Breaker Whiskey

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

[beeps]

[click, static]

Yeah, okay, I guess I really had given up trying to be subtle about it. [click, static]

You didn’t put a question mark at the end, but I’m going to assume it’s a question anyway—or, asking for confirmation at least.

I’m glad you’re okay—thanks for sending me something, even if I’m not totally sure what to say in response. I’ve never really, um...talked about this. At least not to anyone not in it with me.

[click, static]

But, yes, I was an art thief. I mean, that’s the easiest way to describe it anyway. And, you know, it wasn’t always art-art— like with Sylvia, it was sometimes antiques and what-not. I’m sure you’re wondering how I got into it when I’m clearly not an art connoisseur and the answer is really

that I fell backwards into it. To finish my story from the other day, I guess, and completely incriminate myself I met Pete trying to rob him of some jewelry he’d robbed from some Park Ave fat cat—that was mainly my thing at the time. Burglary. Um, I didn’t—when I got to New York, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so I got a job at a hardware store in a really nice part of town and that led to me doing in home repairs for some folks in the neighborhood and...well, you fix enough wall sconces in five bedroom apartments while you’re living with four other people in a shitty downtown box and you start to have some feelings about some things.

I am as good at breaking things as I am at fixing them, so it was easy for me to get into empty apartments, into locked drawers or safes and it was easy for me to case a place if I was already there doing repairs—

[click, static]

God, it’s weird to talk about this out loud and on a public frequency. I don’t know what you might be thinking of me, finding out I’m some kind of common criminal, but I never stole from anyone who really needed it. I always tried to make sure to leave alone the stuff that seemed like it might have real sentimental value to, but of course you can never really tell—

[click, static]

Anyway, Pete—rather than punching me in the jaw for trying to rob him, he offered me a job. He said he liked the way I had broken in, leaving no trace. He needed a yeggman—um, a safecracker—and I wasn’t too shabby at it, even as inexperienced as I was. So that’s what I did.

[click, static]

I was twenty-two years old and I’d been in New York for all of...eighteen months? And I had somehow fallen in with one of the best thieves in a city filled to the brim with expert criminals.

Up until I got stuck with Harry for half a decade, I had pretty good luck with the people I fell in with.

And now I’ve got you, Birdie—or, I hope I do, after all this. So I think my luck is turning back around.

[click, static]

.- .-. - / - .... .. . ..-.

Art Thief

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey, finally leaving Kansas. Up next: Colorado.

[click, static]

I did not see that dog again. I knew it was a long shot, but I still felt disappointed. How stupid is that?

I could have driven around more maybe—spent more time driving through all the little towns that surround the highway where I saw him. But to be honest, I really want to get the hell out of Kansas. The tornado, it—

[click, static]

It was terrifying. I didn’t—it was one of, I think, the scariest things I’ve ever experienced, I think. I never would have guessed that—that a tornado was actually that terrifying. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I would’ve thought different.

I used to love storms as a kid—actually, you know, as an adult too. There’s nothing quite like cozying up with a good record and a little project during a thunderstorm.

[click, static]

This is a little embarrassing, maybe, but I used to—I used to, um, build miniatures. Like, furniture and other things for dollhouses.

[click, static]

I know, I know. But it can’t be car engines and spackle all the time. It was good to work on smaller things. More delicate things. Usually there’d be a toaster or a lamp or a typewriter for me to tinker with, but when there wasn’t...

I always wanted a dollhouse as a kid. I wanted one so badly, but we could never afford it. Not a real one. My dad and I tried to build one out of an old milk crate once, but neither of us had the eye for it. At least not then.

It was actually, um, another fence of ours—Sylvia—who got me into it. She owned this weird little curio shop in Soho and would usually be able to find a buyer for any antiquities or, um, what’re they called—objet

d’arts—that we might come across. Stuff that wasn’t your typical six figure painting or what have you.

And her shop was legitimate and it was full of so much interesting stuff. I may have not ever been an art person, but I love...stuff. You know? The ephemera of peoples’ lives, the clocks, the letter openers, the desks and the paperweights. Some of it is beautiful, of course, but I was always more interested in the function. Or the marriage between function and form, as Harry would say. She tried to convince me that I did appreciate art after all and I would tell her that I appreciated beautiful things that had a purpose and that that was different. And she would say ‘being beautiful is a purpose’ and I would roll my eyes and she would snap at me and we’d just go—

[click, static]

Anyway, before I met Harry, I was in Sylvia’s shop and somehow we got on the topic of her repair work and how, as much as she loved doing it, she was getting too old for it—her eyes too weak, her hands were too shaky from her arthritis. And I needed a little extra cash, so I started helping her out with it. She taught me pretty much everything I needed to know—fixing the lining inside a piece of vintage luggage is not the same as rewiring a toaster—but I don’t know, found I liked most of the work.

And then one day she asked me to repair this gorgeous dollhouse. And it was so frustrating and fun and opened this whole world to me of making tiny little things—tiny chairs and tiny settees and tiny little lamps that really lit up and...

[for the rest of the transcript, visit breakerwhiskey.tumblr.com]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I’m...I’m okay.

[click, static]

I don’t know if you were wondering about what happened to me—or if you even heard my last transmission at all but um—

[click, static]

I’m okay. Turns out you can outrun a tornado so...take that Dorothy.

[click, static]

I—um, I hope everything’s okay with you. It’s been a week of radio silence now and I’m, um...

[click, static]

Well, yeah, I hope you’re okay too.

[static]

[radio noise]

[click off]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

(siren sounds)

[click, static]

Can you hear that?

(siren sounds)

[click, static]

There’s um—there’s a tornado. There’s a goddamn tornado. [click, static]

When it first sounded, I thought it was an attack siren, like the ones they used to play for school drills. When we’d have to hide under our desks and clutch onto the table legs like that would save us from a nuclear bomb.

[click, static]

I don’t know who they thought they were fooling.

[click, static]

I can’t believe I’m in actual fucking Kansas and there’s a tornado. It feels too cliche to be real, somehow.

[click, static]

Everything I know about tornadoes, I know from The Wizard of Oz. (chuckles) That’s really not fucking helpful at the moment, is it? I don’t have Toto or ruby slippers or a basement to hide in.

I can’t remember anything about what you’re supposed to do in a tornado other than going into a basement. But the siren started going when I was on the road and like I said I thought I was—I thought we were, you know, under attack because its the same goddamn noise, um, but then I—I saw in the distance—and you know, there’s nothing around me. I pulled over obviously but I don’t know if I should be driving away or if I should be looking for a bridge or an overpass...I think there’s something about bridges. They’re either the worst place to be or the best place to be.

[click, static]

Really fucking helpful, I know. [click, static]

I’ve already gone on a journey to a strange land, you know? That’s what the world feels like—like waking up in technicolor after being in black and white but...um, the reverse I guess. If I get caught up in the tornado, do you think I’ll go back? To the way that things were?

[click, static]

Back? I don’t know what I’m saying. Back where? I didn’t travel anywhere, there’s nothing to go back to unless I can figure out a way to invent time travel and stop whatever it was that happened.

[click, static]

I keep thinking about hell. In the sense of...is this hell? Sometimes I get that feeling of unreality, the strange sensation that I’m somehow outside of myself, looking at myself from just off to the side. It’s gotten worse since I left Pennsylvania. Maybe I really should look in the mirror more often. I barely even use the car mirrors, it’s not like there’s other drivers to be aware of, and maybe that’s the problem, there’s so little to be aware of around me that I feel hyper aware of me.

[click, static]

But what if we died? What if we died when we were trying to get away and all of this has been a kind of purgatory, a terrible punishing afterlife from a god with a twisted sense of humor?

[click, static]

Never mind, I’m just wigged out. The sound of the sirens is, um...it’s spooky, you know? Eerie. I guess that makes it a good warning system for tornadoes and potential nuclear threat because there’s something in the sound that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

[click, static]

It’s rattling me, somewhere deep down, in some hind brain that triggers my fight or flight. The tornado is still really far away and...

[click, static]

I thought—I thought I saw a tornado, but I can’t—I can’t see it anymore, but, who knows, maybe the emergency system is just malfunctioning but the sky looks so terribly gray, a kind of gray that’s got a little bit of green to it, like the atmosphere itself is feeling sick.

[click, static]

I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. [click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Well, I’ve done it, I’ve been to Nebraska.

[click, static]

I can’t say it’s really all that different from Kansas. That’s true of every state crossing, I guess. The borders feel especially arbitrary out here, all straight lines and perfect corners. The roads are all so straight too. Though I have started to wander more, dipping into suburbs and rural areas, keeping my eyes peeled.

[click, static]

I was gonna head back through Kansas the way I came before I start West again. I thought...I don’t know, it can’t hurt to go past where I saw that dog one more time and see if I can catch him again.

[click, static]

I keep running through it in my head, what would I say if I actually saw a person in flesh and blood. I didn’t really get to choose my first words to you, Birdie, because I was just speaking to...the concept of humanity I guess, but seeing someone in person would be different, wouldn’t it.

[click, static]

I’d start with my name maybe. Say it was good to see them because it would be good to see them. Ask them their name, ask if they’re okay, where they’re from. But from there...I have no idea how to carry on that conversation. Do I jump right into asking about what happened six years ago? Or is that rude?

[click, static]

Where’s Emily Post when you need her, huh?

[click, static]

It’s all a moot point. A fantasy, a daydream. And those can get dangerous if you let them take root.

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I drove past a sign advertising “Pioneer Village” in a place called Minden and obviously had to check it out and guess what? It’s like Colonial Williamsburg—some guy in ‘53 decided he wanted to create his own little frontier amusement park. The place is half old west ghost town and half...random inventions from through the ages. Old airplanes and cars, guns, farming equipment, early electric lights...if I could figure out a way to get the power going again, I’m pretty sure I could live there for the next hundred years. Really homestead it up.

What is it with America’s obsession with the past? Why do we create these towns that let you pretend you exist in a time that was more unpleasant for pretty much everybody?

[click, static]

God, I mean, talk about choice, right? The people who built this pioneer village - who claimed to have built this whole country, those are the people who have had every possible choice in front of them at all times. And so often they used it to make everyone else’s lives worse. And I’ve —I’ve never understood that.

[click, static]

I think—I’d like to think if I had that kind of control over other people, I’d just leave everyone alone. Is there something about getting to that level of influence that just rots away at someone’s brain? How do people care that much about what other people do for a living or what god they pray to or what they get up to in the privacy of their own homes?

[click, static]

Sorry, Birdie. I’m maybe getting a little off topic here. It’s only...well, I was thinking about upstate New York and my friend and Francis Lennon and a lot of different people I’ve known in my life who were, you know, maybe a little different than the norm, and therefore had fewer choices in front of them.

Myself included. My life has been a series of diminishing crossroads.

[click, static]

And here we have a monument to ‘pioneers’, but what did they really pioneer? What ground did they break, what progress did they make? What did they have to do in order to claim that variety of choice on where to live, how far west to go, how to make their money. Who did they have to drive over? Who did they have to kill?

[click, static]

Don’t worry, I recognize the irony in me saying all this. Here I am, with the whole nation as my personal playground. A glut of choice. And it... well, it really feels like no choice at all.

[click, static]

Maybe that’s what happens to people at the top. They go insane with excess.

[click, static]

Alright, Birdie, hope to hear from you soon. Whiskey out. [click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

You know, the last time I took a trip was probably...it was ’65. Or—’66? Just a few years before the incident. The last time I took a vacation, I mean—

[click, static]

Not that this is a vacation, but, you know, it’s not a work trip, it’s uh— [click, static]

I had this...um, friend—a writer I’d met at a club in New York—who had a house upstate. She technically lived in the Village, but she was hardly ever there—I guess writers really like their solitude.

So I’d go up there sometimes, just for a weekend. Take the metro-north to the last stop—she’d pick me up in this old Ford pick-up she had and we’d go straight to the grocery store before heading back to the house. She’d ask me what I wanted to cook that weekend, like I ever had any idea. I’ve got about five dishes I can make with any kind of proficiency, but she loved to cook and she wanted to include me, I guess.

Which was nice.

I’d usually pick out the wine and then we’d take our haul back to the house and put on a record—Joan Baez or James Brown—and we’d drink and cook and eat and talk about books or what she was working on at that moment.

She knew what I did, but she knew not to ask too much about it. So mostly I’d tell her about the weird people I’d met, or the shows I’d seen recently.

[click, static]

I loved going to see shows on Broadway. Maybe that’s surprising to you —it’s surprising to a lot of people who’ve met me. But I loved it. Loved any kind of live performance, whether it was Broadway, off-Broadway, music concerts, beat poetry, whatever. Just seeing people get up on a stage and open themselves up to strangers in that way...there’s something extraordinary in it. And my friend, she didn’t get to the city much by that point, like I said, so she liked hearing about all the shows I went to go see.

And, uh, if I had enough wine by that point in the evening, I might even get up and act out some of the more dramatic bits of what I’d seen on her living room carpet. She would laugh so hard at that.

[click, static]

She had a great laugh. [click, static]

There were so many times in the last six years that I wished I’d been trapped with her in her cabin in the woods instead of in Pennsylvania with Harry. I’m sure there would’ve been things about each other that drove the other insane, but at least there would have been... compensations.

[click, static]

She was a good friend. A really good friend, you know? It wasn’t...um, it wasn’t committed or anything, but...yeah, she was a really good friend.

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Dear Harry,

Today I saw the world’s largest ball of twine. The photo on the front of the postcard doesn’t do it justice. Don’t misunderstand—it represents the size well, but it doesn’t capture the central essence of “...huh?” that the ball draws out in the viewer.

But that’s what art is, right? According to you, at least. Art is meant to provoke, to create a reaction; it’s not meant to be pretty all the time. Well, I’m sure you’d have quite an opinion on the ball of twine.

Glad you’re not here—AR. [click, static]

So. Yeah. I wrote out a postcard. Harry’s the only person I know alive other than you, but I’m already talking to you.

Not like I’m going to send it or anything, obviously—I couldn’t even if I wanted to. But...I don’t know, it felt odd to write on the postcard without addressing it to anyone.

[click, static]

I’m gonna make this a thing, I think—postcards of the weirder attractions around this country. If and when I can find them at least.

Because it did occur to me that even if I went and got a camera, I don’t know anything about developing film. The only way I could take any pictures would be if I came across a polaroid, so I’m keeping an eye out for that.

[click, static]

Have you traveled much, Birdie? Like I said, I’ve gotten around a little, but I’ve definitely never traveled this much in this amount of time. Now

that I’ve been doing it for a while, it’s gotten...I don’t know, it’s kind of fun again, the way it was the first week or so. My body’s adjusted to driving so much and I’m headed to parts of the country I’ve never been to so it’s beginning to feel like an adventure again. Like a real adventure.

I’m going to cross over into Colorado if I keep driving West, so I’m going to go up to Nebraska first, just so I can say I’ve been there.

Alright, Whiskey out. [click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I wish I had a camera.

I am in Cawker City, Kansas, home of the world’s largest ball of twine.

[click, static]

Can you believe it? That someone bothered to do this? To wrap up a ball of twine so big it gets its own sign?

The world is a strange and mysterious place and human beings might be the most mysterious of all.

[click, static]

But I still wish I had a camera. I did go into the general store in town and found a postcard with the twine ball on it, so I’ve got a little souvenir, but I would’ve liked to put a camera on a self-timer and taken a photo of myself with the freakish thing. Proof that I saw it. Proof that I was here. Here in Cawker City, here in Kansas, here on planet Earth, all on my own.

[click, static]

I know I said I never had any power and I still don’t and…that’s true. For most of my life I’ve been an anonymous drifter with no family, no roots, no community. I couldn’t change the world, so I just tried to work around it.

But I left my mark on it still. And I’ve had a lot of empty years to think about what kind of mark that is. And I’m not sure I like the answer.

[click, static]

Maybe I’ll actually write out something on the postcard, leave my mark that way. I’d just…I’d like to leave something good behind. Not just the imprints of my nails in the skin of this world from where I tried to hold on so tightly to my own life.

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey calling out for Birdie.

[click, static]

I got your message.

[click, static]

“Job important. Hurt people.”

I—I’m not sure what to do with that.

Um, you told me that I wasn’t in danger and that you weren’t in danger, but I don’t know if that’s the same as knowing if you’re dangerous or not. I’m not sure knowing the answer to that question is important.

[click, static]

Yeah, I really don’t know what you want me to do with that. If you’re looking for a shoulder to cry on or looking for absolution. If it’s that—if it’s hoping that somebody will absolve you of the hurt you caused or the guilt that you feel then I am not that person.

I guess I could tell you to not feel guilty because I don’t— I don’t think necessarily you should, but then again, what do I know about you or your job?

[click, static]

A lot of people think that their jobs are important and very very few people are right, so I’m not sure how to judge which one of those you are. I think being a doctor is important, healing p eople. But if you feel like you’ve hurt a lot of people as a doctor…I mean a lot of that is out of your hands, right? You don’t strike me as a type of person who would intentionally injure someone.

[click, static]

You know, when I first heard your code broadcasting, I wondered if it was some sort of government system. Some sort of emergency broadcast that had switched on six years ago and never switched off. And maybe you can’t tell me this, but maybe I wasn’t totally off. Government jobs can be important. They can also be useless and corrupt and hurtful. You could’ve hurt a lot of people working for the government. I know that I was hurt by—

[click, static]

Whatever it is—whatever you did, I can tell you not to feel guilty but I’m not sure that you should trust me on that. That’s—that’s what I mean by me not being that—that person. There are things that I should feel guilty for—things that I did, things that I was, things that I still I am I don’t know. And I don’t know that I feel all that guilty about any of it.

[click, static]

That’s not true. I do feel guilty for what Harry and I did. We—we made a choice that day when we started our weird little existence. Before everything happened or maybe simultaneous with everything that happened I mean…like I told you we were a little caught up in our own affairs and, well, we made a choice that day. Clear eyed and maybe not of completely sound mind, but no one could say that we had no other options. And we made a choice and I can’t say with complete certainty that I would go back and make a different choice but that doesn’t mean that I feel so confident about it.

Anyway, if you knew me—really knew me, I don’t—

[click, static]

I don’t think that you would be looking to me to make you feel better about whatever it is that you did. And maybe if I knew what you did, I wouldn’t be trying to get to you, but I guess I’m curious…

Do you feel like you had a choice?

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.