I’m continuing work on the story inspired by the image that didn’t fit an essay about blockchains and underwear, and I'm shaking my head at the convoluted and unexpected paths that creativity can take.
I don’t have a new installment ready to share but I do have a song and a revision note.
The song is a theme that’s been running through my head for the majority of the day while life makes it impossible to write. This usually happens when my subconscious has embraced a story and is letting me know it’s working up details while I’m off doing other things. My creative projects may accumulate soundtracks worth of theme songs that fit the overall themes, important characters, plot events, settings, or significant relationships.
None of these songs are ever a conscious choice.
The theme for my Laundry Day story is “Miss Gradenko” by The Police, an unsettling song from an unsettling album, Synchronicity (1983), which also includes songs about a stalker (“Every Breath You Take”), an inexperienced young man entranced by an older married woman (“Wrapped Around Your Finger”), a man on the verge of slaughtering his family (“Synchronicity II”), heartbreak (“King of Pain”), abandonment (“Tea in the Sahara”), and war (“Murder by Numbers”).
“Miss Gradenko” is disturbing even within the setting of this album. While most of the other songs represent isolated or individual experiences, the paranoia of “Miss Gradenko” exists within an authoritarian society evocative of George Orwell’s 1984, which was, at the time of the song’s release, still set in the future. And still is, I guess, since every year can be counted as 1,984 years in the future of some other year.
Your uniform don't seem to fit
You're much too alive in it
You've been letting your feelings show
Are you safe Miss Gradenko?
Miss Gradenko are you safe?
Is anybody alive in here?
Is anybody alive in here?
Is anybody at all in here?
Nobody but us in here
Nobody but us
The titular character in “Miss Gradenko” is observed to be too alive and vibrant to conform to her repressive society. She is reaching out through secret notes to find others, including the song’s narrator, who might be willing to join her in a rebellion. The physical manifestation of her nonconformity is that her uniform doesn’t seem to fit, which may be the tag that my subconscious grabbed onto in assigning this song to “Laundry Day,” where my protagonist would rather dress in physical rags than accept the tech-enabled virtual clothing of her peers. My protagonist is still unnamed, but I’ve taken to using the working name of Ephemera--an object meant to be temporary but which may stick around in defiance of all expectation.
With “Miss Gradenko” in my head, I’ve started to uncover an authoritarian regime in my story world, and Ephemera is showcasing a few of the skills necessary to game the system on her own terms. The image that inspired “Laundry Day” is set within a larger society where even doing a load of laundry is an act of rebellion against conformity and control.
Ephemera clings to physical clothing in a society that favors digital fashion. The first installment of “Laundry Day” also reveals her preference for physical books and artwork. I had a particular image of haystacks in mind but, not being much of an art historian, I left the original description vague and generic.
However, this week I was pointed to the exact work I had in mind, and revised the paragraph into a larger passage:
The Contessa slams my door so hard, a picture falls from the wall, an oil painting by Jean-François Millet. In it, a pitchfork-wielding farmworker is rendered insignificant beside three enormous piles of hay that have resulted from his labors. The blue at the left edge of the sky is quickly darkening with ominous black clouds that swirl an impending countdown toward an oncoming storm. A flock of animals, which I imagine to be sheep, nibble what sparse grass remains, unaware of and ungrateful for the worker who has just ensured their survival through the imminent winter.
I lose myself in wide open vista under a spacious sky and wonder at the distant buildings and trees. Those must have been such sights to see in person!
A code on the frame links the physical painting to a digital version in some Elite’s vault. Technically, I’m obligated to return the original art to its onchain owner. Technically, the Contessa is obligated to report me for possession of stolen property. But no one cares anymore about the paint-on-canvas haystack, the sweat of Mr. Millet’s brow, now that it’s been nibbled by digital sheep and shat out as valued pixels.
I want it to be clear in the story that this is not a copy or reproduction. The actual 1874 painting, which in our world hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has been acquired, digitized, and discarded by some private owner. The painting is a haystack, the artist is the farmer, and society is the flock of sheep. In this extended metaphor, Ephemera exists outside the frame as the rare viewer, in her own time, who can still appreciate the value of the painting itself. In her world, there are no longer any traditional farms or farmers. Sheep have gone extinct. Haystacks are no longer required. Fields and skies only exist in the artwork from previous times. And Ephemera seems unique in maintaining a sense that something important has been lost.
Which brings us back around to my original essay about the blockchain, and the development of new tools to advance the state of publishing.
I tend toward optimism and have been greatly optimistic about the potential of emerging technologies to revolutionize publishing and the expression and sharing of creative works, but optimism works best when tempered with realistic expectations and constant skepticism.
I remain skeptical of cryptocurrencies. Learning about them has also made me skeptical about fiat currencies, central banks, and arbitrary stores of value in general. In that context, I may yet be convinced that cryptocurrencies are no worse than any other financial instruments or economic units, but I remain horrified by the ever-increasing environmental footprint of Bitcoin and other proof-of-work chains. Tokenomics seems to me like a form of sympathetic magic that only works because people are convinced to believe that it works, like an airplane that only stays in the air because all the passengers are flapping their arms.
For now, I treat cryptocurrencies as coins of the realm in a fantasy land, a necessary medium of exchange for the magic items I want to drop into my bag of holding. These magic items, NFT-based ebooks or images, are tied to the blockchains on which they reside. It’s possible, even probable, that not all blockchains will survive and thrive. We’re still early and can’t predict which currently thriving fantasy realms, if any, will still be fertile environments in five, twenty, or a hundred years. It sure would suck to put all your efforts into building a castle of wizardry in a landscape that devolves into a depopulated waste.
The other thing my subconscious seems to be telling me, through “Laundry Day,” is not to discount what’s physical, tangible, and real. Magic items are cool and useful, like impenetrable mithril armor or a sword that glows blue when orcs are nearby, but there remains much utility in a cup of tea, an overstuffed chair, and a comfortable Hobbit-hole.
The story of “Laundry Day” is continuing to morph and change in my mind and on the screen. If it continues developing into a story of rebellion against a dystopic nightmare of augmented reality, it may yet offer a warning to guide us in the application of the new technologies we’ve been toying with.
