LITANY- chptr 3
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Channing really kind of liked the stash box as a sort of personality test. You hand someone the stash box and the way they deal with the ritual of rolling up the dope tells you so much about their character. Some people take the stash and stammer around for a bit and then ask what they’re supposed to do with it. Now any dope smoker worth their salt knows damn well what the stash box is for so if they look confused and stammer around for a bit and then ask what they’re supposed to do with it then it’s safe to assume that they are needy, codependent people who can’t make decisions for themselves.
If they take the stash box and go to work and, with reverence of a sort, set to setting up each step; the grinder, the papers the scissors for a filter and it’s all set up like mise en place then this is a person who creative yet regimented and who may have a penchant, however trivial, for tradition. Not a bad choice of personal to collaborate artistically with but they may have a little trouble thinking outside of the box.
Speaking out outside of the box: a person who just crumbles the bud with no concern for uniformity, who doesn’t care about whether it’s got a filter or not, who just haphazardly packs what little they’ve bothered to break up into the damn paper they don’t think outside the box either. They don’t think about outside of the stash box that is. That’s all they want to do is get high. They want to get high instead of getting anything done including getting laid. They’re usually semi-baked at all times and anything and everything in their lives begins and ends with a little puff.
They get up in the morning and have a little puff before even making the coffee. After having coffee and waking up they have another little puff to get on with their day. Once shitted and showered and shaved they have another little puff for the drive to pick up an enabler of some sort; fellow gamer, maybe. When they co pick up their cohort who is also going to waste away in front of some sort of gaming system with “The Doors” playing like a sound track somewhere off in the background. They mark the beginnings of their cohesion, if you will, by having a little puff, or two, or three. If they win at whatever they’re playing they have a little puff to celebrate. If they lose they have a little puff to reset their ability to focus. If they break to grab a bite to eat they have a little puff before figuring out what they want to grind on and when their done eating they have a little puff to aid digestion.
She watching Liam, though tried to look like she wasn’t. He was engaged in listening intently to the playing music. He seemed really into it, which is flattering, but even more. It was almost like his ear was always ahead of his hand would absentmindedly “conduct”. Liam was clearly hearing the notes fall into place as they unfolded, listening for the natural inflection, or articulation, of the notes. Most people don’t even know how to listen between the notes but Liam was doing just that. Sure, it was flattering for him to be so into her music,<sp
an style=””> but after all, that’s the way the music is created and he still hadn’t managed to roll a single joint.
He took a little bud from his bag as well as hers. He eyeballed them and palmed them to see that they were the same size. He carefully pulled each little bit off what could hardly be considered the stock so as not to get even the smallest amount into the grinder. He laid the papers out and unfolded the fold and then twisted the grinder like he was a modern day alchemist solving the secret to Rubik’s Cube. In between each of these ostensibly spiritually cleansing steps he stop for a moment or two to listen to Channing’s music.
Liam listened on two levels, macro and micro. On the macro level he could hear the general determining of the phrases and the entire composition, and on the micro he could hear "between the notes" as one note became the next note and so on. Least that appeared to be what he was mentioning. Channing was a bit too flattered to actually take note.
“As each note hits the ears the sounds begin to decay,” Liam mumbled something to himself. He mentioned again about where the musical breath of each piece could be found, “lying somewhere in the void” or something like that. Channing couldn’t quite make it out.
With deft precision he rolled from the grinder without spilling a speck. He rolled two joints that were exactly the same shape and size. They had the exact same filter and neither had so much of an imperfection as a ripple in the paper. He systematically returned everything to the exact same place he found it in and closed the stash box lid. He handed them both to Channing who subconsciously took them while trying to figure out what this nearly obsessive, virtually compulsive way Liam deal with the ritual of rolling up the dope. What exactly did this precision performance art piece say about his character? She lit the first joint and took a long toke off it while gazing out at her scrupulous view of the lake.
They passed the joint back and forth while Liam was explaining how it’s not really his kind of music which he tried to reshape and rework his comment so as not to sound like the musical elitist he actually can be.
“I’m not saying anything mean, at least I’m trying not to. It’s just that I listen to a lot of classical music and this stuff is so Avant Garde I might as well be listening to death metal. I’d be more familiar, probably with the chord progressions in metal than I am with this stuff. It’s good, though. I’m sorry, am I offending you?”, Liam said in only half apologetically.
“Do I seem offended? Pretty good smoke, oui?”
“No and yes”, he said before continuing on with his train of thought and denial of his own elitism. “ Do you think your work is more post-chamber than it is electro-acoustic? I mean, it’s got a little John Oswald collage to it but I really can pin point it.”
Channing was nodding as though she was listening, “no and yes, I guess. I’m not sure what you’re even talking about but it sure sounds cultured coming out of your mouth. I sound like a intellectual musician and all serious, right.”
“This is serious music, isn’t it?”, he implored.
“I know, right? Want to smoke this other one?’
“Sure, light it up,” Liam responded. “The strangest thing for me, by far, is that while I don’t listen to this kind of musical and I’ve certainly never heard your stuff before it’s like I know it. It’s like how a Scots feels when they hear bagpipes. Even little babies with Celtic roots respond to that sound and keep the bagpipe jokes to yourself.”
“But, but… what about the one with”, her voice trailed off before she broke out in that hearty laugh again where she tosses her stratified locks over her shoulder and caught Liam off guard. “Just kidding, go on with what you were saying, it sounds familiar, I guess?
“Not so much familiar but as if I know it. Like I learned it somewhere and the notes are all stored in my head just waiting it out until there’s a recall. It’s like I’m listening to the pronunciation of words and phrases and I’m repeating them silently to myself, trying to imitate the nuances I heard. In that moment, though I’m listening for what I want to hear as I repeat the word. The more I think about it the more I feel like I’m just retrieving my own words and I’m trying not to get tongue tied while doing it. Ugh, that doesn’t make sense, does it?”
“It’s not that it doesn’t make sense,” began Channing, so much as I’m not exactly sure how much sense there is to make. Nope, that didn’t help either, did it.?”
“Okay, maybe the confusion is this; I’m learning this language of yours, but instead of listening intently to Italian over and over again like I’m supposed to, I hear Greek and Chinese. I passed literally years of my life while working meticulously at mastering Chopin or Bach, but at this moment in time it feels like I have existed on steady diet of hip-hop, rock, pop, and country music. Only I didn’t know it or wasn’t aware it was happening. Never mind, you’re right, it’s really good dope&rsq