Hang up when god calls collect.
open your mouth during acid rain.
take electric gods into the bath.
Spectral delivery; yellowed curtains whisper discord from the city below and I am listening, rapt. Unlit cigarette dangling from my mouth, clinging to my poached lips as I am absorbed utterly in the mob symphony, trying desperately to transcribe it, grinding my fingers down to lead in another attempt to quell this aching, gnawing need...
[I come to life through a man named Jack .]
Listen:
If you can tell me why
kaleidoscope contusions deck your heaving ribs,
your vile life in six words,
I'll rush in with peppermint sticks.
Pink Floyd.
Roger Waters.
Murder By Death.
Brian Vander Ark.
The Decemberists.
Early baroque. Specifically, cantatas by Buxtehude, Kuhnau, Bruhns, Schutz, Tunder and Graupner. Especially if they involve castrati/counter-tenors.
World music. Susana Baca, Dulce Pontes, Klezmatics, Susheela Raman...
All things classic rock. John Lennon, The Doors, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, The Fifth Dimension, The Beatles, Cream, Cat Stevens, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Heart, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Syd Barrett...
And, of course, our very own MIDIways.
Tarantino, Scorsese, Lynch, Polanski, Waters, The Cohens, Holocaust film...
Ask the boy about his disfigured youth.
About which direction the wind was blowing the day his nonage ended.
Bulgakov, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Plath, Salinger, Wiesel, Levi, Franken, MacDonald, Kafka...
Melete, Mneme, Aoede.
And the man who composed the English language.