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The Curse of Company
The Story of Leo Magnets according to Jacob Stone
April 2008
The flanks of the empire are shuddering, and our hero Leo Magnets and his band forge ahead at the frontier, lonely and oblivious, as they are indeed a cursed company. Having left his hearted companion (coincidentally named The Memory) in port during THE PARADE DEVINE, Leo sets to sea, conducting the FLEETS IN THE FOG, lost in a prism of nightmares.
Striking earth, the company marches on and on, their days spent at reason’s edge. When night falls their ghosts appear, The Memory materializes in the dark of our Leo, a haunting poem titled ANY DAY is uttered. Ah Leo longs for his triumphant, exhausted and distant HOMECOMING; this ghost of The Memory is not real.
He wakes up alone, kicking at embers. Fuelled by angry, restless energy, the company start the digging of the ALL THE MINES, taking what they can, burning the rest, searching for something unnamed with a religious fury, branding the earth with their legacy.
But things aren’t well for our Leo. With every new shaft sunk our hero descends further, until he is SIDE BY SIDE with the phantoms. Watching life wind down and fall to pieces in the bowels of the earth, Leo is locked inside his dream, walking with The Memory’s ghost to death’s door. Back at the homeland, The Memory hangs clothes and wonders aloud at their fate, lullabying “I HAVE A SIMPLE LIFE”.
Suddenly and definitely, Leo’s spirit lifts out of the dirt and into the sky, flying THE KITES OF THE COUNTRIES, offering a fresh, cold perspective. He numbly observes his life, how his values have been shifting from the heat and struggle of his quest to a mysterious, adult place. Meanwhile, The Memory’s musing turns to dissatisfaction, as though she is consistently perpendicular to our far-away Leo. These vacant WHITE CLOTHES are bitterly reflective.
OH BROTHER to Leo Magnets we all are; this is a mythic reunion with an ambiguous future. JS
