A while ago somewhere I don’t know when
I was watching a movie with a friend
I fell in love with the actress
She was playing a part that I could understand

giving free will, but within certain limitation.
i cannot will myself to limitless mutation.
i cannot know what i would be if i were not me.
i can only guess me.
so when i say that i know me, how can i know that?
what kinda spider understands arachnophobia?
i have my senses and my sense of having senses.
do i got them, or they me?
the weight of dust exceeds the weight of settled object.
what can it mean, such gravity without a center?
is there freedom to un-be? is there freedom for will to be?

sheer momentum makes us act this way or that way.
we just invent or just assume a motivation.
i would disperse, be disconnected.
is this possible?
what a soldier without a _
being the air, but not be air. being the no air.
being the air, but not be air. being the no air.
beyond the loose neither compacted nor suspended.
had i been free, i could have chosen not to be me.
demented forces push me madly ’round a treadmill.
demented forces push me madly ’round a treadmill.

broken hands

I could see you coming
From miles away
I didn’t want it no
No, not today
I could feel you coming
I felt so out of touch
Hangin’ on so tight for life
While the bones in your hand got crushed

How come I always know
When the worst is gonna come
Sometimes it’s so hard to know
When you can’t change what’s gonna come
How could they make you come
How could they break your hands
How come I always have to know
These things I can’t stand

I loved your fragile fingers
So thin, so smooth, so long
I lose my mega-memory
How did we ever get on
I love your fragile fingers
Oh, how they used to soothe me
I need to hear your play again
To smooth my hard feeling

How come they’ve made you come
How come they’ve broken your hands
How come I always have to know
How come I never understand
I never understand

cannot not want no not want

i got a plan. it isn’t enough to know and i don’t know how to justify it.

you cannot want to not want you cannot want to not want you cannot want to not want you cannot want to not want you cannot want to not want you cannot want to not want you cannot want to not want you cannot want to not want

When the springtime comes again

Wouldn’t you expect me to tell you that I am happy and have been happy most of my life, hanging around with the Great Koonaklaster, cat people, fighting Krell? As such a person, I ought to be happy. I ought to have always been happy, at least most of the time. However, I wish to engage in a bit of bad taste and bitching right at the beggining of this book, precisely where one ought not to do such an uncouth and unharmonious and even presumptuous thing, and tell you right off that i am not happy and that i have never in all my life been happy. I am gregarious and simple enough to believe that many of you who read this will not only be surprised, but I even believe that many of you will care. Perhaps the main reason I wish to tell you this is because of an ethical desire to be honest with you. After all, I portray myself in these entertainments as a pretty happy guy, and i feel guilty about that, although it was a great deal of fun. To be more precise, I feel that I have betrayed myself. Yes. Definitely. I feel much worse about betraying myself than betraying you.

I don’t mean to insult or anger you.

I want you to know the truth.

Yes, I have been playing the great American happiness game. I have been implying on almost every page that I’m a happy person. That is the way I was brought up, not just by my “family”, but by every institution and facet of society.

In my early days as a composer of guitar music, I was under this same influence. Once in a while, I would allow you to have an indisputably melancholy, perhaps violent, death-and-destruction piece.

But in most pieces I would mitigate the underlying and overwhelming

GREAT SAD

by throwing in harmonies and rhythms, etc., which disguised and hid the truth.

And that is what I did much of the time in Spank One, and that is what I did in a lot of Spank Two, this book that you are reading.

Oh, for the very discerning, I let the cat out of the bag with gallows humor. With the portraits of injustice, sadism, rape, etc.

Yes, I did that. But I nevertheless feel that in many cases I was disingenuous.

And I want to make this perfectly clear:

I AM NOT NOW, AND HAVE NEVER BEEN, HAPPY.

OK, now I feel better, I have undurdened myself.

I thank you.

And now if you will give me just a little more time, I will tell you why I am unhappy. I trust that there are a sufficient number of caring people out there who want to know why.

You might expect something complex, something profound, something unusual, something appropriate for a character such as myself.

But that is not the case.

The matter is very, very simple, and yet the solution to it has always evaded me.

Here:

I have never had a relationship with a woman that made me happy.

Thay is why I am unhappy.

Oh, I can make women happy. Some women are absolutely crazy about me.

I am polite, charming, warm, chivalrous, generous, and on-and-on-and-on.

Women have told me this.

Some women have told me other things, of course.

But I have made at least a few women quite happy and supported them emotionally and financially, and well – I don’t want to brag.

But I? I have never been happy with any woman.

That’s why I am sad. Very sad.

And perhaps that’s why I wrote this book. Maybe that’s why I write and play music. Maybe that is why I paint and do all these artistic things I do. In fact that is the reason I do all these things. Let’s get rid of the maybe. I am trying to attract someone out there who I can be happy with and who I can make happy.

Well, now that I’ve told you the truth, I feel much better.

I thank you for allowing me this levity, and so — on with the book. The first section is called:

John Fahey

in Vampire Vultures, Prologue