Thread: Magnificent, Marvelous, Mad Madam Mim's Maniacal Menagerie (Comments Welcome)

There's something about vinyl static over the deep tones of old blues which is so keenly able to invoke agonizing anxiety in those of us prone to such things. There's something deeply unsettling in the deep, steady thrum of the bass or sax at the pace of a heartbeat interrupted by the shrill of the clarinet or trumpet. Even more awful are the long, low bass notes joined by drums or brass instruments determinedly entrenched in the lower registers. It smacks of Death with a capital D, of that slow trudge to the inevitable at the pace of that bass, of that moment when our heartbeat joins those of all those who came before us. And the static muffles the brass sounds of those who came behind, dancing above without a care for the steady, relentless bass. It catches your breath in your chest and makes your heart race, as though it can outpace Death if it can run faster than the bass dirge. But that's the heart's folly. It's like trying to run from a particularly terrifying nightmare and getting tangled in the bedsheets. Not only is it useless, it simply confounds matters even more. And it's a shame that it should make us-- me , for I'm not entirely certain I'm not alone in this--feel so. The hipsters say that the pops, cracks, and fuzz make the music better, and to an extent for some sorts of music that's true. For me, for blues, it's awful. That isn't to in any way impune either vinyl or the great Satchmo or any of the greats, for that matter. It's simply to say that they do their jobs too well. I feel too much. The life and death of a struck animal dead on the side of the road--deer, raccoon, fox, cat, dog, possum, anything--I feel in the moment I notice them. The tense silence in a classroom of people who may have the answer but are too afraid to speak up in case it's wrong the lonely waste of a daytime liquor store occupant all the aches and pains and joys and sorrows that come from music and art...I feel it all. All the time. It's too much input for this delicate electrical sponge that pilots my body. So instead the signals get all twisted and bent and, regardless of source, comes in deformed and transformed into that bass dirge and I see Death everywhere. It hovers over my family and my pets, threatening to take them from me maybe not soon but still too soon. It haunts the public, where one slight mishandling of our multi-thousand-pound weapons or being in the wrong place at the wrong time can blink a life out in an instant. Perhaps worst of all is that it hangs on me like a robe where I can never quite forget its presence even in the happiest of moments, reminding me that soon--too soon for my comfort, anyway--all this will be gone and replaced with... what? And that's the terrifying part, that despite my belief in a higher power there might just cease to be consciousness and all of this is rendered meaningless, spitting into the face of the law of conservation of energy. I don't know, and I hate not knowing. But I'm not eager to know the Universe's final secret. Plot twist we're living inside whatever another universe calls a black hole, and it's turtles all the way down. It feels cowardly to not be ready or willing to know that secret, or not having by twenty-five made my peace with its inevitability despite it being the first real, true worry I can ever remember having in a life inundated, maybe even defined by them. By worries, I mean, not by secrets of the Universe. So then the question becomes when will this New Orleans funeral march--this awful thrum that rattles around my brain like a fly trapped inside tapping against a window--turn into that lively celebration? And who was it put in the ground?