I’m up late and I start wondering about Vampira. (No, really.) And I start feeling nostalgic for a time I never lived in, and I see an ad about how analog television is going the way of the black swan, and I think about how tv and radio used to be local, really, how there were once broadcasts that only natives could receive or understand. (We call those broadcasts “fandoms,” now, and they’re like night markets that spread thin and strong as spider-silk across continents and languages.) And I start hankering after a midnight movie broadcast of my own, some poor fellow equipped with slipping accent and melting makeup on whom I could rely during the wee small hours when I cannot sleep, have never slept — that lonely time between midnight and three when all my work gets done.
And the story falls into place, as natural as pillow creases in a sleeping face, and when I wake up I have a desire to hear songs like this one:
Rykarda Parasol, “Hannah Leah”