As the Great Quarantine of 2020 was about to get underway, my brilliant wife bought a jigsaw puzzle on a whim during a Target run (back when Target runs felt normal and less like "missions").
Her choice of images on that (first, as it turned out) puzzle was absurd - and also perfect, as it turned out. Killer whales, a diverse underwater scene along with a sky full of skies and fireworks and two sailing (pirate, right, they've got to be pirates) ships passing by a coastline lit by a rising full moon.
Some years ago, JP asked me the simple question: "Do you like puzzles?"
My mind went straight to jigsaw puzzles, and, never having been too fond of them (or probably never completing one beyond the toy versions of 10 or 50 or 100 pieces of my youth), I told JP, "not really."
He was disappointed, I could see it - and shortly thereafter, I discovered why. JP had created an elaborate and immersive experience for us in our home and neighborhood. It started with a message - I think it was a long letter, and contained the name (an old-timey name, which i do not recall) of an early code (16th or 17th Century?) written in letters from a prisoner.
Using this code, we discovered a message: Tippecanoe ISBN 9780452275003 with each number spelled out fully (or some number, which led me to the book Zombie, by Joyce Carol Oates). This brought the search to a temporary stand-still, because Tippecanoe is the name of my neighborhood, and I happened to own the book in question (i suspect JP may not have realized this, or was increasing the challenge). At the same time, we had begun to discover a number of odd items around our house - a plastic pencil sharpener & a Bierdeckel that we weren't familiar with.
Once I had solved it (perhaps with a hint!), i went to our local library (the Tippecanoe branch!), and pulled their copy of Oates' novel from the shelves. Slipped under the cover, was a receipt - a Walgreen's Photo receipt, which was pre-paid. I took it to our local Walgreen's, and turned it over for a roll of photos - 24 (remember when pics came in sets of 24!?) pictures of items that had been hidden around our house.
And so it goes... I do love puzzles. I love to play the game, and the total immersion game - where you literally walk around the earth and un-earth it is the ultimate iteration. Jason Segel has created for us - i think in part from his own struggle - Dispatches from Elsewhere, which at its core is an immersive game experience. Dispatches is a team game, and a game played outside in the world. It unlocks a narrative, and you get to choose how deeply you want to play (just dancing with Bigfoot & along for the ride or taking the deeper game behind the game approach that our heroes take).
I was a late adopter of Myst but loved puzzling through it once i had discovered it after starting college. But i wasn't able to defeat it (not in the Arfives*!), because many of the puzzles in the game are ones that require patience. My preference for a long time had been the "riddle of the sphinx" type game where a lot of folks had perished at it, but once you came to the answer it was immediate.
As i become old (or perhaps as we are becoming more familiar with the art of passing time, because we're in quarantine!), I have come to appreciate the slow boil puzzles. Nick Bantock was an author who I adore(d^), and read most of his work in the early Aughts. Among the collection of books I owned was The Egyptian Jukebox, which was one i had never finished. It's described as "A Conundrum" on the cover, and it's as beautiful as all of Bantock's works, but one meant to be worked at.
As we have now started here at home on our 4th puzzle, I have become comfortable with the idea that yes, indeed, i do like puzzles and the satisfaction of completion that goes with them. Jigsaw puzzles are fine, but I enjoy even more immersive the better...
On another visit to Milwaukee, JP left at our house a deck of cards, and some mode of giving us a specific sequence of cards. Each of the cards had a small hole poked in it, and there was one outlier card, which had (i think random) letters over all of it. With the sequence, we were able to decode the following message:
"At the centroid of _________, _____________, ____________ in the sculpture in park." The blanks were three locations in Milwaukee, and at their centroid was a park in the 5th Ward. I Bublr biked there one day on a lunch break, and tucked in to the sculpture in a park was an envelope with a gift card to Milwaukee's Public Market that JP had hidden there a week earlier.
Magical.
I don't think Dispatches from Elsewhere could have come out at a better time in history. While the scenes of sitting in diners, or large gatherings in public parks or old timey theaters feels a bit like porn just now, it's more fringy questioning at the corners of reality that I think is so vital. Was that all just a game, as the end party contends, or is there something real that the game is a cover for. The concept / device isn't new (see 1997's The Game or 2018's Game Night), but the idea feels important now, whereas it might earlier have seemed merely fun - a welcome distraction - a bit of whimsy.
As we all going to be re-evaluating (sooner or later) the structures of the systems in place that surround our lives, I would like to recommend that we create some space and some infrastructure for these kinds of immersive experiences, either irl or virtually, a la Ready Player One or "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale". I'm talking about a major company or companies that begin to work on this. It will be the next Facebook - i am quite sure of it...
* this is also a time to consider the place of video games (as opposed to other games) in the Arfives, which I have never really included in my listings, because to complete a video game I have always felt that i had to "beat it". Unfortunately, I've never been all that good at video games and also not very diligent, so it's possible that i've never in all my life actually completed a game (actually, I do distinctly remember defeating Contra - after using the upUpDownDown... trick). I may revise this going forward.
^ I would like to contend, that we no longer should be held to a standard of loving everything today that we once loved in our past, and yet at the same time need to couch that love in a past-time-i-ness... I loved Nick Bantock's works for a time in my life, and while i don't find them as compelling today, we should embrace the moments that we loved things... unconditionally.
Her choice of images on that (first, as it turned out) puzzle was absurd - and also perfect, as it turned out. Killer whales, a diverse underwater scene along with a sky full of skies and fireworks and two sailing (pirate, right, they've got to be pirates) ships passing by a coastline lit by a rising full moon.
Some years ago, JP asked me the simple question: "Do you like puzzles?"
My mind went straight to jigsaw puzzles, and, never having been too fond of them (or probably never completing one beyond the toy versions of 10 or 50 or 100 pieces of my youth), I told JP, "not really."
He was disappointed, I could see it - and shortly thereafter, I discovered why. JP had created an elaborate and immersive experience for us in our home and neighborhood. It started with a message - I think it was a long letter, and contained the name (an old-timey name, which i do not recall) of an early code (16th or 17th Century?) written in letters from a prisoner.
Using this code, we discovered a message: Tippecanoe ISBN 9780452275003 with each number spelled out fully (or some number, which led me to the book Zombie, by Joyce Carol Oates). This brought the search to a temporary stand-still, because Tippecanoe is the name of my neighborhood, and I happened to own the book in question (i suspect JP may not have realized this, or was increasing the challenge). At the same time, we had begun to discover a number of odd items around our house - a plastic pencil sharpener & a Bierdeckel that we weren't familiar with.
Once I had solved it (perhaps with a hint!), i went to our local library (the Tippecanoe branch!), and pulled their copy of Oates' novel from the shelves. Slipped under the cover, was a receipt - a Walgreen's Photo receipt, which was pre-paid. I took it to our local Walgreen's, and turned it over for a roll of photos - 24 (remember when pics came in sets of 24!?) pictures of items that had been hidden around our house.
And so it goes... I do love puzzles. I love to play the game, and the total immersion game - where you literally walk around the earth and un-earth it is the ultimate iteration. Jason Segel has created for us - i think in part from his own struggle - Dispatches from Elsewhere, which at its core is an immersive game experience. Dispatches is a team game, and a game played outside in the world. It unlocks a narrative, and you get to choose how deeply you want to play (just dancing with Bigfoot & along for the ride or taking the deeper game behind the game approach that our heroes take).
I was a late adopter of Myst but loved puzzling through it once i had discovered it after starting college. But i wasn't able to defeat it (not in the Arfives*!), because many of the puzzles in the game are ones that require patience. My preference for a long time had been the "riddle of the sphinx" type game where a lot of folks had perished at it, but once you came to the answer it was immediate.As i become old (or perhaps as we are becoming more familiar with the art of passing time, because we're in quarantine!), I have come to appreciate the slow boil puzzles. Nick Bantock was an author who I adore(d^), and read most of his work in the early Aughts. Among the collection of books I owned was The Egyptian Jukebox, which was one i had never finished. It's described as "A Conundrum" on the cover, and it's as beautiful as all of Bantock's works, but one meant to be worked at.
As we have now started here at home on our 4th puzzle, I have become comfortable with the idea that yes, indeed, i do like puzzles and the satisfaction of completion that goes with them. Jigsaw puzzles are fine, but I enjoy even more immersive the better...
On another visit to Milwaukee, JP left at our house a deck of cards, and some mode of giving us a specific sequence of cards. Each of the cards had a small hole poked in it, and there was one outlier card, which had (i think random) letters over all of it. With the sequence, we were able to decode the following message:
"At the centroid of _________, _____________, ____________ in the sculpture in park." The blanks were three locations in Milwaukee, and at their centroid was a park in the 5th Ward. I Bublr biked there one day on a lunch break, and tucked in to the sculpture in a park was an envelope with a gift card to Milwaukee's Public Market that JP had hidden there a week earlier.
Magical.
I don't think Dispatches from Elsewhere could have come out at a better time in history. While the scenes of sitting in diners, or large gatherings in public parks or old timey theaters feels a bit like porn just now, it's more fringy questioning at the corners of reality that I think is so vital. Was that all just a game, as the end party contends, or is there something real that the game is a cover for. The concept / device isn't new (see 1997's The Game or 2018's Game Night), but the idea feels important now, whereas it might earlier have seemed merely fun - a welcome distraction - a bit of whimsy.
As we all going to be re-evaluating (sooner or later) the structures of the systems in place that surround our lives, I would like to recommend that we create some space and some infrastructure for these kinds of immersive experiences, either irl or virtually, a la Ready Player One or "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale". I'm talking about a major company or companies that begin to work on this. It will be the next Facebook - i am quite sure of it...
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| is this what you were picturing? (Source: Amazon.com) |
* this is also a time to consider the place of video games (as opposed to other games) in the Arfives, which I have never really included in my listings, because to complete a video game I have always felt that i had to "beat it". Unfortunately, I've never been all that good at video games and also not very diligent, so it's possible that i've never in all my life actually completed a game (actually, I do distinctly remember defeating Contra - after using the upUpDownDown... trick). I may revise this going forward.
^ I would like to contend, that we no longer should be held to a standard of loving everything today that we once loved in our past, and yet at the same time need to couch that love in a past-time-i-ness... I loved Nick Bantock's works for a time in my life, and while i don't find them as compelling today, we should embrace the moments that we loved things... unconditionally.
