How lost tapes are born
Strolling down the street. “Clara’s live karaoke” is written in beautiful calligraphy on a blackboard right outside a photography store. A green-haired girl wearing big, mint galoshes sat leisurely on a plastic chair, plays guitar and sings to a handful of alternative kids. Soft, country sounds appeared visible in the air, floating about beautifully like pastel-colored feathers, upon the visit of Zephyr to the backyard, where you’re plucking the chicken, delighted in the knowledge that tonight will be special. My heart peaceful and loving, my ears honored, but myself too shy to sit here and submit myself to the curiosity of passersby, like the rainbow-haired kids sat on the sidewalk around Clara, checking their phones.
So, I pretend to check out the variety of rechargeable batteries for sale in the store, before stealthily walking out to hide in the corner. The further I get, however, the music never seems to quiet down, like playing from inside me, and I keep walking. On the next left, I turn, going up the neighboring street. In my heart, a strange feeling of belonging. Strange in the sense that I did not see myself fit to the standards of this place, although I knew this is where I’m supposed to be.
Up the hill, no longer knowing why —or where I’d end up—, I pose a smile of proud relief, as can only the hard worker once the timekeeper rings six to welcome the evening. It is then that I notice the nombreux groups of redhead women coming opposite of me —, to visit Clara’s, I imagine, although her song had already dissipated. Three here, four there, ten in a military line up, and I wonder why there are so many of them. “Maybe because it’s Autumn,” the thought pops in my head.
One of the parties passes by me as a distant bell resounds loudly, one, two, twelve times. One of the girls says, “it’s 06:30h”, and I silently contest, “How come? It’s still so bright outside.” But as I reached my destination, a purpureal mantle rapidly covered the sky as the lampposts all lit up, revealing a plethora of different overgrown vest-pocket parks, with each its own broken playground pieces and twisted, cement or wooden benches.
The trees stood naked and rotten, reeking of old; themselves older than any soul circling around, of people ignorant to their own environment, blinded somehow. If not for tufts of resilient weeds reaching my hips in height, grass laid dead, some turned to dust on the dirt ground, here and there covered by a swarm of brittle sticks and leaves seemingly old as time.
That which once upon a time was supposed to be revered as a valuable remnant of nature now stayed as open coffins, invisible to most though screaming a more than clear message. For what it’s worth, I doubt these parks have seen human presence in years, if not decades, despite all the people that, annoyed, dodged me like I was an obstacle, grunting and puffing and stomping hard in their shiny dress shoes — while I observed this timeworn tree that looked away, as if ashamedly avoiding my gaze.
On the other side of the street is another of these parks, and I’m compelled to cross and reach, finally, my goal: a wooden bench missing the whole back part. To the left of the sit, a name and a date were carved. I smile. I sit down.
MPB starts playing, resounding, just like a church bell. I look around and find it coming from an indoor gym of sorts, to which flock a number of people, welling up in heaps from the never-ending line of parked cars. It’s an interesting sight, and I draw it, in the same shabby notebook where I’m writing this story right now.
I doubt “Clara’s Karaoke” ever existed, but I did see it, once, in a dream. I saw the photography store, too, and the alternative kids, and the redheads, and the mini-parks, and the gym, and the angry business people that could never say an “excuse me”. It was all a dream, and I wrote about half of that story right after waking up, until I realized I was about to throw up from a hangover. So, I did that, forgot about the dream, and didn’t finish the story at the time.
It was only two years later that I would come to do so, one day I was strolling about and came across that one same exact photography store. Same shelves, same rechargeable batteries, same deals. Clara wasn’t playing at the front, but a loud speaker somewhere played Johnny Cash, and that’s good enough. Compelled to see how far the similarities went, to my prophetic dream that now I remembered like a fresh memory, I turned the corner then turned again, going up the hill as a church bell rang faintly in the distance, and the most beautiful redhead girl came right through me with a ravishing smell of lilacs. I asked a man standing by a drugstore, what time it was and he said “it’s 06:30h.” I nodded and kept going. Empty lots covered in overgrown, dried up greens were here and there, so saddened, shriveled up trees, looking naked and miserable.
Wasn’t long until I reached the main avenue. Poorly-kept vest-pocket parks every two blocks, and a (wannabe) greenish overpass. “Músicas para Churrasco Vol.1” was playing in a bando-looking gym that a handful of people were walking into. From the corner of my eye I noticed an ancient tree, thin and bent like looking away from me. I stopped on my tracks, a rich-looking man bumped into me; neither of us said sorry. A couple more people wearing business suits dodged me like a fire hydrant, while I looked around for that one wooden bench and... there it was!
Only a slat was missing in the back part, but even the engraving was there. It said “Isabel❤”, no date. So, I sat on the bench and wrote the whole story from the beginning, finishing it, finally.
After that, I got home, brewed some coffee and again forgot about all that: there was a thousand-page book to edit, and I needed my full attention at that for the rest of the week.
It’s what? five years later now? Maybe more than that, even, and I find both writings in my records. With them comes a realization in whispery thought: “as to THE LOST TAPES, this is pure essence.”
I’m not a stranger to chronicles. At this point, I suppose many of you are familiar with my anecdotes and cheap verses. But did you know I’ve been a journaler my whole life, for that matter? I have shelves upon shelves of battered moleskin notebooks, in which I’ve been recording my day-to-day thoughts for over a decade and a half now. —whatever life I had before that does not exist lol
If you’ve ever came across “She-Wolf and the Rapid Decline of My Mental Health”, you probably know how this record-keeping works, and how, in a broader perspective, it represents much of my presence on the internet. But in sum, what I can make sense of, in my ramblings, is what I serialize and publish under the nom de guerre of “THE LOST TAPES”, and a lot of people like to read those.
I enjoy it, too. How could I not, right? At this point it is an active part of my life. But something I gotta say, and I which you would listen, is that I’m far from being the biggest fan of how it turned out. Not that it has actually changed, empirically, throughout all this time; but the way I view it and the way it’s been received both have, and that makes me feel strange.
Back in early Augustus I wrote this in a string of tweets to announce the 50th installment of THE LOST TAPES:
"'THE LOST TAPES Vol.50: nothing special', is finally here, marking a pretty huge milestone. In October 2021, 'THE LOST TAPES Vol.01' was released, and a bookful of words has been published under the title since then. Though now, looking back at these almost two years of activity, I feel absolutely nothing. My understanding of what this series means has evolved over all this time, and now more than ever I see it as a lesser version of my literature. The appeal is there, I know that, but not the incentive. If others didn't care about it, I'd have no problem axing it[...]"
As you can see, I was down bad that day. But, it doesn’t invalidate the feeling. THE LOST TAPES has been the head office of the NIGHTMARE MIRROR blog from the get-go. It’s always impressed me how easily people are attracted to it, and how easy it is for them to dismiss everything else in there. I believe that, in the days of today, if you give people a bite-sized option, they will not think twice about choosing it over any other integral alternative. Why’s that? Maybe they “value their time” too much, or can not focus their attention in more than one snippet of content at a time —; not as a chronic issue, but more of a vicious condition. I would not be the first person in the world to say attention spans are diminishing, and so is standard quality in popular consumed content, and I’m pretty sure we all know that. Nevertheless, it’s impressive to me how this trend has come to affect even old-school blog consumers. Even worse, it puts me in a very weird position knowing that I’m contributing to it. But am I really the one to blame here?
Long ago, the series was circa its 20th volume, Duck told me he loved it, and I should totally make a book with those entries. Flattered, I said “who knows? We shouldn’t get our hopes up, but when we get to the 50th or 100th volume I might consider it.” That was because of the amount of content that would entail, and indeed, a “bookful” of words has been published under the umbrella. But, reading the book, there’s shit on every road I took. And I know just so much damn more today.
Firstly, something my readers seemingly often fail to realize is just how unimportant those literary fragments are in the bigger picture. They are, at most, drafts— crumpled paper balls or the start of synopses never finished, put in a folder and forgotten about;— and many of them don't really have a future as any kind of bigger piece. Secondly, lost tapes are snacks, and can never be, by themselves, a full meal. Consider the series a primordial soup, from which other pieces can come from: full poems, stories, novels. What’s in there is too primal to be beautiful, to BE, per se; but can be worked into something much better. The lucky bits, at least.
“The New Bonnie and Clyde” came from THE LOST TAPES, so did like half of the entries in Wayne and Me. Most one-shot pieces laying around that blog and even this blog have come from it, and this is not going to stop anytime soon. Thing is, there’s an audience for better-worked pieces, but it pales in comparison to how much more attention that amorphous soup gets, solely because of the format.
If I stopped doing it, no doubt, I would lose many readers. But doing it, I feel like I’m betraying my own self. So, what am I supposed to do in this lose-lose situation?
“[...]THE LOST TAPES will live as long as NIGHTMARE MIRROR does, it is the soul of that project and I can't deny it[...]” Is what I wrote in the last tweet of the bunch, and it comes across as such a sulky kind of acceptance. What I had forgotten about then, though, and am reminded of now, is the fact that I love my blogs and everything that’s in them. I love the things I make, and I love when people love them too. Doesn’t matter how they come, I know that I’m always keeping true to myself somehow, and that knowledge should be enough to take me into the future with a chin up and a heart full of hope.
As for THE LOST TAPES, from the story you’ve read at the beginning, know that this primordial soup is me, and this series is my life. Be it in dream or out in the open, living however I’m needed to, I won’t stop being me in all shapes and forms. And I’m proud of it (today, at least).
If you enjoy my writing, thanks a lot. I do so, too! We should be friends! And please don’t feel bad if you like THE LOST TAPES, they’re supposed to be likeable. Today, I felt like it was important to talk about this series and assure some of its future, since not long ago a great milestone was reached; but also to cease absolutely this wicked idea of ever turning it into a book. That would be cursed, can you imagine?