Plaster Casts Despite Choosing to Run is a spoken-word poem written in June and July 2017 for presentation on Instagram and later performance in September 2017. It's read from right-to-left, bottom-to-top. Each post was accompanied with a caption which provided context, listed below. It tells two analogous stories simultaneously; one set in historical Pompeii, one set in contemporary times.
Set to the tune of Paramore's similarly spoken-word song No Friend, Plaster Casts discusses ideas of perfection, nature, and an inevitable, slow burn. The release of Lorde's Melodrama in June opened me up to an incredibly vivid spectrum of emotions and storytelling concepts. I created beautiful derivative works which paired vulnerability and romanticism.
Thankfully, I later learned that these works weren't entirely representative of reality; they were derivative of abstract, finite, and primal things like memories, dreams, and feelings. I eventually abandoned romanticism as a virtue—Dark Web Voices directly expands on and contrasts this piece.
The following captions accompanied each post, from bottom-to-top, right-to-left, on Instagram as they were released.
Title. I've always wanted to rap. No, not really, though I didn't know I was as affected by spoken-word poetry & singing as when I first heard @paramore's 'No Friend,' lyrics crafted and spoken confidently by @mewithoutYou's Aaron Weiss. I found myself immersed in that song's honest angst, and the vivid storytelling in their own 'Fox's Dream of the Log Flume.' Here's my take on that art style – maybe I'll take the piece where it inevitably leads. I'll be posting the rest over the next few days. I hope you'll think on this and maybe laugh along!
I. (the corrupting pen cuts both ways, carving our final shapes per whether or not we’ve learned.)
II. (a million times in practice. something concrete, innately familiar.)
III. (a celebration you'd not miss, even without an invite.)
IV. (birthing extralife. a father cowering in an alley lays over his daughter, trading her freshest seconds for piercing pumice fragments.)
V. (veins, grip, sweat, adrenaline.)
VI. ("They’re howling for answers no wolf can know!” — @mewithoutYou, ‘Fox’s Dream of the Log Flume’)
VII. (Terra’s wrath won’t be silenced, nor the wolves nuzzled in each other’s necks; a pyroclastic flow outstretches arms and claims natural author/ity. Thousands of souls find Perfection in dark-day eyes, broken optimism. Their individual velocities mattered not; only their dying wills to stay or go. Every heart will be honored.)
VIII. (the city lay fifteen hundred years asleep when those storytellers asked the planet again to speak; the rubble politely demanded to be written, to be written is to be loved; so it was, and so it shall be.)
[addendum; engraved in a stone tablet]
[addendum; writer in the dark]
[addendum; (Sun in) Scorpio moment]
[three, hip-fired: can't belittle it for its brevity.]
[two, focused: ... Vesuvius erupted in a day ...]
[one, hip-fired: why are some waves louder than others?]