I

Love
You
Back.

Athena Flees the Terrifying Walls of the Parthenon

"People have the right
to fly
And will
When it gets compromised."

~John Mayer, Wheel

A psychic sans memory,

(I can tell what's coming, but I don't know what happened)

(After)
taste of every

Moment gone by.

* * *

I'm strumming (madly) in
six
eight
time
To empty seats.
To an empty seat.

Like some glorious
idiot
I keep playing 'til
My Fingers Bleed
and My voice needs
A rest. Reaching that far into nothing
Puts me to sleep (that's all I can do).

Tomorrow I'll refrain
In the empty chorus
In a theatre I built
not to House,
but to Honour you.

Measures of Truth

As once
the width of King's thumb
was inch,
You,
my love,
are beauty.

Selection from the Shoebox

(drumbeat opens)

This tastes like 2am, September night, one-thousand
nine hundred ninety seven. I soaked up the fringes of your
back porchlight from the shadows, then moved on. I breathed
in the essence of something then unfamiliar to me, something I
wouldn't know intimately for several years. And yet... I knew
it was a breath of real life in the humid air, filling my
lungs. Not the real life on the television. Not the real life
in the streets, but the obliviousness of unshared tears
brought to the surface kind of life. The lay down and die
kind of life.

I lay in the grass, alone, caressing you softly, cheek to cheek.
Pierced by benevolent angels' arrows, dissolving my body
into the expanse.

I left you there in those halls, the bedroom, the park and
the bustop. I left you there and joined secret parts of
you. I wished I could share.

Piked, upon a hill. Still alive. Loving every moment. A
revenge against Roman ways, Roman fears. What glorious
gifts they gave us. The frenzied soldier meeting Buddhist light.
A smile in the mourning.

(drumbeat fades out)

---------

I found this writing in a shoebox of mine, which contains a portion of my writings from 1998-2004. This was written near the latter end of that period. I thought I had lost it, which bothered me deeply, since it was crafted very suddenly inside a very rare kind of moment, sharing red wine, talk, and most comfortable silence with my ka-tet of the time. I bring it here as another precious reminder.

Listen As Though They Were Dead

John Lennon. Vincent Van Gogh. Nick Drake.

Murder. Suicide. Suicide.

Their towering talents aside, their sudden and tragic absences from the world serve to somewhat define these individuals. It also sharpens our interest, and often the sincerity with which we consider their works. Why is that, is what I will wonder on here now.

I have always loved Nick Drake's music, from the moment I heard it first. But I knew nothing about him for the longest time. Perhaps as an indication of how much I respected his art, my mind often conjured this image of a distinguished, middle aged Nick Drake, a highly intelligent Englishman, someone who could have one day been knighted. That sort of image. I didn't know he only made it 26 years in this world.

Upon learning the details of his life and suicide (an antidepressant overdose, possibly accidental), his music (his guitar, his lyrics) made so much more sense to me. This is quite a statement since Drake's lyrics aren't terribly complex in the first place. His whole style is very elemental through and through, actually. But upon learning this information, my eyes and ears opened up in a new way.

There is no shortage of tales regarding posthumous success. Some are accomplished in life, and some are decidedly not, but their work is augmented in stature after they are gone. Perhaps this is related to the cultural notion of respect for the dead, which inspires an earnest investigation, a fair shake, if you will, for what the artist was trying to tell the world when they were still able to tell anything at all. I have to admit, there is a significant sentiment of sadness when I consider this.

When someone speaks to me, earnestly and honestly, I hope to be able to listen to them as if they were dead, as if I were hearing their final recordings. My knowledge of them would be fuller, I think. My consideration would also likely be kinder and more forgiving, or at least less critical (and that's a view we can all probably afford to slip into, methinks). When I see some nobody creating art in the world, I hope I have the sense to pay enough attention to the whys and the character of it all, because that may well be the last chance anyone has of seeing such things performed (a)live.

So, if you have art, or simply honest things to say, you can come to me and hold me to my word: I will do my best to listen as though you were dead.