Scott Garson
A Note on the Lyrics
Really the song isn't mine anymore once it is released and played in cars and stores and auditoriums that are part of what you will remember as part of your life, which—obviously, I am not there, so I cannot guess at the shape of your mind as you listen to me in the cereal aisle, though yes, what you hear is my voice—unalloyed (Vocoder? I don't think so)—and yes, I wanted, in a way, to give you just that variable you prize in whatever you hear. The song is a bridge. You know that. Duh. But not steady: a bridge that each time—and second by second—remakes itself, recombines, and since my part is done, it's all you, basically, which is just what I started out saying: in bedrooms, on truck-stop gas-station speakers, on headphones, the song is yours; so I would shut up, I would not even say anything were it not for some people—why bolster their names?—who do what they can to get you to think that the song is a cipher, over you head; therefore, you need them to experience it in the right way—which, hopefully you know, is bullshit, even if those espousing the view feel helpful and kind as they speak: because the song isn't theirs; the song is between you and me; and if that's not enough—if you want to hear more—I'll tell you this final thing: I'll have you imagine me writing the song at the bus stop, or on my front steps, with crust in my eye, with fog at the base of my skull; but my hands find their way in the strings, and now you are here: the fact, the wildness of you as a person—and me, both of us: because the moment has come undressed. This is what I was intending, all right? You and I, in the swell of that rhythm guitar.
A great water. The whites of our eyes.
Atlanta Gymnopédie
Oh the glare of apartment blocks on a day when the truck will not retrieve these bags of recycling. The truck already came! We did what we could to stuff its hydraulic shudder back into our dreams, which kept starting over without reaching the natural end of whatever they meant to show. And now this cereal bowl. How to clean—how to eat from it? I'd be a rich man if I could seize the molecules that skate my eyes in this infected light.
Asheville Gymnopédie
They had the ballgame on the console radio and they remembered his name. "Mr. Whitmore," they said. And it was towards evening but still quite hot so they had the door open. When he lay himself back in the chair, the corner of the page of the month of June took off in a movement of breeze. "Not long," he told them. "Just got in." And he let out his breath, closed his eyes. The barber's hands were small and his fingers were soft at the rough of his throat. "He never did, he never did!" the barber was telling someone. Later, when his eyes came open again, black combs were turning and touching each other within some kind of liquid.
Oklahoma City Gymnopédie
For those whose concerns are too ungainly to speak I light this candle. For my sister and her child at the Carlyle Motel—even though my house is open. For my Daddy, who'd scorn this mention of him, who'd crush the little worm of shame before it got to his head. He's old, he's old. Yes, brother, but he is alive. He stands on the boards of his porch before dawn in shirts that smell like cumin. For him, and for all of you listening, I position the flame like so.