My intention was to write a short intro and then just insert a transcript of my interview with Trevor Brushton. What I have done instead is to insert myself into the story. I didn’t do this as an homage to outmoded forms of journalism, I did it because I may have become a part of the story of Trevor Brushton’s subsequent death.
I’m not sure.
When word came down that I had gotten the interview, but that it would have to be in person, at his villa in Baja, people around the office reacted the same way they would’ve if I were being sent into a warzone. They said ‘be careful down there,’ or ‘I hope you have a solid escape plan,’ or simply, ‘are you sure you want to do this?’
The name Trevor Brushton held such menace that spending a week with him and his family in a converted resort in Baja was comparable to risking life and limb on the front lines. Even my editors were a little weary. ‘Don’t question any inconsistencies in his story,’ one of them told me, ‘just get his side of it and get out. We’ll fact check it later.’ This was the same editor who, when I interviewed an anarchist accused of murdering 26 people, told me, ‘don’t let the bastard off the hook.’ He gave me photographs of the dead to show the guy.
But I knew that whatever the dangers might be, and I already suspected that they were overblown, I had to do the interview. This man created the first annihilation sorties. What other living human being could say they had a hand in creating a form of art that instantly made everything that came before it look old-fashioned?
(I know there were others involved, and that there are many conflicting stories of how the first sorties came about, but every story features Brushton as a main character, if not the driving force. His testimony must, therefore, be essential. The participants in that early scene, the ones who lived, all have axes to grind and legends to burnish. The stories they tell are suspiciously self-serving, and Brushton’s is no exception. You can choose whichever story you like and believe it completely, but you can’t believe all of them, so the origins of annihilation have to remain a mystery.)
I said goodbye to my cat, gave my cacti a little extra water, made sure my life insurance policy was up to date, and got on a plane to Mexico. All I brought with me was my small-screen and a bag. I wanted to travel light in case I had to get away quickly.
Trevor Brushton will not give his address to anyone, including a reporter coming to interview him, but his publicist assured us that someone would meet me at the airport. I can’t say I was surprised when I arrived at Los Cabos International and no one was there. I tried the pick address I had, but no one answered. I left a message.
Luckily, if Cabo has nothing else, it has hotel rooms, and since SoundWords was paying for it, I got myself a nice one. I ordered a large meal from room service and fell asleep watching American cartoons dubbed into Spanish on the big-screen.
I woke up six hours later at 4:30 in the morning and there was still no response to my message. I went for a walk on the beach, got some breakfast and then called again at nine. I left another message and ordered a bloody Mary. I felt certain that the whole trip would be a bust.
I was well into my second bloody Mary when a beautiful American with black hair and severe bangs came over. She asked if I was alone. “Yeah.” I said. “How about you?”
“No, my friends are still sleeping upstairs.” She looked like she was maybe 25. She had a prominent nose, and intelligent eyes. “Have you ever been to a dog race?” She asked me.
“Sure, all the time.” I said.
“There’s a great dog track here in Cabo. My friends and me are heading out there today. Maybe you’d like to join us?”
“How would we get there?”
“I have a car.” She said. “Rented. I come here for work two or three times a year, it’s a great town. I always try to show other Americans around.”
“I’m Canadian.” I said.
“Good, I hate Americans.” With the vodka warming my bloodstream she seemed charming and attractive. “I’m Lillian.” She said.
“Efrain.” I said. “I’d love to go to the track with you and your friends.”
“I don’t really have any friends upstairs.” She said. “I don’t know why I lied.”
I laughed.
If you’ve never been to the dog track I highly recommend it, and I hope your ability to pick winners is better than mine. Lillian told me she managed the property holdings for a Chinese company and I told her I was in advertising. I don’t think either one of us believed the other. We smoked a joint on our way from the track, and we decided to stop off at a roadside taco place. While we waited for our order to come up I decided to try my luck. “Do you listen to annihilation sorties?” I asked her.
“Not anymore.” She said. “I used to get annihilated every weekend, but these days the sorties are too commercial. Why, do you?”
“Sometimes.” I said. “I heard a rumor that Trevor Brushton lives down here. Is that true?”
“Yeah, he’s got a ranch up the coast. It used to be a resort, now he’s got his pigpen in the old tennis courts. He’s just as crazy as everyone says.”
“Could we go up there and check it out?” I asked.
Her eyes were heavy and red but I could still see the curiosity there. “I guess.” She said. “It’s not much to look at from the outside.”
“I think I could get us in.” I said. She said okay, but I could tell she didn’t believe me. After we ate our tacos we started the long drive to Rattler Ranch. She was fun and beautiful but I wasn’t there to meet fun and beautiful people, I was there to get an interview. I knew I’d have to ditch her if I had a chance to get into the compound. I felt bad about it, but I couldn’t bring some random trick with me on an interview. Unprofessional.
When we got to the turn off that led to the ranch Lillian’s small-screen went dead and the car rolled to a stop. She said Trevor had jammers and blockers set up all around the perimeter. Apparently it had caused a local kerfuffle when people’s small-screens stopped working every time they drove by Rattler Ranch, but Trevor had enough money to do pretty much whatever he wanted in Mexico. Now everyone just knew that on that stretch of road you wouldn’t get a signal.
Lillian switched to manual and took us up the dusty road, past signs that said: Private Property, No Trespassing, and You Are Now Being Monitored by Sequential Time Scanners. In the middle of the vast expanse of nothingness, among the brush and rocks, a high chain link fence appeared in the distance. When we arrived at the locked gate we got out of the car and looked at an enormous sign that read: ELECTRIC! INSTANT DEATH! The fence was at least twelve feet high with a spiral of razor wire along the top. Lillian laughed. “I guess we’re not getting in.” She said.
“You think they know we’re here?” I asked.
“The signs said we were being monitored.” She said. “I have no reason to disbelieve them.”
“Maybe they’ll send someone to see what we want.”
She shrugged. “Maybe.” She said. She pulled out another joint and lit it and handed it to me. “What makes you think you can get us in there?”
“Don’t worry about it.” I took a hit and handed it back.
She took a long hit and leaned back against the hood of her car. “I got you all figured out already.” She said. “I can see it in your face. Your mama told you that Trevor Brushton is your daddy, huh? You came all the way down here to try to meet him, thinking he’ll welcome you with open arms. Shit, this is breaking my heart.”
I took the joint and hit it a couple of times. I’ll say this for Lillian, she smoked some good weed. “You don’t think he’ll be happy to see me?” I asked.
“I don’t know one way or the other.” Lillian said. “But I’ll tell you this, you’re not the first person who’s come scratchin’ around Rattler Ranch looking for a family reunion…”
“You calling my mom a liar?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said, “but it’s been known to happen. A little boy asking who his daddy is over and over and eventual
ly mom just says ‘see that man on the big-screen? He’s your daddy.’ She picked the right person, it’s almost impossible to contact the guy. Also it’s got the added benefit of making you feel special, ’cause you’re running around thinking your dad’s a genius and you’ve got genius blood running through your veins.”
“Look at my face.” I said. “Are you honestly telling me you don’t see a resemblance?”
“Hmm,” she said, “maybe the nose.”
I laughed, but I couldn’t laugh long because there was a truck coming up the road on our side of the fence. The driver slowed down and stopped about 20 feet away from us. A woman stuck her head out the window. “Private property.” She said. “I could shoot both of you dead and it would be legal.”
I told Lillian to wait and approached the truck. The woman was frowning at me. She looked like she was in her late forties, of Italian decent, with short black hair and intense dark eyes. “My name is Efrain Zimmer, I’m from SoundWords up in Vancouver. I’m here for an interview.” I said.
“You were supposed to be here yesterday.”
“Um, yeah, sorry about that.” I said. “I’m here now.”
“Who’s your friend?”
“Just someone I met in town.” I said. “She gave me a ride.”
“Well, get in.” The woman said. I waved to Lillian and shouted out my thanks and got in the truck as the gate opened automatically. Lillian had a curious half-smile on her face as we went by. “I’m Tiny.” The woman said.
“Tiny Tresaro?”
She nodded.
“I’m a big fan.” I said. “Your sorties meant a lot to me as a kid.”
“Uh-huh.” She said. “You can’t see Trevor today. He just got back from a long trip and he’s been in the studio working.”
“He’s working on music?”
“Nah, he’s doing sculpture.” She said. I wasn’t sure if she was kidding and she looked at me shook her head. “Yeah, he’s working on some music. Anyway, he’ll be too tired for an interrogation today.”
“I’m not going to interrogate him.” I said. “I just want to ask him some questions.”
“About the past.”
“Of course.” I said.
“You think talking about the past will help you learn something about it?” She shook her head.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I can’t go back in time and live it, so I have to hear about it second hand.”
“I don’t think it’s worth much.”
“What’s the harm in trying?” I asked.
“I don’t expect someone just out of diapers to understand, but the past aint a happy-place for everyone sweetheart.”
“He practically invented annihilation sorties.” I said. “That’s an amazing achievement, you’d think he’d be happy to talk about it.”
“Even a so-called amazing achievement can be a painful memory.” She said. The big house was coming up in the distance, with the ocean sparkling behind it. “I was against the interview, but our lawyer said it might help. We’re supposed to be getting him up on a pedestal as a cultural icon. For the first ten years what he was doing wasn’t even considered music, now they’re trying to turn him into an elder-statesman of the arts.”
“It’s not a bad idea.” I said, checking out the columned terrace overlooking the cliffs that spilled down to the sandy beach below. “He’d need a pretty comprehensive image rehab if he wanted to move back to the states or to Pacifica.”
“It’d be nice to have the option.” She said as the truck pulled next to a parked car and stopped. “The war can’t last forever.”
A couple of half-naked children ran up to the truck screaming and Tiny gave them some candy out of one of the grocery bags in the back. She told me to take some bags and we went into the industrial sized kitchen through a side door. She said to leave the bags, and that Rosella would take care of them. She led me into a sunken living room space, where two guys in their early thirties were screaming at a football match on the big-screen. “That’s Carlos and Tes.” She said to me, “those were Carlos’s kids out back. Tes’s wife Becca and their girls are around here somewhere.”
“You have a daughter don’t you?”
“Pia’s away at school.” She said. “And Shara, Carlos’s wife, is still in the hospital. Usually there are more people here. Let’s go see Candice, she’ll be glad you made it.”
She led me up a wide staircase to an open sitting room with a big window that overlooked an expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Candice Perra was deep into something on a curve-screen, but she shut it down when Tiny and I entered the room. She stood to shake my hand. She was in her mid sixties, with maybe some subtle surgical tucking or injections. She was wearing a retro neon camo-print skirt and a simple black top that showed off a colorful tattoo that snaked from the back of her hand all the way up to her face. She looked at me warmly and asked why I hadn’t come the day before.
I explained to them that I hadn’t been given the address and that the publicist had assured me that someone would pick me up at the airport. The apologies started flowing, and we sat on the large couch together as they tried to figure out who had dropped the ball. “It’s fine really,” I said, “I stayed at a nice hotel at SoundWords’ expense.”
“It’s just as well,” Candice said, “Trevor couldn’t have done the interview today. He’s been in the studio since he got back and he’ll have to sleep eventually. You can probably talk to him tomorrow.”
“I’ll get Carlos to take you into town to get your bags after dinner.” Tiny said. “You can stay in one of the guest bungalows.”
“Thanks,” I said, “you said Trevor just got back from a trip? Where did he go?”
They shared a look. “He takes long boat trips.” Candice said. “He likes to be out on the open ocean. It’s elemental.”
“Part of his creative process.” Tiny said. “He comes back and goes right into the studio.”
“That’s funny,” I said, “he hasn’t put out a sortie in years. I’m glad to hear he’s working again.”
“He never stopped working.” Tiny said.
I asked if I could interview the two of them, and they seemed surprised, but agreed. I got my small-screen out, and as I set it recording and transcribing Candice was explaining why she hates talking about herself.
-BEGIN AUDIO TRANSCRIPT-
Candice (cont.)
…and then I keep talking and when I’m hearing my own voice I get more interested in making it a good story than saying what I was trying to say. When I read it later I think I’ve been misquoted, but no, I wind up misquoting myself. (laughs)
Me
Let me know if you think you’ve done that and we can get it straight before I leave.
Candice
That’s why it’s good that Tiny’s here. She knows me better than anyone, she can rein me in if she has to.
Me
When you all moved down here to Mexico there was a lot of speculation that you were running from legal troubles. Is that true?
Tiny
No, not at all. If we were running from legal troubles we would’ve left a lot earlier. We’d been fighting all sorts of court cases for years, there was no end to it. Besides, if we were running from the law we wouldn’t have come to Mexico. Mexico has an extradition treaty with the U.S. We could’ve easily gone somewhere that didn’t.
Me
Most people think that you left when they were going to charge Trevor with bigamy.
Tiny
That’s bullshit, they never had a case against us…
Candice
They were searching for anything they could use against us at that point. The party hadn’t co-opted the sorties yet, so they were acting out of fear.
Me
But the three of you are married?
Tiny
Yes but it was always a spiritual marriage. We weren’t trying to make it legal.
Me
It’s an unusual union, and the funda
mentalists were ascendant at that time in the states. Can you give me a brief history of how the three of you came together?
Tiny
We never planned it…
Candice
Trevor and I had already been living together for ten years when I fell in love with Tiny. They had been collaborating on sorties so I met her socially and the chemistry was just (inaudible) We knew it had to happen. We had to be together. It was an amazing time and within a year Tiny and I were married.
Tiny
Candice and I are legally married.
Me
If it’s not too personal, how did Trevor respond to your relationship?
Candice
He was happy for me. He’s not the type of person to feel threatened or anything, and Tiny was a close friend. If anything he was just worried that I was going to move out. He made it clear that he wanted us to stay, and I certainly didn’t want to leave him, so we all lived together very happily.
Me
This was all before the end of the world?
Tiny
Yeah, we’d been living together for a few years before money turned to shit. Trevor was one of the few people who was actually prepared for it. We used to think he was paranoid, buying guns and platinum bars and putting those huge water tanks on the compound.
Candice
People thought he was nuts.
Tiny
Here was this guy with two wives and a bunch of guns, living behind big walls. They thought he was one of those fundamentalist Mormons!
Candice
(laughing) It never occurred to anyone that it wasn’t a story about a man with two wives, it was a story about a woman with a wife and a husband.
Me
I understand someone in a relationship falling in love with someone else, but I don’t see how that turned into a trio. What happened?
Tiny
We were kind of a family right off the bat. Trevor and Candice had Tesla and Shara, they were five and seven at the time, and they both took to me right away.
Candice
They call her mama T and I’m mama C…
Tiny
Eventually Candice and I wanted to have a baby and it was unlikely that she would’ve been able to get pregnant again so it was up to me.
Candice
We wanted the baby to be Tesla and Shara’s biological sibling.
Tiny
We weren’t going with a donor, and we weren’t doing the turkey baster, that’s for sure. So all three of us started sleeping together and it was the most natural thing in the world.
Candice
Well not at first!
Tiny
I’m a lesbian okay? I’m not interested in men sexually but I wanted a kid, and it wound up bringing all three of us much closer together. At first Trevor and I were both focusing our attention on Candice, but things loosened up pretty quickly, and it was a lot of fun. Even after I got pregnant we all kept sleeping in the same bed.
Me
So you two are married and you both consider yourselves also married to Trevor?
Candice
We are married. We had a ceremony…
Tiny
We never sought legal recognition. It was more a declaration that we were a family.
Candice
It’s a spiritual union.
Me
Well it seems to work, you all have a beautiful home. How many people live here at the ranch?
Candice
Let’s see, it’s ten when Pia and Shara are here, plus Rosella’s kids and her husband, so that makes us 16 with room to spare.
Me
(inaudible) … great timing. I heard you have pigs?
Candice
Oh yeah, pigs and horses and some goats and chickens.
Tiny
No cows.
Me
Tiny I wanted to ask you how you got started making sorties.
Tiny
That’s well-covered territory. Did you read my book, Mind Control for Beginners?
Me
Yes I did, I thought it was…
Tiny
It covers most all of the early years.
Me (cont.)
… all soulful myths and dreams and powerful poetic impressions. Your book is a work of art…
Tiny
Life is a work of art.
Me (cont.)
… Yes but it’s short on the sort of prosaic facts that journalists like. People want to know specifics on the subject of annihilation sorties and how the whole scene got started.
Tiny (cont.)
(inaudible) … covered already in my book. What you want me to do is to name and categorize everything as if life could be expressed by a list of dates and events…
Me (overlapping)
No I…
Tiny (cont.)
… uncatagorizable, which is the point of my book, I’m surprised a sharp guy like you didn’t understand that. I could express the events of the past in words and what would I be doing? Killing everything in the timeframe I was describing except what was in the description. I won’t do it. I’m a poet see? So I know the power of words. When I described the past in my book, each line of it was very carefully considered. A certain path of words illuminates everything around it, everything that isn’t on the page. There’s a precise recipe for giving life to the past through words, but if I go traipsing willy-nilly around the past, I’m sowing a path of destruction…
Candice (overlapping)
Really? Thank you Rosella, we’ll be right down.
Tiny (cont.)
… and anything you need to know is hidden in the corners of my book. All you have to do is read it in the right spirit and you’ll find the answers you’re looking for.
Me
I’m sorry if I offended you.
Tiny.
You didn’t -you couldn’t! It’s okay. Just promise me that you’ll beware of nostalgia. I think it’s one of the most destructive and false emotions. It’s almost always a lie. Are you hungry?
Me
Famished.
Candice
Let’s eat, I’ll introduce you to everybody.
-END AUDIO TRANSCRIPT-
Dinner that first night was beautiful. All I can say is that the Brushton-Perra-Tresaro family was completely warm and welcoming, although three of it’s members were absent. Pia in a Swedish boarding school, Shara at the hospital (code for rehab?) and of course Trevor, who had dinner in his studio before I got there and was presumed to be asleep while we ate.
Tiny told Carlos to take me into town so I could get my stuff and check out of the hotel, and when they were talking about which car to take I said I wouldn’t mind going by myself. They gave me Carlos’s small-screen to drive the truck, as it was immune to the jammers and would open the gate. Those were the kind of people they were, the kind that would lend you a vehicle an hour and a half after they met you.
I packed my small bag and checked out of the hotel, and decided to stop by the bar for a drink. It had been a productive day and I figured I’d earned a reward. I found a spot near the corner and ordered a cheeba-vodka. I was doing a little snooping on Carlos’ small-screen when Lillian walked up to my table. She smiled at me. “How’d the family reunion go?”
“It was great.” I said. “He already wrote me into the will. He told me to call him papa.”
“No shit? You mind if I sit here?” I nodded and she sat down. “I was shocked when you got into that truck. I figured you were just fucking around out there.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I know, I knew it as soon as Tiny Tresaro let you into her truck.” My drink came and I took a big sip. “You think you could get me in there?” She asked.
“How would I do that?”
“Just say I’m an old friend you met in town.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Come on Efrain,” she really was beautiful. “I want to spend some more time with you. You’re g
oing back there aren’t you?”
“Maybe.” I said.
“You have your bag with you, so I know you checked out. You must be staying out there. What’s really going on? How do you know them?”
“It’s not really your business is it Lillian? You want me to bring you out there so you can meet some famous celebrities? That’s dumb.”
“No, it’s not that.” She said. “I don’t care about famous people. I just thought you and I hit it off and maybe we could get to know each other better.”
“Oh? How much better?”
“A lot,” she said, grinning at me.
I took another hit off my cheeba-vodka and laughed. “I’m a guest at the ranch,” I said, “I can’t be bringing other guests back with me. It’s rude. If you want to get to know me, you’ll have to do it now.”
“We are in a hotel,” she said, “and I have a suite.”
I drank down the rest of the cannabinoid infused alcohol in a gulp. “Sure, what the hell?” I said.
The suite was nice and the encounter was about what you’d expect from two high, drunk, near-strangers. It was two parts awkward, one part hot. I took a shower after, and when I came out of the bathroom she was sitting on the bed, typing into Carlos’s small-screen. “What are you doing?”
She looked up quick and smiled. “Oh, I was putting my pick address in your small-screen.” She said. “I was trying to be slick about it.”
I got my small-screen from my bag and tossed it next to her on the bed. “Put it in that one.” I said.
I got dressed and got out of there, promising to call her before I left Cabo. When I got in the truck and put Carlos’ small-screen into the driver dock the truck didn’t move. I hit a couple of buttons and a notice came up about a data transfer in progress, but before I could do anything the transfer was complete and the truck started moving.
Of course she was a scam artist, I’m not the kind of guy women throw themselves at. She thought she was downloading my personal information, but had gotten Carlos’s instead. I checked my small-screen to see if there had been a recent data transfer on it, but there hadn’t. I wondered what the right thing to do was, should I tell him? I’d be long gone by the time he realized anything was amiss. I took the coward’s path, and said nothing.
They set me up in a beautiful bungalow, and I slept on a soft, king sized bed with the sound of the ocean in my ears.
Tesla’s wife Becca was assigned to stay with me the next day and we drove around the ranch in a jeep with her two charming daughters. It was very peaceful and interesting and utterly useless from my point of view. If I were writing a piece about all the interesting features of Rattler Ranch I would’ve been very happy.
I didn’t get my interview that day, but I got my first glimpse of Trevor Brushton. When Becca and the girls and I came into the big house, using the side door, the kitchen reeked of strong cannabis smoke. He was sitting on a high stool, talking to an old man, who I took to be Rosella’s husband. They were laughing and sharing a pipe while Rosella bustled around the kitchen, preparing dinner with a little smile on her lips.
Trevor was shockingly alive-looking, thin and wiry, his mop of white hair curling around his head like the rising smoke. He was wearing work-boots and beat up pants with a wrinkled, old fashioned, button-up shirt. He looked at me with mild curiosity. “Want some?” He asked, holding out the pipe.
Becca groaned and and hustled the little girls out of the kitchen while I took the pipe. “I’m Efrain,” I said, “I’m here to interview you.”
“Oh right. Can we do it tomorrow? I don’t feel like getting into a whole thing right now.”
“That’s fine.” I said. I took a deep hit and almost embarrassed myself by choking, but managed to hold onto the smoke.
“I’m a better talker in the morning.” He said.
I released the smoke in my lungs. “It’s fine, really, we’ll do it whenever you want.”
“You like that herb?” He asked me.
“It’s nice.” I said, handing the pipe back.
“We grow it right here on the ranch.” He said. “Totally organic. Xavier says it needs to cure longer, but I think it’s fine.”
“Another month and it’ll go down smooth as goat shit.” Xavier said.
The dinner that night was not as well prepared as the first one, but everyone was just as sweet and nice to me. Trevor wasn’t there and when I remarked on his absence Candice said he was probably out looking at the meteor shower. They had what they called a ‘natural observatory,’ I’d seen it earlier with Becca and the girls. It was a high mound that was flat on top. The kids started asking about the meteor shower and it was decided that after dinner we’d all go check it out.
When we got there, there was no sign of Trevor, but there was quite a show in the sky that night. Eventually I walked back to my bungalow and climbed into my big bed, wishing I was a member of the clan. Tiny had warned me against nostalgia, but it seemed like everything I’d encountered there, every person, place, and moment at the ranch, was designed to elicit that response. When those kids grew up and had families of their own, there was no way they could live up to this. It was a loving, caring family unit on a resort/compound on the beach, eating big meals together and watching meteor showers.
I woke the next morning before dawn to the sound of scratching at my window. At first I thought I’d imagined it, but I kept hearing it so I finally got up to investigate. It was Trevor Brushton. His white hair was wet and slicked back and his eyes were shining and smiling among the multitude of lines on his face. I opened the window. “I can talk now.” He said. “Do you want to talk now?”
I got the impression he’d been up all night doing something very exciting and he wanted to talk before the feeling wore off. He was like a performer who had just gotten off the stage. “Sure,” I said, “come on in.” I got my small-screen out and set it to transcribe and record.
-BEGIN AUDIO TRANSCRIPT-
Me
Let’s go back before the sorties. You grew up in Baltimore Maryland, is that right?
Trevor
That’s right.
Me
And what was your family situation like?
Trevor
It was a pretty typical middle class upbringing, you know? My mom was a teacher and my dad worked for an information technology company.
Me
What did your mom teach?
Trevor
She taught English as a second language to immigrants -a job that doesn’t exist anymore. (inaudible) My dad left us when I was twelve, a sort of typical mid-life crisis thing, you know? He ran off with a much younger woman who then left him a couple of years later. It was all heavy drama and heartbreak at the time, but looking back it seems like a lot of foolishness. My brother got the worst of it because he was really close to my dad, where I was closer to my mom. It’s much easier identifying with a victim than with a villain, which was the role my father took on. I can see both sides of it now, and I think the whole situation could’ve been saved by some honesty and truth-telling.
Me
Is your brother still alive?
Trevor
No, the super G got him in ’29.
Me
Was there music in your house growing up?
Trevor
Oh sure, my mom was an old hippie, so I heard a lot of music from that era, and she was very indulgent of my tastes. I used to play hip-hop with really obscene lyrics sometimes, and she would just laugh. She saw the humor in it.
Me
Was it always music for you?
Trevor
Oh yeah, from a young age I knew I would do something with music.
Me
Did you go to college?
Trevor
I did a couple of years at University of Maryland, but I figured I didn’t need a degree to make the kind of music I wanted to make.
Me
You were making club music at the time?
Trev
or
I guess you could call it that, but it was just house music. When I was in college I was already having some success playing gigs and putting out material.
Me
You were DJing?
Trevor
No, we brought gear with us. We called them live PAs (laughs). We were playing underground parties, raves I guess, and we did some high-tone shit in galleries too.
Me
You were working with a partner?
Trevor
Yeah, Sean Miller, we were called Monoluminous Uvula, or just ‘mu.’ In ’14 or ’15 an ad agency bought one of our songs and played it on TV every five seconds for two years, and I used my share of the royalties to start Revolving Records. I made some good bets early on, and the label started making money.
Me
These were actual physical records?
Trevor
Yeah, and CDs and cassettes and MP3s too.
Me
Were you part of the whole vinyl resurgence I’ve read about?
Trevor
Yeah, but you know records aren’t really made with vinyl. They…
Me
But black discs, phonograph records…
Trevor
Right. We sold a lot of records, and then, after the great corruption, when the internet was all fucked up, we had about three years there where you couldn’t listen to music on any kind of computer. Luckily audio enthusiasts had kept the record-making process alive, and we were in a perfect position to capitalize on the moment. Those three years, after the internet died but before the pick system went up, those were amazing times for me, and for the country.
Me
There was panic though, right? People thought it was the end of the world?
Trevor
It was! The internet was this thing that everyone assumed would be there forever. People had everything invested in it, not just money, but their whole identities, their hope for the future. Then poof! It was gone. The scales fell off everyone’s eyelids. We were actually lucky it happened when it did, the old infrastructure was still more or less intact. The old phone lines still worked, even if the satellites didn’t, and most cars still had manual drive as an option. If the old internet had continued to develop for another ten years before the great corruption hit, it would’ve been way worse. As it was the world just reverted to 1990 or some pre-computer age. It was a terrible shock though, and a precursor of things to come.
People forget that the big end-of-the-world was preceded by a lot of little end-of-the-worlds.
Me
It’s not usually put in those terms.
Trevor
I know, it’s either portrayed as coming out of nowhere, or arising from greed and avarice like some kind of morality play. I teach my kids and grandkids that the house fell down after careless people kicked out each brick of the foundation. It was done little by little, for short term gain.
Me
Let’s get to the sorties, how did that whole thing get started?
Trevor
It was during those three years of the tech-blackout that we started throwing parties. People needed diversion and stress-relief, so the scene got really fun. People had money too, remaking the physical economy took a lot of work, and there was cash flowing like it hadn’t in a long time. People really loved our parties so we kept doing more…
Me
What ‘we?’
Trevor
Revolving Records. We set up a division to put the parties together thinking it would be a money loser, but our very first party made money. Beyond that it was a great way to test new releases and see how the floor reacted to new stuff. And it was fun. Now this whole time I’d been putting out my own records, either as white-labels or under one of my aliases, and one fine day my phone rings and it’s this guy in San Francisco who says he’s been using some of my records in his research. He tells me he’s researching electrical and chemical responses in the brain, and that a recurring pattern in some of my tunes triggers a specific chemical response in the brain. This guy wanted to know if I was working with a neurologist on my music!
Me
This was Dr. Allen?
Trevor
Yeah, but he wasn’t a doctor yet. I thought the guy was nuts and told him so, but he did a good job convincing me he was serious. A week later I got a package in the mail that had his research data and an early draft of his findings. I understood none of it, so I got Eric Morehouse, the smartest guy I knew, to look at it. He had a degree in chemical engineering, so he knew how to read that stuff, and he saw the potential right away.
Me
How did he describe the paper to you?
Trevor
He said it proved that external stimulus could effect the brain just like a drug. This wasn’t anything new necessarily, the brain is changing constantly based on its surroundings, but what was new was the specificity. This pattern, pattern X, produces this result, result Y. Apparently a pattern I’d put on some of my records triggered a long-acting hypnotic response in something like 42 percent of listeners.
Me
This was just a pattern you put in because you liked it?
Trevor
Yeah, and when you’re working on a piece of music you’re hearing it in the studio over and over. When I really got going in the studio I would always lose big chunks of time. I’d look up, like, ‘have I been working on this hi-hat pattern for seven hours?’ (laughs) I was practicing self-hypnosis without even knowing it. I was just unconsciously trying to make tunes that would put me in that state. It was all accidental. When Dr. Allen put what was happening into scientific terms it made sense and of course I wanted to get deeper into it.
Me
That was when you started running experiments at parties?
Trevor
No, that was later. Dr. Allen wanted me to come out and help with his research. He thought we could amplify the effect if we worked together, so I cleared my schedule and flew my ass out to the west coast. I set up all my gear in a research laboratory. I’d be working on patterns and changing them on the fly while he was watching a wall of screens that had these computer models of actual brains. They were really beautiful, and I would tweak a sound and watch a screen full of brains erupt with pink and purple. Working that way we came up with our first algorithm. The first time we tried it on live people we increased the response to something like 62 percent.
Me
So these were real sorties at this point?
Trevor
Yes definitely. The very first ones. We kept refining it and got the response close to 80 percent before I left.
Me
What was the message of these first sorties?
Trevor
There weren’t any messages. Dr. Allen could see if the people had gone into the hypnotic state from his sensors. We’d just let it wear off.
Me
What was your role then? Couldn’t he have just applied the algorithm to random noises and gotten the same result?
Trevor
No, you need a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. People who don’t respect the art form just think it’s a pattern of rhythms and repetitions that are introduced and interrupted in specific ways, but the brain has to be in a certain state initially. Listening to music can put it in that state. He tried to use our findings with visual patterns, but he found that the way the brain interprets visual stimulus is too literal. Music opens up an abstract kind of thinking that leaves a person open to hypnosis. The right kind of music opens up the mind in the right way, the music that the patterns are embedded in makes all the difference.
Me
So you came back to Baltimore with a bunch of annihilation sorties that didn’t have any message, they just put people in the initial state?
Trevor
Yeah, after that first trip I had three complete sorties and a few mini experimental ones.
Me
How long?
Trevor
r /> The four mini ones were 8-30 minutes, but we figured out that the optimal length was 74 minutes.
Me
So did you play the sorties out right away when you came back?
Trevor
Pretty soon yeah. I talked to Dr. Allen about using the technology to influence behavior and emotions, and he told me where the message should go, so I modified one of the sorties and played it out right away. The results were pretty staggering.
Me
But the first annihilation sortie was played by Telephere.
Trevor
Right, but it was my sortie.
Me
Why didn’t you play it yourself?
Trevor
First of all ‘play’ is the wrong word. The sounds and patterns have to be too precise to actually play it live. A fraction of a microsecond timing change can ruin the effect, so it was all prerecorded. We didn’t want anyone to know that though, so we needed someone on stage. It was new, so we decided to put a new face up there, plus I wanted to be out on the floor to see how people reacted.
I was getting a lot of help back then from our promoter, Jaime Mum, and she knew this kid Hector who had played some of our after-parties under the name Telephere. He wasn’t a very good DJ but he looked great, he was a sewerpunk with a kind of wild-hyena look, so we threw him up there and told him to hit buttons and turn knobs, but he wasn’t doing a thing.
Me
So he didn’t have any input into the content of the sortie?
Trevor
None. That’s not to take anything away from what he did later, after he left us. He actually turned out to be an amazing artist, and I have a lot of respect for him. Some of the stuff he put out on his own was really groundbreaking, but at the time we just threw him up there because he looked cool.
Me
He tells a different story in his film.
Trevor
I never saw it, but I promise you all the parties that he played with us, he was just faking it. I did all those sorties.
Me
Tell me about the first one, what was the message?
Trevor
We wanted to get people to dance. That was the message, it was simple. Get on the floor and dance sucka! (laughs) It worked, every single person at that party was dancing, not one person was hanging back.
Me
Was this one of the parties you recorded?
Trevor
No, the third party was the first time we set up spatial time scanners. We did that because the second time we played a sortie, things got a little out of hand and we got nervous. We were so happy with the dance sortie that we figured we’d push it a little further and bring people’s inhibitions down. We figured the enemy of dancing is self-consciousness, so we put this sort of ‘let yourself be free’ message in with the call to dance.
People let themselves be a little freer than we thought they would. People were taking their clothes off and having all kinds of sex right on the dance floor, I mean we were shocked. We just wanted people to have a good time, not risk pregnancy or VD. If someone found out what we were doing we coulda got sued or thrown in jail maybe. I called Dr. Allen and told him what we’d done, and I convinced him to come out and lend his analytical mind to our efforts.
Me
You were scared of the power the sorties had over people?
Trevor
I was in awe. I saw the algorithm as the culmination of thousands of years of musical practice. It seemed to me to be the most important discovery since the harmonic scale. Music had always had a profound effect on people, but now we had the key to controlling its effect. You could make a person feel exactly how you wanted. People say that Dr. Allen and I invented annihilation sorties, but we didn’t, we discovered an algorithm that had been there all along.
Me
So Dr. Allen came to Baltimore to help you throw parties?
Trevor
(laughs) No, he came to help turn the parties into controlled experiments. I think he’d been secretly longing to take this stuff out of the lab and see how it worked in a more dynamic environment. He brought a couple of research assistants with him, one of whom was Emma Silverstein, who became my collaborator on a lot of the post-crash sorties. We set up spatial time scanners and chemical screeners, so we could determine what drugs people were on, and then we threw those five parties that became so famous. Or infamous…
Me
These were with Telephere on stage?
Trevor
Yeah, and he was blowing up, people were mobbing him when he came offstage. I have to say, he handled the situation really well. He wanted to get involved in the creative side of things and I think I was pretty dismissive, so it wasn’t a huge surprise later, when he struck out on his own. Anyway, with each of those parties our skills got refined. I found that I could create incredibly subtle and emotionally resonant responses along with whatever the main message of the sortie was. I felt like the palette I was working with was the range of human feelings, and that sound was just the brush. Those were really heady times.
Me
Were you releasing the sorties on your label?
Trevor
Not then because if we did someone would figure out what was going on. We were paranoid (inaudible) … with good reason.
Me
How did the truth of what you were doing finally come out?
Trevor
The parties were attracting a lot of attention. The authorities, we later learned, thought we were drugging people somehow. They thought we’d come up with a way to aerosolize ecstasy. (laughs) When they executed their search warrant they got all of Dr. Allen’s research and they seized all the STS recordings, and of course they saw everything in the most negative possible light. They arrested us for possession of child-pornography based on the STS data from the parties. We had images of some crazy shit going down on the dance floor, and not all of the participants were over eighteen. But at the same time they put out a press release saying we were trying to brainwash the youth, so it was pretty obvious what their real beef was about.
Me
How long were you in jail?
Trevor
One night! The label hired some good lawyers and we all got bonded. It was the beginning of ten years of legal hassles though, and we were thoroughly demonized in the media.
Me
Was that the end of the parties for a while?
Trevor
Oh no, Dr. Allen was spooked and ran back to California, but I had three new sorties in the can so I decided to capitalize on all the publicity. The news outlets described what we were doing as drugging people with sound. The criticism that actually kind of stung was when they said it was immoral to do this to people without their knowledge or consent. It made me think maybe we’d gone about it the wrong way, so we threw a party and said ‘come and be drugged with sound.’ Apparently that idea appealed to a lot of people so we had to book a huge venue. We were charging a fortune and selling out immediately. Once word got out, our parties started making millions of dollars, pre-crash dollars, and the more the cops and politicians tried to demonize us, the more popular we got.
Me
Was this when you started broadcasting them?
Trevor
Yeah, I think so. I had a sortie I thought was really important, a goodwill message, and I wanted as many people as possible to hear it, so I struck up a deal with a radio broadcaster.
Me
Old fashioned terrestrial radio?
Trevor
Yeah, the pick system was new, so we thought it was best to do it that way. We’d put out a bunch of CDs and cassettes of the sorties, but we found it was diminishing their popularity because if a person listens to the same sortie over and over the effect diminishes every time. We had a bunch of people saying the sorties weren’t as strong as they used to be, or that mass-duplication dampened their power which was all bullshit. At the time there were only ten or eleven sorties in existence, and
we weren’t producing any new ones, so it was just that people had heard them before and they weren’t nearly as powerful the second time.
Me
So you needed to make some more.
Trevor
Right, but Dr. Allen was freaked out. Eventually I lured him back to Baltimore with the promise of riches.
Me
Were you calling them annihilation sorties back then? Where did the name come from?
Trevor
It came from a particularly rabid news article someone wrote about our parties. The guy described what we were doing as launching sorties of sound designed to annihilate all independent thought. The first CD we released was called ‘Annihilating Sorties of Sound.’ The music on that first CD was credited to Telephere, and I know he tells a different story about how he came up with the name, but it just isn’t true. In any case it isn’t worth fighting over, I think it’s a terrible name. If he wants the credit let him have it. By the time I realized that’s what everyone was calling them it was too late to change it.
Me
At what point did you start helping other artists make sorties?
Trevor
Around then. See Hector, Telephere, had hooked up with a Swedish mathematician who had backwards engineered our algorithm based on recordings and broadcasts and stuff. I didn’t have him under contract or anything so the first I heard of it was an ad for a new Telephere annihilation sortie. I was angry at first, but eventually I figured there was no way I could contain a musical development that profound, and I figured I should ease back my control of it. I was feeling burned out at that point anyway, and I thought I was repeating myself, so I went looking for people with something to say. I signed philosophers, rappers, singers, and poets. They all saw the sorties as a way to positively impact people’s lives.
Me
That’s when you met Tiny?
Trevor
Yeah, she was this really inspirational poet, and she wanted to use the sorties to empower women. Of course men responded just as well to her stuff as women did, which bothered her at first. (inaudible) … she did empowerment and self-respect sorties that were really popular and freaked out the powers that be. It gave them a hint of how effective the sorties could be as a political tool.
Me
Were they still trying to throw you in jail?
Trevor
They would’ve if they could’ve, but this was before the CNP. Charging me with child-porn was brilliant because every news report that mentioned me called me ‘accused child-pornographer Trevor Brushton.’ Even after the state knew they were going to lose the case, they prolonged it just so they could keep calling me that. Then it was tax evasion, then I had to testify before congress when they were talking about restricting or banning annihilation sorties.
Me
(laughing) How can they ban a pattern of sounds?
Trevor
I don’t know but they banned a plant for seventy years, so I wouldn’t put it past ’em. I just went and was completely truthful about everything. I told them how I thought it was the culmination of all music and one of the congressmen asked me why I didn’t release the algorithm for anyone to use then, and that question kind of stuck in my head. I kinda thought maybe he was right.
Me
But you did release it.
Trevor
Yeah, after year zero. The CNP was putting out militaristic and control sorties, so I figured the worst thing that could’ve happened was already happening, and it would be better if everyone had access to it. I didn’t want anyone using the methods I’d developed for war or hate, but I couldn’t stop it. Releasing the algorithm would at least blunt the effect a bit.
Me
Let’s talk about the end of the world and what has happened since then in the states. You took an early stand against the party?
Trevor
I’d say they took an early stand against me. (laughs) When people couldn’t buy tickets to the parties, or buy records anymore we had to fold up the label. I just couldn’t keep paying the staff with no money coming in. I still wanted to continue making sorties though, and I started working with Emma Silverstein who had some innovative ideas. I was paying her out-of-pocket.
Me
Where was Dr. Allen at that time?
Trevor
He was financially destitute so he wound up taking a job at the University of Arizona. I was lucky because I always wanted tangible investments, like property and metals, so I wound up okay. I owned this property and had a place in Brazil, along with the Baltimore compound.
Me
Did you see it coming?
Trevor
No, of course not. The overseas places were really just in case the government tried to seize my assets, I wanted to have some holdings that they couldn’t touch.
Me
After the crash, you were still putting out sorties on the radio, why did you do that? There was no financial benefit.
Trevor
I did it to help people, to give them hope. The message of most of those post-crash sorties was ‘we can overcome this adversity.’ I felt like doing those sorties was a moral obligation.
Me
There’s a general belief that you were working with the CNP back then, and that they paid you to help manipulate and control the population.
Trevor
That’s bullshit, I would love to see one shred of evidence that supports that claim.
Me
People were rising up, and you made sorties about not succumbing to mob mentality.
Trevor
Right, which is exactly what the CNP represented to me, a mob mentality. You say people were rising up, and maybe that’s what it looked like from Canada, but at ground level? It looked like a bunch of terrified, starving people, trampling each other to death. I wanted everyone to cool out and come together to do something positive.
Me
There are people who think that you and Dr. Allen were working on a black-op the whole time, and that annihilation sorties are a tool of control.
Trevor
They can be used that way -just look at the CNP sorties. Having the recipe fall into the hands of the fascists was always my biggest fear from the beginning, but come on, it was inevitable. Ultimately there was nothing I could do to prevent it, so I open-sourced it and even published a step-by-step guide on how to make them. If I was working with the CNP why am I living in Mexico? Why do I live behind an electric fence?
Me
You’re saying you’re a target?
Trevor
Look at the documents Pacifica liberated in the purge. I’m on the list of people the party deemed enemies of the future. Read the list, out of a hundred and twelve people only four are known to still be alive.
Me
Most people assumed that Pacifica faked those documents.
Trevor
I think they’re real.
Me
There are other questions about your history that are unpleasant to bring up. You’re often described as a violent, unstable person. For example you were in a car wreck and a young girl was killed. The other person in the car said you crashed on purpose to prove a point.
Trevor
That was one of the saddest events of my life, I think about it every day. I died in that crash too.
Me
What do you mean?
Trevor
Death and life are binary, so in any life-and-death situation multiple worlds are created. The many-worlds hypothesis has been proven.
Me
But you’re here, she’s not.
Trevor
From my perspective, yes. You can’t observe yourself dead, so from your own perspective you always live through such an event.
Me
Did you crash on purpose?
Trevor
Does a human being have free will?
Me
Yes.
Trevor
Then I guess I did. Next
question.
Me
What about some of the artists you worked with at your label who say they were taken advantage of financially?
Trevor
Like who?
Me
Telephere for one, and a bunch of others have said that you bought the rights to their entire back-catalogues after the crash. A lot of them have said they were desperate, and they sold their work to you for much less than it was worth.
Trevor
That’s bullshit, any artist who feels that way can contact me and I’ll gladly give them back the rights to their music. I was just trying to help those people out. I was trying to put money in their pockets, and as for Hector, we paid him for the use of his name and image, that’s all. Considering the amount of work he did on those sorties, which was zero, he should be happy he gets any piece of it at all.
Me
Why did you stop making sorties?
Trevor
Who says I stopped?
Me
You stopped putting them out…
Trevor
I stopped putting them out under my name with big publicity and hype, but I’ve still got sorties going out. I’m doing the best work I’ve ever done, even if I’m not getting paid for it anymore. The fucking marketplace is flooded right now, and most of these sorties are bad, boring, or just plain evil. My work now is countering that, I empower people, I tell them that there’s hope, I try to minimize their fears.
Me
So are you fighting for Pacifica with your sorties?
Trevor
I don’t see it that way, but if the content I create happens to line up more with one side or the other, so be it. I’m not a political artist, but one side in the conflict has never tried to kill me, so I am a little biased in their favor. I think that’s enough Efrain, I need a shower and a bed.
Me
I hope you didn’t mind me asking some of those questions.
Trevor
It’s fine. I’m not a hero and I’m not a villain. I’m a dad, a husband, and an artist. (coughing) My perspective is limited and yours is too. If you remember that it will be a good article.
-END AUDIO TRANSCRIPT-
When the interview was over the sun was up and he looked exhausted. I had five or six new revelations about the man and his work, so I knew my editor would be happy. The most surprising thing to me was that he was still putting out annihilation sorties. I wondered what distribution method he was using, and before I left Cabo I got an answer.
I wasn’t scheduled to leave until the following day and the family seemed to have forgotten about me already, so I was free to wonder around the ranch. There were six bungalows like the one I stayed in, and I found that two of them were filled with boxes. Being a curious person, I went to see what was in them. They were filled with small, hand-crank FM radio receivers. There were about two hundred in each box, and there were maybe forty boxes in each bungalow.
I was back home, working on the article, when I got word of Trevor’s death. It was on the Pacifica News Portal, and I had to read through the notice twice before I understood what it was saying. He was with Carlos, sleeping onboard a boat docked in San Felipe. At four in the morning the boat was hit with a white phosphorous incendiary device. They were both killed. The notice said that they were doing work for a charity that donated radios to children in economically depressed border towns in northern Mexico. The perpetrators of the attack were unknown, but investigators said that the boat had been tracked via Carlos’s small-screen.
I called Tiny up right away. After I expressed my sympathy for her and the family I told her about Lillian, and about how I’d caught her transferring something from Carlos’ small-screen. I cried telling her, and then found myself in the strange situation of being comforted by a grieving widow. “Maybe it was her, maybe not.” She said. “They’ve been trying to get him for years, maybe they used you, but we have no way of knowing. It’s not your fault…”
“But if I’d told you…”
“They would’ve gotten him some other way some other time. Trevor didn’t believe in death anyway. Your guilt is absolutely useless, and you need to stop it.”
“I can’t believe I let myself fall for that.”
“Trevor didn’t want to push his luck by antagonizing the party openly, but I think it’s important for people to know that he was fighting the CNP with his music when he was killed. Trevor and Carlos died on the front lines of the real war, the war against fear. Publish that if you want to assuage your guilt.”
-back to table of contents-
Glitch X 7