Tucson: Send us your tired, your poor, your weak, your undesireables. Tucson will accept them all...But don't bother telling your tale of woe. Tucson doesn't care. Tucson just wants you to SHUT UP. It is the City of Silence.
Sure, we have artists, but we keep them all safely stuffed in South Filth where they can't bother anyone with their ideas. Those ideas just upset everyone else, and an upset population isn't very silent.
The good Tucsonans keep the curtains closed, fearing the daylight. Television on. Sirens in the distance, but not for you. Not tonight. That's someone else's bad day happening out there, and you'll fucking stay put unless you want to share that other guy's bad day. Capisce?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
But still a thought gets inside my mind, that maybe things don't actually have to be this way. That humans aren't meant to live like animals in cages. That there is actually very little consolation in not having very far to fall. That the present system, The Machine, is monstrous and should be put to the sword. Burn the horrible thing down, dance on the ashes, screaming the words to the Goddamn Star-Spangled Banner until they shoot me down like a dog.
I am not an address! I am not a number! I AM NOT HAVING THAT!
But then the sun comes up and smashes me into the pavement like a giant, angry God stubbing out a cigarette. And so I retreat back inside, where at least there's the blues. The blues are always there for you, don't you know? They can make you feel a bit better about basically being the topic of their own lyrics. Recursive hell, down here where the muck goes. Down here where the sirens wail all night and the cops cry in their whiskey and total strangers pound on your door, demanding to know who you voted for or what church you attend or can you answer their fucking survey. Down where there are no smiling EMTs, and the politicians have grins normally seen in aquariums.
But still a thought gets inside my mind, that maybe things don't actually have to be this way. We can rise up, lose our collective shit, smash it all and fuck the consequences. But, thing is, now it's time for pills. Time to get full eating pills. Goddamn pills to wake up and pills to go to sleep and I remember a time when things were different.
No, wait. Scratch all that. Tucson is just a city, man, just a city and it can't actually love you. But I love IT. I love it and I'll never leave, because here in Tucson we all live forever, and we're afraid that if we leave, all that stored time will SLAM into us all at once, and we'll just be dust and bones rolling down into New Mexico. So, no, we stay. We stay, and we love Mama Tucson, and we'll be loving her when the last stars fade out in the night sky, and it's just us and her left in a cold, dead universe.
Come to Tucson. It's great. It's so wonderful that you can't stop crying out of sheer joy, screaming out of sheer love...But doing so silently, because Mama likes her quiet time.
To be continued in this thread.
