The Honey Horn Collection featured four collages with accompanying stories for four UMA Landsleds pro models.
The Teddy Bear Queen (Maité Steenhoudt)
The Teddy Bear Queen is a quintessential queen as far as queens are queencerned. She seemingly never does wrong and never upsets anyone, but that’s only because she, like most of the Teddy Bears in her sleuth, doesn’t do much of anything and thus there is little potential for right or wrong. She enjoys a simple life of eating and farting and sleeping and pooping and eating. At the heart of this seemingly simple agenda, though, a problem has arisen: no more Space Honey!
The Teddy Bears have lost communication with their Space Bear ancestors who happen to be their suppliers of artisanal Space Honey, but the Space Bears live on a planet orbiting the star, Dubhe (pronounced, DUB-bē, “dubby”), that resides in the Ursa Major constellation at the tip of the Big Dipper 122 light years away. This is a big, big, big problem because Teddy Bears need Space Honey to survive. Teddy Bears can’t live without Space Honey.
And so the Queen of the Teddy Bears made the long journey to the nearest Oracle outpost to seek help and advice. The sacred temple the Oracle’s Listening Post occupies is high atop a volcano on Thrig Island in the middle of the Ocean. Unfortunately the Teddy Bear Queen was running late for her Oracle appointment (classic Teddy Bear behavior—they are never on time for anything), and tried to apply her makeup while en route up the steep slopes of the Thrig Volcano. As anyone knows, though, Sheep Sherpas do not provide the smoothest of rides and the Queen’s retinue stumbled repeatedly on the side of the mountain’s sheer path—pretty much every time the Queen raised her lipstick to her mouth.
Despite her unbecoming appearance, the Teddy Bear Queen was granted an audience with the Oracle who furnished the Queen with a remedy for her sleuth’s dearth of Space Honey—a remedy that would not come easy…
Cow Seal Tongue
(Roman Pabich)
There have been rumors that Grand Leader Cow was a mythical shape-shifting seal, aka a Selkie. The creature that founded the Magnificently Glorious Republic in human form would, whenever the opportunity arose, sneak away to his country’s coastline, turn itself inside out at the shore, and slink back into the sea as its original seal self. As a seal, Cow had a much more friendly personality than he did as the ruthless and austere Grand Leader of the Magnificently Glorious Republic. In the sea, Cow was a child at heart and he loved to horse around and get up to all kinds of mischief—in fact, tales of his legendary pranks are so pervasive in seal folklore that Cow is credited with being the inspiration for the antics performed in contemporary seal shows around the world.
Cow’s most popular trick was balancing a tower of chairs on the tip of his nose. He could stack them higher and higher until they reached the clouds. It didn’t matter if they were armchairs, rocking chairs, wheelchairs, lounge chairs, beach chairs, desk chairs, high chairs, chaise lounges, recliners, ribbon backs, Bergères, Fauteuils, Curules, Klismoi, Morrises, Savonarolas, Shakers, Windsors, Wingbacks, or even his favorite: THRONES. He could balance them all on the tip of his nose.
Grand Leader Cow was of great interest to the Teddy Bear Queen and her sleuth because The Oracle had provided them with blueprints for an instrument so powerful it could be heard in the furthest reaches of the cosmos and even in other dimensions. “The Honey Horn,” as it is called, is the most complicated instrument ever conceived. The blueprints for it call for of all kinds of ridiculous, hard-to-find components that would take multiple lifetimes to collect, but there is one component in particular that The Oracle promised would be more difficult to acquire than all the others combined: the Cow Seal Tongue.
Much like the sheep intestines that make violin strings, the Cow Seal Tongue’s muscle fibers can be stretched, dried, and wound into a magical string that allows the Honey Horn to play the most sublime music the world has ever heard or will ever hear. The instrument requires only the tiniest sample from the tongue, no matter how small, in order to sing, but Selkies are extremely dangerous and no mortal has ever seen one and lived to tell about it—let alone acquired a tissue sample from one’s tongue. The Oracle, however, revealed to the Teddy Bear Queen that there is a single instant during the Selkie’s metamorphosis when the creature is completely vulnerable and one might be able to obtain a sample from the beast’s tongue: when the Selkie’s human and seal selves are both inside out and connected only by their shared tongue, it is at that moment and that moment only that the shape shifter is as helpless as a newborn butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.
The Instrument (Evan Smith)
The Teddy Bear Queen and her sleuth of bears scoured the earth and somehow managed to acquire all of the components for the Honey Horn and assembled it. They even got some Cow Seal Tongue. Don’t ask how. We have no idea. Also, how did they assemble the instrument’s intricate parts with their teddy bear paws? They don’t have fingers. Anyway, those darn teddy bears collected every last item on the Oracle’s nearly infinite list of parts, which included, among other things…
The elevator buttons from Sid and Nancy’s floor at the Chelsea Hotel, NYC.
An antique radio containing uranium fuel rods from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
A hair from the tail of Don Quixote’s horse Rocinante.
The engine from the Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 727 that was hijacked by DB Cooper.
The first chemical element on the Periodic Table to begin with the letter J (extant, yet unknown).
Edith Pilaf’s lungs marinated in cigarettes and soy sauce.
A backflow valve from the fourth dimension.
The first flower ever touched by King Midas.
Pope Urban VIII’s Uncle’s unclean underwear.
Cleopatra’s ancient Egyptian distillery.
Siegfried and Roy’s unstable cat, Mantacore, and his favorite circus ball.
A jar of cocaine from Nikolaus Johann Van Beethoven’s pharmacy in Linz, Austria.
A trompe de la chasse that Oscar Wilde filched from an English hunting lodge.
A frog with a chilidog from a synagogue in Prague.
And on and on and on…
As the Oracle had promised, the Honey Horn could produce every sound that ever was, and every sound that will ever be, from a raindrop on a windowpane, to the eruption of a volcano, and everything in between: it can play the songs of Charlemagne accompanied by an inbred on a banjo, and John Coltrane snorting cocaine amid a herd of buffalo. Every sound, every instance when quiet is quelled, from the cries of a riotous crowd, to the crash of every tree that was ever felled, the sound of every smell—because let’s face it, manure stinks outloud—the Horn plays it all, every dog’s bark, every cow’s meow, every sound from history’s start til now. The Horn blares the frustration of labor strikes, and all the music you like and dislike. It recreates the splash of a wave crashing on a beach, to James screaming atop his giant peach. It can play anything from a butterfly flapping its wings, to all of the gusts and gales it brings, to a lion’s roar, a cricket’s chirp, the carnage of war, plus every fart and every burp, from the fwip-fwap clap of a laundry snap, to a white rhino taking a gigantic crap, the Honey Horn makes every sound, all of the sound, it’s inside and it’s outside and it’s all around.
Triangle (Cody Chapman)
Triangle was an experimental band from Germany in the early 70s. Triangle enjoyed success almost immediately upon their debut, but almost as soon as they appeared, they were gone. Despite the existence of a recording, purportedly made by Triangle, most scholars agree that they were never a real band and that they’re nothing more than an urban myth or, at best, an elaborate hoax. There is, however, a growing number of musicologists who insist that not only did Triangle exist, but that they still exist and are an active band to this day.
“Triangle was dedicated to art, not artifice, and they found the music industry, fans, and the obligations of fame obstacles to their music so they ‘broke up,’” wrote German music critic, Ernst Schmütz, in his book Krautrock: German Music In The 70s (Schmaltzdachel GmbH, 1981), “but there is much evidence to suggest they faked their own death.”
Real or fake, the fantastical stories surrounding the band continue to fascinate, not the least of which is the band’s founding principle: utter and complete devotion to Triangles and the number Three:
Triangle has three members. They play songs with only three notes. All notes are triads. Their lyrics are written with trigonometry in iambic trimeter using only three syllable words and every line rhymes with the number 3 (not the word, the number). Their favorite note/key is A because it’s shaped like a triangle. Songs contain three movements. Albums are divided into three acts. The music should be listened to while sitting in the center of three speakers. Their vinyl records are shaped like a nonagon made up of nine triangles (like a pizza). Every album is triple-sided. Etc..
Pertaining to our research, however, is Triangle’s experiments with tryptamines and sonic frequencies—what they called “alchemy music.” The frequencies they created while under the influence of tryptamines are, apparently, capable of affecting (at a quantum level) the resonance of the electrons in the human body and can cause them to buzz/hum in a manner that creates a euphoric, interdimensional experience for the listener. Under the proper conditions one can apparently “see” the music and even “ride” it into other dimensions.
And Triangle may have acquired The Honey Horn from the Teddy Bears to further their research in this area. A woman named, Isis Osceles, who was a groupie and sometime member of the band, claims to have attended a live performance that lasted a month and featured a wide variety of guest performers including Screaming Lord Cheeto, The Screaming Cheetah (it’s a cheetah that just sits there and screams). The performance culminated with what people assumed was a nuclear submarine launching a nuclear warhead (classic Triangle), but Isis says, no, that was a blast on the Honey Horn.
Indeed, the Nuclear Detonation Detection System’s (NDDS) sensors around the world did in fact record seismic and hydroacoustic data on the day in question that is consistent with nuclear weapon detonation. So we know something went off at this concert. But was it a nuke, or was it the cry of the Honey Horn?
Interesting International Incident: Mao vs. Cow
The “Cow Seal Tongue” image almost created an international incident (not really, but it’s fun to say). The original collage I submitted was titled “Mao Seal Tongue” and featured the founder of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Tse Tung (left), playing the role of a mythical shape-shifting seal, aka a Selkie. Clever wordplay, no?
NO! Not in China anyway. UMA, like many companies, has their boards printed in China and their Chinese printer refused to touch the Mao Seal Tongue graphic for fear of retribution. They sent an email:
“For the [Mao Seal Tongue board], we could understand it's your artist's design style, but our HT supplier refuse to produce any graphics which shows no respect and illegal for Country's leader. Please revise or change another graphic for these two items [sic].”
As Americans who have enjoyed democracy our entire lives, this was an unusual situation for me and Andy Jenkins (UMA’s Art Director). Change it? How is suggesting that Mao Tse Tung was a mythical shape-shifting Selkie showing no respect? I thought it made him look kinda cool.
UMA said I either change it or they’re dropping it because they weren’t going to ruin a relationship with a printer over a single graphic.
Okay. Fine.
I eventually found a head that could stunt-double for Mao. No, it is not Queen Elizabeth, as one person asked, it is a portrait of a German woman named, Maria Eisenstecken Oberrauch (above). I hope the descendants of Frau Oberrauch don’t see this graphic, or, in the unlikely event they do, they aren’t offended that their ancestor is being mouth raped by a sea lion.
Interestingly, Maria Eisenstecken Oberrauch’s initials are MEO—one letter off from MAO. Mao Seal Tongue could simply be changed to Meo Seal Tongue. UMA, however, pointed out that if there’s one thing they’ve learned about China it’s that those kinds of subtleties are lost in translation and Meo would likely be considered too close to Mao and still “shows no respect and illegal for Country’s leader.” Okay. Fine. Cow Seal Tongue, then?
I found the experience amusing, but also frightening. Imagine living in a country run by a single party that burns books, outlaws media, and won’t stand for anything which shows no respect and is illegal for country’s leader—it seems dangerously close to happening here at times.