Siphoned
Like Bigger in that novel by Wright, I smothered my first love, Nabokov, to death with the pillow of Marx and burned his body in the furnace of Hegel. I believed my writing life to be free forever from that man whose anagram is Vivian Darkbloom. Then yesterday I wrote this in my slog post on the Zimbabwean guitarist Ashton “Sugar” Chiweshe:
The audience could not get enough of [Ashton’s] brilliance. Whenever he launched into a solo, everyone in the hall would stop dancing and watch him with the sort of amazement that certain animals find themselves in when siphoned out of the darkness by the powerful beams of an approaching truck.
Sensing something strange about the second sentence in that passage, I googled “Nabokov” with the word “siphoned” and came up with this from the 28th chapter of Lolita:
Gently I rolled back to town, in that old faithful car of mine which was serenely, almost cheerfully working for me. My Lolita! There was still a three-year-old bobby pin of hers in the depths of the glove compartment. There was still that stream of pale moths siphoned out of the night by my headlights.
I may have done away with Nabokov’s body, but his ghost is still with me.
You're procrastinating on what you were destined to write.
We're waiting to read your construction of our very own neighborhood murderer, Kyle Huff.
The public has handed you the seeds of the identity - wallflower, the type of person who stands on the sidelines at the school dance, fiberglass moose critic, red state outsider, lonely, artist, a little of bit of society thrown in, but not too much.
The city has even hired an outside expert from Boston, a real scientist to get to the bottom of this, to provide us with "the reason" this happened.
Don't leave the dark shadow of this event floating around us, seeping into our night time dreams.
Having lots of dances this weekend is a good idea. It assures us "Hey I'm not the type of person who feels uncomfortable at a dance. Even at a time like this I can get out there on the dance floor and boogie with the best of them!"
"We" are not the type of people who stand around while music is playing.
That kind of darkness couldn't possibly be in our soul. We've never even stood along the wall at a dance, and even if we did we'd never feel anger at those happy dancers, those lucky couples out there who fit in.
"We" are they type of people who go to dances and have fun, "They" are the type of people who don't get asked to dance, and feel angry about it.
By having dances this very weekend, even a film wrap party in a murder location...We're the type of people who can always party, always dance no matter what.
Anything to seperate us from those dark "others" out there, lurking in the shadows as we party. Watching us...resenting us...
The party is America itself really...you can bomb us but we're still going to have fun. Another rave, another nightclub evening with Paris Hilton, while somewhere out there in the shadows eyes are staring at us, watching from the sidelines, wondering why they haven't been included in the party.
This weekend in our own neighborhood we've constructed a reason for it all. We can't invite those "others" to our party. Look what happens when we do!
The party in America is for "Us" the dancers, fun lovers. The wet blankets, the spoil sports, the wallflowers, are no longer simply annoying, now they have become dangerous outsiders. Soon our scientists will explain "the pathology of the wallflower".
So we've got to turn up the music a little louder, get more of us out on the dance floor, keep our party going at all costs.
"Them" those in the shadows who can't dance just now, who don't like our kind of music, who don't understand the rules of our parties. They are too be feared even more.
And soon our scientists will be able to identify "them" for us and explain the pathology of how "they" got that way. It will finally all make sense.
Because we are not like them. Too much of everything depends on us convincing ourselves that we are different.