#hypnotise me peat

[bird-inacage]

Peat for SEEK (The Dark Charm Gifset)

He’s out there on a mission to ruin my life. 

[pinkysfaultorbrainsfault]

pinky and the brain: s1e7 - tv or not tv

y’all do NOT understand how many times i have tried to post this. tumblr just will not stop eating it. this was supposed to be out last wednesday LMAO i am doing my best.

episode summary: brain engineers a pair of Mouse Dentures that give him a charming smile. anyone hypnotised by these dentures Suddenly Adores Him For No Good Reason. unfortunately, he’s also a bit of a shut in, so nobody is actually going to see his charming smile-- unless he gets himself a sitcom.

....or something.

the rundown:

we open on brain talking about the “weird and magical power” of celebrity. he has defaced several women, and is sticking his ass out. as you do. what is he doing to CINDY! and her ilk?? he must be stopped.

“those who have it weild tremendous influence. few can avoid the enchantment of its’ spell.”

“do you know what gives them this power?”

holy shit. he just stabbed CINDY!.

pinky absolutely does not care for CINDY!’s fate. “haha. narf. hey, paddlefoot, do you know what they call a quarter pounder in france?”

of course, sirius black was not in pulp fiction, and neither, as far as i can tell, was he in france. brain silences him with “enough gay banter”, like he wasn’t just sticking his ass out in his general direction, like, two minutes ago.

(this was the 90s, y’all. gay definitely meant gay back then. this is not the faraway tree.)

“pinky! behold the key to the power of attraction!”

“pushpins!”

“hurraaaaaaaaaaaah!”

“no, pinky.”

apparently the key to attraction is a

“winning smile”, as brain points out, tapping on CINDY!’s poor mutilated face for emphasis.

“and a nice healthy gum!”

“and... a nice healthy gum.”

it turns out that brain has “taken this idea of the influential smile to a new level - a level no less than world domination“, which is bold words for Mr Tumble Dryer. to achieve this, he has invented

teeth.

(okay. so it’s a bit bigger than that. he shows pinky the plans for,

and then a prototype of, a whole machine built specifically to engineer him little mousie dentures. a lot of work went into this one. shame, really.

“when did you have time to build that?”

“while you were engrossed in your mr belvedere reruns.”

“oh, i miss him. ):” )

anyway so. brain puts his teeth in.

there he is.

pinky describes this as

“enchanting (’:”

and brain affirms that it’s supposed to be. apparently the “reflective vibrations” (okay) of his smile stimulates the medula oblongata,

“causing the viewer to adore me for no good reason!”

“zort! i’m adoring you for no good reason!”

(he does point out, while brain is admiring his reflection in a nearby bunsen burner, “what if they’re wearing sunglasses?”

brain’s response is “we’ll work nights.”)

still, brain can’t just sit around in the lab twiddling his thumbs and expect the general public to Adore Him For No Reason. he needs exposure! and as pinky ponders “what would mr belvedere do,” brain asserts that he would “eat some butter”.

“i’m afraid, my friend, that you’ve seen far too much of mr belvede--”

more like mr belvIDEA lol. sorry i’ll see myself out.

“pinky, are you pondering what i’m pondering?”

“i think so, brain, bur it’s a miracle that this one grew back. ):”

.....okay.

thankfully, the plan is not, in fact, to amputate pinky’s leg. again???? instead, brain intends to use a weapon of “great stealth, power, and corruption.”

OUR OWN SITCOM.

✨

meanwhile, at the wb studio, we meet jerry kilmer. mr kilmer is currently being harassed by some dudes who also really, really want their own sitcom. for far less nefarious purposes, presumably.

“so there’s this guy, right?”

“and get this! he designs--”

“BIKINIS.”

“TINY LITTLE BIKINIS. OKAY okay okay okay so here’s the hook.”

“HE’S PRETENDING--”

“TO BE BLIND.”

it does not appear to be what mr kilmer is looking for.

(meanwhile, the mice are spying on the acme labs janitor. he seems like a cool dude! but the mice are not here for friendship.

they sneak into his jacket pocket!

and...... steal his.... car keys? “YES. to the television station!”

✨

this isn’t even the first vehicle he’s stolen. hopefully he’ll have this one back by curfew as well.)

they do get pulled over by the police, but i don’t want to go into that. unless you guys reaaaallly want me to. instead, they park outside the studio and harass some poor receptionist.

“excuse me. we’re here to-- pitch. as they say. a sitcóm. my dear.”

i don’t know why brain says words like that.

“appointment?”

“oh, i’m sure you can--”

“work us in.” says brain. he is sticking his ass out for no reason. all the appeal is in his sparkly dentures, so.... there’s really no need for that, my dude.

✨

“you’re next! for no good reason!”

these dudes are still here. “wait!” yells our budding comedian, “wait! check out this idea. it’s about a guy!”

original.

“who always sticks his foot in his mouth!!”

clever. unfortunately, his demonstration goes wrong, and he ends up kicking mr kilmer in the face.

bonk.

gives him a nasty black eye to boot. ouch.

“ugh. can’t i ever just see someone normal?”

good thing these very normal individuals have just shown up, huh? nothing shady about these guys. “ugh, thank goodness,” says mr kilmer. they introduce themselves politely as jonathan michael charles (left) and jamal spelling (right).

“you guys have quite a look.”

“thank you.”

✨

“alright then. what do you got for me?”

“egad, brain.”

“he’s not adoring you for no good reason!!”

“drat.”

“well. we’re young hip adults--”

“and hijinks ensue!”

“who sit on a big fat couch and whine--”

“with disaaaasterous results!!”

“and have lots of generation x friends who trade zippy, sarcastic banter.”

“and i have a monkey.”

a very original concept.

at least, mr kilmer sems to think so. “hmmm. fresh. but tell me! what really brings you here. what are jamal and jonathan all about.”

“actually,  we are two lab mice involved in a broad and sweeping plan to take over the world.”

mr kilmer thinks this is hilarious, apparently.

these guys do not. but they’re not important, for the moment.

the long and short of it, anyway, is that kilmer can’t give them a sitcom because nobody knows who they are, quote unquote. “the day i see your face on the cover of peeple magazine is the day you get a sitcom.”

irritated, jamal and jonathan make their exit.

and mr kilmer laughs so hard at the idea of lab mice trying to take over the world, that he falls out of his chair.

this will become relevant later.

meanwhile -- i just had to screencap this, okay, because of brain’s face. pinky suggests that he get on the cover of peeple by marrying prince charles. and brain thinks this is a horrible idea.

he’s much more interested in princess diana. but no, pinky, the path he must follow is “the same one followed by the leading sitcom stars of the day.”

“i must become a SUCCESSFUL STANDUP COMEDIAN.”

“so hey, how about those mitochondria? do they have enough cilia or what?”

“hey, why don’t you tell a joke you know!”

this may be harder than brain thought. undeterred, though, he presses on.

“do you ever notice how when you’re looking in the mirror of a quadrant electrometre, your forehead seems large?? why is that??”

“i just flew in from cleveland! and boy are my upper extremeties fatigued by a buildup of lactic acid!”

“booooooooooooooo!” says our guy on the left.

“go back to your troll village, squirt!” says his friend on the right. “what do you say to that?”

“i find you repugnant.”

(well. that made them laugh, at least.)

“your stupidity is matched only by the ill-slipped caterpillar, that chews off its’ own wings after emerging from its’ cucoon!!!”

“in fact! all of you! are just a gaggle of pathetically misguided root diggers!!”

“why don’t you all stand under a stalactite and bellow the resonate frequency, causing it to plummet onto your cranium!!”

“you’re all repugnant i say!!! repugnant!!!”

and with that little mousie tantrum out of his system, brain trundles off to sulk.

pinky claps him on the way out.

“egad brain! narf! they love you!”

“yes.”

so then he goes on tv, i guess.

“our comedy challenger is the master of insults! the prince of putdowns! jamal spelling!”

“you’re all a bunch of crevulating nitwits with peat moss for a cortex. repugnant!”

i don’t envy that guy third from the right. he doesn’t look like he’s having a very good time. he’s sensitive about his peat moss cranium, okay? don’t make fun of him.

NEXT ON G, HOWIE TURN HOSTS COMEDIAN JAMAL SPELLING.

“so, uh, jamal spelling. what kind of stupid name is that? cmon? what’s your real name?”

this would be racist if jamal spelling was a human man comedian and not like, a lab mouse. thankfully, this is not the case.

“my real name is the brain.” says brain, helpfully enunciating the “the”. “and you, my unwashed friend, are repugnant.”

HA HA. HA HA HA HA HA.

“oh, you’re hot, baby.”

okay.

but we’re, uh. we’re not going to think about that, and we’re going to go look at the david letterman show instead.

“uh, my next guest-- paul, do you know who our next guest is?”

“daaaaave, i know he’s a beautiful kind of-- nutty cat who just got us all a-wow.”

“here he is, ladies and gentlemen! for your comedy dollar, jamal spelling!!”

jamal spelling appears to be naked.

but he’s funny, so nobody minds.

“somebody here smells like a coagulated agar slant growing in a petri dish. repugnant!”

see! he’s just too comedy for clothes.

(meanwhile, we take a short trip to the office of janet mekko. “welcome, mr kilmer,” she says.

“my... secretary sent me here-- actually, i feel kind of stupid.”

“oh, honey. that’s a good thing! if there weren’t any stupid people, i wouldn’t have any business.”

“now. ya got some paaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiin.”

(in the distance, dan reynolds - at the tender age of eight - mumbles “you made me a, you made me a believer” in his sleep.)

“yeah.” says mr kilmer, completely unaware of this. “i fell out of my chair.”

“i’m gonna hypnotise you, so relax.”

okay.

“this’ll make you sleepy.”

“what is it?”

“a kenny g album.”

“okay. you’re in a trance. i’m gonna give you a random word. if you feel pain, say that word, you’ll feel good.”

“but careful! cause if you say it when you’re feeling good, the pain will come back! bad.”

spooky.

“and your random word is--”

“repugnant.”

there is, of course, absolutely no way this can go wrong.)

let us turn our view to happier pastures. namely, the mice are watching tv.

TONIGHT ON CIRCUS OF THE STARS

HARRY DEAN ANDERSON GETS SHOT OUT OF A GIANT PASTA MAKER

COMEDIAN JAMAL SPELLING FLIES THE TRAPEZE

AND BOB SAGET GETS TRAMPLED BY A BEAR. we hope.

pinky is elated! “egad, brain! circus of the stars! narf! you’ve really made it!”

pinky wants to be on circus of the stars, don’t you know. unfortunately, as he dutifully informs brain in pretty much the same breath, he hasn’t quite made it into peeple magazine yet.

“hm. it’s time to use plan b, pinky.”

“there was an a?? poit.”

ouch. jesus, pinky.

undeterred, brain marches his merry little ass over to the old timey corded phone.

beep.

“yes, connect me with buckinham palace, please.”

“egad! you did it brain! the cover of peeple!”

rule britannia is playing in the background of this scene. let’s... not think too hard about how this works, and agree that, yes, pauly shore, enough.

no more pauly shore, please.

conclusion:

jerry keeps his word, and, upon learning that jamal spelling is now legally married to princess diana (a fact which would certainly not lead to a warrant for his arrest in a couple of years) he asks him for a demo tape.

for such small hands, jamal sure does have very neat handwriting.

“make me laugh, jamal, and you got yourself a sitcom.”

“why don’t you all stand under a stalactite and bellow the resonate frequency, causing it to plummet onto your cranium!!”

he seems to like it! kilmer makes a little hee hee noise, unprepared for where this is undoubtedly going.

“you’re repungnant!”

“AAUGHGHGHHH.”

there it is.

“repugnant!”

“i say repugnant!”

repugnant repugnant repugnant repugnant

repugnant!

and with that, jerry kilmer falls out of the window.

as he does, he yells “i’ll get you, jamal spelling” which personally i think is unfair. jamal couldn’t have known, surely? don’t be mean to jamal. he’s got a lot on his mind, what with that restraining order against howie turn.

meanwhile, in the lab, the mice debate a good pitch for a pilot (i’ve got it, brain! it’s a show about nothing!) when jamal spelling gets a call.

“hi jamal! this is nina from the tv station. could you come down for a meeting?”

“mm hmmm.”

✨

it’s the WB.

as nina types away, jamal and jonathan enter casually, like this is their house, or something. “are you pleased to see us?” asks jamal, in a cocky, egomaniac labmouse sort of way.”

“yes i am!”

(nina somehow doesn’t notice.)

anyway then these guys find the dentures and pitch the first idea that comes into their heads.

“hey cortex! what do you wanna do tonight?”

don’t ask why mouse dentures fit a human man. we suspend our disbelief here.

(also there was no way this was brain’s fault. he couldn’t have known. outside influence it is. a shame, really.)

brain: 7 pinky: 7 outside influence: 14

thanks for the fun meme, @shuunthenonbeliever​ !

[monigheandonn1743]

Ceart-leth

Chapter 1

A delicate shiver ran down her spine and she took a deep, shuddering breath, surrendering herself to the simple beauty of the moment. It’d been years since she’d seen anything so moving and she lost herself, swaying gently with the soft voices, as the sights, sounds and smells swirled around her.

Outwardly ignorant to all but their task, the Druid dancers twirled and dipped around each another, and the ancient stones of Craig na Dun. Their movements so elegant that they appeared almost weightless as they weaved their magic, hypnotising the small crowd that had gathered to watch.

Synchronised to the last, the dancers fanned out gracefully, forming two flawless semicircles around the centre stone and stopped. Their delicate silk gowns, fluttering softly in the early morning breeze, were suddenly the only thing that moved. Silence descended, and there was a moment of breathless anticipation before the caller stepped toward the cleft stone and, as one, the dancers raised their arms, offering their torches in thanks to the heavens. It was a breathtaking sight, but it was the caller herself that had Claires skin erupting in millions of tiny goosebumps.

Palms stretched, she placed them flat on the ground and rose slowly, gracefully, like a Phoenix rising from the flames, seeming to draw the sunrise up with her from the very centre of the earth. It burst in bright rays of red, pink and orange through the cleft in the centre stone, blinding Claire and dropping everything it touched into momentary shadow.

How the hell did they time that so perfectly?

A warm ripple of applause rose from the small crowd but she was still spell bound. Lost in a trance, the ambiance having drawn her in, luring her towards a distant time. A simpler time, when the pagan myths that surrounded the fairy hill, were held more in truth than legend.

She could picture the camp fires and the highlanders surrounding them, decked proudly in their clan colours, singing uproariously in Gaelic. She could smell the heavy peat smoke and almost taste the warm, smooth whiskey as it trickled down the back of her throat.

She sighed in longing. The ritual and her rudimentary imagination made her nostalgic for her own simpler time. Those unorthodox years of her upbringing, immersed within one tribe or another, in the far flung corners of the globe. She’d spent her childhood living off the land and absorbed in rich local cultures. She’d been fascinated by the telling of legends, sat surrounded by new friends, their own fire pits glowing as she listened to one story after another. She missed the simplicity of that life, and silently cursed her uncle Lamb, one again, for forcing her out into modern civilisation.

Who needs a university education when you’ve had the whole world as your own personal school room?

“Well there’s two hours sleep I’ll never get back.” She blinked, coming out of her daze, and turned to face Frank, a deep scowl etched on her beautiful face.

Here we go again.

He’d moved from his own blanket to Claires, displacing Joe who had been sat beside her when they’d first settled down to watch. She shuffled further away from him.

“Nobody forced you to come,” she huffed, turning back to watch the dancers as they collected their belonging and merged seamlessly into the slowly retreating audience. “If you were that bored you could have gone back to the tents.”

She wanted to slip back into the moment. She’d been looking forward to this since she heard about the ritual months ago. In fact, her whole trip had been planned around it to ensure she was sat on this very hill at the dawn of the summer solstice. She would not let Frank Randell spoil it for her.

“I never said I was bored, I just don’t understand your fascination with this kind of…stuff.”

“How can you specialise in Scottish history and not appreciate folklore? The highlands were a breeding ground for superstition and legends, the two practically go hand in hand.” Joe argued as he pulled Gail between his legs and wrapped his arms around her.

Claire sighed and closed her eyes. This argument had come up more than once during their three week trip through the highlands and, like Frank himself, it was grating on her last nerve. How she was going to survive another two weeks without drowning him in a loch she’ll never know.

“I disagree,” Frank retorted hotly, “The history of the clans, the Jacobite armies, the annihilation of the Scottish way of life. They happened, they were real. Water horses and selkies and Godforsaken fairy hills were not.”

She growled low in her throat and scrambled to her feet. The bloody ignorant bastard was determined to ruin it for her, and though usually even tempered, she’d had enough. Giving her tartan blanket a swift tug, she pulled it from beneath Frank and snapped it through the air before bending to roll it up. The gradual slope of the hill had aided her attempt to displace him, and he toppled sideways onto the grass.

Serves him right.

Dickhead.

“To the people that lived in the highlands, those stories were as real as the barley growing in their fields. Most of them never travelled further than a days walk from their homes. They knew nothing of the world, folklore practically shaped their way of life, Frank. Jesus, I’ve never known a historian to be so bloody narrow minded!” She snapped finally loosing her patience.

“And I’ve never known a medical student to be so whimsical!” He snapped back as he stood and dusted the grass of his jeans.

“Whimsical?” She hissed, furiously. “Taking an interest and understanding local custom and cultures is not whimsical, it’s respectful. Disregarding them, on the other hand, is the height of ignorance and disrespect. If I expect to practice medicine in third work countries, where superstitious still runs rife, I think it’s more wise than whimsical to have a basic understanding of their beliefs.”

“Well said, LJ,” Joe nodded rolling his eyes as Frank threw his arms in the air and stormed off toward their camping ground.

“I don’t know why he even bothered coming on this trip at all. It’s not like he hasn’t toured Scotland before, and he knew full well we’d be visiting cultural sites as well as heritage.” She complained as she sank down against one of the outer stones, all the fight leaving her.

She was close to tears. Was it too much to ask for one day without being subjected to his…his…

“We all know why he came, LJ and it has nothing to do with his history major.” Gail whispered sympathetically.

“Ugh!” Claire buried her hand in her hands, and Joe laughed as he nudged her playfully with his shoulder. “As much as he likes to argue the contrary, he’s not in love with me. There’s nothing about me that he wouldn’t change given half the chance. That’s not love.”

“No, it’s not,” Joe sighed, tightening his grip on Gail. He knew first hand what love was, and Claire was right. Frank was obsessed with her, not in love.“Frank’s a good guy, and when he’s not being an ass, he’s a good friend. But he’s not the guy for you LJ. He’d suffocate you.”

“I know,” She agreed, raising her head to look at him, “and he’s starting to give me the creeps. I swear he was watching me when I was washing yesterday.” Joes eyebrows shot up and he cast a murderous glance at Franks retreating form.

“Do you want me to talk to him for you?” He growled, his teeth set on edge.

“No. I’m going to use the stream on the other side of the hill, if you wouldn’t mind keeping him occupied. I only managed to wash my extremities yesterday.” Joe looked from her stuffed rucksack to the last remaining spectators and it was Claires turn to roll her eyes. “I’ll wait until everyone’s gone.”

“Okay. Gail wanted to hike into Inverness for some essentials, I’ll drag him with us if you’ll be alright up here on your own?”

“I’ll be fine, thanks Joe, I really appreciate it.” She reached over and squeezed his arm in reassurance.

The truth was, she’d be more than fine. Living a mostly solitary existence, she was used to being on her own. After living in such close quarters with three other people for the last few weeks she was almost itching for some peace and quiet.

“Are you coming back down to the camp first?” Gail asked, though she already knew the answer. Claire was in her element out here in the wilderness, like a caged bird who’d spread their wings for the first time. She’d never known her to be so content, and she hadn’t noticed until this trip just how out of place Claire was in a bustling city.

She was a feminine version of Bear Grylls, completely at one with nature.

“No, I want to explore the stones, I’ll go back to camp after I’ve cleaned up.”

Gail smiled and, wiggling out of Joes grasp, she pushed to her feet and offered him a hand to help him raise.

“Come on, lets leave Claire in peace and go deal with our misguided Casanova.”

Claire laughed and accepted Joes brief kiss on her cheek before watching her two closest friends wander away. Hands linked and swinging softly between then, they whispered and laughed as they walked idly down the side of the hill. She let out a sigh before quickly pulling out her phone and snapping a candid picture of the pair.

Joe and Gail were soul mates. They’d grown up in the same small town in Boston, but hadn’t met until they moved to Oxfordshire and walked into the same pre med classroom at oxford university. It was almost love at first sight and they’d been together ever since.

While not altogether envious, Claire couldn’t help a small wistful prang. She’d dated a few guys since her return to civilisation seven years ago, but not one had lasted past a couple of stilted dates and awkward goodnight kisses. She never experienced the excitement or the nervous butterflies she’d read about, or seen first hand with Gail, and she was starting to wonder whether she was destined to spend her whole life alone.

Shaking off her moroseness she put her phone away, spread out her blanket again and lay back. It was still early, really early, and she had hours to kill before anyone would expect her back at camp.

Taking a deep breath, she let herself relax. She hadn’t really stopped for months. With her placement at the hospital, end of year exams, planning the trip, and spending the past three weeks touring one historical site after another, she was exhausted. Yes, they took breaks during the day, but there was conversation and games, plans to make and supply trips to complete. Not to mention Franks unerring advances to thwart. This was the first chance she’d had to really be alone and she basked in it.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, her eyes drifted closed. She wasn’t sleeping, not really. She just drifted from one light doze to the next allowing the stillness of the day to completely wash over her. When she felt the gnawing pangs of hunger, she pulled a granola bar out of her bag and sat up to take in the view. It was so beautiful out here, the only signs of human life, being the electric pylons that scarred the mountainsides.

Part of her dreaded going back to Oxfordshire, and if it wasn’t for her desperate need to be of aid to some of the communities she’s spent her childhood amongst, she’d be tempted to disappear back into the wilderness.

Sighing, she shoved her empty wrapper back in to her bag, rolled up her blanket, attached it to the bottom of her rucksack and pushed to her feet. She wanted to take in as much of the stone circle as she could before it became too hot and it was already almost eleven o’clock.

They hadn’t anticipated a rare British heatwave when they planned this trip, and with the afternoons being too hot and humid to do more than vegetate beside a river or loch, they were cramming in as much sight seeing as they could in the early mornings.

Hiking her heavy pack onto her shoulders she moved around the outer edge of the circle, studying the formation with awe. She’d seen her fair share of stone circles, but there was just something about the massive granite rocks of Craig na Dun.

They called to her somehow.

They were more rustic then any she’d seen before, almost as if they’d stood there for as long as time itself. It was easy to see why the highlanders of old thought it a portal for fae and other mythical creatures. There was definitely a magical element to the place.

Gently, as though it might crumble beneath her touch, she ran her fingers across the first stone. Despite the warm weather, it was icy to the touch and she shivered in response. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling and she sought it out again and again as she moved from one stone to the next, examining, touching, admiring.

To an outside observer she would have appeared as though she was lost in a world of her own, but she was very much present, taking in every scar and crevice of the ancient granite.

They were magnificent.

A welcome, cool summer breeze picked up as she moved within the circle and the air seemed to hum at a pitch just out of hearing range, but she could feel it. It vibrated through the very marrow of her bones drawing her towards the centre stone. She raised one tentative hand, then the other, almost afraid to touch it, but powerless to stop herself.

As her palms made contact, one on either side of the cleft, the stone screamed. It was a heart wrenching scream of unimaginable agony, that burned through her like wildfire, incinerating everything in its path. It was as though she could feel the exact moment that the ancient granite was ripped apart and now the same forces were attempting to sever her soul, to consume it, to destroy it.

She was paralysed with fear. Everything she’d known, everything she was, everything she could be, was slowly being consumed by the flames. Everything was gone, there was no anchor to tether her to the earth. No point of light drawing her to safety. No home or love or dreams to fight for. She was truly alone, free falling into the abyss and, helpless, she surrendered and let the darkness take her.

Chapter 2 

[moodboardinthecloud]

The Night Wages by Martin Shaw

EXTRACT:

In a brownstone in New York City, he once dreamt that a fairy tale was a kind of breast milk from the earth to us humans. A song line that pours troublesome nutrition into our pretending-to-be-modern hearts.

So all day long he thinks about this.

That afternoon in Brooklyn it rains so hard you can barely walk upright, so he shelters in the doorway of a dive bar scrawling what he just thought on a napkin.

The rain seems to banish a lot of static, and for a few hours he gets just a glimpse of the spirits secreted in lively Iranian hand gestures, sees little furry faces furtively peer up from under a rain mac as Jenny scuttles for the bus.

Just a few miles away, something like the Iliad is erupting within the power squabbles of Wall Street, and a distant relative of Beowulf is wandering central park looking for his Grendel.

He watches with his peregrine eyes; seeing knights in panther skin erupt from the subway speaking swiftly in a kind of bardic hip-hop, he spies pummeling battles of seething love almost on the scale of Tristan and Isolde taking place at low volume and high intensity in the dark corner of the coffee shop. You’d have to be mad not to see it. It’s not whole stories he's beholding but moments, images, something of a frenetic jumble. Not quite a myth, but mythic. Hints really. We have the image but not the narrative. For a myth you’d need a more sophisticated pattern. Something you could build on. Not a leap but a bridge. For a myth you need something more than an entirely human point of view.

As humans we’re not living myth, we’re living myths. Plural. They compete. There are differing stories constantly trying to be told through us, different temples that seek our libation. That send us crazy till we blurt them out. There are perspectives in us that aren’t even human; there are thoughts that swoop wonkily through with the bright flashes of a jungle bird, or are preserved perfectly in peat until we are ready to be thought by them.

Some thinking is very patient. It will wait years for us to catch up.

But the hour is getting late now. And when the stories we tell only have a human directive peering back at us we start to get very lost. We hypnotise ourselves with our own gaze. In such a moment it is quite possible to bury your heart under a rock and quite forget where you put it.

Some of the rough gods are still amongst us - and not just the porcelain ones that look a little like us on a good day, but the big bad bunch - the raggle-taggle, rhino tusked menagerie of the Original Ensemble, the Other Folk, the Gentry, the Benji. He knows you’ve glimpsed them, once or twice. They’re about.

They are gnawing on the edge of these sentences.

The Otherworld is this one, when it chooses.

It’s a convenience to believe that the Old Gods are leaving. Gives us permission for all kinds of nonsense. That they are sitting in the departure lounge of Heathrow and LAX with hurt feelings, waving old bones about and shaking their heads. Clambering into some metaphysical elevator that’s going to deposit them in a nursing home for Abandoned Primordials on the other side of Pluto.

We have to stop saying that they die if we stop thinking about them. That’s a degraded idea.

Yet that’s what so many claim mythology is - us thinking these beings up.

But what if they were allowing us to think them? What if we were getting thought?

Not as manikin puppets, but as part of a profound conversation we can barely remember the moves for anymore.

If they are fled, we can indulge sentimental feelings about them and not worry a jot about crafting a life beautiful and unexpected enough to make them purr.

If they are fled, then we can start to feel sorry for them. That’s very foolish.

If they are fled, we can’t remember which temple we serve in anymore. And we’re all serving something.

One of the canoes they love to travel in is myth. One of the runways they land on is the tongue of the storyteller. That could be you.

Let no one tell you that the old stories don’t work our bones over. That all we have is bled out photocopies and cheques that the soul can’t cash. Whilst that’s occasionally the case, it’s by no means the rule. Take courage.

Magic is simply messier and more agile than that kind of morose timeline. We can’t be telling our kids that.

Trust the bone house of your own body in this regard. When you flush, wince, shriek and swell your heart to a tale well told, there is torchlight on the wall of a Chauvet Cave. It’s a form of cruelty to the story to suggest otherwise.

But friend, you have to know that the old stories come with consequence. They will ask something of you. They will ask you to change your life.

They are gnawing on the edge of these sentences.

They are talking to our left brain, right brain, serpent brain, gorilla brain, elegant-cloud-over-moisty-hills brain, old brain, new brain, skeptical brain, exhausted parent brain, terrified brain, celibate brain, horny brain, hands extended into the nourishing dark that hangs over a late summer cornfield brain, strategic brain, hang-it-all please god almighty let me taste real love one last time before they throw me in the clay brain. All the brains.

He repeats: the gods haven’t fled, they’re not sulking, but they do want your full attention.

Copyright (words and drawings) Martin Shaw 2019