ROADSIDE CLOUD HOLE

we left early for the world series on cable. the line up was a mild incessant stream of composed figures this year. the occasional cloud would cast its shadow on the brims of the players’ caps.  I noticed this when the vendor climbed higher towards me. I am perfectly content returning to a food source via memory of my experience in getting to the slopes, but I could feel sympathy by my stomach to those just below my altitude stricken with hunger. The bundled apparatus obscured some instance on the field which seemed to induce silence further below. It’s figure, hovering above mine, was frozen that inning. As feeding persists, the object approached me steadily. Finally, after glancing beyond reach, the vendor sat deeply aside his skeleton of hooks, and I could see the full effect of the clouds on the field coalesce at the crack of the ball.  With my dismissed instinct, I noticed the projectile had began the process of submitting to its organized controllers. Outside, a small hole in the clouds illuminated an estranged group across the valley.  I think, for a moment, we all wondered where our focus should be. As the peripheral awareness within expanded, the voids’ nervous paper edges reflected immediate photographs of the athletes eyes, or demanded there-in, remote attention, a comforting fuel for interest. The ball once again returned to the center of the field as the vendor returned from his make-shift seat. 

Last Friday, I lost my job. I was among sixteen to be confronted with the sad faces of executives in a closed room. I was nervous as they explained solemnly their economic situation. There was a moment when their decision crystalized in my mind.  Something unspoken but instinctive retaliated in me, and it started to rain, then flood. The vestige of my former company was floating away. Though I was still in the room, their voices seemed to wane until I was given paperwork, and the ship bottomed-out. In a way, I am writing these impressions because the situation was, in fact, incredibly boring but nonetheless emotional. After leaving the room, the workplace was a dark grey in its irrationality and impotence. I turned to my protégé, who had also been laid off. He said he was cut, and with that I began to see color again, with each sympathetic face. The words of encouragement came like a fungus from rotting soil. I felt afloat, I was smiling, someone even asked why I was smiling. It was such a strange feeling, words seemed no more than turbulence in light of the shift.  I guess that’s why several of us, including one executive, decided to go to the local bar at sunset. It became apparent the blow was decidedly to the head.

I am riding my bike in a quick circle, to fill the gap between basking in my room and meeting Barrett, who has an intense headache. He informs me his condition has worsened and opts out of seeing the performance. He even gives me an apologetic message for our friend. I begin to peddle faster, exerting a large sum of energy, thinking of another lap, wondering about the music I was about to hear…  I met Elliot after an awfully long trip to an unpleasant neighborhood. Turn the corner from the Restaurant where the waitress referred to limes as lemons, past the liquor store and it’s beggars, up the hill with trash at the bottom to the brick building with an outstretched awning extending like a tunnel to the cast iron gate. Feeling relieved, I opened the gate and accelerate to an upper floor to be confronted by many warm faces. The thought of sound danced among our eyes in a carefree exuberance - a latent homage to the artist who would elaborate on this thing we were all part of.  It wasn’t until the sound began that the walls and furniture started to reveal themselves, beckoning some to sit or just to reflect on the unusual instruments. The crowd assumed a formation which would not only privilege visual access to the musicians, but also was able to disseminate information about the musicians in the small, intimate setting.  Stories persisting on the fact that, we are in the right place and we want to know why.  And the music is so graceful it makes you wonder.  I would think that since Barrett was still fighting the headache that nearly hospitalized him, that he could take the battle to his home field. We have dinner and discuss the tornado spinning about his brain, the drought in my body. The veins in the leaves, the spaces we move through. On route to Bushwick, why are Elliot’s  performances in the most impoverished neighborhoods? The driver slows to read the numbers plastered to the squat canopies of the desolate street. “79” and we hesitate when we exit because the door is shrouded by the canopy of a party-supply store which most certainly is not open for business, but nonetheless unlocked. It feels secretive and stagnant inside and we are confronted with black couches against bare walls and ashtrays on stands. OK, listen and leave.  There’s a harp, maybe a bassoon, an enormous cello, and Elliot looks like he is playing a piece of Dutch modern furniture. The set is structured around Grimm’s Fairytales and we are elapsed in an elaboration of the Twelve Windows from “The Sea-Hare.”  The progression from the most keen first window, to the omnipresent twelfth, and our spirits are uplifted.  

Eames’ documentary short film, Powers of Ten, had it in sync until light speed.  10 to the 16th: “our perspective changes so much in each step now that even the background stars appear to converge.” the bond of narration, camera position, and visual semantics there of breaks past this particular threshold. representation takes its inevitable hold and the screen’s terms are redefined. in the wake of this limit, the investigation enters a new field. fantasy runs rampant, searching essentially for a form of depiction. it consumes in line before a peripheral institution diverts it towards the space of amusement . there, an intena outlined in falsetto speaks softly to the man with the cellphone cigarette sleight of hand. ‘takes a photo and inhales as a comet appears, shifting the frame. A slow descent finds bouyancy through the stratified fields which appear most homogenous. the screen goes white until an ignition from above stains the page.   a loose chain of threads extending from a cloud of eyes tropes towards the stains, scattered in water amongst the man.  He grabs hold, looking beyond to the overflowing tracks in the atmosphere above. The focus halves, and a diminishing word sends the man to sleep.