List Of Recurring Fantasies

I have a recurring nightmare I feel fear from well after the abrupt awakening at 6 AM.

1. My guitar is old, scratched, damaged; it’s covered in writing made with white paste, they’re lyrics.

2. My guitar is old, scratched, damaged; it’s covered in writing made with white paste, it’s advice.

3. My piano is covered in graffiti, it’s literally radical.

4. I’m living with other people, hopefully so many that I don’t ever have to be alone at home.

5. I’m lying in bed, curiously I’m not cuddling with Stasia - I know why - I’m entrenched in escapism, on leaving the shell of my old life, getting away from most of these people that are a drain on me.

6. I’m with a woman who wears venetian masks, black eye shadow. She smokes, only alcohol she drinks is red wine.

7. As lame as I sound, backpacking across europe.

8. Living at a relatives house, any relatives house would do.

9. Living with someone who props me up more often that takes me down.

10. Back in a mental hospital, playing the piano for an elderly person.

All my fantasies are about escape in some form or another.

I Love how much you love so much.

Last of the men in hats hops off the coil
And a final scene unfolds inside
Deep in the rain of sparks behind his brow
Is a part replayed from a perfect day
Teaching her how to whistle like a boy
Love’s first blush

Is this making sense?
What am I trying to say?
Early evening June
This room and a radio play
This I need to save
I choose my final thoughts today
Switching off with you

All the clocks give in
And the traffic fades
And the insects like, like a neon choir
The instant fizz
Connection made
And the curtains sigh
In time
With you

You, the only sense the world has ever made
Early evening June
This room and radio play
This I need to save
I choose my final scene today
Switching off

Ran to ground for a while there
But I came off pretty well

You, the only sense the world has ever made
This I need to save
A simple trinket locked away
I choose my final scene today
Switching off with you

Mediocrity

For about an hour not a single moment was mediocre or ordinary, I was indifferent at first; perhaps it was when random strangers started walking up to me when I was sitting on the floor outside the busy shops - asking me “Are you feeling alright sir?” - when things started feeling odd, but not really quite there yet.

After about 15 minutes a security guard asked me get off the floor and sit on a bench, so I did, and put on Neutral Milk Hotel, which is when everything started feeling really odd, unusual and striking. “Two Headed Boy Pt 2”, awake for days, trying to escape the only place I feel at home had a profound effect briefly, I was proud to be sitting in this busy place; I was very much alone in a crowd for about an hour, waiting.

All I wanted was to be home again, but I wasn’t sure that I’d ever feel the same in that home again, and now I’m sitting back there and it doesn’t feel like home again. Someone took my home from me, merely because of their presence. I wish I wasn’t here right now, I want to be somewhere else, I want to disappear completely right now, it’s not a horrible feeling, but not being actively happy is essentially saddness; How strange it is to be anything at all though. In 4 hours I’ll be happy, in 6 I wont.

One Plank Time

Pennies on the ground, copper boys and and carpetbagger ringers going ‘cross the tower; oft there is this small in this tinest fraction of time, the smell which forms a fractal pattern across the belly of the city, of posies and smog. There is within this glass building the sound of waterfalls while I stare without consciousness, awareness, haste or knowledge into a postcard, its river is prettier than ours, its buildings higher, brighter and its people sadder.

I wish I’d payed closer attention to it’s details in this happily spireless fragment, there is static before and after this unit, and a rather lovely grey haze before me in this instance. There an instant of sound - that of murmurs, shouts, a preponderance of chat with no meaning, much of my fragment is constructed, only this unit - this plank moment - is real to me, I’m commanding it to expand, but it’s just a postcard now, a ferris wheel, a river, bustling streetview, black dust from the factory - that’s profound, I’ve determined it to be so.

Then I’m in that alley way, a barrage of smells hits me as a kettle drum, I’m struck - a special word here with significance - I am struck by a sudden shock, I’m filled with something to the brim, it’s not pleasant. A smell of Indian foods, the sound of foreign accents, everything is so bright! Everything is saturated. I’m in a well traveled place, I’ve been here often - everything is so alien now for no discernible reason, it must be my fault.

The city is beautiful now - don’t believe me - the city is beautiful now, and fierce, and loud, and there’s nothing more beautiful than a speeding car, it’s more alive than you and I, and even I’m a Futurist today. But it’s dying down now, and with it the people with incessant boar laughs spring to life like these ugly plastic dolls, that’s profound.

“But my cat is indispensible”

“..Something that is indispensible..”

 

The single most indispensible part of my identity through and through is really quite simple: a slightly out of tune piano playing a 1 – 6  minor chord progression* over and over till it loses all tune, this is inseperable from the notion that I learned this progress from: “Night does away with colour, it lets blaze the colour of the soul” said Jacabes.

That the piano is ever so slightly out of tune, well worn, preferably brown in colour with rather loose keys is as important as the chords themselves, it is an almost instinctual accociation between the two, this is totally indispensible to my nature. Consider the sound: It’s not dissonant, nor atonal, though it would conjure up such words in the minds of the layperson (so says the proletarian) – but it is manic, it is harsh, and yet I find it utterly unexplainable as to why this is so.

This is a clichéd “sad” chord leading to what would – by itself at least – be a “happy” sound, but in combination these two chord create an immediate sense of loss, existential angst perhaps, and for me, something Kafka said: Everyone carries a room about in side them, this can be proven through the sense of sound, if one pricks up ones ears and listens – say at night, when everything is round about – one hears  for instance, the sound of a mirror not firmly fastened to the wall.

But I digress – I must explain exactly why this sound (or two sounds if you prefer) is totally indispensible: it is my gateway drug to music, my trophy I adorn and a lead away to new sounds – and my life (ironically if you knew me) revolves around sound, around music, chords, notes and nocturnes, there’s not a day without an hour with a song. I so adore this art, it is so close to my heart, I have begun as of late to define moments in my life with marks of music, with a song per moment; per day.

For you see 1-6 is the heart of my music, the heart of Cohen’s Masterpiece and of Dancers on A String, and my music – for better or worse – is indispensible. It bring out the best and worst in me, and I do have a soft spot for the self destructive spirals and red buttons it leaves in it’s wake, I love the sacrifices the musicians make – they totally give themselves over, sometimes right up until suicide, and that’s an ontological tragedy, but it’s probably the most universally beautiful tragedy that comes to my mind, to “burn to bright” and “live too fast” as Garvey would say.

Music is not “deep” in itself, not inherently– I can explain it to you in such a dry calculated manor that it appears as if it were science, and simple science in most cases: pick a chord, go the chord 5 steps away from it, then the next; voile: Music! But it’s all the discipline I can muster forth not to go and bang my keys, and if I’m in a Kafkaesque mood I’ll go nuts and play 1-7dim.

End of line.

* c minor to G major.

Paging doctor Freud

• Picker_of_rose_p: [finishing poem] because there are worlds unseen, at least unseen by you
• Picker_of_rose_p: and prejudice is after all ignorance
• Picker_of_rose_p: did it show?
• Polyphonic_Foxes: Well, we've been through this.
• Polyphonic_Foxes: And I'm not going down this road.
• Polyphonic_Foxes: It turns me into suck a dick.
• Polyphonic_Foxes: such
• Polyphonic_Foxes: freudian slip