Versus: Carl Craig, Les Siecles, Francesco Tristano, Moritz von Oswald
Cite de la Musique, October 18th

Set: Darkness > At Les, Dominas, Desire, Recomposed, Technology, The Melody

Looking for Leary…

Learning how to fly on our front stoop.

Silver Jews, “Strange Victory, Strange Defeat”

They lost it. We lost it. I lost it.

It has been agonizing watching beauty and brains exposed as flawed after all. “What of great skills and intentions? Go and learn the body politic if you want to spit in the badman’s face…and keep walkin’.” Meantime, the cupboard is bare, the ($4/gallon) gas tank empty.

Spring, say the taxman and the bee, takes as good as it gives. One could only hope that next [year] will be just a little different, an annual lesson in rejuvenation – first pollen, then rebate, then [victory]. (Possibly different order for Republicans.) But that’s hope, not fact; and [victory] is indeed fact, no matter how many moral ones are worth justifying. Life is loss and I have lived it.

One can rejoin, “not so fast”; yet speed-of-thought is hardly my motive, kind traveler. My fears are deliberate, focused on heartaches yet to arrive. What is, after all, the ultimate worth? Beauty will remain useless and relative, brains forever bequeathed to zombies. You get one bully free kick against both.

Hence, spinal stretch, Scratch and growth. Bless the hard bone that understands the charms of bourgeois appeal and intellect. Cause if you rub up a little too mischievously against the coarse skeletons of workingmen, the effortless glow of genius gets blocked like a sun behind a cloud. Always remember plan B, and elude fear making it plan A.

Fear is what I smell now. On them. On us. On me.

Gone are days when the gray haze could be shrugged off. Either it lifts a little too easily, or it informs each crevice. Lacrimation and recrimination may come regardless, yet try to stave off the masochism, sheath the lash. Could you do that for me? And one last sleight, devise?

Breathe easy. Time has pushed the climax off-stage for a moment, turned summertime into a commercial break. Still, how many more commercial breaks? How many more summertimes?

The pundits will say these are questions for those with opportunity to ask, who dare demand additional favor. Yet, how can you not? Is [victory] not a right? An eventuality? Forget that perfection’s pledge is easily upended, and the ‘wait’ indeed endless.

You pass the time looking for better skin moisturizer, a recommendation for a new masseuse and a rough draft under your arm. Never to be sure again.