Futile Horn

05.18.2004 - 5:10 am (i could make this a prototype)

Eugene invited me up to the country with him on Saturday. His family owns acres and acres of land north of city for the sole purpose of mowing the lawn. Living where I do, I’ve never cut a blade of grass in my life, so it was moderately entertaining to mow for a couple of hours. I dislodged a few frogs and countless dragonflies, but I suppose those sons a bitches had it coming. Hey, don’t look at me, I was just a hand hired for a bottle of Coors Light.

Sunday evening I was working on a new song. Something kitschy like “Painting Shadows on the Floor”. It’s good to do one of those every once in a while. I made it the refrain so it’d be one of those songs where the rest of the lyrics just keep redefining what the hook means.

I was sitting in the square north of Carmine (it’s really a triangle) and a guy on a bike came buy and scattered a bunch of papers on the ground and rode off. I noticed everyone was picking them up. Who could be bothered to pick up advertisements? Later I realized the fliers were all about the size of a $20 bill, which was in fact what was printed on the side of the ad I hadn’t been able to see. Silly people. I did laugh for a while, even though I think I’ve seen the same trick in Auerbach cellar.

A full-length black pleather jacket flatters no one.

I saw a headline on CNN that said “Bono addresses Ivy League grads.” I knew in a nanosecond they meant my alma mater, because it’s the only Ivy League school no one has ever heard of. Senator McCain spoke at my graduation but I didn’t go. My family wasn’t coming and the only reason I’d have gone was for their benefit. I like him actually, but I hate ceremony. I never know how to behave.

Of course, it is too late to do much of anything, but there’s a lot I want to get done, so of course I won’t be able to sleep, and when I finally do doze off I’ll be asleep till late in the afternoon. Stupid body. Surrender direct control of functions back to me! What does it think it is?

I’m practicing a finger-style version of “Karma Police” so I can get gooder. I freak when I see musical notes because I never learned to keep time to any degree worthy of musicianship, but sometimes when I just breathe and count out loud it’s really not so bad. Anyway, hopefully when I’ve got it down, it will sound pretty enough that I can let it stand alone, because I’ve no desire to sing that song. I’ve heard enough people howling Radiohead in the park to have learned my lesson sufficiently well.

I wasn’t paying attention and I missed Bob Dylan’s birthday again this year. I usually don’t make a fuss about the birthdays of the people I know, let alone the people I don’t, but I owe a part of myself to him in a way that is too embarrassing to talk about. And even though I thumb my nose at each of them in turn, occasionally I have to pay reverence to the men who have taught me to speak and to think. People like Dylan and Horace and Shakespeare and Goethe who have sufficiently rearranged the universe to give me an inkling how to go about reorganizing mine. Because the conclusion is fairly obvious: it simply won’t do as it is. There isn’t anything out there I want. I can either build it myself or I can leave.

If I weren’t going to see Godzilla tomorrow, I’d probably swing by and steal a painting out of the Met. I bet tourists would flock from all over the world to gawk at the space on the wall where it used to hang.

Born to play the funky céilí,
Futile Horn