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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

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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