She Lights Another Cigarette

She couldn’t fool me. 

Sitting on my porch with all of Bucktown in front of her, she tries to tell me that there are no more deep thoughts in her head. They’re all gone. She’s worried. She lights another cigarette. 

Sitting on my porch with the whole street in front of her, she says she doesn’t feel anything. She feels nothing; she knows how nothing feels. She’s worried. She lights another cigarette. 

 Sitting on my porch with the whole world in front of her, she tries to tell me that there are no more deep thoughts in her head. Here I am facing a brick wall. She has the whole world in front of her and I’m left with a wall. Should I believe her? She lights another cigarette. She’s not smoking these cigarettes. She’s lighting them to watch them burn: she keeps the fire going (the art of destroying things that destroy). She wanted to give up. She was worried. But she couldn’t fool me. She kept the fire going. 

Our words are cigarettes. We keep them going, we speak and talk // express and declare // state and proclaim to try to get every little microscopic thought that enters the orb that holds our brains and eyes, the orb which our ears straddle and whichever way our hair styles, to get what’s inside there, into the world, into the other orbs. That is why we write. Language is a living, breathing, smoldering thing. It is our duty to keep the fire burning. 

She stops looking worried. She lights another cigarette. 

Pitchfork Music Festival 2011

So here's the final review of the weekend on Windy City Rock.

Thursday: Cibo Matto at Lincoln Hall

Friday: EMA, tUnE-yArDs, Battles, Curren$y, Das Racist, Neko Case, Animal Collective.

Saturday: Sun Airway, G-Side, No Age, Gang Gang Dance, Wild Nothing, OFF!, the Radio Dept., DJ Shadow, Fleet Foxes

Sunday: Twin Sister, OFWGKTA, Shabazz Palaces, Ariel Pink, Baths, Kylesa, Toro y Moi, Cut Copy, TV on the Radio

Did He Hit His Head?

Did he hit his head?

God is in the details. But I was enveloped by bigger things. There were a few stars obscured by clouds. The City was beaming and it was Everything; the Lake was crashing and it was Nothing. My ears surrounded by seductive horns and triumphant percussion. His arms went straight up. He swayed to the right (he’ll regain his balance). He leaned to the left (oh shit). He went down. “Fuck, dude, are you alright?” “I’m fine, let’s keep going.” “Let’s just take a minute.” “Nah, let’s keep going.” 

Karl X Johan - Flames (uncompromised cut) from Emotion on Vimeo.

Did he hit his head?

We continued along, we caught up with the others. We took a new way, we found the river. The River. The intersection of Everything and Nothing. One becomes the other without schism: they flow into each other. The lights of our City are the stars of our generation; reflected on the water, shimmering, waving to us, it is the manifestation of starry night in 2011. 

“Did I hit my head?”

I am an atheist; God is in the details. So why did I feel the need to focus on one individual leaf of the trees that were zooming past, zero in, and try to grab it? I didn’t want a handful of leaves, I wanted precision: I wanted one.single.leaf. on every tree. And I was already plotting on the next tree before I had picked the leaf off the first. 

“Did he hit his head?”

I’ll never know that answer. My focus is backwards. Is my focus backwards? I should have paid more attention to the details. I hope it’s not too late. 

Perhaps the City is Nothing and Lake is Everything.