Antenna
She says: In the beginning the air was thick with signals about naming me Ann Tanner. But my parents never picked them up.
She takes a drag from a cigarette.
She says: When I had braces, my family wired my headgear to rabbit-ears and shortwave radios to pull in distant signals. They'd put me in a chair, point me in the desired direction and indicate how I was to hold my head and the facial expression I was to make. Football games and military actions ran through my skull. Information tangled with static and filled me up.
The movements of smoke trail her features through spaces of expressionist light.
When I squint at her from across the table I can see the waveforms created by her carrier signal.
She says: I learned to control the overflow with tiny careful movements. I learned to fine tune, to locate channels inside of channels. Sometimes during a coup d'etat or evangelical broadcast unrelated pop songs would hover around my head. I knew each was playing just for me. I am antenna and receiver. Broadcasts search me out. They like my technologies.
She takes another drag from her cigarette.
The night-marsh seems crisscrossed with streams of faint chattering from telex machines. They inch closer, looking for her.
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Author's Note
i know antenna's sister. sort of. in the way one knows another who works at dunkin donuts.
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blew my mind with fresh images. Stuff I'd never dream of, yet it makes sense. Love the dragging on the cigarette. Wonderful.
true story: my parents almost named me Ann Tanner also. Ill-advised in storm country. Excellent use of structure here.
Aren't we all just trying to find channels inside of channels? Nice.
Suh-weeet. Very creative. I think I dated this girl once. Seriously, I enjoyed the imagery and the beliefe with which the character tells the story.
Original. Loved it.
Well done. The words sing as a poem.
nice. thanks very much for the reads and lovely comments. i have to put them out of my mind to work on a new piece....but i'll come back to them later.
Imaginative, wild, funny, delightful. Fav.
Excellent, Stephen. Loved these sentences: "Sometimes during a coup d'etat or evangelical broadcast unrelated pop songs would hover around my head. I knew each was playing just for me. I am antenna and receiver. Broadcasts search me out. They like my technologies."
thanks very much. i really appreciate the reading, the comments and the favorites.
ah, Steve H-K, one of my faves! This is so wonderful on so many levels. I think my favorite image is him squinting (!) across the table at her: that is such a great detail in the midst of everything else.
And the tone is so just right too: she's distant, cool, almost distracted. We are at once distanced and connected -- so perfectly done here. I love the way she says so matter-of-factly:
"I learned to fine tune, to locate channels inside of channels. Sometimes during a coup d'etat or evangelical broadcast unrelated pop songs would hover around my head. I knew each was playing just for me. I am antenna and receiver. Broadcasts search me out. They like my technologies."
Original, alive, cool.
Fun and very different characters all - parents and speaker. I like the weirdness and egotism:
"I knew each was playing just for me. I am antenna and receiver. Broadcasts search me out. They like my technologies."
I like the way you just ramp it up and go for it. -- Q
thanks so much for the comments. i meant to put something here about yr comments, michelle, but i think i put something on yr wall. either way, i appreciate the warm and lovely comments and am pleased you like the piece. truth be told i like this one alot too and for mostly the same reasons you outline. i don't quite know where she came from, this detached woman who smokes on the deck behind the resto a few doors down from where i live.
thanks q as well....i'm interested in the ramping up comment and wonder if i do that. it wouldn't surprise me. please that the piece engaged you. thinking about the rhythm aspect.
Stephen: I hope "ramping up" is not being misinterpreted. I think the piece is really wonderful in the best possible way. I hope you are somewhere writing your fiction, as we speak, so I may read more, and are writing it like you write it. It speaks to me and I don't even have an antenna.
I like the rhythm of the "she says" and the drags from her ciggy. She felt just right and so did her pronouncements and those of the narrator. Rock on SHK... -- Q
Q: No no, not at all. I liked the response, the way of looking at the piece because I hadn't seen it before. So it gave me the pleasure of looking at it another way. I'm also pleased that you like what I'm doing in this curious little fictions. Thanks for being concerned, though. And for the lovely things you say.
Great piece. *
Weird, original, and weirdly fun to read. Fave.