I figure I should commit this in writing before my memory distorts the legend further:
The year of Audeamus’s inaugural issue, I took it upon myself to create the Audeamus “design philosophy.” This was a term that I had been throwing around after becoming interested in contentious commercial design that previous summer; meaning I didn’t really have a clue what it meant. Determined to procrastinate on reading, I drew up a few sketches (in pen, which made my tie dye-shirt-wearing high school art teacher sob in a corner, accompanied by one of the many skulls he owned) and came up with a few ideas. I still have the things hidden away in storage in my parent’s garage, and as long as the rats haven’t gotten to them, perhaps I will post those scraps on the blog someday; however, if the little guys have gotten to the sketches, I hope the inevitable indigestion those sketches caused didn’t kill the poor rodents. Not to say the things were horrendously bad, they were ideas, which is what were were grasping for in those early days; whether they were good or bad was not in question. Quickly shifting through them at a board meeting, the editors came upon something that they liked.
This is where memory serves to liven things up a bit.
The previous night, one of the board members, Kevin (who has been chosen this year to be one of the editor in chiefs after it was found that he possessed over sixty-five-percent of the eighteen marks that denote a future editor in chief as foretold in the Audeamus Sutra, which is not to be confused with the Amadeus Sutra) had a dream in which he and his tug boat had been swallowed by a leviathan at sea. Typically the dream would end there. However, this night, while in the black belly of the beast, a shining light appeared, dissipating the darkness of the whale’s digestive tack. The source of this light was a being in eighteenth-century dress, whose face wielded the power of both a monocle and a mustache, and whose head was crowned by the fanciest of bowlers. Kevin, compelled to ask were one would obtain such a chic fashion sense, approached the figure. The mustachioed man then lifted his bowler and, like a magician or neu-age shaman, called forth two spirits. The first sprit was clothed in stripes of goldenrod and ebony, she wielded a poisonous rapier, had the ability to make flowers bloom, and––despite whatever laws of aerodynamics dictated––could fly. The second figure wore what seemed like giant branches, and whose demeanor said “Hey dude, don’t get up in my grill or I will be forced to pop a cap in you,” but whose eyes like headlights said, “Worry naught, for I eat plants alone.” Thus the man spoke:
My name is a chimera forged from these two spirits. Utter this name in time of need and you will be blessed with a cornucopia of gifts.
That was when Kevin woke from his dream.
TO BE CONTINUED
Sylvia Plath Reads “Daddy” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hHjctqSBwM
Billie Holiday Performs “Strange Fruit” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs
But Does It Float (design ephemera) http://butdoesitfloat.com/
