It wasn’t that he saw too much, only that he waited too short a time before spitting it back out. It was a kind of disease, really, a mind that couldn’t hold an image or a phrase for more than a few minutes without recirculating it in the form of a song. What the world gave him, he gave right back, hot-potato style. He had written, all told, a thousand songs, more than many famous talents, more than Berlin (“the whole city,” he liked to joke) but fewer than Mercer (“the whole town,” he liked to joke). He had the same routine most mornings. He woke to a bed he preferred empty—any company from the night before would have been shown the door no matter how wee the hour—brushed his teeth, drank a cup of coffee, brushed them again, and then took his breakfast in his local spot, the kind of restaurant a man might go to after dyeing his hair gray. He kept his notebook open as he ate. This morning’s achievement: “Floral Pants and Moral Rants,” a kind of foxtrot occasioned by the woman at the next table and the mendicant two tables over. A lesser artist would put a halo on the woman and an aura on the beggar. A greater artist would too. He was, as always, collateral damage as his rage for specificity mowed down the morning. He described the other breakfasters just as they were, the woman with one too many buttons unbuttoned, lovely ringlets, flirting a little to an unseen man on the other end of her phone, the man badly sunburned and rapidly reading an off-brand Bible. He finished his eggs and the song at the same exact time. He would change the title but nothing else.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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