(Subway Journal Direct #1:) This is going to be the one that fills the book, you know, in the still of the night. Not all of us can express what we know for certain we comprehend, maybe too deeply. We know it to be true, so we dare not sing it with feeling. If we were smarter, we’d know that singing it with feeling might be the exactly what snaps us out of this state that’s been going on for years and years.
And I wrote it and I understood it again. Singing is to flying what walking is to talking. And I sing like a bird with a clipped wings. Nobody understands what exactly it means to me to not be able to sing. My brain moves too slowly, can’t make the right signals. And in my dreams, there is no sound.
Doo-wop floats, you know, it’s taken over. It’s got dominion over space and time.
You know, I curse the book sometimes, but imagine if these were the only pages left in the world. The last piece of paper is soon approaching. The rest is shifting sands. Writing isn’t writing.
I look across the platform – a big American Marine kind of guy is swinging around an umbrella, still overflowing with energy. A black guy with purple jeans and a gold chain, swaggers along with a pink umbrella, like some hip-hop version of Oscar Wilde. A groups of girls huddles together on the platform, probably gossiping, but what is there to gossip about at this hour? Everyone looks like a star in this scene. And in a place like this, nobody looks twice at me. But some mad dreams, some mad schemes are passing through my mind.
I’m tempted to pull my walkman out of my pocket, and flick the switch to the external speakers. Cause everyone should be feeling this peace, this tremendous peace, that doowop fills me with. Something deep.
It’s too soon to know. Even I view myself as a wild card, never knowing when I turn myself over, if it’s going to be the 3 of Diamonds or the Ace of Spades.
I just want to be as sweet as I can possibly be to the girl beside me, and then leave without the number, and just hope for a miracle somewhere down the road.
Purity’s not of this world. And I guess it’s too late for me to be pure my whole life through. But how about from this moment on?
All the lost souls, you know, until I realize that I’m one, too. All the fallen angels have gathered in Roppongi. The turmoil. But, isn’t it so that everyone is beautiful, that everyone is loved. Cause as many people as there are on earth, there are still more stars in the galaxy, I guess, which means that constellations support us. All of this endless space, the entire universe, was only built to support the coincidences that have taken us to this point in life as we know it.
One thing — the last word isn’t guaranteed by the last page. I’m jostling with the advertisers and the classics to be the writer of the last word ever read.
Now aura is lost, and art is worthless. The eternal quest to make timeless music has been replaced by the hope that music might be able to link us with that vanishing point, that unique conjunction of space and time.
Regard-moi toujours, comme ca.
Time infinitely splits and spreads. Art looks back, but it can’t go back.
I tried to call you at 6 AM this morning, but your phone was out of range. I just wanted to know if time had changed us.