March 19 2004, 08:51 PM A Closet of a Different Kind

My eyesight is poor, and requires correction. I wear such to bed in order to read, but I remove it when it is time for the lights to turn down. It is this time, in darkness and calm (and clock) that I often think of things I would like to keep, and I know from experience that I will forget most of them by morning, over writing them with dreams that become distant and gone with equal quickness. The problem is that without my eyes, I have a remarkable trouble with writing. But I have worked at it, and have written down those things that visit just before sleep, presenting themselves as brilliant, fresh, good.

I have learned this also: it turns out most of these things are not so much.

I believe I am most powerful in the shower in the mornings, for ideas (the close second is the evening dishes, for similar reasons). I am fresh from sleep and the chaos of the visions of slumber, distracted by the broken rhythms of the shower and clean echo of the space. But I cannot see in the shower, much less write anything down. It is, at times, frustrating. Occasionally I crank up the CD player to give my mind something else to chew on.

The CD player sits atop the water tank, for there is no place else for it to be. This adds some interesting acoustic ingredients to the situation, for the ceramic tank adds some powerful selective amplification. Some pieces of music are more prone to this than others. The current favorite is the recent release Feast of Wire by a group by name of Calexico. This music, on top of all of its other wonderful qualities, takes full use of the water tank and makes it sing, makes it hum. The adaptive effect is so pronounced that in my dream I worry that I am turning Alcosan into a private sound system, blasting Quattro over and over into every home from just about the last place anyone would expect it to come.

Would that it were true. If it was to be, at least then the FCC would have a new broadcast medium to dump on.