5: Shadow

Ikarus ------ they had read the greek myths as children in a volume of lushly illustrated reductions with a pallid moral bent one story that stuck with them and i would act as a kind of motif adorning their lives was that of icarus for what reason this particular story caught their imagination is unclear perhaps it had been the illustrations that dreading a fine line between pathos and battles were no doubt good fodder for once so young still grappling with the ambiguities of emotional life or maybe it was something deeper something that vibrated like the painted sun against the glaring white borders of all that was left unsaid ineffable yet indisputable but then again it could have been something altogether different the first sounding of the motif came with an adolescent foray into ornithology and more precisely the interest though some would say obsession with wax wings their bedroom soon became something of an aviary with posters self-developed photographs models and what their mother would describe as the carb eight immaculately taxidermed specimens it was thus a surprise to many that they chose to major in mechanical engineering though the fact that they chose deadless college may now not seem so surprising after a middling academic career that seemed to evaporate as quickly as it had been poured one of the few scenes a stage with them was an inopportune game of truth or dare there was a rule opposed to sharing personal information on this night their guard was in absentia and they let out a hurried and trembling you fatherless and featherless at that unexpectedly so what so what do you want to do what do you want to be that's the question shaken by this in front of a circle of could be listeners they summoned from the empty vault invent what come on there's nothing new under the sun no you're wrong no no you're wrong you've got to look into the sun not under the sun god look in to the sun to find what's new this naturally was not how they replied but through the auto-heroicizing filter of memory they like to imagine their answer with a response suited to provenance unclear as to what their invention would be or even if they had mental dead said time stared blankly on until one day attempting to repair a lackluster scooter fan with just a pocket knife and a spark the glaring need for more robust suitable versatile and transportable tools became apparent it was then that the germ of an idea started to grow roots they would design no invent a pocket tool that could do everything not just cut and screw it would be a whole toolkit in one light but heavy duty the initial designs looked like birds the plier head had a long metal beak interrupted by an eye bolt attaching the wire cutters to the main head the handles were wings in their imagination opening and closing in a flapping motion as they demonstrated the smooth folding mechanism to anyone who would give them the time on the prototypes they even stamped a layered feather-like pattern though this would later disappear mainly due to expense they're perhaps also due to that ever niggling will to less as the logo and inspiration for their new invention they chose from the book they had admired so long ago the image of icarus his wing upturned as it melted in the heat of the sun sending him plunging to the depths for the name after considering several variations on the bird theme they settled on burning wing it took several years of redesigning and redefining to get a marketable product and a few more years after that to establish themselves as a brand they started out as a mail order only company serving a close-knit community of gear heads and sunny paranoid survivalists but after a few fortuitous encounters they finally made some headway eventually breaking into the family bracket of sales most likely due to their endorsement by the then much coveted celebrity rex brendan the scene the market began to expand at a cutthroat pace and foreign excesses eventually bloated the cottage niche with unsupportable expectations of authenticity burning wing founder heart came to fold the nail in the coffin came when a shadow company from somewhere in the east filed for copyright infringement claiming that they had a patent for the spring-loaded folding tool summoning as evidence a dubiously ornate certificate apparently issued by their home country's patenting office and a somewhat scheduling postmarked envelope containing the original designs of the invention in question predating the inception of burning wing by some years their initial confidence in the authenticity of their invention and the reasonable doubt in shadowfire's claims weakened and soon disappeared altogether as they witnessed the competition bleeding into their market and eventually engulfing it the loss of face far exceeded the financial loss they had been erased also they felt though shadow fire was later uncovered as a vampire brand one that imitates and then fakes precedence draining the life from the original company and then invading its market with its spectral products the good news didn't reach them at least not in any meaningful way for they were at this point battling a new shadow that had appeared on a routine that is routinely prescribed by their insurance policy x-ray of their lungs it occurred to them now that the years of grinding metal in a poorly if at all ventilated workshop may not have been the best idea but the exigencies of youth know nothing of the impasse caught in this net they felt an intense yearning for freedom but not the one they knew would be coming soon they wanted to feel it before the true freedom took them back to a state of statelessness climbing to a height of ten thousand feet in an old twin engine that felt barely able to hold itself together with gaffered windows screwless jittery floor plates and what appeared to be bullet holes in the fuselage they felt a sense of calm radiating a kind of bliss that seemed to link them to the clouds the sun beams and if they had existed to the angels themselves but soon time forgets to pay heed to eternity and so as they rolled out the plane for the brief freedom that the fool gave them they thanked the sky and they thanked the earth for all they were about to become it was a local park ranger who located the impasto remains an abstract on the first viewing a little more on the second and as the sun stains the docile clouds of blood orange with a heavy sigh he radioed back we've got an icarus Gladhand -------- it's all dash cam footage so it's a little shaky but basically what's happening is the old school bus in front is dragging an effigy of the discredited behavioral psychologist ernesto glandthand from the rear towbar in much the same way as the newlyweds getaway vehicle drags a cluster of tin cans grating and clattering into marital bliss but gladhand's flat cardboard body is relatively non-sonorous as it scuttles over the summer's hot asphalt what is making a noise and is the reason this video has gone viral is the three and a half inch loudspeaker embedded in the approximate region of gladharm's mouth originally installed to emit a selection of the more famous and now utterly disproved passages from her chief works city mapping the mind micro geographies of cognitive urbanism and dancing in the boardroom lindy hop your way to managerial omnipotence the speaker is now running into some difficulties performing its duty one of the solder joints has come loose the cone is torn and the power from the onboard lithium battery has depleted to one quarter capacity so gladhand's speeches in the video sound like this as you can hear it sort of sounds like a robotic duck being ritualistically throttled which was not her intention when she wrote these tracks it's ernesto not ernesto by the way