Daedalia is a serialized novel, with a new chapter released every Monday morning. The story is designed to unfold slowly, the days in between, a space for it to settle into your imagination. Each chapter is a 10–15 minute read/listen. Check out the Table of Contents if you want to jump to a specific chapter. Want something to binge while you wait? Three novels, complete with audio narration are ready for you to dive in.
Previously…
An L.A. art critic received a cryptic, hand-drawn invitation on his coffee cup that led him, alone, to a warehouse address after midnight. Inside, he found a single, meticulously lit labyrinth drawing that pulled him into a trance before Lefty Moody appeared and introduced himself as Daedalia’s representative.
The following text is transcribed directly from Kelly Ann Mudd’s journals. There are fifty-three volumes in the collection that was donated to MoMA by her estate.
July 12, 1993
I can’t get used to having my own place. It’s weird. It doesn’t feel real. I never imagined having anything of my own, or really being a grown-up, but here I am with my own dishes, my own actual bed, and a television (which I totally need to put in a closet).
Things have been happening so fast I wanted to write it down here in case it’s all just a dream and it’s gone tomorrow. I want to be able to remember it. My little one-bedroom house is in Laurel Canyon. Yes, that one where fucking Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash lived together! I have a forest view, a little deck where I can sit and have coffee in the morning, and a big open living room with a skylight where I can work. Best of all, I don’t have to sleep on a lumpy couch or share a bathroom.
I’m able to work anytime, day or night, though nights are a little scary. It gets dark out here and it’s so quiet. It feels too much like where I grew up. I don’t know how you can hate and love something equally, but I do. Ona likes the quiet, the trees, the solitude, but it reminds me of being a kid and being alone in that house.
This morning it’s sunny as I sit here in my chair at my table looking over at the piece on my desk. I have a desk! Such a luxury to draw on a massive, sturdy desk that doesn’t wobble. It’s the kind architects use that has a top that can tilt up. It was a gift from Lefty, a “business expense,” he would probably say.
I haven’t written about everything that’s happened since last year and I can’t possibly capture it all because there’s just been so much. If it all goes away, if I’m back where I started in six months or six years, I want to be able to remember at least some of it. There’s been so much I haven’t wanted to remember in my life.
Here’s the thing. I’m an ARTIST now. A successful artist. People buy my work for lots of money. How much money, you ask? Lefty sold a piece last week for $10,000! Who are these people? I can’t even really comprehend it most days. I even feel a little guilty when I think about how hard most people have to work to earn that much. There’s another part of me that wants to shout it from the rooftops, to tell all those assholes from high school that I’m a big fucking deal now and not some freakish thing to be pitied.
But I can’t do that. I can’t do it because the only way this works is if I’m kept a secret. Daedalia is the mysterious artist everybody is dying to meet. It’s more than a little fucked up.
The other night Lefty arranged an invitation-only showing at this gallery called Splinter and I told him I wanted to go and he said it was too risky and I told him to fuck off and we got in this big stupid fight, which makes zero sense, except it does, because I’m sick of being the secret ingredient in my own life. If the version of me and him sitting in that little shitbox in Echo Park could have seen us, they would have been disgusted. He told me this is exactly what I signed up for, which pissed me off even more because it was true. He also said it was my idea, which was also true. At that point I just got quiet and left the restaurant. In true form, I made a scene, which was also not the smartest thing to do for our little enterprise.
He called me later from the gallery and apologized and said I should come, that he had arranged a cover for me. I went down late and hovered on the sidewalk for a while like some lost puppy in fancy, uncomfortable clothes. I looked in through the tall glass windows at the people looking at my pieces and it was such a weird feeling that I can’t describe.
I made all this happen, at least it looks that way, but it’s complicated. I don’t think I ever expected any of it to actually work. I thought me and Lefty would do this little experiment together and it would be a laugh and he’d have a reason to keep letting me hang around.
He helped me get into this place and it’s lovely, but I miss him being around. It was a weird moment when I realized we were looking at places just for me. He got his own apartment in West Hollywood, which is a little bit of an upgrade from the shitbox but nothing fancy. He’s been really careful about the money, wants to make sure it’s fair.
After that first little stunt that Greta helped us pull off and he started getting real offers for my work, he wanted to formalize things to protect me. I said we should just split it 50/50 but he refused and said the most he would take would be 25%. So I’m renting a house in the Canyon and he’s got a one-bedroom apartment.
That’s it for now. I left out so much, but I’ve got work to get to. I have some ideas about a new series with butterflies. The patterns on their wings are so crazy if you think about them. It’ll be interesting to see what we do.
December 31, 1992
Lefty went home for Christmas. He asked if I wanted to come but I told him I don’t have the kind of parents he does, plus unlike him, I can’t exactly tell everybody about my success. I should have done something though, gone somewhere. It’s really sucked to be alone for the past week.
I went to the big stupid mall and walked around for a few hours. I went into a few fancy stores all decked out for the holidays and I bought clothes, like girly clothes I never wear, just because I could afford them and I wanted to treat myself. I wanted to do something with this money I suddenly have. It was fun for a few minutes. I ate way too much Chinese food, came home, and got a little too drunk. I fell and cut my hand somehow. I wanted to call him, but he would just ask if I was okay and then he’d ask what I was working on.
I keep thinking about that afternoon back in September when he took me for a drive up the coast because he saw how tired I was and said I needed a break. He was quiet most of the way and we just listened to music. Something was on his mind but he never said. I know he was seeing somebody. I could smell her sometimes when he came around. But he never talked about her to me, which is weird.
We ended up in this little seaside town called Cambria. It was like a residential area, not a touristy place. He hadn’t planned to stop there, but he was tired of driving. There was a rocky beach, Moonstruck Beach, and we walked for a while. It was like a romantic spot and I don’t think he meant it to be. I think it made him uncomfortable. I wanted him to kiss me and I was reaching with my mind, willing him to, but he didn’t.
I don’t know if he sees me like that. Sometimes when I’m working with Ona I talk about him. She knows him very well by now but she offers no advice. I can feel her waiting for me to ask her to help me make him see me. I think she could do it, but I don’t want it to be like that, a trick.
I’m planning on a new direction this year and that’s what I’m doing here as I sit on my deck with the sun going down on the last day of this year that’s changed my life. I want to do something bigger and bolder so I’ve bought some larger canvases and I’m planning to experiment with more color.
I know an artist isn’t supposed to read their reviews, but I do. Maybe I’m just using the loophole that I’m not officially the artist, but I don’t care. It’s fun to read what other people think about the things that were once just in my head.
That guy Rousseau, the one who wrote that first review in the L.A. Times, said my work was “a tumble down a twisty rabbit hole filled with enchantment and mystical symbology that masks a beautiful, tortured soul sharpening her nib to carve her way out of the darkness.”
The rabbit was Ona’s idea. I’ve never really thought of rabbits before, but I found I liked the shape of them when I started to doodle. Of the six little invitations Lefty had me make for the six fancy people Greta had been whispering to before we did that little show, I connected most with the one I did for him. When I read one of his articles and studied the little black-and-white headshot with his column, I felt a connection to him, like somehow we had similar stories. Lefty thought the invitation was kind of creepy, like stalkery, but when I wrote the words “did you lose something?” I wasn’t just thinking about Rousseau.
The thing about being universal is you’ve got to get personal and personal is messy. The great artists are the ones who give their whole heart away, I think. Some days I think maybe I do that, so maybe I’ll be a great artist, but then I think no, I don’t really do that because I’m cheating. Daedalia is the “beautiful, tortured soul.” I’m just a hick girl from Black Mountain who’s a long way from home and about to spend New Year’s Eve alone.
Future me, don’t feel too bad. I bought some expensive champagne and a whole cheesecake and I’m planning to watch twelve hours of Star Trek.
June 5, 1993
I never thought I would be tired of doing art, but I am totally burned out right now. I know it’s not true, but I feel like I could just walk away and never do it again. That’s scary to me because I’m not sure who I am without it.
I turned 22 yesterday and I feel so old. I’ve done 26 pieces in less than eighteen months. Each one takes us so much time, like at least 200 hours or more. When she’s with me, it’s effortless, almost like dreaming, but more and more it’s just me and my hand starts to cramp after eight or nine hours and my shoulders hurt. I don’t have any kind of a fucking life outside of my art. I thought that’s what I wanted but it’s not enough. How can I already be done when I’m just 22?
I’m afraid to tell Lefty. He’s going to be mad. No, he won’t be mad. He’ll be sweet about it and then gently remind me about all the reasons why I can’t quit. I only see him like twice a week when he comes up to check on me like I’m a prize racehorse he keeps in a stable or something. He always brings me something, food or some little gift he thinks might inspire me.
Once a month we go over the finances and he talks about different galleries across the country who want to stage a show for Daedalia. He talks about her in the third person. It’s so fucking weird. What’s even stranger is he’s got me doing it now too. In some ways it’s easier because it separates me from her and that whole world. Is it weird to be jealous of someone who doesn’t exist?
How messed up is it that I’m bitching here? I have over $200,000 in the bank at this point. That number doesn’t even seem real when I look at the statement. I don’t know how much Lefty has but he seems happy enough. He loves the game of it, but I also think he’s proud of what we’ve done. I want him to be happy. He’s really the closest thing I have to family now.
For my birthday he gave me this collection of photography books by a nature photographer whose thing is to take a single photo every day, only one, and he’s done it for something like ten years. The images are so gorgeous but there’s also something that feels really lonely about them, isolating. Like he’s trapped by this thing he started. I feel that.
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I can’t imagine what this must feel like for Kelly, but you do an incredible job pulling us into her experience. Feels lonely, confusing, exhilarating and dissociating all at the same time.
The price of success is often more than the sum of the parts... so often, for me, it is a dilemma and I feel this here in a certain backwards way.
Lefty seems content according to Kelly's journal but she herself, without Ona...? Her life screams of her becoming a lonely recluse. And I wonder what good is money to a recluse?
I felt sad by the end of this chapter Ben, especially by the gift although I am sure Lefty gave it with all good intentions, it felt almost like a prophecy.