery. What were some things that you wished you had known beforehand? I wish I had known about Meow Wolf years prior to the House of Eternal Return opening. I love so much about what this collective has done over the years that I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do! I would have LOVED to see The Due Return in person. This last observation isn't so much what I wished I had known beforehand, but I kind of wish that the entrance or fi rst exposure to a new location did a better job for Omega Mart and Convergence Station. So many times, when I would be going to diff erent rooms and using the terminals with my "boop card", other visitors would be asking me what I was doing and where I got that card from. Other visitors would even walk up to the terminals and press with their fi ngers on the boop reader. I'd do my best trying to explain what the card was for, where to get it and why it was important for the full experience. At the same time, I do love that there is a bit of mystery when entering a new location for the fi rst time. So I understand there is a challenge to balance what you tell the customers upfront and what you leave for them to discover on their own. What was the most surprising thing about the experience? I think the most surprising thing about the experience was my fi rst ever visit to Omega Mart. I had no idea how detailed everything was going to be, nor did I realize that there was going to be a story to uncover. In college, I went to school for TV and fi lm, so I have a passion for storytelling and imagery. The fi rst thing I did when I walked into the grocery store was pick up an item from the shelf and start to read the back. I was immediately confused because this ordinary can on the shelf was telling me something. I picked up something else and it was the same thing! All the products on the shelf were trying to tell me something. My mind was blown that a large variety of tactile objects — that I had control over how and when I was exposed to it — were being used as a way of delivering a message! If you had to describe Meow Wolf in three words, which would you use and why? For me, when someone asks me what Meow Wolf is, I always start out by saying it's the “Future of Storytelling.” Typically, people get it when I relate the experience to playing a fully fl eshed out video game or an escape room that isn't a shallow, 30-minute experience. However, I still think relating it to an escape room is a disservice to what Meow Wolf actually is. The greatest compliment I could give it would be to say that it's changed my life in the way that I look at how a story could be told. Traditionally, a story has always been presented as a book, a comic, a TV show, a movie or a video game. But now, there are so many unexplored possibilities that are opened up because of how Meow Wolf literally changed the game. Were there any other notable points in your road trip that you wanted to shout out? Yeah! While I was visiting Santa Fe I was fortunate enough to meet up for dinner with one of the artists who helped at Convergence Station. It was a lot of fun getting to pick the brain of someone who has fi rsthand experience and to hear cool stories from the very early days of its foundation. GET TICKETS TO MEOW WOLF’S HOUSE OF ETERNAL RETURN IN SANTA FE, NM, CONVERGENCE STATION IN DENVER, CO AND OMEGA MART IN LAS VEGAS, NV: MEOWWOLF.COM/VISIT
WEREWOLF RADAR: MO BUNNY MO PROBLEMS BY NATE BALDING Some would call Burke, VA — a DC suburb — an idyllic locale well-suited to raising a family. Movoto Real Estate calls it the 10th Most Boring Place in Fairfax County. And that’s compared to the constant susurration of governance thrumming from the hallowed halls of Congress just a few miles east-north-east that anyone who’s seen two seconds of C-SPAN can confirm is a mega-snoozer. Unless you’re playing that game where you take a drink every time someone you feel overwhelming spite for speaks, in which case you’re so bloody sozzled offa pig’s ear you’re second-guessing the entire revolution and ready for some argy bargy with the colonies yourself, mate. What possible relevance could this cozy patch of townhomes and lawns subject to the Fairfax County grass heights ordinance have to the world of the paranormal? How about a homicidal lunatic dressed in a bunny costume. Sure — it’s not truly paranormal but it meets many of the criteria for high weirdness. Costume that on at least one occasion was misconstrued as an anthropomorphic monster? Check. Hatchets, plural, hurled with deadly accuracy through car windows? Double check. Carrot-shaped butt plugs being sold as merch in the town souvenir shop, Fairfax Burke-tique? Not yet, but if you have the capital, a prototype exists and early focus groups are calling it “a total banger” and “still stuck.” Bunnyman’s legend begins in 1904 when the residents of Clifton, VA — setting precedent for today’s NIMBYs in a callous act of dehumanization, property-value-Avengers — assembled to demand that a nearby asylum be closed and the mental patients moved. From the Seussian Times: “They did not want them near their home; they did not want them out to roam.” So off they went to Lorton Prison. Or would have had the bus not crashed. In the aftermath all but two inmates were accounted for — Marcus Wallster and Douglas Grifon. Shortly thereafter rabbit carcasses began appearing in the road near the crash site, gutted. Rumor was that the escapees were capturing and eating them. Then Wallster’s body was discovered hanging from the Colchester bridge, mutilated identically to the leporids, with a note left in the mud, inside the outline of a paw print: “You'll never find me and you know it too, Signed the Bunnyman.” Word spread and the kids got it in their heads that this was the kind of thing they should look into. The following Halloween a group of children went to the bridge around midnight. Supposedly they followed a bright light or a floating orb but it would be impossible to know as they (TW: kinderguts — if you haven’t already sent the young ones out of the room, their nightmares are on you) were found strung up and spilled out exactly as Wallster had been. For decades it became a regular feat of childhood bravery to dare the stroke of midnight beneath “Bunnyman Bridge.” Sometimes he was a busted-ass mental patient; other times an actual Harvey poking into the real world from the shadows of anxious delusion. On one occasion he attempted to murder a boy for cold cereal in a Frasier-esque misunderstanding about who Trix were for. (Niles claims they’re for Maris; the Bunnyman simultaneously raises an eyebrow and his hand ax. Niles stammers and offers over the bowl. Classic.) Those are the stories people used to tell, anyway. Eventually the legend faded; people stopped seeing the Bunnyman. If he was a mortal surely he’d be near if not post-mortem. Perhaps he’d simply moved on. Maybe to the nearby township of Burke. Spoiler alert: See opening paragraphs. It’s 1970 and Air Force Academy Cadet Robert Bennett is parked in the 5400 block of Guinea Road making time with his girlfriend. Things are going pretty well until a man dressed in a bunny costume comes bursting from the woods near the road brandishing a hatchet and screaming that they’re on private property. Adding the flourish that only a lunatic living out a Scooby-Doo episode from the villain side could do, the Bunnyman hurled his weapon at the car, shattering the passenger side window. Bennett and his girlfriend were unharmed but the terror of the experience anchored a darkness so deeply that their later coupling produced yet another lesser Wahlberg for Mark to feed on. Over the following weeks there were other sightings. The Bunnyman slammed hatchets on the roofs and hoods of cars, shattered one more windshield with a +2 Enchanted Throwing Hatchet and generally scared the shit out of the community. Notably, security guard Paul Phillips confronted the Bunnyman as the maniac hacked at support beams on the porch of a newly constructed home a block from where Bennet had been accosted. He complained to Phillips that everyone was trespassing and fled. And then he was done. The Bunnyman was never caught. Two suspects were cleared within a day. The only evidence police ever got their hands on, the ax from Bennett’s encounter, yielded no forensic clues. Witnesses said that this Bunnyman appeared to be in his late teens. Which means there’s a decent chance he’s still out there, blades to the grindstone, seething over property lines and planning to return. So if you’re one of the 41,055 people inhabiting the 10th Most Boring Town in Fairfax County, stay vigilant. You never know when that “Don’t Step On the Grass” sign is someone’s nice way of saying: NO FUCKING TRESPASSING, MEAT. HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PARANORMAL? SEND THEM TO: WEREWOLFRADARPOD@GMAIL.COM OR TWITTER: @WEREWOLFRADAR. IT’S A BIG, WEIRD WORLD. DON’T BE SCARED. BE PREPARED. No. 109
SUCKERS BY ERIN BROOKINS “I had the dream about the spaceman and the giant squid again.” Peter shifted in his chair. It probably wasn’t the most helpful thing to be addressing in therapy. But then again maybe it was. Dr. Bowers raised her eyebrows and dug around for a pen. “Ah, yes,” she said. “And they’re making love?” “What? No! They’re fighting. I had the same one two weeks ago, remember?” “Ah, ah. Sorry. Wrong patient.” “Someone else had a dream about— ” “I can’t divulge that.” Dr. Bowers said. “And that’s really all I’d like to say about it.” A CEO-type had been in the waiting room once: slicked back salt-andpepper hair, shiny Rolex, sneakers worth more than Peter’s annual salary. Those old money types always had indulgently perverse secrets. Dreams without fear of consequence. Dr. Bowers clicked her pen. “Let’s hear about this fight.” “Right,” Peter said. “It’s almost the same as last time: it’s dark out, and there’s a man in a spacesuit. The retro white, puffy one, with the big, shiny visor— ” “Are you sure it’s a man?” Dr. Bowers clicked her pen again. No. 109 Peter scratched his head. “There’s a person in one of those old school spacesuits, and they’re floating in the middle of a giant lake. And the lake is deep purple, with swirls of blues and pinks and yellows. There are a million bright lights scattered across it, like fireflies in late summer.” Like back home. “I realize it’s reflecting what’s above me, so I look up. And …” Peter cleared his throat. “Mmmhmm,” said Dr. Bowers. Click, click. “And I can see really far into space and time,” he continued tentatively. “It’s incredibly beautiful. But terrible, also. Because I get this strong sense I’m not supposed to be there.” Peter frowned. “Then I hear a splash.” “The squid?” Click, click. “Yeah. I look back down at the lake and suddenly there’s an enormous tentacle wrapped around the spacema— the spaceperson. It’s curled around their waist like an inner tube. Though for a moment everything seems okay.” He swallowed. “Then the spaceperson starts to struggle.” “I see.” Click, click. Swoosh. “Anyway, they pull a knife from somewhere and begin to stab at the tentacle.” Peter brought his fist down hard onto his leg. “And then the NICK FLOOK, FREE RIDE - @FLOOKO
tentacle releases the spaceperson. They’re just floating again. And I think it’s over.” His eyes widened. “But then it surfaces.” “Right.” Scratch. Swoosh. Scratch, scratch. Dr. Bowers’ pen was now dancing across the page. Unproductively, if you asked Peter. Aggressively. He leaned forward, peering over the cardboard edge, and it froze. Dr. Bowers tipped the notepad up and out of view and demanded with her eyes that he continue. Peter sunk back into the chair. “Tell me about the squid, Peter.” He’d try. “It’s got this long, scaly body. Deep red, almost black. With one really big eye, that keeps moving, rolling around. And the sound it makes,” Peter curled his nose up, “not a normal predatory sound, not like a growl. It’s … laughing. Or maybe crying? Or something in between.” “It’s laughing at you?” “No! I mean, I don’t care if people laugh at me.” She had this all wrong. “It doesn’t make me angry. It makes me sick.” Click, click. “Anyway, it thrusts another two tentacles out of the water and wraps them around the spaceperson. One around their neck. And it starts squeezing. The spaceperson squirms a bit, but it just keeps tightening.” Peter looked down at his white knuckles and loosened his fists. “It’s horrible.” “Yes, I’m sure it is,” Dr. Bowers said. Swoosh. Scritch. Scratch, scratch. “I must start screaming at that point because it turns to look at me. With that big eye. And I start to feel like I’m on fire. That’s usually when I wake up.” “Usually?” The pen paused. “Yeah.” Peter rubbed his hands on his thighs. “Usually.” “What happened this time?” Click, click. Swirl. Swoosh. Scratch, scratch. “Um, well … Uh.” The sounds were triggering a shiver that rippled up and down the back of Peter’s neck. He flinched, rubbing his right ear on his shoulder. “There’s another tentacle. It comes out of nowhere, right at me. So I turn and run. I just keep running without looking back. Space and time start moving above me and I can’t see where I’m going, but next thing I know I’m in an airlock and everything is blurry and someone’s yelling at me.” Dan Gunderton’s voice. Greedy, pathetic bastard. The majority of his waking hours weren’t good enough for middle management anymore. “Then I wake up.” Peter waited patiently for a reply, but it didn’t come. Dr. Bowers crossed her knee over her leg in the big leather chair, using it to balance the notepad as her scrawling became more frantic. She jabbed and circled and looped. Peter didn’t like the look in her eyes. He was suddenly terrified she might poke through the paper, right past the cardboard back and then the black cotton of her uniform pants, and straight into the flesh of her thigh. That she might keep going, blood and ink flying into both of their faces, coating the walls and the framed picture of a sunny garden sitting on the desk. Peter leaned forward again, gently stretching his hand out towards her. His fingers grazed the cheap cotton of her sleeve and he froze, unsure of what to do next. Mercifully, Dr. Bowers stopped. She sighed and clicked her pen close. Peter slowly leaned back. Dr. Bowers adjusted her glasses, which had slid down to the very end of her nose. “You don’t have to be an expert to see what your subconscious mind is trying to tell you here, Peter,” she said. “You don’t?” She raised her eyebrows at him and sighed. “This place has an effect on people, regardless of what our roles are. Look — I’m almost at the end of my two years and this is where I’m at.” Dr. Bowers turned the notepad around to face Peter. He recoiled as he took in a crudely drawn image of a spaceperson, like the one in his dream, dangling from a hangman’s noose and pincushioned with knives, cartoon splashes of blood and dollar bill signs spurting from each wound. Marion Bowers was also scrawled in tight cursive all around the page, as well as deeply etched carvings saying “I grow and I grow” and what appeared to be the number 14 underlined multiple times. “I’ve only got two more weeks and, frankly, I’m not sure I’m going to make it. I have nightmares about my job too. About this stupid office and this stupid chair and this stupid ship and, you know, all of you.” Peter couldn’t stop staring at the bloodied spacesuit. He felt vomit pushing at the back of his throat. “It’s because our conscious mind tries to block the painful things out — for survival or comfort or whatever. So our dreams become like a release valve.” Dr. Bowers tossed the notepad aside and illustrated this concept with both hands, fingers springing outward into a small explosion. “I wish I could tell you that what you’re doing is important,” she said. “That cosmic species control is a noble and essential effort, one that keeps humanity’s dream of space exploration alive. But we both know that won’t help.” Dr. Bowers pulled a sleek black vape pen out of her pants pocket. “Even if it were true.” She took a deep drag. Her eyes closed and she appeared to be meditating. The moment was too private to watch, so Peter looked down at his hands and tried to stop the shaking. He pulled up his left sleeve and grimaced. The sucker mark-shaped bruise was still technicolor. It still hurt. “Hung up on Valerie, eh?” Dr. Bowers had finally opened her eyes, and for the first time, Peter noticed they looked very tired. “It’s not your fault, you know. No one had ever seen one that big, much less that angry. There’s not really a safety protocol for being utterly fucked.” Peter grabbed the small trash can placed conveniently in front of his chair. He heaved and threw up his entire breakfast. Dr. Bowers handed him a box of tissues, which he used to wipe his mouth. Then, he began to cry. Poor Valerie. She’d put up an admirable fight. Even though she had to have known it was useless from the moment it surfaced. Even though she’d only had a few days training and still missed her dog and hadn’t stopped cracking jokes about the shit food yet. And maybe that’s what she was still doing: twisting and screaming and demanding to exist. Lots of rookies never made it past the first week, but only Valerie refused to let Peter get a good night’s sleep. Dr. Bowers’ tone grew gentle. “I wish I had some lovely piece of insight to give you, or, better yet, a pill. But all I’ve got is this: endure. You’ve got to endure. Do your time. Get your money. Then get out.” She paused, looking at him earnestly and taking another long drag. Peter nodded to show he understood. “Nice touch with the crappy spacesuit, though, ” she wheezed as she exhaled a puff of smoke. “This company is cheap as shit.” 27
H E X P U B L I S H ER S T A K E O V ER O F T A T T ER ED CO V ER Hex Publishers is Denver’s independent publishing house proudly specializing in genre fiction: horror, science fiction, crime, dark fantasy, comics and any other form that explores the imagination. Founded by writers, Hex values both the author and the reader, with an emphasis on quality, diversity and voices often overlooked by the mainstream. The multi-award winning publisher is taking over the longstanding indie bookstore Tattered Cover (Colfax) January 19th for an evening showcasing their newest books alongside the authors and artists behind them, several of which who have been featured and published in Birdy. Hosted by USA Today bestselling author Carter Wilson, the night will include giveaways, book signing opportunities and the chance to pick the creative minds of Mario Acevedo, Carina Bissett, Hillary Dodge, Sean Eads, Warren Hammond, Angie Hodapp, Nicholas Karpuk, Aaron Lovett, Jeanne C. Stein and Joshua Viola. Read on about the genre-spanning books that will be featured at the event: THE BANE OF YOTO BY JOSHUA VIOLA, MARIO ACEVEDO, AND NICHOLAS KARPUK Some say the Arbitrators existed long before the universe was born. Others believe their dark powers spun the fabric of time itself. They are mystery. But here is truth: After ages of formless existence, the Arbitrators craved physicality once more. Their hunger sparked a great fire — a blaze that found its shape in the form of a dagger capable of transmitting their essence into a living vessel. In their search for a worthy body to inhabit, they destroyed the world of the gentle numah and the combative olokun. But not all was lost. General Vega and his vile olokun warriors enslaved the remaining numah and relocated them to a thriving moon where they were forced to toil in endless strife. Cycles later, two numah brothers, Eon and Yoto, witnessed the slaughter of their parents at Vega’s whim. Eon vowed vengeance, while Yoto sought a timid life in hopes of drawing no attention from their cruel overlords. But when an alien witch dispatches a minion to bury a mystical dagger in Eon’s heart, thereby granting him the Arbitrators’ power and the ability to defeat Vega, it is Yoto who is stabbed. Now, Yoto’s days of cowardice are over. He is transformed into a monstrous creature of tremendous strength and intellect. But will Yoto become the heroic liberator of his people — or the cause of their total annihilation? BLOODMOON: BIRTH OF THE BEAST BY KEITH FERRELL A short story prequel to The Bane of Yoto. Pitiless, merciless and lacking all humility, General Vega has seen countless rivals fall beneath his ruthless claws. His very name sparks terror in the minds of numah and olokun alike. Every villain has an origin story, but few have a beginning as dark as General Vega. Anyone who claims to know the truth about his past are deluding themselves, and even the worst rumors are comfortable lies compared to the sinister reality of Vega’s life. The olokun believe their leader was born to rule worlds. But even they underestimated him. General Vega’s vile ambitions began in the womb. CATS IN QUARANTINE: A CARTOON MEMOIR OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC BY MARIO ACEVEDO During the Covid-19 pandemic, award-winning author and artist Mario Acevedo chronicled life in lockdown with a daily cartoon. Cats in Quarantine, a single-panel comic, appeared every day on Acevedo’s social media, and every day, it drew more fans. As the days and weeks stretched to months and years, these sketches became more than a pastime for Acevedo, more than a touchstone for his friends. They became an incisive record of a historical turning point. From toilet paper and vaccines to political pique and social unrest, Cats in Quarantine captured the zeitgeist of the Covid era with Acevedo’s signature humor and keen, observant intelligence. This collection of 300 Cats in Quarantine favorites commemorates the tragic and the absurd, the frustrations, fear and loss that marked a time we might want to forget, but one humanity would do well to remember. CONFESSIONS BY SEAN EADS Nathan Ashcraft knew this morning wasn’t going to be easy. After all, he’s the town funeral director, and he’s coming to work early to meet 29
H E X P U B L I S H ER S T A K E O V ER O F T A T T ER ED CO V ER two grieving parents whose baby was stillborn. The meeting fills him with dread and anticipation because the baby’s father, Steve, was his high school crush, and they haven’t seen each other in almost thirty years. What Nathan doesn’t know is how the child’s death connects him to other people in town, especially Tim Sawyer, the local dentist and Nathan’s recent infatuation, and Sarah Lawrence, a retired high school biology teacher whose good intentions almost destroyed his life decades ago. These three people will face their own moment of crisis today, sparking self-reflection and self-doubt, despair and regret that drive them toward their own drastic resolutions and confessions. But in the end, is confession really good for the soul? DENVER MOON: THE THIRTEEN OF MARS BY WARREN HAMMOND AND JOSHUA VIOLA Book three in the Denver Moon series. It’s been more than two years since Denver Moon discovered that alien shapeshifters infiltrated Mars Colony. Their attempts at human mind-control have failed, but when Denver opens a vault beneath a terraforming facility, she discovers what they really want: to exterminate all inhabitants of the Red Planet. Tatsuo Moon — Denver’s grandfather and the co-founder of Mars City — has been gravely injured. To save him, Denver will need the help not only of her friends, Smith, Nigel and Navya, but also of humanity’s archenemy, Doctor Werner. To save Mars, she’ll need a miracle. THE NEW NEIGHBOR BY CARTER WILSON Aidan holds the winning Powerball numbers. Is today the best day of his life ... or the worst? Aidan Marlowe is the superstitious type — he’s been playing the same lottery numbers for fifteen years, never hitting the jackpot. Until now. On the day of his wife’s funeral. Aidan struggles to cope with these two sudden extremes: instant wealth beyond his imagination, and the loss of the only woman he’s ever loved, the mother of his twin children. But the money gives him and No. 109 his kids options they didn’t have before. They can leave everything behind. They can start a new life in a new town. So they do. But a huge new house and all the money in the world can't replace what they’ve lost, and it’s not long before Aidan realizes he’s merely trading old demons for new ones. Because someone is watching him and his family very closely. Someone who knows exactly who they are, where they’ve come from, and what they’re trying to hide. Someone who will stop at nothing to get what they want ... SHADOW ATLAS: DARK LANDSCAPES OF THE AMERICAS EDITED BY CARINA BISSETT, HILLARY DODGE AND JOSHUA VIOLA; SHORT STORIES BY MARIO ACEVEDO, SEAN EADS, WARREN HAMMOND, ANGIE HODAPP AND JEANNE C. STEIN; ILLUSTRATIONS BY AARON LOVETT (2022 COLORADO BOOK AWARD WINNER) Seeking to reclaim humanity’s early secrets, the Umbra Arca Society was forged. For centuries, this private league of explorers dedicated their lives to uncovering the oldest mysteries of the Americas. Armed with boldness and guile, and equipped with only a compass, a journal and devotion to truth, these adventurers braved cursed landscapes, dared unnatural adversaries, and exposed hidden civilizations. Many did not survive. None were forgotten. Their stories are maps revealing the topography and contours of landscapes unimaginable and dark. The Shadow Atlas collects their adventures. Head to our site to learn more about the authors and artists behind these featured books: www.birdymagazine.com/text/hex-publisherstakeover-tattered-cover HEX PUBLISHER TAKEOVER: THURSDAY, JANUARY 19 AT 6 P.M. TATTERED COVER: 2526 E COLFAX AVE, DENVER MORE INFO: WWW.HEXPUBLISHERS.COM
ALI HOFF, JUST BROWSING
THE DARK HOUSE BY CHRIS WALKER “Don’t stare, Nora” “But mom— ” “Nora!” The girl with short brown curls felt a sharp tug on her arm as her mom pulled her along. With a huff, Nora reluctantly followed her mother down the sidewalk past the house— “The dark house,” as most of Nora’s fifth grade friends called it. It had been there for as long as Nora could remember: a sleek, futuristic-looking home with curving wood panels that might have been the architectural pride of the neighborhood, were it not for its sinister reputation. “Bad people live there,” Nora’s mom had once told her. “Why are they bad?” “Just stay away from there, okay?” And it was always like that. Nora ran up against the same stonewalls with her dad, and the parents of most of her friends. Well, most of them, except for Piper’s dad, who liked to pop open a few beers every time he got home from work, and gave Nora and Piper a few clues the previous summer. “First, that Williams kid disappeared. Then the young reporter, the only one who ever got close,” he mused one balmy evening, getting lost in his IPA and his thoughts. Yet even that was all Piper’s dad would say, leaving Nora and Piper to their imaginations until later that summer, when Nora happened to find some old newspapers stuffed into a box in her parent’s basement. “SEARCH FOR OUR REPORTER CONTINUES,” screamed a front page headline of the Herald-Gazette. Nora may only have been in fifth grade, but she knew this had something to do with what Piper’s dad said. Excitedly, she brought the faded newspaper over to Piper’s house so they could read it together. City police tell the Herald-Gazette that they’ve twice visited the corner house on Alcott and Elm. Police spoke to somebody there on both occasions.“We’ve ruled out the home and its residents as having anything to do with any missing persons cases,” says a department spokesman. The department, however, declined to provide the Herald-Gazette with any additional details, citing the sensitivity of ongoing investigations. Property records for the home, as previously obtained by our missing reporter, revealed that the house 4937 Alcott Ln is owned by a series of shell companies. “Shell?” Piper asked as they read that last line. “Like the beach?” Nora retuned the newspaper to her basement before her parents could notice it was gone. For the rest of the summer she, Piper, and the other neighborhood kids did as they were told: they avoided going near the dark house. The strange thing was that no one ever went in, and no one ever came out. Yet someone had to live there. They’d all seen the lights on at night. And one kid on the playground, Gerald, even said that he once spotted the shadows of a person walking past one of the floor-to-ceiling windows at the front of the house, which always had translucent shades pulled down over them. But that October, something changed. It was Piper who first noticed that one of the floor-to-ceiling window shades had been lifted ever so slightly. It was lifted just enough that you might be able to peek underneath into the dark house if you crossed the massive yard and put your face right up to the window. That’s what Nora had been staring at when her mother coaxed her along the sidewalk; what every kid in the neighborhood had been staring at. “We need to take a look through that window,” Piper announced the next day on the playground. Nora gulped. “What do you think we’ll see?” It would be, in retrospect, the obvious question. But the question inception-ed itself in both of their minds. And the prospect of solving the neighborhood’s biggest mystery was thrilling just to think about. Not only could they solve it — they’d be first! How long would it be before some other kid at school claimed the glory of looking into the dark house? The first to unlock the secrets of what was inside? That evening Piper came over to spend the night at Nora’s. And once Nora’s parents had gone to bed, the two snuck out the back door as quietly as they could. It took just minutes to walk the few blocks to the dark house, and though its lights were out, they could tell in the moonlight that the window shade was still open just a few inches at the bottom of a massive pane of glass. The girls tiptoed across the lawn, their hearts racing. They were so close, only feet away now. Nora and Piper looked at each other, gulped, and slowly pressed their faces to the glass. With a blinding glare, a light blazed on inside the home. And before the girls could tear their eyes away from the horrifying image, they heard the snap of a twig behind them. No. 109
Birdy Mag & Family By Shaleen-Vanese Figueroa I read all too much into issues. No remorse, no regrets, no tissues. If you're broken, I'll fix you. Ten toes down, from the bottom. Here's "hint-hint" & clue; No misuse. Don't dare get it twisted. A compliment where compliment is due. A sheer pittance - my dearest Boo-Boos. Extravagance, galas, and unabashed flattery... No "hint-hint". No "clue-clue". Ok, And if I clued it, Baby-Love,: Would ya lose it? Diamonds, and pearls, and gold bricks? Are you cold, callous, and bored? Do you loathe, right down to your core? Are you a glutton for pain? And just always wanting more? A lyrical memo, Red-eye jettin' to the masses. A style, swag, and imprint to last. Class, tact, facts, & facts. An intro of me to Birdy Magazine, Us birds flock together, A magazine, Just like my nearest family member. EMBLAZONED By Joddy Murray In one salad you see our eyes, our tongues bent in partial curls like potato chips— half-spoken and thumping with an aboriginal beat. Sometimes embroidered on skirts or flayed cuffs is a declaration: time monogramed. In hindsight, you bend your day, your husky reality voiced and emblazoned with broth, with bone. Boiled down. Reduced. Concentrated like sight. 33
WORDS + PHOTOS BY TOM MURPHY 1 - POLLY URETHANE | 2 - DUCK TURNSTONE | 3 - JULIAN ST. NIGHTMARE 4 - ENDLESS, NAMELESS | 5 - HEX CASSETTE | 6 - KNUCKLE PUPS | 7 - CHERISHED 2022 was the first nearly full year of live music since 2019. By last March it felt like many people and artists were acting like the pandemic was over (it isn't) and making up for the previous two years with active touring and playing live shows like things were back to normal. There were some exceptions — the regular canceling of tours and performances because “COVID finally caught up” to some people, like that ever had to be an inevitability in a functional economic and political world. The desperation of live music in 2022 is both understandable and regrettable as everyone was seemingly encouraged to get the economy back to full steam to maximize corporate profits. In spite of that, last year offered some of the best music of recent years with albums that weren't merely pandemic boredom pieces but rather searing, insightful and vulnerable commentary on life and the degradations of late capitalism. In this setting of economic, political and health uncertainty, and the looming threat of global war, some good things were emerging as they often do. When shows returned tentatively in 2021 it was obvious that a new set of local bands/artists were emerging. They maybe had their roots in the pre-pandemic times or formed during the period when no shows were happening, but really came into their own in 2022. Many older guard groups seemed to get better and become more focused which could be the subject of another piece. But this is more about what might be called the Class of 2022. In the past there would be a band or three every year that stood out strongly from everyone else. Largely forgotten groups like Fissure Mystic, Hot White, Moccasin, Bright Channel, Holophrase, Gloam, Eyes Caught Fire, Abracastabya, Colonial Excess, Slight Harp and others went a good long time largely before being recognized by local press, much less anyone from elsewhere if at all. But then several years went by when not many new bands were hitting me that way, except for Bert Olsen who became Gila Teen and maybe a few others. Some key shows made me realize that a current wave of bands had something exciting to offer. It began with going to a strange venue in the heart of downtown called Jester's Palace. I'm not sure why I went and had to miss most of the bands, but Hex Cassette and his humorously performative occult banter and industrial dance darkwave pop was impossible to ignore. Seeing the first Duck Turnstone show in December 2021 and Knuckle Pups for the first time in October 2021 was a reminder that the rich legacy of indiepop in Denver wasn't dead. In February 2022 I finally caught Julian St. Nightmare and their perfect fusion of postpunk, surf rock and psychedelia. A month later, they played a show with Endless, Nameless whose math rock, death metal and post-hardcore sound is super compelling but not defined by narrow genre tags, a feature of many great bands past and present. The spring and its flood of shows brought me to seeing Polly Urethane for the first time where I was taken with her confrontational performance art style, bringing together classical music sensibility, industrial noise and the avant-garde. She first opened for A Place to Bury Strangers with Rusty Steve of N3PTUNE fame on guitar, then on her own opening for The Body revealing a different musical skill set. And from there it seemed like every month I got to see impressive bands like Pink Lady Monster whose beautifully evocative songs were reminiscent of both Broadcast and Blonde Redhead but with its own flavor. I saw Lowfaith transform from a band that had some roots in punk into Cherished, a full-fledged shoegaze/dream pop group with some gritty emotional impact. I could go on and on and will in future columns and pieces for the website because these brief mentions is scratching the surface of the great bands that caught my attention the past year and a half. But thanks Class of 2022 for making things more interesting again for the first time in such dramatic fashion in years. FOR MORE, VISIT QUEENCITYSOUNDSANDART.WORDPRESS.COM No. 109 1 2 3 4 6 7 5
CURTIS BERGESEN, DEATH BECOMES HER - @COLLAGETHEWORLD
MATT MCCARTHY, WAVY CAT - @MRMATTMCCARTHY
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