He lied recreationally. Like a jazz musician adding extra notes because silence made him itchy. He claimed he almost joined Frank Zappa\u2019s band but \u201cthe astrology looked hostile.\u201d He informed a percussionist in Toronto that Brian Eno once called him \u201cdangerously underfunded.\u201d He delivered the stories with casual seasoning. Then he met Clara. It was like discovering another raccoon inside your garbage can. She played bass and wore silver cowboy boots and had the calm of somebody who can lie while watering plants. Within minutes she told him she performed synthesizer duets with Tibetan monks, twice. Normally he would have punched back. Instead he froze in admiration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next few days were like an Olympic event in bullshitting. If he claimed he\u2019d played for three thousand in Berlin, she said she performed for twelve thousand Romanian dentists during the yogurt shortage. If he referenced dinner with Tom Waits, she had ayahuasca canoeing with David Byrne and Guy Maddin in Gimli. Other musicians began gathering nearby just to hear the conversations like solos, like two satellite dishes intercepting illegal broadcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One night in Winnipeg, after several drinks and an elaborate discussion involving Moroccan princes funding theremin operas, Clara suddenly looked unemotional, \u201cYou know we\u2019re both completely full of shit.\u201d For a moment he prepared an automatic response lie, but nothing came. Behind the bar, somebody was covering Hotel California. Ice rattled in glasses. The whole terrible human circus continued normally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s weird,\u201d she said. \u201cNeither of us thinks our actual life is enough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That hurt. Beneath all the absurdity, beneath the fake meetings with celebrities and imaginary tours and mystical pharmaceutical incidents, he recognized the engine underneath it all. He spent decades enlarging reality because ordinary existence felt small and too naked to without rhinestones. Clara lit a cigarette.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAlso,\u201d she added, \u201cThere were no yogurt shortages in Romania.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShocking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They sat quietly, two exhausted fiction factories closed for maintenance. And for the first time in years, he noticed how peaceful reality sounded when nobody was decorating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He lied recreationally. Like a jazz musician adding extra notes because silence made him itchy. He claimed he almost joined Frank Zappa\u2019s band but \u201cthe astrology looked hostile.\u201d He informed […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"Layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-rockbob","post-9529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-tales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}