Episode 73 - Concise
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Welcome back to the podcast, back to this flawed narrative. The course of action I should have been sticking to, the story I should have been telling without diversions, but I digressed. I got distracted. I couldn’t help it.
And yes, I knew that was going to happen. I knew I was going to try to keep from going into those details, from losing myself into a tangent of what wasn’t and what could never be. There were ways to not trouble you with that, though. I knew that too. I could have thought more about it and come up with any number of ways and then acted on those ways, which is a different matter entirely.
The point is I know I didn’t have to. I know I should not have, in fact.
I know this from direct experience. Because I’ve tried to tell this story before. I’ve tried to express that sense of regret, that sense of loss that comes from losing both something tangible and something unrealized. I’ve tried to put together the words to tell others about this story, and by some standards, I’ve been successful in stringing together a series of words that will work, but they never cover much or they cover too much. Too much of the wrong things. Not what other people would say is required. Not enough to speak the right truths.
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Time is a difficult thing to convey in stories. Or it is to me. And I am fairly insecure about that because my mediums of choice are more forgiving on that front. In prose and podcasts, you can jump across time with minimal issue. There’s ways to do it. Maybe you use a chapter’s end or a sound queue to mark the passage of time. Maybe you take parallel tracks of plots or thoughts and let them twist together, breaking up the story in a way that frees you to jump in where it might work best.
A television show kind of has that, though. When it comes to the episodes and commercial breaks. But don’t you have to limit the commercial breaks you put into a kid’s show? There are laws about how hard you try to sell things to children.
And there are other devices anyway. Flashbacks or flashforwards are a thing. And there are visual cues for them. Established cues. There were ways to do it, but normally, it’s done for some sort of leap: years, weeks, days. Maybe even hours, but that one’s not so common.
I don’t remember how that show did it. This unnamed show. I don’t remember how it was that I knew that some hours had passed in Jade’s world. But some time had passed, and nothing meaningful had happened.
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Personally, I could never work in children’s media, to be honest with you. It’s not just that I don’t have the patience to work with children because I think I do. I think it takes a lot to annoy me, but there are other ways in which one cannot control themselves or their emotions. There are times when the hurt, heartache, and trauma that we carry and bury down deep within us will suddenly rise and break through the surface. And when it does, it can infect the people around you if they are too well meaning or too young to be able to defend against it.
Sometimes the ghosts that haunt us can be explained away, dismissed with the proverbial wave of the hand. But I’m not there yet, clearly. And I don’t know when, if ever, I will be.
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The sun gave way. Night overtook. And true to form, there was something that felt almost cliched about the sight of night in that show. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe the science or history of it all have been so carefully maintained that they have lost their tether to reality and started to look more like caricatures of themselves, but either way, the night sky filled with stars, and faint glows of different homes and business dotted the horizon. Night fell over that small shack. But al the while, the impasse remained unbroken.
Jade was the one to light the many candles in the home. Neither of the adults had moved. No more revealed themselves. And so, a child that small walked from candle to candle, room to room, drawing a small flame above the wick of each one she saw. And each fire caught the moment it was given a chance to. That first spark of existence always took hold exactly where it was summoned. And there was a miracle in that alone, that she didn’t lose control, that destruction didn’t fill the home instead. A child so small should not have been asked to take on such a challenge, but she took to it all the same. She was used to that sort of thing.
“It will be a while more yet,” the woman said. The woman kept saying.
That was all that was spoken. The only words passed between them. And those were the words that slowly ate away at Wyatt’s nerves. So in a sense, that was all that was needed for the story to progress. Time had to go on, and one of the two of them had to grow restless. They both were, in fact, but the woman wore it better, more subtly, than Wyatt did, and in the end, that was the episode’s narrative thread, pulled from Wyatt’s soul and leading to his unravelling.
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On a less serious note, children’s media has to be more to the point than what I do. It has to be direct, easy to follow, and–often–carefully contained. You cannot give children too much information to juggle. You can not overwhelm them with things that do not matter. And you have to condense what does matter whenever possible so your story paints with just a few vibrant and completely necessary colors.
Frankly, I could never do that. And I don’t mean that in the minimizing sort of way. I envy that ability a bit. I literally never could do it. Look at this podcast for evidence if you need it. But I am all over the place. I can’t help but be all over the place. I can’t help but jump around, picking up what you or anyone else would call inconsequential. I cannot help but lose my way because there’s a reason–in my mind–to not go forward. At least, to not proceed forward too matter of factly.
But why? Why do the tangents and divergents matter? Why lose my way so often when it seems so easy to progress along a path I can see? That part is harder to say. It’s another journey to describe, a side quest absolutely necessary to arm myself for what comes next. It’s the next step in this larger journey of getting my act together, of improving as a creative. For that, I need to identify the problem, name it, and only with those steps done can I begin to devise a strategy on how to overcome it, how to move forward. That may never happen, though.
Everything feels important. By some standards, everything is important. But no, I don’t think I can make you see that.
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Wyatt shifted from one side to another. “Does he leaves you alone a lot?” he asked the woman. “Doesn’t seem all that safe.”
I wonder if that was not a confession instead of a condemnation. He left his brother alone. He let his brother be free to go his own way and pursue his own ends. And look what that got him. Figuratively look, of course. There was very little left of the man to be perceived, hardly a sign that he had ever lived, a compounding to the tragedy.
“I was supposed to have a husband,” she reminded him, striking him at his core. “But it shouldn’t be too much longer.”
Wyatt grimaced at the first part of her reply. It pulled him so far away from the conversation that he hardly heard the rest of what she said.
“Suppose we continue this tomorrow,” he said. “Or does your brother leave early as well?”
The woman shrugged. Her shoulders moving with a nearly inhuman fluidity. “He tends to, but I can ask that he doesn’t. That should be enough.”
Enough for what, you might be asking. I certainly wanted to know. But of course, I couldn’t say a word. I certainly couldn’t ask.
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Creatives have their inclinations. Certain mediums they are drawn to, yes, but also certain ones that push them away. I love watching cartoons and animated movies. The ones for kids, mind you, although a good adult animated property never really turned me off. But I would never make one. Why? How is it that my subconscious guides me away from what it knows I cannot handle, from a part of my life that I cannot revisit? And why did that mechanism fail when I decided to make this podcast, especially but not exclusively, this season.
What else went wrong, besides the things I already know?
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Wyatt let time continue to tick on. There was no audible clicking, no visible clock to turn to. There was just the feeling of the world slipping past you, of things going the way they needed to go while still waiting for you to move along as well. He sucked on his teeth, feeling the war of impulses waging within him. He had something to do, some grand purpose to pursue, but it was getting late. Very late.
“I rented a bed in the tavern,” he finally said, turning to Jade.
And she must have wondered if he forgot about her, if in the tension, the stowaway he had taken from the side of the road had become irrelevant.
But why did he bring her along anyway? She needed a safe place to be, sure, but there was a better one than in a stranger’s home waiting for a parent who had no way of knowing where she was. The whole situation was ill-thought out, and maybe that was because Jade was not worth much in the way of thoughts. Maybe Wyatt was content with giving her just to bare minimum, but if so, why the sudden change? Logic, perhaps.
“I can’t bring the kid with me,” he said.
He did not elaborate. There was no need to. It was obvious.
“She can stay here,” the woman replied.
And a chill ran through the screen, through Jade, through us. By some standards, it cut through the world, but I doubt anyone noticed.
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I will say, that one of the good things of making children’s media is that I wouldn’t be expected to be too active on social media. The presence of kids in those spaces is already hotly debated. I wouldn’t have to jump in. I would just have to wait for the final verdict on that front, whatever that may be, and I am far too good at waiting.
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Jade ran towards Wyatt. Her small arms pointed upwards. A silent plea was written on each one and also on her lips or in her eyes. It was somewhere. It was everywhere. It was a muted scream that cut impossibly deep. And yet, it went unheard.
Wyatt did not reach down to the young girl now jumping up towards him. He merely looked down with a small smile and ruffled her hair.
“Come now,” he said. “It’s better this way. You and your tricks can help this nice lady, and where I’m going, there’s no place for a kid.”
What he said was true, in some way. And in another sense, a quest was the thing Jade had been looking for. She had expected to find a task to do, to help someone. That was the whole point of this quest she was on, if it was a quest, if it was a destiny of some sort. Jade’s thoughts on that never waivered, though mine might have. Regardless, if it was a grand purpose, a divine mission, it was not one she wanted.
So Jade jumped higher. Her soul cried more urgently, more passionately. And yet, it remained unheard.
“Be good,” he said to Jade before he turned to the woman and thanked her with a tip of his hat.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said as he stepped towards the door. His course of action set.
Jade watched him seal his place, his fate, his end. Behind her, a candle blew out. It had reached the end of its life and left a void in its place. Jade turned her head to see it, but no one else paid it any mind.
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Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, produced, performed, and edited by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show, please leave a review, tell a friend, or post about it on some mysterious online forum. You do you.