Duplicated Record Cultures

Twitter Sonnet #114

Grey cats do not care about peppermint.
Animal minds push back the time for booze.
Ignore cans in fallout shelters you rent.
Scrambled eggs accumulate in drive-throughs.
A tired avocado stretches out.
When liquefied, an agent buries it.
Oblivion's in many holes en route.
So it's better to follow the rabbit.
Stories must be told to illiterates.
Tall bird plots tweet to air by the dozen.
So broken are schemes of Confederates.
Blue jeans can only be worn if chosen.
Frightened rodents guard remnants of burnt books.
You shouldn't judge twin girl scouts by their looks.

I remember two dreams from last night. The first was kind of frightening--I was staying in a large, very old, dusty house with T.E. Lawrence as played by Peter O'Toole. He seemed very vexed by something, but it was long after sunset and he was trying to sleep on a couch. I was sitting on the floor, looking at where I knew there was a chair across the room. I knew someone was sitting in the chair and I was very disturbed not knowing who it was. Hands reached out to me where I remained sitting crossed legged and I held them a moment. Then I began feeling the person's face, increasingly anxious about the person's identity. I felt smooth skin on a chin and full, smiling lips. My best guess was it was a young Elizabeth Taylor. I think this dream was influenced by the portion of War and Peace I read before I went to bed where the Rostov girls were trying to receive supernatural visions by looking into mirrors facing each other and a candle.

In the second dream, I was following a large, dark blue elephant ridden by Kevin Murphy of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and Rifftrax. The elephant's two front legs were white and its right back leg was a lighter shade of blue than the bulk of it. Murphy was riding towards a large, white medieval city somewhat resembling Minas Tirith. A movie was being shown in the centre of the city, and the city walls and buildings had been constructed in such a way as to cause Murphy's voice to echo throughout the city as he riffed on the film. Townspeople could contribute riffs by touching a bag Murphy had attached to his saddle, which somehow funnelled a voice from below to the elevation where it could take advantage of the special acoustics. There'd been some bad, abrasive riffs from the peasants lately, so Murphy had moved the bag to the other side of the saddle, where apparently only the smarter and more considerate peasants could find it.

While inking and colouring yesterday, I listened to the cast and crew commentary on Goodfellas. I found Martin Scorsese's discussion of Henry Hill's voice interesting--Scorsese found the rhythm of Hill's storytelling to be the backbone of the movie, and both he and Nicolas Pileggi talked about a tradition of roaming storytellers in southern Italy, who would go to people's houses with the express purpose of telling stories, which entertained a large number of illiterate people before there was radio. Scorsese seemed to feel this practice had survived in tough kids and wise guys who'd tell stories in the neighbourhoods where he and Hill grew up.

I was also interested in Lorraine Bracco talking about watching the movie again that morning and finding Liotta as Hill very attractive--"very sexy" and she mentioned "falling in love with him again." I sort of wondered if simply watching video of yourself apparently loving someone might be a form of hypnosis.