Leo and Horace A-OK

I have a few pieces of news, which I think everyone will enjoy.

One is that I got a phone call from Horace and Leo to the effect that everything is fine. I recorded the conversation so I'll report the good parts verbatim. If I can figure it out I may post the phone call as a podcast. There were some really nice thoughts in it, both from Leo and Horace.

The other piece of news is that I finally put up some of our glamor shots on a new web album. They are for those fans of ours who aren't satisfied seeing us in our unpredictable shows given in unpredictable locations in small midwestern cities. I will post here whenever there's new material there. I think the official release of our album will be tomorrow, so we'll get more mp3s up on our myspace page, and maybe find a way to sell the albums as well. But there are already some copies floating around out there. We met a guy at one of our shows who bought all the ones we had with us.

But to get to the point. I was fiddling with some of our tracks this morning when the phone rang. I picked it up.

"Hi, Sebastian," the voice said.

"Is this Leo?" I said.

"No, Horace," said Horace.

"Oh, hi Horace," I said to Horace. "Is Leo still being held captive by the anarchists?"

"No, I got him," Horace said.

"That's great," I said. "Tell me what happened."

"I'll let Leo."

Then Leo got on the phone.

"That was really something," he said.

"Explain!" I said.

"Well, so the anarchists had me give this talk. And I told them that even though I wasn't crazy, if I was, I would resent the fact that they had imprisoned me in their revolutionary library. And this seemed to make them ashamed and one of them said, 'What the hell were we thinking?' But then I recited your poem about how Jesus turns people into fish, and they became afraid and they locked me in the revolutionary library again and they said Christmas was bad for a bunch of reasons."

"I slept there and in the morning a few of them let me out, saying that they thought the others were totally insane and they thought all of this was nuts and nothing made sense anymore and they thought this anarchist collective sucked. That was what they kept saying, 'This anarchist collective sucks. I hate it.' I was really confused. Which I guess I'm used to."

"I asked them if they would let me out because it was Christmas Eve Day, and then they got uncomfortable and asked me why I cared about that, and I said, 'Look, I'm not going to tell you about me and the Lord because direct speech on the subject would only make you angry, and so I'm going to have to speak in riddles.' But of course by saying 'the Lord' I had spoken directly and we got into a big argument about all kinds of things. I guess I knew saying 'me and the Lord' would really get them going, because normally it's not something I say. The argument went on for quite some time. And they said they understood why the others had locked me in the library, and the things I said sounded really wrong-headed, and so on and so forth."

"We were getting nowhere, and I was about to put their commitment to violence to the test by just walking out the door, when Horace drove up in his Buick and walked in the front door which was unlocked. Horace, what did you say to them?"

Horace got on the phone.

"It was a speech. One I'd been working on. In my head, I mean. So it was all ready. I said: 'Why are your faces so contorted and your hairs arranged so thusly? Look: my brother and I are going. You can't go with us where we're going. We're going in a Buick. We're going home to see our other brother. His name is Sebastian.'"

"'You think we're the same. We're not. Look. You say identical triplets don't exist. I know you say that because I read the blog. But look. Here we are. We exist. Right? Touch my arm."

"'I've seen these books before.' I gestured to the library. 'I know what you say about the heart of the human species, how we are animals and we are free. And you say: If we ate whole grains. If we adopted polyamory. If we put herbs on our skin. If we made zines. And so on.' I walked into the library and they followed me. I opened a window. Then I started picking up their books and throwing them out the window as I spoke."

"'But you do not know the common nature at all,' I said. Then I became full of passion. 'How can you walk through these sidewalks and brush up against these people in sterile gas stations and not know?' I whispered. 'How can you not understand the sorrow and the longing when we are all steeped in it? People suffer. Yes, they do! But: If you are hungry. If you can get no job. You feel a wound. The wound is that your body is in pain. The deeper wound is that you see hatred in your brother.'"

"'But what do you offer us? What do you offer the world crying out for humanity? The world who senses its own dignity in spite of everything. Senses it because the mind of Almighty God is so near. You say: You are parakeets. You are free. Eat this seed. Mate with the the pretty blue birds. Now your suffering is gone.'"

"Ah, you do not see!' I said, and they looked at each other. They seemed bored. I kept going. 'No, you are thoroughly blind!' I said. 'You refuse to give that which is lacked. You refuse to condescend and fill in the pain with mercy. Because you lack wisdom. Because you lack wisdom, you don't know mercy. You probably don't even think mercy is good. But then, the word mercy has probably been transformed into an alien symbol...' At this point I trailed off. The two anarchists were lying face down on the ground and covering their ears. Leo said, 'Let's go,' and we just walked out. No one stopped us."

Leo got on.

"Isn't that good?" he said.

"It seems very confusing," I said. "Not to me. I think he took some of my ideas. Confusing to others."

"That's the deal, right?" Leo said.

"Yes. That's the deal," I said.

Then he told me they were driving home and he hung up.