Postscript - Gift of Ravens

Read the story here. The following is pretty spoiler free, so do what you will with order and enjoyment.


The inspiration for this story is my own beloved Telecaster. It is a 2010 Telecaster Blackout Deluxe, a three pickup variation of the venerable axe, draped entirely in black. She is a beauty.

That guitar is the reason I name my guitars. I'm not one to give them just regular female names. No, these are items of arcane ability, devices to amplify the unseen, summoners of the hidden stories.

I was playing Dawn of War 2 while I was thinking about what to name this great relic I had fell upon. In the game you can find items of great power with names like Calgar's Bane, Shroud of the Emperor, Fist of Dorn, all that fantasy goodness.

I felt that my black Telecaster needed a legend about how I came to own it. The guitar comes from the spirit world itself, by way of the trickster Raven, and I would create that legend. Naturally, the name Gift of Ravens fit perfectly.

The first line,

          "I was born Fred, son of the seventies and alcoholic parents."

is the result of trying to breach into songwriting. An abject failure as a lyric, but isn't it a great first line for a story? I thought so. Heavy on the tropes maybe, but it would work to serve my purpose, style, and the experimental parts of my story.

Telling this story in the first person present was fun. This was the prime experiment. Have back story and sub plots, but do not refer to them in any way other than a completely hallucinatory way. Some of those elements are fairly simple to decode, but others are not there to decode. They are completely hidden by the character's own perceptions. Just generally, it is a great way to go tell the flow of the story.

Working with first person allows the writer to explore the way we all lie to ourselves. Fred/Thunderbird is no different. His senses lie to him and his mind and desires lie to him. It is a dismal outlook, but there is honesty down there. I will say no more because I wish those elements withheld remain so, in service of style. The work stands as it is, for what it is.

Now, as briefly as I can a few words about how I wrote the story. I had two major scenes in mind, and a loose approximation of the ending. I write sequentially, so I held back on those scenes as I pushed my character as far as I could. This was the scene where he finds the guitar in the trash pile, and the next when he smashes it and hurls it into the river. By hanging those moments ahead they worked like a carrot on a stick. I wanted to write those scenes, but I had to get there first.

I wrote this before knowing that I have ADHD. I'm not sure that is amazing in and of itself, but it is important. Those of us with ADHD have no trouble coming up with ideas like these, but we do have great difficulty in completing them. I have countless stories I got well off the ground, but couldn't sustain flight to a safe landing. This piece is a demonstration that it is possible for me to make the waking dreams real.

Hope is a real town in BC. I find it a romantic little place, a relic of the British Columbia gold rush. Its not much more than a truck stop theses days. A little tourist stop on the way to better places up the Fraser Canyon. It was always a fuel stop for us as a family when we would road trip to the Cariboo. Still is. We always stop for a bite or fuel, maybe a short break to stretch legs.

It always struck me as a town that has always been a sort of place you never go to, always you just pass through. Up the river a couple kilometers is the town of Yale. Yale was once the largest city on the coast, larger even than San Francisco at the time. This would have been long ago in the mid 1800's. I fancy that little Hope has always been second fiddle to some other nearby town, Chilliwack, Merritt, Princeton, Manning Park. Everyone is always going somewhere else.

Legends beget legends, and this one should be no different. In a past life I was involved in film. One project we did was a movie within a movie (a legend in its own way) called "Catholic Cheerleaders for Satan." it was a crazy silly thing we shot up in the woods near Hope. The gang of us, 16 or so. actors filmmakers and friends stayed at a motel in town for the long weekend. A legend started to crop up.

A few things started to go missing. Our DOP had his brand new iPhone stolen. What made it so strange is that it was with like ten grand worth of camera gear, none of which was missing.

Other stories piled up, sweaters missing, I thought the maids had taken a good pull from the bottle of whiskey in my room. Most of it was just us misplacing things. The iPhone never turned up but I'm pretty sure everything else did. The whiskey was probably my imagination.

Well, imaginations being what they are I kind of ran with it. Hope itself is jealous of all the people who just pass through, so she takes a little souvenir from whoever passes through. So they will maybe stay to look for it, or so she will be remembered. The whole town is haunted by this jealousy. It only served to amplify the romantic notions I have for the town.

If you ever make it over to our little corner of Canada, please stop in Hope. Have some lunch, take a walk. Leave her a little souvenir of your visit.

Thanks for reading
Pete