Tonight Joker's listening to the old songs. Back to the mattress, laid out in a coffin, headphones piping memories into his tired, lonely brain. His hand reaches out to push the "stop" button and he wonders what happened. "There was something in those songs," he thought. "There must have been. I remember plucking them from the darkness behind closed eyes. Time was they moved me. How long since the sound lost it's comfort? How long since I found more solace in silence?
"So long. Too long." With that pronouncement he had resolved to drag out all the creaky cassette tapes from a huge box hidden in the cavernous basement beneath his house. Cold down there, the heating unit didn't extend it's warmth to an unused space. A good place for a bunch of rotting plastic cartridges and the decaying magnetic tape they encased.
It should have taken him longer. So many tapes, so many memories to sift through. Don't settle. Take your time, that's the way it's done...but almost immediately he has a black TDK SA-90 in his palm. The ink on the label is barely decipherable from age. The music recorded on it probably didn't need a title anyway. With an uncooperative "click" he jams the tape into the machine and presses "play". The wheels begin to turn, rolling and emptying at some unknown predetermined speed.
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There was a time I could spin melodies from thin air with the ease of a seasoned seamstress. I would spend hours whistling and writing them down. Or sitting in front of an old boombox I would breathe them out like sweet marijuana smoke, guitar in hand. I never mastered those six strings but I knew how to make them do what little I needed done. Simple melodies. Simple chords. You don't need any more than that if you've got a hurt soul and a yearning for healing.
So I sang of dreams. Dreams that never ended and delivered me from the choices I made in life. Sometimes they were a blissful floating. A welcome nothingness that enveloped me as I screamed out my gratitude. A psychedelic light show that promised never to lose it's novelty. Then again, sometimes thedreams were as burdensome as the coming years. When I sang of these the sound of my voice made people sad. It broke them and pushed them into the same melancholy I inhabited. They swam with me there for four minutes and when the last note rang out and died into silence they felt sorry for me because they knew it was easy enough for them to snap out of it. They could tell from the resignation of the singer and the song that I was condemned to live in that ether.
And I sang of love. Love lost. Love forgotten. Love spurned. Love dead and dying. Love so corrupted you couldn't call it "love" anymore. Yes, there was a girl. And yes, I loved her. And oh, yes, you're right of course, she left me. How was I to write another song about the wonder and joy that is love when she took all I had? I'll sing you a song about how I prayed she would bring it back. A song about how the lines in my face deepened and settled with each passing year without her. Surely there is love in such hard headed devotion to a vain wish? The only love I sang of...the only love I'll sing is the kind that mourns faith lost.
People want to hear love songs. They want to hear something happy. I knew this as well as any other. They don't want to listen, they want to hear and mister if you don't know the difference you have no business reading these words. They want to be reminded of why they get up in the morning and go through the busy, busy day and do it again and again and again and I don't blame them. That's absolultely normal. I wish I could give them what they wanted. I could pretend. I suppose. No, actually, I can't. I will bust your buzz.
The words. Yes, the lyrics were my pride and joy. Poetry, if you exalt the term moreso. Where did they come from? I don't think I ever knew. I can't remember anymore. Thomas, behold my side. Stick your hand in deep, explore the spear's wound. Feel it. Touch it. Squeeze it like slick, glistening labia. Reach in further, grab hold of whatever you can and QUICK! Pull it out. You can have it. I don't need it.
Where was I? Oh yes, the lyrics. The stanzas. The verses and choruses. A drunkard's Scripture. I tried so hard to "say something". Enough of generic songs about simple things easily understood. Let someone else bring the good vibes. I wanted to ask the eternal questions. I wanted to float some possible answers by you.
....to be continued
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