You know it never has been easy
Whether you do or you do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of extremities
Or stick to some straighter line
- from 'Hejira' by Joni Mitchell, 1976
KB: "Growing up for most people is just trying to stop escaping..."
gaffa.org/reaching/i89_cd.htmlOoh-oh
(what you sell it for???*) walk straight down the middle of it
Ooh-oh
(just got it from???*) walk straight down the middle of it
Ooh-oh
(just got it from???*) Brgrgrgrgrgrgrgr Ah Brgrgrgrgrgrgrgr Ah
"My mother thought it was a peacock--she was looking for a peacock, isn't that sweet? I fancied being Captain Beefheart at that point, and it just came to me: standing out, calling for help in the middle. It just went, 'BBRRRROOOOAAAAAAAAA'... It's the idea of how our fear are sometimes holding us back, and yet there's really no need to be frightened... 'Walk Straight Down the Middle' came together very quickly.
It's about following either of two extremes, when you really want to plough this path straight down the middle. Rather than 'WAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH': being thrown from one end of the spectrum to the other. I'd like to think of myself as holding the centre, whereas in fact I'm--'WAAARRRRGGGGHHHH'--taking off all the time."
gaffa.org/reaching/i89_nme2.html* Something is being sung here, but I am unable to decipher exactly what!This song is unsettling. IMHO, it seems to be about survivors of abuse stories/mental health recovery/etc.? The
non-Moving opening lines could be catatonic schizophrenia or the terribly vague piecing together of (GHB/Rohypnol) abuse?
...When you and sleep escape me... Traumatic recall or breakdown can be very disabling...
"What do we do Now we just can't move?" ...It can be so hard to seek professional help; and even then the individual can come to hang on to, or depend on their therapist almost completely. Moreover, repressed trauma recovery can be the start of a very difficult therapeutic ascent. The sense of immobility and muteness reminds me of 'suspended in gaffa':
'Gaffa' seems to come from 'gaffer's tape', a heavy tape used to secure cables on stage and in film work. "Kate apparently means to conjure up the image (more or less as illustrated in the film version) of the character in the song hanging in some void, helpless to escape from her station in both the physical and metaphysical worlds."
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gaffa.org/dreaming/E2_gaffa.htmlKB: "'Gaffa' is Gaffa Tape. It is thick industrial tape mainly used for taping down and tiding up the millions of leads and particularly useful in concert situations. 'Suspended in Gaffa' is trying to simulate being trapped in some kind of web, everything is in slow motion and the person feels like they're tied up, they can't move."
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www.thekickinside.btinternet.co.uk/inter3.htmCan't move my arms
Can't move my legs
Can't say no
I can't say yes
Can't help myself
I need your help
(We go)
"Ooh, ooh, what do we do
Now we just can't move?"
We're calling out for Middle Street...
I'd tell the whole story... but instead we seem to be going down right in the middle of a Russian street...- from 'Love Letter Written In A Burning Building' by Anne Sexton.
Love Letter Written In A Burning Building
by Anne Sexton, 9/27/74.Dearest Foxxy,
I am in a crate,
the crate that was ours,
full of white shirts and salad greens,
the icebox knocking at our delectable knocks,
and I wore movies in my eyes,
and you wore eggs in your tunnel,
and we played sheets, sheets, sheets
all day, even in the bathtub like lunatics.
But today I set the bed afire
and smoke is filling the room,
it is getting hot enough for the walls to melt,
and the icebox, a gluey white tooth.
I have on a mask in order to write my last words,
and they are just for you, and I will place them
in the icebox saved for vodka and tomatoes,
and perhaps they will last.
The dog will not. Her spots will fall off.
The old letters will melt into a black bee.
The nightgowns are already shredding
into paper, the yellow, the red, the purple.
The bed -- well, the sheets have turned to gold --
hard, hard gold, and the mattress
is being kissed into a stone.
As for me, my dearest Foxxy,
my poems to you may or may not reach the icebox
and its hopeful eternity,
for isn't yours enough?
The one where you name
my name right out in P.R.?
If my toes weren't yielding to pitch
I'd tell the whole story --
not just the sheet story
but the belly-button story,
the pried-eyelid story,
the whiskey-sour-of-the-nipple story --
and shovel back our love where it belonged.
Despite my asbestos gloves,
the cough is filling me with black,
and a red powder seeps through my veins,
our little crate goes down so publicly
and without meaning it, you see,
meaning a solo act,
a cremation of the love,
but instead we seem to be going down
right in the middle of a Russian street,
the flames making the sound of
the horse being beaten and beaten,
the whip is adoring its human triumph
while the flies wait, blow by blow,
straight from United Fruit, Inc.
I'd never really paid that much attention to it. Now that you mention it, it does remind me a bit of SIG. 
