#12: Empowerment, or: I am SO not fiction today
Dear readers, listeners and antagonists out there.
I don’t know how many of you still follow me here, even my notorious ‘observers’ seemingly have grown bored by these columns. Some of you suggested I’m unable of serious research, even.
Here’s a proposition: You will read this up to the end and I’m gonna empower you with some information that is gonna turn the Burrough’s upside down. So, in order to feel potent, you’ll have to read through to the end.
Magique.
I’ve rambled about it for some time now, and I’m sure you have figured out by now that my brother got deep into the business until he disappeared a few years back. Here is our secret origin. It all started in this shack in the forests, a few miles outside Rockbeggars Falls. ‘Twas a shed of some dog-faced guys’s uncle, and we used to hang out there in a few summer – those uf us who hadn’t to crawl down the mines, even then. Obviously, a lot of stuff started back in this shed, a lot of which I won’t go into. But like with most kids our age, there were always a few around who started experimenting with spellcrafting. I wouldn’t compare this with our first drug experiments. See: Those were our first drug experiments period. Magique, in it’s rawest, most lavishly uncontrolled form, merely distorts, bends and twists structures. And thought is a very vulnerable one, believe me that. There was this Furkin Boy, was a few years older, and if he’d been of any other species he’d have become a big bad bully. He wasn’t though, but he got into possession of a stolen orb sphere that he used for channelling – he had some skills. Digger, he was one popular fellow from then on. I’d say, I remembered vividly all those nights we were giggling and rambling on about those colours and sensations, blurring out into sleepy mornings (except that I don’t have a clear memory at all)… Years later, when we got out into those clubs that hire professional “High-Casters” specifically, we got to learn the real thing, obviously. But for those two or three summers, it seemed like we were at the top of the whole game.
In those night, I also learned a few things about the manipulation of symbols in general. There are not too many ways. Actually, it’s just two. Whereas I quickly decided that, even though I sincerely enjoy my highs, the second one is much more fascinating and addictive to me. You may know it as literature or art, but it’s really just another type of spellcasting in order to twist and tweak meaning, concepts, content and thought pretty indirectly. In so many ways, it works the same as magique, with one decicive distinction: Even though arguments, tales and songs may influence, sway or alter the reality that they touch, they individuate you clearly from the object of your craft – and from the reader, observer or spectator. There is no confusion about identity in reading: There is you and there is the text, and that’s a distinction, obviously. It relies on refinement, precicion and emphasis on appearance, whereby man separates himself from the undifferentiated immediacy of nature and seeks to represent some reality, in its perfectly stable form. “So that through it the individual is pushed to the creation of the redemptive vision and then, absorbed in contemplation of that vision, sits quietly in his rowboat, tossing around in the middle of the ocean.” That’s me on that rowboat, thank you.
My brother on the other hand, he got absorbed into the stormy shores, those that work as short-circuits between the individual and it’s surrounding. On this level, magique features immersion in the wholeness of nature, intoxication, non-rationality, and inhumanity; it involves a frenzied participation in life itself. Obviously, there are other, more blatant (or refined) ways to cast spells. Producing physical effect like, say, shooting a big fireball up your ass. But on the primal, symbolical level, there are limits: You can never really shape or form magique into distinctive CONTENT or MEANING, just because magique is inseparable from it’s Other. And as such, you can never magically influence discourse, shape thoughts or influence minds directly (or so we all thought). You can only spill lots and lots of surplus into it, making people confused, euphoric, furious or horny. And, to some extent, that’s still all that magique is to me, really: those kids in their shed, feeling incredibly high about those… “intense colours and those vivid sensations”. To some extend, I feel that all spellcasters are still stuck back there in my puberty. v
Well.
Or so I thought, up until a few days ago.
Because then I found out that around and inside our city’s town hall, there is a constant watch of high-mages, patrolling and circling the estate in shifts.These drug mages that ought to be nothing but a fun fair attraction for the adult industry. Except these mages aren’t
proper high-mages, but former DUF commanders, and the macries on their heads are property of the DUF, stolen from our dusty city.
And what are these DUF high-mages with Macries on their heads doing there at town hall? Nothing less than using the power of these macries to amplify their maquical potency and turn harmless remote-frenziness in a very harmfull remote-control on every person on the council.
That’s right. Remote-control. Our dear council is controlled by the DUF. Without even knowing it.
Oh, yes, about that power you were promised; here are the names and whereabouts of all 17 of these mages that I was able to dig out so far. Brought to you hot and steamy by your generous Guild of Jawsmithery
There are a lot of question marks left, as you can see, but what can I say: I can’t work miracles, can I?
Here you go.
Soren Sorenson Adams, 17th Aberglaile st.
Johnathan Szeles, ???
John Balabrega Miller, Montesica Heights 12-8-12
???, Spindle st.45BB
Joseph Ovette, ???
Klurd Rrig, ???
Leo “Sam” Horowitz, Byzantine IV, 3rd fl.
Richard Valentine Pitchford, Boom-th-All 16, 7th fl.
Chee Ling Qua, Turbeda & Horowitz 456
Leon Bosco, ???
Oede Tirnad Ghih, Maelstrom acadamy ap.9G
???, Lunar st. 78
William Holden Maxwell, Spherasimia blv.778, ap.8
C.A. George Naeseth, ???
Joseph McCloud Gwynne, ???
Allkrazh-Darwynn-Lano, 7-12-9
“Tommy” Nelson Downs, Brwzzn Chnk 56
As I’ve said.
Baruch Caan