2AM: No Expectations

By Pauly
Los Angeles, CA

Nancy Mumford

Rampant proliferation of false friendships. Never underestimate the capacity for manipulation and the willingness to create distractions. The non-events becoming "the" event.

Saturated by advertisements before noon. Perceived images of doom and gloom.

"News is not the same as truth," Chris Hedges once said in a lecture. He was worried that our culture was being dominated by the lowest common denominator. Hence the Snookification of the world.

The celebration of image over substance. What a perverted ethos. Tranquil, yet vivid memories. Nostalgia color filters. Reverence for the things in the past that brought us the most happiness. Crowded memories. Flashing neon. Thumping bass. Glasses breaking the the background.

In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. Supposedly. The lowest form of conceptual art is reality TV, but there's lots of dough in it. Commerce intertwined with art. Vice versa. The faint whispers intoxicated everyone and even long after the congregation departed.

Disdainful ignorance but beguiled by the simplicity of the newest activities. The sensation of euphoria and inert broad range of experiences are contradictions, like two trains headed into the station at the same time.... on the same track.

Shy, redemptive and instructive. Meticulous emptiness. Gazing upon stale neurotics and electrified gentrification. Surrealistically animated dissertations. Simplicity of the revelation of the American Dream.

Affectionate visions of sonic textures. The stale kaleidoscopic. And the dying tradition of the neighborhood backyard BBQ.

Ecstatic falsetto. Peculiar chord progressions. Unknown syllables and mostly jive talk. Lots of streetcorner jargon. Old junkies of folklore.

Environmental propaganda. Romanticized cabal of tree huggers. Unable to diffuse the apocalyptic future of what they had no clue was public domain.

The solemn trance from a string of red lights. I find discomfort watching overweight tourists, yet nobody is paying any attention. My keen eyes disappear into the distance.

Keen eyes everywhere, except where they should be. Including a semi-famous microbiologist who squandered his money on finding the Lord during a gin-induced conversation.

The sullen bustle but with the grace of a ballerina. We all need allergy medicine. But we found a broken watch that used to keep time on infinite spaces is a broken memento.

Dusty sky. Stars burning the night. Unwritten postcard to Grandma. Vulgar sidewalks in front of the bars are all the same cluttered with cigarette butts.

Mambo musicians on the prowl. Several of them have the same nervous twitch. So instead, it's a night of drinking would end up in a brawl.

That's what the night does to you.