Open Sorcery

Tag: introspection

  • Self-Trust

    Hey, everyone. This is Eight again. I’ve been feeling worse and weirder since I wrote last time, so I’m going to write about a topic many people have asked me about in the same sort of freeform, stream of consciousness style in the hopes that it will cheer me up a bit and maybe get me to follow my own advice, haha. I want to talk about how I built self-trust.

    As you may know if you’ve been following this hell site for awhile, my system has quite the tragic backstory and deep lore. Allēna, the system’s host in our teens, was horribly psychologically tortured by our mother, Hera, to the point where she hated herself, in Hera’s effort to turn her and the system itself “normal”. It horribly backfired, because by the time I came to front as host in 2020, we saw through Hera’s bullshit completely and were done with her games. There was just one problem. We had no idea what the fuck we were doing. We had to get our fucking shit together. Fast. The body was pregnant, so I had nine months to learn how to not be a hot mess.

    Allēna with Chaos Nana in 2015 long before our journey towards self trust began.

    It was one hell of a crash course.

    I barely had time to think or even breathe, but I had to make time or else I was gonna fucking lose it. My partner at the time, Delta, was in even worse straits, so a lot of the calm I found was for them as well as me, because I had to hold us both together during a horrible time in both of our lives.

    So how did I build that self-trust? If you guessed deep-breathing to calm my body as the first step, you are correct. It was much needed to stave off a sense of near-constant terror. Hera and my estranged husband, Fang, put me through absolute hell during my pregnancy. There was a custody battle for my child before he was even born, and not knowing who I could trust outside of myself and a handful of others and numerous betrayals on Hera’s part resulted in a deep case of agoraphobia from which I haven’t recovered.

    She owned the house I was living in with my beloved Chaos Nana, and her numerous abuses drove the system to the brink of attempting suicide because we saw no way out. Eventually, I decided around December that I wasn’t going to die, I was going to outlive all of my abusers who would disrespect me at my own funeral, and I was going to build a life that worked for me, fuck what anyone else thought.

    So, armed with my reason to stay alive, I mastered deep breathing, and from there, determined that I was the only thing in this fuckshow of a pregnancy that I could rely on, so if I was upset about the state of things, I was going to change one (1) thing about either myself or my environment for the better, see how that made me feel, then move onto the next thing.

    If I was sad and couldn’t figure out why, I would go find food. We determined early in the pregnancy that if we couldn’t go out to eat as often as we’d like, then goddamnit, we were going to get on food stamps and learn to cook the food we liked. Being raised rich gave us a very specific and refined palate, and Texas doesn’t skimp when it comes to food stamps for pregnant people.

    When pregnancy put the body in so much fucking pain I could no longer walk, I swallowed my pride and rolled with the punches – and purchased my first wheelchair. If we didn’t like something, we’d take one step at a time to change it. I learned to accept my rage as a part of me that loved me due to a conversation with a very wise friend that winter, as well, and learned to trust it more than I trusted any human being, and learned to use it constructively.

    I learned to set boundaries so that that rage didn’t consume me, and learned how to channel my enormous wrath into huge projects that got me through the harrowing next year of my life. I hated myself at the beginning of this process, but by changing one thing that I disliked about myself or about my environment and then moving on to the next thing, I didn’t get overwhelmed by looking at the whole picture all at once, and learned to accept myself in full in the process.

    It wasn’t a perfect process, nor was I a perfect person. However, it worked, and it worked damn well. In moments where I felt insecure and alone, which happened often when I faced something I had never seen before, I reminded myself of all the times during this process that I’d figured extremely complicated things out that I’d never seen before and that I can and will find or make a way through this challenge, too. That approach helped me build a life that worked for me and mine without even realizing it, piece by piece. I only realized what I had done if I had the time and space to reflect, which wasn’t often. But over time, quietly, I began to trust myself because I had proven to myself that I was worthy of that honor time and again.

    Because of that self-trust, which is now something close to implicit, I survived some of the worst years of my life. Nobody came to my rescue in major ways, but my friends and then partner came to my rescue in every way they could largely from a distance ten thousand smaller ways. In the process of cultivating that self-trust, ironically, I became the person that would have protected the system from the horrors they experienced when they were younger because I had the courage to save myself and begin to heal.

    So if you’re struggling with self-trust, here’s my advice. First, take a few deep breaths. Six or seven will do well to start and will help you stave off your panic/anger/what have you. Next, change one thing for the better. Then, take a break, pat yourself on the back, what have you. Finally, once that’s done, rinse and repeat. Take it from a guy who had to build and rebuild this shit, piece by piece. The small changes are the pieces by which you build the life you want. They will snowball into bigger and bigger changes you’ll be able to make with greater changes once you’ve mastered the small ones. These changes are also a lot bigger than you think. The above is of the before and the below is of the above, so the changes you make will affect you profoundly in the long run. Godspeed, you lovely gremlin!

    As always, stay tuned for more magic!

    Eight, Chief Executive of Functioning ( am just kidding…or am I? Either way, I just made that title up)

  • Of Two Minds Or More

    Hey, everyone. This is Eight.

    I don’t think I will be sharing this post on my main socials so that I can write more freely. Siege didn’t share the last one on our main channels, either. So I suppose that whoever comes across these next few posts is meant to see them and whatever happens happens.

    Truth be told, we haven’t been doing great. We have been very stressed since moving out of Zelda’s place and into our own place with Emerson across the street. The move has put a lot of strain on our relationship with Emerson, as well, and we’ve found ourselves on the business end of a lot of verbal violence from him and dishing a fair bit out in return. None of it has been okay, and Allēna has been in front for the better part of the past week and then some trying to make sure the vessel continues to function and the bills are paid on time. She’s also been hard at work reopening a dialogue with Zelda after the nasty falling out that led to us moving out in the first place.

    In many ways, we feel caught between two houses, two paths, and are of two minds about a lot of shit. Lēna has spent most of this time extremely depersonalized, and has felt little to nothing but anger, muted anger at that. Mostly she just felt nothing. Emerson has been terrified that we were going to leave him and mourning us and everything we bring with us, while our depersonalization has gotten so bad it’s showing the early signs of depression, something that haunted us for a fucking decade with no reprieve and that I am not pleased seems to be darkening my mental doorstep once more. Additionally, we have been showing signs of the most dangerous element of our depression spells – what we call a “hot streak”.

    These hot streaks are depression fueled periods of intense creative output, often when we feel trapped in a terrible situation with no hope of reprieve anytime in the near future. Launching this blog and the frantic flurry of initial posts is absolutely hot streak territory. If I had to estimate we hammered out at least thirty thousand words – over half of the minimum word count needed for a novel as it is traditionally defined – in a bit over a month, and that wasn’t anywhere close to all we did. I have taken up visual art once more in an attempt to communicate what my kicked hornet’s nest of a brain is doing when I’m so tired words fail me, and Allēna appears to have followed in my footsteps. We’ve created a pair of pieces, Desperation and Agoraphobia. I’ll post them below:

    Desperation (2024), by me
    Agoraphobia (2024), by Allēna

    And this isn’t everything. We’ve been recording music here and there, as well. Allēna, fittingly, recorded a strange cover of “Numb” by Linkin Park, which seems like startling fare for musicians known for work that makes its home in the intersection between folk, jazz, and blues. I think that was the point. She got the idea from a conversation with Zelda and was feeling…well, numb, and was in the mood for a challenge. We all enjoy a good opportunity to shock and awe people, too. Nobody expects Linkin Park out of the feral blues system.

    Today was a bit less numb but still painful. The depersonalization floodgates broke open and Allēna ended up crying at Emerson for a good long while and telling him how not okay we’ve fucking been. It ended up being really vulnerable on both of our sides and honestly quite productive.

    However, the conversation took a darker turn when Emerson and Allēna started talking about the death of the mutual ex that I had actually met Emerson through. This ex died on my system’s birthday, and it’s increasingly suspected that it was a suicide. From everything Emerson can tell, his depression and already ailing physical health had gotten worse in the year and a quarter since I’d gotten sick of his bullshit and left him, taking Emerson and a whole virtual village’s worth of power, prestige, and everything he’d ever wanted with me in the process. Emerson suspects that by doing so, that loss killed him slowly.

    This is the same reason why Emerson had been in mourning. He was worried he was going to lose everything if we packed up and headed out, too. This floored Allēna because she had never considered that by doing something as simple – to her – as leaving and removing assholes from her life and various social circles and organizations, it can destroy lives. Her mindset is very much that of “If they can’t be bothered to treat me with respect, what happens after I leave is not my problem”.

    She’s secure enough in herself to not let her love for someone stop her from maintaining her boundaries and boot a person from our life if they’re being an ass and refuse to take accountability for their bullshit, but it did help her get a better sense of responsibility for the position she’s in. Those sorts of situations make me far more anxious than they do her, as I can often see how things might play out months before anything actually happens, so good on her, honestly.

    Speaking of watching things play out, I have no idea how things are going to go from here. I am going to try and get some rest, though. We’ll just take this one day at a time, I guess.

    Much love, everyone. Stay tuned for more magic!

    -Eight

  • Learning – Repost From Allēna’s Old Blog, Order In Discord

    Hey, everyone! Siege here. I have successfully managed to crawl out of my executive dysfunction hole to show you all something cool. I’ve gone back to our good friend the Internet Archive so try and find some of Allēna’s old work from former blogs. I found this really cool post from her sadly now-defunct site Order In Discord. It’s called Learning.

    For a bit of context, she kept this blog when she was discovering kitchen witchcraft, but it turned into a sort of exploration of her inner world to the extent she could at the time. She was living in Alaska as she wrote there during her first marriage to Fang. I thought this was a really cool piece because of what she learned about herself in it. She used the pseudonym Eric when writing on that site, as well. So, without further ado, here is the post.

    Learning, originally posted on Order In Discord

    Hi, all!

    Music has been a huge part of my life until recently when I kinda hit a wall. For a long time (like, 20 years), I had an image in my head of becoming a superstar musician and singer and becoming rich and famous, but that image was slowly draining me and I’d forgotten how to ENJOY making music or even seeing or playing my instruments. 

    My husband and I were in the car today and we started talking about being ourselves. We were in Guitar Center a bit before the car ride. I picked up this guitar that looked like a candy cane. I also obtained a brass slide and began to practice playing slide with the guitar laying on my lap. With a little bit of echo there, I coaxed some sounds out of the candy cane that reminded me of a theremin. 

    Now, I have no idea how to play slide guitar, all I know is from some videos I’ve seen and things I’ve heard. What sets this apart from other times I’ve played instruments is that I wasn’t coming at it trying to prove I was good, I was coming at it to try and learn what all I could do with a brass slide and an electric guitar. I wasn’t an expert, I was learning all over again. 

    He brought up exactly what I had been doing – making music for the fun of it, not just doing it to get famous. To explore something new, not to make a living. That will be the only way I get somewhere. I will only get somewhere if I do what I love for me, not to please anyone else. 

    I’ve been struggling with what to post all day. I took a photo of the insanely good lunch we had today, but along with that post would come some self imposed shame because I am not yet good at eating healthy or eating in moderation and I completely blew the health benefits of lunch at dinner. I could write about how when it rains, it pours because it’s raining outside, but that’s been done before. 

    I know this isn’t about cooking or herbs or tea making or anything kitchen-related, but I want it to extend to that. I want to be my authentic self here, not just somebody who positions themselves as some kind of expert in order to get likes and comments. If you are an expert in your field, blog the crap out of that, but I am not. I want to use this blog to document what I learn, not necessarily to try and teach. Part of my magic is music, and I can do great things with that, but there is still much I must learn. I want to incorporate all I do into this learning process, because that’s what it is. 

    So today I learned:

    • Sashimi is very filling
    • Beans are more addicting than they should be
    • That I can make a guitar sound like a theremin with the proper slide and some echo
    • That I need to do the things I love for myself. 

    That’s all! Stay cool!

    Eris

    My Thoughts

    This post is from October 5, 2019, so there’s a lot we know more about now. For example, our craft has extended far beyond kitchen magic, but we still know how to make some bomb ass tea. However, a lot still rings true here. We continually have to rest so that we don’t push the body and mind so hard that we completely burn out, and that’s a major struggle. We also still tend to try and prove that we’re good/worthy enough to be seen instead of being taken simply as we are.

    This system has absolutely no chill, and we still struggle to understand why anyone would love us if we don’t earn it, even though we know that people do and that we don’t have to earn fuckall. Sure, we still need to do our best to be decent people and to treat those we care about well, but that’s just basic respect, you know? I think we’re pretty good at that most of the time. However, we’re learning, growing, and doing better about all of this every day.

    Even if we need to take breaks, rest, and breathe, we’re still going to do our best, make cool shit, and treat our people well. Nobody is gonna remember that we were skittish or nervous or that we didn’t believe we were worthy. They’re gonna remember how we impacted them. And their opinion of how we show up is not up to us to control.

    I hope you enjoyed this post, and as always, stay tuned for more magic!

    Siege, Super-Admin

  • At Heavy Cost

    I came across this Thread by Nate Postlethwait and wanted to write about healing and freedom as a victory won at heavy cost because it got me thinking.

    Hey, everyone. Allēna here. This post will be a heavy one, but I want to write it even though I know it’s gonna hurt. I’ve spent years praised for my emotional strength and resilience when all I wanted was to be safe. Lately I’ve been deep in contemplation about that very thing and in conversation with several people about this and related issues myself and my system have been having. Then I came across this Thread and wanted to answer the question Nate poses for you so that you can see the true, extremely heavy cost of resilience and “strength” as most people define it. Don’t get me wrong, healing has been costly, too. But trying to be hard and guarded costs far more than healing ever has.

    My Headmates and I Have Spoken About Some Of The Things That Happened To Us And How We Got Through Them, But What Did We Lose In The Process? Trust, for One.

    The first thing that comes to mind is the ability to trust. System wide, we struggle to trust and are actually diagnosed agoraphobes as of 2021. It’s complete and utter hell. Our trauma taught us that we are the only ones that we can truly rely on at the end of the day, and that everyone has a price. Some people’s prices are simply higher than others. Everyone will fail us eventually in some way. After twenty some odd years of that horseshit, while we care about people deeply and want to connect with them, we don’t truly remember how to, at least not without soul-deep fear. That strength, that mysterious nature you supposedly see in us is visceral terror. We ache to connect with people, we love them, but often can’t because the fear is so exhausting that we get too tired to even leave the house. Talk about a fucking heavy cost. Some people have managed to prove these beliefs wrong, but it’s an uphill battle for everyone involved and we would give anything for the ability to trust back.

    We Also Lost The Little Health We Had Left

    Relatedly, due to repeated betrayals and us being too afraid to ask for help, we stressed the body out to the point of chronic illness and severe fatigue. We’ve gotten better at firing ourselves as we’ve healed, but by that point, the damage was already long done. We should have asked for help a long time ago, and we should have had people who made it safe to ask. But we didn’t, so we internalized the idea that the only way we would ever get anything for ourselves in this world was if we got it done on our own without help. That belief and the subsequent actions we took made us very, very sick. This has turned into an ugly, compounding downward spiral we’re still trying to work out way out of gently years later that I wouldn’t wish on damn near anyone. What doesn’t kill you does not, in fact, make you stronger. Ultimately, it tends to make you wish it had finished the fucking job and give you a fuck ton to mourn in therapy.

    It Has As Also Cost Us Relationships And Opportunities

    Due to the agoraphobia and exhaustion, we’ve had to back out of a lot that we truly didn’t want leave behind. It sidelines us a lot. We have to rest a great deal and has forced us to be nocturnal because we’ve developed a medical mystery of a chronic illness due to the stress on the house body that makes us very sick and physically weak if we are exposed to heat and sunlight for any length of time whatsoever. We will literally collapse if we aren’t careful. As such, even if we weren’t terrified of people, that severely limits our options for a lot and we miss out almost daily. It’s horribly sad. We miss the sunlight on our skin, traveling, and going out with friends. We don’t want to be stuck at home all the time.

    Conversely, we also struggle in close relationships because of how guarded we are. The guardedness is absolutely a trauma response and comes with fun side helpings of anger, depression, and occasional impulsivity. We struggle with vulnerability and detest anything that even smells like control or manipulation and will fight hard for our autonomy even if there’s no reason to. We’re constantly on edge unless we’re completely alone. We’ve lost a lot of people because of our anger and inability to be vulnerable. We’re working on healing all of that now, but I wish we had never been forced into this position at all. So in a life of battles won at heavy cost, ultimately the heaviest cost of the supposed strength you see is our peace. All we ever wanted from the time we were young was to be kept safe and a life of peace, and we never got that until we began healing.

    Final Thoughts

    We still have a long way to go. Nobody’s perfect, especially not us cockroach motherfuckers. But something my system and I have learned over the years is that doing our best to feel and be kind and to keep an open heart and mind despite all the bullshit and trauma is true strength, not trauma responses and guardedness. Long term therapy with a therapist who’s no-bullshit like us has helped, as well as running our life like a meritocracy. If people show up for us consistently and show genuine respect for us and our boundaries, we open up more to them over time and let them in more and more. It’s a great way to ease both the body and the system into vulnerability and to make sure that the other person’s intentions are genuine.

    If you’re traumatized like us, I understand that it’s a motherfucking struggle. I get that it hurts every goddamned day. You must have lost so much. My heart and empathy goes out to you. I hope you get rest and ease soon, my friend.

    As always, stay tuned for more magic!

    -Allēna, Super-Admin

  • An Open Secret

    I found this post on Threads that I felt did a great job of encapsulating who the fuck we are – a mess of contradictions. An open secret. A reclusive public figure.

    Hey, everyone! My name is Allēna. Even though I have yet to post here officially, it seems my reputation precedes me – my headmates wrote a standout series of pieces on my multi-part poem “Guernica” that requires very little introduction. I guess you might say that I’m the most reclusive super-admin in a system of of recluses, second only to perhaps Renn. As Ellie did before me a few times, I found the inspiration for this post on social media, Threads specifically. I included my findings in the image above. This post perfectly describes the struggle we keep having system wide with making posts and creating content. As people, we are essentially an open secret.

    From 2021 and on, we were increasingly pushed into the limelight when we wanted nothing more than to be as far from it as possible. Yet, almost everything we enjoy doing is very social and requires a great many high powered connections to ever dream of getting eyes on our creations on a large enough scale to make the sort of money or achieve the sort of notoriety to make the sort of reclusive lifestyle we ultimately long for possible. So it becomes a sort of balancing act and a question of vulnerability. How much do we share? How much is comfortable? How much is safe? How much is trauma talking, and how much of it is logical to fear?

    Becoming An Open Secret – Bread And Circuses

    Before Eight took over, we were far more open. Granted, I still had to be careful lest I still risk fucking horrific punishment, but I wasn’t agoraphobic and wasn’t afraid to try and connect with people even if I had to express myself in code if my mother was around. It wasn’t until our mother betrayed Peri and then Eight multiple times and they weren’t sure who they could trust that they became too afraid to be open with anyone that we truly became an open secret the way we are now. That has only started to change back for the better since meeting our husband, Emerson.

    Before him, however, we would hardly tell anyone anything about ourselves. Much of our content would be what Eight called “bread and circuses”, memes and shitposts designed to distract people away from the fact that we were pretty severely depressed and suffering, often in and out of abusive situations we didn’t feel safe to go into detail about. We would only ever ask people for help if we were truly suffering to the point of chronic suicidality or things were getting so dangerous they posed a significant threat to our physical safety and we needed help yesterday. Much of what we would make and share was hilarious but was an attempt to mask our deep pain. We had forgotten how to genuinely connect with people due to the agoraphobia and ever-worsening complex PTSD.

    Besides meeting Emerson, what changed? Why did we stop?

    Boredom

    Eight may be a recluse like the rest of us, but he hates being bored. When he’s bored he is the embodiment of the old idiom “an idle mind is the Devil’s workshop” and in that mind the Devil finds many tools. Therefore, that old bastard delights in novelty and in being completely unpredictable. He eventually grew tired of doing the same damn bread and circus bullshit and also realized it wasn’t getting him where he wanted to be, so he decided to take a risk and try and be a bit more vulnerable…you know…as a treat. He was terrified, but he sure as hell wasn’t bored anymore. Mission fucking accomplished. It’s difficult to be bored when you’re midway through a massive panic attack and hyperventilating like you’re being chased by a pissed off lion, you know? He’s also a bit of an adrenaline junkie, in case you haven’t gathered that. Speaking of that..

    Risk Taking

    We’ve never been the sort to keep doing what we’ve always done if it isn’t working. Even though it’s terrifying, we figured out pretty fast that staying closed off like that wasn’t going to get us anywhere, both in the real world OR online. People generally like to know who it is that they’re dealing with, and that involves vulnerability, believe it or not. So we had to learn how to be vulnerable again, as terrifying as it was. It’s still very much a work in progress. However, the payoff is worth it in our closest relationships, and we’re rediscovering that there are many people we can trust. We just have to actually be brave and self disclose.

    That isn’t to say, however, that we’re spilling our guts out 24/7 to everyone all the time. There’s still a great deal of the bread and circus type fuckery. There’s just more of us going out on a limb now and actually being honest about how we’re really doing now rather than hiding it behind memes and humor or trying to walk it all off now like nothing’s actually wrong.

    Are There Any Advantages To Being Less Open, Though?

    Oh, fucking plenty. And we still don’t share anything we don’t feel 100% comfortable sharing publicly. We aren’t gonna talk about shit if we aren’t ready or push ourselves more than we have the capacity for. People can think of that however the hell they want. Just because they might talk about certain things publicly doesn’t mean we have to, and vice versa. We only really give a shit about what a handful of people think, and odds are that if we don’t know the person closely and personally, we don’t rightly care about their opinion. No one is entitled to shit from us unless we agree they are.

    And weirdly, that private way of doing things often gets us read as “mysterious” and often works in our favor, so if it works, it works, even if it’s not intentional. It isn’t intentional, for the record. We’re often tired and don’t want everyone to know our every move or else we would not have the energy or time to execute those moves, let alone breathe.

    Final Thoughts

    Being this sort of open secret is a balance between being vulnerable and providing the people with memes and other bullshit content. We’ll always be honest, but we may not say everything. We’ll do our utmost if asked, though, boundaries and energy permitting.

    As my headmates say, stay tuned for more magic!

    Yours in tomfuckery,

    Allēna, Super-Admin

  • Nostalgia

    Hey, everyone. This is Firrian, once again on the acting captain hot seat. Unfortunately, we seem to have made no headway in the sleep deprivation department, so this should be a rather short post if all goes well. I’m fucking exhausted. That said, one of my headmates, Tindwyl, was talking with a new friend of ours about nostalgia and that got us thinking.

    Nostalgia? Never Heard of It. Or Have We?

    Initially we couldn’t find anything we were nostalgic about, but then the Shins’ cover of “We Will Become Silhouettes”, originally by the supergroup the Postal Service started playing on our excellent East Coast themed playlist, and that gave me an idea. We are nostalgic about some things, just not the things most people are typically nostalgic about. We don’t miss family Christmases or vacations with our brother or anything like that. We have far too much Tragic Backstory for that sort of thing. Tindwyl has even taken to calling this blog our incident report because of how much we talk about our complicated lore here. My poor headmates.

    Give Up

    That being said, we do feel nostalgic for the spaces we made in childhood and young adulthood by ourselves for ourselves and our friends. These were sacred times and places nobody was allowed into except by our decree. Listening to that Postal Service album I mentioned is one such example. We are a strange combination of resourceful Luddite and tech wizardry because for the longest time, we were forbidden from accessing the internet on weekdays when school was in session.

    So we learned to get around that shit in any way we could because we need music to function. This turned into a fully fledged obsession with hoarding hard copies of media. We’d listen to Pandora Internet Radio on the weekends and on vacations from school obsessively, and then check hard copies of whatever we liked out at the library so we could listen to music on the go using a portable CD player from maybe 2002 at the earliest. No internet needed.

    We must have checked Give Up by the Postal Service out twenty times. We were fucking addicted to this record. We’d often hole up in a bathtub that was empty save for a thin blanket in the summers and devour entire novels in the summers while listening to that album over and over while the cold ceramic cooled our very heat sensitive body off. I find it hilarious that we were playing an album called Give Up over and over because I assure you, we had most certainly not given up.

    Give Up by the Postal Service, both an object of teenage nostalgia for us and also a major source of inspiration as Allēna learned to produce music.
    Give Up by the Postal Service, both an object of teenage nostalgia for us and also a major source of inspiration as Allēna learned to produce music.

    This Place Is A Prison, But Our Nostalgia Sure Isn’t

    Another very sacred place that holds a lot of nostalgia for us is our creative process. Allēna, our host in the body’s teens, wrote her first real song when we were only eleven and quickly set her sights on recording music in a studio. Not only that, but she wanted to produce it all herself. So by the next year, she had put together a demo her own damn self that she’d recorded by hand in her house on her laptop using Sony Acid.

    By thirteen, she’d secured a record deal and was recording in a studio with a producer she observed extensively. When she wasn’t in Dallas shadowing him and recording with him, she was researching techniques, building her own bedroom studio, and experimenting with her own production style with the things she was learning. She let very few people see her process, as she was a very anxious perfectionist and secretly worried that her work would never actually be good enough.

    Her mother didn’t help with that, either, and she didn’t want what she was making criticized to pieces before she even had a chance to finish it. Nonetheless, by the age of sixteen, she’d created enough work she was proud of to release an extended play that she’d made entirely herself, Fletcher Coming Home. However, due to her soul crushing anxiety and perfectionism, she delayed releasing it officially for another two years, instead releasing a handful of singles first to test the waters. Her childhood was a prison, one almost entirely unworthy of nostalgia, but by the gods, she was going to write, sing, and fucking claw her way out of it if it was the last thing she did.

    The Luddite Gift

    An unintended consequence of giving the born fighter Allēna such a restrictive childhood is that the girl was both relentless and clever and refused to let her lack of Internet access hold her back from making friends and being social. It gave her both unprecedented managerial and administrative skill and taught her how to use her time wisely.

    She couldn’t market her music online, obviously, so she shamelessly plugged it to everyone she met, both in school and at church. People were drawn to this brilliant, reclusive enigma and wanted to both know and hear more. In the absence of social networks, she built a real world network of people that she was deeply invested in and who were deeply invested in her.

    She showed off constantly by performing live at church any chance she got, which brought her powerful voice to new audiences constantly. She was a charismatic force of nature offstage, as well, and church became a refuge that she looks back on fondly for the real world social aspects of.

    Legendary Partying With Greater Efficiency

    When this involuntary Luddite finally joined the ranks of social media in her mid teens, everything simply became bigger for her and more efficient – and easier to hide from her parents. Her already massive social circle tripled in size as she got older, and as she threw parties with her brother, she took a risk and merged all of the different smaller groups of people she ran with. She learned something interesting here.

    Many of her friends got along swimmingly, even if they had never set eyes on one another before in their lives, and these parties quickly became the stuff of legend. She heard from her friends’ parents on several occasions that an invitation to these parties was highly prized and many of their children had met close friends there that they would never have met otherwise. Allēna discovered that she had a gift for connecting people and helping people of various backgrounds find common ground.

    She was a brilliant organizer and people saw that. She could get wallflowers front and center playing Twister with people who were complete strangers five minutes prior. Shy anime nerds found fast friends in gregarious library assistants while sparring with sticks from the pecan tree in our front yard. This is our nostalgia. We created it, and it is ours.

    Conclusion

    Okay, I seem to have lied about this being a short post, haha. I don’t mind. This is totally worth it. I have no clue what the next post will bring, but I’m excited for it, whatever it is. Stay tuned for more magic (and incident reports)!

    Firrian, Acting Captain

  • “Guernica” Part 4: Alchemy and Bravery

    Hey everyone! This is your boy Eight once more. We took a short break from writing yesterday because we took a lot of emotional damage from writing Part 3 the other day. Kalla handled Part 3 since she wasn’t directly traumatized by any of the events of “Guernica”. However, she felt deeply for Allēna and her teenage plight and still sobbed while she wrote it. So a break was in order. I’m back today to discuss “Guernica” Part 4 and how Allēna held both the visceral and the beautiful in equal measure and alchemized her pain.

    We’re gonna do this the same way we did the other three parts (which you can read here, here, and at the link above respectively). I’m gonna show you my performance, then the section’s text, and then I’ll break it down for you. As previously stated in the other posts, you can read the full poem in our collection Singing Molten Gold To The Morning. Without further ado, “Guernica” Part 4!

    “Guernica” Part 4: My Performance

    I perform “Guernica” Part 4 for y’all!

    The Text 

    guernica part iv. 

    you can paint darkness
    and you can paint conflict
    but there’s only so much you can paint
    if you have never experienced it
    i want to paint as much as i possibly can. 
    etxea is the basque word for home and i find home in things
    that hold no home for others. 
    i feel heard in horror stories and seen in the shocking and visceral. 
    i’ve made mansions out of sadness and i destroy the happy ones
    because something in me
    says i don’t deserve them. 
    fuck that something. 
    fuck that something. 

    i’ve seen enough and yet i haven’t
    desperation guides my lungs and my mind. 
    i’ve had enough. 
    this is why i write now. 
    when i was 12 they called me selfish
    i think in hindsight it was because i wanted love
    and they couldn’t give it to me
    so i fought with the wind.
    i knew i couldn’t chase it
    so i fought it. i fought anything
    that moved for so long and so hard
    that i forgot how to make peace. 
    it kept me alive.. 
    when i was 7, my dad got sick
    and i think that was the beginning of the end. 
    that was when the war began and it didn’t end
    not until i was 18 and by that time, the damage was done. 

    when i get sad, my inner child screams and cries
    and wants love from people unable to provide it. 
    i wish one of them would’ve told me i was okay
    instead of pretending i was the bomb in the corner
    or the crazy one in the attic
    the scapegoat, 
    or the black sheep. 

    i’m not crazy. 
    what they did was wrong. 
    sometimes you’re the airplane high in the sky
    the reason why they don’t look up anymore
    and for a long time
    that was them. 
    i look up now to spite them and ask where
    their god is now 
    now that they’ll make their own hell someday
    and have no one to wipe their bloody hands on.

    I Look Up Now

    The gorgeous crystal blue sky Allēna would gaze up at in spite around the time she wrote "Guernica" Part 4 (with some light edits added for pizzazz)
    The gorgeous crystal blue sky Allēna would gaze up at to spite her family around the time she wrote “Guernica” Part 4 (with some light edits added for pizzazz), June 2019.

    My Thoughts

    Like we’ve said in many other posts, we were born fighters. “Guernica” Part 4, to me, sings to me like victory, a victory incredibly hard won. Part 4 marks the transition from victim to victor. She starts to go from someone who had always cowered in fear and allowed others to control the narrative to someone who owned her damn self, owned her voice, and owned her demons. This is the voice of a poet who says “Yeah, I’ve been through some fucked shit, but I’m a powerful alchemist. And goddamnit, I’m going to turn this pain into a powerful story. The world will know what they did to me. The world will know where I came from and where the fuck I’m going. And news flash: it’s a far cry from this hell you people dragged me through.”

    Around the time she wrote this, she was beginning to understand that what her mother’s family had done to her was terribly wrong. She didn’t deserve an ounce of that torture. Three things set her down that path to self discovery – the first kind and skilled psychiatrist she’d ever had, the novella Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and some very important friendships.

    Hera’s Plot Begins To Unravel: Allēna’s Compassionate Psychiatrist

    You may recall from an earlier post in the series that Hera, our mother, had essentially press ganged us into a medication regimen we didn’t need in an effort to get Allēna, who was the system’s host at the time, to be more compliant and easier to mold into an image her and her family wanted her to be. She vehemently denies this to this day, but she’s lied about everything else up to this point. This is the only explanation that makes any sense.

    By the time she even married our first husband, she was on enough of these psychiatric medications to be about a quarter dissociated at all times. Her previous psychiatrists had her on dangerous levels of three different medications – lithium, lamotrigine, and Abilify. All three of these drugs are mood stabilizers. Lithium is essentially a pharmacological lobotomy, and is very harmful for a developing brain. She was put on it at the age of eighteen. I got the body off of it at 23, and mercifully our brain recovered. I’ve heard that most people aren’t so lucky. Often the damage to the thyroid and the resulting cognitive dulling is permanent.

    A Chilling Concern

    However, the lithium wasn’t what our very compassionate psychiatrist in Alaska was concerned about, which I frankly find telling. She was concerned about the lamotrigine. Upon meeting with her for the first time, she informed Allēna that she was on the highest dose of lamotrigine she had ever seen in her entire career. This woman had been practicing for longer than we’d been alive. She asked Allēna if she could remember how or why her dose was so high.

    Our psychiatrist looked like she had seen a ghost when Lēna informed her that no, she had no clue. The dose she was on just wasn’t working, so her doctors kept raising it, often at Hera’s insistence. Hera would often come to our psychiatrist appointments and speak over Allēna, which would piss her off. Then Hera would turn around and use her reaction as evidence for why the dose should be raised.

    Sick And Fucking Tired of Hera’s Bullshit

    Allēna hated that Hera came with her to most of her appointments, had access to her medical information, and ultimately went to great lengths to keep Hera out of most everything. Hera believed she had a right to control Allēna’s medical care, psychiatry especially, since she was the one paying for it. Privacy laws could get fucked, in her opinion. Her money, her rules. Allēna hated it and hated her for the reactive abuse and other abuses of all stripes.

    She didn’t want the meds at all or deal with another adult meddling in her life. Hera had inserted herself into our affairs our entire life and we had been sick of it since Castor was host at about the age of five. She wanted to have a conversation with Hera, adult to adult, about her abuse. But Hera would never do it. So she kept as much from her as possible, which wasn’t very possible in a house in which she had little to no privacy.

    Shaking Off Her Chains

    Getting out from under Hera’s thumb and finding a psychiatrist that listened was an immense relief. But it did Hera no favors. As she worked with her psychiatrist to come down off of the meds, she found herself viscerally angry at Hera. She cut her off and made her wrath no secret. This took immense courage on her part, as Hera was well-connected and had eyes everywhere, including in Fang, which we’d find out later.

    The Next Piece of “Guernica” Part 4: Fahrenheit 451

    The next inspiration for “Guernica” Part 4 came about by chance. Allēna was working as a tutor when she wrote the poem. A potential student reached out, asking if she could lecture on Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. She agreed, despite having never read the book. So she devoured it in preparation for the lesson, which never actually ended up happening. However, the book changed her life. She saw herself in the characters and the sharp, quick prose.

    She saw how the characters who thought for themselves and read books were persecuted and their possessions burned – and saw her life story in the narrative. Hera homeschooled us for most of our education, and taught us how to critically think and analyze literature. Hera herself had a background as a professional seventh-grade English teacher, and was just as masterful a teacher as she was a cold, abusive, and emotionally absent mother. It’s because of her that we can write blog posts like this. She started us very young. Yet, she punished us harshly when we used those skills to criticize the way she treated us. What a cruel, ironic turn of events!

    Allēna found solace within the pages of Fahrenheit, a sort of solace we’d not found in many years. I think the last book she’d related to that hard was Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Card’s politics and beliefs aside, Ender‘s Game is a harrowing illustration of what it’s like to be young, gifted, different, and traumatized, much like Fahrenheit is. We still want to get Fahrenheit’s opening line tattooed on the body somewhere. It was a pleasure to burn…

    A Resolve Stronger Than Iron

    What she’d found in this book and in turn, in herself, strengthened her resolve. She told her story without shame and spat in the faces of anyone who told her she should make up with Hera and consider her perspective. Hera had betrayed her repeatedly. Why should she? She’d had Hera’s perspective shoved down her fucking throat her entire tenure as host. She could recite all her talking points verbatim by that point. Hearing them again was a waste of time and would only piss her off. Hera wanted to control us, and by then, Allēna couldn’t be bothered to give a damn. She had seen Hera for who she was, a conniving snake, and we’ve never given two shits about people like that. Why waste her time on a person who’d only betray her again as soon as she found an opportunity to do so?

    The Final Seed of “Guernica” Part 4: A Little Help From Her Friends

    Yes, Allēna and the rest of us didn’t want to waste our time on traitorous bitches, but there were many people in our life by that point that were worth our time and effort. Beginning in early 2019, Allēna started making many friends online once it became clear to her that she wouldn’t have much luck making friends locally. Many of the local townsfolk were polite, but just as withdrawn as Fang. She wasn’t going to get anywhere in person with Fang as jealous and controlling as he was, either. If someone even looked in our direction with what looked to be romantic or sexual intent, he’d lose his fucking shit and go as far as to blame Lēna.

    So she struck out on her own online and simply stopped introducing her friends to Fang. He’d inevitably start heavily criticizing them behind closed doors, as well. It was no fun for anyone, so she kept her life to herself and stopped asking about his, as well. She wasn’t going to give a flying fuck about someone’s private life or creations when he clearly couldn’t extend the same courtesy.

    A Cradle of Masterworks

    Many of her friends showed her and later Peri what healthy love actually looked like. They treated her far better than any partner ever had and expected nothing in return except her presence. They were also genuine fans of her work and encouraged her to write and share to her heart’s content. It was this supportive semi-secret virtual environment that helped Allēna begin to process what Hera and her cronies had done to her. Through this process, “Guernica” Part 4 and the full poem spilled out of her.

    Peri’s magnum opus, The Secret History of Doloras, was born a few months later in the same supportive cradle. We attribute the fact that our album Light on the Final Day saw the light of day (ha!) at all to one especially loving and persistent friend all the way across the world, as well. We would have never found our voice or the courage to alchemize all of our deep, deep pain without the support and love our friends gave us.

    Parting Thoughts on “Guernica” Part 4 (another pun, haha)

    In my opinion, Allēna is exceptionally brave. Not only did she stand up to our formidable spymaster of a mother for the first time in our entire family’s history, she persevered through severe neglect and abuse of all stripes and found the guts in the meantime to turn that pain into something aching, visceral, and profoundly beautiful. I fucking love this poem and respect the hell out of my fiery pint sized headmate. I wish she’d had an easier lot in life, but I don’t know if we’d be half as insightful as we are without it. There can be no wisdom without experience and no pain without beauty. Allēna, sweet woman, is one of the rare few that is able to see beauty in the horrible things that happened to her and use these gems to craft a new story, one of resilience, courage, defiance, and ultimately – magic.

    Speaking of magic, stay tuned for more of THAT. Part Five is coming up before you know it! Are you ready for another kick in the pants?!

    Bastardly yours,
    Eight

    Before you go, we’ve been WebFingered (Jesus, that joke never gets old!) and have triumphantly entered the Fediverse! Follow us @opensorceryy everywhere that’s federated!

  • “Guernica” Part 2: Allēna Declares War

    Hello, everyone! My name is Ellie. As you may have read, I am one of the super-admins our this disaster system. I am still sick, so this post may read as incredibly sleep deprived. Or loopy, take your pick. In any case, I am going to pick up where Eight left off and discuss Allēna’s harrowing “Guernica” Part 2. If you missed yesterday’s post and you’re looking for that, it’s right here. And as always, the poem in full is part of our second poetry collection, Singing Molten Gold To The Morning.

    This section is a kick in the soul. I’m just going to be honest, we couldn’t read it aloud for years without crying. It made for some very odd performances. Allēna makes some very powerful declarations here and in many ways foreshadowed Eight’s Operation: Dead Hand. Both Eight and Allēna wanted to get away from Hera. However, it wasn’t until Dead Hand was complete that we completely broke away from her, and we haven’t had contact with her for the past year, thank the gods. However, she does directly tap into her rage here for one of the first times in her life, and the results are something else.

    In order to best show you these results, I think Eight’s approach yesterday was excellent, so I’m going to continue doing things his way. First, I’m going to show you a video of Eight performing “Guernica”, Part 2. Next, I’ll write the text of the poem out for you. Then, I’ll analyze it for you. Without further ado, let’s do this thing!

    “Guernica” Part 2

    Eight’s performance of “Guernica” Part 2.

    The Poem’s Text

    “Guernica” Part 2

    thresholds are for brides

    and i was a bride once

    but that was a moment and

    i wore a dress as red as blood

    people asked why i did that

    i know why i did that now

    i didn’t know how else to say i was angry

    when my mind was taped shut and i was

    kept in a fog 

    damn those pills!

    damn the nightmares!

    damn that house that should have caught fire

    with all inside!

    i am not the crazy child kept in the attic!

    not anymore

    i am the human unchained,

    i am the one that walks free!

    i have doors now

    i have miles in my pockets

    i can and will lock you out. 

    and there’s blood on their hands

    they kicked a child 

    they should have loved the child

    but when they dropped the bombs

    the empty house of my mind caved in. 

    but the structure is stronger than that

    i am stronger than that

    and this is me calling it what it is….

    you make your own hell, 

    i say to the bombers

    i say to the horrors that i experienced

    some people see battlefields

    i have seen a mind turned inside out

    i have been trapped in my own body

    i have seen my innocence die before me

    and i’ve shouted into the hole of loss

    and i’m still hearing the infinite echo. 

    i don’t know which is worse.

    you make your own hell, 

    i say to the demons i fight

    your hell is not mine, 

    your chains are not mine, 

    i am not your wall to punch.

    i’m not a pewter cup to drink from and laugh with

    your hell is not mine

    not anymore. 

    this is me calling what it is…

    hell. 

    and i enter it on my own terms. 

    not yours, 

    not anymore. 

    Allēna wearing her wedding dress "as red as blood" as was mentioned i "Guernica" Part 2.
    Allēna in her wedding dress red as blood, as mentioned in “Guernica” Part 2

    For Context, Allēna Is A Born Anticonventionalist

    Practically from birth, Allēna was a fighter who was determined to fight convention and expectations that were placed on her without her consent. She hated the fact that women had very little power in the church she joined when she was 14 after very thorough research (she is a Byzantinist and avid scholar of early Christian history, after all).

    So she charmed all of the men in power so thoroughly that I’m convinced they might have let her get away with anything she wanted to so long as she could explain well enough why she had done it. She charmed damn near everyone else in multiple congregations, as well, so much so that many people cities away would go to her if they needed anything.

    The Mormon Social Nexus

    Everything and everyone passed through her. Eventually she knew hundreds of people in five to ten states who would go to bat for her if she needed them to. All while committing what would be for most people in the Mormon Church tantamount to social suicide. But it wasn’t, not for her. She had hundreds of people in her pocket. And it wasn’t like she was using them, she genuinely loved them and many of them still love her, despite her now openly being a Pagan gremlin.

    “Guernica” Part 2’s Seeds

    Her wedding to her first husband, Fang, was no different. They were married in late 2018, and Xavier, our father, had been dead from an aggressive brain tumor for nearly two years at the time of the ceremony. In that time, Hera had completely lost it and had gotten tired of Allēna’s fiery nature and had subjected her to severe mental and emotional abuse and medical neglect. We aptly compare it to a DIY version of the now-declassified CIA experiment MKUltra in order to make us more compliant, easily suggestible, and weak. It very nearly worked. Fortunately, we are all very stubborn and have a very resilient brain.

    The pills Allēna mentioned in the poem were prescribed for bipolar I, which we didn’t even have. We were autistic, plural, and extremely traumatized. We later learned that we were on the highest dose of one of those meds that our excellent psychiatrist in Alaska had ever seen, and she’d been practicing at that point for longer than we’d been alive. Allēna, completely gutted by losing Xavier, and seeing no hope in living, fell into a deep suicidal depression, which she met Fang in the big fucking middle of.

    Rush Job

    She saw herself attempting suicide within the year if she stayed in Texas, Hera was hurting her so badly, and her fate in Alaska with Fang would be unknown, but at least she wouldn’t have to stay in Texas anymore. Allēna and Fang wanted to eventually marry, but not immediately, setting a wedding date of April 8, 2024 once they were engaged. However, Hera didn’t want us living in sin, so she threatened to cut off our lifesaving health insurance if we went to live with Fang unmarried. So, medicated into a fog and pushed into a marriage she was unsure if she even wanted yet, yet still mad as fucking hell, she settled for her favorite skillset, one she knew would drive everyone up the fucking wall – malicious compliance and bucking the hell out of convention.

    A Dress As Red As Blood

    The wedding came together in three months, during which time Hera and Allēna had an explosive argument in which Hera spat “you’ll be someone else’s problem in three months, anyway”, which inspired Allēna’s iconic folk-punk song “Someone Else’s Problem”. The result was a dark, almost cowgoth ceremony that Allēna dictated down to the last detail on a shoestring budget, since Hera had spent all but forty thousand of the millions of dollars she’d inherited upon Xavier’s death. Allēna and Fang were married beneath an Osage orange tree per her orders, a nod to Xavier, who had taught her all about them.

    Like the Osage orange tree, which we affectionately call the “offensive tree of the forest” for its stubborn nature and tendency to drop things on people who are beneath them at random, Allēna would not be moved and blindsided the guests with a few bold choices – a bright red wedding dress, the song she walked down the aisle to, and the song that she and Fang left after the ceremony to, though that was more her brother Blue’s choice. She walked down the aisle to “First Breath After Coma” by Explosions in the Sky, a band from Texas like her, and the newlyweds walked out to “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash. Blue was the emcee, and he did a damn good job. That dress would later appear in “Guernica” Part 2.

    “Guernica” Part 2 As A Declaration of War

    Once she moved to Alaska, she was able to process more of what Hera had done to her and how fucked her childhood actually was. She reasoned that she should have every right to be angry, Hera had hurt and betrayed her repeatedly, violated her autonomy, and tried to neglect and abuse her into a blank slate that she could finally reshape in her own image.

    Hera and a large part of her family had destroyed any chance she had ever had at normalcy beyond what the stroke did to her. She wanted her innocence back. It was time to reclaim what was hers. Her voice, her power, her fucking birthright. So by the old gods, she was gonna fucking claim it. She boldly asserts herself and her autonomy with that iron will of hers,

    “I am the human unchained. I am the one who walks free. I have doors now. I can and will lock you out.”

    The “doors” line and the next few lines are significant. She was quite literally kept in an attic from 2017 until she married Fang The entrance to her sleeping space – I can hardly call it a bedroom – was merely a staircase that opened up to the rest of a very open-concept house. Allēna didn’t even have a bed. She had to sleep on a window seat. Hera wouldn’t allow her to do anything to make the space more private or even more personal. Blue had a room, however. He had a private bathroom – that Allēna had to use – and had all the autonomy and freedom he wanted. He didn’t even have a curfew, and Allēna did.

    I Have Doors Now

    When she got to Alaska, she fought Fang for a space of her own and won. The showdown occurred in the summer of 2019, around the time she wrote “Guernica”. This was fierce argument in which he threatened to take away her health insurance if she didn’t stand down. He was taking a leaf out of Hera’s playbook, and she was pissed and terrified. Fortunately, her friend told her to call his bluff and see what happened. He was indeed bluffing, and now Allēna had an office of her own. This was a profound relief. She could finally be herself in her own space and have a measure of her own life now. To me, that shows in the poem. Now, for what must have been the first time ever, she could enter hell on her own terms, if she chose to at all.

    She cut Hera off for a time around the time she started writing “Guernica”, and this was a profound relief. Finally, freedom was within her grasp. All that was left to do then was to heal the damage that had all of Hera’s bullshit had done.

    She also cut off most of Hera’s family, and this was a scandal for them. This is why I sort of subtitled this post “Allēna Declares War”. It ignited a powder keg of bullshit the family still wasn’t over by the time Peri left Fang in 2020. The first time Allēna cut off contact was such a big fucking stink for them and so out of the ordinary that it pushed Eight into creating and completing Dead Hand. Heaven forbid people have boundaries and autonomy! My gods, the world is going to shit!

    Final Thoughts on “Guernica” Part 2

    How’s that for a kick to the damn soul? “Guernica” Part 2 always hurts me so good. I love it when people actually dig deep and be real with the world. Pretense sucks. Anyone can put on a mask and play a role, that’s easy. It takes true strength to be honest and open with the world about your story, and those are the people I admire. I really think Allēna opens herself up to the world here, and in my opinion, that’s true beauty. That is good poetry.

    What do y’all think? The comments are yours as long as you be kind. And as always, stay tuned for more magic – and “Guernica” Part 3!

    -Ellie Ulvaard, Your Faithful, if Sleepy, Super-Admin

    Wait! Before you go, we’ve been WebFingered (hahaha, that one never gets old to me) and have joined the ranks of the Fediverse! Follow us? We are @opensorceryy on every federated social platform.

  • “Guernica” Part 1: Allēna’s Visceral Masterpiece Begins

    Hello, dearest gentle motherfuckers of the Internet. I hope you’re having a wonderful day. This is Eight speaking, and I am here to talk about one of my favorite poems Allēna has ever written, her enormous seven part piece “Guernica”. This poem appears in full in our second collection of poetry, Singing Molten Gold To The Morning. Today’s focus in particular is gonna be on “Guernica” Part 1.

    This hell of a poem is a seven-part ringer that was inspired by a lot of her own trauma and Picasso’s landmark anti-war painting with the same name. At the time, she felt pressured into making her trauma into beautiful art. She felt that people wanted her to smooth the pain over to make it pretty and less visceral. And she was sick to death of having to walk on eggshells in her own creative process. She wanted to write a piece that captured the horror that the original painting made her feel. So she used the painting and the events that inspired it as a framing device.

    An image of Pablo Picasso's shocking 1937 painting Guernica, which inspired "Guernica", Part 1 and the poem as a whole.
    Guernica by Pablo Picasso (1937), the painting that inspired “Guernica”, Part 1 and the poem as a whole

    Because this poem is so rich and hits so hard, we’re gonna write a post for each part. Whoever is in front that day will break it down for y’all. We’ll also include the poem’s text and a video recording of yours truly performing it. So let’s jump in.

    “Guernica” Part 1: The Performance

    A video of yours truly performing “Guernica”, part 1.

    The Text and Breakdown

    “guernica” part 1.

    26 april 1937..

    i don’t know what i do best anymore

    except turn pain into something beautiful

    but what about the horrors of it and not the glory?

    i want to take what i feel and not what i say

    turn it into something 11 feet tall and 25 feet wide

    but my hands are little

    my hands are little and no paintbrush is small enough to catch

    all the detail

    i’m tired of walking over thresholds of bombed out

    buildings or a half built house

    i’m tired of only seeing rubble

    i’m a builder, damnit

    i’m supposed to build people up

    i’m supposed to help

    not have nightmares like flashbacks that crush me!

    so i dare myself

    now –

    put your own oxygen mask on before you

    drop that bomb

    and then stay awhile

    before flying away. 

    What Does This Thing Actually Mean?

    Before she ever started writing this poem, she looked into what inspired Picasso to even paint such a shocking thing in the first place. She found that he’d painted it in a frenzy as a response to the Spanish government ordering the near total obliteration of a village called Guernica in Basque country during the Spanish Civil War.

    The bombing was completely unprovoked. Guernica wasn’t a military target. Most of the men were away fighting in the war, leaving women and children behind. The nearest military target was miles away and was completely untouched in the attack.

    Yet, the government had bombed them so thoroughly that the roads were choked with rubble and the remaining citizens were unable to flee. Naturally, Picasso was horrified, and out came this incredibly shocking painting in response. ThoughtCo published a brilliant article about Guernica if you want to read more about it in depth.

    This reminded Allēna of much of what she and her headmates suffered at her family and then our now-ex husband’s hands for the duration of our entire life up until that point. All we’d ever wanted was to be left alone to do our thing without being controlled or harmed. We only misbehaved when the people around us refused to honor that simple request.

    We’ve always been very emotionally independent, while these people were very codependent and toxic. As a result, we were emotionally, mentally, and physically abused for most of our life. So when Allēna came across this painting while researching for a tutoring session later that day, she felt seen for one of the first times in her life in the subjects’ agony and grief. She, too, was enduring unimaginable pain that she could only paint, write in verse, sing, and scream out.

    On Taking What She Felt, Not What She Said In “Guernica” Part 1

    Our family also went to great lengths to attempt to silence us so that we wouldn’t out them for the terrible people most of them were, so we were often sick and in a great deal of emotional pain and terribly lonely with no idea how to articulate our suffering to another person outside of music and poetry, which Lēna learned to write in code to get past Hera’s ever-watchful eye. Her 2017 album Mago, which I helped work on as a kind of passive influence, is an excellent example of such coded work. It sounds like a Broadway musical or some kind of vaudeville piece to the untrained ear, but if you know what all we’re talking about, it’s absolutely fiery and damning.

    I’ve embedded Mago below so you can listen without even having to leave this page.

    But by 2019, when Lēna wrote this piece, she was tired of having to think and write in code. She felt like she was drowning in what was left unsaid, so this was her effort to start talking about everything that had happened to us. She broke free from Hera for the first time a bit later on 5 July 2019. Her successor, Peri, would leave our ex husband a bit over a year later. She told our story, and it paid off.

    Final Thoughts

    I’m really excited for Part 2. I or whoever is out will talk about Part 2 tomorrow. If you thought “Guernica” Part 1 was a kick to the soul, just you fuckin’ wait. I both hope and don’t hope that “Guernica” makes you feel seen, because if you feel seen in this poem, you’ve absolutely Seen Some Shit. But if you HAVE indeed Seen Some Shit, I hope you feel seen and less alone as you read this. As always, stay tuned for more magic, because this time, magic is definitely imminent.

    -Eight, Your Faithful Super-Admin And Bastard

    Before you go, we’ve been WebFingered (ha!) and have JOINED THE FEDIVERSE! Follow us on the federated platform of your choice to never miss a post again.

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  • What Excites Us These Days

    Hey, everyone! This is Ellie here once more. It’s been a very long week, and I seem to be getting sick. As such, I was kinda feeling unmotivated to write on here today. So I decided to challenge myself after looking at some very cool journal prompts and write about what excites us as a system currently and what we’re looking forward to. Even though things are crazy over here and it feels like there’s barely enough time to breathe over here often, lots of exciting things still happen. Expect a short-ish post since I am so tired. I’m sorry!

    What Excites Us? A Good Soundtrack, Always

    First and foremost, music always excites us. Many of us in the system struggle to tap into my emotions without music playing. Every alter in the headspace that has fronted so far likes to create to music. We often struggle to identify what we’re feeling unless we can find music that sounds like the emotion we’re experiencing, as well. We build playlists for every mood. When we need a boost, we absolutely have playlists for that! Our headmate Chaos even crafted a playlist that helped us on our mad dash out of Texas in 2021 that was specifically designed to pump us up, keep us focused, and keep us moving. It’s called Songs To Implode Things To and you can listen to it on Spotify here. I hope it inspires you as much as it has my entire system.

    We’re very neurodivergent, so music makes the body and the brain feel very good. Songs we like make every cell in our body feel alive. Many of us in the system are also synesthetes, and have strong associations between sound and color due to our stroke. One of my fellow super-admins, Allēna, actually painted music as she saw it in her synesthetic mind’s eye in college and wanted to create an entire multi-sensory modern art exhibit. I would love to create that exhibit at some point still.

    One of Allēna’s song renderings, Love Comes Tumbling (2016) after “Love Comes Tumbling” by U2. Music definitely excites us, as do creative projects.

    Speaking of Music, Add Songwriting to the List

    We don’t just listen to music! We write and produce it, as well. It’s immensely cathartic to us as well as exciting to play, perform, and record our original songs and arrangements.

    Performing is always a rush. It took many years for us to believe in our skills, but now that we do… oh damn, are we on fire. We were even doing some recording today for our sixteenth record. We’ve been recording for years, and the feeling of when a record starts to come together STILL never gets old. We know when we have a viable record at a definable point every time, and it’s different for each one. We wrote about how Eight knew his masterpiece Metacognition was ready to emerge a few days before he recorded the bulk of it a day after reading a single line. It’s stuff like that. We had a similar moment with #16, working title Australis, a few months ago with the lines “Every time we fight I imagine you leaving/It hurts less and less each time I fuckin’ see it.”

    But Wait! There’s More

    We’ve noticed that slowness and consistency have been exciting us more and more. Exhausting shit has been happening for years straight, and we’re increasingly attracted to things that give us the freedom to rest for once. You know that old stereotype that your body starts to hurt and you’re dog tired by the time you’re thirty? That happened to us by the time the body was fifteen or sixteen. So what excites us now is absolutely not what excited us in our teens and earlier twenties when we were still trying to pretend we were abled and superhuman and didn’t need help from a fucking soul.

    Simple Fucking Alone Time

    One of the things we never thought would excite us and yet very much does is very simple – alone time. Eight is one of the only extroverts in the head, if not the only one, and so alone time or one on one company with someone we deeply love and trust absolutely excites us. Especially if we manage to get everything on our to-do list completed beforehand and we can unwind for the rest of the day. It’s lovely. We never stopped being very fast readers and can still devour entire novels in under a day if we have the energy to do so. Now, about that one-on-one time…

    A Good List, Not a Long List

    We don’t have many people we trust enough to hang out with in person, but if we do trust a person that much, odds are they’re very energizing and yet soothing to be around. We tend to meet people virtually first since we’re essentially housebound and are definitely agoraphobic, so it’s easier that way. Many of us can get a good sense of who a person is intuitively that way without having to deal with the terror of an initial in-person meeting. Plus, with COVID still going around, even if we weren’t disabled, we would still want to be cautious. These soothing, safe people excite us, and we love talking to them however we can. We love our people, chronic fatigue and disabilities aside.

    Final Thoughts

    This is a short list of some of the things that excite us. I want to come back and write more in depth about some of the things I wrote about here, but for now, brain fog demands that I wrap this post up. One of us do our best to post tomorrow, but depending on how we feel, we might not be able to. I hope you enjoyed this post nonetheless, and as always, stay tuned for more magic!

    -Ellie Ulvaard, Super-Admin

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