Arthur Machen's "The White People" (Live Reading) (March 22, 2020)

Tales from the Potts House: William Hope Hodgson

In the spring of 2020, while stuck in isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I began experimenting with streaming live audio to Twitch. I wanted to mix, chop, and screw with Creative Commons-licensed music live while reading weird fiction no longer restricted by copyright. My elderly Mac Pro from 2008, connected to even older audio interfaces and a Reloop Mixage Controller Edition USB DJ controller, running El Capitan and old versions of Traktor and Logic, gave me endless troubles. I originally wanted to use MainStage, but it would not behave reliably for me at all and I had to give up. Audio was glitching occasionally, but I kept the setup limping along long enough to finish this live reading. This is a challenging story to read aloud, as much of it is in the form a single monologue of extremely long sentences that flow together into extremely long paragraphs in a hypnotic, stream-of-consciousness style. Because there is continuous background music, no editing was possible. Enjoy!