HUGH STEINBERG

Rope, String, Thread

Brought only low-key tools with him: a battered
guitar laid flat on a tabletop, a couple of cheap
effects pedals. Played it with sympathy, using its
eccentricities. Music, entirely improvised, learned
how to roll them together as he worked, moving
his hands quickly, using his fingers as levers on
various parts of the gear. Heard a fuzz sliding into
a thump, heard spotless, echoing chime tones trans-
forming into overdriven hum. Music, moving it
between. To make sounds, he lightly touched a
screwdriver, a radio antenna, a nail clipper, which
he slid under. You are still the one I know. You
were unwavering, you moved so slowly away.
The number of layers. More than you needed
to know. The terrified boundaries. All their
fortifications. Broken things, not in the kingdom:
in the dust, the ashland, guileless. Go ahead.
The circuit of memory is a loop, like a string
of Xmas tree lights. When one goes out, they all
go out, so who can tell what really happened, who
started it? Unknots, trivial knots, collections and
hoardings, piles and piles. There was the house
with a hundred cats, there was the lady who lived
on newspapers, and you, of course you, and me
remembering you. Once it was tied, then it became
entangled. The actual memory, the song, the emotion
associated with it. Something just shifts, a finger
pulls on the center of a string figure; it unravels.
If it was a true knot it would get tighter, it would stop.
I wouldn't have to ask, are you near, are you safe,
if I pulled, I'd know, I'd never have to ask. If
someone said my eyes, like yours? I'd say of course.
I'd say why not? The same notes on the same guitar.
Every year the same thing, the same way forever.
We leave it exposed. Some thread.