Atom Magazine Fall 2012

Recapturing the Daguerreotype, Man Vs. House, Causality Comics, Forgetting How to Feed Ourselves, Bracing for Brussels, Virtual Adventures Then and Now, Stars, Stripes, and Shadows, & Much, much more...

Forgotten

In this issue:

On the Cover and in Explore

S

cott MacDonald is a freelance photographer based in downtown San Jose. After a dozen-year career as a sta photographer at newspapers in Florida, Ohio and California, Scott left the world of daily photojournalism in 2011 to focus on shooting weddings, editorial and commercial work. In his spare time, he likes to ride his bike, play drums in his punk rock band, hike in the redwoods, enjoy a nice craft beer and spend time with his wife Amber.

See more of his work online: http://www.scottmacdonaldphotography.com

From the Editors

D

espite our busy lives and a massive hurricane getting in the way, we re happy to present the latest issue of Atom Magazine‒ entitled Forgotten. This issue s theme delves into the things that have been overlooked, disregarded and neglected (thanks, thesaurus). From an abandoned army base to a rural stream and a gothic fantasy, this issue will take you on a journey through territory long overgrown.

Thanks for taking this trip with us and our contributors.

EDITORIAL

Ashleigh R. Hill Brendan G. Nystedt Spencer J. Sands

CONTRIBUTORS Alli Rico Diane Soloman Emma Nystedt Erin Brown Fordy Shoor Garth von Ahnen Scott MacDonald

FEATURED ARTIST Megan Eckman

FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER Scott MacDonald

ADDITIONAL ART

Ashleigh R. Hill Spencer J. Sands Brendan G. Nystedt The Library of Congress LucasArts/Steve Purcell jayneandd (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jayneandd/) Š 2012 Atom Magazine

Man Vs. House

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Man Vs. House

F

or the most part, I would describe my major struggles in life as childish. Sometimes I can t beat a video game and sometimes they don t have the organic, Whole Foods verison of Lucky Charms at the supermarket. However, when my girlfriend and I moved into a home originally build in the 1930 s (and briefly remodelled in the 60 s) that sat vacant for a few years, I suddenly found myself having actual, adult concerns. We have been working hard to make the house look and feel as good as it once did.

By Spencer Sands

We are getting there, truly, and we are more attached to the house because of our work. It is a beautiful home and we love it more than we can write, but it has certainly presented us with an interesting learning curve. As my personal war-on-house moves into it s sophmore year, I feel like some sort of battle-scared, grizzled weekend warrior, with the scars and war stories to remind me of each hard fought fix-it-up project. With this in mind, I have compilled a list of home-repair philosophies that I wish I knew when I started this project.

Four Simple Rules 1). Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

The first big mistake that I made was trying to fix everything at once. There were too many problems and I couldn t commit to finishing anyone problem because I wasn t focused.

You can t fight a multi-front war (thank god Hitler didn t know that). Life is a lot simpler with blinders on. If you work through one problem at a time, you get the sense of accomplishment associated with completion instead of the unending torment of lots of half-finished projects.

2). Ask questions.

I am lucky that my old man is a carpenter and he doesn t bill me for my long, complicated phone questions. But even if it s not your dad, surely there is an uncle or in-law or neighbor, surely there is someone that you can bounce ideas off of.

3). Beware Pandora’s Box. It is really easy to get all gung-ho and start tear-

ing down walls and ripping out windows, but I highly recommend that you don t start anything until you have thought through all the possible problems that you might be opening yourself up to. I m not advocating avoiding serious work, I m simply encouraging you to not start something that you don t have the funds, or time, or means in general to finish.

4). Making it yours. When we moved in, everything was white. But, every

time we have done work, we add a splash of color. We had to redo a wall in our living room, so we painted it a Tuscan yellow. After repairing plaster in fireplace, I painted it a dark, rich red. As we work our way through this house, we are leaving our mark.

•Spackling is huge.

Patching problem areas is almost always the best option for little problems.

I will avoid opening up a wall unless it is absolutely necessary.

•Old houses have old problems and require old solutions. Techniques like glazing aren t hard to learn and, ultimately, fixing, I feel, is more rewarding than replacing.

•Instead of completely tearing down problem spots, I think it s cool to clean them up and make it look intentional.

•Prep work is huge. The more time you put into the preparation, the better your finished product will likely be. Sanding and priming are huge. I have a Rigid multitool (Job-Pro is their name for it) that does a great job smoothing out old paint before I prime.

bracingforbrussels

A

By Emma Nystedt

re you afraid of the mini cabbage? Please don t be! What did they do to earn such an intimidating reputation? Nothing!! Somebody probably just served you poorly cooked sprouts once and you never looked back. What if it had been pasta, or cake? Give brussel sprouts a chance!

I have a farmers market for almost everyday of the week. I buy what I can aord, and looks fresh. Those really are my only two criteria. This sunday at the farmers market of Los Gatos I had $20 dollars to spend, half of which goes to supporting my Hummus habit. The rest? I spent $5 on some broccolini, a $1 organic sweet onion as big as my head, and these pretty babies:

Leaving me $5 for a rainy day.* What to do? At my house there is quinoa always at the ready (a favorite super grain). Let s cook up a few servings.

How? Follow the directions on the box. Usually 2 parts water 1 part grain. Put all three parts in pot, put pot on stove over medium ďŹ re, heat till edible. **Getting a little fancy with it, toast the grains before you add the water.** First the pot goes over medium heat. Second the uncooked quinoa go in the pan alone. Watch close golden becomes burnt very quickly. Everybody toasty? Add your two parts water, lid the pot, let it go!

Now the onion is peeled and diced, and the sprouts are cleaned and halved. A table spoon or two of your favorite cooking oil goes into the bottom of a frying pan. Enough olive oil (or other) to coat the cooking surface and keep things lightly lubricated. Again medium heat. Add the veg.

Once the veg is in the pan, shift them around til it s spread into a roughly even layer, let them be for a few minutes while things start to cook. Shake the pan or use a spatula to move them from time to time, but it s pretty low maintenance and the less things get disturbed the more brown and yummy they get! **WARNING: Do not, however tempting, leave the kitchen to do your Art History homework! You will inevitably forget and be gone for too long.** (Perhaps it s just me who needs the warning, but as an alternative to leaving the room I have prepared a list of things to do while the food cooks.

Notice how dirty your stove top is.

Eat a spoonful of Hummus.

Wash your teacup and oatmeal bowl from this morning along with the cutting board and knife you used to chop things.

Bring your laptop into the kitchen play some sweet tunes and catch up on emails.

Wipe down the kitchen counters.

Write notes to your roommates on the fridge whiteboard.)

When is it all ready? Well, if the quinoa have released their little tail-germ things and it s light and fluffy, with the water being gone, then it s good to go. Try a bite, then find a serving dish. I prefer a mug, as I own more mugs than bowls or plates. . . yeah college. Fill the bottom of your mug or if you use normal people plates scoop some quinoa onto a plate.

Is your veg cooked to your liking? Fill your mug the rest of the way with beautiful brussel sprouts and delicious onion. Now this is where things can get really exciting! Sauce options abound. Soy, teriyaki, whip up some peanut sauce for a little extra protein, a favorite salad dressing, hot sauce, even Sriracha. Anything goes! **If there is a lot of veg and it won t get eaten all in one sitting, refrain from saucing everything in the pan at once.** This way, tonight we can have veg and quinoa with soy sauce, and tomorrow for lunch veg with a spicy peanut sauce over rice noodles.

Once every thing is sauced and served and you ve taken a seat, eat up! I hope you enjoy. And remember, brussel sprouts aren t as scary as you were lead to believe. *Where did the last $5 of farmers market money go? Drinks on Wednesday night at my neighborhood pub.

Emma Nystedt is a yoga instructor and a Shakespeare lover living in San Jose, CA. She loves farmers’ markets and whipping up healthy meals from fresh ingredients.

Urban Survival Cooking Or: What To Do With That Fish You Caught

By Erin Brown

N

ow that you ve been properly trained how to catch your own food in the wild, I ve prepared a few recipes so it won t just be you and a fish carcass hanging out on a Friday night.

Fire (Suburban style) 2 handfuls of dryer lint 6 beer can boxes That piece of discarde furniture in your backyard that you don t know what to do with

When you re starting a new fire, it s important to prepare your furniture first. Most furniture is far too cumbersome to burn all in one piece, but if you have an axe or even a strong stick, you can get good sized pieces to burn, roughly one or two feet. When you have chopped up enough to make you tired, try handing the axe off to a friend. As it turns out; whacking trash can be very relaxing mentally, while physically being a workout. It s fun for the whole family! Put furniture chucks aside for now.

If you don t live with the type of person who decides randomly to dig a hole in your backyard and line it with bricks, you may not have your own fire pit. You may also have a nicer backyard, or saner roommates, but that s beside the point. You re severely lacking a place to burn your undesirables! If you aren t the type to dig your own pit or just try this on the driveway, you can buy ones made of metal, I hear. Go get one. I ll wait.

Place one handful of dryer lint in an empty beer box. Flatten three more of the beer boxes and place as strategically as you can around the center. Don t worry, we re not expecting miracles. We love you, for you. But really try your best. Your friends won t be impressed when you can barely harness the awesome power of flame, and will snicker at you behind your back. Again.

Lean some of the furniture pieces against your pile, making sure not to completely cover the beer box with dryer lint inside. Now we get to the most important phase. Grab one of the lighters or matches you undoubtedly have just lying around your house and light the dryer lint. It should catch rather quickly, spreading to the cardboard and furniture until you have a burning blaze of garbage.

If somehow you messed up, use the remaining lint and cardboard to try again. If you fail twice, screw it, just get out the emergency stash of lighter fluid and drench everything. It ll catch on fire. Trust me, it will catch.

There you are! A fire to call your very own. Now you can cook things on it, huddle near to stave off the dark coldness, or invent some pretty neat new dares.

Grilled Fish 1 fish (Jimmy) Olive oil Salt Lemon Pepper Oregano Sometimes the best way you can honor a fallen companion is to cook and eat them. Wait, that came out wrong.

What I mean is, if you name and befriend a dead fish, there might be some unexpectedly delicious payoffs.

Carefully unwrap your Jimmy and lay him down on a mostly clean cutting board. Staring at the dead corpse of something you gave personality quirks to can be unsettling, so as quickly as you can cut off his head and tail. The finished product would probably taste better if you left them on, but Jimmy s blank eyes kept staring at me.

If you don t feel okay with fondling Jimmy s lifeless body, it shouldn t be too hard to convince a friend to do it for you. Some people don t mind showing off how fearless or awesome they are. Others are just not as attached to the things they eat as I am. Whatever the reason, this is a great excuse to be a little lazy.

Rub the other ingredients all over your Jimmy, olive oil first, followed by the salt, lemon pepper and the oregano. Just kind of mush them all together. Now wrap your deceased, delectable friend in two of three layers of tin foil. He looks so fancy!

You should have your fire going (see first recipe), and if you timed it well, it should be mostly embers by now. If you didn t time it well, open a beer and stare directly into the fire until it s mostly embers.

To cook Jimmy, you can either thrust him directly into the coals or build a tiny sacrificial alter. If you re a coal-thruster, cook him for 20 minutes, flipping him occasionally. If you re the type to build alters, it s going to take a little longer, but he when he turns out perfectly moist, you won t regret it. If you still have Jimmy s head and tail, consider giving him a funeral pyre instead of just tossing him in the trash. He ll stink less this way.

Hey, you got a fire going and all those borderline old hot dogs are just sitting in your fridge. Wrap those suckers in tin foil and place them next to Jimmy. They can be like charred food friends.

When you think your food is done cooking, remove it from the fire and let it sit there and finish cooking for five minutes.

Carefully unwrap Jimmy and the hot dogs, particularly Jimmy, because if you aren t careful, some of his skin may rip. Now that Jimmy and the hot dogs are free of their shiny

To Find out where Jimmy came from, see Ms. Brown s article in the Explore section of this very issue!

prisons, reach your fingers up into Jimmy s belly and remove his spine. Don t worry too much about getting out all the tiny bones.

They re edible and it s a lot of work to debone, just eat cautiously. There you are! One delicious meal made out of a friend (and some old hot dogs).

Now, in order to finish your meal, you need to pair a drink with it.

This particular recipe, a favorite in the area, is light and tasty and will also get you smashed. It sounds rather odd, but I guarantee the more you drink, the better it will get.

Wine Farts in the Ocean 1 cup boxed White Zinfandel 1 shot Tequila 1 Lemon-lime soda

Put white zin and tequila in a cup. Fill as desired with lemon-lime soda. Enjoy.

Erin Brown is a creative, fun-loving artist and adventurer based out of San Jose. A student of life, as well as San Jose State University (studying spacial design, no less) Erin can oft be found sewing, and or making soups. All in all, she is great.

I

ve been living in Changwon, South Korea as an American ex-pat and English teacher for the past 4 months. During this time I have allowed myself to be open to a new people, language, culture and cuisine. An endeavor and adventure such as this is very much created in the eye of the beholder. I have been fortunate enough to be able to try to take full advantage of attempting to submerge myself amongst a new culture. What I have found in my recent months here, is that people (particularly Westerners) are as willing to go as far as their comfort zone permits them. I ve met people who have taught here for years and hardly know any Korean. I view this as a missed opportunity. Through language immersion, I can literally learn, practice and utilize my (very slowly) growing Korean language skills with every single person that I see and interact with on a day to day basis. This is a unique opportunity and I make 100 mistakes a day, but its been a challenge that I ďŹ nd entirely satisfying and quenches a (formally dormant) academic desire within my brain and an inner need of creating human connection, however small it is.

As with moving anywhere, particularly alone, you will have your ups and down. Loneliness, substance abuse and uncertainty can be unwelcome passengers on this journey. However they sit next to their louder, more brazen and boisterous cousins: adventure, curiosity, discovery, and wild-eyed social connectivity.

All that being said, I have seen the person I have become in Korea, and I can say with a certain amount of certainty: this I was the person I was always meant to become.

HOW-TO SHABU

By Coby Zeifman

Using the supplied tongs you put in the meat and let it cook in the boiling broth. Its so hot and the meat is so thin it cooks in under a minute.

Much like a lot of food in Korean restaurants, you are responsible for cooking and assembling Shabu Shabu mostly by yourself. At ďŹ rst they bring you a large bowl of hot broth.

They then give you your meat, which is paper-thin cuts of beef, and your veggies which include: cabbage, carrots, mushroom, bean sproats, more sprouts, onions, lettuce and sesame leaves.

They also give you some dipping sauces. Two of which are chili derived and the center is sesame oil based.

You take the now malleable rice paper and put it over this special bowl. Add your meat, add your desired veggies and you have a homemade spring roll thats ready for dipping.

Coby Zeifman is from the scenic Pacific Northwest. He loves cycling and the outdoors. He is currently living in South Korea, where he teaches English. Read more about his adventures on his blog: http://changwonliving.blogspot.kr

The brown wooden bowl is full of warm water. At the table you are given these patterned opaque disks. They are rice paper and will be used for making your very own Vietnamese-style spring rolls.

But we re not through yet.

After the broth starts to cook down, the restaurant adds noodles to the broth to give us a Pho-like soup.

Once the noodles are gone and there is only broth. Then they combine the broth with white rice and make a porridge for you. And thats how you eat Shabu Shabu!

Mi Lengua Es Fuego

By Spencer Sands

T

abasco has three ingredients. Peppers, vinegar and salt. How hard could it possibly to create my own, superior-because-I madeit-myself version? Well, as it happens, I m an idiot who grossly underestimates everything.

Finding the proper balance was tricky to be sure, but more over, repeatedly tasting hot-sauce does the human mouth no favors.

My requirements for hot-sauce are a little different. Obviously I want it to be spicy, but I don t want it to be too spicy. I want to taste my food, not just the sauce. The sauce must engage in a beautiful dance with my cuisine̶ not over-power it, but still be present. At the moment, I have no less than six hot sauces in my kitchen. They all serve different purposes and each gets used regularly.

That said, I m not above playing favorites. Tabasco is okay, I guess, but they make a special chipotle version of their famous sauce that is exquisite. I love it. It is good on everything savory and I burn bottles up.

When I decided to make my own sauce, I knew instantly what I would be trying to imitate. It took more than a few tries but I was able to suss out something that has everything I like about the Chipotle Tabasco and somethings that I like better. It is a good sauce and, moreover, it was a cheap sauce to make. I understand that tastes differ, but for my money, the sauce I created is my new go-to.

How I Did It

I started simply with a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, which at my local super market set me back a whopping $2.79. True to form, the next ingredient I used was white distilled vinegar. I ended up using a cup and a half in my quest for spicy perfection. This was about a third of the bottle I bought for three bucks, so that s $1 towards our total cost. The rest of the ingredients I had on hand. I used 2 tbsps of brown sugar, a single tsp each of onion and garlic powder and finally, a whole 2 tsps of kosher salt. That s it. I dumped all the ingredients into my food processor (though a blender would probably work better) and combined it thoroughly. I had an empty bottle, funneled some of the sauce in to and I was done. About $4.00 of ingredients yielded about three cups of sauce.

To put it in terms of bottles, that is just shy of two bottles of store bought sauce.

Being the man of science that I am, I had to test it.

Dipping your finger into hot sauce repeatedly is not an awesome way to accomplish this. Instead, I opted to use a couple of foods that I traditionally drench in hot-sauce as a platform for my creation. It was awesome on fried eggs, and the burrito I soaked in it was delicious. It is a good sauce and it was so easy to create, I foresee me eating a lot of it in the future.

B

elieve it or not, people change considerably during the time between the ages for four and twenty-ďŹ ve. Or at least we should. What fascinates me about this emotional/evolution most is the shift in out priorities. As a child, my biggest complaints about life amounted to concerns about the injustice of vegetable portions, the raw heart-break of lost legos, and worry that bedtime was too soon. I pray every night that these will be the things that concern me as a adult. Not fear about my ability to provide for children I don t even have yet, or the state of the nation, or that I might suer the same health ailments as other members of my family.

As an exercise in recapturing that mindset, I decided to embrace things from my youth that I have since forgotten about. As with all good articles written for this ďŹ ne publication, copious amounts of research was done into what things I loved the most as a child with the one woman who could provide the answers: my mom. We broke the experiment down into four major categories: food I loved, activities I loved, places I loved and media I loved.

By Spencer Sands

In the Days of My Youth

Food

I was an epicurean child. I loved food. That was mostly my parents fault. Specifically, my mother refused to be a two meal cook. What she made for my parents, I ate, or I didn t. Their belief that eventually, I would get hungry and thusly eat what they had prepared. They were right. I ate everything. I was the bane of my peers during sleep-overs because I never argued with what parents served, and I always ate my vegetables without being asked. So in preparing for this article, I was faced with the dilemma that I didn t really have foods that I ate exclusively as a child. There were no mac-n-cheese with hotdogs, or those hotdog and spaghetti octopuses or any other hotdog based childish confection in my house. Thankfully, mom came through and reminded my of a favorite combination of foods that I loved dearly, especially when I was ill.

It starts with the simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I prefer the finer things. That is to say, no Smuckers and no Jif. I like my peanut butter ground for me at Whole Foods and my jam made by kindly older women who sell it at farmer s markets. I m a yuppy, I get it. Finally, for the bread, it s got to be sourdough. My mother always lightly buttered the bread before applying the condiments and I think that is a good way to go. It prevents the jam from bleeding through and it ads a light salty tang.

Next up, chicken-noodle soup. Campbell s is... Fine. And that is all. I like to make my chicken-noodle and as far as soups go, it couldn t be much simpler. Take your favorite vegetables, and cut them up. Onions, celery and carrots are classic, but I like to add bell-pepper (red or orange is possible), both for flavor and for color. Sweat them in a large pot until the onions are clear and the carrots are soft. Next up, cut up some boneless, skinless chicken breast into pieces that suit you and add them to the pot. Once they are on their way, season the whole affair with your basic salt and pepper along with any thing else you like. Oregano is great, as is thyme. Dill could be nice for a sort of matzo-ball effect. Your call, do what tastes good to you. Add chicken broth, like 8 cups, and let simmer. Finally, 10 to 15 minutes before you are ready to serve, add the noodles of you like best. Egg-noodles are great, but little pieces of spaghetti are cool too or even linguine if you like. Once the noodles are soft and everything else is cooked to your liking, serve it up!

What made my love of these two items unique was my technique for eating it. I insisted upon dipping my sandwich in the soup. It is so good. People have called me crazy, a madman, even a maverick, but I promise you, kind reader, it is the most delicious thing. The salty broth interplaying with the sweet jam.

Truly the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Try it. Tiny me was a genius.

Activities

I was a builder from an early age. Legos, Tinker-Toys, and even regular building materials (my carpenter farther was a big advocate of letting me play with his tools), I loved it all. Starting at about age ten, I took an interest in model building. Initially, it was all about the airplanes. My childhood best friend and I were obsessed with aviation, and since our cheap, heartless parents wouldn t enroll us in flight school, we settled for shitty plastic facsimiles. Interesting side-note: that same friend is now a helicopter pilot, clearly he was much more committed to our shared childhood interests. Modeling is maybe not the best activity for kids, especially not unsupervised kids. For whatever reason, I thought snap together kids were for babies (which they obviously are), and insisted up the more advanced glue together kits. Pro-tips for parents: give your children Krazy-Glue to use as they see fit. You will love the results. Honestly, I cannot count the number of times my tiny, uncoordinated kid fingers were permanently for ten minutes fused together in the name of the construction of a tiny B-29. I was basically incapable of painting them. They looked awful. I am saying this objectively, they looked like shit. My parents were not proud, and I don t blame them. Despite the overall suckiness of my model building skills, the interest persisted. I continued to through my hard-earned parents money at the problem. And I never got better. The last model I remember building was in high school. I found it recently, it was awful.

Typically with things I suck at, I never do them, and deny ever having had done them.

That way, the facade of my perfection stays in tact. I admit that in preparing for this article, I was apprehensive about building another model. I wasn t sure I was ready to get my fingers glued together, or get cut by sharp, shitty plastic pieces. But I m a journalist (or something so similar that it s hard to tell the difference), so I drove up to Japan-town and picked up a sweet-ass Gundam. I got home and cracked that bad boy open and sincerely, I have no idea were the next four hours of my life went. I was completely captivated by the experience, and worked in a near euphoric state. I think the biggest difference between modern me and shitty-model-building younger me is patience. This doesn t seem to be reflected anywhere else in my life, but when it comes to models, I have the patience of Obi-Won Kenobi (he sat around in a desert waiting for Mark Hamill to grow up for 20 years). Where I once was impulsive and had to finish each model in a single sitting, I now find myself taking upwards of twenty hours over the course of a week to complete one. Moreover, I don t get frustrated like I used to, and, inversely, I find the slow process incredibly relaxing. I love it, and my models look awesome.

Media

When I was thinking about possible careers for myself, the foremost option in my mind was Ninja Turtle. It was perfect for me. I loved sewers, and pizza was awesome, and I was and continue to be a huge fan of nineties surfer lingo. Saturdays meant two things to me: 1). Digging for dinosaurs (unsuccessfully) in the same place I had for every Saturday prior, and 2). watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I loved that cartoon, so much so that I named my own pet turtle after the renaissance painter/ awesome ninja ďŹ ghter Raphael. (Side-note: I would love to know what percentage of turtles purchased between 1989 and 1997 were named in a similar fashion. I bet it s high. Why aren t the statisticians doing this kind of hard hitting research?)

So, in the name of science, I reviewed the tape (literally) and watched the cartoon in question. It was... Charming? Nostalgia is a cruel thing. It is extremely cute and I love it now because I loved it then, but it also feels massively dated. The dialogue is totally corny, in the best way possible, and clearly, the turtle I named my turtle after impacted my adult sense of humor (he is cool but rude, just like me). I guess I have become spoiled by the higher quality of modern animation, but still, it looks sort of... less high quality. There are these strange moments in the ďŹ rst episode where the animation quality jumps way up and it looks awesome. It s like they spent all their money on about 10% of the episode and then Hanna-Barbara-ed up the rest of the episode (note: I don t think highly of Hanna-Barbara s animation). All things considered, I still enjoyed it emensly, but ultimately, I think I would have loved my memories of it ever so slightly more having not re-watched it.

Activities

I am a bit of a curmudgeon, and I even was as a child. Crowds and loud noise and over-priced everything makes me crazy so I was deeply surprised when my mom informed my that the place I wanted to go in the halcyon days of my youth more than any other was the amusement park. I called her a liar and generally reacted like Luke Skywalker did when Vader told him he was his son. But she insisted. When I asked what it was that I loved so much, she shocked me again. Apparently, my favorite ride, above all else was the humble merry-go-round. This utterly bizarre to me. I don t like circus music, I am no great fan of horses. I don t even really like repetitive motion. Honestly, I just don t see the appeal. However, when I told my girlfriend we would need to go to a merry-go-round in the name of journalism, she basically ipped out. She was elated, and suddenly, it didn t seem so weird that I may have loved them.

Arriving at the merry-go-round, the cynic in me had to eat crow, at least to some degree. It is a magical place. Each horse, or triceratops or whatever creatures your local merry-go-round is infested with is a piece of art. There is the soft glow of the circus style lighting and even the music is not without its charms. I guess the part I liked best about the whole experience was the sights and sounds genereated by my fellow riders. There are not a lot of sad people on a merry-go-round. In fact, I would challenge you to ride a triceratops and frown. The giggles and laughter of children is a hard sound to critize. They are happy (or at least they sound that way) in a way I don t know if I am capable of being for extended durations. More over, the ride is not complicated. My stomach never entered my throat and I never screamed for my life. But I had fun. I get what little me was into, the merry-go-round is a nice place to be.

Summation

Being a kid was awesome. Being an adult, less so. I mean, voting and driving are cool and stu, but cartoons and toys win hands down, every time. While not all of the activities, media, food and places that tiny Spencer loved are of any interest to me, large Spencer (me) found something to love about everyone of the memories that I revisited. I hear my fellow adults bemoan the complications of adult lving constantly and that whining is not unjustiďŹ ed.

Adult life is hard, and it is with that in mind that I encourage you to take a minute and give something you loved another chance.

STARS, STRIPES & SHADOWS

I

n the low rolling hills next to the PaciďŹ c coast in the middle of California, a closed Army base is in transition. In some places, old barracks and buildings have been repurposed -- schools, recreation, housing -- and in others, the old structures await their fate, shaped by the forces of time, the wind, neglect.

Fort Ord covers 28,000 acres and housed 50,000 soldiers at its peak. It was closed in 1994, leaving behind countless impressions of the people who briey called it home. These photos are a close-up look at some of what was left behind.

By Scott MacDonald

Forgetting How to Feed Ourselves

By Erin Brown

S

ome things are easy to forget. Things like where you put your keys, the name of a recent acquaintance, or the fact that your friend is a vegetarian.

Some things, however, you d think would be a little bit harder to forget. Things such as how to protect yourself from the elements, or how to feed yourself without a grocery store, or how you would manage to catch and kill your hamburger if that s what it took to get one.

The unbelievable truth is that the vast majority of us would have no clue what to do if presented with a situation that would require us to survive outside of our air-conditioned, food stocked, pleasure cubes. A lot of people would just kind of shrivel up and die without all of the conveniences we ve convinced ourselves we need, which brings me to the point of this article. What happens what you make someone responsible for their own survival? To be more specific, responsible for catching, killing, cooking and eating their own fish?

The question was what approach to take on this adventure. I considered taking my Dad with me on the trip to make sure that I did everything correctly and to ensure that we finished the day with a fish but that seemed like cheating to me somehow. If I took my Dad we would end up doing everything according to the book, how someone who already knows what they re doing would do it. I, however, wanted to see if, abandoned by professionals, I would be able to rely on my instincts to keep myself alive. An unrealistic goal? Sure, but whats the fun in doing something if you already know it s going to work? What kind of writer would I be without my tendency to leap without looking, and unwillingness to accept help from anyone? (probably a much better one, actually.) Therefore, to supplement the little that I knew about fishing I enlisted the help of Beth, internet comics artist and part time adventurer, to help me catch, kill, and eat this effing fish.

Beth and I grew up in Scouts, so we used to know a little bit about fishing, but at this point in our lives all that knowledge had been long replaced by real world things and useless nerd trivia, which would do us little good as we boldly went into the wild blue yonder. To help us start off this outing like the modern young people we are, we turned to the internet for answers to our questions, which isn t cheating at all. On the internet, we found out about all the things we needed to catch a fish; a pole, beer, a reel, some line, beer, a couple hooks, bait, weights, beer, bobbers and a few choice knots.

After gathering all the supplies we needed from my parents

house and a quick stop at the liquor store, we were ready for action. Next on the list was to find the current location of our future victim which again led us to the internet. After kicking around the tubes for a little while we stumbled upon a government website with a list of all the best places to fish in our area, which was promptly followed by a warning that all the fish in these bodies of water were contaminated with mercury and were inedible. This put us in a pickle because

now any fish that we caught would be unsuitable. Luckily for us though, the Guadalupe river runs right behind our back yard, so we were back in business. Even if it was unfit for human consumption, we were determined to catch something, and since it was all unfit we thought we might as well do it as close to our television and microwave as possible.

The next morning we gathered up our gear and climbed the fence to clumsily make our way down the steep grade to the waters edge. We walked down the bank for a while and found a great spot which opened up onto a larger part of the river (complete with smashed shopping cart) and settled ourselves in for some fish catching. After setting up the line with all the appropriate accessories we cast our line and eagerly awaited some action. After what must have been forty-five minutes there was a nibble on our line! We jumped into action and almost immediately figured out that the hook had gotten caught on some debris resting on the bottom of the river. We cut the line and set up another hook with more of the same chartreuse glitter putty and sat there for another hour to no avail. Dejected,

we packed up our stuff and began to walk away to make our long and sad journey back to the house when we heard a rustle in the bushes. Pulling back the foliage we find what we had been looking for all along! A fish! Thrilled beyond belief we scooped up this fish, named him Jimmy and made our way back home.

Okay, as soon as we read about the contaminated water making fish inedible we called up our local fishmonger and bought a whole trout to cook and eat, you figured us out. Accordingly, we in no way endorse you eating found fish, and warn against naming something that you re going to eat.

This brings us back to the question; what happens when you make someone responsible for their own food? They fail and call up their friendly neighborhood fishmonger.

Why did we fail?

Because we ve forgotten all the survival instincts that our ancestors honed over thousands of lifetimes. The truth is that this is how life goes on, this is how we survive.

We forget the old and outdated ways for the new and more advanced ways which have lead us to a society that s made advances in science that are on the cusp of real magic, and that s amazing. Granted, it will always be prudent to have at

least a cursory knowledge of how to survive in the wilderness, but on the whole it s a dying tradition kept alive by the outdoorsy types. The outdoorsy types who I bet wouldn t leave the house without the best and most advanced gear that science has made available. Zing.

To learn what becomes of this fish,, see the article by Erin in the Chow section of this issue

I

distinctly remember when we got our first CD-ROM drive. IT was a unit manufactured by a company called Orchid. My parents bought it to upgrade their 386‒ a competent computer by early-90 s standards. Paired with a Sound Blaster card, this made our computer into an entirely new machine. Thoughtfully, Orchid saw to it that their drive came with a few games. One of them, Gus Goes to Cybertown, was a kid s game with little appeal to me, even as a kid (it also was incredibly unstable, causing the computer to hang badly, restarting any progress to the first level). The game that I will never forget was called Day of the Tentacle. It was a point-and-click adventure game that continued my obsession with the family computer beyond Reader Rabbit and Dinosaur Adventure.

The game throws the character into the middle of a story after a lengthy introduction and a hysterical opening credit sequence. For a crudely animated computer game, the attention to detail still sticks out in my memory as an impressive facet of the experience. Because of the extra space CD-ROM discs afforded game makers, it was possible to have the characters speak all their dialogue instead of just having text appear onscreen. While the challenging adventures of Laverne, Hoagie and Bernard were a great diversion, there was a preview for an upcoming game that piqued my interest even more. Entitled Sam and Max Hit the Road, this adventure featured an anthropomorphic dog and a so-called hyperkinetic rabbity thing solving the disappearance of an unfrozen bigfoot and a giraffe-necked girl from the freakshow. It would be a few years until I was able to borrow a copy of Sam and Max from a school chum, the style and aesthetic of the demo made quite the impression on me.

When I did get a chance to play the game, it spoke to me like no few other pieces of media had at that age. The offbeat, irrevrent humor and the deeply weird story were a key part of making the game a blast to play. Lucasarts had already mastered the genre of the point-and-click adventure game, based around a group of actions (Look at, Pick Up, Push, etc.) and trying out different combinations of items with the world around you (Ie, refilling the mad scientist s coffee with decaf and send him into a sleepwalk state and get the combination code of the safe to pay for a new diamond?). Often times, trying weird, seemingly random things would push the story ahead and made for illogical, hilarous outcomes.

Virtual Adventures Then and Now

By Brendan Nystedt

Sam and Max s adventures took them all over the eastern seaboard, from the world s largest ball of twine (featuring a rotating diner on the top), to a mystery vortex (resembling something like a Salvador Dalí painting crossed with the opening sequence of The Twilight Zone) and even the stately home of a British-born country-and-western singer. The game s surprises and witty writing never ceased to have me in stitches. And it wasn t just me the game resonated with; with the growth of the internet, the fans of this game professed their love and shared all possible things to try and do in the game with each other. Lucasarts planned a belated sequel (entitled Sam and Max: Freelance Police, in reference to their job description) in the early 2000s that was cancelled when the company decided to axe all in-house game creation.

The void left by the cancellation of the Sam and Max sequel was filled, however, not by the disappointed fans but instead by those Lucasarts employees spurned by their former employer. Founding Telltale Games, this intrepid band sought to rekindle the adventure game genre and, after some work, bring Sam and Max back to computer screens. Their efforts were celebrated by gamers who missed the violent white bunny and his canine cohort. The company has since become an important player in the indie gaming community.

But, as I played these new-school Sam and Max games, I was struck by how much different they felt. Although the gameplay was often similar (albeit with more mini-games punctuating the larger adventure) the 3D graphics demanded by the modern gaming audience had an unintended side effect‒ killing the quaintness of the original. Part of the fun of both Day of the Tentacle and the first Sam and Max was undoubtedly the experience of interacting with what was, in essence, a cartoon. The changeover to 3D had somehow cheapened the experience, making it feel less detailed and clunkier to this jaded old man s eyes. The handcrafted feeling of the original generation of adventure games came from the fact that some of the art was, in fact, by hand.

It s a classic argument‒ the lack of a human hand from an object may turn people off because it cold and unfeeling. That is what my experience trying the new Telltale Sam and Max series. Although character designs, dialogue, settings, talent and gameplay might be there, without that certain feeling, it falls short of expectations. Perhaps it was the long draught between the first game s 1995 release and the sequels more than a decade later that gave nostalgia an opportunity to cloud my judgment. Alas, going back through the game recently, I found out that the new games just aren t the same. Even with the rose-tinted glasses gone, recognizing the original game for all it is it s still a thing to behold. Sam and Max Hit the Road remains an excellent, challenging romp through a zany, funky cartoon world with hysterical turns from the voice actors involved and some surprising twists and combinations of great (albeit crude) animation and unique characters. Although the game is no longer for sale through legal means, a quick search on your favorite search engine will turn up ways of not only acquiring but also running the game on a number of different devices. Telltale Games Sam and Max episodes are available on PC, Mac and iPad through their website and the App Store respectively.

e h t g n i r u e t p p y a t c o e R uerre g a D ico

By

R Alli

P

aris, January, 1839. A new invention is announced by Les Académie des Sciences: a device capable of capturing an image and preserving it indefinitely. It was something completely new. Up until now a camera obscura had been the closest thing to a photograph seen by artists and scientists.

Created by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre in 1838, the daguerreotype was developed with the aid of Joseph Niépce, a pioneer in the field of photochemistry and the first to successfully produce a photographic image by way of a camera obscura. Niépce died in 1833, leaving Daguerre ,himself a noted artist and chemist, to continue his research on the process of developing an image onto silver iodized copper plates. History tells us Daguerre discovered a way to develop the latent images left behind by exposure to the sun after accidentally shattering a mercury thermometer. Once the process was repeated and perfected, Daguerre allowed Les Académie des Sciences to announce his product to the world. The French government was originally meant to acquire the rights to the daguerreotype, and pay its inventor a lifetime pension for his creation. The day before the government was set to take the rights, a patent agent acting on behalf of Daguerre successfully filed for a patent in Great Britain, therefore making England the only nation that required a

license to produce and sell daguerreotypes.

An instant sensation across both Europe and the United States, daguerreotyping was an intricate and complicated photographic medium. An instruction manual published in 1853 lists seven chapters detailing the process, including the chemicals involved, possible replacements for some chemicals, how to polish the silver plates, and so on. Before bringing a subject in to sit for a photograph, the photographer would need to polish a silver or copper plate until it was as smooth as a mirror. After the plate was resurfaced, it would be exposed to iodine and bromine vapors. This combination of chemicals rendered the plate photosensitive. Because any ambient light would ruin the plate before it was ready to be exposed, photographers would work in complete darkness and carry the plate from the darkroom to the studio in a lightproof box.

After exposure, the photographer would begin the process of developing the latent image. This process required heating mercury under the exposed plate to produce vapors that would react with the iodized silver and bromine, bringing out the shadows and highlights of the latent image. The most difficult part of this process was keeping the mercury at a constant temperature; any changes would result in the frosting and pooling of mercury condensation on the image, ruining it. It was this

part of the development process that was possibly the most dangerous: inhalation of mercury fumes resulted in frequent poisonings that could be fatal.

The final step in the photographic process is to fix the image. Today, the fix bath is a solution of hyposulphite of soda, which dissolves unexposed material left after development. When Daguerre was still experimenting with the process, he discovered that washing the developed image in a bath of saturated table salt would halt the development of the photo. John Herschel, a chemist, botanist, and photographer, would later develop the modern fixative bath.

After all of this work, only one image was produced.

Today, we have digital copies and negatives in case we ever need a duplicate of an image. But to go through such a long, complex process just to produce a single image incapable of being copied was not only time consuming but also costly. Photographers of the daguerreotype age would have to charge subjects enough to cover the cost of the chemicals and supplies, plus enough to turn a profit. As previously mentioned, the process could also be costly to the photographer s health.

Of course, with the invention of the daguerreotype came several competitors, each one trying to improve upon and supplant the instant craze. The dominant photographic process for less than twenty years, the daguerreotype was overshadowed by the less costly, less intricate processes of the ambrotype (invented in 1854 by James Abrose Cutting of Boston) and the tintype (first explained by Adolphe-Alexandre Martin in 1853). Both of these processes were considerably less expensive and required far less physical labor in order to produce an image, and because they were so cheap to produce and distribute, they became the newest craze in the photographic world.

The daguerreotype fell out of favor for other reasons as well. While both the ambrotype and the tintype were also positive-print processes that did not create nega-

tives, the exposure time was significantly less than the daguerreotype, meaning if a person wanted multiple copies of the same image, he would simply sit still while the photographer took several photographs. With the daguerreotype, exposure time could vary from a few seconds to several minutes, depending on the amount of light in the studio (or outside).

Photography today is available to practically anyone, from a professional with a DSLR and a range of lenses, to a fifteen-year-old hobbyist with a camera phone.

Products like the iPhone and Android, together with apps like Instagram and Hipstamatic, allow amateur photographers to create the perfect photograph with nothing more than a few seconds of choosing the right filter setting on your phone. In the 1840s and 50s, this was not the case: photography was only available to those select few who took the time to learn the precise chemical mixtures and the correct exposure timing of expensive silver plates. So you may ask why anyone would want to bring back the daguerreotype in the modern world. The answer is dedication. While digital photography may allow for hours of work in Photoshop, the daguerreotype requires dedication beyond the clicks of a mouse. The process described earlier cannot be undertaken by just anyone with a regular camera.

Dozens of photographers, both profession and amateur, have taught themselves the process of daguerreotyping using 19th century techniques. Experience working with chemicals and patience are the key qualities of a successful daguerreotypist. Each image created is unique and haunting in appearance, as the mercury develops differently with each successful print. Creating a daguerreotype is a labor of love in a way that digital photography cannot compare, no matter how long you spend in Photoshop enhancing the levels.

Alli Rico is an amateur historian and a graduate student of museum studies at Harvard. In her spare time, she can be found reading (probably a textbook), drinking black tea (English breakfast or Russian caravan, please!), and traversing the city of Boston.

Featured Artist

Megan Eckman

of which is that there are many different types of forests. The one you know, the one you camp in with your tent, is green and full of deer and moss. But that’s the least magical, and certainly most safe, of them all. Other types of forest sprout up on their own and are usually ignored by people.

However, the occasional traveler will trespass and come back with wild tales, which is the only way we know these types of forest exist.

In the wilder parts of the world there grow Forests of Fear. Anyone who steps inside falls into the forest’s trap to face with their fears.

Such a forest grew once in Germany and from its depths came fantastical stories of wolves and girls in red. The dark secret to this forest is that it’s empty, save for what monstrous frights your own mind brings inside.

To combat this forest, there grows the Adoptive Forests. In these woods, all things odd and abanchildren go when their families can take no more. A few emerge again later in life but most prefer the company in the understanding trees.

Occasionally there crops up a patch of Paradoxical Woods. These aren’t dangerous per se but there’s no telling what goes on to go. Hunters have been seen teaming up with foxes to hunt hounds and rumor has it squirrels run down wolves in packs. You

If you had to stumble upon a forest unlike the type you can safely sleep in, you’d want to get the Cuddly Forest of nature’s least defensible and most sought after animals. Unicorns have inhabited these woods since time immemorial but recent additions like jackalopes continue to take up residence. There’s been such a surge in jackalope population, they are half rabbit after all, that the woods has had to employ jackalope keepers to ensure the animals don’t get stuck in each other’s horns during the monthly mating seasons.

The last type of forest is a very strange one indeed, called the Twilight Woods. It only grows on the tallest of mountain tops, at a place where the air is so thin, the sky pushes through it. When the stars come out at night, they can pass from the heavens into the upper branches of the trees, taking a rest from their journey. It’s not unusual to see the trees lit up like the night sky itself. Only the moon is too big to sit in the treetops, which makes it quite unhappy.

There may be other types of forests than happen to pass into one and make it out again, please send your story to: The Society of Tree Catalogers 346 Linden Lane Leaves, West Yorkshire LS16 4AF United Kingdom That way we can add it to our upcoming The Full Catalog of Leafy Communities and Their Inhabitants.

Megan Eckman is the quirky pen and ink illustrator and storyteller behind Studio MME. After graduating with degrees in art and English, she traveled cross-country from Fargo, ND, (yes, that Fargo) to sunny San Jose. She's recently published her first book, How to Outsmart Tea Pirates (and other useful sailing tips) and spends most of her days scribbling on paper. You can find her book and more of her artwork online at http://www.studiomme.com.

A SECRET CHORD

T

By Fordy Shoor

he florescent overhead lights made a glowing tablet of the sheet music lying open faced on a small round table. Adam yawned as he looked at the face of a common wall clock.

It was five minutes until the day would be over. He sighed and set his gaze back to the weathered notation pinned below his elbows. The first single bassoon note twisted its way from the reed. The sound escalated as it passed and soon reconciled into a cluster of notes resembling a snake charmers tune.

Adam looked toward the wood paneled record player to his left and reapplied his oversized rubber headphones which he could only assume by design, were included when the relic was first purchased by the school. In a casual and fluid motion, he turned over the record and replaced the needle on the revolving vinyl. After hearing the initial sputter and hissing of aged equipment, he heard the mounting single oboe note. Adam looked down at the notation and began to read along, swinging his right index finger as he went.

Adam didn t read the notes so much as he let them permeate him. Music truly was the language he spoke most fluently. When Adam read notation, his brain no longer used its innate translating mechanism. When he read notes, he no longer saw any of them; he would hear each and every one of them. As it was, Adam didn t necessarily need to hear the music played to understand what it sounded like. There was a part of him that enjoyed seeing the assembly of the piece, to remind himself that, even in the midst of seemingly syncopated chaos, there was a fluid sense of structure in a particular composition. It was comforting to him, reminding him of the bouncing ball on a sing-a-long video as it hopped from word to word. After studying several measures, he titled his head upward and closed his eyes.

He stood in sheer darkness, with no discernible point of reference to infer his surroundings. As he began waving his hands in front of his face to grasp the limits of his vision, Adam realized that he could see nothing. As his eyes began to slowly adjust, he could see that he was standing at the bottom of a hill. He traced his eyes upward for a reference point and all he could make out was a single yellow light. As he trudged toward the beacon, he could see snowflakes spiraling down amidst the shining spot ahead. Adam began to see the light in the shape of a medieval parapet window and, after a few wary steps, an entire frost encased stonemason castle began to emerge around the lighted opening. Though the creviced window could not have been more than three feet tall, it s light seemed to vaguely illuminate the entire grounds of the manor.

The snow became thicker and thicker as he attempted to burrow through its mass. At a moment of sheer fatigue, he paused to rest. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw rustling amongst the shrubs aligning the castle grounds.

He looked to his left and saw a faint gnarled appendage shuffle its way back into the darkness. As he began to move forward he saw what looked like a barbed hand slip back into the branches. Ignoring these perceived delu-

sions, he turned back toward the window and started trudging faster. A few steps in, he noticed some movement just adjacent to the shining window. He stopped and saw the tableau of a figure looking towards the window from below, it s jagged frame glistening with wetness.

Apparently sensing his presence, the figure began to saunter toward Adam. The wavering snowflakes absorbed the glistening wetness from its body as it moved jaggedly toward him.

Glancing up momentarily, he noticed a figure now filled out the window frame, looking down on him. When he looked back down, the slippery shape was nowhere to be found. He glanced back up again and noticed the light flickering more, fading as it was carried back to its initial destination within. Seconds later, he saw the silhouette of a figure running up to the window. Without hesitation, the body was flung out the window, falling several stories downward. At the moment the body hit the ground, the light in the window drew its last breath and blew out, shrouding Adam s entire vision in darkness. He began to feel his right leg pulsate with vibrations as he eased out of his dream.

Upon opening his eyes, he saw the fluorescent light shimmering off the spinning vinyl during its final revolutions.

He felt his right leg for his cell phone. When he opened its face, he saw that he had missed a call and received a text message. We re still at the bar. Are you gonna meet us for a birthday drink or not, Ludwig ? He sighed, wishing in vain the day were done. Adam pushed back his chair and stood up, lifting the turntable needle back into its saddle and unplugging the machine. He folded his sheet music to show it s ornate but weathered cover. The words on the front read in elaborate calligraphy The Rite of Spring .

When he flicked off the fluorescent bulb overhead a recollection of the snuffed candle in the parapet window pieced his vision. A quiver trickled down his spine as he remembered the sting of the cold he was to face as he left the music building. He locked the door behind him as he closed off the study space for the night. Since it was a Thursday night, all the other students had long since deserted the practice wing in favor of sticky bars and cramped dormitories. All the doors were firmly locked except for a room at the end of the hall. The consistently occupied Room #14, for one reason or another, was a very popular rehearsal space. It was a reserve practice room and Adam had never thought far enough in advance to request a rehearsal there. The only thing he knew about it was that, no matter what time of day Adam was there, he always saw a thin crevice of faltering light underneath the doorframe.

He scaled the spiral stairs and began to zip up his jacket at the threshold of the front door. He sighed morosely to himself. Adam thought he had gotten away without receiving any pageantry on the part of his friends. For a second, he almost resented them for trying to force this on him. The frigid temperature urged him to simply go back home to his bed. He then reminded himself that it is something real friends do for each other. When he was worn from melancholy, they always found ways to extract the misanthrope from out of him. He was in no position to be denying them his company, especially on his birthday.

So he flipped his jacket collar upward and trudged up the snowy hill in the direction of the bar.

The campus was nearly empty at this point, displaying only sparse signs of life. Those not celebrating the weekend had driven off home in frosted cars for an upcoming

Winter break. Adam, on the other hand, had decided to spend the duration of the week studying inside the music building. Currently working towards a doctorate in music, Adam was one of the few students above age 21 within the department. Having developed a reputation for being regimented and reliable, Adam gradually won the favor of the Music Department Staff who, during holidays would allow him full access to the building for his studies. The week s weather forecasted a near whiteout and Adam planned accordingly, stocking the building s kitchenette with food and coffee in case he was to be snowed in.

Sometimes his work took such priority that he would forget essential amenities such as food and drink. The thought of freezing or starving to death inside the cavernous building was incentive enough to think ahead.

through Adam s brain over and over. Being the son of two musicians, it was a phrase that had been directed toward him from a very young age. The words elicited a distant childhood memory that interpolated through his vision.

Adam saw himself lying in bed as he stared at his open palm adorned with blisters. A tepid tear trickled down his face and, as the door to his bedroom creaked open, he began to covertly wipe his eye with the back of his hand.

What were you doing so late at the music building? Eli asked as he prudently refilled each glass. Working on your requiem?

II.

Only you would go to class to relax. Jen quipped.

They laughed a bit. There was a moment of silence as Adam noticed the song on the jukebox switch to a swooning, jazzy melody very familiar to him.

An icy footpath led Adam to the front of the bar where he sluggishly stomped the slush from his boots. Flinging his scarf from his neck, he opened the front door and stepped in. His friend Jen was facing him and their eyes met immediately as he stepped into the bar. A subtle smirk inched across her face as he walked toward the table. Their friend Eli was sitting with his back to Adam as he approached. Adam planted his left foot forward and grabbed the shot sitting in front of Eli. Ludwig? Adam said.

Oh, is that what we finally decided on? Eli looked up at Jen. I guess so. I don t remember you even mentioning that one but I guess it s pretty obvious. Jen said as she exhaled some smoke.

Eli snapped his fingers. Oh yeah, I was thinking it and then I typed it into my keypad. Between then and now, I must have just sent it.

Eli grabbed the two shot glasses in front of him, clasping them between his fingers as his raised his arm upward.

I raise my glass to the man of the hour.

32 Years ago, this guy was made. This is to the golden fingers...our musical rain man...our Shine...our full-riding grad...our fiend of disharmony...our prodigal son...

Okay... Adam interrupted.

Can t a man finish a train of thought? Eli pleaded in mock offense.

How many cars does this train have? Jen teased.

Okay, assholes, are you done tearing apart tradition?

Sorry, Eli, go ahead. Adam said.

Except for the Happy Birthday Asshole , I was pretty much finished.

Thanks.

Happy Birthday, Adam. Jen finished.

The three of them clashed their glasses together. They took large gulps from each of their glasses before setting them down in a clamor. The words prodigal son floated

Adam relocated back to the present and laughed modestly. No, not tonight. I m not quite finished on that one.

Just relaxing a little.

Is this Mingus? What is this doing on here?

Jen and Eli looked at each other and smiled mischievously.

Nice pick guys. How did you know...

Well... Jen started, Eli and I knew that you d feel weird if we got you a real present so we decided we d rent out the jukebox for the night.

That s right Adam, now everybody in the bar gets to listen to your weird pouty music instead of the usual Billy Joel or Lynyrd Skynyd fare.

Adam felt a rush of warmth shoot up his body. He was taken aback by the gesture. He had long come to terms with the fact that he had a very focused and singleminded personality, rarely relating to his friends on any subjects other than music. It wasn t that they had nothing in common; as Adam saw it, there was a deep mutual admiration and affection between the three of them.

In a way, Adam realized that their gesture showed they had been listening to everything he had said to them the whole time.

That s pretty damn cool.

Jen paid for it, but we both chose the music.

Thank you, guys. He listened for a moment as each the melodies intertwined like a crosshatched fence. So what s on next?

Well, there were ulterior motives in doing this. Jen flicked the ash from her cigarette into the empty shot glass in front of her. Eli pivoted towards the bartender and proceeded to signal with three fingers for more whiskey. He turned back to look at Gabe.

We knew you d only come out for one drink and then try to pull away, saying you re tired or something. So we figured, if we filled the bar full of music you like and poured a few drinks down your throat, the fun would be had all on its own.

We ve found that it s best to trick you into enjoying yourself. Jen returned in a placating tone.

You guys know me too well. What can I say other than the obvious.

You could go ahead and just say it. Jen remarked.

Thank you, Jen and thank you Eli. The bartender slipped in holding a tray slick with booze, handing each one of the three a shot and a matching beer.

Hey man, it s the only way we knew you wouldn t have been embarrassed. Just drink up and enjoy. For tonight, let s just pretend it s springtime, the snow melted... ...and all the crocuses are in bloom... Jen added ...and our theses are finished. Eli said Upon uttering the word, Adam s heart began to feel as though it were filling up with fluid, its ventricles pulsing as it began to sag from the heavy weight.

Hey guys, just for one night can we talk about something else other than our theses? Adam asked.

Jen smiled casually. Yeah, I think we can try to do that.

She took a sip of her beer. So, Eli...what did you do today?

Oh, I was in my room researching for my thesis. How about you?

Well, I ve been transcribing notes for my thesis project since about...yesterday evening.

Her face stark with concentration, Jen lit another cigarette and looked toward Eli. Wisps of smoke rose from her nostrils as she looked toward Adam. She slowly began to crack a devious smirk as she glared at him.

Okay, I get it. You proved your point. Adam relented.

I m sorry but I don t know what more you expected.

We re grad students. This is what we ve resigned ourselves to; a few years of indentured academic servitude.

Jen explained.

Yeah man, and it s our last semester, it s winter on the far tip of New England and there isn t anything closer than a mile away in any direction. What else are we supposed to do? Get cabin fever?

Well, I don t know about you guys but I took the day off to relax. Well, it was a day off after a night of working Adam argued.

There we go. What did you do?

I went to the music building and listened to Stravinsky.

I should have guessed. The only boy I know who has a day off from studying music alone in a small room and he decides to go and study music alone in another small room. Here I am, half cross-eyed from stress trying to remember why I m here and not studying Business at some school in a warmer state. Already partially drunk, Jen threw up her hands for dramatic effect.

When I get frustrated like that, I just remember the day I knew this whole life was for me.

Eli wet his lips, readying himself for his story.

So, I picked up the guitar when I was ten, after having seen a video of Pete Townshend bashing his guitar. First, I just wanted to smash it and then I started trying to play it, trying to play the entire Yes and Joe Satriani catalogue.

Adam scoffed and raised his eyebrow in disdain.

Can I finish? Eli rebuked playfully.

Anyway... so I practiced but never played with anybody else until I was thirteen. I met a bassist in middle school after complimenting his Rush shirt and we went to hang out at his house one day. We went down to his basement and started smoking a joint because what else is there to do in suburban Wisconsin. So, I went through his record collection and saw an album with a crazy picture of a band freaking out in some hotel room. I asked him what it was and he told me it was Overnight Sensation by some guy named Frank Zappa. He put it on and I thought it was the weirdest, funniest thing I had ever heard. That was it for me; the slow and steady decline.

At the end of his story, Eli pushed a full shot towards Adam as a dog would nudge a ball, indicating playtime.

They poured the shots down their throats, the high proof whiskey dribbling down their chins. As they both began to cough, Jen laughed, reaching over to wipe underneath Adam s chin. I can t say I have a specific moment like that, Jen replied in the wake of her laughter, but I have something similar. My grandmother started me on the piano when I was seven years old and, of course, I hated it more than anything. I know it s kind of a stereotype for a Chinese family but I chose the piano over spelling bees or Mathletes as an extracurricular activity. So I played recitals and practiced two hours every day for years. When I was fourteen, I had a boyfriend from band, a saxaphonist, who started getting me into other music like Jazz, and I heard Thelonius Monk and Billie Holiday for the first time ever. He once gave me a mix CD that had Jeff Buckley s version of Hallelujah on it. When he broke up with me for a flautist...fucking pompous flautists...I listened to Hallelujah on a loop. After driving myself nearly crazy, I went out and bought the whole Jeff Buckley album Grace. At bedtime, every night at 9:00PM, I d put on my headphones and listen to Grace every night before I fell asleep. It was weird; once I started hearing all the strange, complex chords, my thoughts started to match them.

A look of melancholic contemplation came over her face as she sat pondering on the threshold of a new thought. ...And, you know, it wasn t so much the music that inspired me as it was the idea that, to this day, I can hear one of those songs and feel the same exact feeling I had when I used to hear it, like I was teleported back to my dark bedroom at home. I used to think it was memory association but now I know it was something more powerful, like a seed of an emotion.

She looked up at Adam in a way that puzzled him. Her look was filled with urging intuition, trying to prompt him to share, as though it was his turn to offer a small slice of his own life. He knew his friends expected some sort of matching revelatory incident or deep spiritual conception.

It really does have that power, doesn t it? Adam spoke in reverence.

Jen turned around in subtle disappointment upon hearing his decidedly neutral response, feigning distraction by ruffling through her purse.

Yeah, that s why I love it... responded Eli. He paused, intending to illicit a more tangible response from his friend. ... But you don t have any memories like ours? Eli asked gently.

I mean, I guess. Am I supposed to just have one...moment...like you guys?

I don t know, man. Look... Eli lit another cigarette and expelled the smoke as he continued, We ve known you for almost two years now and, well...I wouldn t say we re you re only friends but...

Let s just say you could fit all your friends in a small sedan if you needed to. Jen remarked acerbically.

The three of them chuckled, lightening the mood a touch both for what Eli was trying to say and for what Adam was trying to avoid hearing.

I think our point is, Jen continued, We don t really know a whole lot about you. I mean, we know you but, as far as we re concerned, your life pretty much started right when we met you. For example, right now we re celebrating your birthday but we don t know where you had your eighth birthday or what type of cake you had or which lactose intolerant kid threw up on your lawn.

Alright, what do you want to know?

Well, to start, what was your first instrument?

A Steinway Grand Piano from my parents. Adam stalled nervously. That was meant for my third birthday... and for two birthdays afterwards.

They gazed at him in awe. Adam had established to Eli and Jen the fact that he was raised by musicians and had started playing early in his life but had intentionally downplayed his virtuosity. Upon seeing their faces, he felt initial flattery that soon was tainted by a faint undercurrent of anxiety. He was unsteady as he tried to grapple for his words so he decided to grapple for his beer instead.

My dad was composer... jingles and ghost writing, mainly... an occasional sonata here and there... and my Mom... she was a teacher... and a musician. But it was my Dad who really showed me what you could really do with music. I remember hearing a lot of it around the house and when we d go to the symphony but it was about the time I heard Mahler that it really sunk in. It felt like I was listening to a movie. Every day, I d come home from school and play his first Symphony three times in a row.

The first time was the best because I used to shut my eyes and pretend that I was sitting all alone in a gigantic music hall and I had never heard it before, just to see if it made me feel the same way...

Winded, Adam took a breath, realizing for the first time in a long time that he was inebriated. He sensed the flicker of clarity and solace as he began to let go.

I d put all my fears and anger into those opening fugues and it felt like...the music was responding... all those voices reassuring me with their existence...with their constancy. And now my whole memory of that comes back instantaneously whenever I hear it.

Adam sunk back in after a moment of slight apprehension. He peered down into his beer as he took a sip.

Was that good enough for you? he asked.

That ll do...for now Eli answered. You know, Eli segwayed as he haphazardly stubbed out his cigarette, this is probably the last we ll be able to really see each other for awhile.

They shifted onto their feet and, with rustles and zips, they began to cloak themselves in their winter layers.

How do you figure? Jen asked.

I mean, we ve got a lot of work to do between now and May. We re all leaving tomorrow for break so...

You guys speak for yourselves. Adam said, draining the remaining suds from his glass before they started to saunter towards the door.

Are you spending another vacation at the music building? Do you ever shut off? Jen pleaded.

Yeah, when I sleep. Adam retorted mischievously. Jen came up to hug him and Eli joined in as the final shell of a group hug.

Jen leaned back slightly, crutching onto his forearms I ll see you when I see you, prodigal son.

Walking home, Adam couldn t shake those words. Prodigal son. He knew Eli was simply paying him homage, using the term as endearment, but still, he couldn t ignore them.

Moreover, he reminded himself that Eli could never have understood the significance of the words any more than he could have the significance of a birthday to Adam.

Prodigal Son; the words burrowed their way into his consciousness like loose staples. Over the years, their connotation for Adam had become murky and convoluted, disquieting even. He saw them in front of him as he walked, impressions of the words indented in the snow, melting to reveal the wet quilt of leaves below. Had Adam decided to tell Eli or Jen the meaning of the words, they most likely would have understood. There was even a small whisper in his head reassuring him of their sympathies. As it was, Adam hadn t told them, nor did he intend to.

The snow flurried in a subtle cacophony of vigorous whistles and whispers. As he walked further, Adam began to remember himself in a scratchy woolen sweater, staring out the window of his house, watching for patterns in the swirling clouds of snowflakes. He wanted to go outside and feel them numb his face and hands as he grasped at the clouds. As his mother placed his hands over the keyboard, he looked back to the sheet music placed in front of him. He had already played the piece five times before and his adolescent mind, as fine tuned as it had become, was beginning to lose focus. At his mother s instruction, he played the piece all the way through, ending the final chord with an accentuated slump in posture, awaiting his inevitable corrections to follow. Adam felt a strike on his wrist, a sure indication of a mistake on his part. From the corner of his eye, we saw his mother lift from his knuckles his fathers rosewood baton, a tool she had long since usurped.

It doesn t end on the tonic. She spoke frankly.

I know.

Then why do you keep playing it? She asked, with shrewd condescension

It...it doesn t feel...right.

Do you see what it says right there? It ends on a suspended chord. That s it.

But it can t end like that.

Yes, it can. It s an unresolved chord meaning it never goes back to the tonic. I know your brain is used to it going a certain way but this one doesn t.

It doesn t make any sense. How can he do that?

Sometimes there is no resolution, Adam. That s the point.

Sometimes the piece just ends there.

Aren t you just sitting there wondering whether or not it s actually over? How do you know?

No, I can t explain it to you. You just know.

III. The melody of desertion resounded through the facilities as Adam sat waiting in his academic advisor s brightly lit basement office. The shuffling of vacating feet above started in as percussion, accented by the clanking of the music stands next door, sounding out as the bells and triangles. The murmur of spirited, anticipatory voices mimicked the staccato string pluck of violins and, just underneath it all, the floor buffer pulsed like a section of basses.

Having spent previous vacations working alone in the music building, the sound was encouraging to Adam as he anticipated the stillness to follow. The stillness found alone amidst a very old house is unlike any comparable stillness. Two and a half Centuries since it s origin, the music building had beared the pressure of thousands of feet, supported the weight of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Even before the school existed, the home had existed for families, witnessing the first and last breaths of its inhabitants, and every breath committed in between.

Having long since settled in , the stillness the house felt was foreign to almost everybody except its caretaker and Adam; it was the stillness of age, of ailing wood frames, frail bricks and tender nails.

As Adam began to sketch up his mental checklist for the week, he felt the door next to him swing open in a fury, his Academic Advisor at its helm. Mr. Robert Webber staggered in, balancing a stack of ragged papers, staff notation and library books in his arms as he slammed the door shut with the tip of his toe. Adam grabbed a thick stack of papers off the tower and placed them on the desk in front of him. Mr. Webber slumped into his vinyl rolling-chair. Robert Webber, known as Bob to his colleagues and close students, was a physically large man, tall and slightly overweight with a medium length goatee and long, thin brown hair strung back into a ponytail. A distinctly awkward professional dresser, Bob often wore short-sleeved collared shorts with muted knit ties, dark jeans and penny-loafers. He was the head of the everpopular, yet radically underfunded Jazz department at the college. Though enrollment in the program s courses was nearly double that brought in by the classical department, his curriculum was looked down upon by the rest of the Faculty who placated it as one would a nervous child. Bob was sequestered to the basement to singlehandedly teach four different courses and eight different Jazz/Blues

ensembles. Despite circumstances, his ceaseless zeal for the art permeated all his courses. In a way, he taught Jazz Music as it must have truly felt at it s very beginning, as a rebellious expression instead of the formally pedantic institution it had since become. Personally, Bob displayed the demeanor of the modern jazz musician, serene yet cheerfully energetic and passionate. After awhile, one could see another facet to his personality, one reflected by his fixated propensity towards dissonant atonality. Having mired around for years in the nether-regions of the melodic spectrum, his once smoldering eyes had begun to fade through the wear of an overworked professor and an underworked musician.

Bob Webber tossed lifted a brown wrapped package off his desk and casually tossed it to Adam. As he opened it, he saw a thick bundle of photocopied pages, fastened tightly with an oversized rubber band.

I m going to tell you right now, Adam that it took me awhile to find this and I really had to pull some strings on this one. I hope you find exactly what you need from this journal because this is the last favor I can call in from Julliard for awhile. Webber explained carefully.

Adam thumbed through the papers, noticing how the photocopy compressed the look of the thousand-year-old crumbling pages and ancient cursive into two-dimensional monochrome. The front inscription read in rudimentary Latin: Ratio of Audacia Di Luca Apprentice ut Regimen Di Arezzo I still can t believe it actually exists. Adam said, agog.

Barely. This is just a microfilm photocopy made years ago. Still, this thing was hard to find.

The fact that you even tried mean a lot to me. Adam chuckled slightly. Honestly, knowing your...collection, I m surprised you didn t have a copy of this yourself.

There are some things that are beyond even my reach.

I may weasel my way into getting a lot of relics but this one is literally impossible to get a real copy of. The actual book is locked in a case in a museum somewhere in Arezzo.

This is exactly what I need for my thesis. I still can t believe it. This has to be the closest I ve gotten to learning about the discovery of the tritone. There s almost nothing out there. I just wish I hadn t chosen to study history of composition...

I m sure you know why there not much history Webber cut in.

Well, yeah. They were ignorant, because it was the Dark Ages. They hated hearing it because it was foreign to them...too dissonant. So they never would have written anything with a tritone Bob leaned back in his chair and let out a well-meaning sigh.

Sure, but remember, what it meant to them at the time he leaned forward again and opened his hands in broad gesticulation, like anybody who rejects an idea, it s because they re afraid of it, right? Well, the Benedictines really thought that by even discussing the tritone, they

were committing blasphemy. These guys were so religious, the feeling they got from hearing that note, they really thought it was...well, sorcery, I guess. They assumed the tone invoked something unholy.

Diabolus in Musica , right? Adam politely interjected.

You got it. I don t need to explain this to you. Hell, chances are, at this point you know as much as I do about it. Bob said jovially.

Adam shrugged his shoulders modestly and proceeded to slide the manuscript into his shoulder bag and turned back to Bob Webber.

In writing this paper, Adam realized long ago that his research thus far would only allow him to guess what these phenomena must have felt like to these people nearly a millennium ago. Inside of him grew a need, perpetuated by his thesis, to move beyond emotional approximation.

To finish his paper and, more importantly, discover something truly innovative, he needed to understand in the fullest sense how this music made these people feel.

Well, I should leave soon to beat traffic. My wife and I are taking the kids to our in-law s cabin in Maine and we re leaving tonight. Before I go, I should give you this. Actually, I picked it up because I thought it might be helpful to you. Webber handed a blistered leather bound book to Adam. As he perused it s face for a title he saw the initials J.A. embossed in gold lettering.

J.A.?

Johan Andritz. He was kind of a rarity for his time, a teacher and composer who specialized in weird sounding music, like for the Grand Guignol theater or melodramatic song cycles.

What type of music did he play?

Well, it s kind of strange. He didn t really fit in anywhere.

He was too conventional to be like the atonal theorists but he was too dissonant to be Romantic Era. He was sort of stuck, always cobbling together a living with commissions from macabre productions and melancholic operas.

Either way, this is his journal, and there s annotations and translations already in there for you.

Thanks, I m sure this will help out a lot.

Is there anything you need before I go? Webber asked, gathering his notes into a rolling suitcase beside his desk.

Actually... Adam continued with apprehension. I ve got a kind of personal question to ask you...

Over the course of their nearly two-year relationship, Bob had never heard such a request from Adam, his usually bright and motivated, yet quite reserved advisee. At this, Bob sat down, intending to make Adam feel more comfortable. Sure, that s what I m here for. The Church of Musicology is here to listen.

Well...my friends last night were...well, they were joking about... forgetting why they got into music in the first place. Both of them had these stories that reminded them why they were here...and, well I couldn t think of anything... He paused and began to pick at one of his chewed fingernails. It made me realize that, well, I m afraid I might be losing sight what drew me to do this.

Adam stammered.

Bob looked at him with an intent glare and a sympathetic smile. Look, Adam, I m not going to tell you it s too late to turn back because I m sure you already know that. I m not even going to tell you that these things happen every once in awhile... He continued, discerning Adam s growing anxiety.

As I see it, lack of interest isn t exactly your problem. I mean, you re staying here during your break so you can study.

Yeah but...did you ever feel like you were just...doing it because you knew you had to...because it s all you know.

Sure I have. I m going to let you in on a little secret: that doubt is always there, it s ever present, especially when you re in the position you are, getting your D.M.A. And that frustration, the longer you keep doing this, has a greater chance of becoming apathy. But that s when those memories really save you...it may feel like you ve lost interest because you re so deep into your work, but you haven t lost faith in music.

Bob Webber began to move out of his seat and grabbed his bags. As he started to move toward the door, he felt the urge to leave Adam with a parting reassurance.

I know it s not something you can see or touch like sheet music or an instrument but, trust me, belief is a more powerful thing than you know.

Bob put his free hand on Adam s shoulder as he looked up at him hopefully.

Have a good break, Adam. Try not to burn yourself out.

IV. The solid grey sky resembled scratched sheet metal as it sprawled over the stark terrain. At 6:30am, the sun would be lower in the sky if it were shining. As it was the middle of February, the clouds diffused the sunlight in such a way that the light from the snow reflected up onto the sky, illuminating both equally. The effect of such created an illusory atmosphere, as though the vast expanse was an elaborate backdrop.

Adam awoke in his single bedroom to the sound of his alarm clock. As he rose he ruffled his hair and scratched his stomach. Checking the clock, he started to recall what he should bring with him to the music building. He grabbed a change of clothes and a toothbrush and haphazardly stuffed them into his knapsack.

When he walked out his door, he noticed the hall lighting facilities had been turned off to save power over the break. The light from the outside door shed sparsely hollow beams into the otherwise pitch-black hallway. He briskly stepped out the door and headed directly down the long path to the music building. Over the course of the year, Adam had developed a shortcut that meandered through the forest briefly before fanning out onto the main road just ahead of the music building. Even in cold, snowy weather, he preferred this route to the normal one.

The ancient Tudor Mansion classrooms lay dormant underneath their white shrouds, the previous nights snow creeping up their unopened doors and windows. The Music Building loomed ahead of him, its darkened high vaulted windows peering through the cedar trees branches. Adam shuffled between the pillars, scraping his feet as

he dug into his pocket for the keys.

After he opened the large door, Adam flicked on the main lights and was immediately filled with eagerness to start his day. He walked through the foyer and started to ascend the T-shaped staircase, turning left after the first flight. When he reached the third floor, he went down a long hall until he reached the faculty lounge.

When he walked in, he turned on the heater and flicked on the coffee machine. Once brewed, he grabbed one the teacher s mugs and poured himself a black cup.

Walking to the CD player, he turned it on and pressed play without checking the disc changer. Adam was startled by the abrupt blows of the two first notes of what he recognized to be Beethoven s 3rd Symphony.

Immediately, he began to feel the rumble of his fathers old Mustang as they drove through long, twisting roads and listened to the same two notes almost twenty years ago.

Slam...Slam...

Dad harmonized the opening notes with story, a game he developed to maintain Adam s interest in music at a young age. He executed it in such a way that the story s conflict mirrored exactly what was being heard through the music. After five seconds, The young man s feet slap the ground as he quickly runs up the hill.

At nine seconds, he changed his tone gravely.

The boy is strangely frantic as he sees his cottage in the distance. He just keeps running, fast as a wolf. When he reaches the door, he hears his wife screaming in agony.

The young man thinks she must be dying.

At 20 seconds, Adam would feel a rush of worry.

His heart drops into his stomach until he hears the crying of a small child. When he gets through the door, he sees that his wife is crying and cradling his newborn as its small arms and legs wiggled like rubber in the air. He kneels directly to her side and wipes her sweaty brow with his palm. She tells him it s a boy and laughs while tears run down her face. She hands the boy down to him and he looks into it s barely open eyes.

At 50 seconds his father lowered his tone tenderly, It s at that exact moment, that he actually realized he was to be a father. All in a moment, he saw the boy s smiling glances, his waddling legs as he learned to walk, the important man he would grow to be and how, one day, the boy would be kneeling at his bedside to wish him well as he passes.

The coffee maker exhaled as steam sputtered out from its top vents. Adam walked over and grabbed one of the staff mugs labeled with the college s crest across the front. After he poured himself a cup he smiled at the continuation of his fathers story within his head. Underneath the couch, he pulled out two sheets and a pillow and proceeded to stretch them over its plush body. Once his bed was made for the coming evening, Adam walked out into the hallway and back down the spiral staircase to the library on the second floor. Sipping from his cup, he pushed opened the large double doors open and, as he stepped through the façade, Adam flicked on the lights.

The room was a wide space and, much like the décor of

the rest of the house, it like a Victorian parlor with brown walls and fading crème colored trim. As it was a library, this room had rows of old mahogany arranged throughout. Despite its dim corners, it was relatively well lit by converted electric chandeliers.

As Adam walked past the towering shelves, he looked out the windows and saw a swirling grey sky that starkly resembled a water-colored painting. He entered a clearing and walked through the handful of wide wooden study desks. Placing his bag on an adjacent table, he slid onto a chair underneath and lay down his mug with a resounding clunk. As Adam pulled out his folder, he took another sip of the warm beverage before pulling out a few ballpoint pens. He pulled out the thick photocopied packet, the treasure Webber had found. Though his knowledge of Latin was mainly musically based, it s front letters read clearly to Adam: The Accounts of Dario di Lucca, Apprentice to Guido Di Arezzo.

The packet contained the photocopy in Latin and an English translation to make the reading process faster.

He folded open the first page of the text and began to read to himself in silent whispers, only the faint sound of churning wind accompanying him:

March the 14th, 1028. I accompany my master Guido to Rome by decree of Pope John XIX. With his publication the Micrologus, the methods of Guido have become famous amidst our land, especially in the order of the Benedictine. His Holiness desires for us to instruct him in the ways of musical rapture. Unexpected rain upset our journey and we had rationed the little food we had left. My master attempted to give me his share of olives and, though I protested, Guido insisted I take them. I have hidden them in my purse, to return them to him when he needs them. My sacrifice must always echo his own. Upon arrival we were greeted warmly by our host and it made me question his unsavory reputation from his people.

For weeks, we taught his Holiness and his subjects using Guido s known hand technique.

Intermitted Latin phrases appeared to Adam as he read as he compared both texts. Hours passed by as Adam dutifully sorted through every weekly entry with a painstaking precision. It wasn t until he reached a particular entry that he began to notice a change in the tone of DeLuca s prose.

June the 22nd, 1028. A peculiar thing occurred with my master whilst teaching the hexachord. As normal, the students were beginning class with the singing of ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la . He stopped for a moment, his eyes untamed, and he ordered me to close the door. As I did so, he stared at his pupils and began to massage his head and clutch his face. Upon gazing upward, he ordered his pupils to sing mi to fa . They proceeded to repeat it for a long length of time until brother Guido asked half of them to sing an octave of fa and the other the normal mi . The sound they sustained was odd and unsettling, yet they continued until my master laid his hand down.

The duration of our lesson, he continued to instruct them to sing variations on this interval as he watched distantly, touching his hand to his forehead. At one moment, he made them hold the intolerable interval as he stared into the distance, far beyond the walls of the abbey to an uninhabited musical world.

The unmistakable sound of tinkling piano keys crept into

Adam s ear and he turned his gaze toward the door. He figured he had left the stereo in the teachers lounge on but, as he listened closer he heard the music stopping and starting again as though somebody was repeating a measure for practice. Standing up, Adam folded the face of the packet in and listened closer. Upon closer examination, Adam realized that the music was coming from downstairs, from Room 14. He descended the stairs and the music became increasingly more audible the lower Adam got. The tune was what he recognized to be the opening stanzas of Mephisto Waltz No. 2. It wasn t until he heard a flat note that he realized there was in fact somebody downstairs playing the piano.

V. His foot scaled the final step and planted itself onto the cold concrete floor of the basement. From the end of the obscured hallway, a wavering light illuminated a thin strip underneath the doorframe of Room 14. The sound of the sonata resonated back and forth between the walls in slow swells, amplified by the narrow hall. Upon reaching the threshold, Adam s muscles began to twitch as he clutched the icy doorknob and twisted it. He heard a deep masculine shriek as he swung the door open to find a wide-eyed young man.

Jesus, you...you scared the life out of me. I almost kicked over the piano. the boy sighed in halted exasperation.

Adam took a deep breath to calm his nerves before he could even survey the scene. Considering the atmosphere of his surroundings, Adam wasn t sure what he expected to find but he certainly didn t expect to see a terrified young man at the helm of the keys. The boy, no more than 25 years old, stared up at Adam with wild Brown eyes. He swept his dirty blonde hair back with his trembling palm before he opened his mouth to speak.

I really thought I was the only one here... the young man laughed slightly, a byproduct of his heightened nerves.

Likewise.

How did you get here? Adam noticed the young man spoke with a heavily tinged eastern European accent.

I m friends with the department head. He gives me the keys so I can use the facilities to study during breaks.

How about you? Why are you here?

They just let you use the building, all alone, nobody else here?

Yeah, well, now there is. Adam responded slowly.

You must be a stand-up guy for them to trust so much.

The likelihood of me running off with a bunch of books and records is pretty slim.

Adam was slightly irritated, not only because he felt the boy was subtlely doubting his character but he was looking forward to a long, productive weekend alone in the building.

So, how long have you been here? Adam questioned.

Oh awhile now. I was just taking a study break and relaxing a little, playing some piano.

Yeah, I heard it from upstairs in the library. It sounded like Lizst. Where did you learn to play like that?

I learned at Conservatory in Switzerland, when I was very young. But I just play for fun.

Most people don t just play Liszt for fun.

Well, maybe I m not like most people. Mephisto Waltz is like a lullaby for me; a warm, very odd lullaby. He extended his hand outward towards Adam in anticipation. My name is Benrick Spyridon, everybody here calls me Rick.

Adam Hawthorne. You say everybody here but, I ve got to say, I don t think I ve ever seen you here before.

I m not often around because I do private study since I arrived here in December.

Do you mean independent study?

Yes, sorry, this is my first time in an American school.

I m from Russia. It s been difficult to meet people. I just feel so... Benrick paused to grapple for words. Far away, from other students. Do you understand?

Yeah, I think I understand. Adam stepped back into the threshold and rested his hand on the doorknob.

I do very much like this house, though. Benrick remarked, surveying the room with his eyes.

I should really get back to my research. If you need anything, I ll be in the library on the third floor.

Thank you, Adam. I will. I hope you ll find your reading enlightening.

Shutting the door, Adam walked briskly back up the stairs.

As he mounted the steps, he began to reflect on the exchange student. Beyond the obvious foreign barrier, Adam found Bedrick slightly peculiar, not threatening, but just odd and obsequious. Upon reaching the library, he realized he should redirect his mind back to his work. As he neared his table, he found the packet lying open faced on the worn mahogany. Though he could have sworn he closed it when he walked downstairs, he wrote off the thought as a slight hiccup in his memory and sat back down.

Turning back to the journal, he noticed that the open page was a completely different page than he remembered having read. As he looked down, he saw the faded writing of the photocopied calligraphy read a date almost six months past the last entry. Tracing the date to the English translation, Adam noticed the entries became more erratic and infrequent as he began to read further.

November the 17th, 1030: My master is falling into poorer health as his mind begins to mimic his body s deterioration. Even before we were dismissed back to Arezzo by his holiness, brother Guido had begun to change. Only I noticed his slow degradation as he began to spend all his days in his quarters, far from the warmth of the sun or the green of the earth. For over two years, he has toiled endlessly with his new musical notation on an unknown piece of music of which he refuses to share with me.

February the 2nd, 1031: For the fourth day, brother Guido has refused food and company. Though he has taken to bolting the door shut, but I can still see through the sliding porthole in the front that he has grown emaciated and pale as he has begun to live in his own filth. If only I could

find a way to hear what he has since devoted his life to composing.

March the 14th, 1031: Today I brought him his favorite food of olives and berries and placed a handful of them in the porthole of his door. Upon returning, I saw that he had pressed each of them on the wall and he was admiring their shape, a shape I could only assume was a line of musical notation.

May the 20th, 1031: I watched my master spend all day threading needles using his own hair. When I cam back at night, I noticed him sewing up the binding of his numerous tomes. As I witnessed this I understood that he was no longer pretending to follow along with our world.

October the 30th, 1031: Today I tried my masters door to bring him more ink to find it unlocked. Upon opening it, I found him in a serene state, standing still as he gazed out his window, repeatedly humming two notes to himself.

The room smelled of filth and upon walking to his desk, I noticed his writings scattered upon the desk. When I looked closer, I saw a series of notes written in smeared copper brown ink. I looked back toward Guido, who held his hands behind his back and I noticed a dark red liquid dripping from his fingers. He broke his humming to speak to me for the first time in two years. He said Leave now and continued to hum the two notes as I closed his door behind me.

January the 23rd, 1032 Two days ago, I went to check on my master only to find him absent from his quarters. He seems to have disappeared altogether. We pray for his return while I secretly pray for a return of his mind or no return at all.

February the 28th, 1032: For Abbey Record Only. Today I went to compile the belongings of the belongings of brother Guido. When I opened the door, to my surprise, I saw my former master standing in the center of the room illuminated by a single candle in the window. He walked over to the window and picked up the candle. He hummed to himself and wept as he whispered to me. You don t know what I ve heard...The sounds I ve known...but I could never tell you for then you would know. I asked him what he heard. I asked him to tell me. But then you would hear...you cannot forget what is already heard...you can never know. It is something... uncanny... an occurrence God did not mean for us to...

He stopped speaking as if reigned in by another entity.

He resumed humming as he seized a needle and thread and attempted to sew his earlobes shut. At the point I moved toward him, he turned around and ran towards the window. He knocked the candle down as he dove through the hole to his eternity below. Before I had a moment to realize what had occurred, the flame caught all the papers and writings and I seized what I could before they burnt to ash. Now the tomes remain safe and intact, worthy additions to our Abbey library. This journal though shall forever remain private to preserve and conceal these very dark memories of the once venerable Guido Di Arezzo.

Adam read to the bottom of the English translation wherein the finished manuscript was abruptly indicated with a stark: END. He looked up to realize it was 11:00PM. Whether it was the rhetoric or the permeating chill of the February cold mansion, Adam felt constricted and tense.

He stood up and rubbed his sore temples and thoroughly

strained eyes as he walked to the window. As he anticipated the long nights sleep to come he wondered if Benrick was still in the building. Though his body was exhausted, his mind was still processing the reading. Looking out into the camel backed snow-banks developing below, Adam wondered whether or not the monk s musical discovery was actually something malignant. Though Adam took the reading with a historical grain of salt, what really did perturb him was how strongly Guido actually believed that it was something transformative. Holding his hands behind his back, he considered this as he looked outside, searching for a dimply illuminated window amidst the concealed snowflakes.

VI. With the morning sun-light exhaustively diffused by a thick canvas of grey and white flurries, the room s windows offered very little illumination to the loft where Adam lay recently awake. The latticed wood of the lounge s high vaulted ceiling appeared to Adam as the cavernous roof of a gothic cathedral. As he stared into it s fading corners, faintly hearing the hollow sounds of Gregorian chanting echoing off their curvature. Though well rested, he felt as if he had awoken in a cocoon, encouraged to remain in his state for as long as necessary.

Adam much preferred to sleep on couches than beds, even his own, something he often described to himself as a valuable coping mechanism for a musician to have.

After finally rising, Adam walked straight to the coffee maker and turned it on. Gazing out onto the smooth monochromatic landscape, he decided that he he d spend the day working on something else. He needed to stay focused and not try to think about his previous nights readings. Adam looked down the side of the house from the window to see that the snow from the previous day had reached roughly three quarters of the way past the ground floor windows. Suddenly, he was very thankful for his foresight to stock up on food. Turning around, he noticed a black antique trunk tucked the corner behind a swivel chair. He noticed its tarnished bronze latch strapped tautly into the matching lock. A loud, wet sputter arose from the coffee maker like an angry and desperate whisper, causing Adam s nerves to tense up in surprise.

He slid on his pants before picking up his mug of coffee and reaching into his knapsack for his days research. He pulled out a protective plastic bag containing the leather bound book that would serve as his days research. Sauntering out into the hall, he wondered about the young exchange student, if he was also snowed into the building. At the top of the banister, Adam called out his name but, after hearing no response, he assumed Benrick had gotten out before the snowfall heaped over the doors of the house. Adam decided that, since he had full access to a 3 story Tudor mansion, he might as well enjoy every room s unique winter silence while he studied. A small part of him felt compelled to stay away from the library and it s high rise bay windows so he chose a recital room on the second floor.

Upon stepping past the wide threshold, he saw a grand piano in the center of a nearly empty parlor. When he turned on the electric chandelier, he saw a glimpse of a figure at the piano until he realized it was the flash of a bulb burning out. In that instant, a quick, staccato memory flooded his vision, a glimpse of his father sitting at the grand piano in their old house. The obscured winter light flooded through their wide windows, silhouetting his father s frame as though he was the visible shadow of an invisible figure. Adam saw him sitting upright in his family s house at a nearly ninety-degree angle as he

played four notes, each sustaining louder than the next.

The notes were obviously leading up to the resolution of a particular melody, however his father continued to play these four notes in succession. Adam felt uneasy as he approached his father, his tension growing inherently with each repetition of the leading phrase. He wondered why his father wouldn t finish the melody. As he reached the piano bench, his father remained completely motionless except for his fingers scuttling across the keys. When the pre-adolescent Adam crawled up to the bench, he noticed his fathers facial expression to be vacant and distant. Adam tugged the sleeve of his robe but his father remained static. Finally, he turned and looked down to Adam with a polite smile, the type of expression displayed towards a stranger. However, Adam noticed, with the insight of a progeny, a subtle sorrow behind his eyes; the pleading look clarified to Adam that he no longer remembered how to complete it.

Adam s eyelids became heavy as he suddenly began to feel tired again. Sitting down at the piano, Adam took a sip of his coffee, intent on staying focusing on his work.

He slid the Journal labeled J.A. from out of its cover and opened up his German Language Dictionary.

The Diary of Johan Andritz: 1905

October 2nd, 1904: This past weekend I premiered my long labored opera The Glory of the Firebird . After three years of work, I was overjoyed to premiere my opera at the venerable Vienna Court Opera house. It was very highly attended and, though I have not heard much yet from the public, I await a jubilant reception.

October 10th, 1904: Today the new issue of General Music Journal was published with a devastating review of my new opera by the foul critic Friedrich Sheiber. He claimed The Glory of the Firebird is, aside from a compelling storyline, a piece not fit for human ears, a sensationalist monotone of drivel by a truly amateur composer. I m confident that my work can withstand such a despicable blow.

October 24th, 1904: After no more than three weeks run, the director of the Vienna Court Opera notified me that they would discontinue performances of my opera. I could not help but wonder how such a misfortune could befall me.

December 5th, 1904: I received a letter from a gentleman by the name of Max Maurey representing a fledgling theatre company in Paris. He had heard of my reputation and desperately needed short pieces to enhance the theatre s macabre programming. I ve truthfully grown quite weary of producing this type of music. Every year, I yearn to create music of varied color and subtlety but the more I work within this ghastly genre the more difficult it becomes to withdraw from it. However, through flattery and a surprising sum, Mr. Max Maurey shall retain my expertise for his naturalist spectacles. It appears this Grand Guignol Theatre has more sway than I could have expected.

December 27th, 1904: I did not feel well outside of the house and so my sister and her husband came to visit me for Christmas. Before leaving to return to St. Petersburg, the two bestowed a curious holiday gift onto me. Recalling my fondness for antiquities and discordant melody, Eugenia obtained an original tome of the furtive Guido Di Arezzo. Though she refused to reveal her means of obtaining this wonder, I suspect she put forth quite an effort.

January 4th 1905: I attended the premiere of Gustav Mahler s new composition Kindertotenlieder. A ghastly song cycle about a man and his dead children. And his melodies were just as subtle as his words. I received two new students today from two rather wealthy families.

January 7th 1905: Today I began to play some of the writings in the tome. As I had expected, most of them were rudimentary and highly conventional writings. I must have accidentally knocked the heavy book off the piano for it fell to the floor in a flurry. I looked down to find that the spine had cracked and destroyed the integrity of the book. As I began to curse my luck, I noticed a handful of nearly pristine paper scraps sticking out from the broken spine. I pulled them out to notice that they had been stitched in by a very brittle thread. The notes each appeared to be almost carved in with unsteady precision, each perforated from the pressure of a forceful hand upon a quill. I began to play each of them separately, noticing each one to be rather strange sounding, quite dissonant, far too dissonant for such a point in history.

These findings could very well be a breakthrough in the understanding of our musical predecessors.

January 8th 1905: After looking more closely, I realized that all the small scraps of paper were in fact measures to a larger piece. Tomorrow, I intend on figuring out their intended order and play the result. I feel strongly that this could be something that could very well help save my music.

January 15th, 1905: I was more correct than I could have possibly imagined or desired. Upon playing the piece, each note rang out and sustained far longer than any natural sound I have ever heard. The end product was sounded out like a cacophony of Sirens, each beckoning me closer with voices so malevolent yet persuasive I could not refuse. The forces of these sounds caused my body to quake and crumble. This is the most I can remember of the day. For the past few days, I ve sensed a persistent disquiet growing from within me. *************

It is from the comfort of my own parlor that I pen this final admission. Surrounded by my friends and competitors, I can now truly understand the profound depths I have descended to, and all to understand the mysteries of a secret progression. Whether it was the chord itself or my unrelenting hubris, I will now never know.

Music was once a valued facet of education, a zenith for wisdom and beauty passed down through the generations. What was once a conduit for awe has now become a diversion of passing fancy, learned by the poor to entertain the rich or by the rich to entertain themselves. For most, music had ceased to be a virtue of its own reward.

As a composer, how often I asked myself who I was truly playing for and how seldom the answer to the question truly satisfied. For the music itself was endlessly perfected, honed from hours of toiling in solitude. Upon completion, the music simply drifted through overexposed and unappreciative minds and yet, I carried on my succession.

I pushed through pain and anguish. I would never cease for the simple justification that I could not. I was obstinate in my lust to hear and feel all sounds, near and far. It was then that the profound murmur grew inside me, the sounds shifting through my ears. In the past, I had spoken through the music but, after the sounds I felt and the un-

imaginable perversions I had unearthed, something began to speak through me.

When I carried on conversations, it felt as though somebody else was speaking in my stead. The words I uttered were foreign and distant. The world I had so recently known I now watched from a strangely transitory view, as though I were gazing out onto the shuffling terrain from the window of a train. I was becoming the distorted man that now stands before you, impetuous and stone-hearted. The resounding notes of the chord had enveloped me as I had resigned to its will more every day.

The reverberations came in irregular spells, their intensities refined and heightened inside of me. My body had become physically unsystematic as I felt myself under a sway, as though my bones were pushing forward within my body. Before I could rationalize any thought, my body had already begun to execute it.

Soon after my holiday, I found myself contacting students to return for lessons with teaching as the most distant intention on my mind. Every day before a particular student s arrival, I would wait with relish, planning out the time we would soon be spending together.

The most valuable of them I decided to keep with me for reassurance. For days, they listened intently as I performed for them. They sat wide eyed and contented as I recounted them my life s work, every sheet I had ever written. They were so patient and well mannered that I rewarded them by writing a song for each of my friends.

Had I not been endowed with such wealth, the effort to conceal would have been considerable. However, my servants had all but eliminated the task of removal on my part. They had been well paid but, as the days stretched on, I sensed their fearful reticence would soon fade. To encourage them to maintain silence, I would amuse myself by ordering one servant to send to another a small part from one of my friends within the parlor. I also doubled their pay. Now they smiled as they did it.

And I was smiling as well. For the sensations I experienced with my friends and students, the abandon I displayed onto them, the influence of mine they felt was immense.

Now I began to truly know my friends intimately. After we had played together and could play no more, I made Friederich Sheiber into the instrument he could never truly be in his own life. His strings, more resistant by far than any polymer and horsehair, proved difficult to play; though if I recall, Sheiber had always been renowned for his words and not his melodies. If only he could be tuned further.

Months later, the reverberations from the chord still rang through my body pulsating it into a hypnotic state. I had never known edging, abhorrent sounds such as these. As they inched closer, they commanded the world around me, shifting it into obscurity. The world around me had opened up into an inconceivable nightmare, flooding my senses with the very real surroundings only conjured in the minds of the mentally divergent. Now these ghastly waves have permeated my life and all I m left with is the task to thrust them out. All I can do is try to improve, for posterity.

There is so much music I have heard and, as I write this, I try to recall a single melody but all I am left with are these unrelenting final notes. I expect my fate and reputation to be irrevocably marred by my actions but I pray the sounds I created escape such a fate.

Yours in eternity, Johan Andritz Ivan Vasilievich Andreyev March 14th, 1906

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