Souveniers, Novelties, Party Tricks.
Mission control has moved to the guest room. (The guest room is actually a merchandise storage facility. Or it is a mausoleum of outdated musical formats. Or it’s a museum for old postcards and faded pictures. Or the boneyard of winter’s cumbersome clothes. An avalanche of erratic artifacts.)
At night, the mood flips to “awesome” and the space converts into a proper Jam Station™.
I play guitar with my legs jammed between an amplifier and an old typewriter, impatiently waiting to be set free. The old machine is definitely jealous of the computer dreams, the galactic thoughts, Jamiroquai’s dogged doggerel.
These are the whispers of inanimate objects. The sad shower curtain, the lazy garden hose, the anxious french press. The displaced voices start to build and swell, creating a cacophonous masterpiece. After a month of rehearsals, they tour Eastern Europe and become an extremely successful experimental noise-band outfit.
—
This is not real. Ca n’existe pas.
Let’s get down to brass tacks. Let’s cut the bull:
Jam Stations™ are excellent when planning temporary parties-for-one. But they cannot distract from the further distractions.
Through the fictional murmur, there is an actual fracture growing in the grooves of the desk. A dark stain spreading on the screen of the amp. The unknowing gets greater in a series of second-, third-, fourth-, infinity-guesses.
I have a hard time grasping the preschool equation: what matters. (I was really only ever good at deconstructing the wooden blocks and existential napping.)
Clicking on the tiny heart has conveniently replaced the messiness of love. Click on the hi-five, we did it!
The idea that recognition, fame and money have greater value than truth or meaning has etched calluses into my irises and earlobes. My actual heart-light grows dim. Down-and-out to the tiny tap dancing sound of my fingers on this flimsy keyboard: I don’t know if I’m becoming completely aware or totally indifferent. And who fucking cares?
—
(The title of the next chapter is “How To Stop Being a Bummer and Let It All Go.” Look, if you’re trying to score some souvenirs, novelties or party tricks, meet me around back in fifteen minutes. I’ll be chewing a mint-flavored toothpick under the on-again, off-again streetlamp. Literally shady, the shadow making me look like a monstrous marionette. We’ll load up the van with Primal Strips and Pabst. We’ll shout our whispers, whisper our shouts, especially suspicious while we try not to appear suspicious, all sunglassed and twitchy. We’ll find the perfect song to start driving — Dry The Rain by Beta Band! And we’ll never look back.)