With Chapter 19, The Dwelling HALF WAY THERE COMPETITION begins!
Two teenage look-a-likes of Iggy Pop's Stooges smoked rollies outside the Ludlow dive bar. Mioko pushed past them into Machine City and its cavernous collection of automotive fetish. Darlene, a vampy goth bartender instantly recognizes her.
"He just stepped out, hon," Darlene said and smiled humanely like you would to a crippled dog.
Mioko glanced around all the same. "Alright. Well, can you tell him to drop in on me, I need a resupply."
"Sure. Hey, can I get you a club soda or something?"
"No, I'm cool. I gotta get going."
She would have liked nothing more than to pull a stool and purse her lips round a tiny black straw, but that was an easy slide towards the bathrooms and her old motley pals, the 100cc syringe, and his ne'er-do-well partner, the rubber tourniquet. Darlene must have caught Mioko's eyes wander back to the old shooting grounds, because empathy was creeping onto her face. It wasn't a look Mioko much liked.
"Mioko..." Darlene hesitated.
"Yeah?"
"Can I ask you a personal thing?"
"Shoot."
"You quit cold turkey, right? No AA. No methadone. Nothing?"
"It's the only way to do it."
Darlene looked off, lost for a moment.
"Right. Alright."
Mioko put her bag back on her shoulder.
"It's not like I'm, you know, I just dabble in a little blow here and there--" Mioko knew too well the anxiety, and eventual downright self-loathing of wanting to get clear.
"You call me if you wanna talk about anything, Darlene."
Darlene, winked at her, trying to brighten her own mood.
"Yeah. Alright. I will."
Darlene watches her go, sipping her pint of pilsner.
In the center of a pockmarked road filled with quarried Belgian blocks, below towering cast iron facades from the late eighteen-hundreds, a skeletal teen jumped a tiny trampoline with a Gibson Flying V strapped to her front. Jake sat on an apple box with a Hasselblad in hand in the middle of SoHo’s Green Street, yelling at the top of his lungs, "One, two, three, AIR GUITAR! One, two, three, AIR GUITAR! Yeah, WORK IT!"
Surrounded by assistants, agency producers and stylists, Jake snapped away at the skeletal teen as she leapt into the air at his command.
"One, two, three, AIR GUITAR! Great, great, great, grey, grey, gre, gr, gr, GREAT! Check her out guys... HO!!"
Jake tapped his impeccable white tennis shoes at a rapid-fire pace as he continued to yell, frantically trying to amp the languid model. Mioko stood at the field monitor, scrutinizing the shots as they popped on-screen.
"One, two, three --"
The model wavered. Disoriented, she took a step in the air but didn’t find the trampoline under foot. She collapses backwards hitting the side with a thud.
Jake was instantly enraged.
"Oh, that's it!"
Jake jerked his arm forward to throw the fifty-thousand dollar camera, but was intercepted by Mioko's palm. Jake stormed towards the model as the assistants and stylists leaned to help her.
"Would somebody please call her agency and tell them to force feed these daughters of Auschwitz before sending them over!"
Mioko pulled water from a cooler and headed for the trampoline. Jake grabbed Mioko's arm as she passes, completely disregarding that water might be some kind of urgent necessity.
"Fuck. This. Shit." Jake hissed, "I'm gonna slip out and do forty-five minutes of cardio. Text me when she's up and ready to shoot again."
The assistants did their best to lay the poor model out on the trampoline as Mioko leaned in and poured water down the pale girl’s throat.
In the absence of their fearless leader, the photo crew broke for lunch at eleven-fifteen. Mioko was stuck between a pair of prop stylists discussing the injustices of a boyfriend’s public urination ticket. A petite powerhouse of an art director was perched across the craft table from Mioko. Replacing the salad tongs, she reached down and picked up one of two identical black smartphones sitting between their plates. Turning the phone on, the screen saver was an arresting black and white image of three tattooed kids intertwined inside a dive bar toilet stall. The two girls kissed, while the boy shot up. The art director, looked at the image closely then realized Mioko's eyes were on her.
"Oh, I'm sorry," the art director quickly spat. "Is this yours? We have the same phone."
The art director reluctantly handed it back, but stopped before letting go of the device entirely, so that their index fingers lingered on the glass surface in cramped proximity. Mioko could feel her finger buzzing from the heat.
"Is that your photograph?" the art director asked.
Mioko nodded, embarrassed.
The art director finally let go.
"Are there more?"
Mioko reluctantly unlocked the phone and handed back a gallery. Flipping through, the art director pushed back her silver locks, squinting at Mioko conspiratorially.
"We have a concept on the table for 'Lamerica' that could launch from this style. Is that something you could replicate, commercially?"
Jake strutted back into the fray.
"I'm back!" He announced, "What the fuck are we waiting on now?"
Jake turned to Mioko as if she was the one who had hit the breaks.
"Mioko?"
Jake started clapping his hands like he was corralling kindergarteners.
"Let's do this!"
He headed towards the monitor. Knowing she only had seconds before the screeching started, Mioko leaned in to the art director.
"I think I could replicate it."
"Great. I’ll get your from the call sheet and send you the boards. Let's talk tomorrow."
Mioko couldn't believe it, even though this was surely just an audition. She tried not to notice as the art director took her salad to finish lunch with the rest of her agency team. An audition she would undoubtedly fail.
BEHIND THE KEYBOARD
Making a living as an artist is a tricky proposition. Especially when it comes to making commercial art. It’s something I’ve worked with for two decades, since I was 19 years old. Squeezing your artistic self into a client or agencies idea of what they think you are and what they want to get out of your abilities can be a fraught exercise to put it mildly. The funny thing is, living in a place like New York, your really have no other option, and when the work slows often find yourself contorting your art even further to make rent. Mioko feels this intimately. I don’t want to say too much here, because I want to hear your thoughts for the HALF WAY THERE COMPETITION.
Beginning about a decade ago, when the film world and photography world intersected with the democratization of the moving image, I got more and more chances to work in tandem with photo teams and see how their reality was affected by this contortion phenomena. That gave me ample opportunity to get a feel for the challenges Mioko faced.
A still from a commercial I put months of effort into that got killed before it was released. It’s rare, but it happens.
Yours In The Chain,
Doug Karr
SPECIAL THANKS to my wife @zenmommas for years of support during the writing process, @ericvancewalton for his trailblazing, inspired collaboration and incredible guidance, @andrarchy for his mind blowing insight and friendship, @bakerchristopher for being an inspiration as a human artist and bro, @complexring for his brilliance and enthusiasm, Masie Cochran, Taylor Rankin and @elenamoore for their skillful help in editing the manuscript, and to @opheliafu for the fantastic illustrations she created exclusively for the novel's launch on Steemit and to Elena Megalos for her wonderful character illustrations. I’d also like to thank Eddie Boyce, Jamie Proctor, Katie Mustard, Alan Cumming, Danai Gurira, Stephan Nowecki, Ron Simons, Dave Scott, Alden Karr, Missy Chimovitz, my dad Andy Karr and late mother Wendy, and everyone else who helped lead me to this moment.
I am a Brooklyn based writer, film & commercial director, and crypto-enthusiast, my projects include @HardFork-series an upcoming narrative crypto-noir and my novel Dwelling will soon be premiering exclusively on Steemit, and you can check out more of my work at dougkarr.com, piefacepictures.com, and www.imdb.com/name/nm1512347
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