TomFlannery.com

Looking out my window. I see trees moving for a change. Not just standing there sweltering, but giving off what I think is called a “breeze”. I may have forgotten the exact word. Gallons of sweat dripping from the tip of your nose and making your glasses slip down your face can create such memory cramps. I hear we’re back to hell weather come friday, just in time for July 4th, which I despise because it reminds me that this heat shit is really just getting started. And fireworks that don’t light up the sky piss me off. You know, the kind teens hoard and cops allow anybody that doesn’t have a limb growing out of the middle of their head to sell in tents on the side of the road even though they’re blatantly illegal. All they do is go “boom”.  Nothing else. Anybody who gets a bang out of something that just goes “boom” is one of 2 things. Either 10 years old, or mentally retarded. Come 9:30pm on the 4th this place sounds like Sarajevo during the 90s. I asked a kid I saw last year what it is we were “celebrating”. “Independence” he said. “From what?” I said. “Germany” was his answer. I decided to let it go. He seemed annoyed that I was interrupting. He was in the process of searching for frogs so, as he so eloquently put it,  “I can put an M-80 up his ass”. Sometimes I’m not sure if Washington outlasted the Brits or if they just said “fuck it, these people are too dumb to govern” and pissed off back to England.

I’m just cranky is all. Insomnia makes sure I’m never alone, which is kinda annoying ’cause I enjoy solitude.

Fingertips built back up after hours of playing over the last few days. It’s the voice that needs to be reminded of where it’s supposed to go. It’s cracking in places it never used to crack before, which is kinda funny when I’m singing alone but mortifying if I have an audience. “Dad, was it supposed to sound like that?” When you hit a bum guitar note you can just say you’re playing jazz. Off-key voice? Harder to explain away….especially to an 8 year old used to listening to singers on the radio who stay on pitch courtesy of computers and desperate engineers. Give them a Gibson Jumbo and have them try out the middle eight of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” in front of my little girl. We’ll see how dead-on they are.

How’d I get there? I was just looking out the window. Lots of fences around here. The kind that make good neighbors. All of them white and 6 feet tall. I’d prefer something 3 times the size made of brick but it’s cost prohibitive. Grass is all brown but nobody really cares because everybody’s grass is brown except for the guy who stands in the middle of his yard with a hose all day, looking forlorn. I’d rather have brown grass.

Can just see the tips of cars as they drive by. They look like toys from here. Can’t hear anything ’cause I’ve got a John Gorka CD playing at a volume louder than a car driving down a busy street. And he’s singing mostly ballads. If I had Jason and the Scorchers on instead it might break windows.

Why are fences white? Why not magenta? How about green? Or brown, like the grass they keep people from looking at?

Songs are coming. I just know it.

In a bit…

–tf