It is a Tuesday afternoon at the New Orleans Jazz Museum and the weather is 75 degrees in December and I am rambling enthusiastically to Ben Martin, better known as the multimedia magician behind Poose the Puppet, about paracosms. The overzealousness in my voice is because Martin is most likely the only person in the City That Care Forgot right now who might possibly understand what a paracosm could possibly be.
Poose’s secret show in New Orleans will be featured on an upcoming dating series. Photo by Caitlin Ridenour
Originally from Greensboro, North Carolina, one of those Appalachian college towns where one can have artists and teachers for parents and a brother 15 months older as a best friend while living in the shadow of a university and a beautiful landscape, Martin is dressed in Victorian garb despite the heat and seems to be picking up what I’m putting down. After all, a paracosm is generally defined as a detailed imaginary world. Martin with his curly long hair shadowing parts of his face with glittering ruby earrings knows all about such worlds, as he has quite literally birthed the universe of Poose, a puppet spirit I had the pleasure of engaging with last month at an outdoor show. Poose opened for Delores Galore and Tuffy, the latter being a band featuring Martin’s elder brother, Sam, also known for his work in Three-Brained Robot.
Poose strutted and fretted upon the opening act stage in all of her Wondershowzen-esque glory. A giant sloth creature waved its wings upon the crowd and even the most austere hipsters in attendance were moved to smiles as experimental hyper EDM thumped through the autumnal air.
“Poose is a feminine spirit,” Martin says. “She’s like me…she just woke up in this place like some of us do and just thought, What the fuck is going on? She was just floating out there in the universe and she saw the Earth and thought…I suppose I will take a rest.”
Martin and I connect because we both seem to be of the same mind of Poose. It doesn’t hurt that we share a love of puppetry arts.
A child of the 90s, Martin grew up in the age of throwback Jim Henson films like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal and a ton of cinema that revolved around practical effects. “There was always something about the practical effect of puppets as active characters. They aren’t like animation and they just hypnotize me. They’ve always been so magical. Growing up, I didn’t care if it was a Christian straight-to-VHS movie, I would watch it if it had puppets in it.”
Sync up that love of puppetry and performance with an indescribable affinity for what he originally considered “Matrix movie fight music” (which he would later learn was categorized as EDM), then you might be getting at the tip of the iceberg that is the Poose experience. He pinpoints the Crispin Glover fight in 2000’s Charlie’s Angels when The Prodigy was playing as a moment that something genuinely clicked for him musically. He even has an air of Glover’s cadence to him as he speaks.
Martin spent much of early performance years in the artistic Appalachian outpost of Asheville, North Carolina, choreographing his shows and being certain to play off the audience’s emotions.
“I don’t know…I’ve always just preferred EDM and Dubstep but I don’t like things that are boring or predictable,” he explains. “Not to insult anyone, but I would go to these EDM shows and see people behind a computer flexing their egos and playing tracks. When I perform my music and my art, I just want to feel like I’m involved as a part of someone’s experience on this earth, even for a brief moment.”
But that wasn’t always the experience of Martin. The middle child of three, Martin says he was slow to figure out his path in life. He attended university for international business and speaks fluent Spanish. He took a corporate job immediately after and met a girl who didn’t appreciate a song he wrote for her called “Blueberries” (penned as an homage to her blue hair). He lost his father in 2018 and was plunged into the world of being lost. On a tour with his brother Sam, whom he cites as his biggest influence in life and best friend, he found a Lance Bass “It’s Gonna Be Me” era puppet at a Goodwill store and was captivated just pulling the marionette strings.
“In terms of dealing with anxiety and trauma, I really had to start exercising being in the present. I go through this a lot and wonder: Are we in a simulation? I feel like the quickest way to make someone present is not meditation. For me it’s something that hijacks my mind like watching a movie…you’re not thinking about anything else…you’re not in the future or the past.”
We return to the universe of Poose, who at the moment has emerged from her tiny case and has entered the chat in a Paddington yellow trench with sleek gold choker chains. She’s effortlessly cute. Martin tells me that clothes for her are a new thing, as she naturally showed up to our planet au natural.
Her name came from a sort of rebirth moment for Martin. He met a new gal who had gone through similar experiences. He leaned into his Spanish fluency to describe her and immediately thought of the mariposa, the word for butterfly, that transformative creature that just seems to lend itself so many linguistic variations. He took the phonetic long o sound and made it a u sound and Poose and all of her endless poose-abilities were born.
The story of Poose sounds like a fairy tale and Martin says he hopes to make Poose kid-friendly, too, someday. But for now, Poose is focused on helping those who are lost, like Martin once was, find their pur-pooses.
“Poose comes to earth, falls in love with a blueberry plant, they make Pooseberry children, humans find the Pooseberries and abuse their power, this angers Poose and she turns all humans into zombies taking away their free will. She is then met and reprimanded by all of the other spirits in the universe and using their knowledge she realizes that humans need to have free will in order to learn and grow as well. Poose’s true life goal ( true Purpoose) becomes setting free the humans to reveal their true life goal (true Purpoose) as well. Poose does this by teaching human beings to let loose their inner spirits, be present, and be your truest weirdest self through a series of skits and songs.”
Helping people who are lost, giving them a brief moment of freedom from daily stresses and anxieties means the universe to Poose and her puppeteer. “By the end the audience should feel as though they became part of another world and could influence the outcome of the show without any pressure. In that moment they become free from their own reality and they should walk away feeling refreshed, rejuvenated, and inspired- having let go of that tight stressful grip that everyone has on day-to-day life.” Once their true Purpoose is revealed at the end of the show they have become a butterfly ( in Spanish Mariposa) or have fully grown. In the show this achievement is called Maripoosa. (As a testament, this author can completely say her first Poose show was a mystical and life changing experience.)
So what’s next for Poose the Puppet? Martin has a plethora of goals including even more immersive performances, apps that connect the audience to the experience even more (that work like a choose-your-own adventure book), and more opportunities to perform. Martin insists he isn’t limited to clubs or art house venues, he’s open to birthday parties and more—anywhere Poose can help someone expand their consciousness, he’s there.
If the late Jim Henson advised us all ““Life’s like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending” then Ben Martin is certainly moving himself and his puppet menagerie in the right direction, always dreaming and always taking their audience somewhere new.
To learn more about Poose, visit her website here. Poose can be streamed on Bandcamp and Soundcloud and followed on Instagram @poosethepuppet.
