What Should Not Have Been

There are some thing, some styles, and just some ways in the way of fads that should never come back. The mullet is a good example of this. Parents don’t let your children get mullets. Let them shave it off, dye it green, whatever. The flat-top had more depth than the mullet.
Disco. There’s another one. Nothing really great or enlightening ever came from disco. It was more like that pause you hear down in the sewers while you wait for the next person to flush. It was a decade left empty by the hippies once they figured out that they were adults and had to get a job.
I’ve found that the things that have had the long-lasting effects are those things that no one can find fault in. Jazz for instance. You can hear elements of jazz in any style of music. Its that feeling of everything falling apart while melodically still being held together by an underlying pattern. 
Chess is another one. The geometric strategy of this ancient game can be seen in so many modern games and, I bet you will never see a chess player or a jazz musician with a mullet and they probably wouldn’t listen to disco. 

Salutation Pending 
Johnny R Draper 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It Spins

When I was thirteen years old my uncle taught me how to slowly lower the arm of a record player onto the vinyl record without scratching it. Vinyl records….a very delicate thing. This concept was quite figurative in comparison to threading a sewing machine while it is running.  The needle itself that scratched out the audio and transferred it to the speakers was made of nylon I believe and would dull over time. If you didn’t replace it regularly it would widen the grooves in the vinyl disc causing them to sound bad. The alternative though was to buy needles made of graphite commonly called diamond tips. These eventually had to be replaced too but not as often and they didn’t dull, they would just snap over time.  When compact discs (or, laser discs) came along we were led to believe that they were virtually indestructible. This was not true. They were compact but, just as delicate as a vinyl record. Through the transition of this genre there was a lot of skepticism throughout society a
Read more

Sun Bleached Shadows

Pretty song bird where did you go I can hear you on the wind but I can’t see you, I am led adrift, astray, bound to wayward,  By your song, and phantom scales abounding To where stray brown leaves go, to Give body and color to the wind, Over and over again in the,  Sun bleached shadows and flowers frowning. I am lost in the memory of that strain Vexed in silence just beneath the rain but,  Gone when fixed upon, muted, omitted, And though I can’t here it any more I am still hypnotized by its repetition I am complete in its climax and grasping, At resolution in its conclusion, collapsing, And then, it begins, all over again.
Read more

In Passant

A voice like tears stressed and strained Seen through but not broken by The invisible storm, pressed and rigid creak of panes, shrilling but unbroken.  It is the wind in passant, crowded, lulling, and, never truly gone, hissing. Wave after benign wave making the world Collapsed, louder, closer. Sorrows from its deep howls and moans Rise from its empty gullet like ribbon wrapped and rolling Fingers bent, bones showing, under leaves, Crumpled brown and plucked away to become Wraiths in the night.  It is not wicked but, empowers the complacent, Stirring invocation to change at its very roots and, Hidden places where shadows deepen to linger, Long and sullen. It is the wind and it has spoken in, Its tongued aspiration, perpetual, in motion 
Read more