Phantom
I am so happy to announce that @carolkean is getting in on the WeWrite contest this week, by continuing my story! For those of you who don't know what a WeWrite is check out this post: https://steempeak.com/wewrite/@freewritehouse/we-write-12-october-partner-week-last-week-s-winners-announced
It's a great contest where the two luckiest writers win a 5 sbi prize!
The prompt by @owasco for @carolkean to continue:
Elsie hated sunflowers. Everyone who knew her knew this, but every single time a new person came to her beautiful house on the sea cliffs of Northampton, they would have stopped at the farm stand just outside the winding dirt road to her house and picked up an armload of sunflowers for her. When Elsie answered the door and the guests delightedly handed her the huge bouquet, her face would drop, she'd toss them in a corner of the mudroom much to the visitor's dismay, and she'd usher the gawkers in without so much as a smile. She would then caution them to avoid the hooked wool rugs that were strewn throughout the house right where it would be easiest to step, so that the deflowered visitors would have to creep, hop, sidle and leap to get to the studio on the far side of the house overlooking the bay.
Her hubby, you see, had been famous, a prolific and beloved musician confined to a wheelchair. Edgar Viscardo was his name, and Moog synthesizer was his game. He'd made the instrument famous back in the seventies when he could still walk, but it wasn't until after the accident that his music became the trans-formative stuff it was in his later years. His devoted sunflower-toting followers just had to see his studio now that he was gone.
Edgar had been a bit odd. He held ones gaze with a green-eyed and intense stare. He never felt he got his fill of sea urchin at dinner, and he insisted that everyone in his presence at sunset do a celebratory dance to salute the twilight. But his oddest trait of all was that he was known to blurt out the word "Phantom!" without warning or apparent cause at socially unacceptable times, such as at funerals and civic association meetings. These outbursts, although fairly rare, were always followed by prolific periods of musical composition.
It was after these periods of mad music making that he and his wife Elsie would work together on yet another rug.
And here is @carolkean's continuation! A beautiful love story for Halloween:
https://steempeak.com/wewrite/@carolkean/phantom-we-write-12-with-owasco
Thanks so much for reading them both!
All images are my own unless otherwise stated.
The blue rug was made by my mother. The dachshund is mine, but I bought the rug.
🤣deflowered visitors..... love it! A well written and entertaining piece and there's certainly plenty for Carol to get her teeth into there. I look forward to reading the continuation.
I'm so glad I don't have to finish it! lol. This was written as an untimed freewrite.
Thanks for your compliments. If you write one for us, I'd happily continue yours if you'd like and if I'm allowed to. If I win, the 5 sbi goes to @freewritehouse. Wewrites have gotten SEVEN curies in the past three weeks. (None of mine alas)
Ooooh, I'll have to take that one under advisement.;) Dunno if I could meet the exacting standards being set. Thanks very much for the offer. I'll have a think and if I can come up with anythingI'll give you a shout.
Oh I really hope you do!
I second that. Cracked me up. 👍
No input from son Miles the composer/musician, so I did it my way.
Humorlessly. I'm sorry!! November draws near, the leaves are falling, and this happens to me every year, this rather morose mood...
Must go watch some silly goat videos!
GOATS to eat the sunflowers. Great. NOW I think of that....
Oops. The link: https://steemit.com/wewrite/@carolkean/phantom-we-write-12-with-owasco
Hahaha. Deflowered visitors. :)
Phantom!
The best thing is that there is suspense and the desire to know what will happen in the continuation of the story.
Found it - and not on SteemPeak - yay!
Read it - and OMG, this is great, but I don't know how I of all people could carry it through. Love, love, love the "beloved musician confined to a wheelchair. Edgar Viscardo was his name, and Moog synthesizer was his game." If only my son Miles would help.... he LOVES and would love to own a Moog... my mom used to crochet wool rugs, but I have not. But, no matter....
Hey Miles might want to come up to Nyack (45 mins drive from Harlem, there's also a bus but idk about it) to Maureen's Jazz Cellar. Open mic (very unusual open mic, professional and well run with a stellar house band if needed) is Tuesdays at 8 (or 9) until 12 (or 2). If they like him, he could get a show there. EXCELLENT CLUB.
I heard a Moog there recently (Neil Nail Alexander) and boy did that take me back!
Thank you for the suggestion!!!
Maybe both of us will meet there one day when Miles is jamming on Open Mic night... :)
OOoooooh my gosh. Nyack is not slang for New Yahk - it's an actual name of a suburb--which I'd never heard of until you said it's 45 minutes from Harlem. Of course I had to google it:
Ohhh man I wanna go!!!
ooooh, @owasco, that rug - we called it "latch hook rugs" in my 1970s childhood, and my mother-in-law made dozens, using acrylic yarn (ugh) in a shag carpet style. Did you hook that rug your dog is standing on? Beautiful!
As a follower of @followforupvotes this post has been randomly selected and upvoted! Enjoy your upvote and have a great day!
Edgar's musical transition, post-wheelchair, to "trans-formative stuff" brings to mind a group our son listened to in high school:
Explosions in the Sky - "First Breath After Coma"
@jgullinese • 2 years ago
One of my favorite music artists is the band "Explosions in the Sky". They are an instrumental band with smooth ambient guitar riffs, haunting bass lines and they experiment with other sounds like chimes and off beat drum lines. Music that can change pace at any moment.
https://steemit.com/sunset/@jgullinese/explosions-in-the-sky
It's very moving and rich, I'm at a spooky part now. The video here doesn't work for me but it was easy enough to find. Really good.
How cool that you actually like it! I was thinking Edgar's "transformational" phase might sound kinda like this. But that's for you to decide. I feel like I hijacked your characters. Not sure I can do We-Writes! But a vaguely co-authorish stint, yeah. As for curie, they passed me over for the looooongest time. I'd get frustrated seeing stuff that was full of typos and syntax problems getting curied, while my polished pieces were ignored.
FIVE HOUR LATER I find this, unposted... oops.
From the album Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place (2003)
Wow! What a beginning. I haven't read the ending. So many possibilities come to mind. I'm going to see now if @carolkean comes up with one of those or goes in a completely different direction.
Great job, @owasco!
I tried to keep my half consistent with @owasco's stellar first half, but lacking her flair for the unexpected, and the humorous twist, I went with the "drizzly November in my soul" theme. (It's almost November, guys!!!) - and I regret that I couldn't be more whimsical, but it *is * that time of year. It's been a lifelong struggle. I only recently became aware of the autumn effect, but awareness doesn't keep the dark spectre from rising. The trick is to overcome it, dance around it, laugh at it, get past it... Thank You @agmoore and I would love to know what possibilities YOU thought of!
I didn't get dreariness in your response (I think good writers are the harshest critics of their work). Elsie is kind of grim. You give her release. You find beauty in a story that begins with a depressed protagonist and a deceased main character.
Picking up the threads that someone has woven together and then making your own piece, seamless with the first--that takes skill. You did it.
wow - thank you!
I hope @owasco, when she starts revising, will revise my half as well to serve her vision. These are her characters. This reminds me of childhood and Barbie dolls (we only had the knock-offs), and how it feels when a cousin comes over and wants to play with YOUR doll, and does things out of keeping with the characters. My little sister and I built a "town" in the attic and had doll families. You don't just waltz in and strip off Andy Anderson's police uniform and put him in some boxers and send him to the beach to go flirt with knock-off Midge. No. No. Don't mess with my dolls!
Thinking I may be destined never to presume to do a we-write
I love the doll analogy!
hahaha. I don't know why I am getting to this comment thread so late, but I'm real glad I am. I hope you continue to write wewrites @carolkean. Do the first part! I found it easier, and freeing. The second part is hard to write because you do have to tie it in. My part just came spewing out. I met an Elsie-like person who hated sunflowers that everyone brought her cuz of a stand just outside the dirt road to her cliffside home in northampton with rugs all over the floor that I was unsure if I should step on, so that was easy. Her once famous but now deceased husband (not a musician) had been in a wheelchair. The rest is the only part I had to make up, and it just popped out.
Ahhh, the note of authenticity - no wonder your eccentric characters felt so real. Pillage and plunder real life for the fresh and original - that's my motto! You did a spendid job of bringing Elsie and Edgar to life, in their own way, with a nod to the characters who inspired them. #LoveIt
Right?! Well done and not the least bit dreary! I knew it would be difficult to continue and was glad I didn't have to do so myself.
You had me at "Moog synthesizer," which will probably won't thrill @carolkean, but then, I've been seriously into them since Walter/Wendy Carlos and "Switched on Bach."
I wore the damned tape out. More than once. ;-)
And then there are so many other masters of the Moog, including Beaver & Krause (who helped introduce it to the musical world), undisputed keyboard master Keith Emerson, Stevie Wonder, Simon and Garfunkle (Bookends), and The Beatles (Abbey Road).
I heard one recently at Maureen's Jazz Cellar in Nyack NY, played by Neil Nail Alexander during a show of Peter Furlan's compositions. It took me waaaaay back! Such a distinctive sound! And @carolkean loved that I referenced the instrument - apparently her son is a big fan of Moog synthesizers, and she loves some music using them too.