For whatever reason these four short scifi stories are interconnected. It was never my intention nor concept, these stories were written at different times in my life; yet they all speak to the philosophy & concepts of reality, creation, chaos, order, and individuality.
All works ©️ Jacob Pickard. 1995-2026.
“I am falling
I am fading
I have lost it all“
This was the theme song or the Anime “Serial Experiments Lain”. It has never left my head from the first time ive heard years and years ago.
The song reflects & anime (to me), the disjointed, etherial, and dark atmosphere, like there’s a thing just out of your reach, but can’t quite hold it or see it.
Once you seek it, however, it’s heavy, foreboding, and descends upon you without warning.
And you don’t seem to understand
A shame, you seemed an honest man
And all the fears you hold so dear
Will turn to whisper in your ear
And you know what they say might hurt you
And you know that it means so much
And you don’t even feel a thing
I am falling
I am fading
I have lost it all
And you don’t seem the lying kind
A shame that I can read your mind
And all the things that I read there
Candle lit smile that we both share
And you know I don’t mean to hurt you
But you know that it means so much
And you don’t even feel a thing
I am falling
I am fading
I am drowning
Help me to breathe
I am hurting
I have lost it all
I am losing
Help me to breathe
I am falling
I am failing
I am drowning
Help me to breathe
I am hurting
I have lost it all
I am losing
Help me to breathe
Ah-oh, yeah
Ah-oh-oh, yeah
I am falling
I am failing
I am drowning
Help me to breathe
I am hurting
I have lost it all
I am losing
Help me to breathe
Written by: Paul Richard Turrell, Ben Henderson, Jasmine Rodgers, Alexander Caird, Lee Sullivan, Stephen Paul Rodgers
Album: Duvet (ScummV Remix)
Released: 2022
“Forgive the trembling love,
I’m weak and acting bold
And alone”
The rhythmic and melodic layering in this song is amazing. The atmosphere it radiates chills you.
In blur, farther
Glanced over stirred
Imagined you laughing
Muddied feet dancing
What is this aching prism?
This prison wincing
Receiving sudden swaths of dogma
Wandering over royal yonder
Wandering over flooded ground again
(What does daylight look like?)
What does daylight look like in this chaos of cold?
(What does daylight look like?)
Solitude and falling into respites now
In blur, hovered
Accepted devotion
Unearthed, bleeding ark of creation
Wandering over royal yonder
Wandering over flooded ground again
(What does daylight look like?)
What does daylight look like in this chaos of cold?
(What does daylight look like?)
Solitude and falling into respites now
(What does daylight look like?)
What does daylight look like in this chaos of cold?
(What does daylight look like?)
Solitude and falling into respites now
Forgive the trembling love,
I’m weak and acting bold
And alone
Written by: Christopher Johnson, Kerry Dylan Mccoy, George Lesage Clarke, Daniel Tracy, Shiv Mehra. Album: Infinite Granite. Released: 2021
I’m coming to find you if it takes me all night
A witch hunt for another girl
For always and ever is always for you
Say goodbye on a night like this
If it’s the last thing we ever do
You never looked as lost as this
Sometimes it doesn’t even look like you
It goes dark
It goes darker still
Please stay
But I watch you like I’m made of stone
As you walk away
I’m coming to find you if it takes me all night
A witch hunt for another girl
For always and ever is always for you
Your trust
The most gorgeously stupid thing I ever cut in the world
Say hello on a day like today
Say it everytime you move
The way that you look at me now
Makes me wish I was you
It goes deep
It goes deeper still
This touch
And the smile and the shake of your head
I’m coming to find you if it takes me all night
Can’t stand here like this anymore
For always and ever is always for you
I want it to be perfect
Like before
I want to change it all
I want to change
I am Pariah
A life devoid of touch, love, passion, a pillar of rough-hewn granite, to make other’s lives more comfortable so they don’t have to feel guilt. A mirrored avatar to reflect what they want to see; taking responsibility for the cowardly acts of their Phantoms.
Selfish Ideological Narcissists, making victims that exist in the interstitial spaces, Acceptable losses in the war.
A living taboo, stigmatized, no one wants to touch this flesh, it is taboo made real.
Aged masculinty shattered into dull edges, ego ripped out, longtime ideological identity destroyed; the devouring mother’s hunger satiated.
I no longer want to try to identify with anyone, as anyone, or with any group. All are phantoms.
The gulf is now infinite. Not your spaces in-between, because nothing exists on either side.
Playing my part in the background, while the Phantoms roleplay; it’s the curse of total detached awareness & empathy. Pain hidden in the shadows, invisible to all.
Pariah is my rightful place, I am the sacrificial king: I will let this demon eat my soul.
……and I will REVEL in the consumption
One with the Pariah that haunts the
interstitial spaces
the Pariah that whispers to the
phantoms in your nightmares
©️ Jacob A. Pickard. 2025. Originally
published on SubStack.
I’ve been reluctant to share this one. The vulnerable parts of me in this water color are still part of me now.
Some people re-invent themselves, that is a skill I don’t possess. I carry everything because it’s me and good or bad I own it, and owing it is important. If you don’t own your choices, you make villians of others as an excuse for your actions. There is far to much of that in our world.
This is a long read. Just a quarter of this novel I wrote awhile ago. I cringe at some of it, because I was younger, with a great lack of wisdom. Although I think I caught detail of the action pretty well.
A wall of sound, like a train into solid mountain granite
A cacophonic quartet of smashing rhythm
Surrounded by darkness and a halo of thin light.
The bar, black walls, stale smoke and beer
Illumination of execution by genocide, crucifixion for/of beliefs
Murder, letting of blood
Metamorphosis
Material to ethereal, body to spirit
Or some would call it glory, ascendancy of man to heaven
Cyclical thunderous melody, droning and blooming into monotonous complexity
Bombastic renewal of circles cycles, of intricate repetition.
The eye of Isis, the death and rebirth of Osiris. The annual flooding of the Nile.
Life is a system, the process of rearrangement of cyclical moving parts, like a wall of sound.
Written around ~1995 after seeing the band Neurosis at Okayz Corral in Madison, WI. It was so loud I couldn’t hear correctly for an entire week. ©Jacob A Pickard. 2025.
I’m stronger than you’ll ever be
Because, to endure and have your sanity, to make it so long, a clearly defined character, rock hard in its clarity
I am strength
hidden in the hot exhale of your breath
only seen in the cold void
when there is nothing left
©️ Jacob Pickard. 2025.
Okay people out there in WP land this is a difficult question and one that is very hard to answer.
It gets worse if you have diverse musical genres you enjoy and listening moods that you mold the music around your feelings or state at the time.
Personaly; punk, hardcore, metal, & rock have been my main as well as many of the sub-genera’s of them all. Dark wave, industrial, blues, Ambient, folk, Folk Nordic metal, old country and bluegrass. I also like classical, early rap, more jazzy hip-hop/trip-hop or political (here’s looking at you Public Enemy) rap. I’ve never much been into pop, but PJ Harvey, Lady Gaga & Billie Elish i have a soft spot for because of their voice, they speak their truth’s, and the dark feminine nature they exude (Check out Chelsea Wolf). Im not a swifty but I like that she speaks out her politics and stands her ground.
So I im going to try to answer one of the questions I asked above and of course it is not 100%, but my favorite band(s) of all time goes to CLUTCH. Every song is a story, the lyrics build it into a saga, and the music a foundation for a mythology.
I first saw them in my brother’s basement in Madison, WI. Everytime I see them it’s like meeting up with an old friend.
Released 1991
Released 1995
Released 1998
Released 2013
Released 2022
Honorable mentions go to Carcass, The Dead Boys, Mastodon, Gwar, Godflesh, Boy Sets Fire, Paradise Lost, Subhumans, Grinch (west coast progressive hardcore), Bahaus, Circle Jerks, Black Flag, Amy Winehouse, The Cure, Beethoven, Curve, Public Enemy, Anthrax, Conflict, Brian Eno, Front Line Assembly, Skinny Puppy, Chelsea Wolf, Suldusk, Swallow the Sun, Red Fang, Melvins, My Bloody Valentine, Coil, etc…etc…etc…etc.…
Released 1986
Released 1992
Released 2019
Released 2006
Released 1991
Released 1977
So what do ally’all like? Can you answer this question?
Things have changed.
Time vigor pride beaten down by the club of life.
Resurrection?
Not while we’re alive.
©️ Jacob Pickard. 2025. Written ~ 2010.
I have no white whale to consume my soul, I am that white whale. Born a beast a monster: failures, oppression, hurt, murder, rape, death, genocide, femicide, and even your internal misery. I am your enemy i am your monster.
qualities you possess, your biological virtuous signaling superiority; a kingdom built of rage safe space for authority
victimhood aggreivment gives you power, self righteous-justification, superior unquestioned objectification
of me, the white whale
pluck out my eyes, spear my flesh, spill my blood, sickle my fat, bind my girth, blind me with your spit, hell hath no fury like your scorn upon me, i am your monster, your beast, a sacrifice for the goddess your ruler above, penetrate me, rape me, a mangled object your conquest that was born guilty
Yes be Ahab, understand
While lashed on your shattered ship
Sinking into the ocean abyss
”Damning yourself was a choice, you created your end by decision, your agency was your own.”
“Never understanding the nature of revenge while you let me consume your soul, do you understand you never were free, as long as all your thoughts were always centered on me.”
I, the white whale swims free, I will forever, be the last thing your living eyes ever shall see
©️ Jacob Pickard. 2025.
So back in 2015 I stopped using Facebook and Social media all together, i did have a My Space before that. In-between I dabled in Reddit, twitter, and Instagram all of which in my point of view are cesspools. Not that I’m a saint, but I detest those who catfish & scam, trolls, asshole partisians, virtue superiority signaling, maga, aggreivment gender supremacist, trauma grifters, and the general way people treat eachother with disrespect and make instant judgements on your life and character. Also, the stalkers, who go after you, plenty of those ass hats.
I orginally quit social media in 2015 for two reasons, with my friends it felt hallow and fake why not just talk, the second was how MAGA used it with Cambridge Anylitica to get Trump elected, blatant manipulation and FaceBook was cool with it: that was to me grounds to tell FB to fuck off. I haven’t been back since, nor Amazon for that matter. I’ve always made decsions based on my politics and where I spend my money and what platform I allow to advertise to me i take important. One of the reasons I left Substack, because it’s owned by a libertarian tech bro. After the Charlie kirk assination they let MAGA gaslight and make death threats for at least a week. I have no doubt just like Zuckerberg & X, soon as a writer or blogger they will write into the terms that your work, copyright, or IP will no longer be protected.
The thing that disappoints me the most about social media is relationships with other people, or the superficiality of them. I am a person who always is trying to “bond”. I’ve found that the vast majority of people you think you are bonding with are not treating the experience of learning about eachother the same way you would physically, as in face to face. It’s as if the wired has a “buffer” that keeps these bonds that you build from ever becoming reality. I can’t imagine how it is to date with online apps, it must be like going through a menu at a 24 hour greek restaurant at 3am with a bunch of other drunk people.
In December of 2024, I went back in and to blueskye trying to push back against X like many X’ers, then came WordPress for my writing, then I left both for Substack in may of 2025 (also, partly because a WordPress writer was actively gaslighting me). I went to SS just when the notes part (the social media part) of SS came online. Though, I met a lot of cool people on Blueskye & Substack many who had helped me through some of the toughest emotionaly horrible months of my life, there has been only one that I have a meaningfull relationship with that I have from all of it.
The cruelty I faced for coming out regarding my assaults was sometimes overwhelming. The anger and spite directed at me for speaking out just to be heard, the cruelty, the hate, the rage. I finally had enough of it on SS too, like I had on Blueskye. Living with an assault considered taboo, I have no idea what I was thinking trying to find answers on social media sites. I was desperate just to find some grace in a world that views you as a villian at birth, even though you were not the villian, and the experience goes against the narrative.
Now, I plan on staying on WordPress. The last year has been an education for me. Social media is not for some people, I am one of them.
I’m a writer, on the darker side, and a terrible artist, but what I show you and what you read is genuine, it’s from my heart and mind. The majority of the art or images I take myself.
I give you me and I ask nothing from you in return.
©️ Jacob Pickard. 2026.
Ecoheretic 