I love this time of year. Winter loosens its grip and the air begins to warm. Everything hovers on a threshold of blossoming. Scientists caress their abstractions. Our inner gold aches and murmurs. It takes a sensitive pair of hands to fondle a conversation. The jokes are good and the punchlines accentuate our exultation. Reveries engulf the lyceum. We hear the lucidity of scruples warm the logic of soap. We hear things from very far away, tauntingly indefinable yet vaguely familiar. The sound of thunder on the surface of Venus is deliciously eerie. What does the other side of my life sound like? The rustle of a gown in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. Madness in its apogee. Frank Zappa talking to Joan Rivers on the Tonight Show, 1986. Please don’t mock my children’s names. I urge a new rebellion against generalization. All else may be considered details.
The future? It's still too distant to know for sure.
Is it an Oort cloud, or a contusion? The life I started 77 years ago is still
hugely influenced by music. That doesn’t sound entirely convincing. Would it be
more accurate to say that the life that started me 77 years ago was largely induced
by hunger? Which never gets satisfied. Not completely. Some do better than
others. You can see it in their apathy. We don’t have fur like other animals,
or instincts or fangs. What we have is largely myrtle and folklore. Skin is
quite sensitive and requires wool and gyration. It’s a defining moment.
Everyone has their own cherished opinion regarding paddling a kayak. But one
thing is universally accepted as true: music is a large thick bowl of
consciousness. It's like sipping wine with your ears instead of your mouth.
Melodies bend everything towards life, like Nina Simone, while a variety of
rhythms shape our convulsions, like André Breton. The tongue fire has a
pleasant taste. It wraps itself around our needs and gives us the gift of
speech.
There is a hummingbird in the park that I have become
very fond of. We communicate by telepathic confetti. It has 88 tentacles and a
head the size of the Hagia Sophia. Maybe it’s not a hummingbird. Maybe it’s a
mosque. Or a mosaic. Or a tiny pterodactyl reading Le Monde. The definition of
things requires a compelling narrative, a wonderful inscrutability and a good
imagination. I agree that what a conceptual idea of religion may alter may not
be the final float in the enigma parade. We make gasoline as well as suture veins.
There’s nothing one can’t do with a roll of string and a bag of parables. The
first thing I look for when I come to town is a good barbershop. That’s where
people get their news. Or scroll their phones. Looking for news. Ancestry and
beach resorts. Or just sit around bleeding quietly to themselves.
Was there ever a Twilight Zone episode in which the main character discovers that everything they say has the power to produce actual physical results? Let’s call our friend X. So if X says to Z “take a hike,” Z goes on a hike. Or if X says to Y, “go stick your head up your ass,” Y attempts to insert his/her head up their ass. X has issues, it would seem. But say X proclaims “I wish neoliberal capitalism would die and a social democracy would take its place.” The next morning all the podcasts are chattering about the White House frantically restoring all the government agencies recently eviscerated (thoroughly reformed, of course, and fully staffed with highly efficient, deeply empathetic, altruistic experts and happy, competent workers) and subtracted a considerable amount of money from the Pentagon budget to give back to the population to help with inflation and infrastructure. And yes – oh yes! – free healthcare and college education for everyone. And no more homelessness, or war, or genocide. And so, engorged with power, X goes on a wild drunken spree. And in abject drunkenness and an irrepressible appetite for self-sabotage X starts sermonizing about how totally absurd everything is and stupid and meaningless and that’s when Rod Serling appears and smokes this sentence until it’s completely gone.
