Stay

Not to neglect the obvious— if I chose to write a book like Equations, it's partly because the Aughts in Philadelphia were a highly charged time around sex and sexuality. When the Aughts Philly Zeitgeist dictated actual bacchanals followed by actual orgies, it couldn't be that a writer weaned on introspection and deep interrogation would neglect an imperative to ascertain, if it could be ascertained, what it all meant. Hannah, of course, left a major thumbprint on Equations, and on Something Solid, too. The sonnet Undulant, as it appears in P.F.S. Post and on PennSound, hopefully catches a lot of the craziness of what we were living through then. For those with imaginations, it helps to remember that the fun in those days started when you left, were willing to leave, inner-room scruples aside. Then, you could participate in the decadence without being plagued with self-consciousness, if it was in you to do that trick. It was, for better or for much much worse, in me to do that trick. Bowie here investigates the insanity of a Moody Blues mellotron overlay over a George Clinton backing track. Sounds like Syd, right? But the equation is clearly a carnal one. Sounds like the Philly Free School.