The Tyranny of Tradition

I started off trying to review Graveyard’s new album Hisingen Blues.  Things were going really well.  I had a neat little intro where I talked about their 70’s retro sound and compared them to a few bands.  There was a cool section where I discussed the driving intensity of their sound and compared them to a freight train.  It was going really well.  All that is gone now.  All that is left is chaos, despair and panic.  I’m sitting in my car in the parking lot of a Burger King fast food.  It’s 4:47 in the morning.  How did I get here?

I was writing the review at the kitchen table.  My wife and kids were playing in the other room.  In the distance, I heard the vaguely menacing sounds of Dora The Explorer.  My ears were much more attuned to magniloquent sounds of the song Hisingen Blues by Graveyard.  I’d listened to the album a few times, but kept coming back to the title track.  “WHERE IS THE FUTURE?!?!?!?!”

I was grooving to the song.  I closed my eyes.  The next thing I knew my wife was screaming.  “WHAT ARE YOU!?!!?!??!?!?  GET OUT OF HERE!!?!?!?!”

I tried to say “Honey, it’s just me.  Why are you screaming?”  But it came out “Kjqgjgnqrwlkgnjwqrngljnwrjlgnlg?”.  I sounded like the creature in the Predator movies when it tried to talk.  What was happening?

My wife picked up a broom and started hitting me.  “Stop it!” (“Njndgjlqwrnlgkn!”) The sounds that came out of me only made her more frightened.  I ran upstairs.  Suddenly, I started thinking about our cat.  I have to eat the cat.  I have to eat the cat.  I sprinted around the bedroom looking for the cat.  I thought of how good the cat would taste.  I have to eat the cat.  “WHERE IS THE FUTURE!?” echoed in my minds ear.  I need to eat the cat.  It would be so delicious.  I have to eat the cat. I looked under the bed, I looked in the shower.  I looked in the closet on my wife’s red sweater where it likes to sleep. All at once it occurred to me that we don’t have a cat.

I looked into the mirror.  What looked back at me was horrifying.  Green neck, green skin, pointy nose, scales.  I was…..a lizard!!!!!!!  Dear God….A LIZARD!!!!!!  I ran downstairs to try to explain it to my wife.  She had both of the kids in her arms and she was screaming into her cell phone.  “SDGASFHAFSHERJJET!” I pleaded.

“Get away you…..BEAST!  What have you done with my husband????”

My children’s eyes were filled with confusion.  I was not daddy anymore.  I was some “thing” that they could not possibly understand.  Some “thing” they conjured up in a nightmare, but not daddy.  “WHERE IS THE FUTURE!?!!?!!” My wife’s eyes gleamed with hate and fear.  I was a stranger to them.

I grabbed my keys and ran out of the front door towards my car.  Our neighbor was blissfully jogging up the street with her headphones on.  At first, she did not notice me.  All at once her face grew pale.  She turned and sprinted away from me.  I leaped in my car.  Could I even drive?  Could I get the key in the ignition?  My lizard fingers clumsily pushed the key in and I was off to somewhere.  But where?

Most of the last nine hours has been about staying alive.  I have cat scratch marks all over me that I cannot explain.  I feel the empty exhaustion of a sleepless night.  I don’t remember much of what has happened, but I am here.  Soon, the sun will rise.  I have to stay safe.  There is no room for my kind on the street.  Not among the animals.  Not in the daylight.

And what of my condition?  How did I end up here? Something in the song brought me to this place.  I have become the poetry of doom and horror.  Something in the song turned me into this creature.  Something inside of me, both wretched and righteous, has escaped and become my form.  “WHERE IS THE FUTURE?!?!?!”  I am no longer what you would call human.  I wear alienation as my skin.  As the moments recede backwards into the night my fate stands before me.  I am lost.