JAY-Z: Someday I’m going to learn when to cut my losses and head for the hills, and maybe I’ll start to play things closer to the vest.
XENOPHANES: Ah. I see that the night’s frustrated advances on the morning are still going unrequited.
JAY-Z: What you eat don’t make me shit.
XENOPHANES: Certainly a tad of veracity in that. Though think of something emotive. There really is not the requisite amount of amorousness in the heart of the city. So, there. Yes, you see? You’ve got that.
JAY-Z: It’s not all I’ve got. I’ve got things. I’ve got plenty of things. Am I happy? Sometimes I get tired. I look at the sky. What’s up there? I know some stuff too about that. Always different and always staying the same.
XENOPHANES: Sometimes the edges of clouds do not change. They are stable boundaries of a thing in motion, this soft thing that is a coalescing of parts huddled into a porous mass. You touch on this, no?
JAY-Z: Touch on it? I will it and kill it and thrill it and spill it, and I don’t know what makes me more real to me, shit.
XENOPHANES: Most writers create a fictional world that seems very real, while you make the real world seem artificial. I am not certain if this is commendable or condemnable. A possibility is that this is merely a failure on your part, in the process of attempting to be “hyper-real” you are only trapping yourself in the cubicle of your weak imaginings and the endless use of unnecessary details and words.
JAY-Z: Yeah. Yeah. Give me a placebo. I don’t want the real thing. It’s not “real” enough for me.
XENOPHANES: There is no real except what is perceived to be real by the dull instruments of our perception. We are weak like wallpaper. We are not brave enough yet to sit in trees. We are not rich enough in willpower to believe in ourselves.
JAY-Z: If I were a rich man.
XENOPHANES: Ah! He sings at last. What dulcet tones have sounded.
JAY-Z: Jigga, jigga, jigga. That’s how I fill it up.
XENOPHANES: We don’t have to rhyme.
JAY-Z: No.
XENOPHANES: We can placate the desire for rewards just up ahead by pleasing in the present tense.
JAY-Z: I’m moving on to bungalows motherfucker. I’m way past tents.
XENOPHANES: The older the joke…well, sometimes they do age well. Wine and laughter…
JAY-Z: Go together like umbrellas with rain after.
XENOPHANES: Not exactly the stretch I’d de disposed to make.
JAY-Z: Man, I can’t help it when my love’s all gone like this. Man, I had it all, and it all sprung a damn leak and pissed away. Shit.
XENOPHANES: Frustration is a suspect device we use to deceive ourselves in the laborious practice of “moving on” or “getting over” things. We cannot be trusted in our speech at such times, and would do better to dwell in a basement room alone until these feelings pass.
JAY-Z: Let’s be brutally honest.
XENOPHANES: That sounds splendid.
JAY-Z: It’s not like Townes said. Not like that, right?
XENOPHANES: I suppose not.
JAY-Z: It’s that I’m hung up?
XENOPHANES: No. At least not enough that I would badger you about it. Now, elevate thy speech!
JAY-Z: The rainy day of my sorrow is bound in a hurricane’s skin. I am carved from desolation. There is waiting. There is a slipping away. There is a canopy of residual anger that’s keeping the sunshine away. A festering pervades everything, and presupposes all hunches based on grief or mourning.
XENOPHANES: A foreboding?
JAY-Z: Wincing is not something I attribute to the gods.
XENOPHANES: Even gods can be eaten and vomited up again. Even by their own father. We all must be made into a travesty at some point. Luckily, rocks often times are mistaken for babies.
JAY-Z: I ain’t no sucker. No. Not like that.
XENOPHANES: …
JAY-Z: Pardon me. It is just that I still get so upset sometimes. The lines of communication are strained. There is no way to talk my way out of this. I could flap my gums for a thousand years…
XENOPHANES: And nobody would listen for a thousand more.
JAY-Z: Every time I try it is the first time I try and I don’t want to have to try anymore. I used to wake my family up banging out drumbeats on the kitchen table late at night. I named myself after subway lines. I am so tired. So damn tired.
XENOPHANES: Weep not. We are the misshapen instruments of a fool’s ill-conceived decree. Do not rest. There is no rest. The head that is barely above water is a head that breathes. I move mountains in my sleep.
JAY-Z: It goes on. It goes on and on. What else have we but these things?
XENOPHANES: I require only gum and water.
JAY-Z: This machine runs on coffee and Sinatra. A pocketful of charm will get me far enough.
XENOPHANES: Yes. But it’s the damn patchouli stink of it all that gets me down. The shrink-wrapped sun. The muddled randomness.
JAY-Z: The TV screens get bigger as our attention spans get shorter.
XENOPHANES: In the middle of the night, in the middle of the night I call your name: AT&T, Taco Bell, Bud Light.
JAY-Z: People are busy growing hair and whistling TV theme songs.
XENOPHANES: Modifying their behavior to suit the room.
JAY-Z: The pivot of the world is wobbling. It all comes down to domestication and innate wildness.
XENOPHANES: Whereunto does thy solemnity spell?
JAY-Z: What? No. I’m not serious, just sad. Listen. We’ve got mules to pack. We’ve got bills to pay. The murals are on the walls. There is no list to the ear that listens attentively in the abstract. Jules Verne was a communist. Speak in French so I cannot know you as well. Let’s form a vigilante squad to go after the bad guys, if only there were some form of justice that would compensate for deplorable behavior. Make right turns from the left-hand turn lane. Creep back to the creek where the pebbles are all skipped and the music’s in the megaphone. Repair the words and the reading will take care of itself. Throw bowling balls through the windows of people you dislike. There’s something rainy about my moods lately. Grip the wheel like a woodcarver would, and flex your muscles for the walls. My friend’s have all been shot at with a gun at least a few times. Overly judged are the sketchings of my boy Cornelius, though not wrongly judged. Stiff upper lips are in short supply around here. Mesmerize the crowd with boredom. There is a wreck. Just look. A terrible wreck of something. Ever the thing to see birds alit there on the fencepost where that kid fell and ripped his scrotum that one summer. Thinking about one hand waving free. We go back to things. Japanese blood grass grows wild in my mind.
XENOPHANES: Let us temper our spirits some. Soaring is for the birds.
JAY-Z: It is the space between things that matters most. The pieces that go unnoticed. The slots between homes. An aspen’s leaves twisting and bending because their petioles are flattened. Light it up. People will watch, dumbfounded and stunned. And the masses eat butterscotch for breakfast.
XENOPHANES: Let them play at their games. Thinness will overtake the weakest. My instinct is for forgiveness, but my heart skirts about the rim of bitterness, possibly waiting for a return to times past.
JAY-Z: It’s annoying, huh?
XENOPHANES: You don’t always get what you need.
JAY-Z: You don’t always want what you get.
XENOPHANES: Let’s play pool.
JAY-Z: Shit. I’ll eat you up like a sandwich. Like a steak.
XENOPHANES: We shall see my friend. We shall see. Our gods are not like men.
JAY-Z: My god’s about to whoop your gods’ asses.
XENOPHANES: At playing pool, I am not the most excellent, but I do have my wily ways to overcome these cue-stick deficiencies.
JAY-Z: You cunning bastard.
XENOPHANES: Let us repair to the barroom.
JAY-Z: Now you talking.
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