performing their single “Esperanaza Burns (the flag)”, on whatever exists tomorrow at the same location and velocity as the ed sullivan show

***

I was five or six when the school peddled access to we innocents, to some enterprising capitalists posing as benevolent quasi-educators.

They gave us a list of books, had us fill out a form picking the ones we wanted, sent us home to our parents to collect the cash, and twirled their mustaches, probably.

I think I picked ten of them. Daddy scowled (I don’t really blame him for that) and said I could narrow it down to one, and consider myself damned lucky.

Sure I pouted. I felt I’d been scammed. I still think so.

But I prudently picked just one anyway. Take what you can get, cowboy.

It was called Charlotte’s Web.

When Charlotte died (sorry for the spoiler), I cried.

Then I read the whole thing again and cried some more. (“and you go home, and you cry and you want to die”)

Partly because I was very much a wilburpig and loved Charlotte just as he did. Partly because I was scientifically, biologically, and hormonally, a sissyboi. A Nancy in spite of my clothes, and in spite of my desire to be a man. Or at least a proper young manchild like they secretly wished I was.

The proof is in the plummy pudding, because it happened all over again with Old Yeller.

But I became even more of a reader, and started to think that early about making my own stories.

The next year, the next gang of capitalists were musical.

They herded us into the gym and had us listen like docile little slaughter lambs to all manner of musical instruments.

And gave us the form, and said to pick the one we liked.

I picked the viola, because I thought that made the prettiest sound.

When mommy and daddy came down and consulted with the capitalist, the noble fat merchant of sound and promises, he told them that violas were for girls, so fuck that–I was getting a violin, because that was okay, for ‘boys’.

They nodded in complacent agreement with his patriarchal analysis (I’m sure it made perfect sense in the cultural context) and pulled out the checkbook dutifully.

Come Closing Time I went home with that fiddle, but I could never love its harsher and less lush sound.

I was supposed to practice. I didn’t. I wasn’t interested in making screechy noises that hurt my ears instead of soothing them. And to be fair, I was likely lacking in the necessary talent, or patience, as well.

At the end of the semester there was a recital and my parents came, and I pretended to play for like half an hour, feeling deep shame, and that was the end of that shit.

So now you know the proximate causes of why I became an avid reader, and writer, but never a musician of any kind.

Crappy little scenes of whiteboi trauma, kinda ridiculous; I can laugh now even though I don’t. Not ever “out loud” lol, not here, not no more.

But I still love music. And I love … playing it for you. Maybe too much for your liking.

But your boring sensitivities aside, here’s one.

Callin’ In Sick (Of Your Shit)

Well that’s topical, ennit? And pretty funny in some trashy way. But the main appeal is the idea that something so vulgar and ballsy could have been recorded way back in our, um, idyllic childhood of the hills of the Highland. A holler, against the Boss Man, and the HR Manager, and their whole fucked-up worldview of wage enslavement.

Except … it wasn’t, of course.

Now I know it was only a couple weeks ago that I turned up my finely sculpted nose at the whole phenomenon of AI.

My nose is still largely lifted and sniffing, cryptoqueerishly. But what I said about having no use for it? Well, that stupid song (not so very deeply stupid as all that) is making me reconsider my certainty.

I could do that, says my brain. I could do it better in fact, given the same artificial stringed tools, and it wouldn’t even be hard. No screechy. No practice. Not even any need to dedicate myself to a label or identity, as … Johnny Guitar, Finger-Pickin’ Belletrist, or whatTheEffEver.

Tempting.

Especially since it might, in a completely unexpected way, be a means of … healing that tiny instance of perceived trauma, and righting that putative lugubrious wrong.

I’ll be tracking down, on that Maybe.

You just watch me

or, wait

Amendment: you do whatever you want, sugarplum, you do you; I’m reparenting you and with far greater indulgence.