The Birth Of Going Somewhere Else

I don't know about you, but I'm burning to get backstage and see what the whole thing was about. It had something. There was something there. And then it vanished. It was real. But the word ‘real’ diminishes its scope. Its exquisite pulsations. Whatever it was. It had something. Had something going. You can't say that about everything. The northern lights maybe. Orange Julius. But nothing that specific. It had no form, nothing palpable, nothing you could put in your mouth. Just hints. Clues. Intimations. Vague premonitions. Bad jokes that make you laugh inside. Unsettling intuitions. Curious moments of dissociation. It always feels like it’s on the verge of something. Something hair-raising. Something savage and cauterized. Something passionately devoted but tragically anachronistic. The air trembles with its presence. You’d think it was indestructible. And yet it’s subject to the caprices of time. The whims of the zeitgeist. The high cost of gas. A big-ticket cheap thrill. These things are vain. Though satisfying in many other regards, they have none of its mystery. And it already feels like it's crumbling, fading away like a really good song. It’s hard to hang on to this stuff. Because it’s immaterial. And it’ll never be the same. It’s getting harder and harder to find words for it. Most people are in a hurry to get from one job to another. They don’t have time for this kind of nonsense. Even though it’s vital. Indispensable. Critical. And although these edges crack with thunder, they serve a purpose. The scene across the street is too close for comfort. And I think that’s it. The birth of going somewhere else.

Getting there is another matter. Somewhere else might be a long distance. It can be far as your youth or intimate as nowhere at all. You’ll need transport. And transport has a long history. There’s more to it than yachts and private jets. Harleys are cool but they’re no good on this terrain. We need a long warm rapture. An ascendant descending. I’m doing what I can while waiting for a pair of little wings of mine to warm up and take me somewhere. Somewhere else. Something outside the usual parameters, the secure comforts of normalcy. Though that seems to be disappearing, too. There was a long intermission, a long darkness, during which the props got changed, and our seats were different, and what appeared to be a colossal chandelier above is now a web of creepy surveillance. The antidote is antiquated. I hesitate to even mention it. Someone might hear me. And turn away in mockery. Or horror. Nobody listens anyway, not when you’re this old and you don’t have a podcast or an invitation to appear on Joe Rogan. What I’m talking about isn’t digital. It acquires some attention. Jesus, I sound old. Look what age did to me. Too late to repair the damage. But sense enough to thrive on the energy of despair.

Art moves line by line. Note by note. This is why Mahler’s adagietto moves so slowly. Then picks up speed. Urgency. Phenomena like this often occur during a trance. Music is to trance what alpine is to high winds. Actual to the point of putting a fat feather in a skinny hat. It's a cheese that can only be swallowed when its weight is understood to smoke the century like a chandu of opium. Which is a roundabout way of saying cowlick. We try not to get too fancy around here. Language is meant to be translucent. Some things languish in obscurity. And some things achieve a good standing. Art shatters quickly. The market can’t always keep up. A tale of music should include at least one speedboat to get us there quickly. It doesn’t have to be real. It just needs to float. And leave a good wake behind it.

I pool as a gravy unfolding its syntax on a ramification. Tin roof during space with a rain on it scattered my titration. And somehow it came together and formed a narration, a puddle of lightning with a saloon in it and people playing cards. It’s not hard to make a poem chirp like a mockingbird. We do it in our prosody zone. This is a place conducive to gasoline. It’s a conceit I learned from Gregory Corso. Fuel, ignition, the high-octane rush of language. Or was it Duchamp’s love gasoline? Fluid for a mechanical allegory. I can’t remember. It’s funny. Some memories are weird as ears. Others are confusing as lines to see a shitty movie. We live in a city where things are a little hard to grasp. Sooner or later you’re going to come face to face with a QR code. Or a Cyclops going 80 mph on an ebike. Very little makes sense to me in a city with eleven billionaires, 150 rainy days per year, well over a million rats, 13 million dollars missing from the King County Regional Homeless Authority, nightly gun battles on Aurora, and a troll under the Fremont bridge. And to think this was the birthplace of grunge. And Jimi Hendrix. And pickleball.

Let me start again. I’m on the wrong track here. I can’t keep everything filtered out of my language. So why try? Why not just let it hang out like bedsheets on a clothesline? Let’s move even further away from meaning: here in this neck of the woods a work is a riotous amalgamation beyond our control, a broken sprocket after a faulty conception of sawdust. Anyone can loop into a batch of someone if the drool of being has anything in it resembling hair. Earth tones east of Cle Elum help disencumber summer from the damp of early June. Umber has roots in Ice Age cave art. Its grammar has a glamour that is handily subterranean. And yet there are things about it that verge on frailty. Few of us inhabit caves these days. I shall pursue this ignis fatuus another time. Do you mind if I open a new line of credit? I ponder a breathy vowel as a parody of pig iron but feel the foundry of its origin may be tethered to an ocellated turkey. Later, I’ll sort through a few of my mistakes to see if I can redeem anything. That’s how strong my love is. I get ideated and go beyond the snow to see how big the world can get when it’s not real property. This is my silhouette in letters, and what your eyes can see is an open field. We must rely on our dexterity to pull us through, and find our inner ukulele.