Moods relate to keys and scales. Light shows, rockets, vendors, spotlights, Tolkeinesque font, heavy on the kerning. Shirtless cartoon Dick Tracy with shaving cream around his mouth, glaring at himself in a mirror. Are you sure? A library book? Yes, sir. Dictation. A series of orders. People do what they do. In most cases, they follow orders. Get them to open their eyes, awaken out of themselves. Great metamorphoses ahead if China’s working class rises and takes over. Disembodied Italian-American heads gesticulate with imaginary arms. The world appears coherent only inasmuch as we hear it. Such, at least, was the experience of my bespectacled middle school self, with nearsightedness or myopia “afflicted,” so to me it seemed, as early as the age of eight. Much in the composition of my psyche dates to that moment of near-total alienation from the world of my peers.
