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DAVID LESTER ART

Normal History Vol. 38: The Art Of David Lester

lesterNormalHistoryVol38Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

Encouraging the small cat to go home
to cross the hall
staid reluctance—why?
why should it go anywhere?

Standing in the warm clutrification
of the high-ceiling kitchen
noticing guitar picks under plastic
on the floor
a warm ice layer
artifacts from other times
gone all
soft—I wasn’t there
I wasn’t here
I don’t know these people

And then the car to the cold dark room
to watch nearly unbearable video clunkification
of a pixelated past I don’t even remember

A dozen black beans in a colander
ants
randomly traipsing in a Plexiglas farm
doing what? don’t they know they’re being studied
subjects behaving
dragging treasure through circulatory channels
up and over other ant bodies going the other fucking way
hauling some other shit
lugging some other treasure

Is this the agreed upon
dusk
we’re placing ourselves near?
the end?
I’m not done yet

Is it time now
to sit with the others
to recall youth
drained out in
halls and centers
Japanese, Ukrainian, Russian, Indian?

The weight of a session like that
is cement at my ankles
I’m not stopping
I’m evading a withering unstrong enough
to fray or snap at the touch
if the touch was to find its way
to finger my fragments unhinged from the past

I reject a dragging
into relevance that relegates
doings to coloured surface
components
sure, I like museums
but I don’t want to be one

I’m going to sidestep the gloom
seeping onto concrete floors
do a dosey-do
an a la main left the building

Now is a constant re-writing
of the continuum
a conditional compendium
unlatched on a city road
a wooden lock on a tilted gate moving
back and forth at dawn
low pickets wearing
grooves in the earth
making the path
hard

passing around
memories
drives me
to climb into the aluminum confuselage
of resistance
to speed
inside the dank of an impudent vehicle
yelling through plastic covered windows
semi-sealed with clear tape balled up in a confusion
of red twisted letters

spewing vitality
against nostalgia
I won’t be filed
under
old
past
done