It’s the nature of the experiment/ it’s the parable of my temperament
A pretty girl in the market. Cowboy boots with a white dress. And a t-shirt that says, “Music Makes Itself.” What does this mean, I wonder? I’m standing behind her in line and so I ask. “Oh, I’m not really sure what it’s all about,” she tells me. “It’s my brother’s shirt.” Oh. It’s the crafty musician brother. He probably plays in a band or something. “Well, it sounds pretty good,” I tell her, not really knowing what to say. “Yes,” she agrees, trailing off a bit, “I guess it kind of does.”

Outside, it is a perfect night, on a pure skin surface level. Some light breeze runs across your arm and you can’t help but think how nice it is to be alive. It's a long life. A crazy one, really, with no apparent meaning that I can determine. But you can’t help but notice how good it feels, sometimes. It’s the thinking about it, rather, which gets you down. A friend of mine made this same pronouncement last week at the Palais Royale. “Man,” he told me, “Humans got such a bad deal. All I want to do is go to work and come home and not have to think about anything. I end up thinking about my life and it gets me all depressed.” And on some square level, I guess that’s pretty objectively true. There’s no lightweight premise that I’ll run across and not find myself unraveling like a ball of twine. And, I know, that’s weird. We have devised a culture where thinking about things is an outdated mode of being. There’s nothing that isn’t inherently designed to distract you to a point of indecision. And that’s all well and good. But you lose something when you only appreciate things on the skin surface level. And so I spend all my time thinking about things, driving myself over the edge. I can’t really say it’s doing me too much good.

In the car, I hit the preset buttons and skip over the voice of Willie Colon, the DJ for the Latino show on the college radio station. Minutes later, I turn it back to where he’s still talking in incomprehensible blips, which are the changing stations of the mind. “Gentlemen! Let me tell you about the women on the street!” he says, “One minute they’re shy, reserved, and the next thing you know they’ve had two of those—what do you call it—Long Island Iced Teas, with the 6 different liquors in them. And let me tell something about Willie Colon, Willie Colon likes New York City! If you call Willie Colon’s home and he’s in a bad mood, it’s only because he hasn’t been to New York City in a while. But never call Willie Colon’s house if he hasn’t given you his number! Little Cookie is at home and she don’t like that.” On and on, he does this, and I find myself laughing out loud. He then repeats the entire monologue in nonstop Spanish at twice the speed, and you find your head spinning at about 33 1/3, wondering when the next record is going to be played. Clearly, the main premise of this program is to talk about himself. People really seem to be into it, though, as the phone line is blowing up. “Willie cannot take calls while he is on the air!” he emphasizes. The guy, evidently, is a little bit crazy. At least it’s entertaining, I think. He announces one of the other DJs, and then he finally plays the record, causing lightweight salsa music to dance from the speakers of your car.