Chants. 45,540 words

No introduction necessary.

 

In the first week, a few hundred people appeared at each of the Chants. James brought some celebrities who had been feuding… and the feuds were healed. 

Gordon showed up with a stack of resume paper and a vintage typewriter, and managed to type while chanting. Some of the pages were blown around by the wind and landed in the water, which prompted a few dozen people (including James van der Beek and Colin Firth) to recreate the famous ‘eel’ scene from Love Actually, while chanting. 

Afterwards, Gordon could be heard crowing, “I wrote a whole chapter in an hour!! I have a whole new understanding of Celebrity Feuds, it was like an epiphany! What I mean is that even though Celebrities do not ‘really’ become Feud, a block of becoming forms between the Celebrities and the Feud, where their molecularities mix—this is what is ‘real.’ In this sense, becoming Feud is never a teleological process, where the Celebrities have a goal to ‘be’ ultimately Feud. As a becoming between Celebrities and Feud, becoming-Feud is always a double movement. While it affects the Feud as much as the Celebrities, the becoming itself is a third term that exerts this transformative force.” 

James bit his tongue; if Gordon’s epiphany sounded a lot like James’s TED talk on the Celebrity Feud Support Group, that was a matter for his dissertation committee and the unaccredited Arsenio Hall School of Disembodied Agriculture tribunal on academic integrity. 

Jorn Acorn came to a Chant and left as Jorn “Björn” Acorn. He was proud as punch about his new nickname.

Cody “Jorts” Simpson brought all his teammates on the Australian Olympic swim team. They all had noticeably bigger muscles after one hour of chanting than they had before. 

Flo Rida came to a Chant. Immediately afterward, he disappeared into Toronto’s Fashion District. Two days later his new fashion line debuted and the internet broke as everyone tried to purchase the postmodern garments.

Taylor Swift came to a Chant, and announced afterward that she was taking a year off from performing and writing music, returning her private jets, and taking acting lessons. “My dream is to have a small supporting role in the next Space Jam movie,” she said. Despite the smash success of Space Jam: Futbolista a few years earlier, there had been no plans for a third entry in the franchise. But the very next day, Taylor was invited to audition for Space Jam: Pride and Prejudice, a mash-up involving aliens using basketball tournaments to gain feminist victories in the marriage market in 19th century England. Riveting stuff.

Nothing happened for Fenn. The chants were disoriented and trippy, in a not-unpleasant way. A bit like drinking Jackie’s piquette on an empty stomach. They liked being hidden away inside the soundsuit, leading people to their epiphanies and healings and curse-breakings. 

But they could not lift their own damn curse. 

They still didn’t even know what it was. 

Is being born a curse?

Is being alive in the 21st century a curse?

Other people didn’t seem to think so but what was Fenn supposed to think? They were out there every day chanting, it was even sort of fulfilling. The world was better because of their work, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? What was better? How could you know if the world was better? A few people being marginally happier, was that better? Who’s to say that someone else didn’t get marginally unhappier after the Chants? Or was it just Fenn who was getting worse and worse?