coloring

W breeds small fish and feeds them food with dyes that collect in the fish’s flesh, coloring them with stripes and spots. In the summer months he travels and sells them at sidewalk festivals. One year he meets a kid who shows him his own fish, colored like he’s never seen before. He asks the kid to show him how he did it.

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transposition

J as a child had a set of building blocks with which he was inspired, but he couldn’t build exactly what was in his head until he broke most of the pieces with a hammer and then re-glued them so that they would fit into new shapes. He applies the same strategy in early adulthead, when he has trouble juggling family, career, school and romance. He decided he needs to smash them all in order to reassemble them so that they fit more closely together.

frictional unemployment

P has a chance to review his romantic history as he fixes himself his traditional break-up soup. His refridgerator is bare, so he goes out shopping for the what he calls the ‘ballast’ of the soup.

disqualify

M’s misanthropic fuze balanced on the promise of an alternate reality game. He was careful to play by the rules, with the approved pieces. But he began to suspect others were cheating. This wasn’t a simple scavenger hunt.

ecstatic report

a media reporter is led into the ecstatic religious services which normally don’t admit outsiders, since central to them is the use of a moonshine drug cooked by the priest and his assistant. the reporter is from the mountain foothills, where people look down on the coastal religious practices. this is a festival in celebration of the fish catch. he is admitted by a friend, well, one of his stringers. participants entered wearing cowled hats and acknowledged each other with a subtle nod. the reporter passed with what he considered to be his in-born skill at taking a hint that had served him well in so many other under-cover situations. after faking taking the drug, he was happy to see that some attendees stood against the wall gaping. he joined these. he knew he had his story when he recognized a member of the national assembly with his shirt off. this will be a national story when he releases it.

percussion

In imitation of Berlioz, a conductor plays in the percussion section of the orchestra during the premiere if his new orchestral work. Offstage, during lunch and coffee breaks, the percussionists complain about his presumption.

blue sky

we swore an oath to barbarize where we could. barbarizing teens is easy – finding out where high schoolers hang out, tempting them into being runaways. it’s harder to keep guide them into the almost wilderness tent cities and away from the downtown shooting galleries and crack houses.
but the real challenge, and something our tribe has become famous for, is barbarizing adults – infiltrating book clubs, adult study film classes, yoga classes, and in extreme cases, the workplace.

resentment

After saving up for several months, 10-year old P bought himself a new toy, a complicated model that at the flick of a switch would transform itself in a rippling movement from one form to another, from a dragon to a rabbit to a human figure with bat wings. It was made entirely of wood and came disassembled. It took P six weeks of long after-school sessions to put it together. Two weeks after he completed it his sister accidently sat on it and crushed it.

extol

K extols the lightbulb, after their last one has burned out. only three more months of polar darkness. his room-mate J
the last lightbulb burns out – only three more months of polar darkness. K sings a song about light bulbs, every day, to keep his spirits up. It doesn’t keep J’s spirits up though.e

tymbal

Blinded by an injury K learned to play the drums while recovering in the hospital. J joins the band as a trumpet player and asks about the injury but K doesn’t want to talk about. J tries to use a woman to get the story out of him.