Exciting Waveforms

There’s a storm coming. I’m going to sleep.

Before meeting Pam for lunch, I spent time
talking about music technology
with a recording studio owner.

He told me he’d be willing to sell me
his Yamaha Motif synthesizer.

“It’s in perfect shape,” he said. “Nobody
ever uses it. All of my clients
either just play real instruments and hate
the technology stuff, or they’re experts
at the virtual studio programs
running on computers so they don’t need
the fancy keyboard workstations at all.”

I’m reasonably good with computers
myself and I’m trying to get better
at playing what he called ‘real’ instruments.

So I didn’t buy his fancy keyboard.

When Pam got out of her car a strong wind
blew a visible cloud of dust at her
from off the asphalt of the parking lot.

Pam closed her eyes. She turned away briefly,
then opened her eyes, looked at me and smiled.

“Fucking wind,” she said. “Is a storm coming?”

“On radar,” I said, “it looks hours away.”

“Well,” Pam said, “the fucking wind is here now.”

It’s later and the storm is much closer.

In my room, there’s a guitar over there
and my keyboard doesn’t give me access
to oscillator-level sound shaping.

But I can still play songs, still sing to Pam.

There’s a storm coming and lightning will flash
like exciting waveforms against the sky.

I’m going to sleep. Somehow tomorrow
I’ll find a way to make music for Pam.

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




Corporate Communications #1: Pamela


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