Bombast

They call it bombast. I call it kerosene. They call it inflation. I call it watermelon. Sometimes I screw things in the heat and nobody says anything. If everything and nothing happen simultaneously, I call it art. I follow fat wherever it goes. Our dramas are clumsy but our creameries are tranquil. If I have nothing to say I say it anyway. I have no secrets. I have tendencies. I have airplanes and butter. I’ve got movies and marijuana balloons. Coincidences and twigs. I’ve seen eyeballs squirt clouds into an empty sky and an empty sky walk into watercolor. I sigh anytime I see henna. No art is going to show you reality any clearer. I’m not trying to do that. It would be a waste of time. I’m simply trying to chip harder at the walls until a vein of gold appears. We’re in darkness. We’re in darkness all the time. On the brightest of days we’re in darkness. You can feel it. It’s palpable. But there are moments when a little diffuses throughout like the sfumato in Italian painting. The air turns turquoise and orange. I believe art has that power. But it’s a mistake to believe it has anything to do with reality. It’s about perception. It’s about fullness. It’s about the richness of experience. Intensity. It’s about intensity. It’s about unicorns and Donald Duck. Milkshakes and bean burritos. The ordinary made extraordinary. There are more than five senses. Let’s get that straight at least. There are probably more like thirty. But who’s counting? I want more. I always want more. And yet they say a god made us. Think of Ophelia dashed to the floor by the madman she loves. She loved. Has anyone fully fathomed this confusion and come up smiling to talk about it? They say nuclear burning of helium can plausibly give the amount of titanium-44 that can explain antimatter. I’m not going to get in the way of that. I’m not here to argue. But I like the idea of antimatter floating in my martini like an olive of tart cognition. Touching a napkin of antimatter to see it explode. Blow the whole city into oblivion. That would be one hell of a martini. I see a man performing on an open-air stage at twilight in Hyde Park London England in 2009. He sings about shooting his lover down by a river. He plays an electric guitar, sounding notes, stretching notes, banging notes, hammering notes, stroking notes, caressing notes, bending notes. Does this answer Aristotle’s question regarding the ultimate purpose of human existence? No. But it describes our situation pretty well. It sounds like huge beasts clashing, howling, sparks flying, pretty trills suddenly appearing. It perfectly demonstrates Aristotle’s position that the particularity of a substance cannot rest on an underlying characterless substratum. It must rest on an e minor 7. A C major 7, then G, D, DA, G, then DA, then back into the verse. Being doesn’t act alone. It requires engagement with the world. You’ll need a harpsichord, at least, and a nice warm bath.