“There’s no such thing as a pure word.” There’s some hard-won satori for you, my friend, the underlying unsurety, as you’re searching for the stories within the story. Lurching along that well-traveled road, the self, through those exploding otoliths, to the roar inside your head. Notes almost drowning in an ocean of mean ol’ meaning. Take, for instance, the word “fathom” and coincide it, infinitely, with “I can’t.” Or consider how the body-soul goes on mysteriously conundrumming. Alack! We’re always-already in error, and the world is vertiginously contingent. Here’s our young hero now, reciting Shakespeare through a migraine, shedding snakeskin, down the drain. And here’s the libertine from way back when, sifting shibboleths, learning to better interpret his “fits of giddiness.” In the intermissions, he’s turned a little Swifty (as in, stan of Jonathan Swift) and more magnanimous (as in, compassionate to the mishmash of many Johns to come). Losing Music by John Cotter (Milkweed Editions, 2023).
