I saw a show last night. It was frenetic and crazy and wonderful and intense. I was in love with my girlfriend and the bands that played and the crowd around me. I was in love.
I sat down today and put the songs on and relived those moments – the speeches he gave, the way she belted the songs out. I remembered everything vividly at first, but as the day went on, it began to fade. I could feel the experience slipping away from me.
I wish I could relive those moments for the rest of my life, like a VCR in my head that I could just rewind every three hours. I want to experience last night again. I want to fall in love again. I want to taste things for the first time again, and I want to be with my friends again. I want to remember everything.
I’m sitting here, looking out my window. The sun is rising, and I want to remember this. I need to remember this. I need to remember all of this, every last bit of it, forever.
But I won’t.
Everything’s great until you get bored. Boredom leads to bad places. Boredom leads to unnecessary anger. Boredom leads to disappointment. Boredom leads to unconfessed feelings and regret. Boredom leads to drugs. Boredom leads to tears. Boredom leads to love – love that shouldn’t be there, dangerous love. Boredom leads to sex – sex that shouldn’t happen, dangerous, dangerous sex. Boredom leads to the world crashing down around you. Boredom makes you think. Sometimes I don’t want to think.
3 plays
This is a recording of me reading my story Twilight at Carbon Lake. It was recorded on June 25th, 2010 as a little experiment. It’s not perfect (though, of course, a large part of me saying that is because I don’t exactly like my own voice, and I’m also not a huge fan of my acting abilities), and I blew out the mic a few times in the second half (sorry) but I like to think it provides some more perspective on the story.
Enjoy.
I remember a trip we went on once, right at the very end. We went to the lake.
I was never very outdoorsy, and I didn’t really want to go, but love is a crazy, fucked up sort of thing, so I did. For you. I did a lot of things for you. I woke up at five thirty in the morning for you. I dug out my old swim trunks for you. I skipped breakfast for you. I drove two and a half hours for you. I put on sunscreen and bugspray for you. I did a lot of things for you.
In my dreams the night before I had imagined the lake as a black cesspool, ruined by pollution and contamination, a hateful and poisonous thing, perhaps even demonic. I had dreamed of black hands grasping at me, one of them grabbing onto my leg and dragging me to some kind of horrible fate.
Of course, in the end it was a beautiful lake, and that just made me hate it even more.
When I woke up, the world was inverted. My red walls had turned green and my white ceiling black.
I saw someone new in the bathroom mirror. His skin was blue, as if he had been beaten all over. His hair was a strange, sickly grey. I realized after a few moments that it was me.
The grass outside was neon purple, the sun a giant blacklight.
I went through my day as normal. I thought that something would be done. Perhaps the government would step in, or a scientific committee would discover the cause and announce it to the world. No announcement came. No statement was made.
I walked around the city after work looking for familiar faces, but all the people just blended together, an endless sea of unnatural blue.
I looked up into the white night. The black stars twinkled like carpenter ants crawling across the sky.
“And come, tornado!
Carry me away from the croft.
Ruffle my hair, bear my body aloft, oh!”
Owen Pallett, Heartland, “Midnight Directives”
He could feel it in his bones. A tornado was coming. There had never been one like this.
When the storms came he would not run or hide. He would watch from the top of the hill.
He often dreamed of tornadoes. His body, light; his soul, light; his heart, light. In these dreams he would be taken into the tornado and flung around in the air, arms outstretched, laughing. He would cross miles and miles. He would be spun around until he was dizzy and then he would be spun some more. He had no control. He would usually black out, and when he came to the tornado would be gone - instead, surrounding him, a land of sun where the people would greet him with a wave and a smile and the loaves of bread were big and fluffy and the crops always grew and the animals never starved and the rain came only when needed (and always when needed) and there would be lots of green and no gray or brown to remind him of his old home.
Of course, dreams are just dreams.
Rhythmic pounding.
Feedback. A jet engine kicking into gear. The sound of a man giving up.
Rhythmic pounding.
The artist, creating a self portrait. Sketching. Drawing. Painting. Sculpting. Destroying.
Rhythmic pounding.
This is about something. This means something. Birds chirping. Who knows what that is.
Rhythmic pounding.
Echos that aren’t echos, reverb that isn’t. Baritone. For so long. For so long.
Rhythmic pounding.
Soaring. Soaring. Soaring. Soaring. Emotion.
Rhythmic pounding.
The realism comes to an end and the world begins.
Rhythmic pounding.
A face, crying out with its mouth closed and there’s no noise. And then there’s nothing at all.
“Where are your friends tonight?”
I switched schools. I overreacted. I was selfish. He moved. She lied. We split up. I didn’t have enough time.
…that’s how it starts.
We saw each other less. We stopped speaking. I hurt him. I didn’t call him. I quit. We argued more. There just wasn’t enough time.
…and so it starts.
We stopped hanging out. We ignored each other completely. I made him hate me. I ignored his calls. I gave up. We fell to pieces. There was never be enough time.
…it falls apart.
I miss him. I fucked up. We’re better now. He’s still trying. I will never come back. I will always crawl back. I’ll find the time.
…to tell the truth.
“If I could see all my friends tonight—”
Oh, You Glorious Voyager!
You walk on
bringing ruin in your wake,
yet still you are loved.
Oh, You Wonderful Traveler!
Never stopping, always running.
From what, I wonder?
Do you even know?
Oh, You Strange Nomad!
Idolized forever,
your song is sung by millions,
yet still you wish for death.
Oh, You Mysterious Drifter!
The world you travel loves you, yes,
but do you love it?
I think not.
& he worked for hours & days & weeks, selecting & editing & working, shaping the audio into a cohesive whole, picking & choosing clips, & not necessarily clips that he likes but clips that are important to him. Clips of them laughing & clips of them smiling & clips of them just being together & in a lot of these clips you can’t actually hear much but he knows the significance & she’ll know too & that’s what counts.
When he’s done picking the audio it comes out to something like sixty minutes & he thinks about it & decides that he really doesn’t need all twelve minutes of that night that she cried into his shoulder about how scared she was for Kevin - he only needs the last thirty seconds, really - so that brings it down to just over fifty, which is much easier to live with.
He wonders about how to get it to her - he considers a USB drive but no, that’s much too impersonal. CDs are too ugly. Records are too big, & he doesn’t have the resources to press vinyl anyway. Nothing seems right. Eventually he converts the MP3 files into binary & writes it all into a series of notebooks - it takes a few weeks & four or five notebooks, but he eventually transcribes the entire sequence of ones & zeros & that’s the end of that ordeal. He draws pictures in the margins & writes little notes to her in the headers - messages & images that only she will understand. He also gives it to her on a tape, for posterity.
I opened the drawer of her bedside table and there was a bible and a few candles and some change and a stack of envelopes held together with a rubber band. Each envelope was addressed to someone she knew. There were no return addresses, but they were stamped and sealed and everything was ready for me. She had been prepared for this.
One for John, one for Helen, one for her mom and one for her dad, one for Katie and Robert and Nathaniel, one for Clementine and one for Anthony and, of course, one for me. There were envelopes for people I didn’t recognize - people she had never told me about or who I had forgotten. Maybe she’d attached fake names to real addresses to hide the actual recipients from me, or maybe she honestly believed in her delirium that she was sending these letters to real people she had real histories with.
1.)
She opens her eyes for the first time in a long time. I smile at her and she tries to smile back but it looks like she’s grimacing in pain so she shuts her eyes again.
2.)
The water runs down the drain. I stare, captivated by the swirling liquid, waiting for it to get hot. I stand there for fifteen minutes before I catch myself.
3.)
The knife slices through the chicken breast slowly and gracefully - it doesn’t so much tear the meat as it separates it, divides it, splits it apart, decimates it in the classical sense. The knife is expensive and elegant and it reminds me of her in a way, but not for either of those reasons.
4.)
The broth boils, the chicken cooks. She doesn’t like noodles in her soup, or vegetables either, just the broth and chicken, which always seemed like a really boring meal to me but whatever.
“And but so,” he continued, “I need a favor. I need you to talk to her. She doesn’t get it. She can’t see it from my point of view - I just want her back, man, I love her and it’s not fair of her to leave me like this, Jim, it’s just not fair. Everything was right, and now it’s not - it’s fucked up and shitty and I need someone to help me fix it and I don’t know who else to turn to.
“And it’s not like I did anything wrong, either, man, and I need to stress that, because you know me well enough to know that I’m not a violent guy - I’m passive. She’s telling everyone I gave her that black eye, and I had nothing to do with it. It hurts me, man, that she’d tell people all of this shit about me, and I can’t figure out why she’s doing it, and I just want it to stop. I just want her back. I just want everything back.”
It’s only two streets away, but it feels like a totally different world. Elm St. Overgrown vegetation, no houses or people, no noise at all, just silence. Silence and the occasional car speeding by, almost dangerously close to where you’re walking, but not really - not close enough for you to worry about it, in any case. There’s mystery in the air here. To your left there’s a chainlink fence, sagging from years of neglect, blocking off a steep slope that leads to the parking lot.
It’s giant, this parking lot, just huge and abandoned. The pavement is cracked, with grass and bushes and trees growing out of it. What is this place? You see the train go by, in the distance, on the other side of the lot. The cold bites at you. It’s not quite spring yet, but it’s still green on Elm St. It’s always green on Elm St., except when it’s not.
