HYPOCRITE READER
Where Do Dream Babies Come From?
“In the beginning I would spend whole dreams counting the months backwards, trapped in the non-sense of it. Like the fearful dreams in which I’ve poisoned the baby by drinking, these dreams exist in a collapsed simultaneity: I have to recount the past in order to account for the future. I have to determine the origin in order to know what I’m birthing. “
“I write from a closet. (This is a metaphor.) This closet is comfortable, familiar, and safe. Let’s say it resembles my childhood bedroom—bright walls, wooden furniture, an abundance of tchotchkes. The tchotchkes are probably the overwhelming factor. In fact, the closet’s full of junk. Much of it is absently strewn about, but I know every report card, medallion, and baby tooth (I’m a hoarder of memories) and when I’m in there, I’m not ashamed of any of it. This is the world I know most intimately, both somewhere I can’t escape and the place I gratefully return to whenever I’m alone.”
“The moment of central music gathers a mass upnecked and bob perhaps like of the ocean’s buoy breath. Then I, breathless, as the closed door seals my mouth like a jar. Why do we crane necks to see machine musicians press keyboards on the stage? It has been a dream day. This is not unpackaged music, but for the atmosphere, and here he speaks to me, the lights he says are too much. It is the quality of vibration that accounts for the liveness of music.”