Friction

The song cycle has stalled. Something about the electricity of performing it live, of feeling a packed room breathe the songs along with me, has made my solitary pursuits in the attic seem obsolete. I'm afraid I made a mistake when I took my nose up from the grindstone. I looked around at all the unfinished ploughshares crowding my tiny room, and it paralyzed me. Here I thought I had an album's worth of material, but when I looked more closely, I realized how much work still needs to be done--there are powerful starts that sputter out mid-way through the second verse, fiery verses that run with a dull thud into ill-constructed choruses. As long as I had my head down, I could watch the verses accumulate in my periphery with a hysteric glee. Now I've realized that I have to pick through them meticulously, to peel away the lead from the lodestone.

I've always preferred the fever of creation --the immediacy of the freestyle cipher, the way words light on the tongue and split just as quickly-- to the editor's grinding slog through the swampy galleys of undone songs. And I originally thought my lyric regimen was just that: a slow grinding-out of ideas. But I have never before worked at such a rapid pace, and I remember now how I started this project: with a determination to let things flow out, to worry less about content and more about sound, to capture some of the immediacy of my improvisations on record. But now that it's time to record, my old self emerges, the one who fears the condenser mic much like some primitive peoples fear the camera.

The recording steals something vital from me. It delivers a facsimile, a shell, to the listener. When I am there in the room with my words--when I can coax them out of their hiding places, and show them to the audience in their pure form--I have no doubt that they will leave a mark. But when I can't be there with them, tearing my breast and letting their consonant bodies course over my tongue, I start to fear that they're not strong enough to stand alone. So I return to my desk, and dig back into these gorgeous and imperfect pages, and try to extract one single, timeless track. And then another.

Exeunt

I left the attic yesterday. For the first time in a month. My skin had grown sallow--the smudge-eyed man who stared back at me from the mirror was a stranger--and I was in desperate need of the sun's warmth. In 30 minutes I had developed a second-degree sunburn, but I slathered my forehead with some sampler aloe from the Co-op nearby and continued my stroll. I hadn't felt heat like this in ages, and there were clumps of children everywhere, frolicking in the filthy snow piles crowding the curb. A few paused to pelt me with curses and brownish missives, but I didn't hold it against them. I must have looked rather odd, in my overcoat and shorts with no socks.

I didn't realize I had a destination until I arrived. The Stephens-Lee gymnasium. I'd heard that years ago, when it was still a school, Nina Simone had been a student. I imagine she had a rough time of it--she once famously claimed that she would never return to North Carolina, under any circumstances. Still, I wanted to go inside, to walk through the same halls she once had, and see if some of her haunting voice might inhabit me, if only for a minute. The front doors were locked, so I poked around the periphery testing door handles, even walking down some steep stairs to try the janitor's entrance, with no luck. As I came back around the front of the building, I heard the strangest tobacco-fed cackle coming from behind a tall white pine.

I tracked the laughter to its source, and found a gray-haired woman in a jumpsuit shooting baskets. The fenced-in court was lined with cracked concrete, almost certain to snap my fragile ankles, but for some reason, when she invited me to a game, I accepted immediately. What followed was a sound drubbing. Tara had a sailor's mouth and a wicked crossover, and she humiliated me for twenty-one straight points, only pausing to make jokes at my haircut's expense. She dribbled through my legs, over my head, off of my ass, and she did it all with the nimble grace of a dancer. I began to think she might be some sort of charmed creature, that if I kissed her, she would shed her costume and reveal herself as a gorgeous woodnymph. But when I came close to her face, she pulled off an improbable turnaround jumper that landed her foot directly in my testicles, shouted "Game," and sauntered off, into the edible gardens.

Cartographer's Lament

The date is set. My song cycle debuts ten days from now. And what should be a joyous day quickly turns frantic. There are preparations to be made--flyers to produce, costumes to procure, and above all, songs to be learned. For in all my haste to create new stanzas, I have not made time to memorize one single line.

Back when I was a mere dilettante, playing at music, and writing a song every week or two, I could spend days just basking in the presence of a new number. I would run the lyrics over my tongue again and again, finding the breadcrumbs which led from one line to the next, until the whole thing was laid out before me--no longer a map, but a set of backroads I had traveled extensively.

Now, instead of a rural hamlet, there is an entire metropolis bubbling up from the paper scraps that litter my floor and tiny desk. I wade through them, trying to find some landmark, some key that will make sense of this disorienting cityscape I've created.

For Lorn

My own body odor's grown sour to the nose. Food has lost its savor. The winter sun is a flaccid thing, a taunt instead of a gift. Mia has gone to New York, you see, on some cryptic errand, and I've started to come apart at the seams.

I spent the weekend in forced merriment. Unable to work on the song cycle, I thrust myself out into the world of the living, filling my hollow head with various white and brown liquors and plastering a smile to the front of me. Making the rounds at the local art openings, sipping cheap wine and taking in the work of others, I couldn't help but feel like I was neglecting my own work. The manuscript sat at home, while I was out gallivanting, my ears bombarded by disco and garage rock and a rash of other corruptive genres. It took a Sunday filled with pulsing quiet to cleanse my mind of such degrading influences, and I fear their memory may resurface still, spoiling the insular purity of my project.

Hopefully a new song will begin to blossom tomorrow, degraded or not—the reservoir's been running dry lately. That's actually why I went out in the first place. I'd become convinced I needed outside stimulation, that the reason I couldn't work was a lack of fuel, from sucking constantly at the dried-up teat of my attic room. And the world was delightful for a moment—Chance's new paintings were glorious, and several old friends had come out of the woodwork to witness them. But as the night wore on, and I grew weary of my clown's dance, I began to realize the true weight of Mia's absence. It is easy to play artiste and demand your space when your lover's right down the street, but absence makes the heart grow at odd angles. Now I wanted nothing more than to cuddle up beside the gorgeous creature, murmuring slurred paeans to her tender little ears. I could think of nothing else.

By this time tomorrow her legs will be laced through mine, and I will be snoring quietly as she clings to my furred back. For now though, I scribble, unable to sleep. Building a slanted lean-to out of looseleaf paper, a tiny house for her to crawl into when she returns.

Reshelving

My baby's back on the rack, where she belongs.

Filament

Sometimes the muse lays her head down on your pillow, and you cannot sleep beside her. Your fever runs too high. You pace the floor into the early morning, shitty with ideas.

Sit by your bedside in the feeble light, tracing the lines of her body, again and then again, until they start to form a sort of mantra.

With the shape of her ribs humming against your eyelids, lay your body down—still fully-clothed—your nose pressed hard into her neck. And breathe. The scent that sleeps beneath her shirt. That potent musk of slumber.

Lost Yarbles

Yes, my trusty Tecra laptop is out of commission. Indefinitely. I was sitting down to perform my ministrations Monday morning when I accidentally tipped over an old mug of triple-strength Yerba Mate. The liquid spread out over a thick sheaf of papers, and in my haste to save the manuscript, I neglected to save the machine. This is the Luddite's curse, I suppose. Rushing to preserve a couple antiquated paper-scraps while my only worthwhile possession stews in South American speed tea. Though if the damned thing never turned on again, I would probably be the better for it, and I'd still have my precious pile of chickenscratch.

That soggy splay of papers failed to comfort me, though, and I quickly turned desperate in the wi-fi wasteland, delicately hanging my laptop on the clothesline before trudging up the street to Yurick and Jane's to borrow their internet.

While I choose to live in primarily horizontal fashion, Jane and Yurick are decidedly vertical. Pushing through the towering stacks—the bookshelves and toolshelves and shelves labelled electronics dubbed tapes & miscellany—I finally made my way to the foot of their loft bed and got written directions to their computer, 20 feet away through dogs and debris. I had originally planned to do important research on vintage laptop dessication, but I ended up spending the next four hours posting missed connections to craigslist and re-reading my own website. Repeatedly.

With that out of the way, it took me about five minutes on google to determine that my clothesline method was a solid first step for drying the Tecra. I opened up a fresh Word document and began rummaging through my head for an idea. But before I could type a single word, the children discovered me, and focused their disarming attentions on the bridge of my nose. Now, I am not generally frightened by the little ones, but Carlos and Beto are quite different from your average American child. They crawl about on all fours, although they appear old enough to walk upright. They stare up at you with furrowed brows and saucer eyes, rarely speaking except when they erupt in pre-verbal yelps and growls. I would venture to say that they are feral, and I might be right, but I'd never think of asking their parents. Yurick and Jane have the best of intentions, I'm sure, adopting these underprivileged wee ones and raising them as their own. But I'm afraid that even the most civilized country in the world can't convert an animal overnight. It is an arduous process, and I'm sure that—glutted with the abundant food and love their parents provide—Beto and Carlos will eventually learn to restrain their natural and unchecked beggary.

Hours later, when I finally trudged back to the attic, I upended my Tecra, and watched while tobacco-brown juice dripped out from its intake fan. I cringed, and gently uncased the laptop; using a hair dryer I'd borrowed from Terese, I began to dehumidify its mechanical carcass. Afterward, I tried to sleep, but I was tormented by the imagined cost of repair—garish three-digit numbers went swimming through my head—and all the inhumane tasks I'd have to perform to afford even the simplest fix. I woke groggy and unrested, and I swore I'd never touch a computer again. Then I walked up to Yurick's, and wrote this post.

Gearshift

My laptop's in the shop. Curse the world. Carry on.

Spills

The winterscape outside was barely habitable. The creatures I found there were just masses of fabric, with eyeglasses and bits of hair the only hints that humans sat inside, operating the clumsy cloth limbs. Out among them, shivering in my autumn blazer, I quickly realized that I needed a hat for my face—perhaps even a hat for my hat. Cold in itself is shocking to a man like me, raised among pine barrens and humid peat swamps. But today the wind cut so brutally. Of course, it didn't help that I was woefully underdressed. I haven't left the house in quite some time, you see, and it seems I've let myself go a bit. I didn't realize exactly how far until the wind caught me by the pajama pants—making them into a kind of sail—and sent me careening back and forth across the narrow road, into and out of oncoming traffic.

By the time I made it back to the sanctuary of the attic, my hands were raw and red, and the skin on my face had begun to peel and flake off. I decided to draw myself a hot bath. Unfortunately, this required a painstaking process of thawing ice over the hotplate. And since my vessel—a lovely ceramic chamberpot from the turn of the century—couldn't hold more than two liters at the time, I wound up, hours later, with a lukewarm soak that nearly covered my ankles and buttocks. Shuddering fetally in the galvanized washbin, I realized how far I'd fallen—from international traveler with suitcases of cash and a seemingly inexhaustible line of credit, to self-employed scrivener with little more than the frighteningly inadequate clothes on my back. And I began to weep, rocking my body back and forth, gently at first, then more violently as the tears leapt to my eyes. I rocked so hard that I rocked myself out of the washbasin, smacking my head against the filthy floor. And as the soap-scummed water pooled around me, I suddenly found myself laughing out loud, slapping the tiles as my voice rose up and the corners of my eyes wrinkled in ecstasy.

For this is all I ever wanted, ridiculous as it may seem to some—a small room, populated with the instruments of my artform, and the time and quiet to hone my craft. Of course, if I admit all my adolescent fantasies, I have to include taking the world by storm, but that can come later, once the dull stone of my song cycle is polished and gleaming. In the meantime, I have Mia to help keep me above water, and enough bread to last me until February, and this pen, which feeds me until I am overflowing.

Shut-In

I was up all last night blasting my newest piece over speakers at volume 11. At one point Hint came up to complain, and we scuffled for a moment before I sent the old fool tumbling back down the stairwell. Luckily for him, his obese and inflated head cushioned the fall. He didn't bother me again, although at times I thought I heard the faint tap-tapping of his pimpish cane coming up from the floor beneath, as I laughed and carried on in my solitary revels. You see, once a new song comes into being, it's as if a new child has been born. I must play it repeatedly, must cradle it and coo to it and spank it just the slightest bit to make the air enter its tiny birdlike lungs.

I slept ungodly late this morning, though, and I when I finally woke it was to a breakfast of leftover apples and muffin scrapings. It has been too cold to go to market lately, too cold even to leave bed for more than several minutes. I subsist on frozen water that I thaw over a hotplate by my bedside, and whatever bits of snack the neighbors leave at my door.

I remember reading somewhere once that Duke Ellington's mother rarely allowed him to leave his bed until the age of seven. The author claimed that this forced sloth was key in developing the composer's incredibly fruitful imagination. If my situation bears any similarity, though, I'm afraid the Duke was probably a dick. Case in point: Mia invited me to her home last night, with its enormous comforters and its windows that aren't merely welcome mats for wind. But I—having been homebound all afternoon, and with saddle sores sprouting on my backside—crankily dismissed her offer, instead opting to warm myself with homemade wine and the cramped brand of jumping jacks my pitched ceiling allows. I even snapped at Terese, the sweet little woman who lives next door, when she came by offering me fresh-pressed cider. In my defense, though, she hadn't put a single drop of bourbon into the mug. Still, when 5 am rolled around, I found myself thawing ice over the hotplate again and cursing my damnable pride. At that moment I vowed to walk outside today, to stretch these stiff old legs and breathe in air that is not ripe with a dozen too-familiar stinks. Perhaps then I won't be such a godawful curmudgeon. We shall see.

Wingspan

I am different now, since my return to America. Some would say broken. Others, incorrigible. I have lost all desire to work for pay, and instead stay locked in my hermit's attic, working away furiously at a song cycle that I'm sure will move the world to tears, or perhaps even applause. Of course, there are those who doubt, or simply ignore, but there is also Hint, the odd fellow who lives beneath me. A self-proclaimed music scholar, he saunters up from time to time to hear my latest piece, brandishing criticisms and spurring me to revision, always with a fascinated interest underpinning his stern pronouncements. I'm certain he sees true promise in my project, even if he won't yet admit it.

There is a curious woman, too, who has been visiting my attic of late, bringing me scraps of bread and wine along with her own considerable enthusiasm. She listens to my half-made songs with rapture in her eyes, assures me of their power despite my protests to the contrary, and kisses me furiously on the cheeks and forehead before leaving me again to my labors. After she departs, I float above the morass of the world for several hours, hastily scribbling down new ideas and inspirations before her presence recedes, and I return again to the ground. Her name is Mia. She is a brilliant and singular creature.

The Return

Simply put? The plane: it crashed.

And after clinging to bits of raft-shrapnel for several weeks, feeding off seagull droppings and the occasional uncooked crustacean, after losing my mind several times drinking piss-warm seawater, my sleeping body finally beached off the coast of a seemingly uninhabited island. When I came to the next morning, I was sure I was dreaming, or dead, or both, but my hands were too swollen to pinch. So I threw handfuls of sulfurous sand into the air and waited for the gritty sting on my eyeballs, certain it wouldn't come. Sadly, I was mistaken. Once I had cleaned the blinding grains from my eyes, and slept the sleep of a wounded animal by a warm fire, I set about exploring my new home.

I scaled dinosaur-necked trees and scanned the horizon for signs of life and watercraft, with no luck. I discovered odd testicular fruits and tiny boneless birds the size of insects, and feasted on them with fervor, until my stomach turned itself inside out and showed me the exact size and shape of my gluttony. I built hard-won fires of twigs and grass that went out seconds after they started, and wept inconsolably, and then dug a hole in the sand and lay down in it, shivering, waiting for the end.

When I awakened I found a circle of women peering down at me from above. Gorgeous caramel women, short and plump and festooned in bright turquoise bead-necklaces, and little else. They eyed me quizzically, chittering back and forth in an untraceable dialect, and then they bore me away to their mountaintop enclave, where they fed me the most bizarre assortment of flesh and flora I had ever seen—great bright pink grapes and golden eggplants, foot-long shrimps and piglets with vestigial wings. They must have put something in my drink as well, because as I drained the viscous black liquid my head began to swim, my speech began to slow, and I started hungering for a round brown breast in my chap-lipped mouth. When they discovered me hours before, I had acknowledged the fact of their nudity, but at the time it didn't seem sexual or even out of the ordinary. After all, I was naked myself, except for the few rags that clung to my shoulders. But now all of a sudden my loins began to stir, watching these beautiful women tell stories in their rhythmic tongue, their ripe bodies shaking gently beneath girlish laughter.

I do not know how long I stayed awake, swimming through the neverending tide of bodies. It could have been weeks, or months. One thing I do know—this was no special occasion for them. They had no plans to bear my seed, or pass me around like a playtoy, or raise me up as some sort of white god. No, they merely wanted me to join their writhing mass on the grass floor, taking fingers and toes and elbows and earlobes into my mouth and nostrils and armpits and anus, until we were all one body that never slept, that only drank viscous liquid and groped toward the god we found there in our intertwining flesh.

I would still be there now if I hadn't heard a guttural squeal one day that resembled my Christian name—if I hadn't recalled the fact of language, the delight I had once taken in words falling off of my tongue and fingertips. As I lay there, half-blind beneath a sizable rump, and let the tide move me for a while, and ran a Yeats poem through my head line by line, I realized that I could no longer be happy as this body alone, this sated, golden body I had become.

I separated myself from the mass and set to work building a craft. I would take a break from time to time and slip back into the writhing pile, but it never held me like it had before, and I would inevitably pull away again and return to my labors. On the day I was to complete my boat, I awakened in my shoreside lean-to and stepped out into the sunlight. To my surprise, I spotted a group of pale conquistadors there, disembarking in full regalia from a decidedly modern-looking pontoon boat. They eyed me quizzically as I approached, and then a dull roar of laughter started to rise, and I heard familiar phrases jump out at me in unfamiliar accents. "Check out Robin Crusoe, boys!" "Looks like he beat us to it, innit?"

Once I regained my tongue and learned the plans of these self-proclaimed adventure sex tourists, I felt an urgent need to warn the women about these brutes who'd come to spoil their Eden. But how would I do it? I had only learned a few simple words during my stay, and most of them were names of body parts. Perhaps I could distract the Brits somehow, mislead them, throw them off the scent, and find a way to lead them off a precipice or into a staked pit? I was becoming increasingly frantic when I noticed the caramel women filtering in all around us, taking the splotchy bastards into their arms as tenderly as they had taken me that first night. And I realized that all was fine, that this dance had been going on for decades, and I had no place trying to stop it. I would simply gather a few keepsakes from my stay and hitch a pontoon ride back to the mainland in the morning.

And why not—I thought—while I'm still here, why not just one more tumble through the glorious pile?

It would be another three months before I set foot on my native shore.