stubio

I EXIST.

My name is Stuart Richards, and as proof of my existence I offer you my memories and my actions, cached in my own head and the heads of others. First off, I was born on August 13, 1984 in Champagne-Urbana, Illinois, to Johnathan and Mary Richards. My mother was putting my father through college at the time-he went on to get a master's degree in mathematics while serving in the Air Force.

That selfsame Air Force sent us in many directions, but fortunately I spent the bulk of my childhood, a good eight years or so, in Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota. My dad pulled "alerts" in the missileer vaults in the area, ready to turn the keys that would launch the nukes that would torch the Soviet Menace. I remember the day that Gorbachev resigned and the USSR ceased to be-not on the news (the only shows I watched at the time either involved puppets or Japanese cartoons), but as a passing comment on our way home from dinner one night. After that, though, I was curious about politics and I read a book on the Berlin Wall in our school library.

I ended up reading a lot in that library-having started with the Cold War, I checked out every book on paranormal stuff I could find. I don't remember what the connection between the two was; in all probability I must have just happened upon it. But even in the second grade, I could offer my opinions on politics, UFOs, the Loch Ness monster, telepathy, and the occult. As I think back, it's a wonder that I was well-liked by the kids there.

I was put in a gifted-and-talented school downtown for half the week in the third grade, where I made a few friends. The only real things I remember from that were odd, but I think they were a foreshadowing of things to come-I read the first "book" I ever wrote, a hand-scrawled fictitious account of pirates in the Caribbean, in that place. I collaborated with some of my schoolyard friends to write a trivia book there; not to be published but to get out of schoolwork. I even got told off by a special guest that talked to us
about the environment when I broke off part of a dead tree to examine it. I guess I annoyed liberals even back then.

When I was about 9 we moved to Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. That was a radical change; my dad began hating his job, my uncles in Florida got sick of AIDS and died when I was there, and instead of being popular I was disdained for my intelligence by teachers and pupils alike. I got into many fights, beat up kids, got beat up, and generally had a miserable time of it in the public schools. Two things happened that changed all that-two fights, really. The first requires some back story.

I had joined this club when I got there, led by two guys named Matt and Zach. Don't think taking minutes-kind of club, think tree-fort kind of club. Somehow, Matt and I got to fighting and I got Zach on my side and we "rebelled" from Matt's club. Consequently, our new club was called "The Rebellion". I was the leader, and we decided to think up a snazzy title for me. We were studying ancient Rome at the time in school, so when I found out the title of the first emperor, Augustus, I adopted that. I was Stuart Richards, Princeps Augustus of the Rebellion. Hence my screenname. Anyway, we fought all the time, I met this guy named Kyle Witt who joined my club, but finally I got in a fight with this kid who pulled a knife on me. I pulled one right back, but he grabbed a pipe and bashed my forehead open with it. I required stitches, and the scar is there even to this day. My mom worried about the people I hung out with, but I assured her it wouldn't happen again.

The other fight was when I was a sixth grader in Vandenburg Middle School. Apparently, one morning there was an eighth grader who had a bout of existential angst. To prove his own existence to himself, he elected to beat up the first sixth grader that he saw that morning. I ended up being the proof of his existence. Even with my "training" since I had arrived in that state, I got thrashed. The VMS handbook said that fighting was illegal, except in self-defense. This was definitely self-defense, or rather a sorry excuse for one when I threw one punch and he landed twenty. Nonetheless, I was suspended for a week and the eighth grader, who happened to swim in the same genetic pool as the vice-principal, got off Scot-free. A rather sorry state of affairs given that I was the Scottish-American.

In any case, my parents were worried for me and frustrated with the school system. I found myself in Riverview Christian School, wearing a uniform to school and doing these insipid little workbooks filled with cartoon characters that Jack Chick apparently drew on his way back from the Reichstag. No kidding, the main character had the name "Ace Virtueson". Even though the workbooks were trash, the teachers cared about us all and I decided to accept Christ. Kicking and screaming, and I would go on to pretend that it didn't happen for the next two years, but I became a Christian in the evangelical fire-and-brimstone let's-save-the-world-from-Hell sense.

A year after that, I moved to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, just south of Omaha. I really liked it there, and a year after I arrived, in my freshman year of high school, I really started getting close to God. Those were rather idealistic years, but I was a man on a mission. I was gonna save the world, me and my brothers and sisters. I started writing a fantasy "novel" then, called "Hope In Seohri". It was my first go at the whole penfruit thing since the pirate bit, and truth be told it sucked. Lo, did it suck a mighty suck. But I strove to improve, and I wrote another fantasy story, a science fiction story after that, and then I shelved the writing until Maryland.

It was in Omaha that I first picked up a harmonica and learned how to rock. I had had no musical experience ever before, and my ride to my church's youth group, Colin Curry, played in the church's rock band so he had to show up an hour early, and I had to sit and watch them practice. Not content to merely watch, I decided I'd join them. Not confident or rich enough to play/afford a guitar, I decided to get a harmonica. Ten holes, twenty notes, blow in, blow out. Easy. So I did that. I also sung a little bit. That little harmonica would launch my involvement with music today.

A note on my musical tastes at this point. I had rejected the bulk of popular music, but I was partial to a few bands and people on the radio-Natalie Imbruglia, Matchbox 20, and Third Eye Blind. Not great bands, but I take pride in being able to say, even today, that their music doesn't suck. Not completely. But that was the popular stuff. I had broken in my eardrums from my dad's Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa albums, and my sister's 80's pop-stuff like Madonna, the Cure, and Pat Benatar. My tastes never really left that, and I think I longed, deep down, to hear the desperation and the intelligence of that music revived in my own time.

After I left Omaha for Maryland, I found myself in a spiritual rut. I was still enrolled in Christian schools, but Olde Mill Christian Academy, my latest school, was neither on Olde Mill (the street had officially dropped the "e" a few years back), Christian (the faith was a joke there), nor an Academy (I don't recall learning a thing there except that I could draw tattoo designs during Chemistry class and my jock teacher would think it was cool). Wanting to get out and despising my general lot there, I decided to graduate early. I also, somewhat accidentally, became valedictorian.

Meanwhile, I found a cure for my spiritual loneliness at Calvary Temple, a nondenominational church where I met a Secret Service agent named Michael Foster who sort of became a spiritual mentor to me. I also first began sort of "dabbling" in the paranormal there, I guess you might say. Remember, I was the little kid fascinated with the stuff that went bump in the night, but after salvation I abandoned all that. At least, until I found holy outlets for my occultic interests-Biblical prophecy and Scriptural numerological and ritual keys and stuff like that. I talked to a very wise lady at that church, Miss Liz, when a friend of mine was sick; I asked her if she would use some of the anointing oil she used when she prayed on a handkerchief I had brought. (For those who don't know, Acts 19 chronicles an episode where people brought handkerchiefs to Paul and took them away, and whoever touched them would be healed.) So we prayed over it, she anointed it and I gave it to my friend. He got better, although I grant that he may have anyway. I believe it happened thanks to God's blessing on the handkerchief. Later, all this Christian occultic stuff would culminate in a current project of mine-the compilation of a nondenominational Christian exorcism manual based on Scripture.

However, the pastor at Calvary Temple started preaching some things that I and a lot of the church didn't agree with, and so I was one of many who left. I found a new home, Severn Baptist, just down the road. It's not your stereotypical Baptist church, otherwise I wouldn't have stayed. But there, I joined the praiserock band, using my harmonica. I learned a lot from the band leader, a Secret Service agent-to-be named Jason Thompson who gave me a model of a great band leader. He knew enough of every single instrument to weld us all together as one, and he could sing and strum at the same time. He left for the Service, but the band stayed together and I with it.

Even so, I started wanting a band of my own. It was about this time, out of high school but before college, that I started hearing "Gothic" music for the first time. I use the quotes because personally, I think that the last Goth alive told his kids about the time he sacked Rome. Nonetheless, labels are labels and I don't want to look like a nonconformist so I'll conform and use it and learn to love it. Or something. (Emerson would be turning in his grave about now.) But, by "Gothic" I don't mean Linkin Park or Slipknot. That's "Gothic" by the definitions of people who actually care what the definition of "Gothic" is so they can find proof for their existence. No, by "Gothic" I generally mean "possessing intelligent lyrics and being the sort of music that you can play Dungeons & Dragons to without it feeling anachronistic." All the little pierced Vampire LARPers with orange hair are probably going to have my neck for this, but I don't care.

In any case, I found a fourteen-year-old guitarist at Severn Baptist named Steven, and he's rather mature for his age and seemed a decent partner-in-crime for a band. I also met a girl named Amber that liked Linkin Park but could play a decent piano, so with no other choice Steven and I let her in. Her brother was our first drummer, but we had a sort of temporary falling out and now this big guy named Jeremy plays the drums and screams German poetry for us as the need arises. We dubbed ourselves "Dark Christ Apocalypsos", and by "we" I mean "Steven and I". I figured, since we were gonna be dealing with Christian/occultic themes and loosely defined as "Gothic/Classical/80's darkpop" anyway, we might as well force our audience to contemplate the metaphorical nature of light and darkness while we were at it. We played our first show not too long ago, and we were well-received and with a little work we may be something one day.

But that didn't happen, really. Dark Christ Apocalypsos turned into Rapturous Ode, and Rapturous Ode turned into nothing when I moved to Nebraska. But that's okay-Steven and I are still in contact, still planning something further down the road... and I'm working on a solo project tentatively titled "Scarletstain Crucifix". In the meanwhile, the two of us play lead guitar in our church bands, and write lyrics for the day when we can reform.

Now, with an Associate's in Arts from Anne Arundel Community College, I'm about to move out of the house and into the dorms of Grace University in downtown Omaha to get a Radio Broadcasting degree. Schooling's going to get a lot more... interesting, and life in general too. But that's okay, I have my God, my friends, and my wits. Between the three, I'll do all right.

And so I present you with the proof of my existence: the memory of myself written in the minds of others. Yes, it is written in my family and friends, but they will die one day. Even if they tell their kids about me, and they theirs; even if I one day rules the music industry with an iron fist; even if I were one day to scream dominion at the heart of the world; that is not enough proof. All that will be gone one day.

No, the proof of my existence is written in the memory of eternity, with every single other member of the body of Christ. How can God forget His church, His kyriakos, His house? The day He does is the day that I never existed.