Welcome.
Last
year a young writer in my class sent me a text message that was a sequence of
images. Being the late adopter I am, I was like, “What are those crazy
emoticons?”
“You
don’t know emoji?”
I
didn’t. But I was so excited about them that the next day I took a screen shot
of my hundred favourite emoji, had my students paint images of each character,
then had these same students blindly select a sequence of emoji and use that
sequence to inspire a story. The best examples from this first batch were
published in The West Enders, Vol. 1, Issues 1 and 2, available at a fine bookstore near you.
The
activity has been well received so I’ve been sharing the hell out of it. People
enjoy it enough that I wanted to try it.
So,
I asked my friend, the illustrious musician Jim Guthrie, to create a sequence
of emoji for me. He created two. Below is the first sequence and the story I
made from it.
Suggested
musical pairings for the following story: “Alien Love” from Jim Guthrie’s first
cassette, Home is Where the Rock Is (1995) (https://jimguthrie.bandcamp.com/track/alien-love);
“Not Yalk’s Requiem” from Jim’s fourth cassette, Some Things You Should Know
About Sound and Hearing (1998)
and his recently reissued breakout album One Thousand Songs (https://jimguthrie.bandcamp.com/track/not-yalks-requiem-2);
“Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB7C7BgxEWw).
Thanks
for your time,
Lee
Sheppard
The
guitar’s dying vibrations made Matt feel especially alone at the microphone.
One or two members of the audience stared at him wondering if he was finished;
most people were chatting. His brother, who, for whatever reason, was
broadcasting this performance live on the world wide web, started clapping and
a few other people picked up his cue. “That’s it,” Matt said.
“Do
another,” his brother shouted.
“Good
night,” he said.
The
next act was setting up. Matt stood by the bar with his guitar and waited for his
brother to pack up his webcam, microphone and laptop. Someone tapped Matt on
the shoulder.
Two
tall strangers stood stooped above him, their hair falling over their faces.
They both wore red lipstick to demarcate near-invisibly thin lips. The strangers
spoke simultaneously. “We liked your set.” Matt was trying to see their eyes
through their hair. He would have remembered seeing them if they’d been in the
audience, right? “We watched your performance on the internet.”
“Just
now?”
“It
was emotionally direct and vulnerable.”
“You’re
making me blush.”
“Come
with us, please.”
“Sure.”
He carried his guitar over to his brother and asked him to watch it for a few
minutes. Matt followed the hunched strangers out of the bar and into an alley.
They stopped beside a large something under a huge black sheet with iridescent
thread woven through. It wasn’t that the cloth made it hard to see the overall
shape of the thing it covered, but that it somehow made it hard for Matt to
think about what he was seeing. The strangers stood on either side of the
object and pulled the sheet. It fell in a shimmering wave.
The
ship was three stories tall. “You can go inside while we fold this,” the
strangers said.
“I’ll
wait.”
They
led him into a living room with two couches that looked like garbage day
curbside finds and a La-Z-Boy that Matt swore had been his grandfathers.
“I’ll
be right back,” one of the strangers said. Watching the stooped figure walk
through an open door, Matt realized that the stranger had removed his/her hair.
Matt looked to find the other stranger.
(S)he
stared at him with dark, double-sized eyes. Matt couldn’t tell if the stranger
was a girl or a boy or even if the stranger was hot, but the way (s)he was
leaning towards him made Matt eager for the kiss he sensed was coming. The
stranger touched his cheek.
“Are
you ready?” the other stranger said from across the room.
“Yes,”
said the stranger who had been about to kiss Matt. “Come this way,” (s)he said,
grabbing Matt’s hand. (S)he led Matt past a window. He saw the curvature of the
earth and way more stars than he could see in the city at night. He thought he
should maybe text his brother to tell him to go home without him and ask would
he mind taking the guitar, but Matt figured he wouldn’t get service up here.
The
strangers sat him in front of a Tascam 4 Track Cassette Recorder in a tiny back
room of the ship. They played him a song that sounded robotic, like Kraftwerk,
only wetter, and not, like, wet with reverb. Gooey, almost. The strangers asked
him to record a vocal track. No, they did not have anything written. Matt
listened to the track a bunch. No words came to him, so he hummed a melody. The
stranger who had touched his face cried during his fourth take, so they kept
it.
The
strangers dropped Matt off at his house. His brother wasn’t so much mad as
worried about him and worried about explaining to their parents and a bit mad,
actually, but mostly relieved, but, no, still mostly a little mad. Matt thanked
his brother for bringing the guitar home.
That
night and many nights afterwards, Matt lay in bed and imagined kissing the
stranger.
Nine
months later he received a cassette in the mail. On the cover there were
symbols that looked like letters around a red lipstick smudge. Matt’s name
wasn’t in the credits, at least not in any form he could read, but the tape,
and especially his track, sounded pretty good.
Toronto, April 2015
Jim
Guthrie is a musician from Guelph,
Ontario. Andrew Hood just wrote an inspiring book about him, Jim Guthrie:
Who Needs What. You can find out
more about all things Jim at jimguthrie.org
Lee
Sheppard is a writer and educator
living in Toronto, Ontario. He is the founder of The West Enders at West End
Alternative Secondary School, a creative writing and illustrating program that
publishes The West Enders
magazine twice a year.
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