what is normal in the months after civilization falls in ruin? rome didn't disintegrate in one day, either,

but. this is important.

i've loved sara for a year now, since "interiors" and "sylvatica" came in the mail together last summer, since i'd put one or the other somewhere near the back of my cd changer's rotation and forget myself in some task, until "strand of pearls," left me wondering again what heaven i'd staggered into. i try as little as possible to describe one artist via another, from personal history i know that the foolish windmill charge of "q sounds like the industrial phase of act z except as a polka band" can actually come off as somewhat offensive should you have any sort of strong feelings about q or z. but: if you'll remember, that one very avant garde tori amos piece from the "winter" ep--"the pool"--that sense of drowning in voice, of a million broken words swimming in syllables through three minutes. spill it over two albums, you might be moving towards a shade of description. a shade, i mean.

plus with my last order she sent a mesh origami hummingbird. maybe that's a better shade of description, as i know even mentioning that "t" lady can be as damning a comparison for some as it might be encouraging for others (and it is not accurate a comparison at all but in this one lesser known experimental track from 1991? as much as i like/i've liked tori, i do get tired of how every female vocalist/musician gets compared to her eventually, either as a likeness or even, sometimes, as a "nothing like." it's unfair, a bit bigoted, actually. female musicians were making valid and original music long before her sway of influence, just as much if not more as they'll be doing so after she's wisped into the ethers. do we hold every male vocalist/musician against elvis costello?)

mesh hummingbird wings, in song.

*

maybe it's uncharacteristic for me to rail on about an album release but it's been a month it's been a month it's been a month. the first conversation today with my parents, and we only talk about my grandmother's pain and my grandmother's anger about the pain and how it is only getting worse, again, how did we go from staying more or less better to getting worse, again? so guess what we talked about first thing today? she's in the hospital, she's got a fever, she's signed another DNR release. if my parents go on vacation, they'll be needing me to tend to grandma's cat. back and forth to the emergency room all month with this foot surgery she should not have had. and there have been problems with caregivers and there are problems with my father trying to do the duties of a caregiver along with his fulltime job and i don't even know that i should be talking about this, here, but it's all we talk about here, first thing, last thing, most things in between,

when we are not alone in the kitchen with brother, trying to make tea. i love brother, but what brother is learning far too well is to talk to people like no other people are actually in the room. there are people in the room with him, you know, people who love him and want to support him, people trying to sort through and prioritize the mostly junk-drawer ramblings he offers which might, somewhere, contain a jewel, that lost piece of the puzzle you'd been working on in the hall, the little chain that connects the two pieces of your favorite candleholder. except it's too much to prioritize, i am usually left drained and snippy, my candleholder still unconnected. today my two conversations consisted of: grandma infection grandma worse grandma angry, followed up with brother's utter delight at the fact that the late night temperature low in phenoix was three degrees higher than our highest noon high. also he has to figure out how to store his game informer magazines, he's been getting them for six years, you know, and they don't fit in the cabinet anymore even though he likes the cabinet and he'd like to store them in something like the cabinet but he doesn't know quite what yet. also he doesn't know if the follow up to his favorite videogame in the universe, chrono cross, has been taken off the table entirely. maybe it's for the better if it has. he's not sure how he feels. also, did you know he's spent two months working on the tenth volume in his greatest hits collection? yes, of course i did, because he told me this three times yesterday and one or two times the day before that. this is all i talk about. correction: this is all they talk about. i do not talk. i crumble away, wisp into the ethers, not even a voice, not even heavy footsteps down the hall.

so you're saying, speak up? so you're saying, make that same noise yourself? can i want quiet? is it allowed in this culture, anymore, do we legislate for quiet? no, perhaps silence is too much of an affront to capitalism. people might realize they don't need to have their damn cellphones on every fucking second of every fucking day, some of them might realize they don't need cellphones at all, if they surrender to ten minutes of silence now and again. what can i tell you? i'm tired of the volume. i'm tired of droning out. i want quiet. i want to not talk, i want to not hear talking, i want still, i want alone, just for a bit, just for a little bit?

maybe this is why i've become so obsessive, lately, about controlling my sonic environment. why i get so angry when the jliat cd gets droned out by the oscillating fan. why loud voices at swallow falls make me bite at the air. maybe this is why i write so dreamily about sara ayers albums, because only 10, only 11 months ago i could put her "interiors" on and there was nothing else in the world with me, just this one sound, silence in song. no one knocking on the door, no one telling me what went wrong now, no one pushing that boundary just a little bit further, you didn't need this hour alone, did you really? what can i even do about it, i'm sorry, but what can i do? and what's the quiet, what's quiet, when you could be filling it with sound, filling it with something wrong?

maybe i'm not coherent.

did i need to be coherent?

i'm so tired. i'm too tired.