Music Hath Charms

I worked with this lopsided cat named Glen back in the kitchen when I was a cook and he was a dishwasher and high-schooler. We didn’t work together long. He didn’t last. He would do shocky stuff like draw on the whites of his eyes with a felt pen and extinguish cigarettes on his arms or tongue. He did it to show people something about himself. Probably the shockiest thing he did was listen to Frank Zappa. See, the kitchen staff would take turns with the tape player and we were bent on irritating each other. It didn’t seem to be about enjoying the music. So, one kid would play Blood Feast and another kid would play Dinah Shore and I would puzzle people by playing abrasive “sound sculptures” I taped off college radio. And Glen would play Uncle Meat or something. We were using music to say, “Fuck you,” to each other.

But it wasn’t all negative. One night Glen drew a happy face on his eyeball. You can’t get more positive than that. 😃