Friday, January 29, 2010

A Sound to be Heard, an Infinite Point

It's time for another post, folks, a few days short of two years since our last.

Here Eustace returns to imply the question, with an intuitive logic distinctly his own, How have I arrived at post-folk? And, more important, What questions does and doesn't post-folk answer; and what questions does it pose? Now Eustace:


Salt trucks and snow days and sleet and boy scouts and frosting and hoarfrost and crisp fall nights and warm hands and warm breasts and cigar smoke and football on television and soccer on Saturday mornings and cinnamon and green ovens and white shirts with pen ink stains and eyes like small fires seen through undressing branches and a car that rattled when the RPMs went up and inappropriate touching in inappropriate locations with giggling girls and bloody knuckles echoing off cinderblock walls and green linoleum floors and clocks that don't click they just turn real slowly in a circle so you never know quite what second it is and you start to get the sense that time never stops and that there is no such thing as a finite point in time and then you wake up and you're 32 for a second.

I remember when time was a bullet I used to throw around and then I threw it as high as I could and watched it fall down when I was 25.

I remember when the claw marks of a hammer had been painted like they weren't even there and watched as they stared down at me from above my bed on the cool floors of a lingering town of silliness.

I remember when I used to want to leave places early to catch a glimpse of people I had seen but didn't know, hoping they would pass me by on the street.

I remember when I didn't think about things like money and homes and carpet colors and failing.

I remember when I thought that no one knew anywhere near as deeply as me how big a little life could be or how important my friends I had always hoped to replace with the newest models were.

The quiet eager nights with nothing to do but drive and drive and drive and contend with the long days and long nights and short weeks and infinite years --

-- and possibly the only thing I can't remember is whether I knew then that I would be so bored and unhappy and tired and devoid of the divine inspiration I was so sure would come when I sat down quietly in my dreamed-up glasses and my fake blond hair outside of some imaginary coffee house with some imaginary girl looking over at me and trying to pretend she was reading a book.

I remember thinking how long life would be if only I could write some magic phrase and know it perfectly without thinking how the size of the words mattered and the length of the thought mattered and the accessibility mattered.

Someone would always be able to read it if I meant it hard enough.

I remember when guitars made sounds I had never heard.

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