where art collides

The man said swing

When you’re too tired to write can you slow down? What happens to the words? Do they start to slur? Does what you are saying still make sense? Should that really have been a question mark?

Keyboards don’t drag in the same way that an inkpen does. The smear on the page is missing. The clinical delete button kills off the character. The early draft of a Philosopher On Tap classic will never appear for sale at Christies, found at the bottom of a long forgotten drawer or discovered in the library of a minor country house.

Eb ain’t a great key for a guitarist

Something feels missing. The half consumed bottle of bourbon or the empty jug of black coffee with a pile of cigarette stubs in the ashtray. The pile of paper on the floor, screwed up remnants of screwed up attempts at pen on paper.

Staring at the screen just doesn’t seem to cut it, at least not from the romantic vision of the writer stuck in the attic room looking out over the red brick back streets, or was it a concrete jungle seen from a run down apartment block.

Where’s the story?

The saxophone music came through the wall from next door. At first I thought it came from a CD but then I soon realised this couldn’t be the case. Suddenly it seemed to match my mood. Tiredness. I couldn’t make out the name of the tune. Can’t say my musical knowledge stretches far anyway.

The music stopped and after a minute or so I heard a door slam. Must have been an accident. The slam didn’t match the music. I shut the lid on my laptop and called it a night.