#re entering my shadow and bone era
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The Grind- Chapter 31
A/N: Here we are, my precious jewels. The end of my own little era, but the beginning of a renewed passion. This story brought back a love for story-telling that I had long neglected, and although most don't understand the sentiment, I owe a lot of happiness to these characters. The Grind sprouted during a very dark, confusing, heartbreaking time in my life, and it became such a welcomed distraction from my emotional spiral. This piece of fiction will be held near and dear to my soul for all of eternity, and my heart beats with love for each & every one of you who has shared a kind word.
One last time, The Grind.
I was grateful that even over all the unsteady commotion, the gravel of his familiar voice busted through to my eardrums. The thud of my pulse hammered, already bringing along the gift of a taxing migraine that would only worsen once a pair of fists lashed into my skull. I was dreading the aching road of recovery before Kat and I had even thrown a punch.
Hers came first though. Quick, and robust it met the girlish roundness of my chin, shaking quivers over every hair on my skin. My footing staggered, and I swear to you my very eyeballs rattled. The early stages of pain I felt didn’t talk long to drag back the memo to my brain to protect my face as much as possible as she obsessively stalked to land an even more brutal hit the next time. I swished the blood laced spit around my jaws to wet my tongue, and settled in for war.
She could tell the blow had combusted an inkling of uncertainty in my spirit, and it only fed her desire for violence. With a random bout of bravery, I pointed an attempted swing for her ribs, connecting successfully to the tight ripples of her abdomen. Seeing as she hadn’t foreseen the body shot, it crippled her standing straight stance, and I was able to rock two more fists to the opposite cage of her ribs. Something felt off for a second when I heard her gasp for a breath when I released the wind from her belly. I felt… bad.
Violent nature was foreign to me, and I let myself feel briefly apologetic on the inside watching her suffer for air. Then, the fighting side of me rose to rule. I lobbed a club-foot kick to her chiseled thigh, victoriously capturing her balance. However, I couldn’t completely escape my often clumsy tactics, and I let my own legs tangle with hers as she dropped buoyantly to the mat.
I scurried with fluster to try and reach my standing position before Bex, but unfortunately her quickness outweighed my own. I brought my forearms to my face, doubling them as a shield of armor for my breakable nose. With her every delivery of a fist, my head bounced like a ball on the soft mat below. I prayed for her to tire, or somehow make a careless mistake and allow my escape. I could already feel the tenderness of plum-shaded bruises forming up and down my arms, and I just wanted to cower in Colton’s arms.
Where was his voice? Why couldn’t I hear the assuring yells of he and Tia?
Just as my arms began to weaken in defeat, the squealing of the timekeeper’s bell halted her strike.
Katrina stood to her feet with ease, running for the cool swig of water waiting in her corner, leaving a shaken and hallucinating swirl of stars swimming like a halo around my skull. I tried to assess myself on the mat, still surveying what damage may have been done. Aside from my fractured pride.
“Baby! Get up, c’mon! Get over here, Liv!”
I frenzied to my feet shakily, remembering the very limited seconds I had to steal a second with my coaches in between rounds. Tia tried to masquerade her reaction of pity, but the squinting sickness of her eyes told all the tale I needed. I didn’t feel much pain, other than a tight pressure settling inside my nostrils, so the unknown markings couldn’t have been of much severity, right?
Suddenly, settling on the 3-legged stool for a ticking minute of a break, I caught glimpse of the very sopped, very stained towel that Colt applied to my stuffy nose. He squeezed gently, and his touch seemed to re-apply sensation to my busted snout. I yelped as his massaged as gingerly as his rocky hands would, and plugged the holes with some sort of swabs to drink up the blood-spill.
“You good, Liv? Hey… Look at me, right now. Look in my eyes. Do you wanna keep going?” Colton shook my shoulders, demanding a surefire answer. Bless his soul, there was nothing but devoted protection and the will to be my strong tower in his silver eyes.
“Have a little faith, remember?”
He rehearsed his best fake smile, and slung the ruined rag over his shoulder to scoop up my cushioned seat when the ref tapped a finger to his imaginary watch hurrying us to pick up the pace.
Besides the whelped imprint of my ankle bone on the upper of her thigh, Bex would enter the second round only rested and ready for more. She would go viciously after my obviously very broken nose, so it was my responsibility to protect it like a mother bird to her helpless young.
Two nippy little jabs, but thankfully she had missed. The dodging alone of her efforted hits made my entire face spasm with pain, and I was already daydreaming about the blue-green blossoms of bruise I would wake up to in the morning. If I even made it that far…
“Go after that leg, Liv! She’s tryin’ to baby it, so get after her!”
With Tia’s help, I did begin to notice the awkward teeter to Katrina’s steps. She was hobbling in the slightest, and her leg carried a barely detectable limp of uneasiness. If I could numb that leg enough, and swipe her footing to crash, I knew I could get her. I needed just a cracked window of opportunity, and I wouldn’t let my submission training go to waste.
I fell into rhythm with bizarre fist fakes, confusing her reflexes when taking shot after shot at her leg. With unyielding focus, I beat the tender skin of her thigh with kicks like a well-oiled meat tenderizer, the stretch of my own groin muscle also suffering.
Dribbles from my nose spilled blood down my chest onto the mat, painting a slickness beneath our feet. The metallic flavored goo gurgled in the back of my throat, and I wanted to spit free my mouthguard and guzzle the strongest proof of some sort of dark alcohol to curb its stain on my tongue. I made a mental note that Colt make a liquor run once I settled into the featherbed in our hotel room.
As Katrina and I tiptoed on light feet ‘round the cage, I’d give side glances to Colt. Once finding his foot standing in the seat of my stool with his elbow resting on a knee, his mouth taut behind the hand his rested over his lips. Assessing. Strategizing. Criticizing?
Another moment his forearms interlocked over his beating chest, toes tapping in a wide stance, and even a barely traceable half-smile sitting across his face. Just knowing he was there, close to me, only a few arms-lengths away should danger really arrive, slowed the pace of my overbeating heart. I’d win this for him. For me, of course. But, it was decided nevertheless that Katrina’s very first loss tonight, would ultimately rally a victory for me, my camp, and my Colton.
As the round ended, Bex felt the buff weight of pressure stalking around her. As I turned, this time much more aware, towards my corner for a rushed break between blows, she smashed both palms to the blades of my shoulder, childishly showing me to the ground. Our ref consumed her with a tight embrace, quite firmly chastising into her ear. Thankfully for the much ,much needed backup, I bounced out of the way for Willow to swallow Tia inside a resisting bearhug, as I attempted to handle Colton’s own bursting of incoherent fury.
“Handle your fuckin’ girl, Tyler! You and I both knew we ain’t here for any shit like that!” My rumbling bear growled across the mat to Kat’s fumbling coach. “I see anything like that again, and me ‘n you may have to borrow this damn cage for a short minute.”
“Hey, hey, hey! Colton, hey. Stop, baby. C’mon! Look at me, I’m good, ok?” I purred and hummed into his hot ear. Hoping some sort of soothing spell would lull some calmness back into his raging eyes.
“COLT, STOP. Shit! Take a deep breath, Colton. Don’t ruin this for me, damn it! I’m fine, babe. I promise.” I was rambling to an empty shell. His spirit was climbing the rafters like a demonic spirt lurking above the darkest shadows. “Please…”
With that simplest plea, the pink of his cheeks reappeared, and his lips relaxed. I think his teeth cracked from the tense of his unbreakable jaws.
He shuddered, as if feeling his spirit mold back into his body, and turned away from Bex and her coach. Placing two firm paws atop my shoulders, he hurried me to a seat, kneeling himself to eye level.
“Beat. Her.” A growl buzzed from the back of his raw throat.
He knew her sideshow had embarrassed me, and if I wouldn’t let him intervene in my honor, I best do it myself.
Colton kissed me. Hard. Teetering the stool on its back legs. And if I couldn’t win this fight with that kind of motivation, I never had a chance to begin with.
The referee had taken some extra moments to scold Katrina for the uncalled for, untimely reaction, and began ushering Tia and Colt towards the cage door.
I hissed an engrossed inhale, focusing best I could to even out the pace of my tottering, rambunctious heart.
But my heart would be the only thing I would slow.
Barely registering the ‘ting’ of our timekeepers bell, I lunged forward sighting in on the nose protruding from the middle of her smug face. The girl hadn’t given a single clear peep at her face the entire match, but it seemed in that moment that fate had tied her hands for the upper hand of my fist.
Her eyes wept instantly at the burn of her nasal bone cracking in half. But that didn’t stop me. My humanity switched long flipped with the scent of a wound, and I was only out for blood no matter the cost. With battered knuckles, and uncontrolled swings, the light of defense dulled behind my opponents’ eyes.
A happen-stance shot deep into the mushy socket of her eye obliterated her focus, and the cage rumbled and rattled when her body fell limber at my feet. Until I was torn from her, and the match was called, I wouldn’t stop the invasive assault and risk any odds of a comeback.
Her head bobbled like a bottle cap rolling over the waves of a high tide ocean, and it seemed the way her eyelashes batted in slow motion that they themselves were even too heavy for her to bear. Our official closely observed her behavior, watching for signs of drooping unconsciousness, and any other medical qualifications for calling the match.
With one roll of my knuckles over her chin, her knee buckled at the bend and sent her tumbling. Trying to resist the inevitable admirably, in true fighters’ fashion, Katrina’s feeble, worn down body emptied of any overcoming abilities. Tears began to twine with red leaking down her face when the ring ref signaled to the timekeeper, calling the bout.
TKO.
Colton’s obsessing pride, uncontainable joy, and earnest tears of content dissipated whatever inkling of patience he was born with, and he kicked his lead foot into the cage door, bending loose the hinges to get to me. As my left hand was raised in baffling triumph, he pulled it right back into his own, sliding back into to place the sparkling gemstone on my ring finger.
Colton’s sentimental tears turned loose into an unbroken stream, his chest choking free chuckling sobs as he folded at the knee, and buried his reddening face into the pumping breaths of my belly. I could feel his mumblings vibrate into me, and his mouth movements tickling the bare skin above my waistband. Pulling him free and seeking his face, I combed through his shagged hair with giggling of my own.
“Baby. Hey! What is it, Colt?!”
I adored the way his smile danced with his tears, the odd coupling a beautiful one.
“You are fucking amazing, Liv Elliott! And fuck me for ever thinking you didn’t belong here.”
With an eager, rising fever to kiss his forever gorgeous lips, I cupped his face and willed him into me. His hands wormed under the crook of my arms and suddenly the ground disappeared from beneath my tired feet. No protest present, I hooked the clutches of my legs about his abdomen, and captured him. If I had any breath in me after the battle, he would’ve sucked it clear from my lungs with his smothering display of a kiss. I heard cameras snapping, analysts and fellow writers begging my name for a statement, but all the world might as well have been a foreign, unpopulated wonderland where only my soul and his could survive.
The fusing of his plush-skinned mouth with my own lit my spirit on fire, and I considered dragging him to the courthouse first thing the following day to marry him on the spot, just to be able to pair his own name with the word ‘husband’.
“Do your thing, champ. They wanna hear from you,” Colton plopped me down to meet to ground. “I’ll be right here. Always”
He eased himself backwards, dismissing himself from the sight of cameras and attention, pushing me to bathe in the limelight of the results of my hard work. He may not have been holding my hand in the literal sense, but the glow of his cheery cheeks as he watched me share the rundown from my point-of-view with the newspapers comforted me. I spied Tia even chatting at his side, with some strange sentiment resembling a genuine smile, as my parents weaved through the aisles.
Standing in my own portrayal of center stage, feeling the gratifying weight of his diamond promise on my finger, his last name soon-to-be mine on the wrist of my blood-stained gloves, and the unpredicted win of an MMA bout under my belt, there weren’t enough words in a Webster to define my state. Whether things would never be the same again, I knew all change would be for the better with the treasure of my Colton tucked in my back pocket for cherished keeping. With a determined heart, a driving passion, and maybe a few more callouses on my hands than before, I would strap down and relish in the ride to come. Lots of work, even more play, and back to The Grind.
TAGS: @torialeysha @eap1935 @mollybegger-blog @littleluna98
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143 - Pioneer Days
We are thirsty. We cannot see.
We don’t know what time it is, we are nearly here.
Welcome to Night Vale.
Pioneer Days are upon us again. This is, of course, just the folksy rebranding that the public utilities department gives to randomly selected days throughout the year, when they cut all services without notice. The lights go out, the air conditioners grow warm, the food spoils, the water supply dries up. All residents are required to dress in the costumes of early settlers to make the whole thing feel festive and patriotic. Failure to dress in era-appropriate clothing, such as overalls and soft meat crowns, will result in punitive measures. Including being called a time traveler in a pejorative tone of voice, as was traditional punishment for all real time travelers back in the early days of Night Vale.
Polls show that these civic holidays are increasingly unpopular, but this time it’s going to be different, the utilities department promises. “It’s going to be way more fun, we swear. Just bear with us, you’re so brave. You’re all my brave little pioneers,” the pamphlets scattered around town assure us. “After all,” the pamphlets continue, “what is bravery but endurance? What better way to honor the struggles of our ancestors than through personal discomfort and grim acceptance? These are the values our town was founded on, aren’t they? Aren’t they?!” the pamphlets shout. The pamphlets writhe on the ground. The pamphlets inhale sharply and become still. In an effort to sway public opinion on pioneer days, the utilities department has unveiled an interpretive boardwalk and historical display, set up in an open expanse of desert miles from town. The intention of the display is to bring a sense of local pride and education to the community, and to be a fun family centered activity that can take people’s minds off the panic inducing existential questions that come from being so very alone in the dark.
And now traffic. You had a dream when you were young. In the dream, you woke up on the couch after a nap just in time to see your family driving away, leaving you alone in the house. They’ve never done that before, you’re much too young, too small to be left alone. There are no lights on and everything is soft with shadows. You see a brown paper bag on the table. They must have left it there for you. Is it food? You don’t know how to feed yourself yet. The bag suddenly lurches and tips over onto its side all by itself. A snake slides out onto the table, drops to the floor, and slithers rapidly toward you. You try to scream.
This is the moment you were supposed to wake up, but it isn’t a dream, is it? Your whole family really did abandon you. You grew up in this house alone after that, just you and the snake. It wasn’t poisonous but that doesn’t mean it was a good companion. It came and went without consideration for you at all, sunning itself on rocks or squeezing rodents to the death whenever it pleased, sometimes not coming home for days. You cleaned up its discarded skins during the molting season. You let it sleep curled next to your body for warmth in the winter months, even though it could only give back cold indifference in return. But you had no one else, that’s just how it was. You still see each other once a year during the holidays out of a sense of duty. You follow each other on Facebook, but neither of you check that site anymore.
You waited to wake up from this dream of your youth to find your family had never left, that they were still there with you. You are still waiting to wake from this dream.
This has been traffic.
I’m getting more details about the Pioneer Day’s display and celebration. Along the interpretive boardwalk, visitors will come to several viewing platforms where they will see the bleached bones of select citizens’ ancestors, scattered across the sun scorched earth. Those who won last night’s raffle must remit their ancestral bones by noon in order to be featured in the display. Further along the walk, spectators will be treated to an animatronic re-enactment of the battle for the scrublands, an event in which several key town founders bravely fought against the giant benevolent arthropods that used to exist in this area. As visitors will see, the beasts were all slain easily by our intrepid settlers, as the animals were unaccustomed to violence of any kind and regarded the human newcomers with only gentle curiosity.
“They had to die,” intones the robotic voice of a mechanical man in a waistcoat, as he stands triumphant among piles of enormous multi-pointed legs. “For they were too visually disconcerting to live,” he booms.
There will always be a booth sponsored by the historical society displaying repurposed slide film from random strangers’ family vacations that have ben collected at garage sales over the years. Accompanied by plaques with made up historical narratives about the pictures. For example, there’s one of an elderly woman playing shuffleboard on a seniors’ cruise entitled “Griselda Fords the River”. It tells the tale of when pioneers first got to the sand wastes and there was a big scary river running through it, and how they had to risk their lives just to reach the land that we now have the privilege to take for granted. A lot of plaques have a kind of passive aggressive tone like that, actually.
If you make it to the end of the walk, you will be greeted by Earl Harlan, who will demonstrate how to make cherries jubilee, a staple dish among the early Night Vale frontiers people. “You feed a goose cherries until it can no longer walk or stand on its own,” Earl explains. “Then you light the goose on fire until its screams become whimpers, and when it’s finally silent, you extinguish the flames. The goose’s blackened flesh is full with tar enzymes that are very good for your skin and eyes. The red liquid pooling around it is only cherry juice. Only viscous cherry juice,” he explains as he dishes out samples of the boiling native cuisine directly into people’s outstretched ravenous hands.
That’s not all. The fully immersive interactive theater segment is last. You’ll be blindfolded and placed in the back of a cargo truck. Hours later, you will step off of the wooden blank and be free to enter into the desert, to try and find your way back home. Just like the pioneers did it. You don’t realize how the boardwalk is designed to be completely disorienting until this moment, when you step into the endless desert and look to all horizons and see only identical sagebrush and chaparral and nothingness. As if you’ve entered a mirrored fun house made only of hot dirt.
More on Pioneer Days, but first
The weather.
[“Vines” by Super Boink
https://superboink.bandcamp.com/]
As you wander lost in the desert, you first experience a dizzying sense of freedom. You can go wherever you want, the future is yours to shape. The possibilities seem as endless as the vast wasteland in front of you, but when you look behind you and realize you can no longer see the interpretive boardwalk or any other sign of human life, that sense of freedom becomes abject despair. You realize that taking risks is only fun when you have safety net. When that risk is a choice. Now that you’ve been swallowed up into the blistering wilderness, you learn that choice has always been an illusion. You must go forward. The sun sinks lower. The dark air blurs the edges. You feel a cool breeze sweep over the sand – and you are grateful for that. Your lips bleed.
It’s nightfall when you come to an old homestead. It has no roof and leans to one side. There is no door, but there is the shape of a door, the black rectangle of absence. You feel compelled to go in, as would anyone confronted by a structure with an entrance, but you hesitate. You recognize this place, yes. You saw it in the slide film display by the historical society. There was a picture of it taken many years ago. It depicted the same house, only it had a roof back then. It did not lean to one side, and two children, barely toddlers, were standing out front. They had no heads, they had chickens roosting on top of their necks instead. The accompanying explanation said that it was a double exposure, a photographic art form that early Night Vale settlers dabbled in to pass the time. There was a whole collection of these photos displayed: a bath tub filled with blood. A levitating skull on fire. A baked ham with long luxurious hair.
“The first Night Valers were incredibly adept at trick camera work,” the historical society insisted nervously when questioned. “Cameras had come to town at least a hundred years before cameras were invented, due to the rampant time traveler problem back in those days,” they explained.
“We found the pictures in a locked trunk buried near the railroad tracks,” blurted a younger historical society member who was immediately shushed by the elders and relegated to selling merch.
You hesitate in the yard, until you can no longer ignore the siren song of the wind through the broken bones of this place, screaming at you to enter. Inside, the only piece of furniture left standing is a kitchen table. On top sits a sealed jar packed to the brim with pickled eggs. Your child asks if she can have one. Your child is with you, she’s ben riding on your back the whole time and you forgot all about her. That’s incredibly alarming. How can a parent just forget their own child like that?
“Yes, honey,” you say, trembling with the effort of keeping your voice calm. “You can have one.”
You set her down and she scampers across the dusty boards, and she feeds. She feeds ravenously. She asks for a bedtime story next, it is her bedtime after all. At least she says it is. You don’t know what time it is, but somehow she senses it and you trust her instincts. Habits are comforting, rituals are important. It’s what keeps us grounded. It’s what prevents us from shouting uncontrollably and clutching at our eyes.
“Once upon a time, there was a child who looked very much like you,” you begin.
“No,” she interrupts, “the child looks like you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” you say, “because it was actually a dog, not a child, be quiet now. Here’s the story. A dog ran away from home and had many adventures and then returned to its family and everyone learned lessons.”
“What kind of adventures?” she asks.
“Unspeakable adventures,” you say.
“Is this a true story?” she asks.
“Every story is true,” you say.
She’s still awake. You point through the roofless void and tell her to count the stars, hoping to bore her into unconsciousness.
“There are no stars,” she says. You acknowledge that the thick dark air obscures any light that might be in the sky, but “we can see them anyway,” you tell her, “because we know the stars exist.”
“How do we know?” she asks.
“Go to sleep,” you say.
After she’s asleep, you walk through what’s left of the old house and wonder if this is your new home now. There are many things you think you see standing in doorways or huddled in corners. Luckily, most of them are not real. The only thing that’s truly there is a nest of baby arthropods, bedded down in the tattered remains of a blood stained prairie dress. They appear to be orphaned, but they are together, intertwining all of their legs and blinking all of their eyes and wriggling as one large familial mass. You know you don’t belong here. This is their home now, as it was their home before, long before there was ever a house. You lift your child’s sleeping body and enter the desert once more. You look behind you and see the silhouette of a chicken-headed toddler standing sentinel in the yard. It’s not real, it’s just a double exposure.
As light lifts itself above the horizon, something shiny catches your eye in the distance. You move towards it, because it’s the only thing to move towards. You don’t feel hope or motivation, only the pull of a random focal point that keeps you going forward. Eventually you come upon an enormous parking lot full of vintage cars. Some are early models made of skin and mud and some are mid-century coupes with fins and hardtops and spinal columns. Hundreds of chrome bumpers glare in the blinding half-sun of dawn. What’s all this? you wonder in the daze.
“Hear yee, hear yee!” shrieks an individual in a tricorn hat, ringing a handbell.
“What is this?!” you shriek back, grabbing them by the lapels. They do not acknowledge you.
“Hear yee!” they cry again, but do not elaborate further.
Suddenly the pounding of drums and deafening squawk of brass, a marching band is playing. Colorful streamers trail through a clear blue sky. It’s the city parade. You made it to the end of the Pioneer Days interpretive display and celebration! You accept another liquid handful of scalding cherries and stumble home with your drowsy young still clinging to your back.
As you enter your own silent house, completely free of all public utilities in celebration of Pioneer Days, you are overpowered by the scent of rotting kale in the stuffy air. And you breathe it in deeply. You rejoice. You weep. The only source of water is the puddle on the kitchen door, fed by the constant drip of the defrosting freezer. And you kneel down and drink from it, until you are satiated.
Things don’t look as bad as they once did, do they? The walls aren’t closing in on you anymore, they embrace you. The dark screens of your electronic devices no longer reflect your own boredom back to you, they reflect only relief on your haunted face. The inconvenience of no public services pales in comparison to the night you spent merely surviving in a howling unstable universe. It’s all about context. It’s all about managing your expectations. That’s what the utilities department pamphlet was trying to tell us all along.
And of course about celebrating the Pioneers spirit, something something forefathers, vintage cars and other stuff like that.
But now that I think of it, we do spend a lot of our days distracting ourselves from physical reality. Maybe we really can use this time to experience life more solidly in the physical world, the way our ancestors did. Who needs modern conveniences when we have each other, right? Hold your loved ones close tonight. After all, you have nothing better to do.
I’m coming home now, Carlos. I know you can’t hear me. No one can hear me. The power’s out here in the station just like it is everywhere else. We haven’t been broadcasting anything for days now. And even if we had bee, your radios don’t work anyway. but habits are comforting. Ritual is important.
Stay turned next for – whatever you think you hear.
Good night,
Night Vale,
Good night.
Today’s proverb: The leading cause of death is having a body.
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Goodbye to a World
I’m standing on the most sacred ground in American music history. In 2015 Bethel Woods, the site of the first Woodstock Fest, has been transformed into Mysteryland, a multisensory cultural experience for a new generation of starry-eyed electro lovers. Between two hundred-foot-high rainbow-painted horse heads Porter Robinson is concentrating on the instruments before him where DJ decks had been stationed all weekend. My face is drenched in the effervescent glow of the stage lights and suddenly I’m thinking, “Fuck, it’s happening again.” My nose tingles as I recognize the delicate melody that gradually swells into a triumphant wall of sound. The bastard has me tearing up for the second time this set. When the towering euphony reduces to four crooned lines, I’m crying.
We’ll see creation come undone
These bones that bound us will be gone
We’ll stir our spirits ‘til we’re one
Then soft as shadows we’ll become
The lyrics don’t conjure any particular memory or evoke any particular emotion, but rather elicit the response of experiencing vivid beauty. “Sea of Voices” was Porter Robinson’s homecoming announcement, telling the world that the year-long hiatus, his recession to his parents’ home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was over. (Robinson, 2014)
Porter Robinson’s ascension to EDM superstardom was more a series of snatched opportunities than a pursuit. A 12-year-old recluse fascinated by role-playing and rhythm video games, he began trying to re-create his favorite 8-bit tunes on a pirated copy of Sony’s ACID software. By posting his unripe productions on Internet forums he found a mentor in vet producer Kyrandian, who pushed Porter until out popped a Beatport number one. “Say My Name” was a bona fide electro house banger, and at 16, Porter was instantaneously inundated with requests to DJ parties around the country. DJ culture was totally foreign to the small-city Carolina boy and clubs were uncharted territory until he started performing in them. One year later he wrangled Ultra Music Fest, South by Southwest, and three Electric Daisy Carnivals on his first headlining EP tour. One year after that, he charted Billboard. (in Fusilli, 2012)
Oblivious to the dominating Dutch house sound of the first wave of the EDM takeover, Porter’s 2010 to 2011 singles were influenced by the music that raised him: chiptune, trance, IDM (intelligent dance music) and Japanese electro hyperpop from the interactive video game Dance Dance Revolution. The result was a moderately eclectic soundboard within the typical 128-BPM four-on-the-floor electro house format, which he coined “complextro.” It was a style defined by its lack of definition and an emphasis on detail, which Porter thought characterized the work of some of his biggest inspirations, Wolfgang Gartner, DirtyLoud, and Skrillex. Porter prematurely enlisted himself as another purveyor of complextro while these early singles—though inspired by several genres—still fit snugly into the electro house casing. (in Fusilli, 2012) That is, until he wrote “Language.” With its trance breakdowns, glitched-out buildups, and an ambient vocal interlude between progressive house drops, it defied the structural and tonal conventions of electro house. Finally, Porter had fulfilled his own prophecy. He was a complextro artist. The summer of 2012 it was impossible to avoid “Language” at any major festival. If you knew at this point what the letters E-D-M stood for, you knew Porter Robinson’s name.
It’s the all-American name of the fresh new face of the American dream, although as far as faces go, our 19-year-old protagonist hasn’t quite grown into his yet. Porter sits opposite his Billboard interviewer at Coachella, a tan, tattooed human stamp of the word “bro.” In the same frame, Porter’s skin appears blanched and his shoulders permanently hunched over from years of living behind the blue light of a computer screen. His upper lip is shadowed by sweat and baby hairs. As Porter recites responses about his age and influences, he absentmindedly slackens his mic hand so the audio feed fades in and out. Once Billboard Bro has filled his question quota, he flashes a farewell smile at the camera. Porter is sheepishly thanking the camera he thinks has been filming him this whole time, and you have to wonder if socializing is something he ever enjoys. (Brooks, 2012)
In between “Say My Name” and “Language” Porter Robinson made a crucial decision. With Gesaffelstein and Brodinski added to his roster of idols in 2011, he flirted with the idea of making a sharp left turn into tech house, a hybrid of mechanical techno percussion and groove-infused house. (Brooks, 2012)(in easylove Records, 2010) After all, his proclaimed main objective at the time was to “maximize energy and write a song that was perfect for the dance floor,” an idea he traversed in the 2011 Spitfire EP with two dubstep tracks and the crassly aggressive moombahton number “100% In the Bitch.” (in Fusilli, 2012) But something was missing. The constraints of music that functions solely to energize the body left him yearning for a sound that would satisfy the soul. Goodbye tech house, hello emotional introspection. The uplifting and anthemic “Language,” his first true complextro track, was also his first artistic expression of sincerity. Its chart-topping success was all Porter needed to start a new chapter of his career: the decision for beauty.
“Easy” was the confirmation that the Porter we knew, booty-shake-maker big-beat-banger Porter, was never coming back. A collab with fellow touring producer Mat Zo, “Easy” one-upped “Language” in emotionally uplifting power. By connecting with his fans on a deeper, more personal level, it seemed Porter had unearthed his true identity as an artist over entertainer. He was gaining momentum. And then he disappeared.
The decision to abandon the DJ culture that nurtured him peaked in late 2012 when he was touring with Mat Zo, “Easy” in development. “I remember being in the back of my tour bus, and we were all just listening to our favorite music and sharing tracks, and we did that for an hour, and there was not a single dance record that any of us wanted to play for each other.” (in Knaggs, 2014) EDM was losing its appeal. Porter was becoming fed up with the creative limitations of dance music as functional entertainment, the hackneyed structure that builds and releases for the sole purpose of partying. The fear of creative stagnation, which he frequently refers to as “the enemy” in interviews, prompted a retreat to Chapel Hill. “I’m going to go back and listen to every album that inspired me and figure out what it is that I loved about that stuff, and try to channel this all into something that’s really me.” (Robinson, 2014) No interviews, no tours—he dissolved back into the Internet so that the only time we saw his face was in hieroglyphics, 【＝◈︿◈＝】. If Porter hadn’t withdrawn at his peak, we might’ve lost interest in that year of Soundcloud inactivity and festival absence. But we didn’t. We were hungrily awaiting the big reveal.
Worlds was Porter Robinson’s dissent from EDM, but it materialized less as a middle finger than a hug. It wasn’t 21-year-old Porter who emerged from the blue light portal of his parents’ basement, it was 12-year-old Porter, the boy consumed by the various universes of massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). (in Knaggs, 2014) Porter constructed Worlds as a universe with different doors, where you could enter Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time or Diablo, Mario 64 or World of Warcraft, enter the fictional fantasy that he’d been living while “Say My Name” was still in the making. He forged a sonic trip down memory lane to the “cheesy 2000-era pop rock,” the late-90s/early-2000s video game chiptunes trapped in 8 bits, and the Japanese media that defined his childhood. To effectively and obviously reference this era in Worlds he went straight to the source, plucking out presets from General MIDI and SoundFonts, programs created in the 80s and 90s to facilitate seamless transitions from recorded to synthesized audio. (Robinson, 2014) “Most people would hear those and they wouldn’t think that it sounds retro, they would just think that it sounds bad. But for me, that’s moving the nostalgia forward.” (Robinson, 2014) This conglomerate of “retro” and contemporary synthesized sounds gives the album a timeless quality. Stadium-sized snare hits à la Phil Collins dance with unfamiliar modernity through advanced glitching effects. Every human voice on the album—including the many guest artists—is processed with an ethereal futurism. The album’s keyword was ‘escapism,’ the medium a projection of our imaginations. (Robinson, 2014)
In contrast to the discordant hues of the spitfire album cover, Worlds displays pastel softness. Deviating from the rapid-fire 128 to 140 BPM pace of Spitfire. Worlds hovers mostly around 90. Although 128 BPM rhythms do occur, they project a refined delicacy, as in the case of “Sea of Voices,” which actually feels like it floats through 32 BPM. If you were looking for a dance floor banger, Worlds was not the place to look. Crowds wouldn’t jump up and down at his shows anymore, but pulse the air with their outstretched hands, embracing each other affectionately and swaying in sensual undulations.
“Sad Machine” emerged as the immediate hit. An infectious opening hook carries the intro into Porter’s most singable verse yet. It’s a wistful post-apocalyptic duet between Porter and Avanna, a female character from a Japanese singing synthesis platform called Vocaloid. (Robinson, 2014) Boy meets robot. Boy and robot comfort each other in the wake of the end of the world. Porter embraced the role of vocalist out of necessity as the album’s due date rushed up, his vulnerable rawness as a singer contrasting with his computerized counterpart. (Robinson, 2014) His reference to Avanna in interviews as “she” and “her” is more endearing, rather than disturbing or pathetic, and he could care less that some label him an internet-certified pussy. “The best hate tweet I ever got was ‘hey loser go hang out with your imaginary robot girl’ I was like hell yes this dude gets it.” (twitter.com) K-k-k-kawaii, Porter!
Avanna resurfaces in tracks like “Fresh Static Snow” and “Goodbye to a World,” though not in the most Japanese of all, “Flicker.” In her place, a text-to-speech program spits out a nonsensical, whimsical rap of seamlessly chopped up and reconnected album titles translated to Japanese, albums like Daft Punk’s Discovery, his all time favorite. (Robinson, 2014) This is one more example of how Porter cleverly repurposes his sources of musical inspiration directly into the product. “Flicker” is an ode to the Japanese ideal of the appreciation of beauty and color. He searches for the recreation of this ideal he’s absorbed from the timbre of Japanese video games through pensive breakdowns that bloom into optimistic chord progressions.
The most literal representation of Porter Robinson’s resignation from aggressively beat-driven EDM is “Fellow Feeling,” where a weeping violin multiplies into a mournful symphony worthy of a blockbuster soundtrack. The first two minutes of this elegant lament recall the piece Porter has claimed to be “the most beautiful song [he’s] ever heard,” the orchestral version of “Serenity” by Afternova, an expansion on a trance beat, within which also lurks the melody of “Language” and the movement of “Sea of Voices.” (in Harper, 2011) “Fellow Feeling” is conducted by a girl’s whispered narrative filled first with regret, then optimism.
I cried, for I didn’t think it could be true
That you and I might’ve always known one another
And that we could not only evoke,
But conjure a place of our own
And that everywhere that has ever existed
It was all in service for our dream
Now, please, hear what I hear
A chugging techno monster abruptly infiltrates the symphony, assaulting the vulnerability of the strings with mechanical grime.
Let me explain
This ugliness, this cruelty, this repulsiveness
It will all die out
And, now, I cry for all that is beautiful
This duel between the two conflicting aesthetics then morphs into a hard-hitting complextro beat guided by a driving side-chained kick drum. To Porter, this was the easiest way to declare his separation from the perfunctory functionality of dance music. The hybrid house climax at the end, though, references “Language” and “Easy” to make clear that mellifluous music at 128 BPM is still a possibility.
If you visit Porter Robinson’s Soundcloud page you will find it cleansed of the “ugliness” and “repulsiveness” to which he refers in “Fellow Feeling.” Missing are his moombahton and dubstep releases, the faux-complextro pre-“Language” singles, and the bass-heavy Spitfire remixes. The density and grit of these tracks cannot, in his mind, coexist with his newly refined artistry. I wonder if Porter can even listen to “100% In the Bitch” now without cringing at its vulgarity. As for Soundcloud’s music discovery function, he spends at least an hour daily searching the server for new ideas rather than “crazy production prowess.” Rejecting the negative connotation of the word ‘novelty,’ he embraces its implication of distinctiveness. “When I hear something that I’ve never heard before, I love that feeling, and I think that’s one of the greatest things about electronic music.” (Robinson, 2014)
The conception of the Worlds tour was as immense an effort as the album itself. Porter handed everyone in his art department a 20-page document with explicit instructions on the visual concept. Surrealism based on glitch and role-playing video games rather than trippy drug-inspired imagery was the goal. (Robinson, 2014) The outcome was a multi-screen cinematic journey through flashes of vibrant and prismatic glitches and Japanese calligraphy, skies of floating islands, pixilated flower fields, molten orbs, and the familiar forests we experience vicariously through recurring anime characters that leap, fly and fall through Porter’s low-poly imagination. Full immersion in his vision is essential, so he performs only original compositions edited for the sake of novelty, triggering samples on drum pads, playing dominant melodies on keys, and singing wherever possible. He defies the odds against a single DJ possessing so much virtuosic musicality. Inevitably, the experience begs the emotional participation of his audiences, which is guided by narrations, the most memorable of which is the following:
Every place you’ve ever imagined
It’s real
There is a fictional city in your
mind and you know every corner of it
Your mind is a world
Each of us is a place
This shit really takes you on a feel trip.
The conclusion of the album and the live show is Avanna’s swan song, “Goodbye to a World.” In the most heartbreaking instance of the overarching apocalyptic theme of Worlds, Avanna devolves literal bit by bit into her monotone death. The fragility that leads to worlds’ destruction references the MMPORGs so significant to Porter which, “once the company goes under, or the game is no longer profitable...these worlds are completely inaccessible. They basically just die.” (in Knaggs, 2014) I imagine young Porter’s eyes welling with tears as the server shuts down and he is forcibly returned to reality. “Worlds doesn’t really have a place in reality,” he tells us. (in Knaggs, 2014) As he grapples with the imminence of adulthood, he preserves a child-like fantasy. It’s a vessel of fiction and escapism, which is really the guiding spirit of EDM as a whole, though Worlds has liberated Porter from the shackles of the conventionally vapid modes of this ideology. As he noticed EDM curating its own obsolescence, he mapped out his immortality in an alternate universe with an open invitation and warm welcome for those of us who wish to join him.
Bibliography
Robinson, Porter. Porter Robinson on DJing and the State of EDM. YouTube. N.p., 12 Aug. 2014. Web.
10 Dec. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdzj2I0QgP8>.
Robinson, Porter. "A Powerhouse, And He's Not Yet 20." Interview by Jim Fusilli. The Wall Street
Journal. N.p., 4 July 2012. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <http://www.wsj.com/articles/
SB10001424052702304299704577502452164796814>.
Robinson, Porter. Porter Robinson Q&A @ Lollapalooza 2012. Interview by Jonathan Brooks. YouTube.
N.p., 4 Aug. 2012. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u--wXQB--00>.
Robinson, Porter. "New 'World' Order: Porter Robinson Interviewed." Interview by Rob Knaggs.
Clas. N.p., 11 June 2014. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <http://www.clashmusic.com/features/
new-world-order-porter-robinson-interviewed#view-gallery-image-2>.
Robinson, Porter. Porter Robinson Interview: 'EDM is entertainment, it's not art'. YouTube. N.p., 5
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Robinson, Porter. Porter Robinson on Video Games and Breaking Down Tracks from His Debut Album,
'Worlds'. YouTube. N.p., 11 Aug. 2014. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=UiRDqYxPSig>.
Robinson, Porter. EMC 2014: Keynote Porter Robinson: Changing the Game. Interview by Nick Thayer.
YouTube. N.p., 15 Dec. 2014. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=iPxfWmnRmyw>.
Robinson, Porter. "Porter Robinson Interview." easylove Records. N.p., 1 Nov. 2010. Web. 10 Dec.
2015. <http://www.easyloverecords.com/porter-robinson-interview/>.
Sachs, Elliot. "Porter Robinson Refuses to Work with Katy Perry." YourEDM. N.p., 10 Aug. 2012. Web.
10 Dec. 2015. <http://www.youredm.com/2012/08/20/
porter-robinson-refuses-to-work-with-katy-perry/>.
Robinson, Porter. "An Interview with Porter Robinson." Interview by Sarah Harper. Knight News. N.p.,
29 Oct. 2011. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <http://knightnews.com/2011/10/
an-interview-with-porter-robinson/>.
Robinson, Porter. "Q&A: Porter Robinson Loves SF, His Dogs, and Japan." Interview by Carlos Olin
Montalvo. SF Station. N.p., 12 Sept. 2014. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <http://www.sfstation.com/2014/
09/12/porter-robsinson-san-francisco-dance-music/>.
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