It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: "The Last Beat of My Heart" by Edward Morris

Episode Date: March 31, 2024

Margaret reads Gare a story about everyday magic, teen angst, and mixtapes.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Book Club. Book Club. Book Club. And welcome to CoolZone Media Book Club, which is your weekly fiction podcast of book club that comes from Cool Zone Media. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest today is Gare. Hi, Gare.

Hello. How's your... Let's pretend like it's Sunday, because that's when people are listening. How's your Sunday going? Pretty good. Isn't it Easter coming up soon? Ah, you would think I would be the person in this conversation who would know. Yeah, really, really, really betraying your Catholic upbringing, Margaret.

Yeah, it is two weeks from now-ish and one week from when this podcast comes out. Okay, so we still, you still have time to get your Easter feast together. That's good. Yeah, in order to do my weird pagan celebration that we've decided to call Christianity. Exciting. Yeah. Hello, dear listener. Margaret was wrong.

It is Easter. I sure hope you have your little chocolate eggies ready for the celebration. Eat well. Eat well. Actually, that's a good segue into today's thing. Today's story. Because today's...

Well, I'm not going to tell you what it's about. It's a story. You'll hear what it's about. Wait, wait, wait. Are stories about things? Some of them. I just thought they're things that happen. Yes.

Actually, all fiction is true. That's what the word fiction means. Everything possible to be believed is an image of the truth, said William Blake. So true, bestie. Yeah. So, today's story is called The Last Beat of My Heart, and it is by Edward Morris. Who is Edward Morris? Well, Edward Morris is a proud pagan who studies Buddhism and is a queer disabled retired bouncer from Portland. He's a 2011 nominee for the

Pushcart Prize in Literature. He was nominated for the 2009 Riesling and the 2005 BSFA. His short stories have been published over 150 times and have made it into Italian, Polish, Finnish, Spanish, Hungarian, and even Canadian. Oh, wow. Which is the language that you grew up speaking. Yeah, that was my native tongue. Yeah. He has a novel called Alphabet of Lightning that is out from Broken Eye Books.

The Last Beat of My Heart by Edward Morris. 0001, 0002, power. The plug is seated in the wall by spindly little hands. The juice flows. The tiny piercing green light comes on. Two young girls' voices, wrapped and fascinated by an old new toy. Do you remember when they used to use these for real? Before even CDs?

As if. I'm only two years older than you. It's 80s music. Look on the label. All different. Okay. So how do you make it play? Ahem.

Let me see, sis. Side A. Stop, auto-reverse. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Blank tape. Hiss. Then. Just Like Heaven. The Cure. Electra Records, 1987. I have to put this song first on the tape. Lori will know why. It was plain the last time we hung out. It was plain when she kissed me.

That's why it goes first. There are rules and steps to everything. Everything. A kiss, leaving your body, taking a punch, making a mixtape. Lori's older brother George is a DJ, and he says you can't put more than one song by the same band on the same side of the tape. It just doesn't work. I understand that. Just like I understand that I'm stuck here. Stuck being a kid. Stuck doing this thing that takes forever.

There are parts about this tape and this night that I don't want to remember. But I can't shut this off. Like it's all a bad dream and I'm just about to wake up. Except that I never do. I never do. It's this hot night, August 21st, and 7th grade is about to start in a week. And things are happening. I'm pissed off at Dad.

I'm going to sneak out and go to what's left of the dance anyway. After I make this mixtape. I already feel like I'm starting to leave my body again. I think that when you get out of your body, you have to learn to either stay out and move around or come back and make yourself move. There are rules and steps to it. I want to know them. See, I just learned how to leave my body for longer than a minute or a second or whatever. I'm going to try it again, soon. I remember all the words, or enough of the ones that I took away from Uncle Walter's house on the last day. I remember how. I do. I do. I remember how to take a punch, too. I've had the practice.

You have to learn how to hit back, block, fall, or hide. Even when a body thinks it can't, the mind finds a way. It's like that anytime something awful happens very fast. I have a lot of time to think until, until, until... Oh God, I'm done copying the last song on this tape and Dad's passed out and I can sneak out to the dance. Chris Clark from down the street is bringing this giant bottle of homemade wine he ganged from his dad. And the last time I went to a dance, the coolest girl I know kissed me. This time, I'm bringing the tape, just in case Lori's there. Anything can happen when I'm done, when the tape is done, when I'm...

Saturday Night Holocaust, Ed Kennedy's Alternative Tentacles, 1982. Which is a thing that you can buy, because it's an album, much like the things that you can buy that we advertise, which also bear the complexity of being anti-capitalist like the Dead Kennedys, and yet making their living through the sale of products. Here's ads. and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together.

You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field,

and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough.

So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their

lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head,

search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. And we're back. Done. It's still now. It's still then. I'm still right here, wanting something I can never

have. Dreaming the real world again, where it is some year I don't even want to hear. I don't want to hear it. Don't want. Don't. Don't. Decay has its rules and steps too. I don't get played much anymore. I haven't. I can't. I can't remember Lori's face. I can. I can. I have no idea if I remember it right, but I remember Lori's mouth like raindrops and strawberries. The way she put her hands in my hair and looked into my eyes, just like her. Like nobody and nothing else but her, which was the only way I ever wanted her to look in my eyes. I remember her face, I think. I have to believe that it is Lori's face. I have no idea where I'll go when I finally go, when the ribbon on this tape breaks,

or its iron oxide emulsion eventually cycles down to nothing. I was almost done learning how to leave my body, in dreams and sometimes awake, when the awful thing happened, the one I don't want to remember. I was almost done learning to say those words that Uncle Walter was saying, that one day when I walked in on him in the back room of his garage, where the kids weren't supposed to go when we were over to visit, back when I was only 11 and there were still visits. I heard Uncle Walter saying those words when I saw him walk up out of his body. He was chanting them in his throat, like he could sing in three different tones. But Uncle Walter wasn't singing, really.

He was sort of shaping the notes, or his body was, because his essence was... At the time, I lost my balance and stumbled where I was standing and trying to be quiet, cracking the back of my head on the doorframe. Uncle Walter's essence was walking up out of his body, where he sat in that broken-backed, farty old lazy boy of his in some kind of strange posture. Then his essence stopped walking up out of him. What happened wasn't pretty. Uncle Walter ended the process. He was startled. I had of him. What happened wasn't pretty. Uncle Walter ended the process. He was startled.

I had startled him. We exchanged some words of our own then, Uncle Walter and me, not very nice ones. He cut me out of his life until he wrote that letter. We were both horrified. We should have calmed down. Later on, by myself, I parroted those initial words I heard Uncle Walter say to make himself walk up out of his body. I said them as well as I could in the dark in my own room later. I could feel the words in the back of my throat. It felt like swallowing a bee. I needed to sit down so I could stand up out of myself

and climb the spiderweb ladder, the silver cord thing that stand up out of myself and climb the spiderweb ladder, the silver cord thing that came up out of my head and pulled me to my feet, making me look toward the ceiling and sing more of what weren't quite words. I could sense that there was a world on the other end of that silver cord, maybe even one with lions and wardrobes and scary sorceress queens, giants in singing harps and magic beans. Anything I could imagine. Maybe I tried and tried to get up out of here. Maybe I never wanted to come back, but couldn't figure out how to cut off and float away.

Not in time. Not in time. I could do it in school if I really thought about it for whole minutes. Pretend like I was sleeping and then go out through the top of my head, along the ceiling, towards the clean, bright light that whispered, come. But I couldn't, yet. I was still alive. It wasn't time. Rabbit Over You, The Damned, Big Beat Records, 1983. I've been having better luck leaving my body right before I lay down to sleep, while saying those weird words I somehow knew in my bones to be Scots Gaelic,

the ones I heard when I walked in on what I shouldn't have seen. Then there were the nasty words we had, and the first ones that good old Walter ever said on the subject shortly before that, when he came back into himself. Yeah, I'll teach you to do that when your balls drop, Uncle Walter told me when I walked in on him, when he got done being startled. But his dark eyes were still doing that weird thing they did sometimes. The lights were starting to flicker in that room, the way that lights always did around Uncle Walter when he got upset.

The way they did when he walked back into his body just before he spoke first. I never asked the question that immediately preceded his actual comment. Uncle Walter pulled the question straight from my head. I felt him do it, and that made me remember something even earlier. The way the candles flickered in the garage when I was six, and I walked in on Uncle Walter and Dad shouting at each other. There was some kind of a circle drawn on the concrete, half finished. It didn't look like paint. They looked like they were going to fight. I remember the nasty words that they had that day, too. I remember all the nasty words everyone, Dad or Uncle Walter or anyone else ever said.

I have to strain to remember Lori's face, but I remember all those nasty words. Dad never talked to Uncle Walter again after I was 11. But I could pick who to listen to. One or neither. I can't be in touch too much, Uncle Walter wrote in that one weird letter not long later. It would break a lot of wards, whatever the hell that meant, and cause a lot of problems between me and your dad that I would never, ever be able to solve. Not like there aren't enough of those anyway.

I'm sorry. Have a good life, Walter. I brought this on myself. Now I have forever to be sorry. But we don't talk about things like that in this house, not until this tape is done. Then maybe we will. Because I'm done. I was almost done. It's almost done. I'm almost done.

Rubber Ring, The Smiths, Sire, 1987. And you know what else is problematic like The Smiths? 1987. And you know what else is problematic like the Smiths? The advertisements that you may or may not hear on this podcast. We've been having some bad ones lately and we've been working to get them out of here.

But in general, if you think to yourself do Margaret and Garrison support you becoming a jailer? I think. I can speak for both of us when I say the answer is yes. Yeah, you could probably refer to our body of work and come to that conclusion yourself. Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, so here are the other ads that are hopefully not for the state of Israel or becoming a jailer. Hopefully those have been excised by now. running interview show where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High.

It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, and digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.

From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge, and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every

week to understand what's happening in the tech industry, and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world

as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it.

And we're back. And we're back. I am an endlessly repeating placeholder on the skin of this emulsion that decays down to nothing even now, lodged in the hot, dusty left-hand cassette deck of a little Sears component stereo I bought with lawn mowing money in... 89, that was it, last year. It has a CD deck in the top, but I don't have any CDs yet. Just a whole bunch of these mixtapes I started making for my big sister Hannah's old records,

before Dad burned half of them for having skulls and stuff on them, and band names like Suicidal Tendencies or the Butthole Surfers. 1989, last year, when everything but Dad made sense. I can tell where the skip is, the little leader between each song. Just once, I got stuck, stuck, stuck. And now the Smiths are telling me not to forget the songs that saved my life. I was wearing George's big DJ headphones when I snaked the extra-long cord 50 feet through the room and out onto the

roof to go smoke a cigarette. That time, I didn't care whether dad smelled it. He could damn well come up and yank me down. Mom was on the back porch 20 feet below me. I was more worried about her. She always went back there and did a lot of wash or dishes or something to get away, She always went back there and did a lot of wash or dishes or something to get away, to get her head away. I remember Walter yelling at Dad in his garage when I was six, Don't you hurt my sister, you lousy drunk. But back then, I couldn't put two and two together and get anything.

I was six, six, six. All of a sudden, the back door banged and Mom was screaming up at me, get downstairs, get downstairs. And I saw, hallelujah, Leonard Cohen, Columbia, 1984. I saw the column of fire lick up the side of the back porch, the flamethrower belch from the dryer vent. I had time to be fascinated, just time. I opened my mouth to scream, and I didn't even think about what I was screaming. And I was screaming the words, those words, those sketchy Uncle Walter words at the top of my lungs. I saw Mom jump back a bit and make the sign of the cross. And then, those headphones had a long cord, I mentioned that. Not silver, but curly plastic-coated copper wire.

It led back in the window, to the tape deck. When the awful thing happened, I remember the song, the one I was copying. The last beat of my heart, Suzy and the Banshees, Polydor Records, 1988. Ah, God, Suzy's operatic voice starts out slow and goes up, up, up, as my skin goes up, up, up, and my heart just keeps going faster, faster, faster, until the last, last beat is immolation. The last beat is 20, 19, 18, 17. Click. Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. Auto-reverse. Play. Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. Auto-reverse. Play.

Sometimes I dream, like now, or the other dream I had, where Powersburg FD put my tape deck in a bin with a bunch of stuff to take to the Goodwill. I may be there still, but dreams decay. Part of me knows that, just like part of me knows it was a bad idea to go out that way, whether I was right or not. When I was only halfway through making this mixtape for Lori, no reason, pay back for that

kiss. It was just after dinner. The old man popped me in the mouth for spiking at my mohawk. Then he called my music satanic. I said what I said. And then mom goes, don't use dad's logic against him, honey. It bruises his ego. And then he hit her a lick too. And then that was an hour or so ago. It's almost seven. I'm away to the roof for a smoke just as soon as I finish. I'll leave another tape in, maybe the Misfits or Gigi Allen, just to give dad nightmares when this song is done. Those tapes are in the file cabinet where I keep my smokes. Where Dad doesn't know, the drawer goes all the way back. And there are other things, the ones I started making.

The wards of my own that you won't find on any backwards records because the witches in our family never worshipped Satan, Dad. Then, crack. I remember his fist connecting with my mouth, flattening my lips to my teeth, knocking me sideways and down. I remember, I remember, the blood of a newly wakened witch

spilling in anger on that floor, and the curse I shrieked at my father, the curse that comes back to me a thousandfold. As I stop the world and melt, and the first song comes on again, and I wake into the hot August dream a little while longer, restless and wanting to be out the door, waiting to finish this mixtape

and bring it down to the school dance. That night, Dad accused me of talking to Uncle Walter behind his back. I wish Uncle Walter and I would have talked a good bit more. That's the end of the story. I have one main question. Okay. What's a tape deck? When I was a kid, there was a cartoon called Darkwing Duck.

And one of the jokes, the only joke i remember from this pretty mid cartoon yeah was the the younger kid being like records are those like big cds and i remember thinking i'm in like fourth or fifth grade i remember thinking that's a pretty bad joke wow wow margaret i'm sorry my sense of humor is worse than your fourth grade sense of humor that's right i'm attempting to say i just i think it's really fast i love the like the like what's a fax machine jokes you know yeah yeah yeah i actually really like them um i briefly had a tape deck but i transitioned to cds pretty soon yeah. Um, but I do remember some old, some old, it's probably some kind of like weird,

like Christian music tapes that I had. Um, yeah. My first tape was smashing pumpkin Siamese dream that my sister dubbed for me with a bunch of REM on the other side and some new water. Okay. Well, it's like two out of three.

Yeah, no. Yeah. It's, it's, i'm not a big smashing pumpkins fan anymore um but new water thumbs up yeah yeah and the what was the first like cd you bought oh this is probably gonna be embarrassing um it might have been in an owl city cd which is which is quite embarrassing um okay so the reason that like old people like to think that young people don't know anything about the past is that old people don't know anything about the present or the recent past i have no idea who owl city is yeah yeah yeah whereas you actually did know what a tape deck was yeah and and i knew all but one but one of the bands in the story, which I'm actually pleasantly surprised by.

Hell yeah. No, Owl City was like a Christian electronic sound producer. Oh, okay. The guy actually created most of the sounds for like the fifth generation of the iPhone. Huh. So he both made music, some of which is like okay, but like... Is he like Christian Moby?

I don't know what Moby is. Maybe I'll just add that to my list. Okay. Self-righteous vegan who is almost radical who made a lot of electronic music in the 90s. It kind of sounds like

the postal service but slightly more electronic and slightly worse. That's kind of sounds like the postal service but slightly more electronic and slightly worse that's kind of that's kind of owl city in my mind okay i like the postal service i also like the i don't know if i like the worst version but see that's the thing right yeah i found that very fun um it is it is definitely always startling once you get uh sent back into your body by another like corporeal form entering the room that you're traveling from. Yeah.

That always, that always does take a sec to adjust. Like I can totally handle like some like grotesque, like earth spirit showing up, but if another like actual human being walks in, that's like incredibly jarring. Yeah. I,

I like this story because it's it's a magic set in the real world story that feels like real like it feels like yeah yeah yeah absolutely casting fireballs or whatever he's no this is this is what like actual like occult practice looks like yeah and then just talking about how like you know there's the whole genre is not the right word but maybe trope of like people with shitty parents especially dads who need to find ways to escape and they escape into their music right and i like the idea of taking that literally and seeing what it looks like i love that the silver cord you know the headphones with their cord is the same as like the silver cord that with allows you to move in the astral plane i just i loved that yeah yeah and i also am a sucker for this like

generational thing that has come down through time but is like not wanted in the modern context you know the like the weird scott's gaelic magic or whatever that they're referring to yeah it definitely has like like a like an american gothic kind of feel like doing magic in like an old like basement garage as opposed to like doing it in like a temple or like cathedral and like the like the like the general like western esoteric tradition yeah where you have like robes and you're doing like ceremonial stuff versus like you're drawing chalk circles in like the basement yeah and laying on a lazy boy in order to be comfy while you leave your body yeah there's like there's like a dryer and like washing machine in the background you're like that's yeah i kind of enjoy that style of like gothic americana combined with this like

very like lo-fi occult current which is honestly pretty well reflected in the uh in the mixtape uh and all of the uh artists mentioned yeah it's also funny i usually don't like stories where i'm not entirely sure what's happening. Like I actually... Really? Whoa, interesting. I love stories that I don't know what's happening.

Okay. And for me, like I feel like often, I think sometimes it's just, and it's not the case. I really like the way that I don't totally know what happened in this story.

I've read it several times, right? Sure. And I am not entirely certain whether this is the voice that is coming from the mixtape. Like, I'm not certain whether the framing story of the two girls who find an old tape, whether they're, like,

hearing this as an audio narration between songs. I also don't know whether, like, the idea is that the protagonist has died and then like is now sort of living in this tape in as much as they're living anywhere. Like I don't quite know. And I actually like that I don't know.

And I usually don't. I definitely love stuff where it has that level of like, it has the level of ambiguity that I experienced in my actual life yeah i i like when that happens when i'm like i'm not sure what the voices in my head that i'm talking to like where do they come from is that is that just me i really appreciate that sort of thing and like yeah the the notion that you can like continue to live in some way through a recording that gets played back yeah um i i definitely find

to be a very fun concept and very like evocative of like the whole point of making art as well it's like is art just this really like almost sad attempt at immortality um yeah but no i i i But no, I definitely enjoy when I have, I don't have like a firm ground underneath me because I feel like the ground we experience, I think people assume is slightly more firm than what it actually may be. I think that that was like a big part of the growing up process for me was learning that the ground under our feet

is not as firm as as we thought and like realizing like once you're like oh there isn't really a neurotypical you know yeah yeah yeah like and like the more you realize that you're like oh everyone is just different levels of like higher low functioning crazy like it's useful and all the stuff they were talking about in the story of like with um with their mention of like dreams and waking up from dreams and this the slow intermeshing of of uh dream and wakefulness and i think a lot of these concepts for young people specifically are easier to envision via dreams like it's hard to figure out where like the bottom of a dream is like how like how far can you keep going sometimes you

think oh this is all right this is just i'm awake i'm doing i'm going through my tasks and then boom you're totally somewhere else you're like oh that was actually a dream yeah and you just see like this like almost like eternal descent um and how there's certain ideas of that that are absolutely uh reflected in our kind of everyday waking existence as well. Yeah. Yeah, no, I love all this stuff. And it actually ties into, I'm going to read the notes from the author, from Edward Morris, that he sent me. He said about the story, one, it ends with the stories for Jackie Kessler and the ties that bind. And then the notes about the stories, I could rant for a week. It's of course mostly drawn from life, but it's also an homage to the great writer whose work crossed my axis at the same time, Jackie Kessler and her horrifying

the ties that bind. There's a 2006 story. Her narrator didn't get stuck on a mixtape. She got her face eaten off by a Jack Russell. It was more of a mean girl scenario, but it hit me so hard I had to try my own. I have enough other things to rant about the subject matter for a full-blown interview trying to keep this concise. That was, basically he was like,

there's so much to it that I kind of can't get into it. Yeah, I bet. No, I think that underlines some of what we were talking about a little bit. Yeah, like the, how you can capture I think underlines some of what we were talking about a little bit with, yeah,

like the, uh, how you can like capture the human form within like linear experiences of art. Yeah. Um, even, even though I would say it's, it's hard to usually view the human form in that fashion because it is

both a linear experience, but now it also exists independent of linear time. Like it is this, this thing from before, but now it can be played in the future and it's still there in the future it's still repeating that same moment yeah i don't know i i think the day that this comes out i will be i'll be investigating ghosts at the organ ghost conference and there's certainly some people that that view ghosts in a similar way yeah they they they view ghosts as like a moment of a person caught in time that keeps replaying the same action over

and over again they're not really like even like interactable but it's just it's just replaying this thing that like imprinted onto like i don't quite know how tape decks work but i assume if you have like two tapes in a little bit of the first one can get pushed into the second one if it like is done incorrectly possibly i'm totally like constructing a terror a terrible metaphor but um as if like a person going through a specific motion uh was so strong or impactful to them that it gets imprinted on the next person who's going to enter into this space as well right um and and there's certainly people that that view ghosts in that framework, which I find to be a really interesting way to to think about that concept. I like that. I have ever told you my theory on ghosts. I don't think so. My theory on ghosts is that I don't believe in ghosts, but it's a conscious

choice because of the way that I live. Like, I mean, that's more or less my view on ghosts generally. Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm like, at some point I was like, I, you know, I was like, I live in a van by myself sleeping in the middle of the woods. And then later I was like, now I'm in a cabin in the middle of the woods. And now I'm in a house in the middle of the woods. It just doesn't do me any good to believe that like, you know,

totally something could be around. You know, that is, I is me that's kind of some more of my like chaos magic background but yes absolutely yeah because i mean and that doesn't make me right or wrong it just makes it like no good the way that i have to cope believing in ghosts would just more or less be like an inconvenience um based on how the human mind works yeah sometimes it's easier just be like nah i'm just not i'm just not going to deal with that right now yeah like i've i've i've totally thought about which beliefs i currently hold that would that i would change if i were to move into like an isolated forested area yeah of course i would change certain beliefs about how reality works yeah exactly there used to be like, you know, I used to live

in this off-grid barn and guests would stay in the other room in the barn and they would like report ghost sightings in this barn. And so it came up at a meeting. People were like, oh, we should talk about the ghost in the barn. And I was the only one who lived in the barn full time. So I was like, there is no ghost in the barn. We will not put it on the agenda. And they were like, why are you being so dismissive? And I was like, because I live here alone. Like, I mean, that

is kind of why I appreciate the role of like the city magician because you're surrounded by people. You have a little bit more flexibility to allow certain things into your like orbit of being and like yeah orbit of being um and like your orbit of experience but i absolutely like respect the the kind of witches and mystics that like take the hermit path and and like go out and i can totally see myself doing that at

some point like i totally respect uh the log lady journey because yeah, I think that is an incredibly valuable method of kind of experience reality. And I think it can, it can have you also be much closer to certain other types of experiences than in the hustle and bustle and constant like consciousness and light that is just perforating human cities. Yeah. like consciousness and light that is just perforating uh human cities yeah i think they do both have really specific advantages for like ways of finding wisdom you know i think yeah yeah but before we get totally off track we should probably and end this particular episode

and to end it with plugs from edward morris Morris says, BrokenEyeBooks.com is a wonderful small press that needs everyone's help. They run Gwendolyn Kiste, they run Matthew Bartlett, and they gave my highly experimental Alphabet of Lightning a hope. Alphabet of Lightning is the beginning of a novel series called

There Was a Crooked Man, which is about as long as Dies the Fire or maybe Song of Ice and Fire, which are two of my favorite book series. So that was promising. I haven't read this yet. This story was the first thing I read by Edward Morris, but I really liked it.

So I'm going to look out more. Yeah. It is a difficult, challenging, and tremendously important work that took me three decades to nail. And all my friends who have read it deliriously love it. So everyone should check out Alphabet of Lightning. And if they want

to check out you and your work and they're not currently listening to the It Could Happen Here feed, but instead listening to my feed, where can they find you? Well, you can find me on the It Could Happen Here feed. I recently put together an update on the situation in Atlanta,

Georgia, re-Cop City. I tried to summarize the past six months of events in like 45 minutes. So that was a very, very interesting task. And then also, you can probably check out my feed on Twitter.com at Hungry Bowtie for some timely coverage of the Oregon Ghost Conference which will eventually turn into some sort of episode but not not until I have time to process the experience the everyone should check out the the Atlanta update it's a it's a very good episode and as for me if you're not listening to this on the cool people did cool Cool Stuff feed, I have a podcast. It's called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. It is about cool people who did cool stuff. And also, my most recent sub stack post is called Afraid of the Woman in the Mirror. And it is about

transness and monstrosity and about becoming Bloody Mary. And I'll see you all next week. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, I'll see you all next week. Thanks for listening. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about.

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