The Illusion of Discontent.

He sits lopsided, playing his old Harmony as I stare at the glow stars on his ceiling that have long since lost their glow. As I lose myself in thoughts of no importance, he toys with strings, testing out couplets of chords that blend into the background.

And in a way, I guess we complement each other well.

I no longer feel the necessity of speech and he had abandoned such trivial pursuits long ago.

“Words cease to matter when there's no one to listen to them,” he told me, once.

As I lay there, I flick through the many things that have gone through my mind. Many things that I would have quivered to utter aloud. There are some concerns in people that can never be voiced. Less because of cowardice than the loss of air from the lungs, as traitors they hold vocal chords hostage. 

And if, by chance, on the rare occasion they allow leniency, you can see it in the proclaimer's eyes. That irrepressible lust for vertigo. To feel the ground's support - if nothing else - they so long for beneath their feet. To fall onto it would not be such an unpleasant fate, would it? There are worse things, I concur.

I guess it's at moments like these, with Papageno leaning against the bed, his downcast eyes searching for a resolution in strings. With me beside him, dividing my attention between raptures of fantasy and the fixtures of reality. It's moments like these that you contemplate the little glitches in humanity without much consequence. Learning no more about the world around you than what you have known before. You think you do. You might walk out of that room with a new-found revelation about things as they are with a conviction the likes of Parmenides, but then someone says something or does something and you falter. That is why I have a fondness for confines.

I mean, when I think of Parmenides, I think idealist. Probably the most defined in existence, with maybe the exception of the divine. But things aren't always so clear cut as he declared them to be. The whole divide between the positive and the negative, the light from the dark. If a man kills a man for the freedom of the people, does that make him inhumane? Does that make him a negative force in the universe?

Would anyone ever have the answers? Questions penetrate resolves, they do. And people are scared. Paranoid. The foundations of their lives may be built on lies, but stoop to untangle them, they won't. People sure as hell won't change, but wonder, they might. And that spark of wonder, of curiosity, well. That about haunts them 'till they die.  

I feel a tear roll down the length of my cheekbone and his thumb reaches out on instinct to brush it aside, ceasing his strumming once more. And I just look at him and he frowns back. His right hand cups my face and I feel the cool metal of his ring against my wet cheek as he comes in close and whispers in my ear. 

"I wrote you a song." 

He adopts this boyish smile as he slides his fingers from my face gently. He turns back to his guitar and arranges the fingers instead to strum its strings in a most peculiar pattern which conjures the word 'beautiful' in my head. It's insufficient, but isn't language always? Just letters strung together in futile attempt to convey feeling. Feeling. As if you could explain it as you would a fact.

With this staining my thoughts, and with Papageno by my side, we stay unhinged to a world that spins madly on. This will surely get us into trouble one day. This, weightlessness, that we sail the days on. Yet, I can't bring myself to care. We may be long gone, but we are content. 

A Lonely Disposition.

Look not into the haze,

for what is it that you'll see?

A stark dot seeming to float

in a translucent sea.

Look not a little closer,

for what is it that you'll feel?

A raw awareness unwinding 

in a sliver of film reel.

Tip toe not a little higher,

for what is it that you'll smell?

Something disastrous unfurling,

attempting to compel.

Sink not a little lower,

for what is it that you'll hear?

Silence - harmonised with

an ensemble of truths ringing clear.

And after all this,

what have you come to comprehend?

I live in a world of fear,

my friend.

A Sequence of Equation.

Oh dear, is it really all true?
Did they offend us and they want it to sound new? - The Strokes

He walks to me as a stranger does to a wailing child. Cautious and guarded, his every step is carefully drawn out and calculated, weary and unattached. He's become quite the deceiving mathematician. I chuckle humourlessly to myself at the paradox.

“Madeline,” he calls me and I stand there perplexed. When did I become 'Madeline'? He's close now, his body radiating a heat that I can only perceive as a glacial cold.

Fine. Two can play at this jest.

“Benjamin,” I counter, and I see him visibly stiffen at the word. Ah. So he does seem to have retained his heart.

“How is the family?” He swiftly recovers with whatever remaining dignity left in his masked countenance.

“Good. Yours?” I ask in a detached air, while my insides scream in protest. If he could deceive, I could do one better.

“Good.” He equals my cold tone. I simply stare at him, looking onto the man that boy became. That boy who's eyes once quivered with spirit and the anticipation of adventure behind every rickety treehouse door, are now replaced with the aging despondence of a man's nonchalant stare. The arms that used to twist and curve to lift me up and twirl me about so I could fly with the blue jays in my backyard now reside limp on either side of his ram-rod straight frame. The fingers lie dead, hanging from palms soft, no longer the course they used to be from climbing countless trees. His flushed face is a respective meter away from mine, yet I can't bear to look him in the eye any longer. I feel a tear forming in the glands and I know it is time to leave.

I turn on my heel and start to walk away to a place that isn't so constricting. To a place where truth isn't so well hidden behind indifference. To anywhere away from this room.

Just before I could step a foot outside to the ever mounting snow now covering whatever remaining patch of grass lay exposed in defiance, I feel a slight pressure on my right hand.

“Ben I don-” I start as I turn around but he doesn't allow me to finish as he covers my mouth with his. His lips are urgent against mine, as if fighting against immeasurable time, and I let go. I don't have the strength to uphold silent resolves anymore as passion, missing from so long ago, ignites this all-consuming kiss. As I feel my knees giving way, I feel his strong arms around me and I let him hold me up as his lips continue to crash with mine.

And then, just as abruptly as he appeared, he left, leaving me gasping against the unforgivingly hard brick wall. My heart feels like it might hammer through my chest in attempt to leave a conspicuous hole for all to see. A hole big enough to show just how stupidly naïve I'd been. I feel drained as I collapse on the wooden floor and touch my lips absentmindedly as acquaintances crowd around in fraudulent concern.    

What to do when you're restless.

An old soul song comes on the alarm clock radio. -- Conor Oberst.

-------------

She clutches onto Byron, onto Emerson and onto Keats. Time won't let her go and she's not sure if she wants to take leave. Maybe there is a comfort in constriction. Or maybe it's the boys outside her window, toying with her dreams. The coffee beside her spreads it's nostalgic aroma about the paper room. The pencils atop her desk come to life with spasmodic movements akin to the old men she sees in cafés, tapping aged fingers against mugs of ale. The pencils twist and turn, but make a sound, they do not dare. Without a grip to steady them, they are but lost toddlers, not yet skilled in balance. She sighs and she lies there, trying to bring her pulse down low enough to hear her thoughts.

-------------

The constellations made evident by pre-historic humans race about in grandeur, traversing the abundant sky. His eyes glaze over, not having felt the luxury of a blink for quite some time now. In between tall Poppies and scattered Wild Lupine, he ponders over where the rest of the stars fit into the equation. All the remainders, the leftovers of the nighttime escapade. Are they spectators? Or are they simply biding their time, waiting for their neighbours to realign themselves in a more favourable position for a new constellation to arise which would – with planned consequentiality - include themselves? Or do they not even have the mind for such things, with threats the likeness of comets and meteors on the rise? Not to mention their old foes, the Black Holes. Horrible betrayers, deceivers of the worst kind, they are. He chuckles at the thought. The places his mind wonders to, when given the time of day.

-------------

The television blares, telling apathetic humans of their demise through patriotic propaganda and detailing of fictitious epidemics. He doesn't mind. The words blur to incoherence now anyway. He couldn't make out the sense in them if he had any care to. He wants to run. No. He wants to fly away from this world and over to where civilization has not yet reached and where a man's happiness isn't dictated by the sum of numbers at the end of the day in his bank account. But until he can perfect his one-man flight plan, he'll sit there, watching the sun masking the day – media brainwashing the rest.

--------------

She walks across destinies and highways, dreams and one-ways

He beckons and calls, but she could only respond in despondence.

Why mask the face of greed when it lies so firmly within

Why ask a man to drown when he's already mastered how to swim.

--------------

The moonlight leaks through the window, lightly tapping the dormant soul lying beneath the ledge. The eyes flicker to life, irises seeing only a slight orb of light racing across the moulding ceiling of childhood. Near-conscious of its surroundings, the languid soul sits upon the ledge and stares up at the moon. It's brain remembers a far off tale of condolence. A voice telling of how things often are more helpful when disconnected from the item in question. Free from bias, the voice affirms in a detached tone worthy of its cause. Does that make the moon the middleman, the sole constant? The soul inquires. That would make for an awfully lonely disposition. But how does it stay afloat with all the world's weight in troubles upon it's back? The voice answers in all sincerity. It doesn't. It gets carried by the stars.

--------------

How to explain, to express something that was never really there? How to adopt a sense of conviction when all you get is uncovered fraud? Where does creativity spark when people stop believing? Oh they left it up to us, again, didn't they? I guess we'll have to be the salvation. The arm around the emotion that tells us that negativity is passivity and that passivity is better than to be affirmative and fail big time. Because being optimistic is akin to being disappointed at the slow pace of man, now, isn't it? But how would you know that, if you never saw for yourself? The slow pace of man is for a reason. We have the answer but no one is willing to share. Or rather its all an obscure game of chinese whispers, fibs fusing with truths until the end result is complex and not one single individual is capable of discerning the boundaries of reason and beautification.

-------------

Her lips a riotous red; his a chapped pink. Her hair the colour of rich mahogany; his barely passable for a rugged black. Her eyes the colour of the earth, full of its mysteries and hidden crevices; his the shade of a desiccated blade of grass. Yet, where differences divide, this feeling bridges. This... love, is it? This warm bind that laces the two conflicting hands together and that dismembers both hearts, assembling them back to beat as one.

-------------

So she paces. Her future lays uncertain, in the hands of aristocrats playing with lives as if a simple card game. One ace of hearts in trade for a king of spades. She was never good at deceit, anyway. Always an open book, her face relying reflections of varying emotions, yet never quite enough to express her despair. It doesn't matter now. She tugs her worn cardigan across her frozen frame with a subtle self-reassurance. Memories of childhood and heartfelt songs of the ages replay about in her brain as she taps her feet in agitation. A defense mechanism, something she wasn't surely able. Anything is better than to face what may surface within time.

Small Talk.

An early morning coffee, but it’s laced with gin because she’s making me ill.

She’s in an oversized blue or maybe white shirt of his, smoking and smiling.

Her young, freckled face glows with some suppressed excitement that bubbles when she talks;

“He’s so wonderful. He took me on a picnic, yesterday, and kissed me on the swings.”

When I’d asked him where he was going in the grey light of yesterday he’d said with some girl whose name starts with the letter L. Who? And, anyway, it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t mean a damned thing.

“He’ll hold my hand when I go quiet, you know. He feels it when I’m sad. Wants me to be happy all the time.”

I grimace a grin and take a long drink, but there’s not enough to drown me in that little mug;

“He gave me a flower in bed this morning. He even made me toast and tea, told me I can stay all day if I like. I love him so much. I love him more then anything, I love him, I-“

I cut in, quick and angry, and I don’t mean to, but;

“Does he love you?”

She goes quiet and I regret asking. It’s already out, though, the suspended question hangs in the air with intentional spite, and the answer is there, too, it sits in the pit of her stomach, rising to her throat like bile. She blinks away the truth and I watch as she pushes the answer down beats it and forces it into the very back of her being; no, she won’t have that. She won’t have it.

“Of course he does.”

Of course he does. He does. Of course he does.

I can hear the lie resound in her hollow head, bouncing around the stubborn walls of her narrow mind. So, I shrug and I say;

“Fine.”

“We’ve just finished making love!”

Yeah, I’ve heard that one before. Pah. Stupid girl. I decide to call her L. Because she’s so stupid.

I’ve seen this happen time and time again. These girls and boys just fall in love so easy.

Like they want to. Like they need to. It’s pathetic and sad and entirely their fault.

But then there’s him.

Him.

We’ll call him Saki. Because he loves Saki.

I met Saki back in a coffee shop down a street we’ll call Vertigo.

The coffee shop was this dusty, little place that had been popular back in the thirties but had gotten pushed into the background by rivalling cafes which were more adapted to the times. The shop’s owner was this charming old guy called Carton, who was dying of lung cancer. All day he’d be coughing and still sucking tar into his lungs, he looked like death, but he’d muster a smile and tell a joke if you ordered anything. He’d be dead by now, but I don’t think about that.

I was working at the corner of Vertigo in a rug shop and so all day I had to breathe in dust from these rich people’s rugs that they returned because they were out of date, the rugs, not the people. Though you could argue on that one. The bare minimum look was getting to be all the rage, so these rich, beige-wearing customers we used to get were stripping down their carpets and throwing out their old, family-heirloom rugs. Our merchandise was going out of fashion, business was slow and the land lord was thinking of shutting us down.

I had a bad habit of engaging in polite small talk, so Saki called me Rugs, since that’s all I could yammer on about. He’d gotten bored about half way through my woe-is-me-I-work-in-a-rug-shop routine and told me;

“You love rugs so much? I’ll call you Rugs.”

I’d told him;

“No, I don’t like rugs,”

And he’d smirked and said

“Then don’t talk about them so fuckin’ much.”

Now I live here in this morbid little apartment with walls so thin you can hear someone thinking through them. But, at least it’s with him. At least.

The only downside to living with Saki is all these girls and every now and again boys that come through from some drunken whim or spontaneous notion.

He leaves at about four every morning for a walk, so I’m always stuck here to simmer in my own social backwardness.

None of them need introductions; they’re all nameless, anyway, Saki prefers to just give them labels. Names lead to attachments, and Saki doesn’t need those.

I feel no need to introduce myself to L, who twirls her wheat-coloured hair between her chewed pink finger nails and gnaws at her petal-shaped lips while tapping her foot on the floor.

She should know me. She told me that Saki talks about me all the time.

He talks about me all the time. He talks about me all the time.

L and I sit there for about five minutes, me staring her down from my chair which is only a notch taller then hers and her twirling her hair and tapping her foot. I only have to look at her and I can tell she’s already realising how worthless she is to Saki.

How easily she’ll be forgotten.

Ha.

Just a week from now I bet I’ll be asking him how that girl whose name starts with L is and he’ll be asking;

“Who?”

And I’ll laugh, on the inside, so he doesn’t know.

I almost feel sorry for her, but I don’t because she could never understand love, really. She will never have to burn up countless diaries filled with indiscrete confessions of; I love you, I need you, I want you. She will never conjure up dreams of blue skies and grassy fields, lying next to him while the world topples. No, not this one, not L. She is only a girl, after all. Poor, stupid L.

I wish I was her. God, I wish I was her.

“Ah, just who I’ve been looking for this very morn’.”

Oh, it’s Saki. Even before he walks in I hear his broken, brown shoes hitting the decaying floorboards of the entrance way. I love you, I love you I love you.

But I don’t say that.

He enters the room and I try not to look at him but I catch his reflection in the polished wood of the table; he is as ever a mumbling mess of forget-me-not thoughts and dreary grey eyes with a whip of brown hair and a cigarette dangling from between his lips. The outside world gives him back to me but his mind is always elsewhere, always running from here to there, crying;

I am the cat that walked by himself and all places are alike to me!

I brush the poetry from my mind and ignore him. Not that he’d notice.

He runs over to L who jumps up and embraces him with all her love. Pah.

He’s carrying ‘Les infortunes de la vertu’ by Marquis De Sade and ‘Confessions of an English opium Eater’ by Thomas De Quincey. He must think it’s a Wednesday.

I take note and I cut L’s week of fame down to three days.

“’Ello darlin’,”

She jumps into his arms, her bangles and gypsy necklaces ringing in my ears;

“Where’ve you been? I’ve missed you terribly!”

Yeah, say what you like, L. Three days from now and he won’t even remember you.

Ha.

They kiss and I feel sick to my stomach because he’s gotten so good at making it look real. I cringe and pour myself another drink, this time I don’t even bother with the coffee.

“Ah, Rugs, you shoun’t be drinkin’ so early, you’ll have a burst pancreas in a month if you continue this way.”

I don’t say anything and he comes over and sits real close so I have to notice how beautiful he is. God, he is beautiful.

“Aw, come on Rugs, what’ve I done now?”

“I think your friends a bit cranky,”

L says in a sing song, tell-tale voice. As if he cares that I’ve been mean to her.

He leans over and, I can’t help it, but I lean in too, as if he has a gravitational pull;

“Just say the word, Rugs. I’ll get rid of her if she’s annoyin’ you,”

I shake my head, but I know he’s not convinced because he stands and looks L in the eye and says;

“Ah, sorry love, but I think Rugs’ got a headache. Think you better go, how’ver much I’d like you t’stay.”

“Aww, can’t you come with me, then? Leave Rugs ‘ere to brood over a mug’o gin,”

“Nah, I got work today, love. Tell you wha’, you call me around 8 and I’ll take you out for dinner?”

She pouts in that annoying way kids do. Except it’s not cute.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

She smiles and gives him one last kiss and hug before she’s out the door in a flurry of colours. She doesn’t give back his shirt. When she’s finally gone, he sighs, his shoulders relaxing, sinking downwards;

“Thanks, Rugs. You really got me outta that one.”

He takes a cup from the sink, not even bothering to rinse it, and fills it with gin as well, sitting opposite me with a smile on his face; he’s been out, so he’s all rosy cheeked and blue-eyed;

“Now we can hang out, just the two of us, eh, Rugs? It’s bin a’while, admittedly. I almost feel as if I don’t know you anymore.”

Just the two of us. Just him and me. I don’t respond, I want him to feel bad for making me deal with that girl, for making me deal with every moment of loneliness and rejection over the years, for every second that he doesn’t love me back; but I know he’s not so sharp on empathy, so I just shrug my shoulders and say;

“Nah’m busy today, actually.”

Saki raises an eyebrow, theatrically;

“Really? With wha’? Not more fuckin’ doormats, ‘sit? Or, wait, maybe you’ve moved onto tables, which is a shame; ‘Tables’ don’ have quite the same ring as Rugs.”

He takes a long swig of his drink, and I tip myself another, hoping to dear god that I’m not completely off my face soon; I’ve got work today,

“A date, actually. With Thomas Minnet, I’ve got to meet him at the park at 3 today; we’re going for a picnic.”

Saki looks shocked;

“Thomas Minnet? Tha’ wanker? Never met so much of a bore in my life, one time I asked ‘im how he was and he actually told me. Details ‘n all.”

I feign being hurt and summon an indignant air;

“I’m in love with him, actually. He feels it when I’m sad, you know, he wants me to be happy all the time,”

Saki shakes his head in disbelief, and I can only hope he doesn’t tell Thomas Minnet that, otherwise I’d be stuck with the wanker;

“Well, to each their own Rugs, ‘ave fun. If you can.”

He stands, drinking his whole cup in one gulp, not flinching. I can tell by the fact that he doesn’t bother taking off his jacket that he’s planning on going for another stroll, this one might last a week; he does that sometimes;

“And, anyway, things could be worse, I mean,”

And he winks;

“You could always be in love with me.”

------------------------------------

By Mikee Sto. Domingo.

The eye of the beholder.

She walked to me with an undeniable grace unrivaled by any I'd known. Clad in bright red shoes with an equally dazzling yellow coat, she looked straight into my eyes. Her soft hands touched the side of my face. This, she said; “Look all around you, what do you see?”

She stepped back, so I did. I turned around and looked on either side of me. There were buildings as tall as the cranes accompanying them with stores of long gone business at their base. There were trees fighting for life in odd nooks and little children with ear muffs playing tag behind them. Running, they chased each other with rugged twigs. The coffee guy from Queens was picking up littered paper cups from the snow-sleeked pavement, making his preparations for a lonely Christmas again this year. The odd shopper rushed panic-stricken, praying to the Gods to be able to catch the last of the end-of-year sales while hastily applying lipstick to at least have the dignity of vanity in disarray. And all the while, the pigeons picked up leftover chips dropped by busy go-getters, an apparent chirp in their step. Though this was not unusual.

“Look a little closer now. Bring yourself to chip the superficial layer away.” She said this in my ear in a tone leaking of conspiracy.

So I did. The buildings turned to mansions, uniform and profound – soldiers armed against the economic war of rowdy analysts and shortsighted financial statisticians. The little children turned to elves, cheeky and boisterous, laughs reverberating in the lighter atmosphere. Their twigs now hummingbirds the colours of rainbows not yet seen in this world. The coffee guy now a gentile dwarf, hobbling about the square, playing his lute to the casual listener. The odd shoppers now fairies, still as absorbed with the lure of vanity, but less grounded. Free in every sense of the word and alight with stories to recite to anyone who will care to sit with them on the whittled benches. The pigeons transfigured to doves, scattering garlands to those in need, spreading the message of Christmas.

“It's okay to believe.” She said with the slightest whisper imaginable. So quiet she conveyed this, that I would have missed it if I payed even the most minimal of attention to the fresh snowfall now blanketing out the remaining grey to be left of reality.          

Insomnia or contingency?

His respiration is evident in the conspicuous smoke that flows through his mouth and evaporates in the cool autumn air. How did it get so cold so soon? His thoughts pulse and quicken as he feels the unwanted adrenalin coursing through his deadpan body. His eyes carry bags of fatigue as he makes his way up steps and turns at an abrupt right. Left, right. Left, right. Stand still. He sees himself in a cracked classroom window and wonders at the dismembered soul staring back. Who are you? He asks, taking leave of all false perception.

------

The characters just jump out of the books for you, don't they? You see the distinctive line between reality and borderline insanity but you don't care. A step here, a step there. Aren't they all the same? They just might mean more on one side than the other. It's this disillusionment that you fear but feel right in the heart of it all. You see the probes, the penetrative looks of casual passer-bys, but you can't feel cognizant of them anymore. You're long gone, dear, utterly disconnected. A pay-phone hanging in unavailing attempt to reach the ground.

------

There it goes. Up, and out to the skyline. Just shadow play as you find yourself in a desolate alley. Some voice calls out but you can't discern fact from fiction. No, no. Your footsteps no longer resound ominously about the place but rather stay on mute. They feel lighter. As if every movement is stressed. You're moving around craters. Words from ghosts clamber to and fro about from one brain cell to the other. And your senses heighten, but things are splitting at the seams now, and you collapse, wondering what to do.  

To be the odd one out.

Peter. Peter. Peter.

I don't want to grow up. Not like this, with society's face pressed sharp against the window, etching their disinterested visage through the fog. I want to fly, where words make no more sense than the clouds' dissection in the sky. Where thought has no meaning and where facial expressions suffice. The key in the door stays in the doorknob and I am reminded of my seclusion. Oh, how desolation envelops the decrepit, the passive. The wind chimes flutter their whispers to the wind, telling of this girl's unfortunate demise.

Oh, Peter. Dear Peter.

Won't you lend me a kite?

------

The boy, ripened at 19, sits atop his dismantled draws looking to the crash site below. His hair falls over his clouded eyes as like glaciers they stand still by default. He brings his Benson to his mouth and breathes out cancer. Not a care in the world, despair had long left, having appraised the young fellow and deemed him bizarrely disinclined of its presence. The boy's hands stiffen and grip the edge unyieldingly. Men with broken top hats and ladies with half-lacerated corsages dance in a revolving circle, taunting him, asking of him justifications that he can't give.

------

The love. The fear. The spark. The tear.

Oh where, oh dear? Oh simply lend me your ear.

I'll tell you stories of elaborate fences and hoaxes and strange preferences.

You'll build up that wall, finely constructed, bricks and all.

I'll shout and I'll pound, but oh, you won't hear the sound.

But then you'll sit there. And then you'll wonder.

Oh why, oh how you could have made such a blunder.

------

Irony, like tar, flows from his mouth and taints her pellucid mind. We could make it, couldn't we? Ah. But there is the trick as he binds his arms around her. He whispers her promises of realities that won't exist. The ones that can't take shape in this dimension. The rain filters down upon the untimely couple and his face is petered out of its inconstancies and hers relays an emotion no longer relevant. You promised. Ah. But aren't all men fools, chained to desire?

------

He recites her sonnets. Floral vocabulary is his language of choice, yet she responds in simplicity. Each word coincides with the other. Who goes to say that the tiger lily is any more compelling than the lone daisy? The pictures he laboriously paints, she arranges within a few strokes here and there. He doesn't understand this as he grasps at words unknown. And all the while, as she listens in content, her eyes mask a knowing smile.

------

Conceited as he is charming, he dangles hearts on makeshift strings and lulls himself into a sedated stupor, identical to a child and it's beloved mobile. His dreams leave much to be desired as they catch him by the throat and knock the breath out of him. Unintelligible whimpers escape his still form on the unmade bed, disturbing the peaceful atmosphere. A ghost as he wakes, eyes a dull grey and drawn back in weary defeat. I'd pity him, but alas. My heart is empty and hanging from his nightstand.

------

Fingers accented with wrinkles, souvenirs given from his new acquaintance, Age, flit across numerous keys with visible skill and precision. One note after the other leaves the casual listener curious as to its inspiration. Its muse a constant question. At the end of each piece, the man routinely tips the checkered trilby hat atop his head with the causal pressure of his forefinger on the rim. He smiles and starts a new song, words lost amongst the jovial crowd. They know not where the man comes from, nor where he calls home, but know that wherever the music is, he will surely follow.