Showing posts with label kensington-maryland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kensington-maryland. Show all posts

Monday, April 25, 2011

Postcard from the ledge...

A friend of mine who also experiences what consensus calls schiz-like symptoms is back in the hospital.

I can't write to him anywhere or call him just yet so I might as well post my feelings here in this space:

T--

Did the sad pull of life get to you again?

Or was it the feverish frenzy of those wild madboy visions?

I've wondered about you.  Our madnesses are different.  Mine is no longer light and heat, it has been reduced to fire and smoke now.  Cool dark smoke has started to obscure the warm bright flame again.  I am in danger of growing hard and strange to myself again.

Your madness seemed to be about flash and sound and a deep riotous tunneling magic.  Please let me more about yours; maybe I can help you sort it out.

“They” (the loved ones and the unloving alike) could say that I am romanticizing this mystery.  But let’s try to forgive them; most don’t know what these seductive wondrous thrashing dreams are like.

Were your visions tinged with the divine like mine seemed to be?  This is a difficult dilemma in an age of numbness and unbelieving. I still can’t always figure out which spacetime I am in; the signals are all jammed with cold blue noise and the signs fade too fast now.

Were you seeking something purer and realer than all of this?  I was.  I saw and felt it, and now it is in danger of leaving me again.

Maybe I’ll spring up to Sheppard Pratt to see you.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Wednesday afternoon synthpop dirge...



The Magnetic Fields
“Either You Don’t Love Me Or I Don’t Love You”
The House of Tomorrow [EP] / Merge / 1999*

(* Originally issued as a 7” (1993) and as a CD (1996) by the Feel Good All Over indie label.)


Lyrics:

Lost roads and towns of which nobody’s found the name
All the children drowned and there’s no one around to blame
Lost roads and towns left to wilder in seed and snow
As the sun goes down that’s where I'd like to go

Every time you feel wonderful, baby, I feel bad
Either you don’t love me or I don’t love you, oh yeah
When you remind me of all the good times I feel sad
Either you don’t love me or I don’t love you, oh yeah

You and me in the waiting room of a disused railroad station
Scavenging for a few antiques, we’ll make a fortune just have patience
If we find an old signal box you can write your dissertation.

Every time you feel wonderful, baby, I feel bad
Either you don’t love me or I don’t love you, oh yeah
When you remind me of all the good times I feel sad
Either you don’t love me or I don’t love you, oh yeah


Postscript:  Coincidentally, I’ve been listening to this song while thinking about the impending conclusion of my ten-year marriage and haunting Kensington’s railroad station and antiques district as the sun goes down on West Howard Avenue.  And oddly, a friend of mine called up this afternoon and we talked a bit about his dissertation on rhetoric.

So right now my slice-of-life experiences resemble a tag cloud for a Magnetic Fields song lyric.  Swell.