Oh, I feel like my old self again.
Today I ran across campus in the middle of the night, laughing at everyone i passed. I wasn't running for exercise or anything, but for the fully tuned
Steinway they keep in a ballroom in a big, four-story building that's pretty much empty after 11 pm.
But this was after I hassled the poor sod across the hall from me. What's the point of it, I wonder? Today it hit me like an anvil: I tripped on the stairs and slammed my shoulder into the bottom of a wall and saw twinkling
stars everywhere. I stood wide-eyed for a few minutes there and laughed and laughed. And I've been laughing all day!
But when it really first wound up for the blow was my beautiful class on Utopia. My teacher is a bearded, gray-haired former-hippi with
a PhD in Renaissance English. Depraved, yes? The class is full of yuppie children and rebels of rebellion. Good kids, and kids who just think they're good kids with the mind of say, a broken record in a cd player stuffed up the ass of a feminist fascist
white american whore with a Mercedes.
I listened to some Credence, which was amazingly out of character. I absolutely cracked up listening to
Fortunate Son, howled even, and grinned at the downbeats of gangsta-rap
DMX and Sisco in the background. Sisco (or whatever the fuck his name is) is obviously the new Messiah.
My english teacher, he spoke slowly but provocatively, he said to these blank, empty faces, up too early at 12 PM, he said to us
"Are any of you characterized by a talent for insatiability? Is that you? Do you have a TALENT for INSATIABILITY?" And I wanted to just roll on the floor and choke on his words!
I wanted to break a fucking board on my thighs!He stared at us slowly, looking from face to face. It had come out of nowhere, sprung from his drawn out and self-supporting narrative on
Utopia and
Philosophy and
Feminism and
Religion. It broke my fucking heart. But not as much as it should.
Because the Steinway was already out of tune. The short, sad, chinese Jew who had tuned it wouldn't even know it... within a few days, just a bag of strings with no sort of sync. These things always bothered the fuck out of me. Because they seem to put so much work and precision and thought into it, and it sounds so beautiful afterwards. She seemed so sad and pitiful working on it and put so much care into making sure I had something to play. She was probably making bullshit money tuning the piano, and she did it perfectly.
She did it perfectly and she didn't give a good goddamn fuck what the hell she did it for. She tuned it and took the time to show me around the floor to the other pianos. She had cheap, old clothes, and looked homeless, with a little, rotting wooden box for her tools that were perfectly arranged. Probably only five feet tall and
taking apart a piano. Does she have a fucking talent for insatiability?
Hahahaha! I think I smoked a pack of cigarettes today, because for once I don't have work. And god do I wish I did, because I'm going to get motherfucking lung cancer, and lip cancer, and finger cancer and die in a trashcan full of
gum wrappers and
bibles and god knows what else. Maybe
pot-rap will save me? Ooh the bullshit!
That's what the professor was thinking as he stared at us, asking us the first question for an hour, asking for a response that should react with the closest thoughts of any person alive.
Insatia-fucking-bility. As if no one else is desperate for a good, wholehearted laugh? A good scoff with everything!
Maybe cowards become piano tuners, or maybe they don't become anything at all. The brave ones seem so self-sufficient. They seem so complacent... and I suppose it's better if they don't hear the crazy fucker wailing on an untuned piano, in the dark, laughing between solos.