---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ///AMBIENT SAD CAKE\\\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[the creaking of a door opening and closing. the slow rumble of heavy feet descending old stairs somewhere else in the house] one eye opens. the bedside candle is still flickering, casting shadows in the dusty corners of the room. grace is startled awake - something tickles her behind the ears as she can slowly feel her face again. there's a new weight to the air above her bed, maybe the garbled hum of the radio downstairs is seeping up through the floorboards. she thinks about the waves of crunchy sound rising like heat from a worn down wooden box with three knobs for a face, and in her mind, traces the invisible radio signals emanating from a far-off blinking red tower shrouded in wet clouds, flying across barren valleys to a hunk of metal and wire and wood sitting in the living room, where mother sits silently braiding a rug in a rocking chair with the paint peeling off, gently swaying back and forth to the cackle of a man's sad voice and a handful of slow, lonely guitar strums from the speakers: Can the circle be unbroken/ By and by, Lord, bye and bye?/ There's a better home a-waiting/ In the sky, Lord, in the sky grace keeps her body still under the covers and listens closely. no, nothing now but the ticking of the clock at the end of the hallway. what time is it? she wonders this for a moment when she feels something crawl up her legs, which are still stiff with sleep. she holds her breath as it climbs up her body, and imagines the creature to be a giant tarantula heading toward her head, only a blanket and quilt separating her skin from its heavy and hairy arms. whatever it is stops on grace's chest and rubs softly against her cheek, letting out a purr that reverberates through her breast. grace blinks twice and sees the squinting yellow eyes of a fluffy white cat staring back at her. she's never seen this cat before, but it looks almost exactly like her barn cat silver, only this cat has a splotch of black hair dripping around its right eye and has no back half - no hind legs, no tail. in a state of calm shock, grace doesn't flinch. the half-cat bends down and licks her on the nose, a sandpaper tongue smoothly scraping from the bridge all the way down to the tip. the cat then leaps clear over her head and out the open window into the night. grace turns to look out her window - the sky is filled with nothing, only imminent darkness. a new moon. tomorrow night, it'll be a gleaming silver sliver growing on the right. her door is ajar, she sees the light in the hallway go off and forgets about the half-cat. she closes her eyes. [the sound of waves crashing on rocks, growing louder and louder] she is somewhere else now, somewhere where there is only blackness. she can feel her body floating, languid and heavy with lightness, an ocean spray all around her. "hello?" there is no response. the sound of breaking waves begins to grow distant. "hello?" grace yells. still no answer. she feels her limbs flailing in the nothingness and attempts to swim through the silence. a shaft of light appears. an all-piercing voice shatters the darkness from all around. illuminated, grace trembles with shivering sensations all over and can feel her insides rattling like marbles in a tin case.
"AAAAAAM-- BEEEEEE- ENT (pause) SAAAAD CAKE."
the lightness roared and now all was quiet. it grew to such blinding intensity that, for a moment, it was all there was. and in a flash it was gone. grace found herself sitting on the beach at night, in her white nightgown now covered in sand. she stared up to find not the moon but her older sister standing before her, in a matching white nightgown. "heidi? where are we? Is that cake?" heidi reached out and pulled her sister up with one arm and in the other held a shimmering glass cake on a porcelain platter. "yes, but you can't eat it or you'll break your teeth. we have to go, we're late for the show." she took grace by the hand and led her into the sea. the water was cold and they moved fast, and once they were up to their hips in the ocean they dove deep into the blackness, cake and all. [a hundred people gasping in shock and holding their breath. a moment later, exhaling in relief, laughing and clapping in delight] she's sitting at the circus. someone next to her is trying to sell her a car. on her other side, heidi sits with her gaze transfixed on the stage: mid-air, a boy dressed in red rides a unicycle across a tight rope. there is applause all around. then a pause. the tent rips open and the sky falls in. somehow everything has caught on fire. everyone is running for the exit. the elephants are stomping and trumpeting loudly. the clowns are crying. the air is swirling quick, thick with smoke and more substantial things: a gold watch and chain, a leather purse, cotton candy, a baton, silver the barn cat, a used automobile. all picked up by the wind and now in orbit, tent and all, as grace and heidi run in their white nightgowns, barefoot through the mud, the wet earth kissing their feet and sucking at their toes, fighting against the wind to eat them whole, too. a rush of noise, the twang of guitars, cymbals crashing all around them - grace falls to her knees and opens her mouth to a ladybird singing song - "no no," she exhales. the words float into the air and stay there a while, somehow stopping the storm and leaving everything hanging there, motionless in the sky. heidi stops, turning back to grace smiling and hollers, "come on, were going back to the sea! come on!" once again, she extends her hand and helps grace to her feet. they run past it all, the floating cats and cars, the mid-air unicycles and elephants. the beach is in sight, the moon glowing big and blue over the sea, and all she can hear are their panted breaths, their feet slapping against the black mush of the earth - out of the corner of her eye she catches a glimpse of pointy hatted silhouette standing on the hillside.... [heavy feet ascending a staircase. the sound of a door creaking] both eyes open. the oranges and reds and whites of the bedside candle are swirling into her vision, twisting in the air with the blackness of the room. something is terribly wrong. she hears a shriek that pinches her brain and tugs at her earlobes. it goes on and on. her heart sinks in her chest, falling slowly through a bottomless literbox of sinking sand. she tries to lift her head but can't, the skin is melting like wax off her face. the shriek is still ringing all around, now punctured by a new noise - the cries of a cat. her vision is blurred but she can make out the fuzzy apparition of the half-cat standing on her chest, snarling toothy and wicked, pawing at her face. she wants to scream but her lips won't move, her head is heavy, spinning and seething. her blood is rushing up to her brain leaving her body cold, frigid and immovable, her chest is swelling and erupting - when will this all end? she blinks and there sitting in the rocking chair in the corner is the pointy hatted silhouette, bony fingers knotted in her lap, black eyeless pits. her grey lips part and she sings slowly over the shrieking and crying with the solemnness of every sunkenship-tombed sailor forgotten at the bottom of the sea: Went back home, Lord, my home was lonesome/ Since my mother, she was gone/ All my brothers, sisters crying/ What a home so sad and lone
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ///FALL FROM GRACE (TINY LITTLE THINGS)\\\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
there's sparkling confetti everywhere. its in your hair, in your champagne glass, in your smile. we're grinning at each other across the loft balcony, city lights behind us, strings of glowing lanterns above us. inside: a trampoline full of balloons and the girls are jumping up and down and their shiny little skirts are flying up and the balloons give a little bounce to the beat, how is this all happening slow motion like the movies? you sip on your glass slyly, playing it off with wandering eyes and i smirk a one-dimpled grin and slide my hand across the railing as i make my way over. we bump elbows, casually. our eyes catch. "hi." we say it at the same time because we're speaking from the same mind. before we can laugh at our synchronicity 17 floors down a car syncs in tune to our beat and crashes into the face of the building. did we just do that? we grab each other as the balcony drops.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ///JULIAN LYNCH\\\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Smoke rising and twisting, folding into itself and back out unto unself. Floating into another crease of reality and bending back into everything else. Little folds in the air, on concrete walls, on black tarred pavement. You can peel it all back, wrap yourself up in it like wide stretches of wallpaper. Tear it off and see beneath the surface, another layer that once was. The perforations are invisible.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ///HEAD DRESS\\\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
four grizzly bears, with thick and wiry beards, flannel cut-off sleeveless vests, trucker hats, in a leafy courtyard beside an open-faced art gallery with paper-mached mexican day of the dead installation freshly attached to the walls - a gift from new york. the truck drivers are silent, too many days on the road, they've mistakenly walked on stage behind some waved out, psych band's equipment, the floor covered in cables and pedals and knobs, how could they understand? the drum kit full and tall on oriental rug, like a heavy metal band about to play in a respectable chinese businessman's house, family well-dressed for dinner, sitting on a stiff couch watching, honorably, unblinking and still. the grizzlies don't speak, they let the instruments do the talking. maybe they found all the gear in the back of their truck, which broke down here in austin, so they figured it be simpler to just learn how to play heavy psyche music than to go to a mechanic and get back on the road. they layered it on us thick that afternoon, as the sunlight fell from leafless trees to the old leaning telephone pole to the warped wood of the fence that enclosed us. they put us in the zone the same way 15 hours behind the wheel on the interstate 10 puts you in the zone. their songs were never-ending and entranced us with something deep that fumbled into our foreheads like morning falling from us as we wake. all of us, standing, sitting, red cups of keg beer in hands, transfixed for a half-hour eternity. when they stopped, us, the audience, we one by one awoke from the hypnosis as if a therapist had snapped his fingers and began pocketing his old watch on a shiny chain.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ///PIGEON RELIGION\\\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
walking straight into the bar, CHAIN DRIVE, blinking out and back on in-time with nothing, grime on the neon sign, hanging above the door like a cross. this church is damned. jimmy's only 20, they don't let him in. down the hall in brown-orange light of scummy bathroom, door broken off hinges and drunken red graffiti scrawled on filthy tiles, we discuss plans as we piss. brian and i try to strategize a way for jimmy to get in, but erik and kyle and chris say the four of them will just head downtown and meet up with other friends, no big deal. brian and i nod it off, zipping our flies back up and tell them we'll call them after the set. we walk back into nameless silhouetted bodies hanging around the stage like flies around cow shit. the band is setting up. stephen stands out like a beautiful thumb on a mangled dead body. his shirt is buttoned all the way up and tucked in, his glasses look new and are as wide as his smile on his pink chubby-cheeked face. i say hi and it takes him a minute to recognize me because i'm not from phoenix and also because i look a decade older in my big glasses and my goatee and my long, greasy hair. "brian!" he sets down his bass and gives me a hug. we tell each other its good to see one another and we walk to the bar to get a drink. i tell him i'm surprised to find him playing this kind of music on the side of his gentle and sweet solo singer-songwriter career. he says, sipping his glass and still smiling, "yeah! i just joined this band two weeks ago." he gets back to setting up and i wander through the dirty flies in the dark, finding brian smoking a cigarette drinking a pabst on the back porch. i see the back gate unguarded and mention we could've easily snuck jimmy in through there. the door to the bar opens with drunken laughter stumbling out and we hear a terrifying screech from inside escape into the night. brian throws his cigarette butt on the dirt and we rush back inside, i sense some sort of diabolicalness of the occult stewing as the screeching stirs on the stage. the four boys standing on the platform are already somewhere else in their heads, their bodies tilting this way and that, holding their instruments as if brewing a deep cauldron of dark sorcery noise. the red lights shining on their young and already-sweating faces go off.
we should be scared and bracing ourselves. lightning tears through the roof. we panic.
the floor is shaking, amps are quaking as infernal sounds are squeezed out of their abused and anguished faces. every body in the room is trembling, our eyes are witnessing a supernatural horror scarring images into our forehead with seizure-inducing flashes of light. some of the crowd step back, fearing one of these phoenix devil boys will snatch their soul. some of the crowd are ready to embrace this spectacle of death, they jump into the black and bleeding heart of the room, raising their elbows and flinging their bodies across the bar, bouncing off others. the band one by one steps off the stage, charging backward, now attacking us physically. the boy with the microphone possessed and screaming something ungodly is convulsing in the middle of the floor, unable and unwilling to control the fits of rage that are overtaking his frail body. this demented wind of noise blows east and west, washing over the crowd, like a monstrous tattered flag grounded in dirt, trying with all its might to rip off its pole and wrap us all up.
bottles of beer are knocked over on the bar counter, glass is breaking. stomachs are meeting elbows, knees are briefly introduced to thighs, i imagine everyone is screaming their heads off for one reason or another.
i blink.
a moment passes and there is a new buzzing in the air. another body is on the stage, hovering over the drum kit, which is still being brutally beaten by two unbreakable sticks. the buzzing grows louder and a blade is spinning, onto the metal sitting upon the kick drum.
i blink. there are sparks of red and orange and yellow leaping onto the crowd. ignition. i blink.
there isn't a moment of disbelief, because what sort of witchcraft would this be if it did not involve flint and fire? after what seems like a hellish eternity the band pauses for the next song and brian and i walk out unnoticeably quick, our hearts still beating fast. we step back into the night and walk up the street as a dozen others walk down the hill towards us, rushing to the noise. brian lights a cigarette and turns to me. "fuck." " that sounded like what a meth addiction would feel like."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ///TATSUYA NAKATANI\\\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
some sort of ancient asian mysticism, wisdom long lost, mercury in retrograde, horsehair rubbing against metal, controlled chaos of steel and metal rumbling, torrenting, volcanos erupting, lightning shattering window panes and freezing midair, he owns the bolt.