sidebrow
Retarding Passages in Exchange
for a Meager Plot
  • Project: Ghost
  • Project: Page 24

I cried the first time I heard him sing. Very softly it destroyed my reasoning. The pen itself resists writing down such voluptuous nonsense. I become a dull stuttering scholar. Rays of language answer whether I want them to or not. 



I had funky primitive equipment. Everything was mono. All of the birds talking at once. The vacuum cleaner motor had a drone, so I played along with that: 



Dearest __ (a single upper case initial inscribed on page 24 — feathers optional)


We are either going to dissolve as a human race or we are going to break through into a new understanding of what it is to be a human being.


I can picture a whole opera in my mind. A gentle puppet show traces the origin of a few ideas. While peeping through little holes an audience rids itself of itself. Reflections in bent aluminum foil watching painted replicas enjoy the tactile thing. 



I am indifferent to railways and common noises. Their vibrations create a weapon inside me. I recite by heart the daily headlines to reduce their effectiveness. I can’t determine the points of pressure against my skull. But in the dark I can search a room for a small pair of scissors or even a needle and find them. It was a huge room I remembered from college. People asleep in hammocks who didn’t wake up in time. Lifelong habits. The vividness of a bird about to be eaten by a cat. Large dragon-like shapes that sit beside me when I play the notes. Insects of all sorts come out of the piano bench. They remind me of the old dances. I watch my hands move over a black and white surface in the shape of child. He’s made out of bathroom tiles. His face like slips of paper. He makes me kiss my own arrangements. 


This list represents one possible order for Ghost entries as curated by Sidebrow:

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