You helped a kid grow up into the wonderful girl who thanked you kindly and put you in a box in my garage while she traveled the world and made money doing back-flips until one day she took you out and gave you to a new kid who loves you just the same, but also different than you thought.
I want to care and be a team player – I really do. But you’re three years too late. I don’t want to do this anymore; I can’t do this anymore; and soon enough I’ll have to put an end to it. It puzzles me deeply and sours my life.
There’s comfort in a full moon. It’s hard not to sound over-sentimental about them, but with the days as they are, it’s nice to have a nightlight.
Take any job, when it’s offered, if you desperately need it, but please, for G-d’s sake, don’t work here. Fake commerce, behind stolen capital, just a weird group of assholes rifling off LLCs, and never making a buck. Look anywhere else.
A love letter from out west, for you.
Performed, recorded, and produced by Logan Sorese. Photo by Abagail Frank Sorese.
Content subject to periodic updates.
Available at Bandcamp, Spotify, and Apple Music.
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Released as Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International. Let me know if you’re doing anything, would love to know about it.
A year since your wedding and you’re moving, and we’re producing life, and everything is terrible, and how weird it is being years apart from those choir kids in a coffee shop.
I need your new address, thanks.
Okay, so. Look. I don’t know how to roughhouse, or shit-talk, or take a kick to the shins after a close loss; I never got the training. My brother and I did not play; we said nothing, for as long as possible, floating past each other’s bedroom doors until we had something good enough to fight about. The chairs thrown and righted; verbal abuses swept deep into the back; and a quiet stalemate would resume in the morning. Nothing changed.
I will not play football with you, I’m sorry. I don’t like being touched.
This place is weird. You can touch things with your hands. Hear my voice when I’m calling your name. Eat with us, taste foods, nourishing your body. Smell heat, timing, and preparation make it just right. Sit down, see what the future holds, but don’t blink until the final credits. You can come here and spend time or leave for a while, but hometowns sneak up in you.
Yeah, it’s really fucking weird.
“Oh, eat shit, you know that’s unfair.” Jason, looking through Spotify in the passenger seat. The highway and the silence pass at the same speed.
“I’m just saying, you’ve been depressed for years and it never goes anywhere. At this point, just admit that everything is ‘fine’. Everything is always ‘fine’, we’re better than most and not accountable for the sins of humanity.”
Jason looking for the right soundtrack to match the moment; it auto-played The Eagles, but that’s definitely not right. Billie Holiday?
“It’s just, the years go on, and I keep waiting for the rising action. I’m the ordinary person waiting to be thrown into an extraordinary moment. Where’s my Die Hard? Independence Day? I want some action, but instead I’m buying groceries and sleeping at 8:30. When’s anything going to happen?”
“Everything happens everyday! People are born in taxi cabs; get exploded by landmines; released from cages; and donate millions to charities. You’re lucky; our ancestors fought and died for the right to be bored.”
“But that’s just it, man. I feel the weight of my great-great-grandfather looking down saying ‘I toiled day and night so that my lineage would prosper.’ And instead of the America they foretold, we have Memes, earthquakes, and seemingly endless beef. I could be on ‘My 600lb life’ in about 5 years, funded by a Walmart salary and a Golden Corral. I’m jus…”
“I’m sorry you’re not more unlucky, Jason. You’re not special. Please, for the love of god, silence for the next 30 miles. I need a break.”
Strangers in the Night blips from the speakers as Jane pulls the aux cable and stares forward.
Cities rise and fall, now the loneliness of Middle America. It’d only been a few states; a few pit-stops; and the whir of a tiny engine. Jane had her eyes on the prize.
Jane liked Jason a couple of years ago; not to say she doesn’t like him now. She likes him fine, but the young man you meet skipping his Medieval Literature class is going to be a fundamentally different person than the one you buy a house with.
Jason was a bartender, or at least had been at one time, before he “got too sick to work” or, rather, “stole someones’ medicine cabinet, lost his grasp on reality, culminating in a very dark phone call from a motel near the airport where Jason scored couple of pills and a brutal ass kicking.” The cops were called, the blood cleaned, the charges tearfully negotiated to “disturbing the peace” by Jane. Privileged, but it was dealt with.
28 miles, the silence hangs unbroken. Jason reaches in the back seat, palming around for chips in the grocery bags, the ruffles.
“They’re in the trunk”, Jane mind-reads. “I think they might be the cooler.”
“Why are the chips in the cooler? And, 29 miles, you broke your own rule.”
“Do as I say, not as I do.” Jane smiles at Jason who takes off his seat-belt and climbs into the backseat of the hatchback. “What else is in this cooler? Did we horde any delicacies?”
Leaving Raleigh was strategic; a change of scenery for Jason, family for Jane. But Jane worried he’d get tired in Montana; he wouldn’t be the first one to go stir-crazy in the woods. A life full of townies, pick up trucks, and going into the “Big City” once in a while to see a show. It’s got a quaintness.
“Get me a popsicle while you’re back there.” Six hours to her mom’s house, her childhood bedroom, but probably a better nights sleep than at a cheap hotel room.
Jason plops back into his seat, hands over the popsicle, plastic already sliced off, and unclips the ruffles.
Jason re-opens Spotify, re-installs the aux cable, and scrolls. “Do you think Pharrell is happy? Like, he can afford to pay naked women to bring him soft drinks on a golden platter, but do you think he’s happy? Fulfilled and all that?” This is a game they’ve always played when they’re bored. Along with occasional celebrity death-matches.
“I imagine he’s wildly more happy than us. Not because of the naked women, but despite them. He sees through them. We could never understand the level of contentment Pharrell wields.”
“Maybe with the amount of musical clout he has, he experiences life through the vibrations of the universe, and naked bodies vibrate better than clothed ones. The butlers are a necessity for his craft.”
Janes looks pricks, “Is that what you want? Naked butlers and unlimited clout?”
“Man, think about what I could do if I had a butler.”