Through hallowed halls the enlisted edge towards secrets divined by troubled minds.  These walls hold nothing but a promise. Nothing, from a premise. Premise born, promise delivered. But who is the giver? Behind which door lies the puppeteer? What strange machinations grind these ghostly gears? Or is it the mind that steers?

A thousand clues whisper a thousand lies which we fumble for with mask-clad eyes. From the shadows, the audience is surveiled. Spirits walking among us, then suddenly spirited away. The more we search the more we're led astray. In the bowels of this house a darkness stirs - an animalian energy, wild curiosity primal and erotic, a beating heart which beckons us. But this shuttered heart tells no tales. At least none but those that exist in the dawning of our knowledge - the ones we've most suppressed. From arrest comes unrest and in the belly of the beast those stories are released. Louder and louder they beat. Bull bleats. Bloody infant kicks her feet. The red queen stares with serpent's eyes as she goads the possessed between her thighs, while all around her bodies writhe. Our masks portray placidity, but in the end that heart beats within us all. And at the final curtain call, as we shuffle from this immoral coil, amidst the murdered sleep, our thoughts run deep - for this mischief, this darkness, this lurid sweeping dance with blood and lust and death excites us. What does that say about us?

In the end, conscience makes cowards of us all - against our own desires we file out through the manor doors lest that conscience sleep no more. 

Flee the place make haste through a drizzly rain - off like a shot - bullet train. Dove's got the ticket, through forest and thicket we pass and at last we're at Mild Bill's place. Bill.I.Am with the plans and the farmer van - meet and greet, make the drop then straight to the tea shop. Squashing's good but 'choking's better - Poste haste postres and the tally's cheddar. Survey the street - tiger beat - upstate upstarts underage, over supplied, well imbibed, no jive so it's time to ride - dispatch knows, just find the cross-road college bros. Rock n' roll home for some hootchie coo - tomorrow much to see but tonight things to do. Arise to the prize, mile wide eyes. Better exercised on distant skies - nature's drug plus some chemistry and a field full of things grown non-chemically. Guests arrive so it's time to drive - to beacon seeking more than just american muscle and tourist trap hustle. Up bustle and out to the cracker shack - Dove talks a good game of art plus disco snacks and before we know it it's time to head back. Good to sit, Yeezy spits on tunes we split. L train home and that's it for this writ. An adventure ends and a story begins.

It's just us three and Cassi O' P, who's looking down unflinchingly. We've got everything we need - a fire, a harvest moon, and a six string. Matt's playing this song, more soulfully. Another troubadour's tall tale. Not the story of Pancho Villa, he insists - just a song that came to Townes Van Zandt out of some similar midnight blue. From anyone else this might spoil the surprise - but there's comfort to be found in his reprise. Matt's managed to keep himself and others out of every true tall tale that by his driving hands and ceaseless feet has been told. A reality so real it can't be sold. What's left when you take the Self from off the stockist's shelf? Life, the universe, and everything else. We're all just visitors here. Witnesses to the driving wheels that turn our world round and round - to which we can only add sound. I can only hope to add mine so melodiously.

He awakes from a dream of perpetual and public failure, helplessness replayed wondrous and passing strange. Bed sheets soaked with the sweat of desire, all of it pooling together, inert, to yellow the tattered sheets. His body seeking to expel or expand the endless energy inside him, reaching out in every direction, like a universe rent apart by the sum gravitational pull of its planetary members - or gaining so much mass it will inevitably implode. Implode, explode, he can't decipher to which end he will arrive at first - but in the end the end's the same, and certain. Around him loves lie everywhere, taking form as ruddy trinkets, flawless flesh -  fresh to def but always out of reach. The beauty of it all is unbearable, an overinflated red balloon like Lester talked about, one that would carry you skyward until it was burned by the sun - and you'd come tumbling down. Lester would say stop trying to hold on to it - enjoy every moment of your stupid little life. But his impulses speak otherwise. Tumbling is beside the vantage point, or rather after it, an end that befalls both the dreamers and dreamless. To fear the end is to somehow fail to see that mankind can fly at all! And so he'll continue to catch those upward currents, and fall, and fall, and fall.

Seconds become hours. Inches become miles. Journey forth to some other while. Each touch whispers lies of other lives. But with intenions laid bare to the cold night air , what truths lie beneath the breast, under the hair? Desire's fire or some slow steady kindling? Either way it burns bright, settling in to stoke the flames in its mysterious way. Unpredictable flicker, alluring sway. Why fear most that which you hold so dear? What's play it safe? What's in the clear? Pursed lips, practiced sighs - but a telltale heart beating bump bump bump. 

A stalemate played out long after all hands should have been laid out on the table. Trapped in what storytellers call the willing suspension of disbelief. Suspension is impermanent though. Dare we defy these physics? Certainly what is suspended must at some point be released. Stories cannot be wrapped up neatly because life cannot be wrapped up neatly. Or can it? It's your thoughts that now must deck our kings. 

Second time around is twice as nice. 

They say human beings can adapt to just about anything. But can we adapt to mediocrity? The ignorant have their bliss. The wise can't empathize. But those that stand at the fringe, gazing out across the chasm toward those green and sunny pastures of the proverbial "other side"? Greatness close enough to see and smell and hear but not to touch - that final step is just too much. If we could only hitch a ride... The thought of it is maddening - an illusory carrot on a whupping stick, forever dangling in front of your aspiring, admiring eyes. Get too close and you're bound to get smacked. Back into your place - doomed forever to give distant, panting chase. 

Even a fool knows when it's gold

I've never seen the New York City skyline as beautiful as it was tonight. I have, however, heard better songs about sunsets. This one was fresh on my mind though, like the city baptised and reborn in this strange new glow.