Pirouettes at 20 Paces

It's not that difficult, says Fred, my dance instructor.

"Ok, but is this 'quick-quick-slow' thing sort of like when water falls, when it falls like leaves that have given up and maybe surrendered to the authorities?" I ask. "Those parched leaves, the veined and confused ones? Leaves that can't look you in the eye. Is the step anything like that?"

"It's quick-quick-slow," Fred says. "It's not hard."

"Yeah, but does it fall like that change right THERE?" I ask, pointing to the chord that's hanging in the air, the tumble I hear touch feel in "I Wish U Heaven" because no one falls the way Prince does I mean he doesn't fall so much as trip without tripping. "We're talking intent here, pirouettes at 20 paces, like a silent film star who knows how to whisper-scream about love in the prettiest of shimmer streams there he goes he's shimmering about numbers shimmying inside the moment wishing and wishing you heaven oh his guitar's silent-screaming too. Does the dance step you're talking about fall like that?"

Fred looks me up and down. He's pale. Everything is in this Fred Astaire Dance Studio. The ceiling, the floor. Faces.

"You in for the free 'I Don't Need to Know How to Groove to Groove to Prince' lesson?" Fred asks.

I am, I say.

"We don't pirouette here," he says.

Love 2 the 9s

I'm gonna get me a speakeasy. A Love 2 the 9s franchise. It'll be impossible to find. I promise. I'll set up card tables, serve bathtub gin. I'll hang gun moll posters. I'll buy one of those Shakespeare busts where you lift the jaw, push a button and a bookcase skids open to reveal these poles. You'll slide down and get to this cave. We'll play old kinescopes down there. Test patterns. Farm reports. Ed Sullivan. Fuzzy, grainy, distorted, kinescoped Ed. He'll introduce Anna Maria Alberghetti. She'll sing a song about love. She'll be into it. Her eyes will fill. Maybe yours will. The hope is my heart will. I'm thinking we could dress for it. To the nines. Maybe?

What We're Watching (Cosmic Remix)

The kids are watching "The Love Boat." They're asking: How come there isn't any suffering on this show? My significant other is watching the clock. She's asking: Wouldn't music be a better guide to thinking about time? I'm watching stars, the cosmic radiation I see when I close my eyes. I'm asking: What are the environmental implications of wishing on a star? What do we wish for when we wish people love when we wish them heaven when we wish for chocolate pudding? Why am I doing that, that and that, when I could be doing this, this and this?