Poverty Is a Total Idiot, and a Dreamscape
Filled with Nostalgia When It Comes Full Circle
Are you ready for a bit of a double feature?
Filled with Nostalgia When It Comes Full Circle
Are you ready for a bit of a double feature?
I feel like blowing myself up inside of a
pie in the sky sort of thing. Peach, pecan
or my mother’s apple, it wouldn’t matter
to me as long as it was one of those three.
Or a cobbler. Cobblers aren’t pies in the
sky, though. Shut up about the diabetic
fact that my favorite dessert is blackberry
pie in the sky sort of thing. Peach, pecan
or my mother’s apple, it wouldn’t matter
to me as long as it was one of those three.
Or a cobbler. Cobblers aren’t pies in the
sky, though. Shut up about the diabetic
fact that my favorite dessert is blackberry
cobbler, about twenty-five minutes or so
out of the oven, with Breyer’s vanilla
bean ice cream that has been sitting out
side of its frozen home for about fifteen. I
don’t know where my mind wants to go.
Rolling Stone’s interview, “Enjambments,”
slices and dices the interview process until I
quit reading, get up and leave the shed, this
hotbox, my coffin of mass destruction. Then I
out of the oven, with Breyer’s vanilla
bean ice cream that has been sitting out
side of its frozen home for about fifteen. I
don’t know where my mind wants to go.
Rolling Stone’s interview, “Enjambments,”
slices and dices the interview process until I
quit reading, get up and leave the shed, this
hotbox, my coffin of mass destruction. Then I
slid into the alley, and trumpeted. I trumpeted
just fine, please remember that, was it forty
years ago today, nearly? It was a guess but
if I got it right what would my prize be. A
beebee? A bee sting? Be careful not to hit
the notes all staccato, Mister Davis, the
director, would say. It was still the age of
smooth and this was my very own solo in
the marching band’s performance of On
Broadway. Then again, don’t take them
too seriously, the notes. I always did.
But it wasn’t for trying. My goal was to
sound like honey. And while everyone
else in the band was standing stock still,
holding out beneath that bird’s eye fermata
while I got my little twenty second cadenza,
my improvisatory spotlight, how was I to know
what to do or how to handle such things? I just
wung it, as they say. And sure enough, my takata-
takata was all Sugar Lips rather than Chuck Man
gione. The syncopated bubbles I blew into the dull
silver mouthpiece slid into a trumpet full of honey.
That’s the way I remember it. And the applause.
Mister Davis was always trying to get me to re
lease the spit, the snot with which the instrument
would fill so to the brim that by the end of the
solo I’d be nearly drowning in it, chugging big
gulps of it until I nearly gagged every time I
took one of those super-swift inhalations near
the end of the cadenza. But somehow I came
to, cleared my lungs all professional-like, did
a quick puff into the mouthpiece while oh so
surreptitiously holding the water key and then
squeak those last few routs like a coloratura flit
ting away in the upper registers and then I would
finished off the ditty with an extended note held
with such extreme duration, the vibrato smooth
ing out into a whisper, almost, but the parents in
the bleachers where so quiet they could hear it go
on and on, not a one of them taking a breath either,
Eddie the tuba player surely was about to pass clean
out, and then the bird’s eye was gone, my solo was
finished, and it was hep right hep right (applause,
applause, applause, if lucky) into whichever forma
tion for whatever song came next. Probably Thank
God I’m a Country Boy, in which I’d switch instrum
ents because it was a percussion interlude in which
I’d have a duet on the glockenspiel with Amy, the
conductor, who was our class valedictorian and
played the piano much better than I did, a fact
of which I was always reminded as she’d sub for
the organist at our church sixty percent of the
time for those three or four years before high
school graduation (aka, The Great Escape).
She played the much sexier marimba. Occ
asionally it’d be the other way around. We
were easy like that, me and Amy. Either way,
it was during those half-time performances
that I’d, every once in a while, feel like a
virtuoso of some sort, rather than another
snotty nerd wannabe in smalltown Arkansas.
We won the regional championship that year.
I got some sort of honorable mention for my
mucked up, drowned out solo. “They say
the neon lights are bright on Broadway.”
I’d find out sooner or later, I thought,
sometimes while emptying my brass
horn of whatever came from me that
was dead set on drowning it. And it’s
true, I did. Find Broadway, that is. In
fact, I’ve done quite a lot since then.
But I haven’t picked up a trumpet or
banged on a glockenspiel or a marimba
or a piano in something like 20 years.
Performances are perhaps meant to
elicit progressive thought of some
kind or another, but more than any
thing they’re meant to be enjoyed.
This one comes to you directly
from the hotbox. With me an
endless feedback loop atop
a stuffy room’s broken bed.
Whatever you do, don’t bring
up the road not taken. And
by all means have yourself
self a most pleasant and
a most peaceful night.
just fine, please remember that, was it forty
years ago today, nearly? It was a guess but
if I got it right what would my prize be. A
beebee? A bee sting? Be careful not to hit
the notes all staccato, Mister Davis, the
director, would say. It was still the age of
smooth and this was my very own solo in
the marching band’s performance of On
Broadway. Then again, don’t take them
too seriously, the notes. I always did.
But it wasn’t for trying. My goal was to
sound like honey. And while everyone
else in the band was standing stock still,
holding out beneath that bird’s eye fermata
while I got my little twenty second cadenza,
my improvisatory spotlight, how was I to know
what to do or how to handle such things? I just
wung it, as they say. And sure enough, my takata-
takata was all Sugar Lips rather than Chuck Man
gione. The syncopated bubbles I blew into the dull
silver mouthpiece slid into a trumpet full of honey.
That’s the way I remember it. And the applause.
Mister Davis was always trying to get me to re
lease the spit, the snot with which the instrument
would fill so to the brim that by the end of the
solo I’d be nearly drowning in it, chugging big
gulps of it until I nearly gagged every time I
took one of those super-swift inhalations near
the end of the cadenza. But somehow I came
to, cleared my lungs all professional-like, did
a quick puff into the mouthpiece while oh so
surreptitiously holding the water key and then
squeak those last few routs like a coloratura flit
ting away in the upper registers and then I would
finished off the ditty with an extended note held
with such extreme duration, the vibrato smooth
ing out into a whisper, almost, but the parents in
the bleachers where so quiet they could hear it go
on and on, not a one of them taking a breath either,
Eddie the tuba player surely was about to pass clean
out, and then the bird’s eye was gone, my solo was
finished, and it was hep right hep right (applause,
applause, applause, if lucky) into whichever forma
tion for whatever song came next. Probably Thank
God I’m a Country Boy, in which I’d switch instrum
ents because it was a percussion interlude in which
I’d have a duet on the glockenspiel with Amy, the
conductor, who was our class valedictorian and
played the piano much better than I did, a fact
of which I was always reminded as she’d sub for
the organist at our church sixty percent of the
time for those three or four years before high
school graduation (aka, The Great Escape).
She played the much sexier marimba. Occ
asionally it’d be the other way around. We
were easy like that, me and Amy. Either way,
it was during those half-time performances
that I’d, every once in a while, feel like a
virtuoso of some sort, rather than another
snotty nerd wannabe in smalltown Arkansas.
We won the regional championship that year.
I got some sort of honorable mention for my
mucked up, drowned out solo. “They say
the neon lights are bright on Broadway.”
I’d find out sooner or later, I thought,
sometimes while emptying my brass
horn of whatever came from me that
was dead set on drowning it. And it’s
true, I did. Find Broadway, that is. In
fact, I’ve done quite a lot since then.
But I haven’t picked up a trumpet or
banged on a glockenspiel or a marimba
or a piano in something like 20 years.
Performances are perhaps meant to
elicit progressive thought of some
kind or another, but more than any
thing they’re meant to be enjoyed.
This one comes to you directly
from the hotbox. With me an
endless feedback loop atop
a stuffy room’s broken bed.
Whatever you do, don’t bring
up the road not taken. And
by all means have yourself
self a most pleasant and
a most peaceful night.
