Concerto
14 Oct 2008 7:15:31CST
Good morning sweetheart. Have a safe flight
She flies out today, 8 am, from Boston. Fuck. 8 am from Boston is 7 am from here. I guess she gets that in Detroit. To hell with Detroit, the best part about Detroit is the airport. Everywhere else you get shot or mugged by some asshole named after candy. They have this bar in the Detroit airport, Ye Olde Irish Pub. Creative bastards they’ve got there.
41 minutes.
Deadlines, must write. I’ve been fucked up for a week. I’m stuck in my head. Imprisoned in a chemical mind, all I hear are chemical chords. Music, distinct music, like a circus on acid, a neon beanbag plays on. The only thought I have is an electronic marimba.
What the hell are you talking about?
“Well, that’s an interesting point and I’ll take that into consideration. I just prefer to think Hardy is being more optimistic in this poem. I think he wishes he would have led a more positive life. That’s why he’s writing this last poem before he died on his 86th birthday,” Bill said.
Thomas Hardy never wrote anything optimistic in his life, you douchebag. Read it again. Read his bio. What the fuck are you talking about? Hardy was the biggest pessimist of the 19th century, maybe the 20th century too. Oh, wait, no, not pessimist, realist, or whatever the hell he called himself.
30 minutes.
Walking back from this pointless peer review of Thomas Hardy and his optimistic death, idiot, my legs are disconnected. I know they’re there I can feel the burn on the back of my thighs with each labouring step. Tingling flows through my feet as they connect with the pavement below with the beat of that damn glowing beanbag.
“Achoo!”
Holy shit, don’t sneeze on this shit. Upper body just went numb. Started at the head flowed through shoulders all the way to the ends of my extremities, I wasn’t sure were still attached till that moment of nasal eruption.
26 minutes.
The free design of this free write explodes onto the page from my brain. I must keep writing for the sake of the populous, at least that’s what I tell myself. It’s not that I’m better. It’s that they’re worse. Someone has to stimulate people like Bill and hopefully make his IQ increase by a couple points. Son of a bitch thinks Hardy repented for being an ass on his deathbed.
21 minutes.
Deadline, time ticks away. I’m certain this makes no sense. Random thoughts spewed onto a computer screen. That’s fine it’ll all come together at the end of the adventure, barring I make it and hoping I remember. Connect the cushioned chairs to find the meaning, that’s the ticket. I’m working on it.
18 minutes.
Click clack. Click clack. The French circus rolls on. Tricks on trapeze by men with mustaches circa 1920 direct my thoughts from one wooden grip to the next. Normalcy is what I need. Normalcy returns today, 2 pm from Boston on a Boeing 747. System needs to clear out. 7 days straight not knowing where sanity lies will give you a feeling that time itself is no obstacle any longer. Yet it’s the only obstacle simultaneously, a bitch of a catch 22. Time begins to dissipate in this state. The clock works off a Blackberry telling me where I need to be and when, but it fades, slows.
5 minutes
Print. Deadline accomplished.
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Some brief thoughts:
Initially, the airport bit threw me for a loop, as I continued to think the setting was the Detroit airport through about half the piece. I did stop to ponder why a peer review might be taking place in an airport, but stranger things have happened.
I liked the circus similes; they struck me with a Fear & Loathing vibe, which resonated with the atmosphere of the piece and feeling of disconnect. The “wooden grip” was especially appealing, as it relates to the way our thoughts can clench up and hold onto singular ideas as if lifelines.
The temporal aspects of the piece are great; between the time-zone differences and the countdown that’s going on throughout, it has a jarring, intrusive quality of reality imposing its essence upon something that otherwise exists very ethereally. The pacing could be tightened up a bit as far the interleaving sentences go, as the cadence seemed off a bit at times with the calling of the hour, as it is.
A minor quibble: For me, at least, the feeling of “tingling” w/r/t walking comes more from the ground up, through my heels, as the pavement slaps my feet with each step, rather than the other way around.
Starting off with references to ‘she,’ the juxtaposition of ‘normalcy’ in the end provides a disconnect that could probably be sharpened up a bit to provide something more concrete, even if they come down to the same thing. The sparring for focus with time, especially in the last couple sentences, provides a more ambiguous and unsatisfactory ending than I would like to see, but I think each aspect could (and should) have its own place within the piece.
Overall, I’m a big fan of the descriptions for feelings of disconnect, the internal monologue w/r/t Bill (and how he’s a fucking idiot), and the overall temporal aspects of the piece.
Very enjoyable!