Escape Artists
PseudoPod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Bdoomed on June 16, 2017, 10:11:26 PM
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PseudoPod 547: Escape to Thin Mountain (http://pseudopod.org/2017/06/16/pseudopod-547-thin-mountain/)
by Jon Padgett.
“Escape to Thin Mountain” originally appeared in Padgett’s 2016 short story collection The Secret of Ventriloquism.
JON PADGETT (https://twitter.com/Jon__Padgett) is a professional—though lapsed—ventriloquist who lives in New Orleans with his spouse, their daughter, a cat and a dog. Padgett’s first short story collection, The Secret of Ventriloquism (https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Ventriloquism-Jon-Padgett-ebook/dp/B01N0YB19V/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496258259&sr=8-1&keywords=secret+of+ventriloquism), was named the Best Fiction Book of 2016 by Rue Morgue Magazine. He has work out or forthcoming in Pseudopod, Lovecraft eZine, Xnoybis, Antenna::Signals and For Mortal Things Unsung (https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/for-mortal-things-unsung), an anthology containing some of the best Pseudopod original stories to date. This summer, his work will appear in Joseph Pulver’s anthology, A Walk on the Weird Side, and Phantasm/Chimera (http://www.theplutonian.com/2017/05/announcing-phantasmchimera.html), an anthology published by Plutonian Press. Later this year, Padgett will be narrating a story by Thomas Ligotti (http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=11758), which will be released on vinyl LP by Cadabra Records (http://www.cadabrarecords.com/). Follow Jon on Twitter (https://twitter.com/Jon__Padgett) or on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010151443793) for further updates.
This week’s reader – Dagny Paul is a lapsed English teacher, failed artist, and sometimes writer who lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. She has an unhealthy (but entertaining) obsession with comic books and horror movies, which she consumes whenever her five-year-old son will let her (which isn’t often). Dagny is Assistant Editor of PseudoPod.
Info on Anders Manga’s album (they do our theme music!) can be found here (http://www.napalmrecordsamerica.com/store/bloodyhammers).
(http://pseudopod.org/wp-content/images/Thin-Mountain-1024x383.jpg)
(http://pseudopod.org/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/audio_mp3_button.png)
Listen to this week's Pseudopod. (http://traffic.libsyn.com/pseudopod/Pseudo547_EscapeToThinMountain.mp3)
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Sweet balls of b'aal.
First, Dagny Paul did an amazing job. The perfect narration, tone, pace, and subtly inflected work on this. Amazing- you easily doubled the impact of this story by lending your heart and effort to it.
Second, it's always a red letter day when there's a Padgett story.
I'd read the story previously, and gotten a nice image and feel in my head. Then Dagny's take on it, especially the singing bits, made it new all over again.
To look behind the curtain - is this a folk song with a known tune, or is this something cooked up from scratch? Is there feedback between narrator and author to pitch ideas and give hints (beyond those in the text) of how to read, sing, and produce?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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I just read Ligotti's short piece "Ten Steps to Thin Mountain", and I love how Padgett expands on it here. Dagny Paul's narration is perfect.
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I just read Ligotti's short piece "Ten Steps to Thin Mountain", and I love how Padgett expands on it here. Dagny Paul's narration is perfect.
Oh, dang, didn't realize that connection! Reading Grimscribe right now, so I'll have to jump to Noctuary right after that.
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I admit, I didn't understand this one. Was Little Evie a changeling or something? Still felt pretty creepy.
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I admit, I didn't understand this one. Was Little Evie a changeling or something? Still felt pretty creepy.
Nope, I couldn't figure it out either. Was it some kind of fever dream? An addict's hallucination? Definitely worth a second listen!
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I pretty quickly decided that the voice of Little Evie was a hallucination, and that there was only one narrator, despite the speaker referring to him/herself in the plural. I'm still not sure about Little Evie herself, though - I don't think she's alive, but can't decide if she's dead, a doll, or a hallucination.
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This is one of those awesome stories that an anthology could be written on. I read Ten Steps to Thin Mountain and thought it was great even for how short it was. I want more but I see how the "Less is more" rule applies here.
I also developed this image of a creepy "Big Rock Candy Mountain".
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I thought the speaker was mentally ill, and dissociating.
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I thought the speaker was mentally ill, and dissociating.
Dang! Good call, eh.
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Sweet balls of b'aal.
First, Dagny Paul did an amazing job. The perfect narration, tone, pace, and subtly inflected work on this. Amazing- you easily doubled the impact of this story by lending your heart and effort to it.
Second, it's always a red letter day when there's a Padgett story.
I'd read the story previously, and gotten a nice image and feel in my head. Then Dagny's take on it, especially the singing bits, made it new all over again.
To look behind the curtain - is this a folk song with a known tune, or is this something cooked up from scratch? Is there feedback between narrator and author to pitch ideas and give hints (beyond those in the text) of how to read, sing, and produce?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thanks for the compliment. I apologize for being such an infrequent lurker; hopefully, you're still active on the forums.
To answer your question: Jon wrote the words to the song, but there's no melody attached to them that I know of, so I made one up. I'm not a songwriter, so I'm sure that I unintentionally borrowed a progression I heard somewhere else, but (hopefully!) that part is original. I saw the words and immediately knew that was the way they needed to be sung. Jon's a damned genius.
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"Do it nice and easy, now, don't lose control
A little bit of rhythm and a lot of soul
So, come on, come on
Gooo to Thin Mountain with me"
Man, this Behind the Music episode about Little Eva took a really dark turn.
Geat reading here. It really added a lot to the story. I thought Little Evie's tremulous singing was particularly effective at ramping up the creepiness.
The story itself was... inscrutable, but it works. FWIW, I agree with the posters who believe that the story is an account by someone suffering from mental illness. Overall I think it improves on the short story that inspired it.