eva: beach day and bar night?

aqua: girl, you know you don't even have to ask 😝

THE MEDIUM 

Name: Wu Xinyue

Age: 33

Pronouns: she/her

FC: Liu Qian Han

BIOGRAPHY

There was a time once, long ago perhaps, when it was quiet inside her head.  A time when dead were dead and the living were living, and the lines between them did not blur. Her childhood was happy, but she was a quiet child, seeking company of those older than her, flocking to her parents and her grandparents, not quite enjoying befriending the children. In fact, while she was open hearted and lively, there was an aggressive side to her that often made others misunderstand her; especially those close in her age. But, she was all right with being alone, or being in company of her family - never once regretting her isolation from everyone else. The bonds she’s shared with her family could have been broken by one thing, and one thing alone, and it was at the beginning of her teenage years that she’d known loss, known death - and it brutalised her, hardened her. Gone was the silence in her head, gone was the lively and vivacious girl, and what became of her was a withdrawn, isolated shell of a person. It was not an easy transition, but death was never meant to be easy, not for the living.  The more she struggled with reining in the voices, the more she lost control over it, over herself, and finding a way to vent it had not been easy. At first, she tried shutting them out, building a wall around her mind that no spirit could seep through; but, such defensive mechanisms scarred her more, paranoia and anguish being the price to pay for the moment of sanity - yet, it was in those moments, without the voices, that she had been the most insane - and after a while, she stopped resisting, and in return they stopped keeping her awake at night. 

Leaving her hometown was a lot easier than she’d thought it would be - if only it was that easy to leave emotions and memories behind. But, the distance from her birthplace had seemed to have calmed the spirits in her head and once she’s finally put the beloved ones to rest, she’s decided to travel the world, maybe put her skills to good use. She was educated and intelligent, but she couldn’t really settle on a job - and then she heard about spiritism and the occult, and so she blindly stuck a finger on the map and decided to try her luck wherever it landed - in London. She thought that London would be different, but while it certainly wasn’t Beijing, or Istanbul, or Paris, it wasn’t what she’d expected of it to be. Everything she had known about the spirits had come from them, a knowledge coming from the primary source soon made her into something of a celebrity amongst the others who shared her… talents. She was not one of the Masters, wanting to stay away from the limelight, desiring to work alone rather than with others - for a while, they pestered her relentlessly to join them, but after they'd seen how she would not budge, they gave up. But, she was also not one of the Charlatans; she did not do what she did for fame or cheap scares - she did it because she could and because she was damn good at it. 

Her prices were never steep, but her services were not cheap either - they were at the middle, ever changing, ever befitting her clientele. She didn’t care if the noblemen came to her house, or if the beggars asked for a fortune; she greeted them and sent them away in an equal manner. Her talents laid more with the dead, with mediumship and banishing of the spirits, but she keeps the true extent of her madness hidden - and so, she focuses more on tarot cards and runes, choosing to read fortunes rather than conjure the departed beloved. It has been five years since she’s come to London, but in all that time she’s always been polite and courteous, but never friendly - mysterious and withdrawn; not to nurture her image, but to shield her heart. Still, she is somewhat friendly with her regular customers, occasionally going as far as to invite them to stay for tea after a reading; but those offers are rare and far in between. She has always felt there was something strange going on with the town she’s settled in, something dark and sinister lurking beneath the surface - one look at the Tower told her everything she needed to know, and the anguish in her head had not left her for a week. Yes, the town was riddled with pain and death, but so was every other place on Earth. After all, it is wise to remember that not all of the departed ones move on - and not all of the spirits are benevolent. 

THE GHOST

They always change. Traipsing around until she sends them away, sends them to cross over to another life, or sends them to Diyu where they belong, unworthy of living again until the filth in their soul is washed away.  The current one, he helps - the face white as death, with a pale hair cut to his chin and a dark, black velvet attire that resembles a lot like those portraits of old kings, of a time long, long gone. He seems to be sailing from the 14th century, but he doesn’t seem to want to cross over - he doesn’t want to abandon her. We know each other, he whispers, and I am here to guide you, stay with you. And warn of the horrors that come knocking. He never calls her by her name, but nicknames her as the Necromancer - or simply calls her my Lady.

CONNECTIONS

THE FRAUD: It started as an annoyance, and truth be told she would’ve been more than happy if it stayed as an annoyance. She knows they are as false as it gets, the real Charlatan, but since they are younger than her, she’s… started to feel a little protective of them, sometimes taking on a role of an involuntary mentor, veiling it as a dare. They are young and wild, vivacious and proud, and often they remind her of her; of who she’d once been, before death claimed her. She has to admit that once annoyance turned to exasperation, she’s found that she rather enjoys their company. They are the one of the rare ones she ever truly bothers to invite for tea, or ever really bothers to ask if they’re doing okay.

THE WAIF: They’ve known each other for a short while, but she’s pretty fond of them. Perhaps, if she would let herself feel vulnerable, she’ll admit that she regards the other as something of a friend. With the darkness that settled over London, she is terribly worried about them, given how the victims were of the same profession. She often offers them to work with her, whether it is a measly task such as brewing a pot of tea, or helping her scrub wax off her table for an additional few coins - anything to make sure her friend remains safe, especially if she knows they would have to return to the brothel at night, when the hour is dark and the streets are overflowing with monsters - and monsters made of flesh and bone are worse than any ethereal spirit.

THE PEELER: He’s the newest acquaintance and his eagerness to advance is quite amusing to her. But, she sees the wariness in his eyes, sees the horror that marred his innocent soul and sees how the fear begins to eat at him. He was the one who found the most recent victim and she knows it was a sight that would never stop haunting him. She knows he’s visiting her for a routine check, the questions about whether or not she’s ever been in contact with a dubious person, but as of late his offer turned more tempting - and strange. She’s still uncertain whether to accept it or decline it, but she does like him well enough to attempt to help him - if only to soothe his fears.

THE WIDOW: They’ve known each other since her husband has died. The grieving widow held up a lot better than the society of London had liked, and so tales of her questionable morale and the alleged “poisoning” of her husband started to circulate. She rolls her eyes to the rumours, and she’s very impressed to see the widow feels exactly the same. They’ve struck a lazy, easy friendship that started with a séance and ended with a glass of gin and shared tales of life, happiness, woe and death; and in her, she’s found something of a kindred spirit.

THE MEDIUM IS PLAYED BY ADMIN EVA

275

Another one of these because there’s nothing like looking back at your most traumatic years and opening up about them in a room full of strangers. [Elementary School] Do you still remember any dreams you had a a child? Nope. Young or old, I’ve always forgotten most of my dreams upon waking up. What was your favorite game to play back then? I played tons of Filipino games. I’m listing them down even though nobody would know how they’re played–patintero, Chinese garter, 10-20, piko, ice ice water, langit lupa, luksong tinik, and lots of clapping games. Everyone also played dodgeball in grade school. How many best friends did you make through the years? My best friend was constantly Angela even though she made many friends herself and put me aside when we were kids. She has always been my go-to. I was always shy as a kid and so I never made another best friend. How many enemies? Ugh, there was this girl named Niña who was just a huge pain in my ass. She was a consistent bitch and man, she was the devil. Her mom was a complete sweetheart so I don’t know what happened to her. Did anything tragic happen to you when you were little? Yeah, alcoholism ran in my family and it gave me a twisted view of alcohol and family life up until I was around 18.

Did anything absolutely amazing happen? There’s this water resort called Club Manila East that we frequented almost every weekend. I felt like a kid there, made temporary friends, and swam to my 5 year old heart’s content. Its quality has degenerated over the past decade or so and I haven’t been there in that time frame, but I’ll always remember it as one of the places I’ve had the most fun in. How was your relationship with your parents back then? Fine but I’ve always been a little distant with them since they never tried to build a relationship with me. My mom’s position at work then didn’t allow her to be at home whenever I was so I never saw her nor bonded with her. My dad has worked abroad since I was 2, so the same thing happened. Did you believe in cooties? No. That was never a thing here. Did you ever get a cootie shot? A what now??? What was your favorite snack to eat? Oreo O’s and Twix, when they were still flower-shaped. Local junk food was also a favorite of mine. Did you own any pets during this time? I did. I had tons of goldfish. We had chicks a couple of times, too. The house we lived in wasn’t conducive for dogs (too cramped) so we didn’t have one. What was your personality like? My family didn’t really encourage me to try new things, make friends, or explore at all...so growing up, I had no idea how to be and as a result I had virtually zero personality. I was a very shy kid with zero creativity, and was too afraid of people to try reaching out. What was your favorite song[s]? The entire High School Musical soundtrack was my jam. What kind of toys did you like to play with? I liked toy soldiers more than Barbies since I grew up with male cousins who had the former, as well as robots and other action figures. I also played with any kind of set–kitchen set, dollhouses, doctor’s toy set, makeup set, etc. and cash registers since they had so many options to play with. The Play-Doh factory was great fun, too. [Middle School/Junior High] How did your personality change from Elementary to Middle School? My humor became so much darker, even to a worrying extent. I guess it was a result of all the traumatic things that happened in my old house + start of my depression + all my friends migrating to other countries + being isolated from my entire batch because I liked pro wrestling and metal bands at the time + my mom giving me an increasingly difficult time. I started making surveys around this time and one would see the sociopathic answers I used to give; that’s all because of how terrible middle school was. Everyone was fake, puberty killed your moods, and you're struggling to know who you are, what you want, and what you’re supposed to do. What was your favorite thing to do during this time? Staying in my room alone. If I was in school, then I liked staying by myself. I barely talked in this period. I had no friends either. Who were some of your closest friends? Angela but during this time she found other people who were more stable than I was, so I was temporarily alone for a time. I did not become friends with Gab until the seventh grade. How often did you get involved with Middle School drama? I was mostly invisible except for that one weird time in sixth grade when rumors were spread that I was in a relationship with Andi. Just the fact that someone was willing to start a rumor about me was strange in itself hahaha I was such a boring person. The rumor died quickly, and nothing about it was dramatic at all. What kind of "clique" were you in? Or did you not beleive in cliques? I hated the idea of cliques, and I wasn’t in one till late high school. I was literally all by myself. I didn’t even form or join a group with the other loners; it was just me. How did people treat you? I was virtually nonexistent to so many people. Gabie had no idea who I was until we met, even though I knew her since we were 4. Do you look back on these years fondly? Not one bit. Fortunately my brain did me a favor and removed a huge chunk of middle school, so when I try to look back on it, I hardly see anything from that time at all. What was your typical kind of lunch during school? I don’t remember anymore. What school[s] did you go to? I went to an Assumption school in the Philippines. Was it really as bad as some people say Junior High is? At least in my experience, it was. Did you like to read? I did. I read a lot and it was partly why everyone chose to ignore me: because I always had a book with me. What was one good memory you have of this time? Meeting Gab and having my life subsequently get better and easier. Were you still enemies with someone from elementary school? Yes. I haven’t talked to her in nine years. If you could go back and change one thing, what would you change? Let’s keep it simple: for my depression to have never formed in the first place. [High School] Are you still in High School? No, I graduated two years ago. Who were some of your close friends? Athenna, Angela, Sofie, Gabie, Katreen, Hans, Fern, Kaira, Aaron, Chelsea, Eva, Rap, Raf, Jez...man they were a lot and I can’t list them all. We were a riot in high school. Who were some of your enemies? I had no time for enemies in high school. How did your personality change from the previous years? I became more open; for some reason it just happened. I learned how to talk to people. And then it became I wanted to talk to other people. I didn’t want to be all by myself anymore and spend all my weekdays in crippling isolation. Having friends became fun, and it made me look forward to going to school. My days became brighter. Going in, did you really think they were going to be the best 4 years ever? I didn’t think it was going to be the best per se, but I just stayed optimistic about it since I thought I could start off with a blank slate. Were they? (or are they if you're still in High School) Definitely. I grew up a lot, went through a lot, sweated and cried a lot, learned a lot. Things happened that could have only happened in high school and never anywhere else. What's one memory of High School can you look back on and grin? All the times my friend group broke the rules, made a mess, and laughed it off. It’s not high school without some suspense and being a dick once in a while. Did you ever cry while you were in school? Yeah, whenever I got a letter to be given to my parents explaining that I failed a test. I’ve always been grade conscious so those letters hit me super hard. How was your love life? I was crushing on Gabie for most of it. People teased me about Mike and for a time I did consider it, but he was ultimately not my kind of person. How was your social life? Rich. Extensive. Healthy. Did you have any teachers that you just absolutely loved? Yes. Did you have any teachers that you just absolutely despised? Yes, and they all hated me back too. Shoutout to Ms. Tin who was always mega bitchy to me! How were/are your GPA? We don’t have GPA. I did graduate with like a 93. Did you know anyone who got pregnant? No. [There's no time like the present] Do you currently have a job? Nope, I’m only in college and I’m not really qualified for a job until after I graduate from university. What kind of job do you *want* to have? Something that’ll allow me to utilize my skills, obviously. I want to meet new people, but not too many new people that it would give me anxiety everyday. What do you like to do on your free time? These days I like hanging out at Skywalk and talk to my orgmates. Watching videos and eating out has also been my favorite things to do recently. What's your relationship with your parents now? Strained. It never got better from childhood. Do you own any pets? Yup, I’ve had a lovely dog for the past ten years. How many places have you traveled to? Too many to count. We go out of town all the time and I’ve been to several countries as well. Do you own a cell phone? If so, what kind? Yeah, I have an iPhone 8. What are your goals for the future? Get a job and save enough money to move out and subsequently survive on my own. What's your favorite kind of drink? Milkshakes always get me. Did you ever get into the Twilight saga craze? You bet. What about the Harry Potter craze? No. Where is your mind at: The Past, the Present, the Future, or all around? I’m too obsessed with the future. I want to get there already. What's a really good movie you've seen recently? I haven’t seen any new ones in a while. Are you happy where you are right now? Like I said in a previous survey, I’m never happy but at least I’m not asking to die today.

Amanda Reads - May 2017

I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date! Or something, haha. I’ve been traveling SO MUCH this month already, and I haven’t had the chance to sit down and write about all the books I read in May until now. But now I’m here! And I’m about to get started, because there were some GEMS last month! And a couple of DNFs too.

A reminder of the rating scale:

0 dogs petted: DNF. I couldn't get through the book. It's not a good day.

1 dog petted: It was an okay day. I mean, I got to pet a dog. But it could have been better.

2 dogs petted: A solid effort. May recommend.

3 dogs petted: A really good day, tbh. Would recommend willingly to friends and family.

4 or more dogs petted: Best day. Will be recommending to all the people. Pet all the dogs.

Let’s go!

Tobacco Sun by Lorna Hollifield

Today is Tobacco Sun’s launch day! Hurray, and welcome to the world, little book!

This is southern fiction like I’ve never experienced it before, although I should probably admit that I have very little experience with southern fiction. It’s rooted in the relationship between two sisters, but there is also a wonderful relationship between two best friends who have always loved each other. I don’t want to spoil it, but trust me—it’s good stuff. Check it out, and happy book birthday, Lorna!

Rating: 4 dogs petted. It’s not my first choice in genre, but it really delivers in the end.

Get It Together, Delilah! by Erin Gough

Ugh. I couldn’t get through this book. I just couldn’t. The premise of the story didn’t make sense to me, and it was too much for me to get past.

So it’s about this high school girl (Delilah) who is running her dad’s diner while he’s away on vacation in Mongolia or something. She’s underwater, but she just keeps it going. Her one best friend doesn’t understand her (in part because Delilah is a lesbian, which is why I thought I’d love this book) and they’re drifting apart, and it’s in large part because she has a new best friend named Charlie. Charlie is the worst. I couldn’t stand him from the very first page. I finally gave up when he stalked this much older woman that he thinks he’s in love with to her parents’ house, and then when her father doesn’t let him in, Charlie punches him in the face.

I  C A N ‘ T.

Rating: 0 dogs petted. DNF at 24%.

River by Shayne Ford

Rock star romance! What a wonderful palate cleanse after the last one.

River is the lead singer of a rock band. He also sleeps with any girl who is willing, basically. But something changes when his childhood friend (whom he believed was gay – she’d been dating a woman for many years) professes her love to him. They have a weekend together before she runs to make up with her girlfriend, and then River is lost. Sort of. He’d already met Layla, an innocent photographer. After having his heart broken, Layla is exactly what he needs.

Okay, so this is just a fun romp. You’re not going to learn rocket science or anything reading it, but I enjoyed the quick distraction. I’ll eventually get around to writing a full review, but things have been a little hectic lately – apologies to the author!

Rating: 2 dogs petted. The story wasn’t bad, but the manuscript could have used a good edit. Errors kept taking me out of the story.

How to Make a Wish by Ashley Herring Blake

THIS BOOK LEFT ME PUDDLED ON THE FLOOR.

Grace is in the summer before her senior year of high school, and all she wants is to get away from her tiny coastal town. When she returns from piano camp, she realizes her mother has moved in with another guy, except this time, it’s her ex-boyfriend’s dad. The ex who humiliated her in front of the entire school by sharing their sexts online. She thinks her summer is going to be miserable. That is, until she meets Eva, who was forced to move to her town after her single mother died. Eva is living with Grace’s best friend Luca, whose mother was Eva’s mother’s best friend. Things with Eva heat up fast—and Grace admits her bisexuality, and Eva has been out for years. It’s a love story like none I’ve ever read, intensified by Eva’s grief and the many issues Grace has with her unstable mother. There were so many things to love that I can’t even name them all. Eva is biracial, and Luca is such a great best friend, and Luca’s mother is just the best. This book was wonderful. Is wonderful. I’ll be reading it again.

Rating: 4+ dogs petted. SO GOOD.

The Football Girl by Thatcher Heldring

It could have been that my expectations were too high when I started this book. I wanted something game-changing about a girl who wants to play football despite what everyone says or thinks. That’s… not what this is.

First of all, Tessa and Caleb are about to start high school. That means that they’re what? Fourteen? The premise of the book is that Tessa wants to play football, but also wants to date Caleb, and he doesn’t think she should play football. I wanted her to learn to be strong and fierce and to do what she wants, no matter what any boy tells her. But hindsight tells me that a) these characters are too young for that type of story, and b) this just wasn’t the book for me.

Rating: 0 dogs petted. DNF at 17%.

Noteworthy by Riley Redgate

After the last one, I knew I needed another gem, so I picked up a book that everyone has been talking about—and I was not disappointed.

Jordan Sun is at a fancy arts boarding school in upstate New York, and she’s specializing in theater. Only she’s never been cast in anything, because her voice is too deep for the girl parts. Her Chinese immigrant parents don’t think she should be doing arts stuff in the first place, so she know she has to figure out a way to be successful at her school. So what does she do? She takes her too-deep voice and auditions for an all-boy a capella group… dressed as a boy she named Julian Zhang. And that’s where things start to get complicated.

Rating: 3 dogs petted. This book was so good, and I loved the characters of the guys in the a capella group SO MUCH. My only quibble is in the marketing—they were saying this book was about a person who is gender queer or nonbinary, but that is not at all what Jordan is. She was cross-dressing, plain and simple. So. The book itself was wonderful, but the way it’s being advertised is incredibly misleading and potentially hurtful.

March: Book One by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

March: Book Two by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

I’m putting these two together for ease.

Did I know that a graphic novel trilogy was what I needed to read over Memorial Day weekend? No. But it was. It was exactly what I needed. These books need no introduction. They document the life and tale of John Lewis, one of the most well-known Civil Rights activists in his day, and one of the few who is still alive. The first book starts with his early life on a farm in Alabama and goes through the passing of the Voting Rights Act, detailing all of the terrible and tragic happenings in between. It is so well-told, and the art is out of this world. I didn’t know a lot of it—my education failed me. I learned. I cried. And I felt the need to get out of my chair and DO something.

I felt the need to march.

Rating: 4+ dogs petted. Everyone should be reading these. (I finished the third one in the first few days of June, so that will be coming next month.)

There was May for you! I didn’t get as much read as I intended, but I think I did okay. What was your favorite book that you read in May?

Happy reading!

-A.

5 The Predator

Short opinion: Nothing can make you hate Visser One quite like reading this book. 

Long opinion:

Although he can be loud, and obnoxious, and can take a joke waaaaay too far, Marco also might be the most adult member of the team as of the beginning of the series.  After all, this book opens with its 13-year-old protagonist buying groceries for his family using a budget he balanced himself, with every intention of going home and cooking dinner for both himself and his dad.  Not only does Marco take care of his dad, he treats that caretaking as a fact of life.  He might whine and joke about it, but he also stops in the middle of that process to save some random stranger getting beaten up in an alleyway.  (In the same situation, one could imagine Jake deciding that the risk to the team was too great for it to be worth morphing, Rachel or Tobias planning out some elaborate revenge scheme, and Cassie or Ax waiting for the situation to blow over before offering the victim help.)  Marco might be a little ruthless, and kind of a brat at times, but he also understands how the world works in a way that most kids his age—including his teammates—do not.  

Edna St. Vincent Millay has a poem, “Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies,” that makes the point better than ever I could: childhood ends with the first major loss in one’s life.  Adulthood begins with the understanding of death and grief and mortality that can only come from a world-shattering loss of a loved one.  Marco has to assume a lot of very literal and very mundane adult responsibilities at a young age—he is essentially acting as the head of his household in the absence of a competent parent—but he also has a brutally realistic understanding of death in a way that no one else* does.  Right from the first moment that Tobias suggests the Animorphs should get involved in the war, up through Marco’s decision to quit midway through this book, he has asserted the same point over and over: that death is very, very real and will find them if they fight this war.  He’s correct, of course, since by the end of the war they’ve not only lost Rachel but also James and Collette and Jara Hamee and David and hundreds of foot soldiers and loved ones.  

Other people have commented on the skill with which Applegate portrays the horror of the ants, and the ongoing motif of Marco being the weakest morpher (and also the one who stays the closest to human, with the only primate battle morph on the team), but the other moment from this book that I think is really important for the character is when Marco wakes up from a nightmare about The Lobster Incident, and his dad treats it as more or less routine.  Rachel and Cassie and Jake all get some combination of concern and shock from their families when they start showing signs of PTSD, but Marco’s dad doesn’t seem surprised at all.  That suggests to me that Marco is already dealing with a lot of negative mental health experiences as a result of Eva’s loss, well before he ever gets dragged into the bloody life-destroying hell of war.  

Marco can see where they’re all going, well before Jake and Ax lose their idealism or Rachel and Tobias lose their war-hawk tendencies (pun not intended).  He has already spotted the bright, clear line from Point A (six idiot teenagers charging off to save the world) to Point B (two teenagers dead in battle, one totally disengaged from her friends, and three rushing off on a suicide mission to combat depression).  It’s not cowardice that keeps him out of the fight at first, the way Tobias accuses, and it’s not selfishness, the way Rachel says.  It’s the calm, certain awareness that they are definitely in over their heads.  

When Marco does tell Jake he’s quitting—and Jake takes the news with his usual airbender calm—he gives a very specific reason.  He says, “a year from now I don’t want my dad going to leave flowers at two graves,” which is such a gut-punch of a line because it tells us that Marco has already pictured that exact scene (#5).  Marco understands exactly how it would play out if he did, in fact, die in the war.  When Marco says that he refuses to throw his life away because his loss would destroy his dad, he’s making a hugely adult decision with a degree of empathy and horrible pragmatism that none of the others have yet learned by force.  None of the others really seem to give much thought to their own deaths.  Cassie lightly dismisses her parents’ and friends’ concerns when she is (apparently) dead, first in #19 when she and Aftran/Karen disappear into the woods, and again in #44 when she takes an involuntary vacation to Australia.  Rachel struggles to wrap her head around her own death even as she goes into the battle that will cost her her life (#54).  Jake, Tobias, and Ax never really seem to think about it at all, unless Jake is looking to throw himself heroically between Crayak’s Hessian bullet and his friends.  Marco has calculated the possibility of his own death, played out scenarios in his mind, and concluded that that outcome is unacceptable based on a very personal degree of experience with exactly what death means for those left behind.  

And then, of course, we get to the final sequence of the book.  And Marco gets this enormous heap of revelation dumped on his head: all of his own grief, all of his father’s devastation, all of the myriad ways that Eva’s loss destroyed his life… is all a lie.  Marco’s entire existence—suburban house, brilliant engineer dad, gruffly affectionate mom, best friend two doors down, comfortable certainty in his universe, clear role among his friends and classmates—exploded into nothingness the day that the Coast Guard pulled an empty sailboat onto the local pier.  And it wasn’t horrible happenstance, it wasn’t a cosmic accident, it wasn’t a disaster at all.  It was a deliberate decision on the part of a yeerk who couldn’t be bothered to play the role of an ordinary mom anymore when she could instead move on to better things.  Visser One lived in their house, ate at their table, kissed Marco goodnight, and chose to destroy that all.  Marco doesn’t even know for sure anymore—not for a long time—how many of his memories are actually of his mother, and how many are of the imposter.  

But Eva’s mere existence, there on the Blade ship as a convenient tool in the middle of an arms race between Visser Three and Visser One, means that Marco also has the chance to go back.  Once he knows she’s out there, he knows that he has the chance to undo that terrible life-shattering event.  There is a chance that he can bring her home.  That he can give his dad new life.  And so Marco embraces that chance, even though he still knows perfectly well that the war will probably cost him his life.  

*I’ll save my rant about how we get such beautifully terrible depictions of Jake’s grief for Tom and Rachel, and Marco’s grief for Eva, but almost nothing on what it felt like for Ax to lose Elfangor, for another time.  

Hyperallergic: Beer with a Painter: Peter Acheson

Peter Acheson, “Eva Hesse” (2011-2015), oil, acrylic and collage on canvas, 12 x 16 inches (all photos by Charles Benton and courtesy Brennan & Griffin)

Peter Acheson, who lives in upstate New York, uses his living room as his winter studio. The “hearth,” which we sit around, is an old bookcase/hutch. He uses it as a provisional viewing station for paintings — propping them up and rotating them on the shelves and along the floor — as we talk. It’s also where he keeps the sound system and a stack of CDs. The Stones or Dylan are usually on deck.  A paint-splattered tarpaulin lies in front of the bookcase, and chairs are pushed to the edges of the room. Jars of acrylic paint and yogurt containers filled with brushes are right on the floor; this is where he works.

It’s a painting and rock ’n’ roll den, where art is the total, almost devotional focus; Acheson does not care about trading niceties or being ingratiating. He would rather propose and debate philosophical ideas. But he’s been quoting poetry all day, ever since he met me in a café in Hudson, where he was holding a copy of Robert Bly’s Eight Stages of Translation. We read Guillaume IX of Poitier’s “In the Great Sweetness of Spring” together, and one passage in particular became a point of reference: “Our love moves in this way: / like a branch of the hawthorn tree / …I want my God to let me live / to have my hands beneath her cloak again…”

Peter Acheson (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

A similar combination of rawness and sensitivity is what gives Acheson’s work its potency and range. His paintings are ravaged, earthy, and acutely considered, all at once. They employ a host of painterly gestures, mark-making, and collaged interruptions to the surfaces. He often paints on rough panels, burlap, and wood scraps, and attaches found elements like seashells and animal bones. He makes delicate, scribbly line drawings on paper, à la Henri Michaux. He also makes paintings with mysterious pictographic forms, bands of color, and dense layers of impasto paint. He frequently scrawls the names of his artist-heroes, or lines from poems,  across the paintings. They are abstract odes to felt experience.

Peter Acheson was born in Washington, DC in 1954 and received his BFA from Yale in 1976. He was an early member of the Williamsburg art scene in the 1980s, and now lives and works in Ghent, New York. His work has been exhibited at Novella Gallery, New York; John Davis Gallery, Hudson; the Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York; and Baumgartner Gallery, New York. In the winter and spring of 2017, he was the subject of two solo exhibitions, at Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, New York, and at Brennan & Griffin, New York.

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Jennifer Samet: Do you have childhood memories that factor into your paintings?

Peter Acheson: I have this memory from when I was about four years old. I was on a tiny beach in Cape Cod, digging my feet in the sand at the waterline. I got my legs fully buried under the lapping water, and felt something under my toes.  I kept trying to reach it but it was way down at the bottom of a hole. Finally I pulled it out and saw that it was a small toy truck.  It was metal and old, probably something from the 1940s. It was so corroded that the original shape of the truck was obscured into a pitted, abstract mass. To my eyes as a child, it was highly mysterious.

I was overwhelmed by the sense of discovery and wonder of excavation. I think about that still, because at certain moments I have felt a shudder of recognition — that same feeling of wonder and discovery. I have felt it with images in my own paintings that seemed to spring from a buried place outside of myself. And I’ve had it when looking at other art and objects. It was strong when I saw Cy Twombly’s plaster sculpture, which can be just on the other side of recognizability, as if they are weathered or eroded. They are like manmade things that are returning to nature. Everything has been softened. That is a quality I am looking for.

Myron Stout’s paintings can look like some kind of goddess sculpture from pre-dynastic Greece that’s been buried in the Mediterranean for one thousand years, and excavated. Is it a creature with two horns, or is it a seashell? That sort of mystery is what art taps into.

Peter Acheson, “Untitled” (2015), oil, acrylic and collage on board, 17.5 x 21.25 inches

JS: You studied at Yale in the 1970s. How did it impact your development as a painter?

PA: Yale was very much a problem-solving environment. Al Held was the dominant force and the graduate critiques would also include William Bailey, Bernard Chaet, and Lester Johnson. They would say things like, “He has to turn the figure three quarters of the way around, or “The foreshortening on the arm isn’t long enough.” There was a dissection of the painting as if it was a math problem to be solved. That affected my thinking about painting; I used to think like that.

Judy Pfaff and Joseph Santore were also there, and everybody talked about how “You’ve gotta make space.” I bought into it for a while, and when I got out of college, I was trying to make overlapping planes. They never looked spatial enough to me. Then I would sort of get confused by Minimalism.

Now, I don’t care about space; I’m interested in place. I want the painting to be an extremely specific event. It is as if you were walking in the woods and you saw a tree with rotting mushrooms growing out of it. You’re interested in it; you’re drawn to it; you’re looking at it thinking, “God, that’s so beautiful.” Then you look up and you see silhouettes of pine trees against the blue sky. It’s a completely different event, but it is the same world.

In several paintings, I have incorporated text from the poem “The Deer Fence,” by the Tang dynasty poet Wang Wei. It is one of the most famous poems in the Classical Chinese canon. “Empty mountain / no one to be seen / but hear — human sounds / returning sunlight enters the dark woods  / shining again on green moss.”  It is nineteen Chinese characters, but English speakers have translated the poem in a wide variety of ways. Eliot Weinberger wrote about this in his book 19 Ways of looking at Wang Wei: How a Chinese Poem is Translated (1995). I love that idea: how did all that variety get built into it?

Peter Acheson, “Untitled” (2012), acrylic and collage on canvas, 12 x 9 inches

JS: Your exhibition in Chatham incorporated different painting approaches, and work from different periods, installed in little groupings. Why is variation important to you?

PA: When your vocabulary is dispersed enough, you can go from one painting to a totally different one. I am hardly ever stuck on one. It is a formal strategy that I devised for myself: you make fifteen different things, and hopefully they will circumscribe a circle that you could loosely describe as yourself.

I think of it as a polytheistic aesthetic, and it’s my response to the stress of having to find one style that suited me. You and I and each of us are like the cast of Hamlet — a play with many actors. Our psyche incorporates all of those characters. James Hillman is the psychoanalyst writer of the polytheistic soul. He said the Greeks had it right. You have to have your God of War. And when you are in command, you better have your Zeus; you can’t be Eros. All these characters are necessary.

I am not interested in being a reductive formal artist. I grew up in a reductive formal environment. I went to private school, and a private college. I was expected to achieve, to be good. I grew up with Chris Martin; we were best friends since childhood in Washington, DC, and we talk about this all the time.  The expectations on us were so high that we just want to fail.

I was told, “You are an Acheson.” So doing what I am doing is tremendous freedom. Once I sent Chris a text message saying, “I made a really bad painting today and I love it.” He sent me back a text saying, “Irrevocably bad, irredeemably bad, terribly bad, awfully bad…!” I have gotten out from under that WASP work ethic. I don’t want to harsh painting’s mellow by getting all formalist on it.

When my youngest daughter was seven, she saw me painting in the house and would ask if she could paint too. At the end of the evening, there would be five paintings by her and one of mine. All of hers were much better and I thought about why that was.

Peter Acheson, “Untitled (Clearing)” (2010), oil and acrylic on canvas, 11 x 14 inches

When I was about seven years old, I was sent to private school and had to start wearing a tie, get my hair cut, shine my shoes. I was being told, “Peter, it’s time to grow up.” I had to leave my seven-year-old imaginative inner feminine behind. My daughter Izzy came along years later and demonstrated what that was, right in front of me. I come to the canvas with all this baggage. In that period, from about 2004-07, I tried to unpack that baggage, to get more childlike and open.

JS: Does being open mean not making many painting decisions in advance?

PA: I don’t want intention to be the driving thing. It’s more about an aesthetic response. It is similar to the response of going outside and saying, “Wow, what a beautiful day.” You didn’t conceive it. You didn’t invent the trees or the sky or the car or whatever. You just go, “Fuck, what beautiful light right now.”

That is the state I want to present to the viewer. It doesn’t matter what the content is. It could be a mud puddle; it could be a bright red tractor in the rain; it could be your girlfriend’s face; it could be a cat.

Hillman discusses how the word “aesthetic” is related to the Greek word “aisthesis,” which means “to breathe in” — a sudden intake of breath. He said when something causes you to suck in your breath, that’s aesthetics. That is what I work for.

JS: You often write the names of other artists right on your paintings. It’s like announcing your influences. I was thinking about how you like Julian Schnabel, who seems to be an artist unafraid of taking from other artists. Can you talk about that, and some of your other artist heroes?

Peter Acheson, “Eva Hesse” (2016), oil and acrylic on canvas, 12 x 28 inches

PA: Yes, Schnabel is a big, grandiose, open-hearted, wear-it-on-your-sleeve artist, and I love that about him. His work is saying, in effect, “I am just making a love letter to Twombly.” They are big acts of erotic interest — in Van Gogh with the Roses, in Twombly with the blobs of paint. The great thing about Schnabel is that it is an act. It is painting as a performance art, like a band up on stage. What is the act? How well does your band play? Schnabel’s whole act is making the movies, being the director, wearing the bathrobe.

In his autobiography C.V.J. (1957), Schnabel talks about the work of a painter as “a bouquet of mistakes.” That is poetry — because we are all going to make mistakes. But, what if you made the mistakes on a twenty-foot scale and they ended up being beautiful?

I am proceeding by means of granting myself more and more permission. It is like, “I just visited [Forrest] Bess in my studio today; we hung out.” Or, it’s a fantasy of being in Raoul de Keyser’s studio and he asks me, “Hey, do you want to study with me for a while?” I say, “Fuck, yeah; you’re one of my heroes.” So I paint like de Keyser for a while.

Peter Acheson, “Palermo in…” (2015), oil, acrylic and collage on panel, 18 x 24 inches

Blinky Palermo’s painting series “Times of the Day” (1974-76) at Dia:Beacon is another thing I am influenced by right now. The paintings are so specific.

JS: You mentioned allowing oneself to make mistakes. Can you talk about the idea of failed paintings and how that is part of your process? Also, you mentioned big paintings, but you tend to work on a medium to small scale. Why is that?

PA: I am interested in the idea of making a painting that fails. Sometimes I will be making a painting and say to myself, “This painting is just failing.” Then I’ll look at it for a long time, and sometimes realize the painting is not actually failing.

I’ve made big paintings before, but I am no longer interested in impressing anyone. I want to draw your attention. My heroes are artists like Myron Stout, Forrest Bess, Gandy Brodie, and Jan Müller, who work on a dense, small scale.  You always are walking up to the painting. You’re drawn in.

It is like the way you would look at a rose bush. It draws you in and rewards close looking with the feeling of general erotic attraction. Hillman says that it is not a question of whether it’s good or bad. It is a question of whether you are interested in it. The Latin root of interest is inter esse, which means “to be between.” There is an energy; it’s not just the painting; it’s not just you. It makes you think, “I am interested in this.”

JS: Your work often becomes object-like; you collage pieces of wood or other scraps onto the surface, and sometimes use irregularly shaped panels. How does that impact the work?

PA: I want to proceed by means of violations and defacements. Often, I am trying to violate the abstract painting language. So I will glue scraps of wood onto the work. I tend to save things and have a shop in my studio, so this stuff is around. I love paintings, but I like using objects to challenge their painting-ness.

Peter Acheson, “Untitled (Thornton Dial)” (2012), oil, acrylic and collage on canvas, 18 x 24 inches

I have been in the position before, when I was painting only with oil on canvas   and I always had this feeling, “The world doesn’t look like this.” The world has got all this shit in it: thin people, fat people, babies. My sneaker has a hole in it, my car has a flat tire. How do you get all that experience — experiences like watching your wife give birth — into your work?

I want my wobbly, uneven life in the work. An artist with a solid base under him or her can make a work that is, as Schnabel said, “a bouquet of mistakes.” It’s like — I broke up with the wrong woman; I was in love with the wrong woman; I was a fool. The fool can make the painting. Why edit the fool out? Why edit out the bad luck? Why edit out the heartbreak? Why edit out the joy and the ecstatic?

JS: Despite the fact that you talk about incorporating failure, I feel that each one of your paintings in the show at Chatham is so beautifully considered, and has a sense of quality. Do you think about “quality”? 

PA: Yes, and I love this question. In the early 1960s, the Beat poets, especially Allen Ginsberg, were criticized for not caring about quality, for just getting drunk and saying whatever they wanted to. Gary Snyder was asked about this in an interview. He said, “I worship at the lotus feet of Quality.”

I agree; I want quality like the experience of seeing a hummingbird on a flower.  The particularity of that event, the quality of the flower, the bird, its energy, and the fact that it even exists, puts you in a divine state of grace.  You are hooked on the quality of the experience. It is like looking at a lichen-covered rock on the North Peak in the Catskills, seeing an owl feather, or experiencing an autumn day. It is a natural event but it’s stunningly beautiful in its particularity.  I don’t want the work to be general. I want it to be extremely specific. The quality is tied to the particular attributes of a place. It’s not space, it’s not casual, it’s not sloppy. I am asking the painting to speak back to me, and until it’s speaking back to me, I will keep working on it. You know when a painting is done when you fall in love.

JS: Tell me more about the connection between love and painting.

PA: Several years ago, I was dating a woman artist who was such a muse.  I was in love and it was just fantastic. For six months I went around feeling like I could not fail because all I had to do was work on the paintings, and let that energy be there. The muse energy was bigger than me, and I was spreading it out over all these canvases. I was making the paintings that the art dealer Kevin Rita calls my “vibratory paintings” using the side of the brush. I could make formal decisions, but the general approach was just ecstatic. Then I would go back into the paintings and tighten them up.

Peter Acheson, “Untitled (Reef)” (2016), oil and acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24 inches

I think about Eros and love. The equation is that you start with beauty — beauty in the world, beauty in a person, or beauty in a painting. Beauty creates desire. It creates an attraction, which, in a human being, translates as desire. It is not mere wanting.  You can solve wanting by going to the mall. Desire is unattainable. Robert Bly says, “I desire to be as great a poet as Shakespeare.” It’s not going to happen, but the desire for that makes life sweet.

Hillman says, “Desire creates the growth of the wings of imagination.” To me, that makes a lot more sense than sitting around figuring out a problem. There is a Rainer Maria Rilke poem called “Remembering,” which is about this. It is about looking for something that will, in Rilke’s phrase, “infinitely increase your life.” I think about the idea that there is a painting in your future, either as the viewer or the maker, that will “infinitely increase your life.” You haven’t found it yet, but you better get busy.

The key is that you might not find it. It is in the looking, the working hard enough. I am in a hurry to find that painting. I may not find it, but the journey towards trying to find it will be fucking awesome.

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