Can’t sleep. Can’t ever sleep, but tonight I’m particularly restless. New York City is where the Rat King Sleeps, far beneath the city, beneath the subways and the sewers.
Perhaps he sends scouts to the surface. Rooting around for cheeses and elderly cats, they are dragged to subterranean rat labyrinths to be tortured and beaten – information about the sunlit world is gleaned through such unscrupulous extractions.
It’s the Rat King who schedules the subway trains. It’s a sign of his unimaginably complete control over our every day Lives that he can reroute these troglodyte monstrosities. In DC the Metro runs swift and sure in everything but the worst conditions. A man has to jump on the tracks before they run amok.
But in New York, the subway trains are lead by breadcrumbs through their eternal night, and the Rat King’s minions wreak havoc with our human Lives by stealing and rearranging these morsels.
Tonight’s show went well. It was a shining moment in the darkness of this New York visit. The Orange Bear responded well to our presence, and we even sold a few CDs. Well below our quota, but it’s a start, I suppose. Despite unimaginable technical glitches (beyond the regular broken string, Heather’s guitar’s being truly capricious, the sound system distorted her tone beyond recognition, and we ended up running her through a bass amplifier instead). We made friends and were visited by old friends.
Zak Smith is an old face from Suitland High School – always the Anarchist’s anarchist, always the force of chaos, it was stupid how I rebelled against him rather than my parents. Somehow I fought his aesthetic every step of the way, and all through my Life, I’ve never been sure if we were best friends or arch-enemies.
And yet, seeing him again was really, really good. It seems the competition between us is finally over, and – well, he’s got a whole city to gift-wrap for me. I’m eager to see it.
In the meantime, I’m caught in the grip of New York insomnia, trying to work out the chords for “My Guitar Gently Weeps” in my head. Now THAT’s destined to be a fruitless task. Sigh.
