A Small Voice in a Big Room

Hiroshi Nagai's paintings need sunglasses to look at.

They look like how it feels to walk across a parking lot on a 98° summer day without a speck of shade in sight.

They look like heaven but also like you'd burn your bare feet on the ground.

Even when you can see shade you know it's not enough and the minute you step out you'll be burnt to a crisp like a vampire.

This feels like I could trip on that radio and fall right into that water, feeling the crystal waves as I drop in.

And this, a nice stroll down a resort strip, where my sunscreened skin could literally feel cooked if I leaned too close to the tiling.

And then a nice stretch of summer street, wherein you could see your face in the flushed red of that car provided it didn't blind you from its sunny reflections.

Dick: i mean you were there, right? so you must have at least tried to give him parts of a normal childhood.

Jason: oh yeah. i felt like his camp councillor, just constantly trying to come up with games to teach him what fun was. he was a real stick in the mud though, he didn’t like doing stuff that he deemed ‘useless’

Dick: and ‘enjoying life’ was useless to him?

Jason: league brainwashing man, what can i say? i did force him to watch movies with me every now and then, though.

Dick: oh?

Jason: yeah. backfired real bad.

Dick: how does watching a movie backfire?

Jason: well. in the league everybody’s paranoid. everything’s either a test or a potential assassination attempt, y’know? so i picked a light-hearted rom-com and we watched ‘first daughter’,

Dick: oh, that one about the president’s daughter who wants a normal life that befriends a guy at college who turns out to be lying and is actually another member of her security team?

Jason: yuh.

Dick: …and that backfired how?

Jason: well. the kid assumed that i was talking to him in code and came to the conclusion that i wasn’t actually his brother, but rather another assassin guard planted to make him feel like he wasn’t being babysat when we hung out.

Jason: took two weeks for Talia to convince him that i actually was adopted.

Dick: oh. well, that’s not too bad?

Jason: yeah. but then i got curious so i made him watch ‘the man in the iron mask’. you know, that old movie about the two prince brothers, where one locks the other in an iron mask for his entire life so that he could take the throne unopposed?

Dick:

Dick: Jason. really?

Jason, slightly amused: yeah man he was terrified of me for a month.

Dick: you’re such an ass.

Jason, nodding: tell you what though- he stopped disobeying his tutors real quick when he thought his position as heir was on the line.

Dick: god, that poor kid. having to have you as his only sibling for so long…

Jason: i know, right? after that i put on ‘the truman show’ and just watched his entire belief system fall apart. it was fantastic.

Dick:

Dick:

Audio: A recording of Leonard Nimoy reading it on Internet Archive.

Text: A PDF version.

Nemoy’s voice is PERFECT in this!

Paid service with no ads: Well, if they're not funding it with ad revenue, they need to charge us something.

Paid service with ads: Well that's bullshit.

saw this on Insta and the idea that people who are anti-AI are just using it anyway like... willing to give it up? I ACTIVELY AVOID THAT SHIT BUD! WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT?

ALSO

if i shouldn’t use my cane because i can sometimes technically walk without it, it would just hurt like a motherfucker then abled people should no longer be allowed to use potholders to take things out of the oven because i mean