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trickster-jpeg · 2 months

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Cracked At The Line In The Air, I feel safe.

Summary: Steven accidentally breaks his childhood teddy and it triggers a meltdown.

Warnings: Steven hits himself as a stim during his meltdown. Not sure of that warrants a warning but just in case.

Word Count: 1607 It's On AO3 -> Here

A/N: 'Ricitos' is just a term of endearment (usually for a partner, up to you how you interpret it) that means curly hair/small curls.

It’s broken. It’s broken. Oh my god, it’s broken.

Steven was laying in bed. It was the middle of the night and he was just settling down to sleep. It had been a good day. Nothing bad had happened, he’d been rather at ease, enjoying going about his day with minimal interference. He’d rolled over to lay down on his side and seen his childhood teddy tipped over, having fallen onto the floor. It was a fuzzy small elephant called Nellie. The stuffing distributed unevenly and one of the ears slightly worse for wear than the other due to constant chewing as a child, but it was still whole. It had small black beads for eyes, a stubby little trunk, and two tiny white mounds either side of its face for tusks. Not wanting her to be lonely, because he still had a tendency to anthropomorphize things, he went to pick her up and place her back on her spot on the bed.

Despite having had it for decades, it was still in relatively solid condition. He’d put effort into maintaining its state and was rather chuffed with himself at having had her for so long with minimal incidents. Which is why it was all the more heartbreaking when one of the seams on its neck had stuck out and gotten caught in the floorboards. He had no idea how, but it did, and when he grabbed her to pull her upwards it started to tug. Something he had realised far too late to stop it from happening.

The seam had stayed wedged firmly in the crack and as soon as the force of pulling the toy was applied, it started to unravel. In an instant, the body started to separate from the head, the old stuffing starting to tip and pile out onto the floor beneath itself. The stitches snapped as the neck stayed stuck to the ground, disconnecting from the main body and tugging a front arm off along with it.

His brain stopped dead in its tracks, physically incapable of processing what had just happened. It was almost as if time had slowed as Steven watched the events unfold in absolute horror. He froze instantly, eyes bulging as his mouth hung open with shock. A tremble immediately started to zap through his hand as his fingers loosened from a firm clasp around the worn but soft body of the toy, to a lax and limp claw that was just barely holding it. It was only as it tumbled out of his grip to lay with the rest of itself, surrounded by the stuffing that was once inside, that Steven lunged at the broken object, his heart pounding out of his chest as he frantically tried to gather all of the pieces together in his arms.

“No. No, no, no, no- NO- NO!”

His lungs constricted as his breathing instantly got caught, fractured breaths intermingling with the rising nausea and swirled around like the ocean in a storm. Broken sounding words flooded from his mouth as he stuttered to get them out in a desperate attempt to relieve some of the crushing pressure growing like a lump in his throat. They got muddled and stuck, his tongue getting in the way as he tried to stammer anything new, but was unable to get them out in a way that felt right. His mouth quickly flooded with the crimson metallic taste of blood as he bit down on his cheek, his jaw crunching down in a moment of shock as he tried to process what just happened.

Fat globules of tears poured down his face as he desperately willed the pieces to form back together, to undo it all and fix itself. His breaths heaved as he continued to work himself up, bawling harder and harder as he grasped the pieces impossibly closer to him. The sudden heartbreak was painful, physically painful and even more so psychologically. He felt the disparaging familiarity of dissociation grip him, his brain disconnecting from his body as he started to heave strangled sobs, whimpering pleas for the elephant to be okay. For his Nellie to be all better again.

He couldn’t lose her, she’d been there for him since he was a kid. She was the only thing that could calm him down when things got too bad, something not even his headmates could fully manage to do. Meltdowns, flashbacks, nightmares, panic attacks. Even just giving him something to cry into when a character he liked in a film died, or just something to fall asleep with when he needed to. He didn’t care that people might see it as childish, after everything the system had been through when they were supposed to have been a child, he thought they should almost be owed it to make up for lost time. But Nellie was something from his childhood. Their childhood. Which is why it was all the more painful that she was now broken apart and torn in his arms.

Gradually, he felt his body begin to rock back and forwards, his breathing trying to match the motions frantically at the sudden awareness he really wasn’t breathing right. How could he have been so careless? How stupid could he have been to just destroy one of his most treasured items? One of the only truly, wholly good things they had from their parents, from their little brother, and he’d gone and broken it. Bringing the main body of the teddy to his face, he pressed it against his skin and started to muffle his cries, the pain steadily shifting into a burning anger. Anger that he could blame no one for but himself.

His brows furrowed in irritation as a swelling burning flashed in his chest, his grip tightened around the material painfully as the rage towards himself grew. The feeling began to burst through his limbs as he clenched his jaw almost painfully, grinding his teeth in annoyance as tears kept trickling down his face. Through huffed breaths, a guttural rumble rose in his oesophagus and tore up his throat in a furious roar.

“FUCK! HOW COULD I BE SO FUCKING STUPID? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME? FUCKING STUPID- USELESS- WORTHLESS FUCKING- FUCK-”

In an instant, he raised his arms up with fists balled and started to bash them against the side of his head. The motion was repetitive and a bit painful, but soothing in a way. He carried on letting random, frustrated words and whines fumble out of his lips as his body took over. Tears and snot dripped down his face as he continued to hit his temples, sobbing in bitterness as a crash of self-hatred pooled in his chest. Briefly, he thought he heard someone speaking to him but he couldn’t figure out what they were saying.

There was a new resistance in his arms, something that pulled them back and made them feel not quite right. That made him almost struggle to do the thing that was soothing him. That was helping. Made it feel like it wasn’t helping. Like it was almost worse. He didn’t like it, it felt restraining. So instead moved them away and sat on his hands, trying to mitigate the uncomfortable feeling that stopped them with pressure. Continued to rock back and forth, to make the noises that climbed up his throat.

“Steven. It’s going to be okay. We can fix it. It’s alright.”

He shook his head disparagingly at the words, too overwhelmed to be able to form anything comprehensible. His legs bounced rhythmically as he tried to convey what he wanted to say, tried desperately to grasp at words and throw them out in a way that made sense. That helped him explain that it wasn’t alright and that it couldn’t be fixed. That he couldn’t fix it and it was too late for anything to be saved. But in some way he felt as though the speaker understood his thoughts regardless of whether or not they were spoken, and the gravelled voice spoke again. Accompanied by someone else.

“It might not feel like it, but this’ll pass and we can stitch her up. She’ll be fine, it was an accident, Steven. You’re not stupid or useless, it was a mistake.”

“He’s right, ricitos. We can fix our fluffy friend. Maybe even get her some new stuffing and fill it out properly again.”

As the voices spoke, they projected feelings of warmth. There was a contrast between their comfort and the gradual dimming of the burning that had been exploding in his chest. Whatever it was, it was nice. It was kind. Caring. And they said they could fix it. They could fix Nellie. He just needed to try and calm down so that they could. Gently, he felt himself move off of sitting on his hands. Felt them start to lift and snake up to wrap around him and hold him in a way that felt good. That felt safe. Protected. It felt like he could just let go.

He didn’t want to feel this way anymore. Didn’t want to feel any of it. And somehow he knew they would be able to help him stop feeling that way. They’d be able to fix it for him, they could fix Nellie. Stop him from causing more damage to their belongings and their body. He didn’t mean for it to happen, he never meant to hurt them, never meant to hurt himself. But he just couldn’t help it. So, that’s what he did. He let the pair take his place, and went into the back.

#moon knight #moon knight system #moon knight fanfic #steven grant #jake lockley #marc spector #autistic steven grant #(Marc & Jake are as well but this is just focused on Steven)#my fic #ao3 #hurt/comfort #meltdowns #we stan Nellie the elephant here #writing

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sinceileftyoublog · 1 year

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Joseph Decosimo Interview: How Does It Make You Feel?

Photo by Libby Rodenbough

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Count multi-instrumentalist Joseph Decosimo as another in the great line of contemporary players making old music for modern times. Like his friend and collaborator Jake Xerxes Fussell, duo Anna & Elizabeth, or even James Yorkston, Decosimo constantly thinks about what traditional folk songs mean to him--and us--today. The fiddler, banjo player, pump organist, and phD-holding folklorist, like Fussell, has had the opportunity to study with legendary trad players. For Decosimo, that’s the likes of Clyde Davenport and others in areas of Tennessee and Kentucky where he grew up. At the same time, Decosimo has surrounded himself with some of yesterday and today’s most exciting players from the thriving scene in Durham, North Carolina, where he lives, from Fussell and Hiss Golden Messenger’s MC Taylor to legendary singer/multi-instrumentalist Alice Gerrard. These influences combine to find a bridge between the past and the present on his upcoming album While You Were Slumbering, out next Friday via Sleepy Cat Records.

To your average music listener (whatever that means these days), many of the songs on While You Were Slumbering do sound from another time. The album starts with recently released single “The Fox Chase”, based on a field recording of Dee Hicks calling up foxhounds, bolstered by the warmth of Decosimo’s nasally vocals and the fiddle, banjo, and strings. It ends with the instrumental “Bob Wills Stomp/Wild Goose Chase”, a two-part song of melancholy fiddle and, yes, a jaunty soundtrack for running amongst waterfowl. Throughout the record, Decosimo conjures Appalachia, with tunes of lost dogs, fruited alcohol, possums and racoons running amok. On the video for first single “Will Davenport’s Tune”, a 19th century banjo piece he learned from visits with Clyde, Decosimo's vivacious plucking is laid atop impressionistic images of nature, interspersed with rippling, yet grainy watercolor, a hazy mirror to a location only folks who have been there will be familiar with.

At the same time, on the album’s best songs, Decosimo’s interpretations offer newfound clarity to tunes etched in a former time. “Man of Constant Sorrow”, which most listeners will know for better or for worse due to its inclusion in Joel and Ethan Coen’s O’ Brother, Where Art Thou?, is presented not as a prickly, nonnative bounce, but as a solemn hymn appropriate for today. Just as prescient is “Trouble”, though the hopefulness inherent in the song’s beautiful harmonies is rooted in the idea that bad things, like everything, will inevitably cease to exist and be replaced by something else, perhaps something better. It’s a stunning song, the album’s emotional centerpiece.

Though Decosimo plays plenty of instruments on While You Were Slumbering, the album is certainly bolstered by his chosen collaborators: Joe and Matt O’Connell of Elephant Micah, fiddler and singer Stephanie Coleman, composer/fiddler/pump organist Cleek Schrey, bass clarinetist Alec Spiegelman (who also mixed the record), and Gerrard. He wouldn’t say this, but to my ears, While You Were Sleeping represents a sort of sharing of the torch moment from Gerrard to Decosimo. This isn’t to say that Gerrard is done--quite the opposite, actually--but that Decosimo’s record has the same connection to the traditional repertoire that so much of Gerrard’s music does, precisely why he wanted her to play and sing on the record. “She’s a national treasure, as far as I’m concerned,” Decosimo told me over the phone in September. “She’s a force of nature.”

During our conversation, Decosimo, somewhat sleep deprived as a result of his newborn baby, nonetheless thoughtfully contemplated where he fits in the music world as a result of his new record, from academia to traditional circles to Durham. Read our interview below, edited for length and clarity.

Cover Art by Gabe Anderson using watercolor assets by Larissa Wood

Since I Left You: Do you feel a kinship with other players, arrangers, and scholars who adapt to contemporary sounds the traditional tunes they’ve learned from various historical channels?

Joseph Decosimo: I think so. I’ve lived most of my musical life in this hardcore traditional world. There [were] opportunities along the way--especially living in Durham--to play with Mike Taylor on the early Hiss [Golden Messenger] stuff. In some way, what I’m doing is different from what Jake [Xerxes Fussell] does, but it’s coming from a similar place of tradition, and the question of, “How can I make this translate for people who are not folks who spend their time listening to field recordings?” This album is me asking that question and figuring out a way to do it. In some way, it probably registers to most ears as pretty traditional, but to me, it feels different. [laughs]

Because I’ve spent so much of my life in traditional places of music-making and artistry, what’s happening here is me trying to do right by that but also something that feels musical and approachable and accessible to normal people. It’s a tall order. We’ll see how it lands. Jake’s approach totally works and does right by those camps.

SILY: I don’t know if you’re referring to Greil Marcus, but when you talk in the liner notes about an “older, weirder America,” I feel like that quality has encapsulated the folk scene for some time. Over the past decade or so, though, there’s been a concentration on more of the expansive qualities of folk instruments--whether you want to call it cosmic Americana or not. I think this record touches on both worlds. Do you think those two worlds can exist in conjunction, or are they at odds?

JD: That term “old weird America” is convenient, but it goes a little overboard and [exoticizes folk]. I grew up in Appalachia, and talking to people around the region, there’s a little bit of cringiness around it. It’s just another form of vernacular music. What I was interested in was working with a traditional repertoire. The way I play is a departure from other folk artists at the moment. A lot of stuff is coming out of the Berklee School of Music’s American Roots Music Program. People who go through there have incredible chops, but a lot of the time there’s a similarity of sound that has to do with bigger trends in traditional string music. I was lucky enough to be able to encounter it, brush against it, and see it firsthand. The weirdness, to me, can be with the texture of how the older players sounded. If you go through a conservatory program, you’re going to be learning different techniques. The funkiness, [on the other hand,] there’s so much depth and beauty there.

I don’t know that I’m pushing towards the cosmic thing. I think it has more to do with Enya or something. [laughs] Using traditional instruments to create something layered and lush. The pump organ’s been around for a while. People used it in vernacular Southern music for a century, creating new sounds with it. I don’t know what the relationship between those two things is, but it feels like a lot of times maybe the way the old weird stuff gets treated is [that] it’s stuck on a 78, and that’s the performance mode. That can be amazing. I’ve seen incredible performances of people lifting material out of 78s and interpreting it beautifully and in a very faithful way to the old recordings. I think there’s something pretty wild in that, too, that’s pretty expansive, the creative uses and tunings of instruments that could register in that cosmic space.

SILY: Speaking of the cringe-inducing nature of the term “old, weird America,” a very Hollywood-ized manifestation of that idea is O’ Brother Where Art Thou?, which obviously made “Man of Constant Sorrow” well-known.

JD: Oh. Oh.

SILY: I can hear you cringing.

JD: A lot of people rode that wave. [laughs] Norman Blake, who is a phenomenal musician, probably made a lot of money from being involved in that movie, and certainly deserved to. The version on [the record] is learned from a field recording. It was kind of fun to dive into that, to be like, “This is not like this other thing.” It feels like it hits in a completely different way.

SILY: To me, the song on the album that’s most timeless because of its sentiment is “Trouble”. Can you talk about that track and why you included it?

JD: One of my favorite banjo players of all time is Virgil Anderson, who lived on the Tennessee-Kentucky line of the Cumberland Plateau, which is the Western edge of what we’d call Appalachia. I grew up on the Southern end, near Chattanooga, TN, but I’d been obsessed with Virgil Anderson forever. There’s a beautiful LP release by County Records in the early 80s, [On The Tennessee Line]. I never got to meet the guy. I love his playing. [“Trouble” is something he learned as a young man in his 20s when he played with two African-American musicians, the Bertrams. They would play in these little camps and communities in that area. [So] it’s a piece that a white player learned from the Black repertoire of Appalachia. He sings it in a chipper way, which is cool and works, but during July 2020, I had been playing it for a while, and it started to resonate in a very different way. I think we were all dealing with things in different ways in that moment. That song started feeling less like a chipper banjo piece. It’s incredibly simple, but it has a kind of power. It was a time when you couldn’t hang out with people who weren’t in your house. I sent it to Joe O’Connell, who is in Elephant Micah and writes great songs and has a great way of arranging stuff. He added this pump organ and harmony part and sent it back to me. My friend Stephanie Coleman added the fiddle part and vocal part. It went from this old field recording of Virgil Anderson and became something that felt way more powerful. My friend Alec Spiegelman said it was making him cry as he was wrapping it up, which was unexpected, to end up with something so direct.

Part of this project was me turning 40 and wanting to expand, wanting my music to connect with more people. [“Trouble”] a piece I was sharing with family members who know nothing about the type of music I make. They were connecting with it.

SILY: For some of the songs on the album that are instrumentals, if somebody doesn’t take the time to learn about the song’s context--and not everyone does--and just looks at the title, and there are no lyrics to go by, they’re interacting with the quality of the arrangements and the instruments themselves. Can you talk about how you treated the instrumentals in context of the whole record?

JD: One thing Jake and I have had several conversations about is that at times, it feels like if you’ve really studied these traditions and have dedicated energy to learn your instrument and play it well, people will reduce you: “Oh, he’s just a fiddler or banjo player.” People will be glad to have you play on their album, but you can’t contribute back out [with your own varied material]. The way I was thinking about a lot of these tunes was, “How does a person in the 21st century listen to a fiddle tune or banjo tune? How does it matter to you? How does it make you feel something?” I know that when I listen to the fiddle, I can feel it. [But] how do you create a connection? One of the [challenges] is trying to find melodies that are just beautiful and stick with you even if you’re not accustomed to listening to a fiddle. A lot of these pieces were played solo for a long time and nourished people, doing the work that art does. How do you make them continue to do that work?

SILY: Take a song like “Clear Fork”. There’s that droney background hum that people like for the same reason they like to look at a Mark Rothko painting. It’s still, but it’s shimmering and rippling at the same time. Contrast that with the tangible sound of a banjo, there’s a lot to take in. People are free to interpret it the way they can, even more than the song that comes before it on the album that references 19th century European politics [“Young Rapoleon”].

JD: [laughs] So much of my musical social life is going to fiddler’s conventions and playing tunes after tunes with people. My relationship with an instrumental piece, I have no concept of how others might hear that kind of thing. I know them in a certain way. There’s a sociality to them because of where they’re played, but to imagine that it’s kind of an expanse for people to imagine their own interpretation or experience is a fun thought. I like the beginning of the “Clear Fork” piece because Stephanie has a shimmery harmonic that at first sounds like it could be a flute. One of the other things we were working with was a little bit of the ambiguity of the sound. The percussion in one spot on “Will Davenport’s Tune” tune is Matt O’Connell knocking on something. He can’t even remember what it was he was knocking on. I had sent him a field recording of a guy from Eastern North Carolina who would wrap his knuckles on a table and create these incredible rhythms that mimic percussive dance. People who know this music might think it’s somebody’s feet, but it’s sort of unclear what it is.

SILY: Can you talk about the relationship between the visuals and the music on the video for “Will Davenport’s Tune”?

JD: My friend Gabe Anderson who runs the label helping put this out, his friend Larissa [Wood] combined to work on the visuals there. There are a couple things at play; Gabe can explain more of the concept. I have a friend who is a folklorist named Sarah Bryan who has been documenting tombstones all over the South, especially North and South Carolina, for the last couple of years. She shared a picture of a tombstone from Stanly County, North Carolina. It’s a weird tombstone without a single word, but there are circles that are imperfect with weird triangles. It looks weirdly contemporary, the way people are into shapes these days. This tombstone stuck with me when I saw it. It started coming to mind when I listened to Clyde Davenport’s piece of music. Larissa made paintings built off of the crude shapes of the tombstones, and those are at play in the video in this really beautiful way over the top of nature scenes. The thing that Gabe came up with in the end feels right for the music in a way. He was hearing the different elements of the reedy, breathy pump organ, and the clackiness of it, and the woody knocking sounds of the banjo. In some of the videos, he was imagining the sound of those images. I’m really curious if I were to show the video to Clyde Davenport what he would have made of it. [laughs]

SILY: What’s the inspiration behind the record title?

JD: The 90′s romcom While You Were Sleeping.

SILY: Is that really true?!?

JD: No, that’s not true. But the ballad “Man of Constant Sorrow”...ends with this line, “While you were sleeping, while you were slumbering / I am sleeping in the ground.” I pulled it out of that. I thought it was a beautiful idea. In some moment, I thought I had clarity on what the project was about: I felt like the project as a whole was emerging during this time of collective slumber. We’re all sort of checked out in our own little dazed worlds. It felt right. The music here is more dream world than real world. I liked the line in the ballad, and I liked the experience of what happens in the space of being asleep.

SILY: I’m sure you’ve played these tunes throughout your life, but are you going to change how you play them in the future based on these specific arrangements?

JD: Having a baby at home is a moment is not the most conducive to get out too much, but I’m definitely hoping to get some shows together, perhaps a little tour. I worked out a little band to perform this stuff, which has been kind of fun. Most of my public performance has been in a string band context, which is fun but has its own logic. [laughs] One of the fun pieces of this has been collaborating with people with little background in traditional music. They might listen to it but aren’t traditional musicians. Joe and Matt O’Connell have become a little bit of a local band. Joe can play pump organ, and Matt can play guitar and percussion. The arrangements are pretty straightforward, so it’s been fun to figure out how to make it work on a stage for an audience. I think it works pretty well; I’m enjoying it. I’ve slipped a little bit out of the usual string band form and context, so it feels a little more open-ended and inclusive. I can bring in sounds or people that feel pretty fresh that I haven’t worked with before. It’s open-ended enough that somebody can bring bass clarinet, and it will work with these settings. I’ve had a couple fun opportunities to play it with different people. My friend Andy Stack from Wye Oak, who can be plugged into anything, played percussion for a festival in Durham back in the summer with me. It’s very different from what Matt does.

SILY: Is there anything you’re working on in the short or long term?

JD: I have a project with my friend Cleek [Schrey], who plays on this album, and a long-time collaborator, Luke Richardson, which is more fiddles, banjos, and pump organ, which feels like very fresh interpretations of tunes. It feels a little more tune-ish, if that makes sense. I’m excited to get it out in the world.

I played a duo show with Jake Fussell back in July, which was a lot of fun. I think people enjoyed it. He was playing acoustic Spanish guitar and an old Gibson I have, and I was playing banjo and fiddle pieces. Maybe there’s more opportunity there. His approach to guitar playing, he knows the old ways of doing stuff but also has his own way. It felt good.

SILY: What material were you playing?

JD: Just a lot of traditional tunes. He occasionally writes instrumental pieces, but we were playing old folk songs from the South, and he had a song that Art Rosenbaum, the great artist and field recorder, recorded that we played. It was pretty listenable and musical. He and I have had similar paths and opportunities to spend time with older players. He’s created his own sound, and I’ve lived a little more in the traditional world, but we mesh nicely.

SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading that’s caught your attention?

JD: I don’t know if I’m enjoying this: I’m not a big Stephen King reader, but I’m reading The Dark Tower series. I’m kind of stuck in it, and I think I want a break. There are like 8 books, and they’re super long. Maybe it’s not worth mentioning.

SILY: It’s okay. I don’t think he’ll see this.

JD: Most of my waking time has been spent with my little baby. You can’t imagine what it’s gonna be like before [he’s born], and we’re in this phase now where there’s lots of smiling, and he’s making these gurgly noises. It’s very cute. I’m more interested in watching that than a lot of things.

SILY: Do you play for your child?

JD: Mmhmm. He’s gotten a good bit of exposure to the banjo already. He gets regular doses. The fiddle is a little intense. It’s loud, but it really draws his attention. You’re supposed to give babies tummy time, where you put them on their stomach and let them look at stuff. Someone gave us this book of totally psychedelic [images], like a bear with a swirl and blue eyes, pretty trippy stuff. There was a little phase where I had him listening to the Dead and looking at those images.

SILY: You’re raising him to be a Deadhead!

JD: Yeah, from the get-go. He went to his first show Friday night. Our neighbor had a poetry and music thing, and Joe O’Connell played an Elephant Micah set. It’s the perfect show for a 4-month-old. It was super chill. From all accounts, he was pretty into it.

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