Amen, Disjointed Ceilings Project. I’ve decided to take your advice. I’ve disconnected. I’m writing this with a pen and paper, although maybe I’m just thinking out loud — the two have been intertwined for so long, it’s hard to tell which is which. Perhaps once the digital glow fades away, my eyes will have adjusted to human nature’s dim light.
I’m letting my worry wash over me like you told me to do. I’m embracing it like one would a body pillow.
My dearest pillow, O how I loved you. O how I stitched and stuffed the contours of your shape and form. O how I kissed you sweetly at night’s edges. And O how you kissed me back. Our bodies writhed together. For a time.
I hope I make it, too.
Watching isn’t that hard to do. I’m sure it’s something I can do with style, with alacrity, with passion. If I must.
Is there beauty in decay? Of course there is. In the fungal filaments as their exterior stomachs digest the memories of death. In the give and take of ions and their chemical bonds. In the thick and unrecognizable muck that’s left behind. And so the world fades away. And so, too, do we all.
• • •
To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
• • •
Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
