It was hard to hear exactly the words he said. Kept his head hunched down under his shoulder, under the music of the bar, under the people next to us, the drinks, ordering, yelling, laughing. The club was heavy with sound. Just a thick cloud of sensory over-load surrounded the two of us, so his Bogart-esque comments were less dramatic than they could've been. But I heard one thing, "it's done."
And I shook my head. Not to deny him, but just cause that's all I had. All I could give. Sometimes there are no words. Sometimes things are too big to hold much less comment on. And sometimes I get tired of retreading. 'We've been here before. This face. This voice. This argument. I've been here in Denver. In Nashville. I've seen it in Brooklyn and Toronto. I've fought this down the P.C.H. And back through the south, Albuquerque, El Paso, Dallas, Little Rock. So here in a small bar in Indianapolis. I'm not surprised.
He turned away. His head hovering over his half-drank pint.
You can know something is true with out understanding why.
"Alright."
Might be the last word I said before turning towards the merch table.
I slid behind the table and sat on a tub of t-shirts, watching people pass. Watching the main band play.
Phillip, the dude working the merch for the other two bands, was on a break. He was older, professional, and always on top of his job, but left whenever he had half a chance.
I was lost there alone, with no thought for a few moments until the band hit a song right in the middle of the set. A pick up from the song before, and the local lighting girl took it as a cue to try some things out.
And just as the bass came in to the song, there was a flash of red. Then blue. Then red. Swiping left and right. Pulses of white from the back of the stage coming at me with the beat of the drum. Flash. Flash. Flash.
I saw the face that spread continents and time. Haunting the spaces between flashes. Between the red and the blue.
White. Cut in shadow by hard lines. Red. Eyes hooded. Blue. Across both sides of his nose. Black. A thin top lip. White. The beard. Red. Staring cold. Blue. The finality of disappointment. The white flashes.
"Somethings you can't come back from."
Seemed like a voice from out of time. From another place.
"They go and go. Hiding behind you. Following close but always out of reach. They won't come back. It's done."
"And if I want to go?"
His lips immobile, but the words were there, "You can't. You can't be the same and leave it behind."
And then I knew, from a thought that was not my own, the words came to me.
"The I can't be the same. I must change with everything else. I'm not the same. From here. I am new."
-rene
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mood RIP Prince:
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