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Diner car prodigy of a musician, sitting with one leg crossed over the other, guitar gently weeping with each reverberating note that echos in the belly of the beast. The sound of white ceramic plates dully clinking while the fourty-year-old waitress pops her gum can be heard in the background. An old fashioned tape recorder sits next to a set of sunny side ups on a melrose day. The light pittering of droplets hitting the metal gutter and sidings of the trailer-like side-of-the-road dive creates a sense of ambiance. A Moriarty car sits in front of the thick glass windows, reminiscent of the glorious sixties. Of course he wasn't alive at the time but all the stories from parents, and war movies seemingly on-loop while growing up with toy guns and armies of soldiers fighting the commies, the viets, and the pigs, all lined along the bay made one feel they waded the muddy tributaries of war blood just as their grandparents had during WWII. Sacrificial lamb chop, coated in seasoned flour and fried to heart-attack perfection with a side of hash and ketchup. Rolling of a joint and the vibrancy of that two o'clock trucker traffic are all captured on the clunky metal recorder. Switch the tape out for each song, a change of tempo but the sound of fresh coffee, jet black, being poured in a cup sounds like a downpour on the machine.
Sipping on the first cup of hot tea, fragments of leaves swirling into the whirlpool of forgotten emotions, while the audience polishes off the forth and fifth cups of strong sixteen-bean coffee.
College students looking for an adventure on the open road; Thelma waiting for her cowboy while Louise calls all of the yesterdays on the opposite end of the phone. A thick phone book, she thumbs through, rests at the bottom of the indoor booth. Wooden, old, with engravings of all the young hopefuls from yester-year. Fifth and six strings, walking bass, open, open, patting the wooden body while tapping a foot on tiled flooring. His eyes, half-lidded while in thought looks off at Louise while softly beginning the song. The words are not his own but they mirror his sentiments. Thelma knows the lyrics so she volunteers her services --in more than one way. Blonde and sweet but a few marbles short of a game of jacks.
The joker's acoustic session melds into his own material. Songs etched on the halls of his recording studio, penned down on the soles of his feet, so that with every step he takes, that's one less closer to the muse. He keeps to himself despite the annoyed truckers trying to tune out his melodic voice. Drowning pancakes and toast in an ocean of syrup, dripping on the counter top, like the peach pit of an estranged 90210 pilot --canned for the realism of blue collar life. In between nowhere and being a nobody, somewhere off in Boston there is a man working in a similar dive taking orders, writing unrequited love poems on the back of a receipt. He flirts with the local lesbian, trying his best to charm her, in hopes of measuring his prowess. Writer turned waiter. Writer turned bartender. Whether serving happy meal quality burgers or happy hour filled drinks, the parallelism is obvious.
Jack of spades with his royal flush. The cards are splayed on the table next to his rosemary tea but all he can see is the reflection of a lover. Sal's in the car, tapping a tune on the leather wheel but the heart aches for what it wants. Despite the growing audience's persistence, the Freudian chef with his ashes falling in the soup, his mind tells him to sing, his heart tells him to play, his feet tells him to walk back to the beginning.
Nighthawk prodigy of an artisan, sitting with one leg next to the other, guitar softly calling with each strum of the strings, waiting for the second guitarist to join in but the guitar never comes.
Decided to post this anyway.
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