View:
Words: I once heard a Chicago folk-punk outfit play a one-man acoustic encore song about witches and shaving beards that broke my heart. I waited a year and a half to get a recording and finally did, and although there was certainly magic lost in translation since the brawn-brimmed concrete basement where some young guy named Sanders made all the room's muscles stop their tongues and listen, it still stirred something up. For some reason, I was thinking of the girl who died on my lawn, who looked so much like a white, bone-slick seal in the gloaming. I was thinking of when I used to take my temperature three times a day. I was thinking of nose-bleeds in Vienna, oxidized angels in Iowa, sleeping in every inch of my Milwaukee house, and spine-kisses on the Lake Michigan shore. I've just made one of the most important decisions of my life and there's a weird calm in it, although I know it should be tearing me up. I'm thinking instead of how I can never remember how to spell restaurant. And I can't shuffle cards. And I keep thinking of that part in Donald Barthelme's short story The School when the children ask the narrator to make love to Helen, and he says no, and they say please, we need an assertion of value, we are frightened. My skin feels loose, things are dying in the school. Listen to the song below if you are needing an assertion of value.
No comments:
Post a Comment