It starts off easy. I follow along and sink deep into the dead mans words and story that I wish I could have written. Or maybe I’d be happy just to be as widely read as he is and always shall be. It doesn’t really matter either way. I move through a page and realize that I forgot to put on a record. I get up and have already decided on another dead man’s words and sounds to be the background of my literary escape. Crackle needle spin into a harsh voice deep and solid and sometimes hard to articulate. Twangy strings plucked and stroked with hard soul and Deep South rhythm. The kind of shit only a second-generation slave boy could pull off. In my own music I write and play I use barbaric stomping and head thrashing to get my blood pumping. I know the old gods. Respect them deeply. But would never try and pull the wool over the phantom eyes of their legacy. I would think most of them might get that. I might even get a nod for the effort.
Swimming through the words flowing like violent river currents pull me back into the tale. A laugh or smirk or smile or stone-faced stare control my expressions. I am soon right there in the person place and thing I read. Pages after page I can personally relate or befriend some character I know in real life. I can see that I have been there or close to what authors project. The simple idea of all art and how any one individual can get their own relevance from the artist’s expression. I learn new shit I hope to never find and see things that I have not had the pleasure or become shocked at the relevant coincidence of a mutual experience. I look up for one second and one of my cats catches my eye. I watch him lay on the floor licking a cat toy and rubbing his cheeks along side of it. It’s an informal after midnight face wash. It makes me wonder about instinct and human denial of natural law. How people are forced to live beyond their time of death. The grim reaper has been sued, laid off, criticized and been written off as obsolete as doctors sustain “life” under all means no matter the quality or dignity left in the fleshy shell. I will never let myself get there. I’d rather die by my own standards. People used to die at home now they die in sterile hospitals among strangers without dignity or privacy.
I am falling back to the pages and move onto another chapter. Short stories are nice because they require less responsibility and can be finished with more waiting in the wings for next time. It feels like hanging out with a close friend where you can’t get the words out fast enough because you are both spitting prose and picking each others brains in full relation to the next level. I am close to so many people I have never met, never will meet nor would ever want to meet alive or dead. This is perfect. It’s like the close relationship of two roommates one deaf and one mute and their careful choice of what to say. There’s never too much bullshit to worry about because communication is limited and direct and understood or possibly already written. These are authors forever in time waiting to be known by the next idiot who can afford the cover price.
I need this escape. I need those dead words so full of life. It keeps me sane. Having such a close relationship with text written 40 years before I was born… That blows my mind. In punk rock (my categorized culture and lifestyle) we always say “now go make your own”. Go out and live what you have read about. You can’t write a book if you never did it. Why do you think there is an over saturation of modern garbage books, films and music? Maybe because no one can hitchhike anymore? No one can tough out life without a solid career. Too many humans only exist as a piece of shit robot that contributes nothing but self indulgence. No one can find their purpose anymore and it’s due to over saturated over nurtured politically correct over educated unexamined self existence. I will die knowing I tried and will probably fail in miserable misanthropic poverty and hopelessness but I will know that I understand my reason to stay alive. If the world ever gets it or not, fuck them.
I sit among the cats, one now on my lap and one on top of the chair that I employ as eyes pass by the words of wisdom through the filter of self realization and comfort. Sanity within insane stories that make perfect sense to me. My religion and my hope. Relevant and meaningful even if no other eyes open another copy of this. I read until my eyes grow weak. Soon I will complete this current odyssey. Move onto another binded packaged text and so on and so forth. My escape is their truth. It is all for me and anyone else open minded enough to seek out this place of solitude and education. I never learned this shit in school. You have to find it one your own.
CVW
