High Muck a Muck

First of all I had to look up the phrase “high much a muck”. I can only recall one other instance of ever hearing this and it is in the song Wonderboy by the band Tenacious D. I even had to look up the lyrics of the song to be able to compare the two different usages. In the song the lyrics go: “High above the mucky-muck, castle in the clouds. There sits Wonderboy, sitting oh so proudly.” The way the phrase is worded is different but I think there’s room for interpretation there.

The definition of the phrase “high muck a muck” goes like this however; “an important, influential, or high-ranking person, especially one who is pompous or conceited.” That’s all fine and dandy, but the issue comes when interpreting the entire piece of electronic literature itself.

Before I start off talking about the parts I didn’t get about “High Muck a Muck”, I’d like to point out what I appreciated the most: the presentation. Talk about a visually gorgeous work of e-lit. The combination between water color painting and a map looked stunning, and the combination of an exposed body serving as the landmass across a map looked pretty cool—and not to mention the “hotspots” placed across the map giving the reader different responses depending on their shape and size.

This piece made me think several stories I’ve heard—but admittedly haven’t researched enough on my own—of the rail road work in the United States in the period where the rail road companies worked to connect the west coast with the east coast, and create a “highway” across the mainland. This thought came to me first and foremost because of the combination of the music—which sounds like the combination between a melancholy and tranquil song played on a wooden flute—and the various references to Asian culture and heritage spread across the work. (There’s also a gong placed in the a few times, which immediately directs me to an Asian.)

And then once you click on the option of “Canada” we actually get to see rail roads, people carrying tools, and a sigil that says, “Canadian Pacific Rail Way”. Like I mentioned earlier, I admit to not know much about this, but with the combination everything I’ve seen in this piece I’m thinking the piece is predominantly working around the immigration of people of Asian to the west—in this case Canada, and even more specifically; Nelson, Vancouver, Richmond, and Victoria.

The stories that I’ve heard surrounding the rail road work in the United States were horrendous. We’re talking working conditions that killed people, and companies that would rather see their workers die in the ditches so that they could get out of paying them for their work. Apparently, if memory serves me right, Asian immigrants were exploited because of their willingness to accept awful work for awful pay when others would refuse to work under the same conditions.

Although I haven’t been able to go through the entire piece as much as I’d like to, I’ve found that I enjoyed it so far and I’d like to highlight the aesthetics and atmosphere surrounding the piece the most, and I ended up placing the literature part second to the presentation—for now.