Artificial Light

by James Greer

  The extent of the wreckage from Kurt’s death has yet to be measured across the span of the rock continuum, but the plain fact is, nothing will ever be the same again. In no way is Kurt’s death anything other than a “senseless tragedy” (these words themselves are senseless); rather, his gesture was the inevitable tragic result, in one form or another, of our relentless insistence on larding random manifestations of individual genius with more sociocultural weight than they can bear. That said, genetic predisposition and physical frailty probably had more to do with Kurt’s decision than any cultural factors, all burbling about the burdens of fame notwithstanding.

  In the end, though, even Kurt bought into the lie of his own importance. His death contradicts every song he ever wrote, every note, and that contradiction is the exact point we are trying to focus on, even though it keeps slipping out from under our fingers, even though no matter how many words we spill onto the perfect white sheet of his funeral shroud, nothing will keep him from dissolving, over time, into an imperfect assemblage of fading memories. His music, we’re told, is the enduring, important part of the man, but that consolation is so utterly, ineffably weak. No cliché can encompass the full measure of Kurt’s death. A tragedy this tall eats clichés and belches them like cinders from its fiery heart. However noble or pure, Kurt’s suicide was a devastatingly pointless act. We cannot make sense of it. Things are different now. Things will always be different. Despite that most of the blather about Kurt’s music completely misses the point, both dehumanizing the tragedy of his suicide and inflating the sociological import of his art: Something has changed.

  We woke the next morning and went to meet Henry, who doesn’t drive, and drove our car out to Albion, about twenty minutes from Henry’s place in Northridge. It was a beautiful day, a cloudless spring day, the sun was almost warm and a number of the guests gathered outside on the lawn, behind the long hedgerow that separated us from the crowd of photographers, reporters, and mourning fans just on the other side, thronging the street. We heard there were special high-sensitivity microphones planted in the hedges, so we were careful what we said, but what we said wouldn’t have been very interesting—we mostly talked about trivial stuff so as to keep our minds off the reason we were there. There were a lot of bad jokes, as we recall. We made most of them. The most notable thing, maybe, was walking out onto the back lawn and seeing someone who looked exactly like Kurt—so much so that you involuntarily did a double take, thought you were seeing a ghost. On closer inspection, the ghost turned out be …

  … a ghost. We know how that sounds, and lacking the expertise necessary for accurate extranatural classification, maybe we should just call what we witnessed an Unidentifiable Phenomenon and leave others the job of definition. But whatever the thing was, it looked just like Kurt, even down to the cigarette burning in his/its fingers, from which he/it would take short frequent nervous puffs. We sat down, cross-legged, in imitation of the way the U.P. was sitting, and didn’t say anything for a while. The U.P. didn’t even look at us for several long moments.

  “Trip,” sighed the U.P. in acknowledgment of our presence, after some time, exhaling a thin cloud of smoke. We looked closer. You could see right through the vaporous stuff comprising the U.P.’s form. The hedge, for instance, was visible through his shirt sleeve, the blue sky through his head.

  “Kurt?” we managed.

  “How you been?”

  “Fine. Kurt?”

  “I’m not really Kurt, of course. I’m not not Kurt, either. I’m a Kurt. One of a number of possible Kurts, is a good way to put it.”

  “But you’re still dead.”

  He nodded wanly, made a trigger of his finger and thumb. “Bang.”

  “Mind if we ask a question?”

  “That’s why I’m here, Trip. Fire away,” said Kurt.

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Do what?” He considered for a moment. “That’s a ridiculous question.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, don’t be. I overreacted. I’m not used to dealing with finite intellects.”

  “You mean because humans aren’t capable of grasping all the stuff available instantly to the immortal mind?”

  He looked at us like we’d gone insane. “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing. So. Why’d you do it?”

  “You’ve been working for a long time on a book, right?

  We talked about this once. About Orville Wright.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, the reason you’re working on that book is related to the reason I killed myself.”

  “Okay. What? Because the act of writing about something destroys it or freezes it and prevents it from becoming?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “The problem is liminal, basically. The limits of everything: the world, our perception of the world, everything. The book you’re writing?”

  We nodded.

  “Don’t write it. Seriously. Stop. Burn what you’ve got, or otherwise dispose of it so that no one ever sees. If you write that book, you become visible, like me. Which is exactly the opposite of the point.”

  “You don’t look all that visible to me.” We pointed at a robin pecking around the lawn, easily seen through the fabric of Kurt’s jeans.

  “The proper aim of living is disappearing by degrees. Everyone has to find his own way to disappear. For me, in my circumstances, I took the only available route.”

  “No regrets?”

  “Infinite regrets. But that’s not any of your business. You better go now. The wind’s picked up and it’s getting cold.”

  He was right, too. About the weather, anyway. We decided the circumspect thing was to keep our encounter under wraps, not even tell Henry, who would have thought we were joking, and would not have appreciated the joke.

  But: no joke. Everything we described here actually happened, and exactly the way we described. Were that not true, were we making this incident up or embellishing an actual incident or anything in between, there would be no point in writing anything, ever.

  Suddenly we’re just really, really tired.

  If you could see us right now, maybe you’d understand. Our place is littered with empty Coke cans and cigarette butts. We started smoking when we quit drinking, mainly because we couldn’t stand the idea of being completely vice-free. We smoke Camel non-filters after a brief flirtation with Pall Malls. Also there’s a bunch of candy wrappers, mostly Rice Krispie bars with a few Hershey’s white chocolate. The shucked husks of pretty much everything we’ve ingested to sustain ourself through the writing of these pages thus far lie on the carpet around us. We don’t have the energy to do anything but write until exhausted, climb into bed, get back up, start writing again. We think we’re afraid that if we stop we won’t start again, because that’s a pattern in our life. Our follow-through is not great. We’re running out of supplies, but going to the store in any organized way is out of the question, and none of the girls who occasionally stop by to see us at 3:30 in the morning drunk out of their minds have shown any inclination to shop for us. There’s one sleeping in our bed right now. She has cranberry hair and the dress sense of an autistic. On the plus side, she doesn’t seem to mind when we pace from living room to bedroom and back, muttering, “I hate myself and I want to die,” which was a rejected N—album title for the follow-up to N—, but that’s not why we say it over and over like a mantra without meaning either end of the sentence.

  Right now we just want to know why Gail has not called. We’re trying not to fear the worst, but fearing the worst is our specialty, and when we have a bad feeling we’re about fifty-fifty on being proved wrong. Which is not very comforting when we’re in the middle of the feeling. The only thing to do is keep working to the point where we’re too exhausted to worry. Unfortunately, when you’re exhausted pretty much the only thing you can do is worry. Or listen to music. Or both. Right now the song playing is “The Falling Down Show” by Droplet, at very low vo
lume so as not to wake neighbors or the girl in our bed. It’s an okay song, but has little effect on our emotional state, which is probably for the best. Do you know that feeling where you’re simultaneously uplifted and depressed by something, usually a song? You’d think such a thing was impossible, or ought to be impossible because it’s not fair. Say you hear something undeniably, ecstatically great, like Samuel Granta’s “In Time,” probably the most romantic pop song ever committed to vinyl, back when people used to commit things in general, and to vinyl specifically, which never happens anymore. At first you sit rooted, immobile, the adrenaline from the aroused emotion paralyzing your limbs and speeding your breathing and heart rate. Doesn’t it seem like the world for that moment has potential, that everything isn’t necessarily going to hell via handbasket, and all you need is love, etc.? Then the song ends and you’re left with a hopeless aftertaste, which we think has two causes: 1) you’re worried that your reaction to the song was overblown, unrealistic—in other words, that you were duped by the skill of the song’s writer/performer into believing in the viability of something (i.e., the possibility of perfection on earth) that you don’t or at least shouldn’t, for sanity’s sake, believe; and 2) the song, if your reaction isn’t overblown but appropriate, raises expectations so high for what ought to be true that the clash with the inevitably imperfect real, confronted at the song’s conclusion, immediately destroys the thing the song sought to foment. Then, what’s worse, you listen to the song too many times in a row, hoping to revive that initial moment of connection and inspiring spirit, but all that happens is you wear out the song’s welcome, and it loses its power of effect.

  These are the perils of a life lived through music, though. We know that the majority of the world is not like us, and live their lives tone deaf and soundless and perfectly happy. We further realize that the non-listening portion of the world considers the listening minority immature and childish and we agree completely. We are not a full participant in the human conversation because part of us is always distracted, always listening for the perfect note, the one maybe contained in the next song, or the next, or overheard in our dreams. We don’t ever expect to hear the note, and we don’t know what would happen if we did, because (you’ll have seen this coming) it’s the hunger for the note that’s important rather than the note itself. But the wonderful thing about an imperfect world is that as long as you can find a way to sustain your hope (a matter of being able to recognize hopeful things, which is not as easy as you’d think), you will keep looking for perfection even in the face of undeniable, and often tragic, evidence to the contrary.

  The sexiest sound in the world to us is the sound of a woman breathing. “Edicule” is a song by The Grin that features the sound of a woman breathing over the final few seconds of music. This is therefore the sexiest pop song we can think of right now. We’re reminded because it’s very late at night, or very early in the morning, and we can hear the sleeping girl in our bed in the next room breathing. The morning has lightened to the color of grime, and the sparrows who inhabit the middle-aged ash tree outside our bedroom window are awake, and singing. We have written all night, again, and very soon we will stop and crawl into bed next to the girl. She won’t wake up because we don’t want her to, because, like a perfect song whose conclusion both contains and betrays the secret of life, her breathing holds the rhythm of our secret life.

  Notebook Sixteen

  Mary, after some time adjusting her wig in the bathroom mirror, and finally removing it altogether, decided she could no longer remain in hiding. He might be there, he might have moved on, but the obviously prudent assumption, she thought: still there. You put a face on, you compose a face, like an artist composes a picture, to convey a feeling to the viewer. Is that right, the viewer? The watcher. Watchman, what of the night?

  Trace of crying jag remained around the eyes, but only if you were looking, and who would be looking for that? Not when I’ve got the unkempt promise of sex.

  She pulled open the bathroom door and stepped into the tumult and visions of the bar. Of course he was there, but much to her relief, Mary saw that Michael was deep in conversation with Trip Ryvvers, and Kurt C—, and Henry Radio. She was able to pass that table without more than a tiny smirk directed at Kurt, who looked up and smiled briefly in response. No one else did. That’s deliberate, thought Mary. I’m a distraction, a frivolous girl whose only possible use is entertainment. Michael has an excuse, but the others are older and wiser and wary of powers of manipulation in my hips. And I’m supposed to feel how? Never consider that, because you don’t consider feelings of an object, like a lamp or a table.

  She made her way to the next booth where Joe and Amanda had been joined by Fiat Lux. She smiled and slid in next to Joe, who was still preoccupied with his drink.

  “Hey,” said Fiat. “You okay?”

  “Just powdering my nose,” said Mary.

  Joe Smallman sneered into his drink. “I wish,” he said.

  Fiat looked at Joe, bemused. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You wish,” countered Joe.

  If I was plain like Fiat, thought Mary, would I be happier. She moves freely from group to group, doesn’t have to hide her brains to avoid scaring boys. But at the end of the day, or more accurately, at the end of the night, nowhere to go but home, alone. Too scary.

  “Kurt says we should all come to Albion,” said Fiat.

  “Well, since he says it.”

  “Joe, you don’t have to go. You can go home and you and your bad attitude can have nice game of—”

  “I’m going,” interrupted Joe. “Nobody said anything about me not going. I was making a sarcastic comment, which is not against the law.”

  “When I rule the world, it will be. You’ll have to pay a fine of three sincere compliments.”

  I fear the names of things, thought Mary. Afraid if you put a name to the thing you somehow reduce its power. Or yours. Nothing more moving than discretion. Desperation bores me. Dayton reeks of desperation. Everyone tells everyone everything, different every time. Secrets fly through the ether, piled ironies topple under the weight of disclosure.

  “Anyone know what time it is?” asked Mary. “Is it near closing?”

  “I think maybe around midnight,” said Amanda.

  No one in this town wears a watch. Don’t need to know what time, might as well be like farmers in fields judging by the sun. Sun goes down, go to bar. Sun comes up, go home.

  Jacket Michael was wearing. Must be new. Midnightblue and shiny, matches his nail polish, matches his personality. I see everything that’s important about a person in a glance. The way his body tensed in response to my approach, very slightly. Trip in his over-large T-shirt and sweater, Henry Radio in his untucked work shirt. Older guys who think it’s a trick to hide their bellies. As if we’re as superficial as them. Only sometimes.

  Then Kurt in plaid shirt hunched over, the trailing ends of his brown pea coat draped from the back of the chair he’s pulled up alongside the booth. Blond hair in lank strands pushed back behind his ears, dimpled square jaw badly shaved, weirdly out of proportion. His smile is so kind.

  The Hive had grown progressively more crowded as midnight approached, a phenomenon known as “college creep” among the regulars. Behind the bar, Billy had been joined by his late-shift partner, Rob Roy, an amiable bear-sized man with wire-rimmed glasses that gave his fleshy face a focal point, and further softened his potentially intimidating features. In contrast to Billy, Rob Roy’s disposition was unflaggingly pleasant, no matter how crowded the bar area grew. He and Billy performed an intricate dance behind the counter, their shoes protected against the slick floor by rubber mats perforated in geometric segments to allow beer froth to flow freely underfoot while they worked.

  Fiat knew, which means that either Joe or Amanda told her, thought Mary. Most exciting thing to happen here all night, probably. An electrifying performance! I was on the edge of my seat! This one will run and run! And
why was Amanda so nice to me, and why is she so fidgety, like there’s a dragon crawling up her throat to breathe fire on us all. Welcome, dragon. Welcome to the berthplace of aviation. Due to whether conditions, we have been grounded indefinitely.

  Would a dragon, a little one that could fit in your throat, emerge glistening and wings folded with little claws that can only tickle, and sneeze fire, be too much to ask on a dreary winter night? In a bar that blazes with color, that’s on fire with sexual tension and stupid boy aggression and drunken fury that evaporates in sunlight and colors of clothes worn by people who don’t know how to wear clothes with color and the piping of neon and the noises that have colors, too, the bright violet of girlish laughter and the dark green of shouting back by the pool tables, the stripes and solids of the clacking balls: Who would even notice a grayish little dragon sneezing fire if she crawled out of someone’s throat and unfolded her veiny wings and lapped at a puddle of spilled beer on the table? If I were not medicinally barren, chemically incapable of conception, that would be a thing I could imagine squeezing from inside me, and you would feed her insects and fronds of leafy plants, and you would keep her in a shoebox with holes for breathing, and maybe you would find a piece of string and carefully tie around her scaly neck and promenade, is the exact word I would use, down the cracked and frozen sidewalk. You would be riven with concern for your dragon all day, which would delete the long hours at work in a keystroke of concern, and you would rush home to see your precious offspring, you would play light-the-cigarette and light-the-stove all night and not even want to go out and see anyone, and any time someone called or came over or you saw them running errands, all you would talk about is what your dragon did that day until people would leave you alone, but you wouldn’t care because the bond between a mother and her dragon replaces every connection on earth with something that transcends every connection on earth. And then you would be happy.

  Trip came up to the table, pulling on his coat. He stuffed the papers he’d been writing on into his coat pocket. “We’re getting out of here,” he said, with a vague wave at the table where Henry and Michael and Kurt were slowly gathering their things. “Heading up.”