TFM Trip to Galway 2008

Jingle – The Provost (Andrew Booth, Gareth Stack)

I joined TFM in 2004, a bushy tailed, pointy eared 24 year old, finally having clawed my way into the halls of academe as an utterly (im)mature student. Almost immediately I feel in love with that dusty little room at the top of house six, overlooking Trinity’s cobbled front square. Although it would take a couple more years before my cheeks stopped rouging in to match the on air light. As a kid I’d spent thousands of hours listening to long wave broadcasts of BBC Radio 4, and now crouched over a condenser mic with a set of behyer DT100’s clamped to my tie dyed Mohawk and the only light the little yellow and green LEDs of the sound desk, I was back in that realm of dulcet tales and clearly annunciated jabber.

The New Microphone arrives – Mark Hughes models

Jingle – Arts Show

Jingle – Twenty Four (Mark Hughes)

Jingle – Karl Rove (Luke Reynolds)

TFM became my clubhouse, my hobby, and the place I spent every second outside the class room. In 2005 I became station manager, responsible for setting schedules and putting out fires both figurative and occasionally literal. From 2006 – 2007 I took on the role of senior producer, which consisted of making wish lists of glorious radiophonic equipment, and occasionally racing across campus when an unwitting foot had dislodged some vital cable, kicking the place to darkness.

Another from Galway, just to space out the paragraphs

Jingle – David Lynch

Jingle – Piece of shit iPod (Luke Reynolds)

Jingle – Dark like the heart of Africa (Luke Reynolds, Pete Moles, Gareth Stack)

Thanks to an intermittent license, shared with a number of other college radio stations, TFM could broadcast only six weeks a year. We tried to make them count, not least with an enormous party every broadcast week, where the college’s regulations on ‘refreshments’ were stretched to their limits. Part of what made TFM such a wonderful station was the sheer amount of air time that needed to be filled. This, combined with a lack of any dedicated media courses in Trinity, ensured a constant inflow of new broadcasters, producers and committee members. TFM gave birth to a host of creative endeavours in my time there, from Analogue Magazine to Technolotics, and it’s alumni include print and radio journalists, sports presenters, three comedians, one Billionaire For Bush and doubtless a few future celebricritters.

Carolyn Power, Niall Kelly and Mark Hughes

Table dancing at the AGM

Jingle – Tired of Cheesemonkeys (Luke Reynolds)

Jingle – Art and Culture

Jingle – Irish Language (Rónán Mistéil)

TFM taught me about realpolitik. Obeying the unwritten law that the smaller the power base the more folks will fight to dominate it, my first couple of years in the station were occupied in battles to keep it out of the hands of various gibbering power mad hacks. But these teething troubles passed, and the station became more open, democratic (and I’m proud to say, female run) over time. We worked hard to make it a place where talent and enthusiasm were translated into airtime and roles on the committee. This experience accounts for my enthusiasm for places like Exchange Dublin – and has cemented a faith in the power of consensus run institutions to overwhelm the toxic actions of bad actors, in a way the top down hierarchies of modern business and electoral democracy can’t match.

Mark Hughes kicking back in the TFM studio

TFM’s ‘research’ trip to Goldsmiths, 2008

Jingle – JFK (Mark Hughes)

Jingle – Good good bad better (Luke Reynolds)

This one means a lot to me, it’s the first piece of audio I ever edited. The theme tune to my old regular music show ‘Kick The Kat’

Anyway, enough pretentious musings, how seriously can you take a station who’s moto was ‘Coming In Your Ear’? I can’t be sure, but I like to think I came up with that one. In 2007 we were awarded TCD society of the year and our chair won best student. The year after we pulled a record number of applications together for the Student Media Awards. A couple of shows even got nominated, including a po-faced Americana music show called Footnotes.

My trusty junior producer, Rónán Mistéil, hard at work in the then graffiti’d studio

Jingle – Thomas (Rónán Mistéil)

Jingle – Daddy (with Andrew Booth)

Jingle – Lord Bret (Luke Reynolds)

Over my years in TFM I produced a regular music show (kick the kat), a sex advice show (Thrust Us – still running!), an alt-folk show and a comedy show (the names of which escape me), as well as a million one, or two, or five hour fill ins when presenters overwhelmed with exam pressure missed their slots. It’d by lying if I said it didn’t negatively impact on the grades occasionally, but I don’t regret a minute of those carousing, offending, inflammatory broadcast weeks. Not even the ‘graffiti wall’ which all too quickly swelled to encompass the whole studio, including an enormous phallus hanging like a fleshy sword of damocles above our heads. Not the time our most humorous committee member got raked over the coals for describing striking nurses as ‘money hungry ward whores’. Nor the hours spent standing before an enormous wooden radio, shouting “You’ve got a face for radio” at jaded freshers. Not whispering in a darkened studio into the ether, who knows who listening at 2AM, lights off lest security kick us out, playing strange lost Charlie Mingus cuts and slyly drinking cocktails snuck up from receptions where dancing on tables had not long ceased. TFM, I salute you.

Trinity FM victory at the CSC Awards 2007

Thrust Us – Episode One (Best Of) (42 megs)

Footnotes – Americana (63 Megs)

Her little face was blank. Vacant, Tim thought, wholly absent. But then, he hadn’t turned her on. He shifted the rustling foam packaging of the box and pursed the child between two strong hands, lifting her easily up to his face. That close, the skin was ideally imperfect, bright and glossy yet here and there blemished. Not lifelike, real.
He set the doll down, still and oddly incongruent on the coffee table. From the box he pulled an instruction flexiscreen, and touched it awake. A bright, half familiar C-list face, resolved slowly on the disposable LED. He tapped the lips icon, and it spoke.
“Mr Price, thank you for purchasing the Taffin Luxadoll. This doll, like all Taffin products, comes with a full eight-year on site guarantee…”
He grunted, and tapped seek. With the cost of the thing, the deal should include a car, holiday, and daily shiatsu for years to come. The video skipped to a brochure scene, and he hit play. On the flex, a tall pro athlete type was seated in a park on a sunny day, while his creepdoll–maybe two, biological approximate–made tentative steps as he looked on adoringly. The voice-over resumed.
“Not only will your Taffin Luxadoll allow you to practice parenting skills, and provide a loving, well behaved and easily maintained companion.”
On screen, a cute twenty something blonde approached, and began playing co-chi-coo with the giggling creepdoll. Before long she looked up with interest at the beefcake ‘single father’.
“…opportunities for making new friends and socializing with young parents, who can find it difficult to relate to childless singles.”
Tim snorted, glancing at the creepdoll as the ‘dad’ in the video introduced himself, accompanied by the rich swell of a string quartet. It certainly did look real. “Each face uniquely crafted,” the hoardings roared. “…perfect opportunity to meet,” they whispered, speaking just to him; twenty six to forty four, unmarried, male, college educated. Almost the perfect ABC1 consumer, commuting to and from a highly paid anonyjob.
“Hey Tim, check this out.”
“Yo Tim, have we got a deal for you.”
“Tim, this year take a gender vacation in lawless Nevada.”
At least the hoardings were discrete. Crowded on the subway at night, no one knew which ad had hooked your retina, which acoustic cone projected just to you, whispering, “Tim, you don’t have to be alone, more and more men are choosing…”
Creepdolls. Half illegal, wholly sick toys. Props for pederasts and chicks with burnt out wombs. But they had other uses. As long as you kept their clothes on. As long as you hid the state-mandated absence of genitals, and the lemon yellow ‘Non Organic Lifeform’, tattooed onto their tiny silicone chests. Creepdolls could pass for human, for a while.
On the flex, animated boot-up instructions flashed for his attention. Tim shook his head, laid the doll down, still in her two foot oaken box, and went to bed.

“Create a rich parenting environment,” the fleck advised.
“Outfit your home, as for a human child.”
And so he did, hitting Macy’s new-parent site for a child pen, mobile, cradle and ‘Daddy Dearest’ front-side toddler carrier. He thought about it for a while, then added pampers, wipes and kiddie chow for realism.
The doll watched as Tim assembled first its cradle, then the hugely intricate pen, with its eighty-five separate pieces, and instructions in Persian, Chinese, and comically inept Engrish. He’d propped the creature upright in its box, at an angle to the wall, so he could keep an eye on it; so it could keep its eyes on him.
It was a cute, freckled little thing, with dark blue ringlets and a slightly crooked overbite. A face Nth generation maternity mechanisms had tweaked and prettied to imprinting perfection. Even off, Tim could feel its need, its simple pure desire to be protected. He shivered a little, pushing the last slat into place. Somehow the pen seemed reassuringly solid. He turned and hefted the doll’s light, carbon-silicate frame into the enclosure, turning it on.
For a moment, nothing. The eyes remained glassy as ever, features frozen in timeless contemplation. Then it blinked and looked about, orienting, lifting its arms to stretch; flexing fingers like a miniature pianist. Systems test he thought, coolly fascinated. It had to be checking each silent servo, each richly adaptive kinaesthetic analogue. Before him, the doll began to spin, smiling softly as it turned, fat wee arms realistically loose. Little knees bent convincingly below a sunflower yellow summer dress. Tim leaned over the pen and the creepdoll froze and blinked again, activating some high level learning set, froze and looked into his face. He smiled a little awkwardly. He tried “Hello”.
“Daddy”, she replied, and threw her arms around him.

He set his test up on a grassy bank, up along the breeze cooled cliffs that overlooked the great Atlantic bridge. He’d brought along a hydroponic picnic, which sighed itself out into a tartan groundsheet, sprouting bulbs of iced lemon tea, and hot buttery pitta bread, stuffed with tofu and chickpea falafels.
Tim lifted the doll from her carrier, and set her upright on the grass beside him. Deactivated, for the moment dead, she was as actual as Eve. Frozen deep in some infantile epiphany, her little features were scrunched in apparent surprise. He shifted the doll so it faced away along the clifftop path, then switched it on.
The little girl sprang to life, tottering along the grass, glancing round in apparent joyous exploration. For a moment he worried she might wander too far, cross the path to the long still drop to the rocks below. Then he remembered the breeze shield which deflected accidents and would-be suicides. Remembered she was dead, and heavily insured.

Suki had been his tipping point. Lean, hip, and lush with enhancements, she’d seemed liberated and exciting. Through their first date, Tim had been captivated. Captivated by her tales of slaughter weekends in the dry wastes of the Aussie outback. Captivated by her skins lullaby drift from indigo luminescence to translucence. Perhaps the bar code on her neck should have rung alarm bells, a little tasteless as she’d never been to jail. He knew he should have taken note when her club of choice turned out to be ‘The Comedown King’, a motley cantina packed with ex-junkies and serotonin temperance freaks. In the pub a loping cybergoth, huge and oddly free of visible tech or even old school body mods, had gripped his arm too hard and held his gaze unhealthily–an ex, of course, slapping Suki’s ass possessively, bawdily whispering something which set her laughing. Tim had tried to steel a grin, offered the manimal a drink. Had tried not to react as this topless bemuscled cretin stood between him and the girl, gutting their date like a boneless fish. He’d gotten up to leave when they’d begun playfully fooling around, the goth demonstrating a foreplay technique involving grinding Suki into his lap as he hooked Tim’s gaze and chewed her shoulder. He’d gotten up to leave, but had been stopped by the girl, who’d hopped up suddenly and taken his hand, and led him like a lamb, deep into a darker, danker corner of the bar; where she’d launched into a gritty exposition of her childhood–her hand on his cheek, kawaii eyes wider than ever. She’d talked, and just as it had seemed that they might have a two way conversation, rushed off to hold court with one or another group of drugged out criminal types. Each time, eventually returning to talk at him some more, her date buddy. He’d left finally, alone at three, stooped and defeated, refusing an invitation to some hip pad where terrible things, he expected, fizzed on blackened, stolen, silver spoons. He’d actually dated Suki twice after that. Both times she’d been vacant and indifferent, checking her timeplant, repeatedly bouncing their location as if to shake something, someone traveling with them.

Suki had been the last, the worst, the crazy story Tim would tell at dinner parties; slyly hinting at the excitement of his other, darker, more experimental life. Suki had been the worst, but in truth, just another in the conga line of disastrous, staccato flickering embarrassments. Girls his memory shot past on greased electric rails. What, he’d ask, finding himself again and again alone, could be the problem? He was such a nice guy, well educated, considerate in conversation, attentive. The sort of guy who’d carry a single red rose, let his companion choose the restaurant, the play, the movie–pay for everything–soliloquise amusingly when the occasion demanded, nod appreciatively when expected. The sort of guy who’d always, always leave the appropriate and subtly communicative delay, before calling for a second date. It couldn’t be him.

Out on the green, the little girl had found a friend. Another tot, about three or four, this one most likely alive, and human, and unaware of her companion’s strange mix of vat organics and plastic composites and nothing else at all. A kid racing around the doll, clapping her hands.
The girl’s parents gradually approached along the path and, smiling, introduced themselves.
“Patrick Hersh.”
“Beth Earnhardt.”
He responded, shaking their hands in turn.
The man, a slight bookish type, sweating through a short sleeved work smock, laughed.
“Seems like Trish and your daughter get along pretty well.”
Sure enough, out on the grass, the girl and the machine chased one another, their little arms outstretched, as much to protect from falling as to tag.
“I guess they are.” Tim said, and choked a little, his mind blank.
“She is a little dear,” said the woman, taller than her husband; slim, unreasonably pretty.
“What’s her name?”
Tim didn’t reply. He couldn’t. He’d honestly never considered the question. Naming a creepdoll, now that was something. The man coughed, and Tim spoke up.
“Lucy… Lucy doesn’t have too many friends. She gets a little… Excited.”
He rose, and began walking toward the girls, gaining speed, moving too fast, almost slipping on the grass as he stooped to lift his little girl into the air.

The single parent group was pricey; there’d be no half mad goth chicks here. Only the finest high functioning neurotics, borderline and histrionic personalities–the Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc of personality disorders. Be friendly, be friendly but distant, he thought; responding politely, even warmly, to the low end alimonied types who seemed at first so eager. Don’t cash in too soon, he told himself, you can do better. Scan the territory. You are the prize.
He gossiped mindlessly with the other dads, and waited for a woman to catch his eye. Lucy seemed to fit in so well with the other children. Amazing in one sense, her intricate co-ordination, her perfectly infantile proto-speech. Perfect wizardry. But he wondered, how many situations could the doll be exposed to? The makers had obviously anticipated a classroom scenario, and she joined in eagerly with finger painting, occasionally toddling over to present some primitivist masterpiece. What other, strictly speaking legal, but less socially acceptable situations, had she been prepared for? He was briefly nauseated.
“Your daughter is adorable,” a voice from behind his shoulder.
“How old is she?”
This time he was prepared.
“She’ll be two next May.”
His eyes remained fixed on the doll.
The woman moved to his side, and he watched her, vague in his peripheral vision, absent mindedly pawing at her kids biomeasure, fingers tracing the haptic bump of an endorphin jump. Tim turned to briefly look her over. Petite, blond hair jetting back into a sharp forest of manga-spikes. A bodice, wasp wasting down to a black mini. Her glasses purple shaded and trendily off kilter. The typical conservative single Mom, but thinner. Her cheeks seemed shrunken, if still flush. Her wrist reaching back to pat her hair, a little desiccated. Not Ani he thought, returning his gaze to his little girl, now bouncing about on a miniature space hopper, chased by a clutter of screaming toddlers. Not Ani, too healthy a complexion. CR for sure, with the clear skin and bright eyes of a dedicated life extender. Thin though, as from disease. Hot.
“Alefiyah”, she said, extending her hand, and he took it warmly, gently, a little frightened of exerting pressure.
They spoke as the kids played, watching each other carefully, awkwardly venturing grins and newcomer observations at the expense of other parents. Alefiyah, hinting at how she’d set up in the city after a change of job and a messy breakup. Tim, explaining his choice to have a child alone. She had, he found, a rare intelligence, a way of priming jokes so that their bawdy payload seemed to land only slowly and uncertainly, as though a product of your own perversity. What a joy to talk at last to a girl articulate, with hot gesticulations and wry challenging observations; a three dimensional human being.

As the weeks passed, Tim played hot and cold, flirting with the best of the other mothers; acting distracted one day, slipping Alefiyah a book or mix album permission the next. He took to dressing well, in Versace cashmere belly tops and Ralph Lauren kabuki-ninja turbans. He had his plaits re-dyed in affect-triggered Day-Glo spirals; twists that glowed sunset orange when he chatted with Alefiyah. They began walking by the park after class, the kids scooting around their feet on toy slow drift-skeds, raising waves of Autumn leaves to flutter and land in Alefiyah’s hair. Leaves for Tim to tenderly remove.
They talked, acquainting themselves with warm censored versions of one other. Alefiyah, vocal in her support of his choice to have a child alone. Tim, shaking his head at reports of her humorless, careerist ex. Always the children played together. Lucy and Rowan, growing ever closer through the autumn, separating only at night, when the little doll had to be secreted away, to charge with a low hum from an ordinary wall socket.

Alefiyah toasted two handfuls of chestnuts on the grill, simmering a mushroom and grape juice sauce up in a shallow pan, delicately weighing each pinch of basil and oregano, before tossing them into the simmering mix. In another pot, an inch and a half of boiling rice neared readiness.
Tim’s mouth watered. When you were this hungry, you could taste the steam that rose in thick wet drifts from the cooking surface. He reached into the heat field for a chestnut, had his hand slapped back twice–first by the dry burn, a second time by the girl.
“Go check on the kids,” she scolded, turning from the pots to face him, pantomime pushing in the direction of the living room, her eyes grinning wickedly.
“In fact, get everybody washed up, grub’s almost ready.”

Washing the kids’ proffered hands reminded Tim of something he dreaded. What if Lucy were to spill something on herself? What if Alefiyah thought she needed to use the potty? He didn’t want to imagine her reaction. Couldn’t stop himself visualising surprise, disgust. Alefiyah dropping, perhaps throwing, Lucy into the bath, or against a wall. Rowan grafted to her chest as she smashed blindly out of the apartment. Officers at his door. His name on a registry at playgrounds and nurseries. Perhaps a story in the newsfeeds. Lucy, ground up, recycled, or worse; resold as a toy to some molester.
Tim was shaking, one hand on the basin, his blanched face staring back from the mirror. The kids watched him quizzically, Rowan backing away, Lucy turning her head on one side to look right up at him.
“Daddy… You ok, Daddy?” She held out one tiny palm, patted his knee. Tim reached down and picked the little girl up, pressed her to his chest, buried his face in her sea blue curls.
“Everything’s alright Lucy. Everything is fine.”

He rose from the mattress and tossed his legs over the side, dropping his sleep-set to the bedside table. In the cool grey half-light, Alefiyah looked beautiful, her features softened but still strong. He ran a finger over her lips, brushed her hollowed cheek. It was only the third time she’d spent the night. Defying all convention, they’d waited months to sleep together. At the group, gossip had cracked like static around their near chaste ‘Victorian courtship’. All the chickens clucked their disapproval. Neither of them cared. There was something romantic about an old-time affair.
Tim padded onto the landing, steering through the apartment by memory. He checked on Rowan, sprawled on a futon in the spare room; mohawk tufted to a frond above his Spiderman pajamas. Lucy was in the little room he’d painted for her. Formerly the den, now a nursery with softly pulsing cartoon lullabies, silent in the deep stage of a sleep cycle. Clowns and birds of paradise, glowing like radon watches in the cave of dark. Lucy was charging in her cradle, to which he’d added an induction pad when the risk of wires became too great.
As Tim leaned over her cot she seemed to wake, to smile and raise her little arm, to wave. He blinked. The doll was sleeping. Micromovements simulated a child at rest. How strange a thought. To whatever degree the girl was conscious, she was always awake, at times merely pretending to sleep. Lucy tossed her head, as though dreaming.

Alefiyah IM’d him at work, the warm throb of a priority communication overriding his filters. Tim nodded, blinking her message crisply to his retina.
Call me ASAP. It’s about your daughter.
He pushed back from his desk, almost knocking over his chair. Unsteadily, he jogged to the corridor and hit the single bathroom, invoking privacy. The company’s monitors would record everything, he couldn’t help that. Fuck. Pulling a work-wear bowtie from round his forehead, Tim slipped to a crouch against the wall. The tiled floor was ice cold. Lucy was at home, what could have happened? With a gesture he called back.
“Tim,” her face broke through, a one way image, eyes searching the blank video on her end.
“Tim, thank God. It’s Lucy. Your super got diverted to me, he’s not on your priority list.” Tim cursed under his breath.
“Honey, what’s wrong?”
“She was all alone Tim. A couple heard her crying from across the corridor. She was inconsolable, but I got her down. You should have your sitter arrested, there’s no sign of anyone here.”
Tim allowed himself to breath.
“Al, I can’t thank you enough. You’re amazing.”
“Can you get away?”
“I’ll leave now. Give me a half hour.”

After Alefiyah had left, holding him close in the apartment’s doorway–promising to put him in touch with a reliable agency–Tim leaned against his front door for a long time. The place was eerily quiet.
Sitting at the kitchen table, he pulled up a sketchpad, laying out the problem logically. Alefiyah was everything he’d looked for. Smart, successful, available in a way that had long been considered deeply unfashionable. She was an adult, perhaps the first he’d met. But now… The doll was like an albatross circling ever lower. It was just a clockwork toy, a thing of bytes and plastic after all. He had to rid himself.
Tim smashed his fist against the table, and wiped the document. From the nursery a voice, high and plaintiff.
“Daddy?”
He couldn’t kill his daughter.

As weeks passed and risks mounted, Tim wrestled with the problem. Taking care never to leave the machine on again, he managed to convince Alefiyah he’d hired someone responsible. The clock was ticking. Others might have faced this problem, maybe even found a solution, but his endless trawling of the net couldn’t seem to track them down.
He considered abduction, Lucy stolen by a stranger; but the publicity, the police and media attention. Impossible.
Death then, here or abroad, accident or illness. But where could he go where death certificates wouldn’t require verification, birth records, and the answers to unanswerable questions?
Tim found himself spacing out at work, clicking and unclicking a stylus, gazing out his office window into the bay.
Where could he go where a doctor wouldn’t take one look and realise? Hell, just taking the kid out of the country would be impossible, how would he even get her through border security?

What if the body were completely destroyed? Crushed by a waterfall, or burnt up in an explosion? No use, one problem solved, two more created. The authorities wouldn’t stop searching till they found remains; the police would demand to know the cause.
Modification then, illegal add on parts, enough to fool all but a detailed medical examination. But that would just delay the inevitable. This child would never age or grow, would never change. Even if he could somehow replace her with incrementally ‘older’ models, the intelligence just wasn’t there. Convincing AI topped out in kindergarten.
Perhaps a legal battle, he found himself wondering, occupying a lift for tens of minutes in the evening. Motionless as it drifted up and down past his apartment’s floor. Some disenfranchised maternal character, an actress, emerging from the woodwork to demand sole custody. But it couldn’t be. He’d told Alefiyah the kid was vat grown, remixed and cloned from his own DNA. Even if he went back on that story, he’d have to stage a battle. Alefiyah would never accept it if he just give the child up. Too much conspiracy required. Too many details.
That left what? Come clean, have Alefiyah accept the subterfuge after a minor argument? In twenty years maybe, or on his deathbed, but after a few months? No attraction was that strong.
It seemed the doll would have to die; which took him right back to square one.
Tim asked himself at work, nodding his way through his worst monthly review in half a decade; what would Geppetto do, or dear old doctor Frankenstein?
And just like that, he had his answer.

‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun’. They took her eyes, niobium contacts, snapping with a twist-click where the retinas should be.
‘Coral is far more red, than her lips red’. Her mouth peeled back, a rictus of mesh filaments revealed in place of cheeks.
‘If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head’. The scalp parted, a sticky mess of CSF pooling at the seam.
The doll was off. Shipped across the border, inactive in a box. Dead on the operating table. Skinned, dehumanized, synthetic piece by piece. Tim, watching from behind the theatre glass, rubbed a hand over his eyes. Here, here in the unventilated sweat of San Paulo, in back street surgeries built on metamorphosis, on the poor dark dreams of transmen and chimeric furries, you could buy anything, any perversity. You could switch the eyes (vat grown organics), and the face (biomimetic) of a creep doll with what, a street kid? A lost child from who knew where. Even burn the mind in, photo-polymer to synapse, like scouring a wax record from a digital recording. Eat your heart out Pinocchio, Tim thought, eat your heart out.
In the real world it took a body to make a body, rising pink from the amniotic bath. In the real world, a sin behind the switch, skinless, pits hooded in the ropey steak of facial muscle. In the real world, one thing died so another could live. A helm of needles, devils torture chamber, descending; beneath, stereotaxic electrodes extruding. Tim watched, gaze glued to his double murder.

His wife and children put to sleep, he takes a tram, then a bus, then walks part way, implants off so he can’t easily be followed. He charters a sub using a disposable credit slip; rides it way out to the storage lockers, unseen cabins crusting the bay floor in an artificial reef. Pausing in the lock, he unwraps a toy doll from its packet and looks out, out of the clear plastic tunnel to the ocean beyond. Looks out to fronds of algae clutching to the faces of a thousand other pods. To shoals of Striped Bass, and Atlantic Sturgeon darting between them. Somewhere ashore, Lucy, the one with bones, and homework, and a fresh set of teeth; the Lucy with a real live beating heart, is sleeping. He taps a code into the antique panel, waits while pressures equalise.
She’s waiting on the other side. He catches his breath. The door opens. His eyes take in the dull resin of her new face; catch the cheap composites, her eyes now.
His daughter, smiling.

Download: Lake Superior (16 Meg, MP3)
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Lake Superior

I was fifteen the year Tom died. But this story isn’t about him. I was fifteen and greyhound lean. I drove an Oldsmobile Rocket 88 Convertible. But this story is not about that beat red, soft-top wonder carriage. It isn’t about the girls Tom and I would ferry from bars in Aurora, down to Tettgouche Camp, to make on the beech by the edge of that dark and quiet body of water- their flesh pale and shivering under the moon, their little cries lost in immensities of Black Spruce and Eastern White Pine. This story is about our grandfather. A tight muscled, brylcreemed, fighting Irishman, who wore his slacks high belted to his chest.

Michael Francis O’Connell had lost his job when Rainy Lake killed off big-pine logging in nineteen twenty nine. After that our family migrated with the work, and the year my brother died, we moved one last time, to a town called Beaver Bay. Barely a place at all, not much more than a barracks while Reserve Mining hurriedly dug in. A place, my grandfather said, where “Three generations of O’Connell could haul ore”. A place for Tom and my father, who’d served in PTO and even then had not returned, and never would, to move past those long sad days away. In later Springs, this little corner of Minnesota, from Red Lake down to the shores of Silver Bay, would become a place of infamy. That Summer, it seemed a miracle hauled from the soft dark loam.

My grandfather had started short and stayed that way, but he’d built up and kept off the liquor, so that at fifty five he was as mean a pioneer as ever sat through mass at St Joeseph’s. Running afterward, the sixteen miles to Illgen City, he’d pick his Raleigh up from Eddy Byrne and cycle ten miles more to Crosby Park. Year round when the mood took him, he’d strip a to steel gray jock strap and swim beneath the waterfalls of the icy Manitou. Then on the banks he’d strike a match and perform his stretches, seahorse curls of smoke falling away like sin.

My grandfather kept pigeons until nineteen sixty three. Well into my thirties they still nestled there, on tight hung chords of clothes line and telephone wire. Nested looking down on the shop I’d built over their former home; conditioned to seek in our yard, a place of rest. I was sat in that yard then, stooped on our back step, staring at the tethered and untethered birds. Birds that looked back, dim and malevolent behind their grills. Every now and then, I’d take a piece of bread from my sandwich and toss it, so that it struck the cheap serrated wire. Each time the tin cage rattled as birds thundered up, a black feathered mass- their orange tags, like hot iron fillings leaping off a sparkler.

My grandfather’s blow was curt and hard, if half expected. I’d felt him coming in the house, or known anyway that he was due. He’d come to tend his flock, a great steel grain bucket swinging from its handle as he walked. I rubbed my head and watched him strike the cage twice and screech a rusted feed tray from inside. The tray was set up on a hinge he’d built, like a prison food slot that swiveled forward to hang exposed outside its cell. With both hands my grandfather hefted the bucket and clacked a dune of grain out for the birds. They squawked and fluttered but did not approach, their small mean brains alive to danger.

I looked away as he passed by me to the house. He moved through the rooms behind me. He set his vacuum radio to clack and whistle across the AM dial, pausing at each station, then on over the mounds and furrows of the ether, with soft flicks and catches of the oiled brass dial. I moved halfway out across our cramped back yard, away from the rising drone of the New York Philharmonic, midway between our house and his god-damned birds. Leaning over the low side wall I looked across the neat cropped hedges of our neighbors. Today the yards were empty. It was Saturday when all that little town escaped. Across the radio, cutting out the orchestra, came the cold old bells of the Angelus, my grandfathers music. I shivered. My shirt had grown dank with the cooling afternoon. Those birds began to shift in coughs and wheezes. I moved back inside the house.

My father came home at eleven with a little drink on him. My grandfather was waiting by the door. Alone in my room, listening and fussing with arithmetic, I whispered to him to leave the poor fucker go and move off to bed. I heard my name ring clear or almost clear. My neck itched under my cotton shirt. In the dark beyond the circle of my desk lamp, my father’s voice died away, then rose again in short spastic agreement. Silence. My father opening and closing the door to his room. The door to the room where my mother lay, awake or asleep but always. A knock at my door. My grandfather bunched in the doorway, silhouetted in the hall light. I took my jacket and hunting cap, and my gray seal skin wallet, and went with him into the night.

I’ve been deputised, granted a solemn duty by my brother, and I have failed. My job was to wrangle a little green from our father, a bit of money for the city. A cheap sour job, and even that I’ve failed. So my grandfather tells me, as we bounce up toward Finland in his old Chevy truck. My father is no good, a waster and a scandal, and amn’t I his son? He fumbles one handed in the glove compartment for a pack of cigarettes. The rumbling of the truck becomes the rhythm of my heart as we ride further into darkness. My grandfather shifts gears, guns the unloaded machine. His eyes are vacuums hoovering the flame of gravel and dirt road. Inside the lined pockets of my coat, my hands began to shake. The cabin is slick with the turpentine and the coconut oil smell of him.

My grandfather has only beat me, really beat me, once. I was six years old and my mother had said I’d eat my food or the Nips would shoot my daddy. I’d called her the worst word I knew. He’d pulled this same stunt then, powering out of Bow String with me beside him in the car, hog tied and horse with fear and screaming for my father. It was midnight when we passed Mizpah and he slowed only a little to kick the door ajar and knock me to the road. Landing snapped my jaw and tore a streak of bacon from my shin. I waited two hours by the roadside in the dark ’till he returned. Two hours hunched up, curled round the base of a Cedar tree, drooling helpless from a hung open jaw, hunting warmth out of knots twisted in my sweater. Two hours flinching every time a wild dog howled.

Tonight he grunts beside me. He twists the wheel, hand over hand like his ship faces an iceberg. His face is invisibly dark under a moleskin Fedora. I am ungodly tired suddenly, and sniffling, grope for a handkerchief in my jeans pocket. He reaches out, and crushes my wrist between finger and thumb. “You’d best not have a blade, boy.”
I shake my head. I lift my open hand out of my pocket and wipe my nose onto my sleeve.

We’re halfway between Cook and Orr when something flashes by, black on black like a boxer in a Bellows painting. My grandfather pushes back hard against his seat, slaps a flat palm on the wheel. He slows to a stop. Looking back out the open window he twists the truck round slow, says “Not a word.”

She was the first colored girl I’d seen, outside of movies. She was alone on that road, her hair strait and flossy under a peach cloche. She looked in through the drivers side window and smiled at me and nodded to my grandfather.

“I was afraid I was stranded out here”.
My grandfather said nothing. His furred hands twisted at the wheel. Reaching up slowly he lifted off his hat. His hair was flattened, slickly silver. He stared straight ahead, out at the road. Back the way we’d come. He leaned suddenly, his arm pressing me into my seat-back, and opened the passenger door. I climbed out, patting myself against the damp. I hauled at the wood railed trailer and swung up behind the cab. Through the oval rear window, I watched her walk around front of the truck and climb up to sit beside him. Resting her head back against the passenger seat, she closed her eyes.
“Thank the lord you came along. I swear I might have frozen.”

In the rear view mirror, I watched my grandfather study her. She was small and Hershey dark, with a soft almond face. When her eyes opened, I noticed they were green like my own. Somehow I’d expected black on white. Catching my glance in the rear view mirror, she smiled again. I imagined I could smell her perfume, rosebud daubs of Chanel number five.

“Where are you gentlemen headed?”
My grandfather looks out over the cooling cornfields. With his tongue, he readjusts his artificial teeth. Her smile falters. I watch her fingers close over the hard lips of her seat. We pass an open level crossing, the white painted barrier sparkling under our lamps. Our truck’s hard tires and dull suspension play tricks with gravity as we cross the tracks. The girl looks out of her window and presses her lips together. In the weak light splashed back from our headlamps, they look berry red. My grandfather half turns in his chair. In the mirror I can see them both, hanging still as we coast, and myself a hidden creature, only the eyes showing, in the blue dark outside. She crosses herself and swells up with an unheard intake of breath. My grandfather shifts into third, forth. Lifting his hands off the wheel entirely, he lights another cigarette. His match is a flare in the cabin. He watches my reflection shrink back.

“Miss,” he said. “What are you up to, out here alone?”
The girl shifted in her seat to face him. Her fingers pulled at one another in her lap.
“If you’d be so kind as to leave me, leave me off at the next town.” A pause. Again, “If you’d be so kind.”
Her voice was East Coast, Chicago maybe. I tensed to speak. I was six years old and my jaw hung loose. My grandfather exhaled a slow trail of smoke. It rushed away into the slipstream, out over Wisconsin and the great lake. It rose diffuse in the dark, collecting beads of sweat that cooled and grew heavy and prepared to fall. Cigarette between his fingers at the wheel, he set his teeth down on his lower lip, to softly whistle. Her cream coat was beautiful, over-sized buttons lining the lapel, like domed and peaceful sleeping towns. She was crying, her chest rising and falling. Her crying was quiet, like a child trying hard not to be heard.
“Promise,” he said, taking another drag, watching my eyes in the mirror. “Promise, you’ll never pull a damn fool stunt like that again.”
The colored girl shook gently. She looked at him and nodded.
“A damn fool stunt,” he said again, and we passed on into the night.

A Federated Media For Podcasting

John Battelle’s Federated Media is a medium sized company which aggregates the eyeballs of several of the worlds most popular blogs (including the highly influential and chaotic Boing Boing), and sells them to advertisers.

Result – blog authors can finance their writing and the growth of their sites, while advertisers get a single point of content to help them target and run campaigns. There’s an instant firewall around editorial decisions – as advertisers have no direct input into blog content; and sites can choose to accept only advertising that accords with their perspective (and *puke* branding). Advertisers get an instant audience (Boing Boing alone gets 3 million uniques a month), cheap.

Why does this not yet exist for podcasting?

While individual podcasts garner listeners at most in the hundreds of thousands (although there are perhaps a few that crest a million uniques) together they represent an growing, economically solvent and highly educated audience. An audience, in the US alone, of over 18 million listeners!

There are organisations like Adam Curry’s ‘Mevio‘ (formerly Podshow Network). These guys throw automated adds into hundreds of small – medium casts, and provide a revenue stream; claiming exclusive rights to content for contract duration in return.

What I’m suggesting here by contrast, is a limited service that would work with top 20 or 100 (independent) podcasts only- dealing with advertisers directly in geographically specific markets (this is how itunes distinguishes its podcast rankings, which largely dictate downloads); and allowing podcast hosts to craft their own discursive in-show adverts, in their own voice – as Leo Laporte does in his enormously popular This Week in Tech podcast. This way, advertisers get known quantity shows with large, established audiences and (internally) consistent content and presentation. While at the same time growing indies can fund production costs and the development of their creative enterprise- via a personal relationship with a single company, who are ‘on their side’. The reality of ‘new media’ is that (especially in audio production, but increasingly in video) a small group working with a tiny budget can create compelling, high production quality content. What they cannot do, is replicate the services of a sales force. Nor should they try, as direct advertiser / editor contact, almost inevitably results in watered down, less appealing creative work (or ‘content’, for you marketdoids).

Marketing on Demand for Authors

Small publishers and independently published authors are increasingly switching to Print On Demand (POD) services for short run (in the low thousands), academic and older titles (slow but steady sellers). Companies like Lightening Source provide a dirt-cheap ‘just in time’ printing facility, with constant improvements in the quality of the finished book. Additionally such POD services facilitate ISBN numbers (which allow bookstores to order and stock a title) and work closely with Amazon to ensure books are available to purchase (and more importantly deliver quickly) online.

These companies also remove the distribution headache, delivering directly to the public and retail, without the necessity of publishers direct involvement. Such services are not perfect. The finished product may not always rival a traditionally printed book (and of course the design is still reliant on the talent of the publisher / author side artist). More importantly POD cannot replace the direct relationships between publisher and retail chain / indie bookshop, which dictate placement of the book at retail, how long a title is stocked, and whether it is for sale at brick and mortar stores at all. Accepting that, they can be an important tool for small publishers who wish to take a risk on a book they could not otherwise have published, or authors who have a pre-existing audience they can sell to directly. I’m thinking of the Wil Wheatons and Amanda Palmers of this world- actors, musicians, and fine artists who maintain a direct relationship with their fan communities, either through blogging, podcasting, convention appearances or what have you. Personalities who may obtain much greater targeted sales dealing with their audiences directly. Here’s an interesting quote from the Wheaton interview linked in the last sentence, on his experiences with his book ‘Dancing Barefoot’..

The publisher insisted on marketing it in a way that did nothing to expand the audience I was already able to reach on my own, and basically blew me off when I repeatedly begged them to change course. I hired a PR firm at great expense, and they did pretty much the same thing. I vowed that I would never again go the “traditional” route with my future books.

So POD is great, but what’s this business that’s missing?

What’s missing is a marketing firm specially tailored to the needs of micropublishers. A company that knows the net, understands how to build an audience, AND can work with traditional media outlets to arrange interviews, reading tours, store promotions and television, radio and new media advertising. This is the one facet of traditional publishing that has not been replicated as a paid service.

With the suicide of the music industry, musicians are abandoning record labels to deal directly with, and sell directly to, their audiences. Probably the two best known examples are Radiohead’s In Rainbows release, and the Nine Inch Nails record Ghosts, which were both released directly online using donation, and fremium models respectively. Both records sold extremely well (in Radiohead’s case, better than their previous three albums).

What’s less well known outside the industry, is that artists are turning to next generation promotion companies like Live Nation, to handle the other important aspects of getting music out there- promotion and touring. These are services that an artist (beyond a certain popularity) cannot themselves handle without a label or label replacement. More importantly, as the perceived value of music recordings drops to zero (as will inevitably happen with books, Kindle or no Kindle), such tours provide the revenue stream that musicians need to keep creating.

Where is the equivalent in publishing? Where are the television and radio adverts for books? Where is the radio talk channel devoted to the enormously popular audio book genre? Who is organising paid and highly publicised public readings? Who is organising and promoting book tours for a set fee or a percentage of profits? Answer- no one. This is a service that could work at a variety of levels, from festival main stage readings by Chuck Palahniuk, to book promotions of unknown but compelling new fiction and non-fiction authors.

Two businesses that should exist, but don’t. Yet.

I’ve launched a new podcast called ‘The Invisible Tour Guide’. It’s my first foray into the medium since Technoloics, the humorous technology and politics vidcast I co-presented with Jason McCandless and Francis McGillicuddy, shut it’s doors way back in 2006. I’ve wanted to get back into podcasting for quite a while now. Technolotics was an ungodly amount of work to get edited on a weekly basis, but enormously satisfying. There’s something deeply cleansing about about a net producer, rather than consumer of entertainment.

I’ve kept involved in audio production, producing a variety of shows on the excellent student radio station Trinity FM, as well as a couple of shows for RTE 2XM, and several dramatised readings for the podcast ‘Starship Sofa‘. But nothing beats the freedom, creative expression and accomplishment that accompany writing and performing your own work.

I’ve worked over the past couple of years, at learning to write comedy – something I never imagined I’d have the cojones for. There’s a big leap somehow, from believing you can produce an entertaining, well constructed story, to imagining you can be funny. Luckily for me one of the fine crew I met in Trinity FM was a man with no small comedic ambitions.

Andrew Booth had been writing parody reviews (and indeed releasing his own satirical zines) since secondary school. Finding a shared appreciation of the creative renaissance that erupted in British comedy in 90′s, from genius writers and producers like Steve Coogan, Armando Iannucci to of course Chris Morris; we embarked on a variety of bizarre comedy project. While none of these projects – from postmodern reviews, to novels, to popular imaginary MySpace celebrities – garnered much critical attention, it was and remains a rewarding creative partnership. One that provided me with the confidence and experience to dip my toes in the waters of comedy. When Andy became editor of the always controversial, but frequently unfunny Trinity satire magazine Piranha!, I jumped at the chance to write and rewrite for the outfit. The results of our work, and the input of great writers like John Hoysten, can be seen in the issue of Piranha! released last September, of which we’re all justifiably proud.

Before the first issue landed, Andy and myself had the displeasure of attending a dry as dust recruitment meeting, attended by hordes of the sort of smug, social climbing, journo-critters to be you might imagine embarking on a media career at trinity. To take the edge off I decided to attend the event in character. I’d been obsessively watching Youtube videos of the wonderfully eccentric New York playwright Edgar Oliver, and attempting to mimic his inimitable prosody. Wandering about the obscenely grand Graduate Memorial Building, tiresomely sober (its never wise to drink around such people), Edgar’s voice escaped from me in the form of ‘Christoff Englebert’ – an unfortunate whose nametag I’d been gifted. Oliver’s voice, morphed through severely deficient mimicry into even more grandiloquent pomposity, was wonderfully empowering. I flitted hither and tither camply bitchy and flirtatious – terrifying all about me, loosed of the bonds of convention and propriety. It was, I imagine, much how a drag queen must feel, compering a wild night at a gay bar. Christoff maintained his voice all evening, and doubtless there are those whom to this day, remain convinced that the lunatic character is really a fellow student.

Around the same time, I came across a wonderful interview (on Jesse Thorn’s podcast ‘The Sound of Young America‘), with writer and humorist John Hodgman. Hodgman is a sort of American Stephen Fry, a humble jack of all trades, with a uniquely dry, urbane wit, and a tremendous ability to articulate his theories of humour. While Hodgman’s books are fanciful compendia of untrue facts, purporting to represent all world knowledge; the man himself has a habit in interviews of being oddly honest and literal, and as I listened to him speak about the history of volumes of arcane knowledge I had a flash of insight. If I could combine the character based humour of British comedy, with the fictive universe building of writers like Hodgman and Shea and Anton, I could produce something fairly unique that would be tremendous fun to perform. The copious notes I made that night include the phrase ‘Test several voices of varying seriousness, including Christoff’. There was in truth, no contest. Christoff became Professor Byron Frump, and his playground, art and history. I’d recently heard of a wonderful art project reminiscent of an alternate reality game which directed two listeners on a journey through Dublin city – moving independently, signalling to one another and interacting in mysterious ways, apparent only to them. I’d also seen wonderful videos of ‘flash mob‘ happenings, where strangers – directed by tapes or downloaded MP3′s – would dance, perform aerobics, or simply gather in huge numbers and identical dress, to the confusion and delight of their accidental audiences.

I realised that if I took this character (who my notes describe as ‘across between sister Wendy, and an ex-british army cricket reporter’), into the real world, his natural proclivity to pontification (well mine), could illuminate the absurdities inherent in high culture. Humour could emerge from the juxtaposition of elements of real life with an absurd headphone soliloquy. Listeners could perhaps be convinced to perform bizarre and inappropriate acts. Museums could become comedy venues, and galleries have their inherent pretension exploited.

I set to work developing a ‘location based comedy’. A programme which would follow the listener into the real world, fusing character based humour with ludicrous lies. I wanted the comedy to emerge not from stupidity or buffoonery, but rather the characters absurd pretension, and surreal take on things. There’s a tendency in much contemporary comedy – from Elton’s Baldrick, to Atkinson’s Mr. Bean, to Larry David’s Larry David, to every Will Ferrell character – to derive humour from a characters bumbling stupidity. I find this lazy and boring, like filling a cinema screen with explosions. Don’t get me wrong, slapstick when done well can be ingenious – my friend Tom makes wonderful short comedic films in the vein of Buster Keaton. That said – obnoxious ‘shouty make a scene man’ (the focus of most SNL sketches) has been done to death, as has ‘untalented but likeable guy’ (I’m talking to you Mr. Apatow), and ‘sweet quixotic looser’ (Wes Anderson territory). How much more interesting are satire, parody, surrealism, word play? How much more funny are clever, disturbing protagonists? Hence professor Frump, Fulbright scholar and ‘Lord of Cotton Wolf on Surrey’, ‘born into a life of almost unimaginable privilege’.

Ten episodes are planned – there’s no natural limit to a podcast, and I’ve learnt from Technolotics the limits of my interest in a project. Each show will include background sound – recorded on location, and densely scripted fictional history. Each episode will be a real tour – which can be listened to wandering around its location, or at home. The plan is for each successive show to become more like a radio drama – with additional characters, effects and music. There’s a tension here with the more passive situational humour, but there’s method to my madness. The ultimate aim is to teach myself how to write scripted comedy. I’ve an idea in mind for a sequel to the Invisible Tour Guide, something a little more conventional, which might be suitable for radio. I’d like to put a script together and ultimately get it into production at Radio 4, or one of the independent British production companies. Wish me luck!

The first two episodes of The Invisible Tour Guide are available to download free from http://www.TheInvisibleTourguide.com. New episodes will be available every Monday.

Over the past year, I’ve contributed a handful of readings to the wonderful Starship Sofa science fiction podcast. Ciaran O’Carroll and Tony C. Smith began the show in 2006, as an in depth discussion of the life and works of a variety of New Wave and Golden Age Science Fiction authors. Ciaran left the show last year, but far from this being the harbinger of podfade, it spurred Tony on to new heights of fevered podcasting activity. The Sofa began to acquire the audio rights to a host of science fiction stories, poetry and factual articles, and started soliciting it’s own fictional content in the form of flash fiction.

Today’s Sofa has grown from a single weekly podcast to a pot-pourri of science-fictional productions, regularly releasing a variety of shows under the banner StarShipSofa: Science Fiction Audio Magazine.

Tony manages to regularly crank out the Round Table (a discussion of SF stories with some of the Sofa’s dedicated crew of readers and writers), Engine Room (a peek behind the production curtain), Aural Delights (short stories, essays and the like, read by a variety of professional and amateur micsmiths), and Sanatorium (an audio diary of his own eccentric doings).

The importance of the Star Ship Sofa, in this era of struggling old media, and horrendous science fiction magazine sales in particular; can’t be overestimated. The show is introducing a new generation of listeners to science fiction as it was meant to be enjoyed. Not merely as an alternative setting for a samurai or cowboy adventure, but as a fertile ground for new and strange ideas about mankind’s place in the universe, our relationship to technology, and the nature of consciousness itself. Great science fiction stories exude what’s become known as sensawunda, a glorious feeling that – like deja vu – has the quality of a unique and singular emotion. It’s clear that Tony and his fellow ‘Sofanauts’ share an enthusiastic familiarity with this addictive state.

So far I’ve done six readings for the Sofa (including two not yet released), you can download four of them (as part of Starship Sofa ‘Aural Delight’ shows) below…

Billy And The Wizard by Terry Bisson
Billy In Dinosaur City by Terry Bisson
Passion Ploy by Matthew Hughes
The Spencer Inheritance by Michael Moorecock
Gigantic by Steve Aylett
The Serial Murders by Kim Newman – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & 4.
Black Glass by Gary McMahon

I’ve enjoyed these readings enormously; even when I haven’t liked the stories, which has been quite often! Producing over the top characterisations, coming up with unique, appropriate (and often awful) accents for each character, and gaining skill in intonation and production, has been a whole lot of fun. Thankfully Tony has been heroically lenient with his narrators, allowing a great deal of leeway for creative interpretation. This is a good part of the reason I’ve just equipped myself with a new podcasting rig, as I’d previously recorded readings in TCD’s radio station. The show was also one of the main reason I began writing science fiction again, and hence sold my first story last year, to Irish magazine Albedo One.

You can check out everything Sofa related at Starshipsofa.com, including the sites excellent forum.