There is no moral to this story at all. But there’s a point. There’s always a point. I had forgotten, that first bar. That first one. I forgot that shambling philosopher who burned down villages and lamented his accomplishments to anyone that would buy him a beer. I caught a whiff though, somewhere, recently. Some cheap IPA too dark to see and too heavy to drink. It smelled of waves of mutilation. And then, bam! It was there. He was there. The dark haired woman that served him too, tattoos spiderwebbing down her arms. The cook behind the bar, dressed like a ninja, in yellows and black, he was there too. Hat backwards, eager to get off work and have a drink, smelling like grilled meat, which, for what it’s worth, smelled pretty good. Ready to rip out somebody’s throat with an extra-dimensional alien he held in his dead palm. He gestured to me. “Get over here!”
The stage was piloting some cheap acoustic held by some old man playing the same old Kenny Wayne Shepherd tunes you would totally jam out to driving down the interstate but never when ya pulled up next to somebody in traffic. Christ, I’m thirty-six! What if somebody saw me air-drumming! Scandalous!
These thoughts, these memories, these songs came fully formed, tore through the top-level consciousness like it was just the calf of a god damned god ripped open by a woman with an aegis and a feminist agenda. She took no prisoners. She was no goddess of mercy. She listened to Iggy Pop. She was a Principality. She loved Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and was reading Madame Bovary, and she had some time to talk. To turn it into music.
I am no minimalist. I don’t take my cues from Carver and Hemingway. I wish I did sometimes. I love the stylized nature of two-tone iPhone commercials with simplistic EDM playing in the background of an imaginary store. I love the things those things imply. I love the stylistic verve they offer. I love The Beatles. I want to buy them. Set them on my shelf with the Ghostbusters and Jesus if Jesus were a bowler.
But I look around too much. I see too much. It’s a wonder it doesn’t burn out the capacitors. There seems to be very little in little to move the soul, too little in minimalism, at least through my personal capabilities, at least in the fashion I’d love to maintain. But mountains move with but the tiniest pebble and all, so to each their own.
But ah!, there’s just too much to write down. I’m far too enamored with the beauty of the philosophy. Too far gone. I mean, what kind of goddess patrons a concept that eventually votes her off the island, out of existence? A nihilist Donny. A woman with a death wish. These are the things Minimalism never cared about. Concepts far too abstract, concepts too delighted in the whimsicality of abstract thought. Such is the significance and insignificance of the inner impulse.
We are a collection of all the impulses. All the drum beats. David Bowie once did a cover of “God Only Knows,” an “arrangement of an old California folk song.” (Elvis Costello, circa 2012) He smoked in a trench coat. He was the anti-culture’s answer to John Wayne. He dressed in spiderwebs too. David Bowie was the man.
Like so many other shots with my typical parabolic blast radii, this thought has a landing zone too.
I leave too much to assumption. I make too many assumptions. That affects my writing. Have you ever been writing and used a word and known that you use that word all the time and thought “I don’t care. I’m still using it; I love that word!” Lilt is one of those words for me. I could (could) tell you the why. It’s got to do with space-faring civilizations and Venusian gangs and a scene I’ll never get out of my mind of a man about to die in an apartment building covered in snow, talking about a music box and this beautiful tune this beautiful woman used to sing in a bar he loved. “A strange, lilting tune…” he said. He played saxophone. How do I still remember that? Why did that scene do it, trigger such a strong impression? Seems an odd thing, for a man to be thinking of happy music as he bleeds out, I guess. Maybe the contrast is the only reason, the juxtaposition, maybe that’s all.
The point is this. That specific memory holds an infinite significance to me, but not to you. And across broad spectra too, not just isolated to that introspection relayed above. That was merely the first time the word resonated with me. Not the first time I heard it. Not the last either. But it was the first time it became mine. I imagine that was what they were going for. They wanted people to remember it, to remember the significance. And so it attached itself to me as such in such a way. Not happy at all! It followed me around, like so many others – desiderium. Apophenia. Synesthesia – asking if it’s the right time to apply its nature. Sometimes it is. Sometimes we sit down for coffee and we suss it out and figure out why this scene is right for lilting or why lilting really isn’t a good fit for this company.
The takeaways from Gardner’s work are myriad. But more important than any individual punctuation or correction, this real lesson was made belligerently clear from the beginning. The lesson is to play. Go play. Gardner says “go play goddamnit! Right now!” “MINE DEEPER!” Who cares if ya uncover a Balrog.
We’d do well to listen to the man. He knew his shit. Just make sure to bring a wizard like Gardner into the deeper wells. Wizards can kill demons. And you could do worse for guides through the spine of the world, or the mind.