Awful Grace, or The Tolling of the Void Bell

Download Schizophrenic Nightmare and Other Lurid Flavors Awful Grace Homepage I was working on the following episode for months before COVID-19 derailed it. The argument it attempted to make is still strong but only relevant during non “end times” type shit. It was to be named Ouroboros Obese. Because it’ll be a little bit before I’m able to start over and release something else I thought to share the intro and outro of a thing you’ll otherwise never hear.

EATHEACH, a new podcast from the producer of Awful Grace, featuring short works of indiscriminate origin. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

The Apocalypse Equation/Invocation of the Hyperreal: A prelude to The Mulch Prophet, a forthcoming work of post-fiction from The Champagne's Electric.

You only asked we not forget as you must do the same. Those memories died with you, my love. Again the never came.

Fame is a bee. It has a song— It has a sting— Ah, too, it has a wing. - Emily Dickinson How to Sell America! in the Twenty-First Century, or Exhibits on the Withering Effect of Eternal Light Exhibits: I. Conversations with a Serial Rapist II. Meryl Streep Thanks God III. When the Blood Dries, Sell It IV. The Fear Mongrel’s Bark V. A Selfie with the Hindenburg VI. Monetized Schizophrenia and Other Benefits from Living on a Flattened Earth VII. When Superman Declines, Who Will Wear the Cape   Produced by The Champagne's Electric, Chicago. MMXIX. Awful Grace is dedicated to the memory of Cecilia Vaisman. 

11.22.XXXX A Day in America A tragedy told in XXXX acts, set in XXXX, USA during the year of our Lord XXXX, A.D. Produced by The Champagne's Electric, Chicago MMXVIII

Ruina Imperii or Our Feet Still Wet from the Riveredge  or A Mournful Addendum for Dr. Sagan (A Dirge in Six Parts) First, a content warning: The following piece is composed of some of the most disturbingly violent events ever recorded, most of which are presented with scant editing and at full volume. It includes graphic audio clips of suicides, murders, and man-made disasters. (I am obligated to also note that the most-featured clip details the implicit murder of many young children by their parents and caregivers. Though none of the violence being done to these children is recorded directly by the microphone, their screams can be heard in the distance throughout the clip.) "And, putting his hand on mine with a cheerful glance from which I drew strength, he introduced me into the secret things. There sighs, weeping, loud wailing resounded through the starless air, for which at the outset I shed tears. Strange languages, horrible tongues, words of pain, accents of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and sounds of blows with them, made a tumult that turns forever in that air darkened without time, like the sand when the whirlwind blows." Inferno, by Dante Alighieri (C3, 19-31) Awful Grace is produced by The Champagne's Electric and is dedicated to the memory of Cecilia Vaisman.    

Portions of this episode are presented in Korean with no accompanying English translation.  Produced by Elise Byun and The Champagne's Electric. Chicago, MMXVIII --- LOUISE - Kangaroo. COLONEL WEBER - What? LOUISE - In 1770, Captain James Cook's ship ran aground on the coast of Australia. He led a party into the country and met the aboriginal people. One of his sailors pointed to the animals that hopped around with their young in pouches, and asked what they were called. The aborigine replied "Kanguru." COLONEL WEBER - What's your point? LOUISE - It wasn't until later that they learned "Kanguru" means "I don't understand." **** IAN - Is that true? The kangaroo story? LOUISE - No. But it made my point. - Excerpt from "Arrival", screenplay by Eric Heisserer   "The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world." - Excerpt from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), Ludwig Wittgenstein

“For each fire is all fires, and the first fire and the last ever to be.” - Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy INTERMISSION, from 54:09 to 1:01:24 This essay is dedicated to Shamiya Adams, Samuel Walker Jr. and the silent dead of this city. I also owe an undying gratitude to Cecilia Vaisman, Martine Granby, Ritesh Sharma and Alex Wroblewski.  

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?   "The Second Coming", W.B. Yeats

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passen-core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all’s fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface. The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur — nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since dev-linsfirst loved livvy.

These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare

The Young Man's Last Words, said with Confidence to the Devil Unbeknownst. "Bet you won't."

We Real Cool, by Gwendolyn Brooks   THE POOL PLAYERS.  SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.   We real cool. We Left school. We   Lurk late. We Strike straight. We   Sing sin. We Thin gin. We   Jazz June. We Die soon.

Chapter 2, beginning now.

Hanns Jones wanted to die. And so he drove to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Florida and jumped. 200 feet down, reaching speeds that kill, he hit the water like watermelon against a brick wall, 75 miles per hour. He should have died. Should have.

While reporting on the Battle of Fallujah in 2004 for the Washington Post, Jackie Spinner found herself sitting at a table with Anne Garrels, a Foreign Correspondent for NPR. For Spinner, Fallujah was an initiation to war, and Garrels an experienced reporter whom she admired. As they sat, Garrels slid Spinner a sheet of paper. Written was the name of Garrels' husband and his phone number. Spinner looked at the slip and realized that Garrels, a veteran of many conflicts, was afraid that she might die during the battle. The moment was a revelation for Spinner, for whom the fear of war had already begun to fade. Both survived the following days, but Spinner carried that slip of paper with her for some time after, using it as a reminder of a rule she found to be increasingly apt as time passed: stay scared. Spinner spent years reporting on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the Washington Post. She is the survivor of an attempted kidnapping, various conflict zones and stateside PTSD. After the death of her friend and fellow war reporter Chris Hondros in 2011, Spinner decided it was time to pursue what she wanted above all else: to be a mother. Within a month of Hondros' death, Spinner was in Morocco beginning the process of adopting her first son, essentially ending her tenure as a foreign correspondent. With the help of her twin sister, Spinner wrote an account of her time during the War in Iraq called "Tell Them I Didn't Cry." She is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism at Columbia College in Chicago and acts as the Chicago correspondent for the Columbia Journalism Review. Spinner - who herself was adopted along with her twin sister - later adopted a second son from Morocco. She has written about motherhood for the Washington Post.

Colt Cabana only wanted to be a professional wrestler. He watched pugilists moon-eyed as a kid: He-Man, Jean Claude Van Damme in Bloodsport, but especially the turgid giants of the squared circle. He loved the stories, the characters, the conflict. He dreamed of of being one himself, living to endure the slog of travel, the pain of performance. As soon as he could, Cabana became a professional wrestler. His life was training, traveling, performing, repeat. He saw the job push some to drugs. Steroids, alcohol, or whatever dulled the pain long enough for the next match. He'd decided long ago that wasn’t for him. He didn’t want the behemoth build that anabolics gave; the glass-eyed slur that poured into the next morning; the hard escalation needed to hush the pain. He doesn’t call it “straight edge" like his longtime friend and former WWE Champion CM Punk, but he did it his way. No drugs, just work. He eventually made it to the big time. WWE. Seven-figure contracts and world-wide fame if you’re lucky and good enough. They changed his name but he kept his humor. He worked some good matches. But it didn’t happen. On February 20, 2009, Colt worked a match with Umaga, a 400-pound Somoan with a tough guy gimmick and a rep for stiff work. The match was quick, designed only to show Umaga’s dominance against a weaker opponent. 2 minutes in, Colt was pinned. 3 days later he was out of the job. But he wasn’t done. Years later and Colt says he’s in a better place now then he ever was in the WWE, and you’d be hard-pressed to call him a liar. He’s got The Art of Wrestling with Colt Cabana, a show that was second only to Serial at one time in 2014. He interviews other wrestlers, people in the industry. He still wrestles the indie circuit, internationally when he can. Though, as with some of the greats, he’s gotten most of his goodwill without throwing a punch. Colt remembers the harder times, mostly when he wakes in the morning and the pain taps him on the shoulder. And the thigh. And the knees. Tears, breaks and sprains piled on top of one another until they’re your most reliable companion. But to him it’s worth it. The price you pay to tussle with the giants and talk about it after. He’d do it all again, he says.

Antione Day spent a decade in prison for a murder he didn't commit. While there, he witnessed physical and mental abuse, beatings and killings. Day finds it hard to forget the incessant noise of prison, the dank must of the air. But Day adapted. He created his own world, choosing to exercise, read and eventually, work on his own case in hopes of having his conviction overturned. With the help of the late Howard Joseph, a lawyer who worked pro bono on Day's case, Day was eventually granted a new trial after it came to light that his defense attorney had failed to cross-examine a surviving victim who said Day was not involved, amongst other errors. Charges were dismissed against Day in 2002 and he was released. Day went on to co-found Life After Justice, a non-profit that provides homes for men released from prison, with preference for those who were wrongfully convicted. Day was awarded a certificate of innocence by the Circuit Court of Cook County in 2010.