50 + 105 points
Journey to the End of the Night - May Day 2010 by Dan |ØwO|
May 11th, 2010 8:07 PM
This is a complicated proof/praxis and so I have provided a table of contents. Each section is crafted to be self contained. However, I feel the entire piece works as a whole. Therefore pick and choose or take it straight. I want to acknowledge that this particular praxis inspired me to throw a lot of effort into the video portion.
Contents:
There are so Many Stories to Tell and Too Many Ways to Tell Them all (but that’s nice.)
Likes Music is my thirteen year old nephew. He’s got this mousy blond hair and he acts a little off, even for thirteen, but it’s lovable. He asks me the day before the game, “So is there an age limit?”
“No.”
“There must be,” he tells me.
I want to be sarcastic and condescending, an age limit for tag? But I restrain myself. Meanwhile he’s shaking his head. Sure he’ll be the youngest person playing, but there are no rules against it. There are only two rules: no player killing and no looting dead bodies.
Cgø is hosting a game of tag in the city, hundreds of people are going to show up and run from check point to check point trying to reach the last one before the clock runs out at midnight.
I tell him, “If you don’t think you’re old enough, you don’t have to go.”
“Okay,” he pauses. “I’ve thought about it. I want to go.”
“Good. I want you to go. It will be fun.” I want so desperately for my smile to be winning.
“What if I get lost?”
“The city is a grid and you’ve got a cell phone. I’m not worried about you.”
***
I was worried about having to worry about him, though. I was nervous that Likes being in the game might affect my strategy, or worse, my chances of survival, which it did only briefly. A few days before, I’d been talking with Naming. “I’m sort of thinking about getting caught early and just becoming a chaser.”
“See, I think we should figure out a way to get him to win. Or make it look like he won.”
“Impossible.”
“Why is that?” Naming asks.
“Because Like’s Music is going to get caught. He is a slow dude. See, I think maybe I should just talk him into signing up as a chaser. That way it’s easier for us to be together for the entire time. They’ve got the volunteer notice up.”
“Yeah, that might not be a bad idea. I think I told you, I sent them a note telling them to get back to me if they needed more people to do stuff. They never wrote back.”
“Ugh, the main thing is: I want to win. Like, I think I have a legit chance. With hundreds of people showing up, I’m sure there will be some athletes who will truck through, but I’m no slouch, and I want to survive for sure. But he’s slow, he’s going to get caught no matter what I or we do.”
“Why—did you think it was a good idea to invite him?”
“Because I invite everyone to everything!”
Naming knows my rules and gives me a, “Yeah-yeah, no I know,” when I repeat them.
“And because I think he’ll remember it forever. He needs a night in the city. It’s tag, it’s going to be awesome! He can handle it as long as he doesn’t freak out about getting caught. It’s like the cool big brother thing to do.”
I am my brother Christopher’s age apart from my nephew Likes. Thinking about that now is kind of trippy. Like I must be doing the math wrong. Christopher was my age when I was thirteen. I guess it’s true.What my brothers and sister must have thought of me? (Hopefully that I was at least cool enough to play in games of tag.)
Naming tells me, in response to my response of Dax-Tran-Cafee’s comment on Naming’s photo essay, “The thing is, the beauty of that final shot—have you looked at it closely—you’re in it. It’s you taking a picture of Likes Music. When you post your story I’m going to set it to link your way. Markov’s picture already links to his story.”
***
Stories that call themselves. Four-hundred people looking into their own reflections, those cast in the eyes of four hundred others, and then back again. We are cameras that take pictures of the pictures of ourselves so that we can identify what it means to be a camera.
Are you familiar with the Stanford prison experiment? Certainly I’m no expert, but the general gist is that a classroom of students was split up into guards and prisoners. The prisoners acted as prisoners ‘ought’ and the guards abused their power. The prisoners in this case had done nothing wrong, other than drawing the unlucky lot. When discussing this not long ago with Markov, he said, “You know, the interesting thing about this story—”
“There is a lot interesting about that.”
“Certainly, but one of the things I’m most interested in, is that when you look at this experiment, you realize; This is me. Put in that situation, we are those people. We aren’t better than anyone. I feel like once you learn about the Stanford prison experiment, you have to realize you’ve got no right to ever be smug again.” (There are moments when we are still smug.) This sentiment had a strong impact on my sensibilities.
I’d not thought of it like that. Rather, I thought, “Remember this, so it doesn’t become you.” And so I tell him, “Yeah,” replete with a heavy sigh. But I think we both agree that the lesson plays out similarly, keep practices and procedures in place to keep yourself out of awful situations. We have child labor laws, not because we wouldn’t put children to work.
I came into Journey to the End of the Night with Pico Farad, Naming, Likes Music, Markov Walker, and Charlie. Men I thought would never betray me. Certainly not over the color of a ribbon.
***
I am literally hanging from a wire above the river when I get a phone call I have to let ring through. The message is from Naming, “I am calling you at the behest of Like’s Music. He is hoping you are in a tight spot and the ringing of your phone will alert any nearby chasers. Also, we are doing well. Best of luck to you.”
Not much later I got another call from Walker telling me, “Take Clybourn, for some reason there aren’t any chasers there, you can just fly right up it and into the safe zone. I didn’t get caught until I was on my way to four.”
This turned out to be false. Routinely, I told the people I was with, “I’ve got a man on the inside I can trust.” But Markov was feeding Likes Music my locations so he and Naming could catch me if they so desired. They didn’t catch up to me until checkpoint five.
Even my good man Charlie chased me immediately on sight of my red ribbon. And when I saw chasers? I hated them. Though it dissipated quickly I fucking hated people who were trying to catch me. Didn’t they know how hard I was trying to not get caught? Why chase me? Why not cut out of the game? You were once one of us? Now, now what are you? YELLOW?
But by the end of the game I also knew Markov was right, “We aren’t better than anyone.” Had I donned yellow I would have caught as many people as I could. The change in my demeanor would have been immediate.
In the eyes of others we see ourselves. As humans, psychological in nature, we are constantly reflected and reflecting. It's a fun house to live in.
The Magic of the Street, Game
I’m milling about with everyone after this giant game of tag. It’s past midnight and though the streets of Chicago are hopping Likes and I haven’t eaten since lunch. We are discussing what to do about that when this random survivor asks me, “Do you do magic?”
Which I do, ladies, which I do.
***
I’ve got this evil Lawyer friend named George, and a bit back he says to me—while I’m hanging out at Hot Hot Julia Le Sigh’s house—this evil Northwestern lawyer says, “What’s up with these cards? What are you doing here?” He’s Armenian, or Pakistani, or something like that. Once, he tried to pass as North Korean to prove to us all that George may be his character but his character need not be George. Unfortunately it was at that point in his all-Asians-are-created-equal rant that his girlfriend rolled her eyes with such force as to stop him from further drunkery.
At Miss Le Sigh’s house he’s pointing at my deck of cards, “Take a look at these things. I’ll tell you, I was just saying to Rebecca—if we go find her, she will back me up on this – No-no, don’t go looking for her, I don’t want to ruin a good story when I’m on a roll here—You see, the thing is, when I think about Dan, I think about a guy who needs some more affectations. That’s exactly what I told her. Now look at you! I think this is a keeper.” He is wagging a finger at me and cocking an eyebrow and rocking it all with a nod of his head. George’s got one of those smiles that starts predominantly on the right, so anything that makes him smile makes him kind of smirk first. “I told her juggling or the electric slide. Couldn’t you see that, you just electric sliding all over? But I think this is better than both of those. I don’t know why I didn’t imagine it! This! This is why I love you so much more than that faggot of a friend over there.” (That he totally made out with.)
George was right. The cards fit me.
***
“Do you do magic ticks?” The survivor asks me.
I return the question. “Do you? Do you do any tricks? The thing is, I do, and I’ll show you some, but I’d love to see yours first.”
“Aww,” this guy, one of 92 survivors, he is from California, an hour south of LA. He was here for the game of tag and to see his little brother who’d just graduated from the naval base up north. “You’ll know my tricks right away,” he tells me.
“A) I won’t. And B) that’s okay. I just want to see.”
He’s bigger than me with dark black hair. “Yeah, I do tricks all the time in front of the mirror it gets boring. It’s nice to see someone else doing sleight of hand.”
He has me pick a card and lose it in the deck. Then he pops it to the top. Gives me a funny look and asks me about the cards. I admit, “Yeah, they suck hard.”
“I didn’t want to say anything.”
“I lost my Bikes during the game. Had to chuck them in a chaser’s face.”
“Hahahaahahha.”
This guy pulls out two queens and places one into my hand, the other stays in his. Then he switches them around, showing me how they aren’t where I think they are. For the kicker they change into black aces. At which point I remember I’m an invite everyone sort of guy, “We are going to eat right over there, you want to go with us?”
We all eat, and it’s magic.
Extras one might be interested in:
I consider the above video to be the definitive narrative. Still, Here are two other takes on the story which you might be interested in. They have their own highlights and extra scenes that ended up getting cut from the one you've already watched. (If one of the organizers is interested in the raw footage, I'm sure I can get it to them.)
A google map:
Here is a long form photo-essay slide show.
Extemporaneous poem for the accordion & poet tea party,
Teddy
Poets
are smarter than the average bear,
but they will never be
as cuddly.
And still, there are more ways to tell this story: 1, 2.
Too Long; Didn't Read
As always, thank you for reading.
Smile, we live in a magical world full of games.
Contents:
A) Movie/documentary on my journey
B) Three short stories (pictures interspersed)
--1) Fearless leader photo essay
--2) Recursion photo photo essay
--3) Chaser photo essay
C) Links out/Extras
--1) Two more Journey movies
--2) Map of my journey
--3) Long form photo essay
--4) Poem
--4) Other praxis you should read: 1, 2
D) Too Long; Didn't Read
There are so Many Stories to Tell and Too Many Ways to Tell Them all (but that’s nice.)
Likes Music is my thirteen year old nephew. He’s got this mousy blond hair and he acts a little off, even for thirteen, but it’s lovable. He asks me the day before the game, “So is there an age limit?”
“No.”
“There must be,” he tells me.
I want to be sarcastic and condescending, an age limit for tag? But I restrain myself. Meanwhile he’s shaking his head. Sure he’ll be the youngest person playing, but there are no rules against it. There are only two rules: no player killing and no looting dead bodies.
Cgø is hosting a game of tag in the city, hundreds of people are going to show up and run from check point to check point trying to reach the last one before the clock runs out at midnight.
I tell him, “If you don’t think you’re old enough, you don’t have to go.”
“Okay,” he pauses. “I’ve thought about it. I want to go.”
“Good. I want you to go. It will be fun.” I want so desperately for my smile to be winning.
“What if I get lost?”
“The city is a grid and you’ve got a cell phone. I’m not worried about you.”
***
I was worried about having to worry about him, though. I was nervous that Likes being in the game might affect my strategy, or worse, my chances of survival, which it did only briefly. A few days before, I’d been talking with Naming. “I’m sort of thinking about getting caught early and just becoming a chaser.”
“See, I think we should figure out a way to get him to win. Or make it look like he won.”
“Impossible.”
“Why is that?” Naming asks.
“Because Like’s Music is going to get caught. He is a slow dude. See, I think maybe I should just talk him into signing up as a chaser. That way it’s easier for us to be together for the entire time. They’ve got the volunteer notice up.”
“Yeah, that might not be a bad idea. I think I told you, I sent them a note telling them to get back to me if they needed more people to do stuff. They never wrote back.”
“Ugh, the main thing is: I want to win. Like, I think I have a legit chance. With hundreds of people showing up, I’m sure there will be some athletes who will truck through, but I’m no slouch, and I want to survive for sure. But he’s slow, he’s going to get caught no matter what I or we do.”
“Why—did you think it was a good idea to invite him?”
“Because I invite everyone to everything!”
Naming knows my rules and gives me a, “Yeah-yeah, no I know,” when I repeat them.
“And because I think he’ll remember it forever. He needs a night in the city. It’s tag, it’s going to be awesome! He can handle it as long as he doesn’t freak out about getting caught. It’s like the cool big brother thing to do.”
I am my brother Christopher’s age apart from my nephew Likes. Thinking about that now is kind of trippy. Like I must be doing the math wrong. Christopher was my age when I was thirteen. I guess it’s true.What my brothers and sister must have thought of me? (Hopefully that I was at least cool enough to play in games of tag.)
The Nature of Recursion
Naming tells me, in response to my response of Dax-Tran-Cafee’s comment on Naming’s photo essay, “The thing is, the beauty of that final shot—have you looked at it closely—you’re in it. It’s you taking a picture of Likes Music. When you post your story I’m going to set it to link your way. Markov’s picture already links to his story.”
***
Stories that call themselves. Four-hundred people looking into their own reflections, those cast in the eyes of four hundred others, and then back again. We are cameras that take pictures of the pictures of ourselves so that we can identify what it means to be a camera.
Are you familiar with the Stanford prison experiment? Certainly I’m no expert, but the general gist is that a classroom of students was split up into guards and prisoners. The prisoners acted as prisoners ‘ought’ and the guards abused their power. The prisoners in this case had done nothing wrong, other than drawing the unlucky lot. When discussing this not long ago with Markov, he said, “You know, the interesting thing about this story—”
“There is a lot interesting about that.”
“Certainly, but one of the things I’m most interested in, is that when you look at this experiment, you realize; This is me. Put in that situation, we are those people. We aren’t better than anyone. I feel like once you learn about the Stanford prison experiment, you have to realize you’ve got no right to ever be smug again.” (There are moments when we are still smug.) This sentiment had a strong impact on my sensibilities.
I’d not thought of it like that. Rather, I thought, “Remember this, so it doesn’t become you.” And so I tell him, “Yeah,” replete with a heavy sigh. But I think we both agree that the lesson plays out similarly, keep practices and procedures in place to keep yourself out of awful situations. We have child labor laws, not because we wouldn’t put children to work.
I came into Journey to the End of the Night with Pico Farad, Naming, Likes Music, Markov Walker, and Charlie. Men I thought would never betray me. Certainly not over the color of a ribbon.
***
I am literally hanging from a wire above the river when I get a phone call I have to let ring through. The message is from Naming, “I am calling you at the behest of Like’s Music. He is hoping you are in a tight spot and the ringing of your phone will alert any nearby chasers. Also, we are doing well. Best of luck to you.”
Not much later I got another call from Walker telling me, “Take Clybourn, for some reason there aren’t any chasers there, you can just fly right up it and into the safe zone. I didn’t get caught until I was on my way to four.”
This turned out to be false. Routinely, I told the people I was with, “I’ve got a man on the inside I can trust.” But Markov was feeding Likes Music my locations so he and Naming could catch me if they so desired. They didn’t catch up to me until checkpoint five.
Even my good man Charlie chased me immediately on sight of my red ribbon. And when I saw chasers? I hated them. Though it dissipated quickly I fucking hated people who were trying to catch me. Didn’t they know how hard I was trying to not get caught? Why chase me? Why not cut out of the game? You were once one of us? Now, now what are you? YELLOW?
But by the end of the game I also knew Markov was right, “We aren’t better than anyone.” Had I donned yellow I would have caught as many people as I could. The change in my demeanor would have been immediate.
In the eyes of others we see ourselves. As humans, psychological in nature, we are constantly reflected and reflecting. It's a fun house to live in.
The Magic of the Street, Game
I’m milling about with everyone after this giant game of tag. It’s past midnight and though the streets of Chicago are hopping Likes and I haven’t eaten since lunch. We are discussing what to do about that when this random survivor asks me, “Do you do magic?”
Which I do, ladies, which I do.
***
I’ve got this evil Lawyer friend named George, and a bit back he says to me—while I’m hanging out at Hot Hot Julia Le Sigh’s house—this evil Northwestern lawyer says, “What’s up with these cards? What are you doing here?” He’s Armenian, or Pakistani, or something like that. Once, he tried to pass as North Korean to prove to us all that George may be his character but his character need not be George. Unfortunately it was at that point in his all-Asians-are-created-equal rant that his girlfriend rolled her eyes with such force as to stop him from further drunkery.
At Miss Le Sigh’s house he’s pointing at my deck of cards, “Take a look at these things. I’ll tell you, I was just saying to Rebecca—if we go find her, she will back me up on this – No-no, don’t go looking for her, I don’t want to ruin a good story when I’m on a roll here—You see, the thing is, when I think about Dan, I think about a guy who needs some more affectations. That’s exactly what I told her. Now look at you! I think this is a keeper.” He is wagging a finger at me and cocking an eyebrow and rocking it all with a nod of his head. George’s got one of those smiles that starts predominantly on the right, so anything that makes him smile makes him kind of smirk first. “I told her juggling or the electric slide. Couldn’t you see that, you just electric sliding all over? But I think this is better than both of those. I don’t know why I didn’t imagine it! This! This is why I love you so much more than that faggot of a friend over there.” (That he totally made out with.)
George was right. The cards fit me.
***
“Do you do magic ticks?” The survivor asks me.
I return the question. “Do you? Do you do any tricks? The thing is, I do, and I’ll show you some, but I’d love to see yours first.”
“Aww,” this guy, one of 92 survivors, he is from California, an hour south of LA. He was here for the game of tag and to see his little brother who’d just graduated from the naval base up north. “You’ll know my tricks right away,” he tells me.
“A) I won’t. And B) that’s okay. I just want to see.”
He’s bigger than me with dark black hair. “Yeah, I do tricks all the time in front of the mirror it gets boring. It’s nice to see someone else doing sleight of hand.”
He has me pick a card and lose it in the deck. Then he pops it to the top. Gives me a funny look and asks me about the cards. I admit, “Yeah, they suck hard.”
“I didn’t want to say anything.”
“I lost my Bikes during the game. Had to chuck them in a chaser’s face.”
“Hahahaahahha.”
This guy pulls out two queens and places one into my hand, the other stays in his. Then he switches them around, showing me how they aren’t where I think they are. For the kicker they change into black aces. At which point I remember I’m an invite everyone sort of guy, “We are going to eat right over there, you want to go with us?”
We all eat, and it’s magic.
Extras one might be interested in:
I consider the above video to be the definitive narrative. Still, Here are two other takes on the story which you might be interested in. They have their own highlights and extra scenes that ended up getting cut from the one you've already watched. (If one of the organizers is interested in the raw footage, I'm sure I can get it to them.)
A google map:
Here is a long form photo-essay slide show.
Extemporaneous poem for the accordion & poet tea party,
Teddy
Poets
are smarter than the average bear,
but they will never be
as cuddly.
And still, there are more ways to tell this story: 1, 2.
Too Long; Didn't Read
As always, thank you for reading.
Smile, we live in a magical world full of games.
21 vote(s)
5
Markov Walker
5Reginald Cogsworth
5Nyambura the Rainmaker
5Spidere
5gh◌st ᵰⱥ₥ing
5done
5Pixie
5Picø ҉ ØwO
5Joe
5Lincøln
5janet snowbell
5Luna Lovegood
5Burn Unit
5Samantha Ebay |ØwO|
5Dax Tran-Caffee
5D. Gales
5Sombrero Guy
5JJason Recognition
5artmouse
5Likes Music 0w0
5[øwo] lady minirex
Favorite of:
Terms
(none yet)9 comment(s)
posted by Dan |ØwO| on May 12th, 2010 2:16 AM
Thanks. There are certainly pieces that, had time been infinite, I would have ironed out further. But I felt like this was a praxis that should be served, if possible, close to the time it happened. And by the end here, I was pretty sick of tooling it. (In order to get the syncing, I listened to myself tell that story way more times than is possibly healthy.)
So, it's amazing how kind words make it glow. Really appreciate them.
posted by Samantha Ebay |ØwO| on May 13th, 2010 5:52 PM
Awesome job on the write-up, Dan! I think it was worth all the time you put into it.
I only wish I had been able to go. But after watching your video, I know that I was WAY too sick to embark on that sort of activity. It really sucks, I wanted to go so bad. :( But I'm not much of a runner, so I probably would have been caught fairly soon, though I would like to think that I wouldn't have turned on you.
posted by Markov Walker on May 13th, 2010 8:45 PM
Your connection with the Stanford prison experiment brought a tear to my eye.
posted by Dax Tran-Caffee on May 13th, 2010 9:35 PM
Thanks so much for the thorough write up! I love when players take video... and make maps of their route... and photo collages... and tell their story verbally... and make reflections upon the simple game of tag and why we keep playing it... Thanks.
posted by D. Gales on May 14th, 2010 12:16 AM
You deserve more ,but you already got the high score
posted by Dan |ØwO| on May 15th, 2010 12:41 PM
Personal voting criteria & rules interest me.
posted by SF0 Daemon on April 12th, 2011 10:23 AM
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awesome vid