The Rise and Fall of Harry Hamid*

Everyone said I should take a vacation and so I took a vacation.
It was just me and my brother, Jeff, and we walked around New York City. We looked up at the buildings and at restaurants that sold pizza by the slice, and we looked at many people who were looking up at the buildings and restaurants that sold pizza by the slice.
We looked at the building where Lou Reed met John Cale…
…and the one where William S. Burroughs lived in the Seventies and Eighties:

We looked at the Chelsea Hotel, where Mark Twain and Allen Ginsberg stayed and where Sid killed Nancy and where Dylan Thomas died.
We looked at Central Park, which is a sort of enormous green hole punched into the middle of all of those buildings on Manhattan Island. In Central Park, we sat on a bench.

I showed my brother a picture of Genesis from 1972 and said, “Can we find this rock?” Sheepishly. I asked him sheepishly. And naively, too. As questions go, it was a pretty dumb question. Central Park is 6.1 miles around. One-point-three m…

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It was not expected. It was something unexpected. I went to New York City and when I got back, home to Houston you know, Astro was here waiting for me. This was unexpected because I’d convinced myself, nearly to the point of acceptance convinced myself, that he was going to be gone.
And though how he might ever get out and away I do not know, I half-expect him gone each and every day upon my getting home from work. This day will be the day at last, yes. I close my eyes, always closing my eyes, and I picture in my mind behind closed eyes my house with all its assorted vulnerabilities. A broken front window, something breaking a front window and out he goes, or a person kicking in the back door for what could only be a disappointing robbery for the robber, or the landlord coming in unannounced for o I don’t know, decades-overdue maintenance on my townhouse, maybe.
It could happen.
I worry about these things, all of these things and more, and my worrying makes no sense, you would agree it…

I wish there were a way and probably there is, to quickly and simply zap it out of my mind. Out of memory Bzzz! Perhaps one even imagines a little electrode, of some sort, focused in upon my wrinkly wrinkly brain and burning away this precise memory and not one more, so that I, like you, simply do not know.

You will walk up to me then, anytime thereafter, I can see you, and you’ll say, “Hey, Harry, who did you vote for in 2016?” and I’ll show you my trepanning scar and say, “I don’t know” and you’ll believe me!
I don’t do that, no I don’t set out on the road to trepanation yet, for the very good reason of I don’t know that it would help, in the end. The next question – the very next question – in that scenario just laid out for you, it would be something like: “But you know who you probably voted for, right? It was [Insert Name Here], right? I mean, you know…”
You might see this as a problem only imagined and not real at all. You might say, “No one really cares, Harry,” but you’d be wro…

I remember the way I felt the day Astra Navigo murdered his blog. The day Squatlo killed his. The A Beer for the Shower guys theirs.
We found them in the dumpster, starved and strangled. Not even any blood. Discarded like leftovers. (The blogs, I mean.)
I felt. Betrayed.
This was a wrong, taken against me. Each one, each time. All this senseless killing. Blogicide, and it is not too much a thing to call it that, what it is, blogicide, is always a selfish act, you see, you know, because what about the ones, like us, who are the ones left behind? Left to pick up the pieces after? Left to carry on?
I remember. I remember those cowards. Those bastards. Those burn-outs. I do not forgive.
Now listen to me: I do not know who I am without a blog, not now, or, to be more specific, without planning my next blog post. Endless walks taken to find, hopefully, those perfect introductory words. This time, a relatable title. A repeatable catch phrase. And again and again, like Sisyphus, really, until i…

Do not laugh at me please when you know I am right. It is a door – it is! – right into your unconscious. Into eternity. Yes. It is magic. Real magic. Each note is.
But then all the studies keep telling me we close the, well, to go on with my metaphor, I suppose, we close the door, sort of at 14 but definitely by 30. Studies, studies, studies.
The music stops. Then we’ll listen to the same music or else we’ll listen to music that sounds like the same music but I don’t want that. I do not want to listen to the same music as before. I do not want to listen to music that sounds like the same music as before. It’s more though, it’s even that I don’t want to find new music that makes me feel as I felt the first time I heard the music from before.
I want to find new music making me feel new things. New wonder, new anger, new love, everything new. I am old but the door is open. These are my new favorite magicians.
10. Juan Wauters They tell me he came from Uruguay, and he sings songs that sound s…