#oasis based oddities

[entitybear]

ice cream drawings🍦

[scarecrowbutch]

birthday art i made for my dear friend @entitybear!! i had sm fun drawing himmmmmm and i hope you had a wonderful bday 🫶

[joojdraws]

Side of an art trade with my friend @entitybear!!🧸🌈🩷

[the-commonrose]

Birthday art I did for my good friend @entitybear of his ocs Bart and Entity!!! Really wanted to dig into the classic romantic vibes with essence of art nouveau in thereeee.

[oasis-based-oddities]

Main/reoccuring character sheets! But all together this time ^-^

[notakeyring]

hello! i've noticed i've been using my blog less! so to get myself to post more here, i thought i'd make post each time i download/buy a new album, given how much i love music and gushing about it!

i've been downloading music for awhile now, cause i don't have Spotify... the result was, i ended up accidentally being forced to consume music the way music used to be consumed - album by album, instead of through vibe-based playlists - cause i had to download songs in batches, and albums were basically the only way i could do that! and it's been pretty fun doing this awhile! :)

Low, "Heroes", and Blackstar.

by David Bowie.

(1977, 1977, and 2016)

so... i've always been a bowie sort of person. (and no, i don't just mean im bi.)

David Bowie, as an artist, is probably best understood from a modern music perspective as a 20th Century equivalent of Radiohead with a lot less pessimism. Avant-garde, and absolutely experimentally poppy... but nevertheless able to compose something musically cohesive and accessible out of elements that you wouldn't expect pop music to be evoked from.

When I was younger, I listened to a scattered ton of his songs. Looking back at younger me's vibe-based playlists, I can see "Scary Monsters and Super Creeps," "Starman," "Space Oddity," "The Man Who Sold The World," "Under Pressure," "Heroes," "Nightclubbing," and even his cover of "Comfortably Numb!" And I'd listened to Blackstar a few times during A-Levels... His song, 'Heroes,' was and continues to be my favourite song of all time, I think! and The Man Who Sold The World was the first song I learned to play guitar while singing to!! Actually - I vividly remember it being one of the first songs I sang to myself, and thinking... "oh... i actually sound... nice, when I sing? i didn't know that..." Looking back, David Bowie has been like, one of the most formative artists in my musical development!

But despite all that, I've actually never "got into him..." He's my sixth favourite artist of all time, but I only knew him from scattered songs when I was younger. And, I hadn't listened to a song of his in like, four years. Until...

One day, I got given a prompt for an Old English essay.

"'We can be heroes. Just for one day.' - DAVID BOWIE. Discuss in relation to heroism in Old English literature."

It's not very often an essay gives you a soundtrack for its own writing! So I downloaded Low, 'Heroes', and Blackstar to listen to while working on the essay. Low, because it was meant to be "his best album." 'Heroes' because it was what the essay was about. And his final album, Blackstar, because I remembered liking its weird genre-fusion a lot when I was younger.

And... wow. It turns out Bowie's a lot of fun!

Low. (1977)

art rock, electronic, avant-pop, ambient... sovietwave???

"something deep inside of me-! yearning deep inside of me!"

Low is the sound of David Bowie trying desperately to get off cocaine. It was ruining his life, his body, and worst of all, his music. And so he fled the druggy land of 70s Los Angeles for his home continent, settling in West Berlin where it would be impossible for him to get his hands on the powdery white stuff.

(in that way, Low reminds me a lot of Oasis' 'Standing on the Shoulder of Giants...' an album made with a similar desire to shift from poppy rock and experiment with arty avant-gardisms to find a new identity in the wake of the ghost of superstardom and cocaine addictions... anyway, i digress.)

From the moment Low starts with the electronic bleeps and bloops of "Speed of Life," you sort of know what you're in for. I saw a review (again, Radiohead comparisons!!) saying that the electronica-rock fusion of Low had not been achieved again by another artist until the release of Kid A by Radiohead - and honestly, I get it. It's influenced by a ton of the krautrock-electronica weird stuff that was floating about Berlin at the time from acts like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. It's the first of many Bowie albums to be produced alongside Tony Visconti - my beloved! - and the ambient pioneer Brian Eno. It laid down a lot of foundations for the genre that we now know and love as post-punk, better known as "USSRrock" or "Sovietwave" in online circles depending on your sexual preference. And so it's popularly lauded by critics as the most pioneering album he ever made!

That being said, I think it's follow-up, 'Heroes,' is better...

Highlights:

"Speed of Life"

i know it's the first song, and lasts like two minutes, and has no vocals... but idk... something about it just is such a vibe. bleep bloop!

"Breaking Glass"

bleep bloop bloop. that punctuating bleeep-boooop gets stuck in my head every now and then....

"Sound and Vision"

the music is so upbeat and fun and poppy!

but the lyrics...

(again, i'd compare it to 'Gas Panic!' by Oasis, written by Noel Gallagher! both darkly propulsive pop songs, all about the cocaine-addiction demons as they seize ahold of you all of a sudden...)

"Heroes." (1977)

art rock, avant-pop, ambient, electronic...

"get me to a doctor's!! i'm under japanese influence and my honour's at stake!!"

Despite containing one of Bowie's most praised songs, 'Heroes' as an album is... underappreciated. And I can understand why... It's a more commercial-pop rendition of Low's experimental convictions. The people who like Bowie for his sweet and catchy pop love his Ziggy-era stuff better, and the people who like Bowie for his avant-garde art rock love Low and The Next Day more. (i still need to listen to the next day!!) I guess that's why critics like Low better - cause it's "more pioneering"? If Low is Kid A, then 'Heroes' is Amnesiac - "everything it did, the album before experimented more with and did it first."

But 'Heroes' is... good. Like, really, really good. From the very first track, you get a taste of what you're in for. Irreverent and experimental, like Low is, but the added pop sensibilities of 'Heroes' gives it this added dimension of sweetness and melodic juice!

Low's second side is full of ambient soundscapes, apocalyptic sounding and dark. Heroes' second side is ambient soundscapes too - but it genuinely beats Low into the dust. Ranging from the slight ominous edge of V-2 Schneider to the actual feeling of being bathed in the Half-Life 1 Xen healing pools that Moss Garden and Neuköln give you... it's just such a masterclass in ambience. Not until, like, Aphex Twin's debut album and Xtal did such resonantly chill vibes get embedded into plastic again. And then it's all topped off with the vocals on "The Secret Life of Arabia," a mad victory lap of a final song!

this is what Selected Ambient Works and the second side of 'Heroes' sounds like to me, okay? don't judge.

And for all that, I really think 'Heroes' beats Low... Low is more brash, punky, electronic, abrasive - and that's such a vibe! But 'Heroes,' the more swimmy, melodic, poppy take on Low's electronic avant-garde art rock just resonates something different in me. That "something" is probably my inner psychedelic coming out...

(It's not that inner.)

Highlights:

"Beauty and the Beast"

such a stellar opening track! irreverent and experimental, like low, but soaked in more pop than a sugar-addicted primary schooler's t-shirt...

lol, as i finished up this post, listening to this song my mum came downstairs and started dancing to it... i guess bowie passes the mum test?

"Heroes" (obviously...)

king crimson's robert fripp playing the swimmy, hypnotic ambient guitar that feedbacks dreamily throughout! my favourite song in the world! as the vocal take continues, tony visconti switches the microphone input to microphones that are further away and need a louder signal to activate - getting bowie to transition from the soft close-up mic voice to that iconic histrionic desperate-crying-out performance that we know and love as the song continues!

"Moss Garden"

a warm, sterilising cleansing bath of ambience for your ears. stellar... delicately sparkly... purifying... and intensely not-talked-about-enough, like all of Bowie's instrumental work!

Blackstar. (2016)

art rock, jazz rock, avant-jazz... hip-hop?? ... d'n'b??????

"Look up here, man... I'm in danger. I've got nothing left, to lose."

Q: What does someone dying sound like?

Tony Visconti received a call from David Bowie one day in 2015. He'd like to work on another album, he said, after a long time. But first, he needed to talk to Tony in-person. Visconti thought it sounded ominous - he wondered if he was going to be fired. "We're just going to have a little chinwag," Bowie told him over the phone. And when he met the Starman at his office, Visconti noticed his eyebrows were missing. "Uh oh," he thought.

"I have something to show you," Bowie said, taking him inside. He pulled his wooly hat off; and Visconti saw that the famous rock-'n'-roll hair, which had so often graced the cover of the NME back in the day, was all gone.

"I have cancer. It's terminal."

I remember as a little tyke the day that Bowie died in 2016 - mere days after Blackstar's release - and the tightly-kept secret of his cancer spilled out into the world. People on the radio, on the TV, were all stunned and teary about this man who I'd hardly known the music of while he was alive. And this album is his swan song. A final message. In his last days he talked with friends about recording another album after it - he thought, like we all did, that he had more time.

But he didn't. Blackstar is the sum total of his career.

...and what a sum total it was...!

The first song is a ten-minute jazz-rock-avant-pop dark epic. Maybe jazz isn't your thing. That's okay. Because the very next song is a slammy explosive rock number. Then the very next song is a measured, contemplative, swelling ballad that crescendoes with yearning energy. Then the very next song is ... ultrapropulsive frantic drum 'n' bass that sounds like it was made for a high-octane getaway scene?! Then... Kendrick Lamar-inspired hip hop written in... antiquated British gay slang?? What in the world??

Bowie's final work is a show of force. It's him demonstrating that he can do it all, and do it well, and do it while still being David Bowie throughout - and have it all work together as a cohesive whole. And it's amazing, all the way through. Written with his own imminent death in mind, it's a genuine testament to him, his career, his life, his death, and his subsequent afterlife in that great gig in the sky.

Highlights:

"Lazarus"

a really heartbreaking ballad... pondering death, and what's coming for him. it soars, and builds, and swells into an energy-charged crescendo! named after a biblical character who was a close friend of jesus. lazarus dies while jesus is away, and when jesus comes back his mother greets him, crying. jesus is trying to hold in his grief, when lazarus' sister enters, and sees jesus, she starts crying, whispering "oh, lord, if only you had been here, i know my brother would not have died!" jesus starts to break down, overcome by sheer human emotion, and begins to cry badly. he resurrects lazarus, overcome by the grief of his loss and his mourning friends and family...

lol, my little brother asked me what i was doing listening to "soft-rock smooth jazz..." he said the song was "music id skip if i heard it on the radio..." then my mum came in, dancing, cup of tea in hand. mum test!

"Sue (Or In a Season of Crime)"

a mad frantic dash of a song! pulsing neurotic breakbeats, with a sense of propulsion that goes absolutely all over the walls as the song continues!

"Girl Loves Me"

polari was a british gay code-language, used by the nation's secret queer subculture from the 19th century up until the 1960s decriminalisation of homosexuality, and polari was subsequently assimilated into everyday british slang. Girl Loves Me is a hip-hop style track, but instead of doing the AAVE slang that Black hip-hop tends to favour, Bowie's doing British queer vernacular, as a British queer. it's cool!

The cover of "Aladdin Sane," released just as Bowie broke into international music superstardom as the Starman. Unquestionably the most iconic photo of him - and unquestionably one of the most iconic shots of popular culture, up there with the Abbey Road cover...

The final song on Blackstar, and in turn, of his entire discography, is a lilting, dance-ish, moving piece called "I Can't Give Everything Away." It's a goodbye song. A sum-up of his life's work, an epic closing track, and a final bow from one of the most colourful, varied, and important discographies in music history.

And as his final track draws to a close, and draws the curtain on his discography - a harmonica part fades in, taken from a song of his on Low. Situated at the end of Low's first side, that song's harmonica piece is recontextualised from it's origins and placed in the foreground of I Can't Give Everything Away as that final song ends: a farewell to Bowie's incredible musical career.

The original song's name? "A New Career In A New Town."

I hope you're rocking that great gig in the sky, Bowie. ❤️

my mum is currently dancing to the song i'm listening to atm: 'It Ain't Easy' from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.

that's three separate songs from three separate eras. bowie officially passes the mum test.

❤️

[thedeadheads]

Oc Band blog for The Deadheads. Of course if theres any band irl with the same name/similar this isn't to do with them, so theres no confusion on intent here.

@entitybear <- main blog (other blogs & art ones in the pinned)

Official blog for Tedious Lapin’s own “The Deadheads”! Featuring all five (?) members! Such as; Malakai Dionysus Narisco, Kylie “Kyo” Martin, Abigail “Abysmal” Sally, Nana and Margot Mae.

This blog will contain: inspo (meaning clothes, style, guitars, interiors), original art (reblogged from main/my artblog mostly!) And soon enough this blog may contain short story excerpts from the universe of Tedious Lapin, Oasis.

[the-blackbird-roleplays]

The Desert Oasis Shop

(A closed RP with @mii-lovers-den)

Dune was under strict orders from Lady Urbosa. The Gerudo warriors needed some kind of edge in their conflict with the Yiga Clan, something that could find their hidden base. The only thing Dune could think of was some kind of magical tool or weapon, something to give them knowledge they shouldn't necessarily have by normal means.

He'd searched throughout the normal magical shops in Hyrule, finding nothing that could help him or his adopted people. He was just about to call it a day and head home to his tent outside Gerudo Town when he saw a small shack near the bridge to the Beach of Demise, the sign above the door reading "Eclair's Magical Odds and Oddities." He shrugged, deciding it couldn't hurt to give this last shop a try.

He opened the door and stepped inside, seeing a cute blonde with twin ponytails behind the counter. She looked like she'd be happier fighting the monsters around Hyrule than manning a magic shop.

"Excuse me, are you Eclair? I'm looking for something rather specific, and I'm hoping you can help me find it..."

[iturbide]

more smoke and mirrors please i am WEAK for pokemon aus just general world building or even interactions i would like to see more thank you

Look Smoke and Mirrors is going to be a romp.  It’s definitely going to take a custom setting (one I fully intend to base on the Awakening map because I can), but I’ve been working out a lot of little details here and there so why not start with some setting and worldbuilding:

The world itself is a fusion of the mainline Pokemon world tech and Awakening’s overall map routes and biomes.  This means that we have modern tech like video phones, Pokemon Centers, stylish pokeballs, and all manner of curative items; while the setting takes us through familiar towns and cities updated to match while retaining a sense of their original flair.  For instance:

Southtown is a quiet hamlet in the south of the Archanea region.  It’s basically the classic ‘first town checkpoint,’ like Cherrygrove from Gen2: it has a Pokemon Center and Pokemart, but not much else besides the common businesses and residences.

Ylisstol is a bustling city near the heart of the region and sports all manner of places to visit and specialties to sample.  Similar to Castelia from Gen5 or Lumiose from Gen6, it’s big and sprawling and has all kinds of things to check out, including a Pokemon gym.

Arena Ferox is the heart of the icy northern reaches, and is known to be an excellent place to find a challenge.  The main attraction for most people is the rivalry between the eastern and western dojos, who duke it out tournament style once a year for the right to be called the Gym (akin to Saffron in Gen1 with its gym and dojo).

Plegia is the jewel of the desert, an ancient city that’s endured through time and adopted modern touches on top of their long-standing cultural traditions.  It also boasts an outdoor gym in an ancient courtyard, which gives trainers a little taste of history while they fight for their badges.

The Longfort is an ancient but beautifully maintained wall separating the northern reaches of the region from the southern ones.  While there are stories of it repelling invaders in the past, it’s mostly a glorified gatehouse now, though the wilds on either side are full of pokemon to study or capture.

Similarly, the Border Pass in the mountains between the eastern and western portions of the region also acts as a gatehouse.  It has its own curious history, mostly involving how historically treacherous the Pass could be, but in the present day the way is much more hospitable so long as people keep to the main route (though there are definitely secret areas to be accessed via special moves).  Breakneck Pass in the eastern region is rather similar, though it leads to a more out-of-the-way destination rather than being a gateway to another part of the region.

Beyond the Border Pass is a large desert region, with a thriving oasis town near its heart.  Many pokemon adapted for desert conditions (Sandile, Maractus, etc) can be found on the way there, of course.

The Dragon’s Table is a historic treasure, a tower dating back to ancient times.  It’s beautifully preserved, though, and plays host to a history museum and library in the present day, where visitors are free to explore for a nominal fee.

Mt Prism and Origin Peak are somewhat out-of-the-way for most people and offer a tremendous challenge for any trainer or researcher daring enough to brave them.  Powerful pokemon roam both the outer reaches and the inner caves -- and some people even claim to have seen legends roaming well beyond where most travelers normally venture.

The Midmire is a particularly stunning natural geologic feature, giant spires of obsidian rising up out of the earth.  No one’s quite sure how they came to exist or endure, but they are a very popular landmark...though they have an odd reputation, too: many swear they feel they’re being watched while they make their way through, even when they’re entirely alone...

There are no royal lineages in the world at present, though there’s evidence of their past prevalence.  Technically, Chrom does still bear a Brand, but its significance has been replaced in the present society: where it was once associated with a royal lineage, now it’s associated with a prominent business where his father is CEO.  Chrom himself, though, has no interest in carrying on the family business, and instead spends his time with the local Pokemon Ranger group that he and all his friends are part of.

Recently, though, Chrom decided to try his hand at Pokemon battling on a broader scale and decided to give the gym circuit a try -- something his father endorsed because it would offer good publicity and press if Chrom did well.  So off Chrom went, taking his sister Lissa (a medic in training, following in her big sister Emmeryn’s footsteps) and Frederick (the bodyguard appointed by his father -- no, he did not have any say in whether Frederick came or not).  Very soon after starting out, they happen across a pair of white-haired strangers asleep just off the main route outside of Southtown.  The young man and woman, who appear to be fraternal twins, introduce themselves as Robin and Reflet (though Robin does all of the talking -- as she explains, her brother’s just shy), and when Chrom invites them to come along, they agree since they’re just out exploring for the first time.

From the outset, Chrom’s Lucario seems intensely interested in Reflet (to the point of impoliteness -- Chrom has to scold him at least once because he just gets very up in Reflet’s face trying to figure him out).  Prince can sense that Reflet has a very strange aura unlike any human he’s ever seen, but he can’t put his paw on exactly what the oddity is...until they’re going through the forest separating Southtown from Ylisstol and get attacked by an aggressive wild pokemon.  Reflet lunges to protect Robin, and when the dust clears it’s not twins standing there, but a young woman and a Zoroark who swiftly chases off the opponent; unfortunately, the unexpected attack did some significant damage (mostly in the form of poison), and Robin promises to explain everything once she’s taken care of the pokemon -- something Lissa delightedly helps out with.

As it turns out, Reflet is and always has been a pokemon: he was born a Zorua and hatched around the same time Robin was born.  They’ve been inseparable all their lives, they grew up together, and since Zorua is known for its illusions, Reflet swiftly adopted a human guise in something like Robin’s image so they could go everywhere together.  The act got even easier once he evolved into a Zoroark, since he became bipedal (though learning to use utensils took some work), and since he’s not big on fighting and there are places that won’t allow known pokemon in outside their pokeballs, they decided to travel as “brother and sister” rather than “trainer and partner.” 

(Prince is feeling very smug about catching on about the aura, of course, even if he didn’t know what a Zoroark’s aura looked like before and therefore couldn’t place it).

[entitybear]

lalala 🧸 i love oc & sona art ^-^

[scarecrowbutch]

silly bouncy comm of bart for @entitybear! 🩷🧚‍♂️

[joojdraws]

Art trade with my friend @entitybear!! his ocs Bart and Entity!! something cute for the valentine season ❤️

[the-commonrose]

🎉 HAPPY BIRTHDAY SANTOS!!! 🎉

@entitybear b-day was yesterday finally got this done 😮‍💨 these are his lovely ocs Entity n Bart, perfect for this lovely pride month :)

[oasis-based-oddities]

Welcome to my little comic blog this story takes place in a place called Tedious Lapin, Oasis for the most part... there’s always more to be explored!

Potential warnings ⚠

OBO will contain mature content generally (18+)

Horror elements + injury (blood and potential gore.. Not common but present)

Other elements suited to adults.. to be determined

Main blog: @entitybear

The Deadheads blog: @thedeadheads

Feel free to ask questions here or my main listed above. I’ll provide better or adjusted content warnings when OBO is more in progress.

Tags below for further navigation 👍

[oasisimmigrationconsultancy-blog]

Hong Kong Immigration: Immigrate to Leading Asian Country

Youngsters these days are becoming high aimed and progressive when concerned about their careers and are ready to move anywhere in search of better work opportunities. In our globalized economy, working abroad has become standard for the people of all financial statuses unlike it used to be an oddity for the few blessed ones. Moving to another nation offers a lot of chances for boosting your vocation, helping you to gain new, fluctuated aptitudes and experience, and to build up a universal network that may well deliver profits later on. Oasis immigration consultants in India offer you the easy immigration facilities for Hong Kong which is the safest place to migrate to as it is crime-free.

Hong Kong is one of the globe’s biggest financial centers. This wonderful area additionally has one of the most elevated per capita earnings in the entire world. Hong Kong’s economy is depicted by unhindered commerce, low tax collection, and the least government obstruction. Numerous migrants are pulled in to this city because of its conservative size, exquisite scenery, extraordinary way of life and the most significant is Hong Kong has an outstandingly welcoming universal network. Due to these and certain other similarly significant components Hong Kong migration bodes well, and is generally utilized by the ambitious transients from over the world.

Hong Kong government announced a scheme in May 2006 a quota-based entrance scheme. It looks to draw in exceptionally gifted or skilled people to settle in Hong Kong to upgrade Hong Kong’s monetary competitiveness. Effective candidates are not required to possess an employment offer from a local Hong Kong employer for visa application. All candidates are required to satisfy certain prerequisites before they can apply for immigration to Hong Kong with the QMAS scheme. The candidates are accessed based on one of the two points-based eligibility tests, namely General Points Test and Achievement-based Points Test. People who succeed under this plan can sponsor their life partner and unmarried kids less than 18 years of age to Hong Kong after meeting certain prerequisites.

Hong Kong immigration consultants help you with all the documentation process and will guide you at each and every step while the visa process goes on. They offer you around the clock customer service in case of any queries or any customer support required in accordance with the visa processing. They believe in giving excellent customer services in those areas that are not supported by the government or any administrative bodies. They offer high-quality customer satisfaction and exceed the customer’s expectations in the field of immigration-related administrations, including taking care of the privileges of the recent migrants.

Further, their migration specialists watch out for important updates including the basic occupation list of the relevant country and other changes made in the immigration and visa requirements of your selected country. They help you in the most ideal manner and keep you in an informed state with the evolving times. Hong Kong is a dream nation that offers incredible openings for work for skilled experts. Without a doubt, this is one nation that one can make his/her permanent residence and a perfect spot to raise your family in.

[northseth]

short trip home  (part 2—west of the divide & back)

Two famous movies produced before Technicolor became standard, when it remained costly and labor-intensive—The Wizard of Oz (1939) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)—still made strategic limited use of it: in Oz (at length) as the vivid dyes rendering Dorothy’s polychrome dreamland; in Gray as the jolt bringing us face-to-face with Dorian’s corruption and cruelty.

Audiovisual entertainments are now so immersive and realistic that it’s hard to gauge what impact the selective use of color once may have had on movie audiences familiar only with black-and-white. Yet both films’ technique came to mind as I drove from east to west over Rogers Pass—from dry, late icebound winter into full-blown mountain spring. I weighed switching to color for the second half of this post.

That would have strained an already slight parallel. But the greens of the meadows and forest floors along the Blackfoot Valley did rival the John-Deere-tractor hue of the Wicked Witch of the West’s face. And the unidentifiable roadkill emerging here and there from the ditches’ receding snows could have resembled (since it was already on my mind) Dorian’s vile portrait-corpse.

The Blackfoot Valley has less idiosyncratic ties to cinema with Robert Redford’s A River Runs Through It (1992), the movie based on the title novella of an autobiographical collection by Norman Maclean, a retired Shakespeare professor from the University of Chicago, who had grown up in Missoula. The film doesn’t come close to conveying the story’s wonder and laconic pathos, I’ve always thought. The collection, never promoted, and published by an academic press since no commercial publisher would touch it, was in my teens a dog-eared parable passed around among fly-fishing family and friends, who took it to heart before it grew widely famous (although my paternal grandfather, an ardent fly-fisherman and churchgoer, like the author’s father, found it scandalous).

The Big Blackfoot River comprises the healing waters that course through the story, though other streams make appearances too. The Blackfoot is “multitudinous,” “gossamer,” “electrically charged,” and above all “beautiful”: a bestower of glory and haloes; a shadow-maze, an oracle, a cipher. It’s the timeless current that recalls for Maclean his brother, Paul, and helps him come to terms, imperfectly, with Paul’s bewildering character and at last his murder.

                   The North Fork of the Blackfoot River (web photo)

In July and August, the Blackfoot pours like molten crystal through long, at times suddenly sharp, curves, tinged emerald in its channels and holes. But in mid-May this year it raged down in such muddy volume that its rapids’ usual din fell to a whisper—an unnerving sign of power and mass—and it flooded flatter parts of the valley floor in shining swaths. I wondered how the fabled trout within it were surviving such forces.

At various points, Highway 200 and the river diverge, to cross again miles further down. At each successive crossing that day its torrent seemed doubled. Near the sawmill and railroad town of Bonner, where the Blackfoot joins with the Clark Fork River, it ran as wild and full as I could have imagined possible for the river I had known since childhood.

A few miles yet further down, in Missoula, the Clark Fork surged too. As its banks bloomed obliviously with lilac and chokecherry, the river smashed through town at 100-year flood levels, completely drowning Brennan’s Wave, the white-water hydraulic there beloved of kaykers and river surfers. Norman Maclean’s Blackfoot had here become T.S. Eliot’s strong brown god —“sullen, untamed, and intractable.” 

                            The Clark Fork River in Missoula May 2018

                            Brennan’s Wave in May a few years ago

Most of the city itself hadn’t flooded, though, and bustled with the business of graduation, taking note of the Clark Fork’s maelstrom from its bridges but preoccupied with its own rhythms and rituals.

Indeed nearly all weekend the weather and setting were paradisal. The crabapples’ white profusion disappeared here and there into the snows of the Missoula Valley’s five surrounding mountain ranges. Lawns and trees pulsed green in long spring light. There were parties for the graduates and their families, smiles and toasts and a palpable sense of relief. The student house where my nephew lived stood just a block west of the campus, a neighborhood that includes beautiful yards and small mansions of various architectural inspiration.

                             Charles C. Brothers Residence under restoration

Missoula embraces its identity as a political and civic oasis in a deep red state, still retaining some air of the working-class progressivism forged through its early ties to the railroads, timber industry, and Forest Service. The university, of course, has long reinforced this culture on its own terms, as do Patagonia-wearing millionaires who’ve moved there for close access to wilderness. The city itself has bucked the regressive zoning and land-use trends elsewhere in Montana to restrict sprawl and keep the bare foothills cradling it mostly development-free. Those foothills constantly draw the gaze upward and shift with clouds and light; from the busy center of town their emptiness somehow calms the heart.

                                  Alley art downtown

                            Alchemy along the walls at Butterfly Herbs

                              In Missoula, on the south bank of the Clark Fork

Missoula cherishes its oddities, too, human and otherwise—probably none moreso than the dramatis personae haunting the Smead-Simons building, Montana’s first skyscraper, known as the Wilma.  Standing tall on the downtown-side bank of the Clark Fork, the building’s early history (available in various accounts) revolves mainly around its opulent movie theater and the Crystal Plunge, an indoor Olympic-size pool (another Montana first). Through the years chapters featuring a perfumed fountain, Mahalia Jackson, ornithomania, and David Lynch were added. Its apotheosis was the Chapel of the Dove, a shrine assembled in its basement to venerate Korro Hatto, the beloved pet pigeon of longtime Wilma owner Eddie Sharp.

Though openly gay (when being so in the American West carried serious risk) and half her age, Sharp had married Edna Simons (née Wilma), the widow of the the Wilma’s founding owner and a former Vaudeville singer. Sharp revered and dearly loved her. According to Missoulians I know, but no written account I could find, Sharp came recognize Korro Hatto as Edna Simons-Sharp’s reincarnation at some point after her death in 1954; the chapel was an exact replica of chapel where they had married four years earlier in New York City. Korro Hatto, Sharp’s constant shoulder-perching companion, lived to the age of twenty, and they are interred together, along with Sharp’s subsequent partner of forty years, Robert Sias, in Missoula City Cemetery.

Missoula is now home to several start-up breweries and distilleries, but still hosts a number of its original taverns, most notable (to me, anyway), the Oxford—”the Ox”—whose blackjack tables never close and which used to serve brains and eggs as part of its 24-hour breakfast menu. The poet Richard Hugo, perhaps besides Maclean the most famous literary figure who lived and taught in Missoula, drank and socialized here and in the town’s numerous other “cavelike, majestically slow-moving Western barrooms.”              

Stars are not in reach. We touch each other by forgetting stars in taverns, and we know the next man when we overhear his grief. Call the heavens cancerous for laughs, and pterodactyls clown deep in that fragmented blue. In that red heart a world is beating counter to the world.

Soon enough, It was time to drive back, to cross the Divide again in my rental car (which my youngest nephews, twins, relentlessly deemed “gutless”)—this time from west to east. The flight home to Minnesota would depart the next morning at a harsh pre-dawn hour.  

After goodbyes, we headed out in a caravan. I did so with a heavy heart—the weekend had been too short, the family time joyous but jumbled, the fragrant sliver of springtime achingly perfect.   The road from Missoula to Great Falls is still beautiful, though the views eventually resolve, once over Rogers Pass, into the forlornness of eastern Montana. The late afternoon sun, falling behind us, kept out of our eyes and lit the shifting landscapes ahead. The Blackfork River dwindled as we climbed, at first only slightly, but by Lincoln decidedly. The snows on pass had mostly melted away. We sped through Lewis and Clark and Cascade counties, past ranches and windbreaks and homemade antigovernment signs nailed to fenceposts, anxious for our destination. At Vaughn, though, rather than taking the interstate where it crosses highway 200, we cut off on the road leading to First People’s Buffalo Jump State Park, or the Ulm pishkun as it’s locally known. The twilit hills and coulees glowed pink and gold. We stopped and got out of the car at the turnoff to McIver Road just to take in the sunset for a few minutes, then got back in and drove the rest of the way to my brother’s house before dark.