Oona sits in the warm Long Island sun, drinking a jasmine soda beside the stainless-steel recycling can, earbeads spooling a Y-cast, audio only, Y is not something they can process for long without headaches, and they spend enough time as it is watching remote visuals for work.
This Y-cast, though, No Ripcord, is interesting, interviews with people who have had strange or wild or frightening or lovely spiritual encounters, in places all over the physical and virtual worlds. This episode is an urbex couple building a sculpture tower out of items they took from abandoned churches, storefront temples and old basilicas and wherever, a few of the places Weren’t totally churches, squeaks one of the couple—the audio on this episode is really substandard—but they were holy sites anyway and we felt the holiness there, so we—
::MESSAGE::TIDAL BRANDS WHITMAN EDWARD::MESSAGE::
Pausing the Y-cast, they set the soda can aside, take the work call from Edward Whitman at Tidal Brands: Tidal Brands is installing an indoor splashpark in a live-in mall in Tennessee, and booked Grave Ague to play the VIP and donors’ opening. Now Edward Whitman is turning blue over Grave Ague’s hospitality rider, which is mostly standard and nothing to turn blue over, so their job this minute is to let some oxygen into the process while sidecalling Grave Ague’s management to let the team leader know the possibility exists of an onsite hiccup, but again, nothing to turn blue over—
UNICORN THIS IS A CONTRACTUAL CHANGE?
WILL BE NP. MEETING W/JIMMY FROM GRAVE AGUE @1300 ILL MSG YOU AFTER
SO OUR HOSTING ROLE IS CLEAR? THANK YOU UNICORN
NP
::MESSAGE::END::MESSAGE
—letting in oxygen enough to keep everyone breathing easy: they are known for that, for keeping it easy, staying calm no matter how outlandish or demanding the circumstances might be. Some fixes are a little harder, and some are truly difficult, like that Sunshine Scene trainwreck, keeping their crew together and functioning, but mostly they are easy, like this one; like changing their work name from “Oona” to “Unicorn” was easy, no one ever spells “Oona” correctly anyway, and “16,” they liked the idea of joining an unseen herd of magical beings, wasn’t that the plan in the first place? to work with artists, performers, DJs, getting everybody everything they need to make whatever magic happen?
But will there be any magic at that splashpark? Or on the Gigglewatt tour, the Gigglewatt people are offering a booking bonus, but the invite sits unanswered . . . Taking up their soda again, a long sweet swallow, squinting against the round red sun, flipping back to the Y-cast—
singers bird watchers and of course artists, we feel we’re honoring the artists by reinstalling their work, a lot of effort to transport it safely from the site, that club’s just ruins, it was, it was a real
Would you say it was a struggle?
Oh definitely, definitely! But heaven on earth you know it’s all just a beautiful struggle
—and tipping the can, the last of that sweetness, heading back inside the townhouse, ceiling fan whirring, their other phone purring on the tabletop desk—
::MESSAGE::A WALK IN THE PARK SORIN MEGHAN::MESSAGE::
—and “OK,” softly and aloud, pausing the podcast again, that name is familiar, why? scrolling as they answer—
HELLO MEGHAN SORIN THIS IS UNICORN16 WHATS YOUR EVENT