Austin TremblayCREPITUS Pressure keeps a house: the slurred speech * * * LATE ON PALM SUNDAY All those uncomfortably dressed girls, At the buffet, they'll sit beside men Because there won't be work that evening, the way crickets do, singing. As the men scoop them when they were boys. Bad luck to step on one * * * RESOLVEI can't get this chord progression out of my head–A minor to F to C–and I know exactly why. A minor, because it's a minor third below C, causes a dark start, like birth, like the way a bar looks when you enter. And then, because F is the subdominant chord to C, it hammers on C's door in the rain, hard up, stuck and wild, like when the bar enters you. F begs: Let me finish this. Let me in where it's major and warm. I've worked hard for this. I deserve the sound of your resolve. And there's no choice then. C has to let F back in, home. For music, for that science and formula, it can't refuse. I used to be proud to hear this, to pick it out anywhere. Now it won't leave me alone. I didn't think my life would be like music. I thought it would be music. That I would ache through this progression toward comfort, that aptitude alone would save me. But I'm not a song. I can't sing myself. I can't get these chords out of my head. They won't stop feeling like this, and I won't stop wanting them to, needing that resolve. I can't fight this feeling anymore. My own compulsion is my fucked up mercy.
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