Like a Satanic Beatles record, melted orchestral chords, pouring weird pink enchantment into my juvenile ear. Notebooks filled with dimensions & sadness. As if the real thing were next, as if this were a game. Once there were dryads & orcs. We sang with grown-ups & lost our retainers in the laundry basket. Timing, moonwalks, game pieces mixed in the colored paper. Jazz was impossible. There was something called a phonebook. Stores could become labyrinths or not. Copying cassette tapes & faxing them to other continents, my soul was a magnet & a hand-drawn label. I gave it a crazy name, like “You can’t cast spells on the moon.” Magic commercials brainwashed us into wearing hypercolor shirts. No espresso was spilt. The only number that mattered was number nine.