C’mere, kid. You wanna know the secret of existence? I’ll tell ya…
God is standing at the mouth of a cave, screaming “Hello!” into the darkness and pretending that the echoes of her own voice are different people calling back.
“
Looking up into the sky, he saw an albatross hanging motionless overhead in a way that reminded him of that Pink Floyd song.
Her style was something akin to a gutterpunk wandering into a paintball match.
Truth is boring, and when people clamor for honesty, what they are really asking for is convincing lies.
“They were soul mates,” he said, “if you believe in that sort of thing.” Daphne made a sour face that managed to indicate with tacit elegance that she did not.
Like a Casio keyboard with a case of arrhythmia…
He nodded his head as if following a beat while his speakers blared out a slow, meandering synth line with no discernible melody and only the most fleeting flirtation with rhythm. It was just random bleeps and buzzes, like a Casio keyboard that had developed a case of arrhythmia, its only conceivable virtue being a passing resemblance to a handful of video game sound effects half-remembered from their childhoods.
“Awesome song,” she lied earnestly. “I love this album.”
“Yeah,” Baz mumbled in a way that suggested he had neither solicited nor appreciated her validation. As if her opinion were just a mild irritant. “It’s not as good as their first one, though.”
“No, it’s definitely different,” Fiona quickly agreed. “But I still like it.”
She didn’t really agree. She didn’t think she’d even heard their first album. She wasn’t actually sure which band this was. She was just used to finding the right thing to say from contextual clues, even when she had no fucking clue what he was talking about.
No one ever truly creates something from nothing. There are no more original ideas. Even Shakespeare and Disney just retold other people’s stories. We’re just the first generation to acknowledge and embrace it. We are the remix generation. The sample generation. The ubiquitous pop culture reference generation. The generation that treats karaoke, air guitar, and cover bands as serious artistic pursuits.
“
His heart beating so hard he could feel the pulsations in his ears, he pushed through the museum door and emerged into the sunlight. It took every last scrap of self-control not to look back, break into a sprint, or scream out exuberantly.
They’ll never know.
She jams the earbuds in and cranks up her iPod. She feels the sharp pain in her ear, a pain that’s lately become too frequent and pronounced to ignore. She knows that she’s doing irreparable damage, that one day she may lose her hearing…
(she thinks about Marguerite’s voice)
…but at times like this, there’s no other kind of therapy that compares. “Everything in the universe tends toward decay.”I want to smell like celluloid. I want to be a mink-wrapped diva with nicotine jitters and a cognac growl. I want skin like pancake makeup so thick it cracks just like the wrinkles it’s supposed to hide.
“
Dressed in Natalie Portman drag, I pass you the ear buds like you’re a goyish Zack Braff and say, “This song will fucking change your life.”
He turned to me under the oppressive heat of the stage lights and said,
All I’m saying is it’s 2011, already the second decade of the new millennium, so how can we still not have a fifty-cent piece with 50 Cent on it? I mean, Fiddy’s been shot like nine times. JFK only got shot once.
Cue laugh track.
