Episdoe 61 - Use

(Music fades in)

  Welcome back to the podcast. To something that provides, to some degree, that I have a sense of agency, somehow. A confusing sentiment, I know. I don’t know how to explain this, but honestly, it’s been hard to make this podcast as of late. But I… I shouldn’t mention that if it’s not something I want to explain, and this is not the sort of thing I want to go into. Life has been stressful, sure, but life is always stressful. It’s more like… Okay, the ambiguity is not going to help. But when I started this show, I knew what I’m getting into. I knew that I was choosing to tell this story, and with every episode, I renew that choice, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? The past is in the past. And at some point, the past isn’t that important to the present. It’s foundation, you might want to point out. It’s something we can learn from. But are we really taking the time to learn? And isn’t the point of a foundation that it just exists without much thought?

Also, this was just a show, and what is a show but something that is meant to be experienced in the moment. It’s a spectacle meant to amuse, and it might convey some sort of message, sure, but not all messages are created equal. Some are more important than others. Some have a wider appeal than others. Some are just for individuals. And maybe this story is just for me. 

But that’s a hell of a thing to say. Especially if you’re going to take time out of your day to listen to me talk about a show that was likely rightfully ended and erased. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

The man offered the woman his arm. And she–with a slight degree of reluctance–accepted it, and if her reluctance showed, she was able to hide it behind the child, the need to care for her, that is, to ensure that Jade was alright walking on the edge of this couple and could be held in equal measure to the man without any unnecessary tugging or pulling. She was a small child, after all. Holding the woman’s hand required a bit of a stretch, but it wasn’t unreasonable. Jade’s arm wasn’t held taut. It was nothing for her to share this woman who had taken charge of her seemingly without reason or need. 

And so, the woman had no choice. She accepted the man’s offer. She took his arm, sliding her hand into his elbow, but she did not pull herself closer. A few inches remained between them. And even that seemed to send a chill up the woman’s spine. But she hid it well. A slight grimace lingered at the corner of her mouth, but no one else seemed to see it. It was just a slight tell left in by the animators, a hint left for the audience alone. 

“She’ll stay with us for a bit,” the woman said, as if that was decided upon. 

And I suppose that, in her mind, it was. She had made her mind up. She had decided that it would be so, and her opinion was the only one that mattered. 

Jade’s certainly didn’t matter. And some might say that discounting Jade’s thoughts was understandable and reasonable. She was young and small, in a place where she didn’t belong. She didn’t know what was in her best interest. She had no means of making an alternative plan for herself. Sure, in other episodes, she used her art supplies to make some sort of shack or camp. Her lines would be clumsy, but despite the physics suggesting otherwise, her buildings always managed to stay upright. So she had done it before. She had taken on this problem and won, but that probably wasn’t the wisest thing for her to do. Staying with the woman in a safe and supervised home was likely the best option. 

On the other hand, if her caregivers had actually been caregivers, if they had shown her enough consideration and love to not lose her, they might have agreed with the woman. But as things stood, they hadn’t shown that care or concern, so they lost the right to care.

And in the absence of those other opinions, who was left but the woman and the man? The woman had cast her vote, clearly. As for the man, he seemed content with whatever the woman said. 

“Of course,” he agreed, committing to the notion aloud. 

But there must have been something inevitable about him saying as much. It seemed to be already understood. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

I probably should have said this sooner, but I sincerely doubt it was some deliberate purge that removed all trace of this show. I know that sort of thing can happen. I know it might happen. I mean, if it does happen, though, it’s more of an intellectual property sort of issue. It’s not an attempt to purge the record. It’s an attempt to protect what is owned. But value is relative. 

In corporate media, for example, it’s not intrinsic. A story isn’t valued for what it means or what it can tell people but for the money it can bring in. And a show like this, what with all of its potential for controversy and little appeal, wasn’t going to bring much. With Jade’s power, maybe there was reason to be optimistic in the beginning. She might create something truly iconic, something that could be turned into a children’s toy or game. It could be printed on clothing items, or the like. Maybe she could be turned into a plushie or one of her creations could come to life and become that plushie. There were options. There were chances. But none of them came together. 

So no one cared, and indifference is a different but effective kind of eraser. The names of kings, queens, emperors, and the like have endured, but the names of the many who made up their kingdoms and their worlds have largely been lost. Those things were hardly ever recorded, and those records were not protected. Why? Because none of them mattered in the long term. 

This show wasn’t meant to endure. It wasn’t meant to belong to the future. We were all supposed to forget about it. But I can’t. It doesn’t feel right to. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Their home wasn’t that small, but I might not be the best judge of that. Across my life, I lived in so many homes, so many places, and every single one was distinct. Every single place had its norms and standards. Everything was always different. 

Their home matched the ones around them. Maybe it was slightly larger, but it wasn’t outside of what one might expect. Any difference could be chalked up to part of the inevitable  variation that happens when things come naturally or are built without a life or death devotion to rigor and standards. 

Jade didn’t seem taken aback by it. The whole way there, she had walked at the woman’s side, holding her hand as if nothing was amiss. She didn’t seem taken aback by anything she had seen that day. And why would she be? This was just a typical neighborhood. It might have resembled the standard American suburbs too much given the more medieval aesthetics the episode seemed to be aiming for, but on a kids’ show, that much is forgivable. It’s almost expected, really, that you give kids some anchor of normalcy amidst it all. 

And that’s why the house felt familiar to me, right? It was designed to tap into the psyches of American children and show them a reflection of the world they knew. That’s why the two floors with their factory-produced rectangle windows and their dark wood trimmings reminded me of other houses I had visited. Why it felt like I had been there. That’s why I could convince myself I had walked on the porch or why I thought I could tell it had been patched, harmed by time and repaired by a clumsy set of hands. It’s why I could see myself sitting in the rocking chair up front. It was pointed perpendicular to the door as if whoever usually sat in it was not waiting to greet company but to size them up before they stepped inside. It was an odd detail, as if someone forgot what front porches used to be for. But then again, I think a lot of us did. 

The man looked towards Jade and offered her the best smile he could. “Here we are,” he said.

It’s then that she and the audience realized he doesn’t have teeth. Maybe he did in the earlier shots of the show. Maybe it was something of a continuity error. The model they used to cut corners on that initial drawing had teeth and no one bothered to remove them. But now that character was more central to the story and frame, that detail had to be added in. I don’t think it was a hint to something. I don’t think it was a clue that the man was falling away, that bits of him were being taken and disappearing despite how important they were. It was just how he was.

But Jade did not smile back. Her face remained blank for a moment as the man stepped up towards the door. To do that more effectively, he left the woman and Jade behind. They followed, though, at the woman’s behest. They walked up that stone path from the main road to the home. And there was nothing significant about the walk. It seemed to be the usual sort of pace, what one might expect with a child in tow. And the bottle remained out of sight, seemingly out of the woman’s mind as well. 

So the focus, then, could remain on the man as he walked towards his home, patting his pockets as he went. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Look at the context of it all, and it will tell you that he was looking for a key, as if homes in this realm were run with the same rules and mindsets that we use in ours. The rules must have been carried over, copy and paste, just like the aesthetics. 

And like so many of us, true to form, he couldn’t immediately find his key. All the tapping and patting across his body didn’t work. Maybe he didn’t even have the key on his person. Maybe it was lost somewhere. Maybe… Well, there’s a thousand possible maybes. The point is that the man didn’t have the key. When he got to the door, there was nothing he could do but continue his patting and tapping, hoping that the key would somehow reveal itself while he stood there, in the brief window of time between when he got to the door and his wife followed. 

While he worked at his pockets and every stray bunch of fabric that covered his person, the woman’s mouth sat in a firm frown. Her brow furrowed. The disgust that had once been carefully hidden, seeped onto her face on full display. 

She started to mutter something, and though the air around her swallowed up the syllables of what she says, her disdain remained clear. 

“Again,” she said a little louder.

And as if that were her cue, Jade pulled her hand away. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

But why doesn’t it feel right, though? I think it does to everyone else. And why does it feel right to sacrifice the old for the new? I mean, I talked about the reuse of old film before, but it’s not about that right now. I mean things in a more general sense, and no matter the circumstance, is there some reason that the old has to fall away in favor of the new? I think we’re okay with that, but I don’t know why. But okay, not everything can last, right? Sometimes the old has to fade away in order for the new to come into the scene. Our old phones and laptops become obsolete and then we get new ones with more memory and better cameras. That’s how it goes. That’s how it always goes. And we’re okay with that.

Not everything can endure. Some things just don’t matter. Some people just don’t matter, you might also be tempted to add. Like the Medieval peasants. So what if their work is wiped away? What if the work of these creatives is wiped away? Maybe it doesn’t matter. 

But what would that mean?

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

The woman let Jade’s hand slip away. She hadn’t meant to, though. Her eyes went wide when Jade pulled back, but she didn’t lunge for the girl. She didn’t frankly paw for the girl or scramble to take back what she must have thought of as her prize. Her head did whip down towards her, towards the girl reaching for her bag and the crayons kept within. 

The rules and regulations surrounding Jade’s art material slip my mind. They were never explicitly explained. No one seemed to know what was going on besides Jade, and Jade didn’t talk. She would just pull out one of her crayons or colored pencils. Maybe she’d grab a paintbrush that would just miraculously have paint waiting on the tip. Either way, she just had something. And with a wave of her hand, that thing would work.

So she did just that. She took a brown crayon out and with a wave of her hand, she began drawing.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

But then again, what is the metric that matters? You ask a major company, one of those big production studios, and they would say that profit is the metric that matters. Then they make decisions accordingly, and we often hate those decisions.

And yet, at least they have some sort of metric, right? At least there is some standard they can point to and say, “This. Here. This is what matters.” What do the rest of us have? How do the rest of us know what needs to be done and when?

Or maybe it’s really obvious for all of you. But it isn’t for me. So forgive the question.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

The drawing was quick. The silhouette was really all that Jade needed. The shape of a key, though drawn comically larger than the actual key would need to be, was good enough for the magic to work.

The man took a sharp breath in as the final line was placed. A small orb of light took over the air where Jade had made her sketch, and from that orb, a key fell into her hand. She caught it with a slight bounce and presented it to the man, a smile of triumph plastered across her face, lighting up the screen. 

That smile soon infected the man who was clearly taken by surprise at Jade’s ability. Proof he did not know her, I would think.

“Remarkable,” he said. “Quite the useful houseguest we have here.”

It’s a happy moment. It’s a moment when a child has something to celebrate. Despite her size and the fact that she is still learning how to be, she has accomplished something that the adults in her life could not. And in that way, she was clearly no longer a small, helpless babe. She was capable. She was accomplished. 

“She’s useful,” the woman said. 

And something about that sentence sent a chill up my back.  

(Music gradually fades out)

Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, produced, performed, and edited by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show, please leave a review, tell a friend, or post about it on some mysterious online forum. You do you.