Wyrd Woman is an audio drama from Broads and Books Productions. The show is written, performed and produced by Amy Lee Lillard.
Music comes from the Ghosts albums by Nine Inch Nails, courtesy of a Creative Commons license.
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Episode Transcript: Night 7
Intro voiceover:
Wyrd Woman is intended for an adult audience, and discusses mental health, history, and other tough topics. Take care when listening.
Music*:
01 Ghosts I, Nine Inch Nails
Sound:
Record button on Voice Notes
Woman:
I’ve been alone before. I’m usually alone. And I’ve always said, there’s a big difference between alone and lonely. I feel comfortable alone. I feel safe. Myself.
But now …
They haven’t come back. It’s been a full day, and nothing.
I’m alone, and it feels terrible.
I feel naked, like my skin has come off.
I liked having them with me. In me.
They made me feel less lonely.
Because as much as I said alone wasn’t lonely, and denied that living alone, and moving out here alone, and protecting myself, alone, wasn’t lonely…
It wasn’t true. I know that now.
So now what?
Once you’ve connected with women across time, and found a sisterhood… everything else feels empty.
This house, out here, away from everything. This refuge. This asylum. Where I’ve disappeared. It felt so cozy. Or I’d made myself believe it felt cozy.
Now it’s just a place. A stop in the road. To where, I don’t know.
Major feels it too. He’s been pacing, meowing until the windows are wide open, staring so hard at the wild.
I’m so mad I brought him. It wasn’t fair. Because if something happens to me… I have to… have to make sure…
I’m trying not to panic. Or cry. I’m doing all the deep breathing and other bullshit they preach to women, so we won’t explode in anger or suppressed feeling.
I’m pacing a lot. I can’t concentrate on anything.
But I have been thinking, in this time of silence. Thinking more about the how of all this.
Maybe with the how, I can figure out – I don’t know. How to get them back?
Anyway.
I’ve been thinking about sound. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the Voyager satellites.
Two machines, launched in 1977, the year I was born. Flying past the planets of our solar system, and now out in the blackness of space. They don’t predict they will fly past any new solar systems for 40,000 years.
And in the satellites, they put the golden records. Two big records that have sounds and images that, I guess, will show who we are to any aliens who find it. Start some communication. Though we’ll be long dead as a species by then.
I always felt this deep sadness thinking about that. These machines sent out to die, transmitting messages from beings that don’t exist.
The sounds on the record always made me a little sad too. I read there’s all sorts of nature sounds – like waves, and wind – and animals sounds – like birds and whales. And then there’s greetings in 55 languages and morse code. And there’s human sounds too, like laughing.
And music. All sorts of classical music, and traditional music from different cultures. Plus Chuck Berry. Apparently there was a fight over including that – the idea it was too adolescent, I think. I wonder what they’d think about punk.
So yeah. There’s images too, but I imagine the sounds are the real kicker. And these sounds are collected and sent out into the void.
Sound travels time. It’s a way to connect. It’s a gateway, or a doorway.
When the women came, I always heard sound along with their voices. A slight strain of music, and different echoes and sound effects on their voices. I didn’t think too much about it at the time, I was just so confused and surprised and excited about these women speaking.
I wonder if somehow sound is what is connecting us. Who know where and how it started, but it’s there.
Aliens who find the Voyagers will maybe feel like I do. Confused and alarmed at the sounds they hear on the golden records. Excited and intrigued. They’ll understand some of it, in their way, and will be at a loss for much of it.
But they’ll be connected to us. Through the passage of sound.
We’ll be long gone. The true end. And maybe they’ll be facing their own end.
I don’t know. This doesn’t make a lot of sense. But my brain is racing, trying to fill these lonely gaps.
What else am I going to do?
What I’m going to do is think about how all of us odd, different, disappeared women came together into a sort of dimensional community center or support group. It’s a great tag line.
And thinking about that is better than thinking about what’s going on out there.
There’s still the birds, and owls, and bats, and foxes and deer, and bears and bobcats, and other animals that I hear during the day and night. They make me feel better.
But.
It’s lonely in here, inside this house, but it’s still better than the outside world beyond.
The slate of new laws this last month reads like science-fiction, like the backstory to dystopian novels. Just the last few days, since I started this. The last seven nights. It’s just…
They’re moving so fast. They’ve moved past abortion and contraception now. They’re looking at quotas, and marriage laws. And those of us outside – the unmarried ones, the ones who’ve chosen to be childfree. The queer ones.
We’re the trouble. We’ve always been the trouble. Always will be the trouble.
We’re already unAmerican. We’re already broken, and unnatural, and too old, and too weird. Some corners of the web are shouting rumors about witches. Some are preaching the lessons of the Taliban and fundamentalists.
Can it be far off to have villagers with pitchforks hunting us down?
This is why I ran. But I don’t think I ran far enough.
I want them back. I want to talk to them about this. They all lived – live – through danger and fear, and being disappeared, and –
I mean, I guess they didn’t live. Ultimately. Maybe they lived for awhile but then, time moves on. They died.
I’ll die. None of this will matter. I’ll just be another nameless one.
What’s the point of connecting, or commiserating, or complaining…
What’s the point of all this.
I say that but I still want them here.
I need them.
I –
Oh my god, the air, it’s filling again, oh god, are they back?
Please come back, please…
Music: Original One theme (22 Ghosts III, Nine Inch Nails)
Oh.
You’re new.
Or, I guess, not new – you’re –
I’m so glad you’re here.
Sound: Record off.
Music: Outro theme (12 Ghosts II, Nine Inch Nails)
Voiceover:
Wyrd Woman is an audio drama from Broads and Books Productions.
The show is written, performed and produced by Amy Lee Lillard.
Music comes from the Ghosts albums by Nine Inch Nails, courtesy of a Creative Commons license.
Find full episode notes, transcripts, and show details at wyrdwomanpodcast.com.
If you like what you hear, tell a weird friend.
Thanks for listening.
* All music comes from the Ghosts albums by Nine Inch Nails, courtesy of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.
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