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Song 4 | Aug 06 2003

We had to pass through a place with small, low trees. It was just a short way, ten or twelve feet. It was night and dark. I’d been there before and knew the way. Still, you were scared. I’d never seen you that scared, and it confused me. I told you it was safe, for it was, but you wouldn’t budge. I went through and came back, to show you. It didn’t matter. You were scared in a way that left no room not to be scared. I didn’t know what to do. Finally I took your hand and put my arm around you—left hand in left hand, right arm wrapped tight to your waist—and led you through. We went slow.

The fourth song is bad methinks. How it is possible you like it?

In the film I watched last night, a woman looks out the window during an argument with her lover and threatens to take up with the first man she sees. This is what she does. She follows a random man to a train station and stares at him as he buys his ticket. Next we see the man calling his wife from a hotel where he’s in bed with the woman. He tells his wife exactly what has happened and says he’s going with the woman to Barcelona. In Barcelona we’re treated to various shots of her naked breasts in the moonlight. The film very well could have been called Naked Breasts in the Moonlight. In his journal, in 1913, Kafka wrote: “Went to the movies. Wept. Boundless entertainment.” I didn’t weep but became sleepy.

The song made me realize that you are capable of anything, including hearing the same thing I hear but in such a way that it is no longer the same thing. That threw me.