I fell upon these lines in the black notebook covering the recent Baltimore, Pittsburgh, NYC trip…
James Brown is Alive!. Oh, no, my mistake, it’s just the hotel cleaner, well fed and happy in the land of the free.
I pass the graceless pharmacy,
To where the deli groans with meat and bread
The coffee girls making noise…
“Can I call?”
“Please call”
“Why thank you so much”
…and the intrusive body builder with his moustache and his need to express his love of America by killing Jews, niggers and queers…
“Uh-huh. There you go. You like that, huh? Uh-huh”
…and, finally, in the record store…
“I ordered a new CD last week. Has it arrived yet?”
“Oh, Gosh. I dunno. What was that CD, sir?”
“It was, uh, called Coffee Shop Catharsis, I think”
“Aw, gee, I think you gotta mean “Nostalgia Whore””
“Oh really? Neil Young? Paul Simon? Freebird?”
“All the Sunday morning greats”
“Will it take me back 25 years to a room that smelled like a church and never got the sun – and where a blonde girl who never made it out of her teens lay back so softly on her grandmother’s eiderdown and allowed me to touch her?”
“Sir, you’re… you’re fading. I hear crackles in your vinyl, tears on your stylus. Do you want to buy this record, sir?”
“I… I’m not sure I can. Afford. It”
“Sir? Sir? You’re almost gone. You’re. Almost… Irrelevant”
