When you need to, you should really read “Steppenwolf”
“You make everyone want to read ‘Steppenwolf’,”
Erica jokes; as of this morning, she’s a few pages
deep into the preface. I’m really not trying to own
my loved ones’ time. I put on “Dance Yrself Clean”
all the time to make everyone listen to it, to make
myself listen to it, for effect. I don’t own yr love or
my own. When I was twelve I decided to spend my
time watching movies. By seventeen, I had left my
spirit where I knew it could be safe. These days my
heart is stuck within that Art-prism. My face reveals
very little, and Erica wonders, where are you, lover?
I am looking at Dionysian colors, life, the children
of the Sun; and the Apollonian plane where people
stroll sequentially, where editors cut and directors
yell, “Action!” In the best times, what I look at and
feel affirms my self, reminds me of childhood and
that eternal optimism. I’m addicted to the best times,
and I’ve been making a map of the muses. That’s
what this has all been about. And if I ever forget
I need only listen to ‘Person Pitch’ by Panda Bear.
But I know that I’m done forgetting, that I don’t
forget like Voldemort wouldn’t forget what his
Horcruxes are. What I need to learn is that old,
favorite artworks can’t receive my good, that the
children of tomorrow’s utopia need inspiration
like I need food and sex. I have been dutifully
living since I was twelve, latched onto the teet
of the beautiful and sublime, getting busy not
killing myself. I need to get busy helping Erica
and the kids not kill themselves, because they
are alive and awesome, and I know that, ’cause
I see it.