Episode 18

Episode 18 - Rift in Time

Thanks for Hitting Play and then listening to Hit Play. This week: moon mom, final fantasies, grandfather greetings!

Some of the plays in this episode may contain sensitive topics. For more specific content warnings, check out the timecodes below.

If you like what you hear and want to support the New York Neo-Futurists, consider making a donation at nynf.org, or joining our Patreon. Patreon membership gives you access to bonus content like video plays! We’d really appreciate any support in these difficult times. Contributing to our Patreon helps us continue to pay our artists.

Take care of yourself, be Garfield but swap lasagna and Mondays, and share it with us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

1:25 [CW: death] - Going back to that tree to record what I had been meaning to write because this time, it does feel a bit different by Julia Melfi

3:48 - A review of ff7/ff7 remake with time distortion by Shelton Lindsay

6:27 [CW: death, drinking] - 3 attempts at sitting outside my apt and drinking around my grandfather's 100th birthday by Rob Neill

10:50 - Audio Crime provided by Cecil Baldwin

Our logo was designed by Shelton Lindsay

Our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean

Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean, Julia Melfi, and Léah Miller

Take Care!

Transcript

Episode 18: Rift in Time

Show Intro

Swoopy electronic instrumental music plays underneath.

Julia: 18. Rift in Time. I’m Julia Melfi—a New York Neo-Futurist. While our on-going, ever-changing, late-night show, The Infinite Wrench, is on hold for the foreseeable future, we wanted a place to keep making art for you. And thus, Hit Play was born!

If you’re already a fan of The New York Neo-Futurists, or any of our sibling companies, hello! We can’t wait to reach for the same gallon of milk as you in the grocery store, graze hands, lock eyes, and fall madly in love. If this is totally new to you—welcome to it!

We play by four rules: We are who we are, we’re doing what we’re doing, we are where we are, and the time is now. Simply put: we tell stories, and those stories are our own. Everything that you hear is actually happening. So if we tell you we're recording while winking after every sentence, we’re really recording and winking after every sentence. Like me. Can you tell?

Some of the plays in this episode may contain sensitive topics. For more specific content warnings, check the timecodes in the show notes.

Julia: And now, Shelton will Run the Numbers!

Shelton: Thanks Julia! Hi, I’m Shelton Lindsay, a New York Neo-Futurist.

In this episode we’re gonna bring you 3 plays by Julia Melfi, me–Shelton Lindsay, and Rob Neill. And an audio crime provided by Cecil Baldwin!

That brings us to 76 experiments on Hit Play. Enjoy!

Music winds down.

Play 1: Going back to that tree to record what I had been meaning to write because this time, it does feel a bit different (1:25)

Background noises of Julia recording outside at Prospect Park with other people around.

Julia: Going back to that tree to record what I had been meaning to write because this time, it does feel a bit different. GO!

Background noise complemented by chordal underscore.

Julia: Mother’s Day morning I wake unexpectedly at 5:58 AM both fully awake and fully in a dream state. The Moon was up and we locked eyes. I didn’t know that was a thing we could do. She looked paper flat against the blue.

Morning Moon doesn’t cast the same halo of light. I bunched myself up in the corner of my bed and looked at her long as she traveled across my window, without straining my eyes. I had this knowing that the moon was my mother. Not the embodiment of my actual mother—but that the moon herself had born me, and I was her alien child.

This weekend will be 13 years since my actual mom died. I remember her body lying as round as the moon was flat. At this point that number feels very abstract to me. There are things I do to mark the date, but—as I’m saying more and more these days—time is not linear. And some days are, for no apparent reason, kind of hard, while most others feel kinda normal.

I’ve seen hours pass by in a second.

I’ve forgotten whole months in a single bite.

I’ve felt a breath last as long as my life.

For a time, there was even some dispute as to the actual date that she died. The 15th or the 16th? Is 2 or 3 or 4 or 5:58 AM any different than the day before or the day after? Or the day after that?

The following questions pop around the stereo speakers, sounding like different places.

Wasn’t it just yesterday that it was March and I drunkenly hugged Robin and Rob goodbye on 9th Avenue?

Is it really almost June?

Have I really been in place for 72 days as I record this play in the park?

Am I really only 27?

Are you really listening?

Could this goose get any closer to me?

Is that music coming from the gazebo, or from somewhere much much much much further away?

Is my butt that numb, or am I part of this tree?

What does it mean to be alive at this time, in this age, when you could be born at any time, in any age, and some of us are not?

Was it just me, or could I see every shadow and crevice and crater of my mother in perfect detail as she crossed my bedroom window and put me back to sleep?

Music fades out.

Play 2: A review of ff7/ff7 remake with time distortion (3:48)

Shelton: A review of Final Fantasy 7/Final Fantasy 7 Remake with time distortion. GO!

Electronic cover of the Final Fantasy theme music plays as intro and then fades into underscore levels.

Shelton: It’s 1997/2020 and I’m eleven/33 living with my parents picking sticks up in their yard, playing Final Fantasy 7/Remake on my ps1/ps4 when they let me/when I want to.

I dream of a world where I will be old/safe enough to go out to bar and clubs and make friends and be gay/be happy. But I'm here now, with little to do, so I escape into a fantasy world filled with monsters and magic and materia.

The game is AMAZING/good. and I lose whole weekends/weeks playing it.

While playing I wonder what my life will be like when I am older. What will the world look like, what will I do? See, video games are not just about escaping into a world of make believe, it’s about escaping into your own dreams, where you can become something else just by flicking a switch. Makes you feel like you're powerful out there in the real world. That life is an adventure, as long as you frame it that way.

And you look at the things in your room and start calling them your inventory. You get on your bike and you think this adds plus 5 to movement speed. You start picking up those sticks from the yard and spinning them around yourself imagining it's a broad sword and you’re a warrior.

And then you think about mortality in video games and how it always seems that you can come back from the dead and you wonder what tthat would look like if there were spells for healing, and spells for bringing the dead back, and you wish there were, because so many die before they are supposed to and you wish you had a way to help them, but you feel powerless and small.

So you keep escaping into a game where you can button mash your way to victory. Trying to heal a land that’s being polluted by corporations helmed by President Shinra, a president that cares more for profit margins than people.

It’s only a video game you think as a kid, but a video game is just a reflection of reality you think as an adult. You're 11/33 and maybe some questions can be answered tomorrow. So you go back upstairs, and turn on the Sony t.v. and turn on the playstation and sit down on the same warm brown leather sofa, and load up Final Fantasy 7/remake and dream the day away.

Music crescendos and plays out.

Play 3: 3 attempts at sitting outside my apt and drinking around my grandfather's 100th birthday (6:27)

Rob: 3 attempts at sitting outside my apartment and drinking around my grandfather's 100th birthday. GO!

Woosh of outside noises, cars going by, wind. Rob says this list underneath number one: "one truck sitting outside the Starbucks, one USPS truck, UPS truck, three FedEx trucks, 1 semi, a box truck with no discernible markings, 1 2 3 4 6 pickup trucks, a Duane Reade truck, too loud". All of the text is layered and sometimes distorted.

Rob: One. First I wanted to start recording but there’s this truck just sitting right outside my apartment, idling loudly. Course the plan wasn't that it was going to be this cold out this windy this loud this is more of a draft of a rough draft of a rough draft of... I tried this before tried to write something like this more than once and failed and will fail again. So loud.

Background noises continue. Sirens go by. Eventually fades into Pietro’s “You'll Find Old Dixeyland In France” accordion music from 1919.

Two. I'm looking at this picture of us. I don't remember exactly when it was, but I was pretty little, like under 10, and we're all, it's me my grandfather and my grandmother and we're all wearing some kind of pattern, and my grandfather is wearing stripes and plaid (stripes and checks), and he has a cigar in his mouth and he's wearing this amazing glasses, and he is filling up what I believe is some kind of fertilizer or some kind of pesticide tank, that we're going to spray somewhere around the property. My grandmother's in the picture too, she's the one that looks the happiest of us all. I look a little skeptical, as I put water into the can, and my grandfather is attentive making sure it's all happening as it should. Looking at it now, sure, he's smoking a cigar and focusing on the task that I'm only kind of.

The following line is repeated and layered over itself with some distortion.

Looking at it now, I can't get over how fantastic (amazing) those pants are.

Three. ...asking if I'm sitting down and I'm thinking oh my God this is going to be terrible, and I didn't know what was coming next, and he told me that my grandfather had suddenly passed away (this was a while ago) we were all just shocked... he was such a generous and (yesterday was his 100th birthday) joyful man, (he spoke) and it seems like (he spoke German from the war and Spanish from the candy house) I didn't get to really know him, but I knew him in a good way–I knew him for twenty-some years. (He also really loved) He'd like to drink wine out of a box or a giant jug. He liked Jello.

Background noises continue. Pietro’s “You'll Find Old Dixeyland In France” accordion music from 1919 fades back in.

And I drank whiskey Bourbon and Rye over the three attempts.

Three (continued). He loved playing songs, particularly patriotic songs, and he’d play them on the piano or the accordion. When we were kids we would parade around the neighborhood in Wisconsin, and in and out of houses with him leading, and all of us singing and banging on pots… (there are clouds in the dark night sky that are... like someone dumped a bag of cotton balls into an ink pit. ink pit? no ink well, I don't know…)

What are you hearing? (there's another bus)

Right now I don’t hear an ambulance anymore

I do not hear a truck idling (I hope to see you soon)

there is some traffic (after you get home)

Some bikers, some of the shops are open

You hear all that?

Background noises fade into just the music, then the music fades.

Audio Crime with Cecil Baldwin (10:50)

Sound effect of camera zooming in and focusing.

Cecil: Audio Crime. GO!

Cecil: Thirty seconds of actual crime. In actual time. Lee-bleep. Using illegally purchased medical supplies.

Sound of package being opened and clattering. Something rips. Rustling. More opening and ripping sounds.

Cecil: Why did you do it?

Someone: So, most pharmacies don't keep this gauge of needle in stock and I can't exactly haul ass to the one location in Manhattan that does carry them right now. So why wouldn't I buy them in bulk online from a shady out-of-state retailer?

Sound effect of camera zooming in and focusing.

Show Outro (12:01)

Dreamy electronic instrumental music plays underneath.

Julia: Thanks for Hitting Play and then listening to Hit Play. If you liked what you heard, subscribe to the show and tell a friend! If you want to support the New York Neo-Futurists in other ways, consider making a donation at nynf.org, or joining our Patreon–Patreon.com/NYNF. Patreon membership gives you access to bonus content like video plays and livestreams. And if this episode gets over 1,000 downloads, we'll order one of our Patreon supporters a pizza on us. We’d really appreciate any support in these difficult times. Contributing to our Patreon helps us continue to pay our artists.