PRYNNE
I was in America on this cracked-up studentship. It was a curious *affair *because it was rather grand, and I got it after some complicated and *demanding interviews—but it didn’t do very much in the way of income. I was impoverished as a student in America. I couldn’t travel, I couldn’t buy books, I couldn’t do anything very much. I didn’t have any money, which suited me fine, but I led a very isolated life. Popping in and out of the library and doing my stuff, I had a chance to assimilate some of my previous educational experiences and to reflect on what I was going to do if I was going to do any more writing and what kind of writing it was going to be. Grave isolation was quite significantly useful for that purpose.
I used to have my meals in an automat. I liked automats because they were completely impersonal. You just opened the small door and took out the plate and that was what you ate, you know. I remember thinking, I have rather few personal connections in this world. How far through this world could I go without exchanging a spoken word? Without any force, you know, just not actually speaking when you didn’t need to. My record was two and a half weeks. And this automat was one way of dispensing with chatter in mealtime. So I did have an isolated life. It was useful to me. I enjoyed it well.
this might be more for my own amusement more than anything, but...
I've had a terrible flu the last few days, and at one point, I started thinking about Prynne as if he had done hip hop, and in the same vein as Kool G Rap's Street of New York, but with the automat as the central setting.
I apologize for the vocals probably not being recorded loud enough, but I'm way too sick to be fiddly with stuff right now (yeah, I should've waited until I'm feeling better, but I didn't... also an excuse to take my mind the sickness... also gonna use that as an excuse for some of my flow being a bit off here and there)
Glass pane corridors, clatter of coin rain,
automat sermon in the hush of the mundane.
Flick of the switchblade, quick with the food trade,
Nickel on the tray, got the hunger in doomsday.
Chrome box sermonize, blink of the blue glare,
Hand grips the nickel like a vice in the cool air.
Slide of the panel, meal on the mantle,
Silence in the metal like a ghost in the channel.
Moonlight bleeds through the tremor of streetlamps,
Dust script etches on the rim of the stained glass.
Windows got a vision of a world's been frozen,
Grime in the corner where the secrets stay broken.
Solitude clicks like a key in the brass lock,
Metronome patience in the pulse of the tick-tock.
No talk, no weight of the words on the tongue-tip,
Shadow of a gesture in the frame of the quick wrist.
Nickel on steel like a stutter of fate’s grip,
Paper cup steam like the ghost of a stray wish.
Shelf-line radiance, gridlock of hunger,
City pulse distant in the still of the number.
Two weeks in silence, record in the tallies,
Ghost in the glasswork, watching from the alleys.
Gaze in the corner, blur in the render,
Streets spoke nothing, and I didn’t remember.