SAT:
Hi Baker B. Welcome to the interview.
Baker B.:
Thank you. And: thank you.
SAT:
We are you after all.
Baker B.:
Right. State your first question worker (smile).
SAT:
How did all this Collagesity stuff start? Second Lyfe… Collagesity. Don’t go into details. Just the general, just the mundane.
Baker B.:
2008 for Second Life, er, Second Lyfe. 2010 for the first virtual town, which was called Pietmond. Collagesity evolved from Pietmond — started 2014. Is that general enough?
SAT:
Thank you. Your first avatar was a woman. Your second avatar was a man. Yet both are named Baker. Please explain if you can — again succinctly.
Baker B.:
I actually can’t remember why I chose a woman as my first avatar. My RL wife decided to be a man (inworld), so I guess that had a role. She was what you could call a very prudish looking woman (with long white dress and un-accentuated features). At the same time, my RL wife’s avatar looked much like David Bowie.
SAT:
The woman’s name was Baker Blinker, the man’s Baker Bloch. Just clarifying here. I understand that Baker Bloch gradually took over responsibilities from Baker Blinker and became your chief or main avatar. How and when did this take place?
Baker B.:
Oh, probably after our move to mainland and I purchased my first land from the Lindens directly. The Lindens own and run the Second Lyfe world. Or, I should say, Second Life there, since I’m talking about them now. And Baker Blinker — perhaps hard to believe — was getting a bit of griefing (as a woman) on mainland that she didn’t have in the less crowded Estate (non Linden owned land of the game). So when Baker Bloch, not Baker Blinker, bought the first mainland land for our “family” (of avatars), in Rubi and very near where I still “live” virtually — Collagesity that is — then that was really the beginning of the end for Baker Blinker as the main avatar. She’s made a big revival in the Collagesity novels more recently. She even got married (!).
SAT:
Karoz Blogger, yes. Describe how they met and then the progression from there to marriage and beyond. I understand they had some rocky patches to work through. Perhaps these are still going on?
Baker B.:
Yes, I don’t think I’m giving away much of a plot when I — we — say the two characters got married rather early in the Collagesity novels as they stand so far. It was a big event, along with them getting together — falling for each other — in the first place. The latter event took place in the exact center of the first Collagesity novel, which we’ll, for simplicity’s sake, call Collagesity Novel 01, although the actual title is “Collagesity 2015-2016 Winter”.
SAT:
Describe how this took place.
Baker B.:
Karoz just looked around and realized one day that he was attracted to Baker Blinker, where before she was just an acquaintance — one of the family, if you will. But this went beyond family. Baker Bloch and Baker Blinker, for instance, never had this kind of attraction to each other, although at least Baker Blinker might have wanted it at one point. Instead they are more brother and sister — closer than brother and sister, since they have a common user. They can finish each other’s thoughts because they are the same; that kind of closeness. Closer than married couples who are close in many ways.
SAT:
Cool. How about Hucka Doobie? I know he is the guiding spirit of the blog, and one that Baker B. — you — relied on a lot for sage advise, at least before the Collagesity novels started kicking in. Can you describe your relationship to him, and what changed about the character during the course of the novels?
Baker B.:
Hucka D. has a definite backstory. He was formerly Charles Nelson Blinkerton, a New Mexico artist from New York who was always one beat behind the current artistic trends. So when Pop Art was around, Blinkerton was still a surrealist and abstract expressionist. When Pop Art yielded to more postmodern concerns, Blinkerton trailed again and took up practicing the basically obsolete form just mentioned. He died on (or near) the top of Burro Mtn. in New Mexico of a heart attack in 2008 at the age of 98, I believe. His soul went into the already prepared body of Hucka Doobie in Our Second Lyfe, then. But the melding created a fusion of personalities, since Hucka Doobie was already established a bit in this world. It wasn’t just Blinkerton taking over a body.
SAT:
Hucka Doobie is the 3rd avatar you, the user, created, and the first beyond The Bakers male and female.
Baker B.:
Yes. And I should add that in the Collagesity novels it is revealed that Hucka Doobie is a woman and not a man, or transformed into a woman from a man at the least. She is continuing to morph away from her purely bee (shaped) start, and currently looks much like David Bowie’s widow Iman, a strong black woman in the modelling industry. Kind of strange… and she seems more trapped in Second Lyfe than ever through this more human form and unable to go back to spirit form, let’s say.
SAT:
Interesting. Let’s see, now we have Wilsonia, the 4th avatar. I’m just reviewing the chapters of “Where are We on That?…” in order.
Baker B.:
Right. Wilsonia was never developed, really, although she has a point of origin: Otherland (Estate land again). But in the novels she becomes Wheeler Wilson — or, sometimes, Wilson Wheeler — certainly a very important character there.
SAT:
How did this (development) come about?
Baker B.:
She absorbed, I guess, the feminine half of the spectrum — from Baker Blinker at the end (during Collagesity Novel 02). Baker Bloch is now the primary male avatar and Wheeler Wilson the female one. So it is appropriate earlier this year that Baker Blinker sells her chunk of Collagesity to Wheeler Wilson. But Wheeler Wilson is multiple avatars now, as is Baker Bloch. Baker Blinker, Karoz Blogger, Hucka Doobie and the rest: not so much. Like I said, Baker Bloch and Wheeler Wilson are the great male-female duality now. Bracket Jupiter is also around.
SAT:
Topic for another night. Good night.
“It makes total sense that the focus on New Island shifts over to Fisher’s Island to its left.”
Sunklands 