Mischa: The Temptation To Go Unplugged

I found a rug in an old junk shop

I brought it home to you

Along the way the colors ran

The orange bled the blue

“I Do It For Your Love,” Paul Simon

I don’t think Atlantis is in the house
Mischa Barton’s selling on the West Coast.
(And, to be clear, I don’t think Atlantis
is around Mischa Barton’s house, either.)

I can’t even come up with a pretend
screwball metaphor for why Atlantis
would be in the house Mischa is selling.


I saw a picture of Mischa wearing
a yellow dress. I don’t think aliens
will kidnap Mischa or her yellow dress.


If I ever, somehow, bought Mischa’s house
I strongly suspect I’d spend too much time
playing an un-mic’ed acoustic guitar
without lights or a camera running
improvising folk songs without drama,
just endless sappy dirges recounting
ghosts and the origin of consciousness.
It would take a lot of production tricks
to add value to that kind of content
and without a mic or a camera
a one-person operation is lost.

Of course everyone’s lost anyway but
I’m afraid Mischa’s house might be more lost
than the places Atlantis might have been.
Or might still be. So, yeah, that’s really lost.

Electric guitars, digital keyboards —
These things need to be plugged in. I don’t want
any (more) temptation to go unplugged.

















(Here’s a bit of music world trivia. I used to know a really good semi-professional drummer. His hero in the world of drumming, a guy he regarded as the best drummer alive, was a professional drummer named Steve Gadd. Steve Gadd plays drums on this Paul Simon clip.)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .



Mischa: A House That Can’t Be Fixed


The Apocalypse Of Her Yellow Dress


Ghosts Are Us


Affannato


A Consolation And An Inspiration