for it is neither too early for the orchestra that features Donald Barthelme in a fucking pant-suit, nor for that note played off to be inconsequential, but, as “we are jitterbugging our dance-floors too raw,” I too prefer to remain mostly illegible when distancing, I guess you could say, never had me no penmanship to speak of but here at the strike of noon fifteen I can almost designate from among you the one most likely to climb a single-stepped staircase; that, which is called something else, that, which holds that dance-floor’s too raw for the orchestra, and “who is paying for this airfare” is certainly a valid question; one that, no doubt, the perp has taken into consideration, as he or she disembarks in Helsinki, in Saigon; or in anywhere they can keep their backs straight; I have not been able to quip enough about appropriation in this spinal season settling, not enough to shame the column management that will be notified forthwith and here for no other reason than to be spreading ‘spreading’ like sprouting the posturing in the forever imperfect past, the posturing in even the simplest flower, a dew patch, surrounded and sallow, shaking with envy and posturing posturing.
Like it was that long ago, and like yeah, I guess you could say they are becoming increasingly endangered. The way it works, of course, and if it isn’t pretty, grow up because that’s the deal. They walk among us like bureaucrats of a bygone downtown, and like everyone, they, too, die alone. Their memories are presently drifting off and growing rosy, or perhaps less rosy, more black, more extreme gray scale. Maybe this is best thought of in a way like this: the last Polaroid is a Polaroid you have not taken, and you, too, cannot remember what it depicts. “Oh yeah,” says A Walking Billboard of Olde Newe Yorke, condescendingly, “it was cheap to live here back then but there were heroin dealers and like empty lots on Avenue A with intimidating looking thugs— oh but there was no law, and.” And what? Oh, of course “it wasn’t as cleaned up as it is now,” a specifically pre-Giuliani grin, a party you missed because you were too busy crapping your diaper or fuck, now maybe your mother was crapping hers, and what is Olde about it. I want someone to make a graffito about dancing about architecture, but I fear that that would not be enough for most of you’se. See, there I said “you’se” but I meant “authenticity.” Well, and the Billboard is now a decaying sack of “notions” and would not be caught dead in a dicey neighborhood (unless it is to visit you, the son, the daughter). We are, of course, our own goddamn billboards, dying alongside them: “Our” “Brooklyn” “co-opted” “gentrified” “and” “being” “choked” “by” “quotation” “marks.” Dick Clark is dead. Likewise the keyboardist of Men At Work, who was found a corpse in a Melbourne kitchen. Grunge knew that punk was dead; New Wave went back to France in the 60’s (mais pourquoi?); Hip-hop likes to feed on its fore-fathers/mothers; Raves are strickly worth it if your brain is being drenched in dopamine and serotonin; There will always be an annoying folk purist; Heavy Metal is “so hot right now” in “Greenpoint” which might mean that it, too, is doomed; and no one is sure what indie-rock is, what it was, what it’s supposed to be. This was not meant to be a polemic on popular music, but get the picture, you! No one ages gracefully, that’s the thing about the goddamn thing; time robs us of our swift recoveries, of some of our hair, or maybe taut skin; of freedoms we wasted our youths worshipping or at least tell ourselves to worship; of our friends and family and heroes and anti-heroes and also of an endless stream of motherfuckers we did not know or care to know. I have forgotten how to laugh today, but this does not bother me. I am not as broken as this discourse. I am not as bitter a pill, I promise. In my haste, today, I bought a Laurie Anderson record and was happy to do so. I, too, am a Walking Billboard. I, too, await elegy one day, and am inappropriately laughing at your funeral. I, too, inject false gravitas in the last line.
I used to work at a now defunct coffee stand in Grand Central Terminal. I was 25 and fresh to the City. I kind of hated that job the way I kind of hated most jobs I’ve had. I remember a co-worker there, a bigger guy by the name of Will Fort, who one day, after closing, was taking a train to his home state of… Delaware? I think it was Delaware. Any rate, Will was visiting his folks there. Among his accouterments, packed in a kind of worn out gym bag, he was taking along a 1 Liter bottle of Dewars, an ounce of middle-grade marijuana, and for some reason also a bottle of ether. That Hunter S. Thompson shit. While the manager was upstairs counting the money, and we were dispatched to mop the floors, he gave me a huff. It was kind of like thisssssssssssssss ssss ss s s s s s ss.. Fear and fucking loathing. All that. I gripped the mop handle and giggled and seemed to kind of take flight. I actually flew. There was a detachment of police officers across the way, bunched up out the window, in the hallway. I was swimming and was like a multi-colored pufferfish. The cops had no idea that they looked like bowling balls covered in latex paint or something. I sometimes think of Will.
Bubble Gum And Poppers 