expanse
.... one of those times when youre tired and just a little sad but a little thankful at the same time, one of those moods where youre really too spent to get angry at anything and you've been beaten into a silent submission by everything around you. a hindu sunburn from being too close to the sun, blind and withering, fading out in an echo that never stops fading, the twisting unpredictability and infinite intangible liquid-ness of smoke, being spoken to when you understand but can't really recall what was said, the breaking of a bottle on your head, roundness of speaker coil, indeterminate depth of the sky. it is all this and more, but none of it. silence in my mind; it is exhausted, weary. i slump and droop. there is a track i put together, that music she always hated and competed with for my attention. not even the acknowledgement of criticism, just a cold and impartial lack of interest. at least tell me how shitty it is.
this track plays in my headphones, reverbed guitars and deep kicks, a modified 4-4 beat, echo effects, impetuous hi hats and crashes like ghosts or something, some being too far beyond our world to care enough to stick around longer than it takes for a golden splash to fade. i wonder if i am mentally ill; no, just tired. a tired working-class waste.
i live in stonebridge ranch, where everybody wants to live but nobody wants to know your name, residential sector of large houses and tiny lawns, neither with any past. what was here before, a field? it would be a more beautiful place if it still was. it is a community i am in the middle of without being in the community. like watching a sport with a bunch of people you dont know and being the only one who doesnt know the rules.
everytime i end up here, this mental location, there is some memory i forgot i had, often childhood, that pops up, like an old pain rediscovered? today it is the computer lab, there is the slope of the hall that seems so huge and blue, that felt stuff on the walls to hang kids pictures up ... by where we'd go out to play kickball, the double doors, the stairs up to the ground level of black tarmac with pebbles you could slip on if you werent careful. i think i busted there once.
further down, the art portable; i threw clay balls at it with the art teachers crazy son, a great artist he was, best friends at six years old. he just got out of prison for heroin possession, a junkie since ... 16? too long. no father and lots of disuse and pain.
i am in first or second grade, something happened, there was this black kid ... i feel so sorry for him ... he was very ignorant of computers? or i was very good with them? there is more too this, i just cant remember ... i dont know, but i wanted to help him, it wasnt fair i grew up with a computer and he didnt. he could do things i couldnt, but these things werent what made you good at school. i knew all the answers, but only because i knew all the questions.
tetherball. hotdogs on fridays. tatertots. havent thought about this .... ever, i dont think. dont know why i am now. ripping the skin off my hand on the monkey bars. rubber roaches, what we called the chopped-up tire bits around the new playset thing, the blue and orange one with the curvy handles, the new school of playground equipment, the next generation. i bet most kids these days will never even see a boxy, cubic jungle-gym with 5 layers of green paint and no pebbles or chopped up tires or bark chips beneath it.
i am aging too fast. my life is going by and i am the only one watching. i just want someone else to see it, please just look at my life for a moment, before i die. i want someone to remember.
this track plays in my headphones, reverbed guitars and deep kicks, a modified 4-4 beat, echo effects, impetuous hi hats and crashes like ghosts or something, some being too far beyond our world to care enough to stick around longer than it takes for a golden splash to fade. i wonder if i am mentally ill; no, just tired. a tired working-class waste.
i live in stonebridge ranch, where everybody wants to live but nobody wants to know your name, residential sector of large houses and tiny lawns, neither with any past. what was here before, a field? it would be a more beautiful place if it still was. it is a community i am in the middle of without being in the community. like watching a sport with a bunch of people you dont know and being the only one who doesnt know the rules.
everytime i end up here, this mental location, there is some memory i forgot i had, often childhood, that pops up, like an old pain rediscovered? today it is the computer lab, there is the slope of the hall that seems so huge and blue, that felt stuff on the walls to hang kids pictures up ... by where we'd go out to play kickball, the double doors, the stairs up to the ground level of black tarmac with pebbles you could slip on if you werent careful. i think i busted there once.
further down, the art portable; i threw clay balls at it with the art teachers crazy son, a great artist he was, best friends at six years old. he just got out of prison for heroin possession, a junkie since ... 16? too long. no father and lots of disuse and pain.
i am in first or second grade, something happened, there was this black kid ... i feel so sorry for him ... he was very ignorant of computers? or i was very good with them? there is more too this, i just cant remember ... i dont know, but i wanted to help him, it wasnt fair i grew up with a computer and he didnt. he could do things i couldnt, but these things werent what made you good at school. i knew all the answers, but only because i knew all the questions.
tetherball. hotdogs on fridays. tatertots. havent thought about this .... ever, i dont think. dont know why i am now. ripping the skin off my hand on the monkey bars. rubber roaches, what we called the chopped-up tire bits around the new playset thing, the blue and orange one with the curvy handles, the new school of playground equipment, the next generation. i bet most kids these days will never even see a boxy, cubic jungle-gym with 5 layers of green paint and no pebbles or chopped up tires or bark chips beneath it.
i am aging too fast. my life is going by and i am the only one watching. i just want someone else to see it, please just look at my life for a moment, before i die. i want someone to remember.