|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| Did you ever hear that story about the lovers on Mars?
Well, the choice to spend a month on mars together was his idea. Palms sweating under the invisible weight of trepidation, he asked her if she wanted to spend a month with him there. Just a month, just the two of us, he promised. Why yes, of course, she replied. He looked at her, an unbelieving smile tempting the tips of his lips.
Really?
Really.
I didn't think you'd want to spend an entire month with only me around.
Well, I didn't think you'd want me to be around you for an entire month.
They smiled at each other.
Then they were there. And for the first few days, their gazes smiled in silent acknowledgment of the situation's precious nature. They took pictures to backgrounds of monolith red mountains and sent them back home.
But after the first week or so their communications grew despondent. Their relationship weakened as they found less to talk about and even less in the other's dialogue that they considered interesting. The silences between them grew tense, accumulating hostilities and resentments like encroaching molds. Eventually they stayed in separate rooms, she forlornly messaging her friends back home, pining the delay of her return, he immersing himself in the irresponsibility of a fantasy- numbed existence.
And when they returned to earth they never spoke to each other again and their thoughts of that month were tinged with an embarrassed regret.
Am I here on a specter's words, chasing an eyelash in the wind? I need to face the fact that I'm just another silent footnote scrounging meagerly at the bottom of a page. That's what happens even to the giants of the world. They die and the world sums the ethos of their existence within the span of just a few sentences. Tragedies become monuments and homes welcome new people all the time. Who am I to think that I could escape that? I'm a ghost. I'm a fucking ghost that deludes itself into a world of tangibility. Did I even remember it correctly? What if I'm wrong?
Did you ever hear that story about the lovers on Mars?
At first it was odd. The waters between them were lukewarm, their hearts so used to isolation that the idea of entwined souls required the very strongest that trust had to offer.
But as it happened being solely on the company of a lover had a remarkable effect on these two. They acquired a level of comfort, an ability to tell the other anything and everything. They lived an existence devoid of trouble. Relaxed and unfettered, they grew closer than they ever had with any other person.
One day, sitting side by side with their hands held tight as they watched the barren Mars landscape, they talked of love. She asked him a question.
Do you believe in soul mates?
He turned to her and smiled. He saw her open, honest face and hoped that his eyes weren't flecked with the stains of lies.
I'm beginning to.
They snuggled closer, and were content.
I shouldn't be here. These maudlin motivations are making me the fool. Blind, I clutched at the leash of heart strings that lead me here. What manner of an idiot am I? Tell me truly. Am I the fool that makes his home among decrepit ruins? A foolish romantic wielding a knight's blade, or some other damned anachronistic novelty, amongst a sea of rifles?
Damn the heart that mends the slowest. It does itself no service but embarrassment and prolonged suffering.
Did you ever hear that story about the lovers on Mars?
It goes without saying that the higher you fly the harder you fall. The tightrope walker knows this. The rock climb knows this. But the careful lover knows this best.
The best of dreams know no easy awakenings, just as Eden knew no easy departure.
You've changed. You're different. You're not the same man you were on Mars.
How am I different? I feel the same. Yes I have problems, but I'm dealing with them. I still love you the same.
You aren't. We fight all the time now. I'm just not happy with you.
The man looked into her eyes and all he saw were dreams of red dust and blissful absolution.
Maybe sometime after all this it'll work out. Maybe someday we'll know each other the way we were on Mars.
And years later, I'm here.
Do you still remember me? Does it, do I matter any more?
Bleach clean linoleum tiles and the aroma of sweet synthetic grass. Is it wrong that I'm back here, that I'm waiting?
Or am I alone in this? Am I alone in being here, and I alone in my thoughts of you?
I don't want it to be that way. I'm here.
Please tell me I won't be the only one.
Where are you?
| | |
| The Music Inc.
By Frank Gao
As time curled its indefatigable hands around the short hand of the round, silver clock on the wall and pulled it down to strike four as the phone rang in and throughout John's apartment.
He woke up with bleary eyes and groggily fumbled with the receiver before managing to push it against his ear.
“Hello?”
“John, baby,” the voice bursting through the receiver's speaker was the definition of gregarious. John reached under the nearby lampshade and flicked the light on. Rubbing his eyes, he listened as the voice continued.
“Listen, so we got this gig for the band coming up this Saturday. And I was just thinking, sorry to bust your ass on such short notice and all, but hey, business is business yeah, and we didn't sell out for this concert.”
“Uh huh” John mumbled into the phone.
“So we were wondering if you could come up with something. Something fresh, something exciting, something that blows all the other crap out of their ears and back into the sewers where it all belongs. A gift to the fans, you know. They'll love it.”
John weighed the man's baited patience in the silence that followed.
“So what do you think? Can you get something together asap?”
John sighed. “Can't I just take something off my own draft board and mold it...”
“Absolutely not. I've read your stuff before. You're good, John, I'll give you that. That shit you write has a lot to it. But it's too good. I know you love writing songs, but people these days don't want what you got. And let me tell you, all that'll just sink you straight down to some crap flat in some ghost of a ghetto. You'll be performing in smoky cafes to a handful of people collecting dimes for wages.”
“But you said the words didn't matter”
“And they don't, Johnny. The last thing people listens to these days is words. People want beats, not lyrics. Man, the last thing they want is for those songs to mean stuff. People these days want the flesh without the soul. Hell, they take the food without the nutrition. Demand's high for fast food, then you sell the greasiest stuff you can make. No sense in catering to the goddamn hippies and health nuts. ” John heard fingers snapping through the receiver.
“They want if fast, you know. Quick rush of blood to the brain. Dope to the veins. Naked. No filters. Hey, get to work on something. Just one song. I'll make sure you get paid good for it. See you later, man.”
The receiver went dead with a click and John let it hang limp in his hand for a second before firmly placing it back. He dazedly gazed into the dark corners of his room before laying back down, drawing the covers up to his chin and shutting off his light.
A few minutes later he snapped the light back on. He slid out of bed and walked over to the shelf. He picked out a record and set it on his turntable. Sliding the needle over the black vinyl surface, he got back into bed and turned off the lights once more.
Music filled the room, and like a paroxysm of chance sparks thoughts began to fill John's mind. His thoughts assumed varying degrees of temperaments, some melancholy, some amused, some steeped in the darkest of spite. He found it hard to believe that he had been sound asleep mere moments before. For a while he lay there, gaze fixed to the ceiling, helplessly and invariably pondering.
Eventually, he began to fall asleep, and as he did, the remnants of a song that quelled his soul to rest lingered on in its final moments.
Paul woke up, got out of bed and dragged a fine toothed comb across his bedraggled head.
It was well into the afternoon hours of the day when he emerged from his hotel room and headed downstairs for a meal.
As he entered the hotel's restaurant a man in a cross-hatched dress shirt, khakis and sunglasses waved to him. He sat down , nodding to the man. He sat down as a waitress descended upon the table. He ordered a burger, fries and a shake before turning to the man in the khakis.
“You look ridiculous, Andy.”
Andy shrugged. “You gotta problem with it, you find a new goddamn producer. I'm not one of those stiff-necked monkey-suit bastards waddling around with their asses pinched tight enough to catch a toothpick.”
“I'm kidding man, you look great. How'd you sleep?”
“Good, just not as good as you, Paul. If only we could all sleep a working man's hours away.”
“Hey, you ask me to do what I do for 2 hours a night, and I do it. Shouldn't be any other gripes on your part.”
The two men sat in silence for a while.
Andy cleared his throat. “Hey, Paul. I got our guy working on a new song. You probably know we didnt' sell out. So, uh, once the guy gets his stuff in, I'd appreciate it if you did some practicin'.”
“I've got like two days until the concert. You want me to learn a song in two days?”
Andy shifted about in his seat, sinking his hand into his pocket only to bring it out empty moments later. “Not even two, you'll probably only have the day. You rest today, our guy should probably have it in by tomorrow. You practice tomorrow then you're good to go come concert time. Hey, I know it's tight, but we gotta satisfy, you know?”
Paul smirked. “Yeah, I know.”
Andy leaned back into his chair. Suddenly, movement outside of the hotel caught Paul's eye.
“What's going on out there?”
“Ah, that.” Andy shuffled in his seat as he slid his unused utensils closer together. “Some bozo tried to scale the side of the hotel. Made it up to the top floor until he lost his grip. Bastard fell and made a damn mess all over the ground.”
The waitress came by with Paul's food, and he took a large bite out of his burger before laying it down on the plate. He chewed and swallowed.
“Wasn't that my floor? What was the he after?”
Andy sighed. “Isn't it obvious? He was after you. Heard you was up there, and he wanted to see who you were for himself. Cept he didn't quite make it. Just ended up painting part of the town red.”
He looked up at Paul, who hadn't made another move towards his food.
“That bother ye?”
“I'd be a real cold bastard if it didn't” muttered Paul.
“Well, that's what you get when people don't know your real face. What they see, that's just a pen name. People are weird, yeah. They want the truth while they're perfectly happy with the lie. But once in a while you get one crazy fucker who reaches beyond the veil. And you get that out there” he said, gesturing at the window. Outside, a crowd of people milled around a caution tape barrier inhabited by various uniformed men.
Paul grimaced. “Suddenly I'm not that hungry anymore.”
“Well, good for you. You shouldn't be eating this anyway. Hey, take it easy today. You got work to do tomorrow”
“Yeah,” Paul absently replied, still staring out the window.
“So what if sales weren't that great for this Saturday. We gotta pump the prime again. Give em something to love again.”
“Yeah, yeah” agreed Paul, still staring out the window.
“So you gotta squeeze that practice in. I know it's a rush, but sometimes it pays to be selfless. Anyway, I gotta bounce. I'll call you when we get the song in, alright? You stay cool till then.”
It was the Friday night wrestling match at Rose square.
They were two men behind masks, seeking the dominance of flesh and spirit amidst the heady roar of the crowd and a cage of taut elastic bands.
Sitting near the front, Paul shot his fists into the air, reveling in the energy, the volume, the violence.
A few minutes later, John silently entered and quietly took a seat near the back.
They circled each other like wolves, bared clenched fists and the spirit of a staunch challenge. Their eyes were locked, their jaws clenched. Bright light and sweat danced in solos and pairs in their eyes as they performed a waltz of gaudy bravado.
The wrestler with the white mask rushed into his opponent and grappled him into the ground. As the initial spark of fear broke through his face paint facade, the other wrestler pushed back only to be met with a fist to the ribs. The masked man threw his punches emphatically, punctuating every blow with a dramatic pause before throwing his fist forward. It was mechanical and somewhat stilted, but the audience didn't care.
A faceless crowd looked on, its raucous cheers encouraging collision, rewarded gritted teeth against full body impact and sharp blows to exposed flesh. Yellow slips flashed and flickered throughout the darkness of the room as their rabidly attentive owners blessed and cursed their decisions.
The white mask curled his fingers around his opponents ponytail. Swinging about, he gave a plaintive roar before smashing his enemy headfirst into a corner pole. The man crashed to the mat and stayed down as the white masked wrestler stepped over his limp form, arms raised in the air, head bobbing arrogantly as he accepted the crowd's adulation and unabashedly asked for more.
The man with the painted face slowly began to get to his knees, but the masked wrestler quickly flipped him on his back and smashed his foot into the floored man's face. Incarnadine splotches slopped about the man's face, obscuring the paint. He lay there, hands on his face until they shot to his stomach the moment his opponent drove another blow to the abdomen. He flailed, his hands pleading protest against the stark contours of his opponents face as he took the apparent beating of his life.
It was a dreadfully small ring the two men fought in. It had been stripped and confined as to prevent escape and ensure that every fight was quick, forceful and bloody. Everything was a blur of spontaneity in which drawn out gridlock and awkward stalemate were effectively eliminated.
When the match ended and the spectators left the ring, Paul animatedly chatted with friends about how the masked wrestler had decimated his opponents. They made wan mockeries of his actions with fettered movements, pseudo-sparring with each other as they left. Not once did they bespeak testament to the fact that what they had just witnessed was fake.
John had left the ring much earlier, reminding himself that he hated crowds and their spectacles.
There was a lonely man sitting on a park bench. He clung onto a frail frame of existence, sustained himself on lingering sidelong glances and the fringes of peripheral version.
His mouth was set in a permanent smile and his right hand raised in immortal salutation. He was an amiable, gregarious presence. But nobody would ever sit down and talk to the man. People in suits with briefcases walked by him, curtly slicing their palms through synthetic city lights in response to his hellos. Mothers ushered their children a safe distance from him, disturbed by his forwardness. People, busy, embroiled people, walked past him and onto the next frame of their lives without a second thought. Clean cut in the film, quick change of the reel, and he was a thirty second old memory replaced with fresh visuals and thoughts.
His clothes took on a plethora of hues much like a chameleon. One day he was a vivacious red with spots of yellow, rabidly seeking the attention he had so consistently been denied. But the next day he bore a mellow blue, a melancholy dirge against a world uncaring.
He fluctuated between different tones as the days went. And as he was continually ignored his pigmentation did a frenzied relay between peacock displays of gaudy array and subdued, maudlin existence.
Eventually his clothes became translucent. He looked down at himself, unable to muster the will to display the ostentatious hues of comic book strips and Hollywood films he had so earnestly taken to before. In his last days he could hardly find it within himself to smile or think happy thoughts. He watched children and dogs playing in the park, watched couples walking by hand in hand but he was alone and miserable. They all walked by not understanding the incongruity between their physical and emotional distances, for after all, how does a man who's warm understand a man who's cold?
Eventually he disappeared, his body fading into chameleon tones, and then he was gone, a non-existence that affected neither the disposition of plotted city air or the rotation of an uncaring earth.
John walked into the Midas' Touch club around midday the next day.
“Love is a losing game
Love can be a shame
I know of a fool you see, for that fool is me,
Tell me why, tell me why”
John recognized it as a Frankie Lymon song. He took a seat at a table, ordered a coffee and sat there listening.
“Why does my heart skip this crazy beat
For I know, it will reach defeat
Tell me why, tell me why
Why do fools fall in love”
The singer was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, but later that night she would be singing black satin dress. She focused every iota of longing within her into the last few lines of the song, her fingers caressing the air before her, coming to a rest on the microphone's stand.
John snapped his fingers in applause. The singer looked up and waved.
“Take five guys, I'm on break” she said to the other singers and band members. She jumped off the stand and walked over to join John.
“How's it going, John”
“I'm doing okay. How're you?”
“Same old. Sing all day so I don't mess up at night. Go to bed, wake up, rinse, repeat. Thankless task.”
“You think so?”
“Heh.” the girl scoffed. “Only when you don't make it big”
John's coffee came. “Could I get some milk?” he asked.
“Certainly,” said the waiter. “And what can I do for you, miss Kate?”
“I'm good, thanks” said Kate. The waiter nodded and left.
“You still writing songs?” she asked John as she lit up a cigarette.
“Yeah. But you know how it is. Nobody wants to hear them when I sing them. Maybe you could.”
Kate laughed. “We tried that, hon. You remember? There's no voice good enough to do justice to all of your words. You still don't get it do you? Music needs that melodic base. The lyrics are just there for personal reflection.”
He was a college freshman in a new world, a big city and a new life.
The first few days, he threw himself headfirst into this fresh chance. He met people and made a large amount of small talk. He was amiable and gregarious as his abilities permitted. But after a few days he began to feel stifled by the layers of congenial personality he had taken upon himself in order to meet new people.
“It could be the other way around though. Dylan's music was just the words. Your ears might not've liked what he was singing but your heart knew it was right.”
“Yeah, John. But that was in another time. He sang to a different people. People these days don't even hear what they're listening to. The heart of today's music is an aberration of the craft, a pulsating mass of electric audio cocaine and hollow, empty voices. Dylan cut to the core. His music fed the soul. He reached in and touched something few of us could even see. But hell, today all you gotta do is write a slow acoustic song about “laying down your weapons”. Throw in a few military allusions, some whiny, soulful teenage voice and you're in the top ten. That's today's music for you, John.”
He felt as if he were becoming a little porcelain man, touting his perfect sheen and creamy facade until the first cracks started to wind their way across his face.
He felt like a banal member of an army of manufactured cheap green soldiers, moving mindlessly to the ebb and flow of an infant's enigmatic desires.
He made copious amounts of acquaintances within the first week thanks to his smiling, carefree veneer. He forgot many of their names, as well as the things they had hurriedly told him about themselves. Through these masses there were a few he bumped into again, and a few of these eventually became friends.
John sighed. “You're telling me the public's taste for music is crap.”
“Hell yeah I am! Why do you think we're the way we are now? Why do you think the people that bleed and slave for their craft end up in categories like “indie”? The Sundance festival, for christsakes. Nobody wants to see that stuff, John. They want another Spiderman movie. They want another puppet with a pretty face channeling lyrics to the mainstream audience.”
“Does it matter though? People should just listen to what they like. I mean, it's just music, Kate. People play it in the radio without a second thought. It's just something in the background.”
“John, john” Kate shook her head. “There's the food that you eat to stay alive, yes? You need that. But there's also food for the soul. That's music, John. That's movies, that's books, that's art. How can you defend people when they live day to day without listening, without seeing? I think it's disgusting. There's music, books, film out there that arrest your soul, John. You know what I mean. It stops the mundane flow of blood, it hacks open your sordid shell of predilection and prejudice. It sends shivers down your spine to know, even to the smallest extent, what you've just experienced. I wish everybody could feel that. I wish most of this world could wake the fuck up. But how do you do that when they're all saturated on whatever the prostitutes of the music industry are offering? How do you show a child the sky when he's obsessed with the pebbles at his feet?”
But there was something missing, something a thousand miles away in a boring suburban household and familiar faces. Though he had to admit the familiar faces he was able to conjure without feeling despair had been halved and then some. He felt torn between his yearning for home and the bitter taste of ostracism visited upon him by a jaded heart.
Eventually he stopped pretending and withdrew into his new group of friends. But thoughts of home still plagued him at night, times during which he smithed the very torture devices that agonized him into the early hours of the morning.
“I don't know, Kate. I know how you feel. I bloody love Dylan, Bowie and Guthrie, but some people don't. Some people like getting their heartstrings pulled by Coldplay. Doesn't much bother me.”
“Christ, John. Can't you see everything's becoming industrialized? Things just aren't from the heart as much as they are from the factory line. How many of the write their own songs? Hell, maybe you're okay with it but I'm not. What you and I do, I guarantee you eclipses anything those bastards do. Like that band Tom Sawyer? We should be there. We should be up there telling the world a valid message. But if you're okay with it, then hell. Enjoy your posthumous fame, enjoy the lines of fans coming up to your tombstone to beg an autograph.”
He lay there in a Sisyphean free fall of emotion, climbing out of depression and anxiety to fall but just the next day. He silently pieced back the shrapnel from the regular Promethean combustion of his soul, becoming whole only to be destroyed again and again within the day.
At some point when silence and loneliness threatened to engulf him, and everywhere he turned it seemed that he was continually met with stoic backs. He stumbled in a mire of panic, hands clawing at straws and then thin air. But in the midst of the terror he found patience. Patience would lead him to the right people, patience would help him find what he wanted. Patience, he told himself, words he engraved into his mind with a furious sculptors hammer and stake, patience, he reasoned with himself when his thoughts turned corrosive and malignant. Patience.
“Geez, Kate, calm down. I just came over to talk.”
“Well we're talking now, aren't we?” Kate laughed. “Yeah, I'm sorry. I just get so angry sometimes. At this big, dumb beast we call the world. Try to talk to it and it sits there with this infuriating dull luster in its eyes. But show it something shiny and gaudy and it'll clap its hands and laugh.”
“You still wish you could go back, eh?”
“Yeah, I do John. I love singing. I love the crowds, everything about it's great. People just don't want me up there. And now look at me. I'm singing in a bar, I'm starting to age, my voice gets strained more easily. And I'm turning into a complete bitch. Ah well. Life gives you a brain tumor and all you can do is name the bastard, eh?”
As John left the club, Kate started to sing again.
“So, if an old friend I know,
Drops by to say hello,
Would I still see suspicion in your eyes?”
Ladies and Gentleman, I present you the spectacle of our time from outside the range of society's blind ignorance! I give you something so ordinary, so common, yet indubitably fascinating, I give you... The Invisible Man!
You may scoff as I pronounce this man invisible, but his translucence lies not in the physical realm. We consider him invisible because he, as a sentient human being, is in every way capable of being his own man! He has no apparent physical deformities, instead, he is crippled by his blind adherence to the terribly generic public sensibilities in the arts and opinions of politics and everyday happenstance!
See him disappear into the masses, see his mind rot and all semblance of free agency hanging in rags from his tepid flesh! See him, walking zombie, a mockery of the free mind, a slave, a fettered paper mache mannequin smiling blandly at a pane of impeccably shined glass showing off the latest fashion trends, he, an opaque surface, a mere canvas for the colors of more creative minds!
But I profess, ladies and gentleman, to the courting of an utter sham. For you see, though I have advertised this display as a commodity, invisibility is much more prominent than you think.
That night, John stood there amidst the deafening throes of an insatiable crowd and pondered what exactly the audience loved about the music.
He had written the song Andy asked for in very little time. It had slipped from his fingers as carelessly as money from a fool's hands. He had only lyrical consonance and assonance in mind when writing the song. But the lyrics had been influenced by his earlier talk with Kate. Perhaps she had been right, he thought. Perhaps the farcical popularity that his songs garnered was a testament to the weakness of the modern day mind.
Perhaps when they heard the lyrics, if indeed they did, they would think about what they listened to, perhaps they would start to search for something more.
He stood there, embroiled in the steady ebb and flow of hedonist glee that engulfed the entire crowd, squinting against the myriad strobe lights as the lead singer strode onto the stage.
Paul strutted onto the stage with all the impunity of a masked criminal.
He was completely anonymous underneath the layers of paint and makeup that covered his face. His face was the face of perfection, and as he stood there, his expression blank and disinterested, he looked for all the world a living porcelain doll, a testament to the prim perfection of an the ideal human visage.
And then he started to sing.
She's a cold one
cries for no one
yeah, she's a heart of gold
well hidden and damn cold
you meet her eyes and
she tells you she loves you
she says that her heart's yours
when she's looking over your shoulder
He shrieked and whooped. His fingers crashed into the guitar strings, and as his energy intensified so did the audience's. As he dived into the chorus the concert hall exploded with energy.
well, she's here today but all
she wants is tomorrow
He laughed, baring a set of perfectly bleached teeth. He roared and spun about, and as he did synthetic strands of hair swung about his face.
she's got plans so grand
don't make demands
or she'll just think of leaving
you can cry and weep, your chest will heave
with feelings she doesn't return
she'll just tell you your feelings are a burden
and cast off without a second word
He stopped and faced the crowd, a sea of screaming, distorted faces all trying to reach him in their ecstatic fury.
“How the hell is everybody tonight?!” he howled to cacophonous approval.
He held the microphone close to pale lips of clay and whispered the name of the next song.
well I know this fight must be our last
with our happy memories a muddled mass
an angry black taints colors dark
I know we've been at this too long
can't even be a friend
i've cried, i've denied, i've lied and lied
i've wished, hell, I thought I was done
but my soul still burns like sigil flames
As he sang he felt great. He stood on the peak of music's Olympus, clothed in euphoria, drenched in the sweat of glory.
So why must I suffer and feel this hurt
I remind myself daily of the lessons I learned
but it doesn't matter does it, it just goes on
when all I want are the credits to roll,
our movie lingers on
And as he sang he felt as if immortality were reaching out to him in the silhouette of a hand.
He was Eric Clapton, singing from the depths of his craven heart of the forbidden temptation of an unrequited love, Layla, got me on my knees, Layla.
leave me, hate me, hate you, leave you
what did I ever do to deserve this
where's my ending, where's my home
where's the happy end of my fight, no
this story just keeps dragging on
He was Kurt Cobain and he wore his chorus like a sneer, Here we are now, entertain us.
I want an epilogue
I want a tombstone
not a sequel, no more
I just want to be left here
and rest in pieces
He pinched his heels together and took a grand bow.
John stood amongst the masses, attempting to stand straight against the physical beck and sway of the crowd. He raised his arms in front of his face in defense against the tantalizing encroachment of that mainstream society, the sprawling net of its royal we's and self aggrandizing debaucheries falling ineffectually about him.
Do you hear me out there
Stupid ears, dumb minds
John barely picked out the strains of his new song.
Can you listen to this
Or is it just too much
But as he looked about him he realized that the crowd's energy hadn't abated. The lyrics might have been snide and malicious but they were all but lost in the frenetic energy of the electric guitar's shriek and the bass's guttural growl.
I can see you all
your vacant gazes
mouths wide open
gaping, drooling
poisoning minds like lead
I see you drunk
in your saccharine dreams
Asphyxiating in
your cellophane glee
It was useless, the words were lost, were meaningless. They were the tragedy without the catharsis, the intercourse without the ecstasy of orgasm. They were thoughts in a thoughtless world, orphans so neglectfully transparent at birth that they could do little more than dissipate into the most ephemeral of memories.
I see you lost
in your la la land
Revel you would
in your candy floss world
John looked about him and cursed the masses with a relentless and unheard fury.
Who do you think I am?
A Lennon, Dylan perhaps
Cohen, Marley, Wilson?
so you tell me you know their faces
and you tell me they're the best
but i've seen them all before and I say
I think they're all quite lame
I had to rearrange their masks
and grant them all new names
And then he was leaving, he was gone. He was walking away from the concert, away from the infantile zombie masses.
His phone rang. As he dived into his pocket and flipped it open, he had the premonition of a Chesire cat smile smirking at him from the other side of the line.
“Hello, John” It was Andy.
“Hello, Andy.”
“That was quite a show, wasn't it John? Quite the spectacle, yes, but hey, we do what we can, you and I. We run the show, we spread the seed and oh do the pigeons flock to us. Ha ha ha... that was one hell of a song you wrote.”
“Yeah.”
A pause, and the tremulous whisper of truth began to rise and take form.
“So why'd you do it.”
“Because fuck it, that's why.” John's voice grew angry.
“Because there's a horde of stupid shits back there that spit on the good music that the world offers them. What do they want? They want this, this... politician's music, this lyrical and melodical consonance that sounds so good but doesn't mean anything. And I'm god damned sick of it. There are musicians out there, real fucking musicians I say, deterred from following careers because they don't believe they'll make a damned dime without whoring themselves out. And it's because of you, and it's because of me, and I'll be damned if I take part of it anywhere.”
Andy laughed. It was the bastard child of a demeaning chuckle and a sadistic guffaw that erupted from the man's mouth at that moment.
“You dumb, miserable fuck. Do you think anybody cares about this? About what you're saying? Listen to yourself. What the hell are you defending? Ha ha. Capitalism is democracy, and it caters to whatever the people want. The customer is always right, my friend. You think I don't understand this? You think I don't know this as I tell you to write us lyrics? You just decorate, man, you just make it look nice. You just put some nice, simple words there so the fans can project themselves onto the song. That's why way this works. People don't want to be told a damned thing these days they want to be a part of it all. They want to relate to figments of the creative imagination!”
John came to a stop. As he stood there, the city lights bathed him in a uniform hue, and all he could do was listen.
“You know what they had last week at this same place? A circus. And when they tried to wheel the elephants and tigers in to do the show, the goddamn animal rights activists showed up and bitched up a storm. Well now we got a concert, and you're making it out to be something just as bad, the way you're worked up. Well, do you see any people holdin' signs protesting the rampant prostitution in mainstream music? Eh? And by what tangent strain of reasoning do you assume this is even your music? What about the guy who sings in the studio all day to produce a good single, to be told he has to do it again, what about our guy on stage today, busting his ass to please the crowd? What about em, eh? They work as damned hard as you, you just don't appreciate it you god damned snob. So fuck you, John. You're fired.”
Paul shed the chemicals and electronics that completed his stage persona, his skin still tingling from the energy of the performance. He loved his job, the audience, the intoxication, he loved everything about it and at that moment knew that this was where he belonged.
He left the building in a flurry of high fives and back pats, melting into a crowd eagerly awaiting the appearance of that night's hero.
Still reveling in the energy of the night, he ran to the nearest bus stop and walked on. Sitting down, he pulled out a music player. Twist and Shout by The Beatles began to play.
Well, shake it up, baby, now, (shake it up, baby)
Twist and shout. (twist and shout)
C'mon c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, baby, now, (come on baby)
Come on and work it on out. (work it on out)
At the next stop John walked onto the bus. A phone at his ear, he walked past the bus driver without paying the fare. The driver yelled at him. Flustered, he dug into his pocket for the change but came out short. The driver shook his head and let him on with a remonstration.
Shaken, John took a seat. He shamefacedly avoided eye contact with the other passengers while the bus rolled off once again.
Paul shook his head and stared out the window. He liked the city lights, liked the blurred lights and sounds that burned themselves into his senses.
John, still dejected, can't stop a sad song from looping and rewinding in his head.
I know it's hard to keep an open heart
When even friends seem out to hurt you
Well, shake it up, baby, now, (shake it up, baby)
Twist and shout. (twist and shout)
They sat there on the bus, one man at peace with his life and the world, the other burdened with the malaise of self doubt.
Well never mind the darkness, we still can find a way,
Nothing lasts forever, even cold november rain
As they passed under a dimly lit overpass, a stock of spray painted script stood out from the yellowed walls.
“Follow the trail of words; wherever it ends is where the truth begins.”
This story is dedicated to Jason Cheng. Thanks for getting me to appreciate the little things. | | |
| Just this last summer I spent a week in Tibet.
This was my parents graduation gift to me, a senior trip to the other side of the world. Their reason for sending me to China can be explained by my steady neglect of my heritage over the past few years; I barely knew Chinese, didn't maintain contact with my relatives and in truth, didn't really care for either.
The plan was to stay in the holy city of Lhasa for a few days, then drive an entire day to get to Rikaze, the second largest city in Tibet. Lastly, we would embark upon a 2 day car trip to the base camp of Mt. Everest.
I didn't much enjoy the first few days of the trip. Not that the city isn't magnificent, but sadly it's a tarnished magnificence. Ever since the invasion of the Chinese Tibet has become steadily modernized. Where I imagine that 50 years ago Lhasa may have existed in the pristine state of a forbidden relic, in which power lines were unheard of and the sight of the Dalai Lama driving about in an imported automobile was deemed a rare pleasure, the modern Lhasa has its vaunted Potola Palace wearily watching over the turmoil of city streets, fast food joints and designer clothing stores.
Modernization had turned Lhasa from an isolated wonder of the world into a tourist spot. Tourists with cameras and little understanding of the culture trooped in and out of the ageless halls of the monasteries, arriving in a holy city that some pilgrims walked for years to reach but for the modern tourist requires only an opulent wallet and assorted paperwork from the Chinese government.
We walked in and out of monasteries while the monks prayed and fixed our gazes to the ground as various merchants sought to entice us with cheap factory made wares in bits of broken English.
The Chinese military presence was very heavy. Soldiers bearing assault weapons stood watch on crowded street corners, and every few minutes a police convoy would roll down the street. Ostensibly, the presence was there to deter any possibility of insurrection from the Tibetan natives. But we are talking about a people so peaceful that they wouldn't dare hurt insects for the fear that those insects might be the reincarnations of their ancestors.
The military presence wasn't so much a practicality as it was a reminder of who was in charge. And the aspects that made Tibetan culture so idiosyncratic and colorful were now being prostituted on the mainstream market for a mere pittance.
That wasn't the Tibet I chose to take away with me. The Tibet that now consumes my mind is a vast, untamed land with sights that completely eradicate any common perception of the extent of nature's prowess. It's a land with a sky so blue you'd think it hailed from the pages of a comic book, of stretches of land so desolate and empty you'd be the only one even thinking for miles.
This is the part of Tibet that is home to the Himalayas, and more importantly, Mount Everest.
Imagine the largest, most gentle sloping brown hills stretching on and on into the horizon. Then, imagine in the distance a dark, foreboding mountain range stretching across the entirety of that horizon like the Chesire cat's taunting smile. Imagine those mountains capped with snow, and those that aren't capped with the smoothest, silkiest looking clouds you've ever seen. Imagine all this sitting under the clearest blue sky, comic and poignant, because this is the closest you'll ever get to heaven in the outdoors in this lifetime.
Now here's where your imagination comes in. Do you still have those hills in your mind? Those giant, sloped, turgid monsters of eternity?
Well I want you imagine all the people of the world standing on those hills. Everybody, from every country, that draws a breath at this current moment. Imagine for just a second, for the sake of this idealistic dream, that by some stretch of plausibility they could all be transported onto the slopes leading to the Himalayas for just a moment.
Of course they would all be confused. Everybody would look about and wonder, why are we here? I was just sitting at my desk. I was just arguing with my wife. I was just asleep, I was about to take my life. But in my mind, they'd stop talking when they see the Himalayas.
If, for just that moment, all the people in the world could see what I saw, would they forget the things that made them bad? The petty squabbles and senseless self doubts, would all that be cast off for just the moment? I do. I want to believe that what I saw had that power. And I know it does. There was this feeling of being incredibly small and humbled. Just the way it all looked with the clouds hovering above like muses plying the torpid earth, lingering in a sky so clear and blue you'd think you were staring straight into the past, into a celestial Eden... it's something I've been trying to capture for the last few paragraphs. And it's something I definitely won't forget for the rest of my life. | | |
| so i didn't end up finishing my story, and my chinese is still rather inadequate. Well off i go nonetheless. Going to be in China for one month.
email me at mr.FrankGao@gmail.com with your address if you want a postcard.
cya! | | |
|
