Upcoming serial: Everything Falls Apart

I am getting closer to posting the first piece of an experimental serialized bit of fiction called “Everything Falls Apart”.

I feel I owe everyone some explanations about the incoming content.

The most important [not really] is the title. This story is not a post-apocalyptic doom and gloom story.

Instead, the title was borrowed from second generation of Minneapolis punk-hardcore and is the title song from Hüsker Dü’s eponymous first studio album released in 1983, Everything Falls Apart. The band name, Hüsker Dü, is Norwegian for “do you remember?” and comes from a board game one or all three band members played as kids. The album was a blistering collection of twelve songs in nineteen minutes and showed the first signs of them moving away from being the “fastest band in the world” towards something more melodic and more fully realized by their second double-album, Zen Arcade.

For the curious, the lyrics to the song giving this story its name are, in part:

If I listened to the things that you said
Everything would fall apart
If I did all the things that you do
Everything could fall apart
Let's not listen to the things that they say
Everything can fall apart
Let's think about our actions before we do them
Everything will fall apart

The 80s was a sweet time to listen to local music in Minnesota. We had Prince, early rap, Soul Asylum, psycho-country (cowpunk), Celtic punk, The Replacements, goth, and everything in between. Popup gigs in parks, alleys and in-store were the norm and you never knew which acts the lineup was going to end up including.

But this isn’t a story about Hüsker Dü, the song or, really, much about the Minneapolis music scene at all of the early 1980s aside from a fictional ‘zine mentioned in the early part of the story that is also called “Everything Falls Apart”, which would have been pretty period-appropriate for a fanzine, even down to it being the title of a local band’s song/album.

I’ve put off the inevitable for long enough…

The real thing that you need to know is not the source of the serial’s name or anything about any of the above, but it is this: the story will mimic the appearance of blog posts, emails, things that have the appearance of text messages, personal records and forum discussions.

It may also include transcriptions from short bursts, “chirps”, from sub-gigahertz radio traffic (<915 MHz), a license-free wavelength of radio. Actually, I know it will, so change that “may include” to “will include”.

This is an experiment in the writing style for me, so please bear with me if it ends up in disaster.

I shouldn’t have to say so, but the story is entirely fictional. While loosely based on real events, places and people I’ve known or known of, the representation of those all of those things in the following serial is sewn entirely out of fabric of the void within my head.

In addition to that little disclaimer, I should also warn that some of the activities presented in the story are extremely dangerous to participate in. As one real-world group who partakes in such activities says: “[It] is illegal. [This] is dangerous. Do not […] do what we do. Unless you want to.”

Yes. I am being vague. But that’s because I want to leave the activities to discovery while you are reading. Just keep this warning in mind if the you read the story and think, “now that sounds like fun.”

It can be fun — but it can also kill you or put you in jail.

Not… erm… that I would know… from [recent] firsthand experience. Ahem.

Another logistical warning: I am employing a custom plugin for story navigation within the story. It may have unintended consequences once I start posting. Let me know if you encounter quirks that don’t seem to be intentional.

Anyway, I plan to post the beginning of this story within the next few days and thought, f— it, let’s get the administrative part out of the way up front.

Also, if you’re the kind of person who gets triggered by reading about things that happen in real life, then here is your trigger warning: It’s probably best, if you don’t like grit or feels, that you don’t read the serial.