Radio Chthulucene 87.9 FM

I wonder what else I can do to get a better grasp on who Living!Clara is. She’s distinctly different from Dead!Clara, but I’m not entirely sure how to convey it. Incorporating other languages and codeswitching is also something I’m considering. Maybe I could incorporate spanish, albeit terrible spanish, since I don’t think Clara is very well versed in it. Maybe I could mess around with font. I’ve done it before, but maybe using a font for parts of the text that readers shouldn’t be able to understand. Like demonic text. It makes these overlapping and hard to read letters that could work as a sort of  language that some of her viewers speak. Maybe she speaks it briefly, leaving Living!Clara in utter confusion.

I agree with my peers that Diggs’ book was hard to find. I’m working from a few sections I managed to find online. It seems messy. Not necessarily in a bad way, but she haphazardly plays with language, translating only sections of it. It seems to align with my goal, so I might play with it some more. Here’s a little section of what I’m working on (keep in mind, the formatting didn’t transfer well to a wordpress blog post):

1. Int. Radio Station – Realignment (The Darkening) a week later

CLARA sits at her desk, humming as she writes in a messy scrawl in a notebook. She crosses out a few lines, tugs at her earlobe as she rereads her work, and then nods firmly, setting it aside to begin set-up for the show. She adjusts her chair, lowers it, fixes the wrinkles in her top, and reapplies cherry chapstick before she pulls the mic down, sits up straight, and makes eye contact with one of the technicians through the small circular window. In response, he nods and holds up three fingers, counting her down until the broadcast–

CLARA: Hello again my dearest deviants, and welcome to channel 121.5. It’s a beautiful Realignment, so be sure to prep your ritual circles, hug your most tolerated ones, and make peace with the halting of time as we know it, at least for a week or so. For those of you experiencing your first Realignment, remember: SPF’s got nothing on the pure intense heat of our greatest adversaries, so stay inside, don’t report to your superiors–fate knows they’ve already got so much on their plate for today–and enjoy the last few hours before the void approaches. 

CLARA: For today, we’re going to try something new. We, here at the station, take your suggestions and comments very seriously. As a matter of fact, one of our dearest listeners sent in a question last week about managing stress, and I thought it so so poignant that I shaped today’s show around it. But don’t worry, dearest souls, we’ll still be providing music breaks.

(Clara readjusts in her chair, shifting her vaguely human-shaped legs atop the table, then clears her throat)

CLARA: Now, I understand that our plane is beyond humanity, beyond illness and pain–and debatably more important, beyond the primeval of birth control–but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we are free from the blight of thought. We are creatures of thought, for better or worse–except for our most fortunate lobotomized listeners–and many of us crave a balanced combination of leisure and productivity to feel fulfilled. I’ve always thought work-life balance was a load of Gleeb-shit, but what do I know, my whole life is in this booth.

CLARA: Anyway, stress is natural. We may not experience physical illness, but our skulls still bow to the unerring beat of drums, the itch of sentience and impulse, our brains sing the tune of sorrow, and synapses continue to fire at an unprecedented rate, an entity of its own. Much as I’m sure we’d like to try, we cannot control our brains, can’t tell it to stop worrying, to stop having a bitch fit. Not entirely. Eat your heart out, Sarah Sheffield.

CLARA: Hell, not even I, your ever so gracious host, am free from stress and fear and memories. Sometimes I dream I can see my own rotting corpse at this very table, a single gnat circling my head, nestling itself into my hair to find an open wound, an entry point…

(Clara’s eyes grow hazy, and for a moment, she can smell the rotting flesh, the cool table where it dug into her cheek)