2 - hell: inna jar
Nov. 13th, 2018 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
honorariaThe broadcast starts with a close-up of a large glass bottle lying on its side on a red velvet cushion. The mouth of it has been tightly corked and sealed up with crimson wax. The bottle if filled with shifting gray smoke, and in it, a face, and sometimes hands, are clearly visible. The face is that of a man in his early thirties, with messy hair and bags under his eyes. The face drifts around the bottle, pressing up against the glass to look around fearfully. It doesn't much resemble J.
There's a little placard in front of the cushion. A label is written in looping cursive on a thick white card. It reads: Failed Poet, early 20th century.
Now the broadcast begins to zoom out. It quickly becomes apparent that this bottle is one of many, all of them similarly lying on cushions, neat rows of them in tall shelves made of dark wood. Each one is corked and sealed with crimson wax, and each one is full of shifting gray smoke filled with a shifting gray face. The placards in front of each bottle follow a similar theme: Overlooked Portraitist, late 16th century. Disappointing Musical Prodigy, early Byzantium. Unloved Writer, mid-22nd century.
The broadcast view stills once it's zoomed out enough to encompass the entire height of the shelves, which fill the screen from left to right, plus a bit of plush carpet beneath and dark wood ceiling above. The lighting is soft, a bit dim, cast by torches in sconces affixed to the top of the shelves in regular intervals. The movements of the gray smoke in the bottle become quick jerks of motion: the broadcast is speeding up.
This becomes even more apparent when the only person in the broadcast appears. That person is a tall, hulking, thickly furred figure with a boar's tusked face and broad cloven hooves. They are wearing a beautifully embellished smoking jacket and nothing else. Their movements have the quick, twitchy quality of fast-forwarded video as they dip in and out of the frame. Sometimes they add bottles, or remove bottles, or take this or that bottle down to admire its contents. They hand-write all of the placards, none of which ever yellow, despite what must be a considerable amount of time passing. None of the torches ever go out, either.
The memory is very quiet. The only sounds are hooves shuffling over carpet and glass sliding against velvet. Aside from the hulking figure's sparse appearances, it's mostly just a view of the shelves with the jars. Soft jazz plays throughout, at a normal tempo.
Even fast-forwarded as it is, the memory takes nearly two hours to finish broadcasting. And even then it doesn't so much conclude as fade to black. The broadcast slows down to regular speed, lingering on a scene of the hulking figure in their beautiful jacket picking up the glass bottle from the beginning, admiring its contents and reciting its placard with a gravelly but satisfied voice. Failed poet, early 20th century.
NOTABLE
+ Was that me? That doesn't look like me. But also, that was me. What???
+ That was a really long time but he's not entirely sure how long because, there was no way of keeping time,,,
+ No thank you to enclosed spaces for a while
+ Also to being idle and/or alone and/or in the dark and/or... a lot of things...
+ Very clearly thinking that this is hell, but... In retrospect, J won't be sure if he means metaphorically or literally. (It's literal.)
+ He knows he had been disembodied somehow (I mean, obviously) but isn't aware of how/why it's happening or happened.
TAKEN
https://imeeji-frontstage.dreamwidth.org/100519.html?thread=70657191&posted=1#cmt70720167
There's a little placard in front of the cushion. A label is written in looping cursive on a thick white card. It reads: Failed Poet, early 20th century.
Now the broadcast begins to zoom out. It quickly becomes apparent that this bottle is one of many, all of them similarly lying on cushions, neat rows of them in tall shelves made of dark wood. Each one is corked and sealed with crimson wax, and each one is full of shifting gray smoke filled with a shifting gray face. The placards in front of each bottle follow a similar theme: Overlooked Portraitist, late 16th century. Disappointing Musical Prodigy, early Byzantium. Unloved Writer, mid-22nd century.
The broadcast view stills once it's zoomed out enough to encompass the entire height of the shelves, which fill the screen from left to right, plus a bit of plush carpet beneath and dark wood ceiling above. The lighting is soft, a bit dim, cast by torches in sconces affixed to the top of the shelves in regular intervals. The movements of the gray smoke in the bottle become quick jerks of motion: the broadcast is speeding up.
This becomes even more apparent when the only person in the broadcast appears. That person is a tall, hulking, thickly furred figure with a boar's tusked face and broad cloven hooves. They are wearing a beautifully embellished smoking jacket and nothing else. Their movements have the quick, twitchy quality of fast-forwarded video as they dip in and out of the frame. Sometimes they add bottles, or remove bottles, or take this or that bottle down to admire its contents. They hand-write all of the placards, none of which ever yellow, despite what must be a considerable amount of time passing. None of the torches ever go out, either.
The memory is very quiet. The only sounds are hooves shuffling over carpet and glass sliding against velvet. Aside from the hulking figure's sparse appearances, it's mostly just a view of the shelves with the jars. Soft jazz plays throughout, at a normal tempo.
Even fast-forwarded as it is, the memory takes nearly two hours to finish broadcasting. And even then it doesn't so much conclude as fade to black. The broadcast slows down to regular speed, lingering on a scene of the hulking figure in their beautiful jacket picking up the glass bottle from the beginning, admiring its contents and reciting its placard with a gravelly but satisfied voice. Failed poet, early 20th century.
NOTABLE
+ Was that me? That doesn't look like me. But also, that was me. What???
+ That was a really long time but he's not entirely sure how long because, there was no way of keeping time,,,
+ No thank you to enclosed spaces for a while
+ Also to being idle and/or alone and/or in the dark and/or... a lot of things...
+ Very clearly thinking that this is hell, but... In retrospect, J won't be sure if he means metaphorically or literally. (It's literal.)
+ He knows he had been disembodied somehow (I mean, obviously) but isn't aware of how/why it's happening or happened.
TAKEN
https://imeeji-frontstage.dreamwidth.org/100519.html?thread=70657191&posted=1#cmt70720167
