Amy, plural
Enlightened ones may live everywhere among us, looking like functional failures.
I was sitting in a chair reading Amy Hempel’s a full service shelter, exploding on the inside as I came to its final statement. I finished my coffee and went to the kitchen.
I put on on Aimee Mann’s Mental Illness and listened to the first 3 songs over and over again, eleven times total, 33 listens, waiting for the clotting to finally take hold.
Every so often I am reminded of how a work (a text as we used to insist on saying) can shake me free, kick me loose, wield a stark and unruly autonomy over whatever pattern of coherence I thought I was rutted in, like a needle on a spinning record abruptly skittering from its track and the party stops so cleanly that it becomes clear that what we presumed to be a party is entirely and utterly something else.
