Scriptor Press - The ElectroLounge

Something flashes before my eyes. My hands vibrate faster.
The blindness of our senses breaks & here I am, the usual array of head, torso, limbs.
Guitar in my hands. Looking back I see Rebecca close behind, her small hands tightly
gripping my waist. She smiles at me. Sure of me, as always. Surer of me than I am, as always.
A sunny afternoon about us. Warm. We are in a long open field lined on both sides
by thick lines of trees. Similar to the Ampitheater.
“No, Dad. It doesn’t feel like the Ampitheater at all,” Rebecca says inside my mind.
We are still able to share minds.
She’s right.
This place is empty in a way the Ampitheater never is.
It’s the trees & grass & sky, I realize. They’re not really here. Only Rebecca is.
“Rebecca, I need to hug you. Can we do this?”
“Close your eyes, Daddy. Don’t stop playing, though. Play our song. ‘Octopus’s
Garden.’ Good. Do you see me yet? I’m standing in front of you.”
I hold Rebecca tightly. It doesn’t matter how many removes from reality this is, I
know her down to her subtlest vibrations. I gain something from this embrace. We walk like
this for a long time, Rebecca behind me, Rebecca before me.
We sing together.
“We would be so happy, you & me,
noone there to tell us what to do
I’d like to be under the sea
in an octopus’s garden with you
in an octopus’s garden with you
in an octopus’s garden with you.”
My guitar plays spritely, happy, far beyond our singing’s cease. Rebecca closes within
me, becomes a bodiless warm with a name. I allow this though I don’t know what it means
or portends.
I open my eyes & here is no field any longer. Here is a sizeless cave with a high
ceiling. Many figures here, scattered. They are staring at me, deeply fearful. I look behind me
& see I have emerged from a tall black doorway, perhaps a tunnel. Fire flickers at me & from
me.
There is shuffling. Voices singing. Is that . . . Greek?
Looking more closely, I see among the robed men & women other kinds of
presences. Summoning up a dense clutch of notes derived from Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to
Heaven” & Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray,” I direct a fireball at these unknown
presences.
Sounds of leaves shivering. Angry starlight.
“Rich, stop.” A voice I know. Not Rebecca’s. She’s safe inside my deepest pouch.
No. Time’s. I spatter a few smaller fireballs of music around, Throwing Muses, Sonic
Youth.
There! That old Army jacket of his. Those large hunching shoulders.
“Time!” I make to move toward him but the room shifts & shakes. He’s gone with a
second message: “Run! Play harder! Go!”
The passageway behind me is blocked & figures are closing in on me. More fireballs
from my guitar. Hendrix. Townshend. Clapton. They back away. Another round at a cluster
of leafy presences. They light up, briefly, & I leap amongst them. Climbing. Playing.
11
The Cenacle / 54 / April 2005