WEDNESDAY AUGUST 3RD, 2011
(Don't Speak Its True Name III: Colors)

Everyone’s in fragments.

Music, I
Eo owl is god
Ea god is red
Ir man is mountain
Fi mountain is death
En music is dead
(han, dough, try, catheter.)
Eyes open. I see nothing, blackness surrounding with white lines. I hear a faint static, a faint wind.
All I hear is inside my ears. Tastes like electricity, feels like the cold warmth of a computer.

Music, II
The white lines outline landscape. Color solid black, white outlines. Rocky ground, lined with cracks. Black, white, then black again.
Motion makes seeing easier (easier seeing makes motion)
I hear voices coming from cracks in ground.
"let us make you lost."

Music, III
Defenseless.
Am defenseless.
I am defenseless.
I am in their world now.
Walking.

Music, IV
I went through some black and white hills.
I walked, I went, I limped, I tried --
I sought, I noticed, I heard, I had --
I went through some black and white hills.
Syndetonation

Music, V
My hills the music
Music playing from every crevice in the ground.
All of a sudden, all I hear is jazz.
Musical Crevices, I shall call them, as I name everything that I find.
Is this the land where music comes from?
Do the gods live here?
And that in the sky, is that me? I'm an octave higher there... and me below.

Music, VI
I have found a rushing river of color. Instead of waterdrops, there are rays of light. Like a photograph of a city at night, like the frozen car headlights.
I hear music still. When I blink, it changes.

Music, VII
Cliff.
I am at the bottom.
I see no way up, no way around. no way in
All I see are words etched in rock.
"A voice speaks to me: Do you want to see?"

Music, VIII
I want to see.
In my left eye, I am in clouds, above an empty city of black and white. Colors fly through the air in single threads.
In my right eye, there are caves of dark and light, black and white, sound and sight. I can hear color storming behind the walls; I am below the sea of raging tone.
In the left, I am alone with two.
In the right, I am alone with two.
I want to see.

Musician, IX
The man on the left looks at me and I cannot see him.
Despite the clear contrast of my monotone surroundings, all he looks like to me is blur; my eyes cannot focus right. Black suit, white skin. Black beady eyes. Black hat, coat, tie.
The man on the right looks at me and I cannot see him.
These two men crafted this universe and ours, these demiurges of vibrating sense. Well dressed, they invented language. Well spoken, they created music. They know of matter, they know each other, they know all that matters. Sound, light, heat, density, gravity, electricity, magnetism, the invisible rhythms of psychology. These two men are the Musicians playing in the eternal pit of creation.
And they want to talk.

Musician, X
The Musicians see me, laugh; their laughter shakes the buildings all around me. I have to run, I have no time to run, I escape with hours to spare. I exit the city of colors and see: the cloud beneath me emits a vague steam.
Now the landscape of music is a much more laid-back electronic sound space.
In the caves, this music changes the layout, allowing me access to a new cave passage. Suddenly the steam hisses around me, and the Musicians watch their rabbit run and go hide in the blades of the grass, the paths.

Musician, XI
I run faster, clouds raise me higher, sound around me melts like fire. I float, approach an ocean in the sky. Fish floating towards the sun.
I sink lower, the slow goer, into labyrinth. Eyes taking me as far as feet move.
I do not rely on my eyes when in the landscape of music.
I rely on my ears. Wherever there are voices, I run away from. Wherever I hear light— a little like the running of water but a lot slower and lower— I run that way.

Musician, XII
The fish are falling, the music is stalling.
The rocks are rising, the heat is increasing.
My path grows narrower, and I cannot breathe.

Musician, XIII
COLORS
monotone
THE SEA IS VIVID, I AM ALIVE AGAIN
the caves are monotone, I am dead inside
Then both eyes open, blink, and see clearly.

Music, XIV
[sotto voce:]
I have been staring at this cliff
face all this time, living in the
worlds the Musicians have painted for me.
I saw the cliff face and decided to
just.. mentally "step" my way around it, obfuscating
the reality... in denial, denial of its difficulty.
But I can’t keep listening.
I’m going to climb the cliffside.
I’m going to find you two, and
I’m going to take you twin tricksters on.

Music, XV
The Musicians have to know I am coming.
The Musicians have to be ready for me.
Yet this cliffside's less sheer than I thought.
They want me up there.
Am I ready for wonder?

Music, XVI
I climb onto a winding black mountain path.
Chasms surround my feet on all sides, and smoke rises from the trenches.
I have reached the valley of no sound.

Valley- I
I explore.
My mind is crawling.
Each thought is tired.
Every person in my life, every friend I left behind.
They deserve better than I can give them.

Valley- ii
I stumble.
If I stayed lost here?
If I stayed behind here?
They would mourn, but then... would they be free again?
Without me to hold them back, and my desires.
I have to do something.
I have to remove myself.
I have to... stumble.

Valley- iii
I fall into the trench, smoke heating up my back.
Laying here. Facing the sky.
Static, pastels. Like Donnie said.
Feel the warmth of defeat.
Right here, right now.
Oh, my childhood. Taken away.
And then thrown into Rapture.
And I charge in, welcoming the insidious dangers.
Right there, ride on. ego wrapped in black

Valley- iv
I hear a voice call me from nearby.
It's Sonic the Hedgehog.
Form flickering in the static.
He is not real. He is my mind.
He tells me, "Let go."

Valley- v
"You are here now. That's all that matters."
I trust. I let go.
Sonic grins at me and pulls me up.
His voice's the only sound I can hear.
"You've come a long way, kid. More than even the Rapture can know. No way are you giving up here, now."
I try to ask what’s going on, but not a sound comes out of my mouth.
“Welcome to the mute valley. Just as the Peisistratos is Tiresias's realm, this is the Musicians' home turf. It's not made of matter but of thought. That's how I'm here; you, Jordan, made me. You believed, you never stopped. The winds of change are yours to wield, as long as you believe."
I smiled at my mind.
"Remember what you believe in: Fight your Fears."

Valley- vi
The ground opens up, and I fall in deeper.
My cynical mind is silent.

Valley- vii
Caverns of black and white. Colder than before. Sonic leads on, walking slow, paying no heed to expectations.

Valley- viii
"We're passing some secrets you may not want to witness, so decide wisely. If you look, don't scream.”
I see, through the walls, webs spun of color strands-- rainbow webs painting a picture of tone in a grim and foreboding chamber.
I see, amid the rainbow webs, spiders of human flesh and broken bone.
I nearly yell, in surprise, but I breathe.
The spiders' eyes stare me in the face; they begin spinning something new. These webs are white and black, but there’s also some green in there. Some red, too, and yellow. A touch of blue, a dab of orange, and I am given Tiger Stripes.
Its strap fits better on my back now, and I grip the neck with sweet care.
Sonic turns to me, smiles, and he says:
"You're ready to fight them."
How do I do it?
“The Musicians have mastered noise; you cannot compete. So you should try bringing your own structure, bring them a loudness war. 'Eldritch' is spectacle to me; remember when I killed God? Do not falter, go now. Break out of their Octavarium; create your own."

Music, XXV
I wake on the surface.
All is silent, yet when I listen close, I can hear something strange.
It sounds like the steady ticking of time…
The motion of breath through space and mystery.
To understand one’s enemy, one must listen.
Wait.

(Attached: "I spent some time locked in the truck, then at one point someone got in the front cabin and started driving. I was pretty scared, yeah, especially seeing all these dead bodies in tubes, but what was I gonna do? I was sealed in, I was along for the ride.
After a ride long enough to let me sleep, the back of the truck opened on a well-kept warehouse, and some security guards gave me a stern look until I climbed out. A woman in a lab coat told me I had better come with her, but not before I was blindfolded.
I walked, following the sound of her footsteps, occasionally her voice, and then I heard the sound of a cell door closing and was told I could take the blindfold off again.
And that's when I saw Danny.
Totally alive, and everything. A little hungry, not the most comfortable, but he wasn't complaining. We were sharing a cell. We'd both seen more than we were supposed to, him encountering Genera secrets a few days earlier.
He was excited to see me, seeing that together we could probably come up with and execute an escape plan. The bars on the cell were wobbly, and the doors were opened several times a day to feed us, so between the two of us we could come up with something.
We, uh, didn't.
We stayed locked up for another couple days, in fact.")