The Hub

Author notes

Issue 1 - Pg. 14

HyenaHell

on Jan. 30, 2009

So Victor is from New Orleans.

Well. He's from New Orleans like I'm from New Orleans- in that we both moved there when we were eighteen. And Jellico is the last town you pass through on I-75 in Tennessee before you cross the border into Kentucky; it's about 45 minutes south of the town I was born in. And we both happened to awake one day and find ourselves trapped in a alternate reality of sorts. Well, okay. I woke up trapped in Houston, watching my city get destroyed on a 12”, fuzzy television set. And *then* I got trapped in an alternate reality- small town North Carolina. Yeah, there's your culture shock, kids.

After Katrina, practically everyone I knew said to me at one point or another (apparently with the sole purpose of pissing me off), that I should “make art about it”. Yeah, well. To this day, I still can't even watch television programs or read articles about Katrina without, at best- feeling a profoundly painful sense of grief; and at worst- having a profoundly painful panic attack. So needless to say, I didn't “make art about it”. Or… did I?

I didn't realise until after I'd finished the first issue that Victor's story was kind of (read: very much) parallel to my own. It's guess it's more or less about being “displaced”: having your whole life- your home, friends, job, possessions, identity- disappear overnight. Also, we both like bad punk bands, curse superfluously, and tend to wear our leather jackets constantly, regardless of the temperature. I prefer to think all that's coincidental, though.

My Mom asks me whether or not “that boy will ever get to go home”. Everyone else asks me if *I* will ever get to go home. Well. Reckon we'll just have to wait and see.