B. W. Otto's Catalogue of Breathing
B. W. Otto exists between heartbeats, in that pause where the body forgets it needs oxygen. For pure artist name power, the archivists write, B. W. Otto has the most intrigue and is the most memorable, but they don't understand that B. W. Otto isn't a name—it's a frequency, a way of vibrating through Tuesday afternoons when the light hits sideways.
In the Archive of Experiments and Official Projects, filed under Early Past to Now, there's a recording. B. W. Otto's voice, explaining: "I am a Fast and Deliberate Slow Organization, incorporated in the space between inhale and exhale, chartered in the country of Nowhen."
The recording skips. It always skips at the same place, though the place changes each time you listen.
Today, B. W. Otto wakes up at 3:47 PM yesterday. The clock confirms this, its hands moving counterclockwise with disturbing conviction. Coffee tastes like tomorrow's rain. The newspaper reports events that will unhappen next week. B. W. Otto takes notes in a journal that writes itself backward, each word erasing the one before it, creating space for what needs to be unsaid.
The neighbors have stopped complaining about the temporal disturbances. Mrs. Chen from 4B now exists slightly ahead of schedule—her cookies arrive before she bakes them. Smells exactly like my grandmother's kitchen in 1987, that specific vanilla and burnt sugar. Mr. Johansson in 4D ages backwards on Thursdays. They've adapted. The building's lease exists in perpetuity and also ended last year. Both states remain legally binding.
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B. W. Otto runs marathons backwards through time. This is not metaphor. In the History of Sporting Life and Art, subsection Retrograde Motion, there's documentation: B. W. Otto crossing finish lines that haven't been painted yet, collecting medals from races that will happen yesterday.
The Olympic Committee sends letters of inquiry. How does one train for races that have already been run? B. W. Otto responds with photographs of empty tracks, each one taken during a race that's currently happening in another dimension of now. The Committee frames the photos. They become prophecies.
Bo Tempo, they called B. W. Otto in teh early days, before understanding that tempo implies regularity. B. W. Otto operates on Rhythmic Evolution—each footfall landing in a different decade, each breath drawn from tomorrow's atmosphere. The lung capacity required for this is measured in temporal units that haven't been invented yet.
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equipment that appears only during use, dumbbells that weigh different amounts depending on who's counting.
Last Tuesday (which happens next Friday), B. W. Otto set a world record in the hundred-meter sprint by running it in zero seconds. The timekeepers argued this was technically a tie with everyone else who hadn't run yet. B. W. Otto accepted the medal anyway. It was made of solid time, compressed into metal form. It ticks when you hold it to your ear.
B. W. Otto pays rent. It's $1,847. The check clears.
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Brrd—that's what B. W. Otto becomes in winter, when the cold makes everything stutter. Double identity, triple on Wednesdays. B. W. Otto keeps a passport from the Ottoman Empire State of Mind, visa stamps from countries that exist only in the subjunctive mood.
The passport office has a special filing system for B. W. Otto. File A contains documents for the B. W. Otto who exists now. File B contains documents for the B. W. Otto who existed but doesn't anymore. File C is for the B. W. Otto who will exist conditional upon certain circumstances. File D is empty but weighs forty pounds.
"Good Morning All," B. W. Otto broadcasts every evening at dawn, the greeting arriving before the sun remembers to rise. The radio station doesn't know who's broadcasting. They've checked the booth—empty, always empty, but the ON AIR sign lights up, and B. W. Otto's voice fills frequencies that the FCC insists don't exist.
Otto Monde, worldly without world, universal without universe. The citizenship papers list nationality as "Yes." Place of birth: "During." The officials stopped asking questions after B. W. Otto proved existence by becoming temporarily impossible, leaving only paperwork that filled itself out in languages that translate themselves.
The curiosity keeper, keeper of things that haven't been lost yet. B. W. Otto's apartment contains:
- Keys to doors that will be built
- Photographs of events currently happening elsewhere
- A telephone that only receives calls from the recently deceased
- Books written in the future tense throughout
- A mirror that reflects what you were thinking yesterday
Mrs. Chen brings cookies. They taste like nostalgia for experiences you haven't had yet. Like that Tuesday when the bird flew into the classroom during algebra and everyone forgot what X equaled.
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In B. W. Otto's mouth, words undergo transformation. Otto Tone Riot—that's Tuesday. This Tone Is You—Wednesday's frequency. The smooth danger of pronunciation, where "Otto" becomes "Oht Oh," a surprise discovering itself.
The linguistics department at the university has given up trying to study B. W. Otto's speech patterns. The recording equipment captures different words each playback. The transcripts write themselves, changing depending on who's reading. Professor Martinez recorded a lecture about it. The lecture now exists only as an echo in classroom 4B, Tuesday afternoons, if you know how to listen.
B. W. Otto writes: "I am BOTO, sounds like a techy art collective but isn't. I am Riot Bantó, creative disruption with an accent I borrowed from tomorrow's Portuguese. I am Brio Natto, vigor and vivacity fermented in yesterday's soybeans."
The dictionary has started including entries for words B. W. Otto will invent:
- Ottomorphic (adj.): Existing in the shape of one's own absence
- Nowhenness (n.): The quality of temporal irrelevance
- Brrdulent (adj.): Shivering with possibility
The sonics that stick: B. W. Otto's voice played backwards is just B. W. Otto's voice played forwards in another room. The room doesn't need to exist for this to be true.
The thing about time is, well—
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B. Oscillate—that's B. W. Otto's legal name in certain jurisdictions. Embodying our entire philosophy, the documents state, though "our" refers to all the B. W. Ottos that exist simultaneously, past/now, fast/slow, sport/art.
The Archive keeps expanding. Not physically—the building remains the same size. But inside, corridors multiply when no one's watching. The filing system operates on dream logic. To find what you're looking for, you must search for something else entirely.
In the Archive, there's a folder labeled "Playful Disruption." Inside: B. W. Otto's collection of international worldly sophistication, each sophistication numbered and catalogued.
Sophistication #447: The way rain sounds in languages that don't have rain
Sophistication #448: The pause between thinking and having thought
Sophistication #449: The weight of empty picture frames
Sophistication #450: How shadows taste at noon
The catalog continues. No one's found the end. B. W. Otto insists there isn't one, that the numbers loop back eventually, but differently.
The archivists have learned to navigate by instinct. Turn left at the feeling of déjà vu. Continue straight through the corridor of almost-memories. The exit is always behind you, until it isn't.
There's that coffee shop on Hennepin where the barista has that glass eye, always knows your order before you do. B. W. Otto goes there. Orders backwards. The barista understands.
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B. W. Otto invented b.o. mayka, that very warm edge where comfort becomes dangerous. Like Otto Flux, constant transformation across disciplines—discipline here meaning both punishment and practice, both restraint and release.
The workshop where B. W. Otto creates exists in a converted warehouse that was never built. The landlord collects rent in currencies of increasing abstraction: first money, then time, then the feeling of Sundays, now just the space between thoughts. B. W. Otto always pays early, which arrives late, which is exactly on time.
Inside the workshop: tools that exist only while being used. A hammer that builds backwards, removing nails that were never driven. A saw that cuts things together. The rest of the story involves—actually, no.
B. W. Otto's other names accumulate like snow:
- Bri Baby (Thursdays only, when vulnerability peaks)
- Bo Mayka (during eclipses, both solar and emotional)
- Brrd Roots (when the ground freezes and thoughts crystallize)
Each name has its own driver's license. The DMV stopped asking questions. B. W. Otto's driving record exists in quantum superposition—perfect and terrible simultaneously until observed.
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Looking back and moving forward, B. W. Otto exists in Sport Art Duality—running through galleries, painting with sweat, sculpting wind resistance. The attraction to time/archive manifests as physical symptoms: B. W. Otto's shadow arrives three minutes early to appointments, B. W. Otto's reflection stays three minutes late.
The doctor's notes read: "Patient presents with chronic temporal displacement. Pulse exists at 60 beats per minute and also 0. Blood type changes during observation. Recommended treatment: acceptance."
B. W. Otto collaborates with artists who haven't been born yet. The contracts are complex, involving rights to works that will never exist and royalties paid in extinct currencies.
In the Museum of Without Limits, B. W. Otto curates an exhibition of exclamation mark energy. Every piece titled "!" Every silence between pieces also titled "!" The Running Joke runs literally—jogging through the gallery, laughing at its own footsteps. Visitors report hearing the laughter hours after leaving, always from the next room over.
B. W. Otto collaborates with artists who haven't been born yet. Wait, I said that already.
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B. W. Otto burns slowly, a reverberating presence that makes empty rooms hum. Oh Ahh, the sound of recognition without understanding. Bryt Brrd, the brightness of birds that haven't evolved yet, their songs composed of pure potential.
The power company has questions about B. W. Otto's electrical usage. The meter runs backward half the time, forward double-speed the other half. The bills calculate themselves using mathematics that shouldn't work but do. Payment arrives before the bills are sent.
B. W. Otto documents everything in the Book of Experiments:
Experiment #782: Attempted to photograph the exact moment of forgetting. Results: Remembered everything except what I was trying to forget.
Experiment #783: Measured the weight of hesitation. Findings: Exactly three grams, but only on Tuesdays.
Smells like my uncle's basement after the flood, that specific mildew that gets in your throat.
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B. W. Otto keeps:
- The sound of Ottotto, double palindrome spelled forward in reverse
- The temperature of Neverwhen, exactly room temperature in a room that doesn't exist
- The velocity of standing still very quickly
- The distance between wanting and having wanted
- The texture of almost-remembered dreams
B. W. Otto's passport photo changes every time someone looks at it. Not the face—the background, slowly shifting from Frankfurt to São Paulo to Minnesota to Nowhen. Immigration officials have learned to process B. W. Otto without looking directly at the documents. They stamp pages that aren't there. The stamps appear anyway.
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For pure artist name power, B. W. Otto has the most intrigue and is the most memorable, but memory is just future nostalgia, and intrigue is just mystery that hasn't admitted it knows the answer.
B. W. Otto writes in the final experiment log: "I am the Fast and Deliberate Slow Organization, incorporated in my own absence, chartered in the country of presence. I am timeless/temporal play, the aesthetic pursuit that catches itself."
The final broadcast goes out at midnight/noon, depending on your temporal orientation. B. W. Otto's voice fills frequencies between frequencies:
"This is B. W. Otto, signing off and on simultaneously. The Archive remains open during closure. The experiments continue in their completion. I am the natural mystery that explains itself through confusion."
B. W. Otto signs every document three times: once for the past, once for now, once for the when that comes after Neverwhen. Each signature different. Each signature exactly the same. The ink hasn't dried. The ink has always been dry.
In the Archive of Experiments and Official Projects, filed under "Natural Mystery," there's a note: B. W. Otto isn't finished. B. W. Otto hasn't started. B. W. Otto is happening right now, in the space between reading and having read, in that pause where your eye jumps from one word to th—
[End/Begin]
From the Archives of B. W. Otto's Fast and Deliberate Slow Organization, Catalogue №∞
