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…
Kelly explained that after she disappeared she first hid in a cheap motel, then fled to Italy, where the light and solitude helped her recover while she remained oblivious to Daedalia’s sudden explosion back home. She admitted she regretted not contacting Lefty, and described returning transformed, only to realize the work had begun opening doorways for other people too.
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.
March 30, 1995
I don’t know how to describe what I’m feeling. I guess that’s why I’m writing. At this point I’ve gotten everything I wanted and I’m not sure how to feel about it. I never expected anything, really.
Last night I kissed Lefty, mostly because I knew he would never do it. He kissed me back and it was both strange and wonderful. I’ve only been kissed a couple of times in my life, and one of them was in sixth grade, the result of a dare at Kristi McDaniels’s birthday party.
Being with him in that way is something I’ve thought about for so long but now that it’s happened, I feel really strange. The longer we kissed and the more he touched me, the more disconnected I felt from my body. It was messed up, like I was standing on the outside watching it all happen.
I kept reminding myself that this was Lefty, the guy who had taken me in when I needed it and supported my work when no one else did, but there was this other part of him that frightened me. No, that’s too strong a word. I wasn’t afraid of him exactly. He was gentle and loving, but I could feel this hunger coming off him, like he wanted to devour me or something.
I felt really dumb, like I asked for this thing and then didn’t know what to do with it. This is what sex feels like, I guess. How it feels to be desired. I imagined it would feel different, magical somehow. Not exactly like when I’m really into my drawing, but something close to that.
All I could think about was all the women he’d been with, the smell of them that used to linger in that little studio apartment, and the way his cheeks were flushed when I’d see him after.
I should back up. We didn’t actually do it last night. I know he really wanted to, but he figured out that something was wrong even though I tried to hide it. I feel terrible, like I’ve ruined everything. Maybe I can learn to like it. Maybe I can want him in that way eventually. He told me he loved me and that it was okay, but I know it’s not. How could it be? I feel like I’ve totally fucked it all up and maybe I shouldn’t have come back at all.
I’m going to try to work again today, for real. It’s been almost a month since I’ve been back and I’ve not found a way to start up again. I’m too distracted. This Daedalia thing is like a real business now and it’s so weird. There’s pressure to do the next thing and I don’t know what that even is.
Lefty’s been patient but I can feel him getting antsy, and he’s always dropping hints about some major gallery somewhere sending inquiries about hosting the next show. Also, he’s starting to get a little paranoid. He’s worried someone will find out that it’s me and then everything will fall apart. I don’t want that to happen either. I’m not sure I could handle all those fancy people being disappointed when whoever they imagined Daedalia was is just me.
April 3, 1995
It’s two in the morning and as I’m writing this, Lefty is snoring on my bed in the other room.
After a few days of awkwardly walking around that first aborted attempt, I told him I wanted to have sex. It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Not the sex exactly, but the weirdness of not knowing how to talk about it and then finally talking about it.
He totally freaked out two days ago after I told him I was a virgin. I was like, duh, do you know me at all? He disappeared for a day and I know he was weighing everything in his mind. It’s complicated. Our fifteen-year age difference has always been a thing and then this thing about me being a virgin just freaked him out more.
When he came over this afternoon, he brought a huge bouquet of flowers, not roses but all these weird, exotic types that I’ve never seen before. He really knows me and that’s kind of amazing.
I was in a funk and really frustrated. I’ve not been able to work at all and Ona is just gone, or that’s how it seems. But when he showed up at the door with those and looked at me in that way no one’s ever looked at me before, I just kind of melted and started crying.
When he hugged me, I kissed him. This time he was tentative and it was even more awkward (if that’s possible!), but I got him over that. I pushed him onto the couch and sat in his lap. I pretended I was someone else, someone who could be with him the way he wanted.
I kind of went into my head like I do when I’m drawing and I fall into this other world. I imagined I was this sexual, fairy-like person with translucent skin and wherever he touched me left behind this phosphorescent glow.
It worked. Even during the painful part, I just imagined I was this fierce fairy creature and I moved against him until the pain melted into this warm feeling and I felt like we were this one being, moving together like some kind of mythological mating of a centaur and a griffin or something. Wow, it sounds totally insane now that I’ve written it down.
I’m not sure where we go from here, that’s why I can’t sleep. There’s so much more to lose now. I’ve never been in love. I’ve never had people counting on me.
What if I fuck it all up? I’ll fuck it up for both of us and Lefty really needs this to work. He’s put his whole life into me and my art. I’m afraid it won’t keep working.
Maybe Ona has left me for good and I’m on my own. What if the trick I did tonight doesn’t always work and Lefty finds out how weird I am with sex and my real body. What does that even mean, my “real” body. I just wrote that and I’m not sure why but it feels true.
April 20, 1995
Today we had a tough conversation. I knew it was coming, like that feeling of knowing that you’ve got to vomit but you keep trying to hold it down.
We were sitting on the beach (I still can’t get used to just going to the beach anytime I want) and he kept asking me if I was okay. I finally said, no I’m not and I’m freaking out a little bit.
He’s just been so weird since we started being more than friends, or whatever we were before. He’s always hovered, but now it’s different. He’s too attentive and trying too hard. It kind of pisses me off and I just want to say, enough. I need some space, dude. But I was afraid to say that because I didn’t want to hurt him.
Then I’m like, he’s a grown man. Why do I need to worry about hurting him? I guess that’s what love is though, always having to think about the other person. It’s kind of exhausting and it’s only been a couple of weeks.
But he surprised me. He’s done that a lot so you’d think I could give him more credit by now.
He said he’s been reading this book by some psychologist lady and it was all about setting boundaries. Defining what you need and what you don’t. He said maybe we could try that.
I said I didn’t want anything to change. I wanted him to still be funny and to tease me a little too hard and to keep pushing me like he used to. He said he would try but that things were different now, that there’s no way it could not be different.
I told him I missed living together like we used to but I wasn’t sure I wanted us to be like a married couple living together. He made this weird face and I’m not sure what he felt because he really couldn’t say anything but okay.
So we’re going to try it out for a little while here at my house before we buy some place together. I’m nervous because I’m not sure I can sleep with him every night. I like him close by, but not that close and then there’s the whole sex thing. He needs a lot of it and if we’re in bed together it’s like this whole thing.
Shit, the more I write about this the more I feel like I’m making a mess and none of this is inspiring me to work and that’s really not good. I guess we’ll just have to take it day by day.
May 14, 1995
A lot has happened in a few weeks. Our little experiment of living together again has been bumpy. I kind of blew up at him on Sunday. It had just been building up for a long time and I lost it.
He looked so wounded and pathetic I felt bad but a part of me didn’t. This is hard. We walked around in silence for a couple of days and that totally sucked but eventually we talked and I brought up the whole boundaries thing again and he was like, this was your idea, and I said yeah it was, but how am I supposed to know everything.
He said I was behaving like such a woman and that hurt in a weird way, and not just because it was a caveman thing to say. It felt personal. My immediate reaction was, I’m not just a woman, but that would have been a totally fucked up thing to say so I just kept quiet.
We made up and went out for a nice dinner at this Greek restaurant. Over dessert he said he had a proposal and let me just say that freaked my shit for a few seconds until he clarified.
“Let’s find a way that makes this work, whatever it is, no matter how weird and unconventional,” he said.
He told me how much he loved me and I could feel it. I could see in that moment how hard this all probably was for him and how much he was stretching just to make it work for me. He came from two normal parents and probably wanted the whole house in the suburbs and white picket fence thing but he wanted me more than that.
We’ve agreed to find a bigger place where we can live together and I can have a separate space for working and just to be on my own when I need it.
I told him I still wanted him to be close, to come and sit when I work sometimes and to be the first person to see the pieces I finish. He said he wanted me to sleep in a bed with him at least a couple of nights a week and to wake up together. I said I thought I could do that.
He asked if I wanted to move out of Los Angeles and suggested maybe it would be better if we lived out somewhere closer to nature. He didn’t say it, but I also think he’d like us to live somewhere more private because it would be much easier to keep the whole Daedalia thing secret.
I think I’d like a new adventure. I never really chose to be out here exactly.
He said we had enough money to go about any place we want. It’s crazy to have so much freedom. I don’t feel worthy of it, but I said I would think about where I’d like to live.
Last night I felt Ona in my dreams. It’s been so long. I felt like she had abandoned me. I woke up and my cheeks were wet like I’d been crying. I can feel something new coming. I have to stop for now so I can go try to work some.
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Tricky territory. Seems Kelly’s primary relationship is to Ona and the art, and nothing will (or should) change that. This chapter makes me think about how challenging it is for neurodivergent individuals to navigate the “normal” or “expected” stages of life. Our culture sure doesn’t offer a lot of alternatives, though many of us would choose them if they were presented!
Ben, please forgive my seeming absence, and me listening over on podcasts (it’s just so much easier in the car!) Please know that I stand amazed by how you’ve managed this story, how the deeply mythical aspect to her work remains so grounded because she herself is so human, in her struggle to be human. It makes it all so exquisitely real. And the Clem chapter was so alive, and so visual, that I feel like I watched a movie of that chapter and can still remember all scenes. And, oh my God, chapter 13!! It reminded me SO MUCH of when I went to the Hilma af Klint exhibition at the Tate Modern a few years ago, where the final room of the exhibit has her ‘The Ten Largest’ pieces hung around the edges of the room. They’re massive and fully abstract but they represent the chronological stages of life, and I stood in the middle, and in amongst everyone there was woman with a pram, holding her baby, staring at the first one, and this little old lady stood staring at the last, and it was moving. Overwhelming, really. And I fully relived that feeling listening to taht chapter.
And their unfolding of their relationship, is just so gloriously honest. I feel like I never read a fictional relationship that's depicted as being far more about the complexity that actually exists underneath the attraction between two people, and that’s the part that is far more interesting. Her journal entries about their intimacy are genius. How awkward being a human in a body actually is, all the mad things we have to do in our minds to make things feel ok. How much space we really need but the world just doesn’t allow... Oof, I didn’t think I could love her more, but here we are. And I’m so fucking glad Ona is back :)