mouse, i think it was the Koo Kowlick Dying Day break of my second year of college, december 78? or maybe it was the summer before. towards the end of your years in wishaw, anyway. i went out to buy cigarettes and i walked south up that hill to the bar that stood up on those crossroads. it had always before been a nondescript trashy lanarkshire dive. throw a stick. if you get ten locals of a night you might between them make a mouth of teeth. i walk in and the place is packed and there's a band playing and every motherfucker in there's wearing a stetson including the mini-skirted waitresses (waitresses? in lanarkshire? but i swear it's true). i walk back out like i'd popped something mind expanding and vaguely unpleasant and i see they've hung a new sign up: "the hitching post".
sometime in this empire of dr. bienke hypernovel i'm gonna put into a cowboy's mouth these words: "i don't like cows. i don't eat cow. and i don't wear cow. my boots are snakeskin. snakes are just nasty varmints. cows are death-dealing pains in the ass."
when i was a little boy it was suggested to me that growing up to be a cowboy was a proper and legitimate aspiration. i was being lied to of course. but howsoever i find it always easy to deviate once set upon a course i find it hard to change direction. it was also suggested that one could not be a cowboy and a communist. that was a silly lie. unfortunately it is a silly lie still lodged in the little boy imaginations of thousands of aging heads throughout my poor native land. i'll betcha george bush kneejerk thinks you can't be a cowboy and a communist. i'll betcha my momma kneejerk thinks that. byron. jim. jeff. phil, for sure ( that is i'd make the bet. i might lose. it's been a long time since we've talked. i swear i'm gonna fix that.)
open range.
or put it another way: if america isn't a socialist country, then where did all that concrete fall from? people let themselves be baffled by the commercials into believing the fucking automobile is some kind of freedom machine. the automobile is just a stinky expensive ticket to ride. the highway is the mode of transportation. the railroad was like the telephone when you could pick the thing up and say: "jenny! i gotta talk to mom. connect me up honey." it was expensive and anybody could listen in. the highway is like telephones now. an irksome tax on your existence. where, if you try to go anywhere new, you spend most of your time on hold.
open range.
i generally think of song-writing in terms of laying barbed wire. there's that open range of word and sound and a song is how you cut yourself a piece of it you can lay claim of possession on. i know how to do it but i have a cowboy soul and i'm never very happy about it. the next step is burning your commodity monniker into some baby's ass flesh and after that you stuff its mouth with indigestible goop made in part from its moomma's (moomma's!) unprofitable extremities until its fat like a tick and then you butcher the thing. if all the wire fell down i'm guessing i wouldn't mind.
open range.
mouse, everybody in the family is mad at me because they know that i absolutely believe their destinies are defined by their ability to sell quin. momma's life defined by her ability to sell quin. anna's life defined by her ability to sell quin. beth's life defined by her ability to sell quin. your life defined by your ability to sell quin. 'i am messianic and satanic. i love to sing the blues.' - monkey man/stones. the thing is i have learned that none of my crazy kin (except sometimes carl) have the least perspective on how they pimp in their hearts and their heads for the motherfuckers who would squush them unthinking if it meant the slightest increase in profits. all they do is squirm and hide and they call it 'acceptance' or 'humility' or some crazy shit.
'i'll tell you exactly how nasty and angry and egocentrically insane i am. i don't believe i need a revolution in my country to bring down that motherfucking bush family. all i need is a revolution among my kin-folk and friends. like as not i'll die first. it's a motherfucking shame.
down on the border at the end of the Z.O./
there's a hot little burgh where all the cowboys go/
where you can rent your love, your horsey needn't know.
i love you girl but my horsey disapproves/
i'd like to settle down but my horsey wants to move/
i've an open mind but my horsey's in a groove.
11:18:05 AM 
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