Ashenfolk by Joseph Mosconi

There is this large box in front of me. Its name is Ashenfolk.



I give it a little shake, listen to its contents shuffle about and take its lid off. I discover a lush art deco lining, various pamphlets, three postcards, a folded scroll and a couple of glossy black booklets. There's no rhythm or order in reading them. It feels like a lot. I open a pamphlet of poetry and put it back down, flip over a postcard that says bat-winged hamburger snatcher and then I start all over again in a grabby, fleeting attempt.

The box starts to take shape as paraphernalia, a collective output of creatures called Ashenfolk: a tech-obsessed, AI, cartoonish, stoner, Californian, elfin/alien hybrid. I read more and find a list of contents, an author's note to userhandles, word maps in heavy metal typeface - poetry, prose and scripts all on human ontology. The Ashenfolk sum this up in their pamphlet as:

I tell you, I am bored to death of portraying humanity without being part of humanity. Because I work. I work at talking like you. I work at being like you.

...

But my greatest fear is that one day I will find the language to express your feelings.

This is the heart of the alien-Ashenfolk mythology of human beings. And I begin to wonder if they resemble something like Tessa Farmer's Little Savages always on the attack - or perhaps something less tangible - a Panos Cosmatos like psychedelia, cultish and unyielding. On their folded scroll, the Ashenfolk come up with their own answer:

THE ULTIMATE AIM OF ELVES IS ART. WHAT ABOUT DARK ELVES? DARK ARTS. DUH.

This is what it to comes down to then, a dark art of Ashenfolk based on curious human beings... I decide to tidy up the scatterings of paper for now, put the lid back on the box. I think it over and in the end, I am sated. Joseph Mosconi and Make Now Books have truly created a collective poetic form and a perfectly far out and weird reading experience, an entire world of Ashenfolk.