SKULL HOPPER

SKULL HOPPER
by
William D. Tucker

1.
White light against a plaster wall
Looking with my back turned.
Window is the vacancy of intersection.
A perspective on one aspect of the jagged upper texture
There is pointing and then there are jabs from the buildings.
You sit there, white light on your back.
The room is so suffused with cold, clear light.
Nothing is hidden yet nothing is revealed in the cold, clear light.
We speak of matters with a speech that the Observer does not render exactly
In the rendering, we become a pantomime.
Nowhere above and beyond this room,
So filled with light,
Can we ever speak truly of the vacant point of intersection.
Who has ever spoken before the cold, clear light suffused this room,
How was it even possible?
It isn't blinding,  it isn't sudden,  in fact it lacks all flourish or sensationalism.
The cold, clear light simply is,  and it is in a most unavoidable way.
Nothing hidden, nothing revealed.
Looking with my back turned.

2.
Drink. Purchase. Sitting.  Another drink/purchase.
Routine of the room of the cold, clear light.
Papers. Organize. Read. Papers. Sort. Prioritize.
This is the work of the room of the cold, clear light.
Pillows. Laughing. Porch. Train car. Outdoors. Indoors.
This is the room of the cold, clear light.
Green, beige, red, blue, yellow,  purple:
These stand out in strange new ways beneath the cold, clear light.

3.
He wished to communicate sunlight on the side of a building.
Many received his communication.
Others received many other things besides.
Drink. Routine. Cold. Clear. Light.
"More real than real" as one person put it.
Critical response: good, suffused with the cold, clear light.
He did not try to explain,  except for elaborate designs and plans,
Which were not accepted as any sort of explanation.
Many view. Experience an array of emotions.
There is a look of awareness at the science and rigor of construction.
Science/rigor/effort is reduced to "emotional response. "
Cold, clear light becomes invisible.
"I get a sense of loneliness, " one person says.
"This makes me feel the way I felt in college,  at 4:25am at a Waffle House after a night of drinking," says another.
Rigor, effort,  construction, science subsumed by "emotion."
Opinion. Subjective. I like. I think.  I feel.
Drink. Routine. Cold. Clear. Light.
Looking with my back turned,
I fall back into myself,
"I wished to communicate ..."
Taking over from "He wished to communicate ..."
I see them turning away having observed, felt, thought,  and processed very briefly the offering before them.

4.
Plans. Construction. Intersecting lines of purpose.
The science and the rigor necessary to achieve that specific, sleepless effect.
"I want to communicate sunlight on the side of a building."
Result: opinions.
I think. I feel. Maybe.Kinda.Wouldn't it be funny if.  I like. I did not like.
I am approached for moments, perhaps,  having extensively researched, practiced, and calculated myself.
Moments.
The rigor disappears. Lines of intersecting purpose are softly,  gently smudged into pleasant, distinct blurs of opinion.
Invisible. Cold. Clear. Light.

5.
Opinion passed.
Return of routine.
Beyond initial foray into understanding.
Drink. Office.  Papers.  Organize. Dance. Sunbathe.
Conceive ideal spectator,
Cloned from my own mind,
Hand them operations manual,
Put them through course of certification,
Indoctrination,
Overseer behind their eyes,
Now let them work:
Analysis:
Cold, clear light becomes visible, perceptible
Intersecting lines of purpose rise to the surface.
"I can see the wires. "
Repetition of analysis as per doctrine.
Rigor and science unearthed
Notebooks are thumbed through
Paradigm shift on schedule, as per doctrine:
Cold, clear light hides nothing, reveals nothing.
Analysis,  as per doctrine:
"In this place,  there are fewer, wealthier people.No one has any memory of the past, nor any need for such memories.Everyone is prosperous, satisfied,  happy, and no one quite wants to remember how it got that way."
Paradigm shift on schedule, as per doctrine:
"He is expressing a deeply ambivalent attitude towards his subject matter. The elements of the voyeuristic collide with an overwhelming sense of the privacy of each person's universe. Ultimately,  the voyeuristic wins out, because,  alas, the end result is the work itself.  He could not resist looking into the realms of privacy and then share what he saw with others."
Paradigm shift on schedule, as per doctrine:
"It is the portrayal of man's environment as supremely indifferent that wins out over everything else. His settings are neither threatening nor comforting, destructive nor supportive, good nor evil. His humans, likewise,  have learned to dwell in this environment with all harmony by becoming creatures of supreme indifference themselves. "
Analysis.  Paradigm shift on schedule as per doctrine.  Many cycles.
Results ad infinitum.
Return of opinion.
Opinion refined,
Elaborated as per doctrine on schedule.
Still opinion.
Overseer disengaged, cloned brain discarded.
Cold, clear light hides nothing and reveals nothing.
-April 2003-May 2016

Florets and Rostrum-shod Stylets Chopped'n'Mushed in the Maw of the Nuclear Devil Ape

I eat broccoli at all times
Even when it crawls with wee blue bugs
Aphids=Protein

Hustleforms

Don Quixote becomes the book
Hamlet the stage
Captain Ahab the harpoon
Bruce Wayne the cape and cowl ersatz bat
Travis Bickle the gun
The Thing from Another World every-goddamn-one.
You can't be happy with who you are
If you wish to become a legend
Good, evil, categorically transcendent
In your time
Or the time beyond.

Back when I had friends

We would get together to play Wild Bunch,
And always fight over who gets to be Ernest Borgnine.
I usually ended up being Warren Oates.
I had the wardrobe for it.
And the teeth.

Wait Comix

Excellent comix
only functional wait mechanic
to bust you out of the eternal, punitive present.

Making the Villain Fist

The Invisible Man,
Dr. Doom and countless aspiring conquerors drawn by Ditko and Kirby,
Darth Vader,
crushing the cosmos in a fearsome gloved or gauntleted hand,
compacting Reality down into an ultra-dense chess piece,
it's a thing these people do, you know?

Every Day Is Halloween 2

Every Day Is Halloween 2
by William D. Tucker 

Sequel
slash the budget
dump it in some film school grad's lap
command and control functions stay with the producer

Maximize marketing budget
optimize gore
optimize tits
optimize confusing, pseudo-arty shaky-cam bullshit
optimize shouting
optimize piss' n'shit grim'n'gritty color palette
optimize bogus "true story" websites

Economize talent
shoot in an anti-union right-to-work state
hire actors with low Q-ratings
for low pay
work them like pack animals

Strangely,
there's always money for 3-D post-conversion

If it's a hit,
crank out another one,
same formula

If it bombs,
write it down,
dodge some taxes

It isn't art,
nor is it truly entertainment,
but it's a healthy living
for the New Era Corporate Citizen.

Broccoli Gears

Broccoli gears
imagine giant gears
like you see in the obligatory clock tower stage
in one of those Castlevania games
teeth rotating into each other's gaps
mecha-comrades playing kissy-face
or something more X-rated.
I leave it to your imagination.
Now picture those giant gears
replaced by big, bulbous broccoli heads
florets grinding scandalously
into one another's intimate gaps . . .
. . . broccoli gears . . .

Tom Joad was here . . .

I'm guessing he's on his way, now, to that Not-So-Promised Land.

The Power or the Abyss

Self-Portrait Goes off the Rails '08

Starring Steven Kell

Some old madness
Intruding into present time frame

Am I Enemy,
Or Detective?

Am I merely another Secret Mastermind squatting in some shadowed corner,
Or just another washed-up Dungeon Master,
Dice all rolled out,
Scattered to dust, further obliterated by B-movie wind machine action?

All we can do is dress sharp
In anticipation of some cinematic showdown or other

Hope we can outdraw the lousy sinister villain
Trailing us through this dumpy dystopia

Words/Photography by William D. Tucker
-May 2015

Look at that face! Totally playing for the camera! What a ham!

The Scribble Phoenix

Dedicated to Osamu Tezuka. With apologies.

The classics. In glorious black and white.

Null Savior