Epilogue
Last call. The leaves have turned their last fall. The atomic clock in the kitchen has stopped. I empty the medicine cabinet and padlock it forever. Pick up the receiver and leave it off the hook, the dialtone echoing its flatline into the dim archives. The television now shows only live aerial footage from Beirut on every channel. I unplug it from the wall socket which sparks in my hand and shocks me. With a watergun I spray the remaining light bulbs. Glass ruptures and sprinkles onto my childhood. I hit the street as purple hailstones fall from the sky. I catch one in my left hand. It is lukewarm. Four sleek black stretch hovercrafts rove the landscape festooned with rims that keep spinning when they touch down on street corners bursting with moldy desires. I notice that some people have grown fins, some tails. The moon is so close I can see pimples on his scowling cheeks. He has a green glare. California is drowning, flailing and grasping for the last time onto the Hayward Fault, bucking and buckling. I ride the land wave that roars toward me. The San Andreas is three feet untied and widening, the tide three feet high and rising. I fold my skin inside my wallet and traverse the terrain unsheathed. In my jacket pocket I feel the weight of organs that were not there before. Their heaviness comforts me. At the corner of Lakeshore and Nevermore, I step east where the sky is sizzling. I materialize in a grove of redwoods that jut from a rocky outcrop spaced equidistantly. At the northwestern giant I gouge a crescent with my hand and remove three oblong seeds that resemble shark’s teeth. I place one in each kidney and one inside my liver for safekeeping. Discarding my contact lenses I peer from the ancient treetop at the tumbling mountains, beatbox along with the Max Roach on my eardrums and await the next world...
-D.M.
(from my book Cloudbank Robbers, Charms Dealers, and Things of that Nature
to be published when the time comes)
This post and mini-mix: simply an exercise in imagining what the the end of the world would look and feel like. Heads that were around in the Telegraph Era (circa '93-'96) will remember Eclipse...he goes by Walt Liquor now. I actually saw him & Karma perform that track at a house party in West Berkeley that True Justice was djing in like '95. By the way, I ripped that from cassette yall (see above-thus the sound quality), and the feedback at the beginning is meant to be part of the song.
2. "Dandelion Dust" - Joi (EMI, 1997..but LP was shelved)
Couple years later when Kirb put me on to Joi's 2nd album masterpiece Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome, I recognized the same loop but this time it was blazed up with Fishbone guitars. I'ma put "Joi Mix" on my to-do list right now.
3. "Da Art of Storytellin', Part 2" - OutKast (LaFace, 1998)
Then comes this Aquemini monster...there's few OutKast cuts where Big Boi outshines Andre but this is one of them..and Dre killed it too! Too many quotables.
4. "Last Day" - Teedra Moses (TvT, 2004)
Last but not least, another LP masterpiece is Teedra's Complex Simplicity. One of the most slept-on R&B/Soul vocalists ever, but more and more I find out how many people have been bumping that album and waiting for her to come back out. Gotta end with the female perspective on the end of the world...beautiful. 1neLuv.
//REWIND
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