Brendan has said that it is true that the minds of many can be accumulated through the exit doors of life. Life in a small cramped space. If wine is music and beer is song then this is the hang over the next morning. This is the vomit on your shoes as you stumble home. The slow-gin-mill-gun-sling-fiz creates only what can be known as the last call alcohol of limp chords and lymph nodes. I eat the fear that swallows most (speaking as brendan here) I stand in my own 3-D rendering of reality amidst all of life’s 2-D expectations. The rain falls mainly on the plain brown rapper, indeed. And the peanut butter sandwich falls mainly face down-always. As this goes in the file cabinet of things to chalk up and history exams to fake ones way through, the true reasons of multiple choice surface. I am the lynchpin in my own knife wielding never ending story of get-up-in-the-early-morning-the-next-day someway, somehow. (The record spins. The record spins around) The throat stuck, glued to the trouble of a less than fortunate release. My place to stand becomes increasingly less defined. Packed on the subway car of life New York style, the water walks away from the pool, hands thrown up in the air, head shaking. “What has the world come to?” The shadow of my heart splits itself across the great divide (me and the audience). The love lost on the dice rolled. The hand in my face, the fist in my glove. Love? The end of love, stamina and a healthy dose of sand in your shoes. My starting place that begins to unravel. The fear of fear itself.
from Best of the Angry Man by Brendan deVallance, performed at the Lunar Cabaret, Chicago, Illinois 11-16-96
