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about

“The Pale King” is an unfinished book that DFW was working on when he died. The existing pages were gathered, and Michael Pietsch (the same man that edited “Infinite Jest”) was called upon to edit and arrange them in some kind of order for a posthumous publication. At 700+ pages and a feeling that the story was really just getting going, it promised to have been a very lengthy novel had DFW actually finished it. This piece is about one particular event that happened in the life of one of the characters when she was 12 years old.

A 12 year old girl has a Mom who is in her late 20s. They are poor; the Mom bounces from job to job and man to man. All of them treat her terribly. Some of these men also make moves on her young daughter, and she cannot defend her. There are also scumbag teenage boys in the trailer park that make moves on the young girl. At first, she is forced to go along with it. She then learns how to shut off her mind and distance herself from what is happening to her. She is smart, and eventually learns how to defend herself and inflict pain on anyone that threatens her. She likes to do this in creative ways. She also came up with a game for herself; seeing how long she could go without blinking. Basically practicing a dead stare. She learns to fight through the burning in her eyes and the desperate urge to blink so well that 5 minutes (and even longer) is not a problem. This game evolves into practicing being perfectly still, and later into how to control her breathing to a shallowness barely detectable. During yet another of the Mom’s low points, they were at a truck stop eating breakfast and the Mom starts flirting with a trucker. She tells him they are essentially homeless; he tells them to get in his truck. Although they are total strangers, Mom and daughter get in the semi and head out to wherever he is going next. The Mom had done some drugs and her eyes were glassy and she was half out of it. The trucker makes dirty talk about what he wants to do with her at the next stop. The Mom nods off, and the trucker continues to drive with one hand on the wheel and the other reaching back to the backseat to fondle the daughter’s 12 year old breasts. The girl does nothing about this; doesn’t say a word. In a moment of clarity at the next stop, the Mom gets into the driver’s seat while the trucker is in the bathroom. She drives off in the truck while the trucker is coming out of the bathroom. He begins running across the parking lot, screaming profanities and threatening to kill her if she doesn’t stop and come back with his truck. Mom and daughter keep driving. About an hour up the road, another truck barrels down on them from behind. It’s the trucker, in a smaller truck than the semi, and he overtakes them and runs them off the road into a ditch. The Mom isn’t good at handling a semi, and she rams the truck into the ditch, shattering the windshield. The Mom’s head bashes the steering wheel as various pieces of glass and dashboard enter her body. The daughter is relatively unharmed, but her seriously injured Mom is on top of her in the cabin of the truck. The trucker approaches, crazed with anger, and rips the sheet of broken windshield from the frame. He looks at the Mom, seeing her bleeding and moaning but not conscious. The daughter is petrified with fear, but her survival mode kicks in. All those games she practiced to defend herself from attackers in the past made her body go still. She stares blankly off into the distance, focusing on nothing. She is breathing so shallowly there is no movement in her chest. The trucker looks at her and decides that she must be dead already. He grunts and proceeds to choke the Mom, whom never regains consciousness, but makes horrible moaning, gurgling sounds while her broken body jerks around. The daughter is beneath her the whole time, able to hear and feel her Mom dying on top of her. All the while staring and barely breathing. She knows if the trucker has any inkling that she is still alive that he will kill her, too. After a few minutes her Mom stops convulsing. The trucker once again looks at the daughter right in the eyes. Only through sheer will and because of all the practice can the young girl hold his gaze without a sign of life. She thinks he is going to choke her as well anyway. Meanwhile, blood from a cut on her Mom’s forehead is running down her face; close to dripping in the daughter’s eye. If that happens this is all over. After what seems like an eternity, the trucker walks away to the other truck and peels out, leaving them there.

Aaron Kerr:
There are two compositional items in this piece that are particular to the cello. This story was about a girl who trains herself to not blink for an extended period of time and uses this training to fake death to stop an attacker. One technique I use is simply muting my C and G strings with my left hand to get a non-tonal rhythmic effect - this is my interpretation of what it would be like to have to keep your eyes open that long. The other technique is particular to cello, especially my electric cello. On this album I play two instruments. I have a regular “acoustic” cello that most people are familiar with. I also have a six-string electric cello which I got 13 years ago (actually, it only has five strings because I broke the top string at a rehearsal and never changed it because I liked it better with five strings). On this song, you hear a really low drone - this is actually two notes played on the lowest three strings, first on the C and G strings, and then the F string. The interval is a close harmony, first a fourth, then a second. The effect you get when you do these close harmonies on cello is super dense and gritty - it almost sounds like a low, dark grunt, but still vaguely tonal. I love exploring this, and especially on the electric cello. - the low F string gets me into the bass-instrument
> > > territory.

credits

from To Combat Loneliness: Compositions Based on the Works of David Foster Wallace, released June 21, 2019
Aaron Kerr--acoustic and electric cello
Tyson Allison--guitar, percussion, synth, piano, bass, drums, chimes

Produced by Tyson Allison and Justin Deleon
Recorded at IPR studios in Minneapolis, MN
Engineered and mixed by Justin Deleon
Mastered by Tom Garneau at AUDIOACTIVE in Minneapolis, MN
Copyright 2019 Humble Mumblings ASCAP

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Emperor Penguin Records Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Emperor Penguin Records began in 2003 in St. Paul, MN and later moved to Milwaukee, WI in 2015. The label is run by musician/producer Tyson Allison. EPR enlists and caters to singer/songwriters, introverts, experimental weirdos, bookish people, and crafters that paint pictures with words and toy with your emotions on a well-placed chord. Thank you for your interest! ... more

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