TO PLAY THE GUITAR WITH YOUR FEET

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a horse rides boldly across the plains, like an oncoming train, proudly defiant as it eyes its target. its love target. no sand colors his legs for long, always on the move. striving.

Cotard: we can live without a map. we must live without a map. but we must have an internal compass.

the horse jumps into Fuerza's arms and licks her like a puppydog, wagging his two tails, shooting white mucus out of his nostrils that had been stopped up in there for eternity. Fuerza's smile beams brighter than it could have alone.

Fuerza: there, there, you're a good boy.

the horse's eyes turn human at this.

Manny the horse: call me Manny. the horse.

Fuerza: you are sadder than The Last Stallion. you, mijo Manny, are the first stallion. well this makes up for you hurting me earlier, mijo.

Cotard: me? what'd I do?! tend to your other son.

Fuerza: you hurt me with your epitaph. i brought you life to save you from pain. i'm jealous of your wife. her voice is so........disembodied.

Cotard: those words hurt more than getting rammed by an oncoming train? i don't remember my wife...

Cotard transforms into a star and meets Fuerza, who's already a star, and they form a bistar in the sky. next to them is another set, a twin star, the eyes of Yayray's grandmama who doesn't speak but her eyes say a thousand things.

Codrus reaches into the last train car and takes ahold of the gold brake. he elides his rough skin and smoothly slides it to the very end other point, to COMPLICATEDNESS.

(turn)

Codrus: well this is an emergency. i fear no evil, for i am evil. go ahead, old man, give me your worst. or your best. MEANWHILE i see Fuerza in booty shorts, her tramp stamp on the small of her back showing, reading EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY.

Codrus: mom!

Cotard: mom! please act your age.

Fuerza: and what is age, son? i am merely being who i am. at all times. and spaces. i'm modest, i was there when modesty started, i added ONLY, for that's who i am. but there is no shame in nudity, it is as pure as it is original. we must learn to start from the heart and not the head.

the two brothers collectively hang their heads in shame and head on over the fence to a private area where they begin making snow angels in the sand. Cotard steadily makes full wide weightbearing halfcircles while Codrus cheats and whips his triangle point fingers back and forth skittily in a razor-sharp motion.

Cotard: y'know, when i saw my mom outstretch her arms like that for Manny, it reminded me of how terrible i was to my baby sister.

Codrus: you don't mention your sister much. and i know everything about you.

Cotard: therein lies the problem. she's adopted and i was always too busy for her. there was always something more important......which was never important. i feel i subconsciously shunned her because she wasn't my real sister? that's a terrible thing to say, but this is what it means to be human, you are eventually forced into taking a secret, internal clear-eyed accounting of yourself. she grew up a blank slate, and when the prodigal son came back, she had become a woman but was still the girl i had forgotten. she bore the drip of disappointment in her lips, her face was full of abandoned eyes, noxious nose, and she spoke in a foreign tongue. for the first time i was the older generation. when she was a baby she innocently held out her hands to me. it was halloween and for some dim idea i thought it would be funny if i put on a very scary wrinkly skeleton mask with sharp teeth and hollows and said boo. she was terrified and i caused her pain. so much trauma in the world and i was her first. i should have been her brother but i was her bother. the last shard of my heart silently blew away. i changed. i became cold, distant, lonely forever. i had denied the eager humanity in front of me. i don't deserve her friendship now that we're both adults. for she is the only adult here.

a hand remains invisible and Cotard begins to weep inconsolably and it forms the first river of this new moon. Codrus hugs Cotard to no avail.

Codrus: it appears you are inconsolable. and your father?

Cotard: the beautifullest of men. i don't talk about him to spare Fuerza. he will never demise in my eyes, he will delight in his senses, he won't deign but reign his brain, he will sprinkle me with his spirit each morning when i kiss his framed photo and send me from my shackles. before he died, the Unabomber case was hot, or rather cold.

Codrus: Unibomber? that was before my time, but i am eternal so i remember now.

Cotard: yes, he was the Uni bomber, Ted, the professor who become a skewed symbol of what happens when one devotes all his time to academic studies and none to interpersonal fuckings. you gotta get in there, y'know, gotta get down and dirty, gotta leave your tower and get in the mud, gotta live, have fights, be dumb and love someone, lose your mind over somebody, so you don't lose your mind and lose bodies. he struck us especially personally cos we were kinda like him, eggheads with more ego than elegance. at a movie theater dad relayed some advice given to Ted by his Mexican penpal: "a life lived completely alone is not much of a life." or something like that. words to that effect.

Codrus: all effects are special. Ted, what a devilishly disarming name. what are those two long marks along your wrist there as you open your palm over? tried to kill yourself?

Cotard: how could you say such a thing? i thought you knew me. that area of my wrist where the veins are, i'm so sensitive there i don't ever touch it. even in happy times. i would never do such a thing. that was from my cat Kiss. or was it the other one? didn't i tell you this story? don't you know it already? they were playing around with my computer wires again, the frayed brown extension cord with the heavy bulb. my poor cat got caught in the cord and couldn't wriggle free. Kiss woofed and panted and snarled and in trying to get the cat head out, Kiss bit me on my wrist in self-defense. that was the first time i was proud of my blood, so i licked my red wound. it was just two small bitemarks and my tongue was enough of a clotter. the scars are longer than the initial injury. that's the nature of scars. poor kitty, Kiss could only do what Kiss could do. the good news was my cat was free. to freedom.

Codrus: gah! my god do you gawk over these subs. why would you bow down to these troublesome rodent replacements? deign for these dumb animals? i just don't get it.

Cotard: it lies in the heart of family, which is the only not-lie. for all of the wasted time, and timewastes, and wastes of time, and wastes of space, the memeification of memory, and the endless wars which are in fact a necessary good as they are the only proven method of population control, you come across one of your species, not your kind but their kind, that you look up to, not away from. a good new-fashioned good person that is the summus of our simian species. we must confront all the disturbs in our minds lest they become demons. we mustn't cage any thought lest they fester and become feral. light not only disinfects, it dazzles. hate lives in the hidden house. for all the body-modification horror, and not being in control of one's genes, we were able to produce

THE BEAUTIFUL MAN, CLICK HERE, RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK

the concert is being shown on the water circle that Sid, Glidden, and Rumi have created arms outstretched and interlocked they are and they are medipraying. it is the last concert before the prayer circle turns into an infinity symbol.

(turn)

Cotard: it's good not cos it's good but cos it's not fake. you witness and you know there is a fire that burns inside, one refreshed and grown larger by each 8-shaped glass of water drunk each day. Boxed Water Is Not Better. forget FIJI Water. i'm talking about warter. i'm talking bout tears. from fear. and sweat. from sacrifice. scarifice.

Codrus: huh, pre-internet, when popes were men. the good ol' fashioned days.

Cotard: has being in a female body taught you nothing?

Codrus: it's a slow process. women are foreign to me. now that i see how women think i'm like whoa. turns out all of human history has to be reexamined from the woman's point of view. they lived lives in this life, too.

Cotard: all the colors of the rainbow, that's what light comprises.

the two are finished with their conversation and finished with their snow angels. as expected, Cotard has formed a half-circle in the ground. Codrus's shape is a wedge.

Cotard: music. we have lost the ability to communicate to each other. we talk to, not with. we are too tied to ideals and expectations and looking cool on the internet. do you know what's worse than faking? having to fake. when our words fail us, there is music, the great communicator that spans globes.

Codrus: i shall be composing my first song soon, and it is the first song.

Cotard: praise Jesus. the other one, not you.

Codrus: hey, at least i'm not Yeezus. but music is overrated. if you've heard one melody you've heard them all. there are only so many chord progressions. man is limited. imagine the anthems that could be created if there were more, undiscovered notes. new instruments. muses as far as the eye can't see.

Cotard: oh it is a perfect set-up is it not? we are set up for sure. we are abandoned on earth to fend for ourselves and the only way to represent our struggle is through the soundwaves we produce with our human instrument and instruments. they float up past the clouds, disappear from our discernment, and carry high into space for all of time. do they land on alien ears? never, for we are all one. it's so complicated when you see the pieces but not when you see the whole. and everything is destined to become whole again, round, a circle, a dot on a screen, fall back down to an earthen surface, to the infinitesimally-packed marble of the Big Bang. the infinite was once contained in a circle, the perfect shape. what was there before the Big Bang?

Codrus: the old man. and his rocking chair. on his porch. he was always old. he always had a porch. he always needed to sit. he knew he couldn't handle it all himself. imma cut across his lawn.

Cotard: maybe it's an old woman. she'll be nicer. i think. music is a meritocracy. like sports used to be. sound is colorblind. sound is blind. does it matter if you use a drum or a trash can? if you use a bass or have that bass? is it fish or fishes? or fishies? when British singers sing, they sound American. they lose their accent. for the longest i had no idea Adele was English. i just heard the english.

Codrus: poor Lionel Ritchie, i grew up with him. time flies. and conquers all in the end. and in the end is all that matters.

Cotard: does it matter if "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" is sung by an atheist? does it lose its sting? no, it inspires no matter what. it just has to be sung mightily.

Cotard passes his palm over his heart. his heart turns into the sound hole of a giant guitar in the sky. the two marks on Cotard's wrist, where the sensitive two veins are, become the guitar's fret. he touches that squishy creepy gentle shivering cold clammy disgusting area of bad dreams on his wrist for a soft moment which strums the invisible string of the guitar. the guitar emits a wave that becomes a sound wave that becomes a gravitational wave.

Cotard: musicians are the real prophets. the only ones we listen to anyway. it's like they get it when the politicians and epigones and snake oilmen don't. they're in the streets with us, they say what we want to say but the rest of us have stage fright. sure they can't solve any of the world's problems. sure their songs don't directly speak to you, yourself, your individual set of crises. they speak to humanity. and some aliens. they didn't save you from that overdose, you saved yourself, by buying that record. and of course they all die young cos they only really have the one message that no one is hearing. there's nothing more for them to do, they're not static mathematicians, they understand waves. they're sick of the world truth be told. constantly sick of the world. baffling. unintelligible. yearning. that is their eternal refrain. that is what all their lyrics mean. they want more but there is never enough, it's all been dried up by the sun. they say stupid stuff that sounds better when put to music. when you dive into desire you hit your head on the bottom of the pool and drown. they're angels with bent wings all gathered round for supper.

Codrus: and what a swingin' club that is! i'd love to dine at that table. hello, i'm Adam and i will be your server today. sorry, folks, out of water. we got pies for appetizers and pipes for dessert. my first edict when i become president of reality is the return of the neverending breadbasket. complimentary. oh you humans are a clever bunch, huh? you're getting very close to cracking the riddle, aren't you? do not fear, that was the old riddle. i am the new riddle. and i'm nice 'n' easy. it's just me here. you should have seen your faces when you finally discovered everything there was to discover, when you mastered math and solved space and tempered time. i wish i had a camera. or at least a phone. but there's no one to call. at least i've stored that time in my hernia for safekeeping.

the next concert (which is technically the second-to-last concert) (and what a display of technique!) takes place in the two ovals of the infinity symbol marked in blue with an EX and a WHY:

UVULA (FACE NOT SHOWN) ON VOCALS, CLICK HERE, RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK

Sid, Glidden, and Rumi (around the prayer circle): that's what was missing. there's nothing quite like a woman's touch.

Codrus enters the theatre for the second showing and sees Uvula on stage singing, spotlight on her. it's a little cold, the air is getting through his crumbly skin, so Codrus has to pull up the flaps of his bomber jacket around his neck. despite the grand scale of the show with all its complicated moving of large set pieces and getting the timing just right and making sure Uvula doesn't explode when she's flying all around the room hanging on by a tripwire string attached to the diamond ceiling and making sure her poofy hair doesn't get wet when the artificial overhead raindrop sprinklers turn on, the concert goes off without a hitch.

well, there is one thing: the lights don't immediately come back on when the concert ends. Codrus remains in the dark for awhile.