Icebox Records

It’s a long walk home at 2am (or 3am, if I were feel­ing hon­est). And it’s Ver­mont, so there’s ice, and you con­cen­trate so hard on not falling that you tend to not notice what’s hap­pen­ing around you as you try to get from this to that. And bullshit’s hap­pen­ing all over, swerv­ing cars glar­ing at you through half-open eyes, cops observ­ing you from the third floor of a park­ing garage, 2 white-caps stum­bling home trem­bling with dreams of Pamela Lee … and some­thing makes you think, and you won­der if anyone’s see­ing it exactly that way, and you don’t think they do but really, you know that they do. You say you don’t really smoke but you light another cig­a­rette. Hearts are bro­ken as often as shitty books are pub­lished. We nudge our sor­row along like dis­con­tent tugboats.…

…and there are bright moments, sure. Times when you hear it work­ing, when you can tell what color it is, when the ran­dom tones strike a chord … and then you try to fig­ure out the key, and it’s a fuck­ing crap-shoot, like shoot­ing fish or punch­ing blind­folded. A white rook, a black knight, a double-twelve domino you’re stuck with when the Mex­i­can Train folds. Do you still not get it? What I’m say­ing is that it’s a cake­walk if you’re stu­pid, it’s sim­ple if you’re lucky, it’s easy if you’re blessed … and still most of us move slowly for­ward under the weight of the heav­i­est of palimpsests, the joy that know­ingly shares it’s space with sorrow.

Or let me put it this way: it’s like a B string that won’t stay in tune … it feels so good play­ing it– so right being heard– you don’t really care that every­one else thinks it’s wrong.