W E L C O M ET OS T O R YT Y M E

Another sleepless night tossing me about, in and out of consciousness. The times when you are half asleep is when your mind plays tricks on you. Dreams seem to be reality, a recent event passed. I lay there wondering, did i actually put my cat into a halloween costume? Then soon after I found myself asking me if I said that out loud or not. Its not that I don't enjoy feeling a little out of control sometimes, but at this moment in time all I wanted to do was find myself in a blissful slumber. So hesitantly and ever so slowly I dragged my legs over the side of my bed. To hopefully carry me upstairs so i could see if there were any sort of sleep aids to be found in the medicine cabinet. As i slowly swing the door open on its hinges it squeals long and angrily, much like my body who very much wishes to not be disturbed this late in the evening (WD-40 works for noisy hinges but not as a sleep aid.) It seems much darker in this house than i remember. An ultimate matte black, a darkness that seemed like if it were introduced to light, the beams would be immediately devoured and digested by the blackest of gastrointestinal tracts. I reached around the corner to flip on the light, just as

my finger pushed the switch up, a different light flashed. Not the stairway lights as I was anticipating, but a cold, harsh flash of blue light flooded

the living room courtesy of the window. Lightning? No signs of thunder storms in the news, or anywhere else i had heard.

Then, what followed this flood of blue light made me jump. A loud thud, like something very heavy had

landed just outside the window. It was at this point, where i should have realized

that this was not a half-asleep dream, but foolishly i taunted

my consciousness (what you got brain?)

As I felt my way

up the dark stairway I felt the hairs on the back of my neck and my arms stand on end. I wasn't scared and it certainly wasn't cold out, it had been 88 degrees today and i doubt the temperature had dropped much since the sun went to bed (lucky bastard). So if it wasn't cold, what could it be that was making me react this way? As i reached the top of the stairs I could feel a serge of electricity pushing through the air. Not only did i feel it, I could hear it, humming and radiating from outside where the flash of blue light and thud had originated. I peered out into the yard past the curtain i had pushed aside, and through the glass of the sliding door. As my eyes adjusted to the starlit darkness, a cloud of smoke started to waft by. I slid open the glass door, which usually makes a groaning noise, but this time it was silent. Almost as if it were trying to be still, as to not attract attention to itself. I stepped out onto the top landing of the stairs and could see where the smoke or steam or what ever it was, was coming from. Even with my eyes adjusted to the darkness the spot seemed to be just a dark hole, or a amorphous object with the darkest of cloaks draped over it.

I could see the dark obj e ct from where the mist or the smoke was eminating.. . . . . . .... . . . . . .

I now grew a little hesitant. Because this was unlike any half-dream i've ever had, the realization that i was not dreaming sunk in. But as I tend to do, i tell myself i need to investigate things no matter how benign or ominous. Moving closer to the dark object i could feel the humming and the heat becoming more intense. I moved around it to the side to observe it from all angles to see if the back or the sides were unobstructed by this blackness. All sides of this thing were just as dark as the last, not just dark, it seemed to be a deep endless black, like a bottomless pit. So at this moment in time i realized i had not even grabbed a flash light. As my foot swiveled on its ball directing me back toward the house, i heard a voice. Unlike any voice i had ever heard. An ethereal whisper that seemed almost friendly. At the time i couldn't make out what it had said, but it seemed more comforting than malicious. And with that feeling of comfort came a frightening inability to move in the direction of the house in which i had started. As i strained against this invisible force it only seemed to be pulling me closer to the object of darkness. My toes trying to grasp the grass forgetting that after all, they were not hands. But the strange thing about this moment is that, that feeling of comfort and a feeling of a warmth never left, me as i was being forcefully dragged toward this unearthly shadowed entity. A sort of tranquilizer i thought, to keep it's victims docile as the darkness pulled them into it, to be devoured (or what ever it did) i thought. Very clever darkness. But i was now no less then three feet from it, and the warmth got more intense as did that rhythmic humming of electricity. I held out my arms to try and delay or even stop the inevitable, but to my dismay my hands never contacted anything solid at all. It felt like an electric blanket made of humid and ultimate blackness. I watched as my arms slowly disappeared, and now i was being pulled by them into the black. Now with incredible speed i was tugged into it, complete darkness, no sooner was I hurtling away from the earth. I could see it moving away from me at an amazing rate. Above the atmosphere apparently, but still feeling warm, like i was being cradled by a large, soft, dark black felt sleeve rushing me out into the cold black vacuum of space. Traveling at a breakneck speed into the vast key black of nothingness, lights of distant stars began growing longer as the speed increased. The warm comfort of my captor was too overwhelming, and i soon gave into a trance like state. Not quite asleep, and not quite awake, almost like being in a half-dream but more like being under a strong hypnosis. Time and space soon fell away and there was only me in the sleeve and bosom of the dark unknown entity. I felt the speed slow and eventually stop. As i regained consciousness, I found myself on solid ground once more, only this was not Earth, that was very clear. The darkness was predominant here as well, there was stark contrast of the almost glowing violet of the ground's surface, and the cloudy darkness, that seemed to begin right above my head. The blackness would move and undulate with every move that i made. The ground seemed to cradle my foot and push it back up with every step i would take, and i felt almost weightless as i effortlessly strode toward the only familiar sight. There, off in the distance was a gazebo, with a light emanating

upwards from its peak. ™It couldn't be more than a mile awayº i muttered. But as i set out, almost floating with an apparent lack of gravity, the gazebo seemed to get further away with every stride. Just when i was in my mist of frustration and confusion I heard a voice, the same etherial whisper i heard back in my yard on my home planet of Earth. ™Which way will you choose?º, ™what?º I asked the voice. ™There are literally infinite ways in which to travel, why towards the light do you travel?º I could only respond with a childlike honesty, ™because i am afraid.º ™There is nothing to fear of the darkness itself, your mind is the thing you should fear. For it creates all of the baddies you believe the darkness to be concealing.º There was still a calming, concerned nature in the whisper. ™If toward the light you must go, then we shall guide you.º Soon I was being whisked by the warm dark sleeve toward the light reaching up out of the blanketing darkness. The distance was immense, it would have taken me years to reach it. Arriving at the structure which before had looked like a simple gazebo, now i could see it was an enormous and ornately decorated altar. The sleeve then released its hold on me, and before my feet ascended a large glowing staircase up to the interior of the altar. Climbing up the stairs, i thought for sure by the top i would have broken out of the dark clouds which loomed so close to my head on the ground. But the dark milky clouds ascended the staircase along with me, never more than a foot above me. As i reached the top of the grand staircase I saw in the middle of the altar on a podium of glass was a large book. The largest book i had ever seen. ™Open the book and ask of it that which you desire mostº the voice chanted. I slowly approached the podium, another set of stairs, these were made of glass and i could see the dark swirling clouds beneath them as well. The stairs lifted me up to the book. The large cover did not have a title just a large L embossed in a golden relief, which seemed to glow as i brushed my hand across it. As i struggled to lift the immense cover of the book i could see rays of light seeping out from between the pages. Once open, the book exploded light out in all directions and pierced the looming darkness with such brilliance it immediately blinded me. In this bright light I felt waves of warmth and comfort the likes of which i had never experienced. Unlike the dark sleeve it seemed to speak the truth, not having to mask its intentions, this felt like ultimate safety and infinite unconditional love. My tired weary eyes became so heavy it was impossible to keep them open to read the almost visible words on the golden pages. I fell into a deep sleep, it felt like i hadn't slept in years. The most wonderful slumber washed over me, like one hundred hands were cradling me and rocking me to sleep like an infant who has just been soothed quiet from a crying fit. I felt a warmth on my forehead. My eyes lifted open, and i could see a golden hand approaching my face, as it came closer the world around me became visible.A bright white sterile room filled with white masked faces looming over me, I could see the expression of utter disbelief in their eyes. ™Where am I?º I asked. It was very difficult for me to mutter this question. ™When you arrived here you had no signs of

life, you were pronounced deadº the masked man whispered. ™What?!º ™You were struck in the head by an unidentified object which fell from the sky, and as a result suffered extensive brain damage. You have been in a comatose state for the past two weeks. It is a miracle that you are awake.º

m u s i cm u s i cm u s i cm u s i cLate last year, Anthony Gonzalez announced his next album was almost complete and would be “very, very, very epic.” With all due respect, consider the redundancy of that statement: Since 2003 breakthrough Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, every new and increasingly colossal M83 studio record has led to widespread crowdsourcing of synonyms for “epic.” What exactly was he promising other than simply another album?Well, throughout the past decade, the 30-year old Gonzalez has honored the tremendous impact of growing up during the golden age of CD buying by implicitly serving as a patron saint for those who treat the weekly trip to the record store as a pilgrimage and still covet the album as a physical proposition: His output always comes styl-ishly packaged, with cover art worth obsessing over and credits that need to be scoured in order to spot the guest appearances. Unsurprisingly, he ups the ante here by aspiring to what is still the paradigm of artistic permanence, both in terms of legacy and tactility: the double album, that occasionally ambitious, usually decadent, and almost always fascinatingly flawed endeavor of musicians convinced (rightfully or otherwise) that they’re at the peak of their own powers. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming might be all of those things, but above all else, it’s the best M83 record yet.But let’s talk about restraint for a moment: While each side of Hurry Up would be oddly slight for an M83 album, the demands of its 74-minute runtime are hardly daunting. It’s actually the easiest M83 album to consume in one sitting, a reverse accumulation of past strengths that makes for Gonzalez’s most compact and combustive music yet. He continues the path set by Saturdays=Youth by easing out of the mini-movie business in exchange for pop songcraft, while trading that LP’s pretty-in-pink pastels for the urban neons and fluorescents of Before the Dawn Heals Us and embodying Dead Cities’ mile-wide expansiveness.But the most crucial change is how touring with the likes of Depeche Mode has inspired a newfound showman-ship in his vocals: Previously, Gonzalez enlisted outside help, piped in plot-advancing narratives, or sang in a low, tentative murmur that submitted to its massive surroundings. But here, within the first minutes of “Intro”, he’s matching blows with the juggernaut bellow of Zola Jesus’ Nika Danilova to the point where it’s much tougher than you’d think to tell them apart. It’s really not too different from the first chords of “Planet Telex” or Lil Wayne’s “Tha Mobb” in terms of being an unmistakable sign that you’re going to be listening to this familiar act differently.M83 have never stood for half measures in any aspect, but Gonzalez is absolutely going for ithere in a way that sheds new light on known tricks: The hair-triggered drum rolls of “New Map” recall Before the Dawn’s searing car-crash fantasy “Don’t Save Us From the Flames”, but Gonzalez’s nervy punctuation at the end of each line sells the idea that he’s along for the ride this time rather than being a passive observer. Dead Cities’ “In Church” was the sound of blissful acquiescence, but amidst the swaggering synth-metal of “Midnight City”, Gonzalez hollers, “The city is my church!” empowered and present, finding a voice for the evangelical zeal always implicit in his work.

Cutting down on plastic bags (and what do with the extras).According to the Huffington Post, “American Samoa is going to make it illegal for stores to hand out plastic bags once a new law goes into effect early next year.” On top of that, Washington DC’s 5-cent bag tax already resulted in “an 82 percent reduction in the number of plastic bags and $150,000 for the city” in just one month.The numerous upsides of switching to reusable bags are obvious. What do to with the extra plastic bags you may have laying around may not be. One solution? Take a cue from artists like Nils Völker, Joshua Allen Harris, and Michael Rakowitz.

As public art becomes increasingly well documented (note, for example, the efforts of WSPA and Exit Through the Gift Shop), I have to wonder if its commission, perceived quality, and overall presence will ever become less controversial.Last year, Flavor Pill posted a great overview of public art that’s recently hit New York City, including a decent start at practically breaking down how people qualify public art. The article features the current Event Horizon by Antony Gormley, Richard Serra‘s notorious Tilted Arc, and more.Cambridge, MA has also been blessed with a good amount of public art. Musical Fence by Paul Matisse may be one of the more well known controversies, though unlike Tilted Arc (which was sliced up and carted away in the night) Musical Fencewas simply relocated to a sculpture park.Do you happen to be in New York this weekend? Visit FIGMENT on Governor’s Island for a serious dose of possibly controversial, purely temporary, and highly participatory art. You can also read about how FIGMENT launched a Boston version of the event in Cambridge this past weekend.

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