A Friday night in Syracuse, 1983. Pitfall gives way to Robot Tank, and a ten-year-old boy discovers a new dimension just before his own world is about to change.
Tag Archives: coming of age
Starboy
A forbidden basement room. A glowing stereo. An older sister with something to share. One side of 2112 later, music would never sound the same.
The Altar of Syrinx
Neil Peart’s passing felt like the closing chapter of a lifelong soundtrack. Against all odds, one unforgettable evening proved that some spirits never leave the stage. A reflection on music, memory, and briefly becoming seventeen again.
The Olfactory Time Machine
A forgotten bag of sweaty clothes becomes an unexpected portal to the summer of my fifteenth year. What begins as an unpleasant chore transforms into a profound reminder that memory isn’t just stored in our minds. Sometimes it’s archived within us, waiting for the right scent to unlock a version of ourselves we thought was gone forever.
The Cr’apple
Some lurked in closets. Others scratched at bedroom windows during summer storms, fed by half-heard conversations and imaginations running far ahead of reason. The Cr’apple is the story of one such creature, and the quiet revelation decades later that transformed a family tree into a family legend.
Ghost Runner on Third
There were never quite enough kids to fill every position, so imagination did the rest. Ghost Runner on Third is a tribute to sandlot baseball, unwritten childhood rules, and the quiet code of honor forged on long summer afternoons behind a weathered barn, where friendship always mattered more than keeping score.
Potsy Gopher
Potsy Gopher is the story of a childhood imaginary friend who felt every bit as real as the world around him. Born from Saturday morning cartoons, spinning vinyl, shortwave radios, and basement adventures, he became a collaborator in wonder, a defender against shadows, and a companion through the analog landscapes of youth. Though time eventually carried him away, some friendships never truly disappear. They live on in memory, imagination, and the dreams that time cannot betray.
Night Signals
Night Signals captures the fragile boundary between childhood imagination and primal fear, where the familiar refuge of a basement becomes something far less certain. Set against the flickering afterglow of late-night television, this piece follows a young boy’s urgent ascent from darkness, chased not by something seen, but something deeply felt. The cellar transforms into a liminal space where time stalls, breath tightens, and fear presses close enough to feel on the back of the neck. In this suspended moment between sleep and waking, escape is not just physical, but psychological. A meditation on memory, fear, and the dreamlike loops that shape our earliest encounters with the unknown.
Cellar Door
A summer storm. A descent underground. A door that refuses to open.
Depth of Field
In the quiet glow of a basement in March 1982, the waiting finally pays off. The signal has been tuned, the record has been chosen, and now the image returns, developed and real. This piece closes the analog loop, where patience is not just endured but understood. In a world that moved at the speed of process, meaning had time to form, settle, and reveal itself.
Mannino Acid 