— — “Words for Sale” — —. ““I” leads to a million more letters…
By: La Vieux Carré Times
Tags: Work In Progress, Fiction, Series, Pulp Fiction, Blog

““I” leads to a million more letters forming words that lead to tonight’s batch of musical notations based on letters and words, which often linger endlessly in a stream-of-consciousness fashion, like Burroughs or Jack….

The fast-aging composer redirects his attention to the final touches of a funeral dirge he is composing in his Vieux Carre’ music studio (which is actually a, haunted, renovated “slave-quarters”). Even though he lately has been experiencing what he jokes to his granddaughters is “old-timer’s” the music-composer, indeed, is having brief lapses in memory….

In the instant case Balzac does not feel at the moment like looking-up the proper spelling of Kerouac; “lazy bums, both!” he confesses silently with a loud, audible, laugh.

Onset Alzheimer's? Or it could be he is exhausted from the weekend, although Sunday is tomorrow. [Insert video of “Miss Irene” singing “Sunday Kind of Love”]

“Miss Irene” singing a song about a Sunday kind of love….

Most Sundays Balzac would visit his favorite neighborhood haunts, such as Igor’s Checkpoint Charlie just across the Esplanade from the Vieux Carre’ where the failed music composer lives (with his dogs Rosa and Sophie). [Insert photo of Sophie jumping into Old Man River after a driftwood stick thrown from the area of the levee called the Moon Walk, and the video of a Louisiana Pelican that startles the coydog momentarily.]

Sunday passes — as do all his days — like a jet plane. Words too pass through his mind swift as a hurricane but less organized. He’s “everywhere” as his latest music composition explores — all over the place. Pick a subject and Balzac is thinking about it; yep, been there-done that….

Indeed, his life today is as predictable as a dictionary; open one up and point your finger to any word — that’s him: Sir Thomas Balzac, the most-unpopular knighted American composer alive, a true one-trick pony with his “Sodom” production presented Off Broadway so many decades ago.

A fad for a day, but the Queen Mother happened to have been in the audience, was thrilled at the Shakespearean-like characters Balzac had created — and, on the spot, ordered the composer to kneel, whereby she touched his shoulders and head and stated some very stately words (if he remembers, although it was so long ago; and, also, he believes his “old-timer’s is kickin’-in”).

Balzac confides the latter to his friend JB, whose PTSD is so extreme it goes in one ear and out the other of New Orleans’ most-famous “sidewalk-astronomer” nocturnally whose day job is a Cathedral Square portrait artist. [Insert photo of JB, proudly posing in front of his telescope as “Bill Nye, the Science Guy” views through the eyepiece.]

What a genius, his friend is — a stream-of-consciousness story to kill for (patience…one day). Meanwhile the composer is stuck with this feeble attempt to construct a musical composition — a fugue or another opera but better than “Sodom” which was performed Off Broadway for not even all of two weeks. He hasn’t yet compiled enough of an impression on which to base any style of music, much less something original…

“Words for Sale” will be its title, perhaps. “Music for Sale” is just as apropos. Both require outlines although Balzac has one for neither; he’s shooting from the hip. Thus, verily, this mediocre batch of words strung-together like a bucket of paint splashed onto a large unframed canvass by a mad artist. Why even “publish” them? Why expose such mediocre sap to the general public (as if anyone will see, much less, read this tripe)….

-30- [“My Kingdom for an editor!”]