chime raze no explanation exists for the melody that made itself known to me. i imagine it had something to do with the dimming of a down. or maybe it was an indication that a play was being reviewed by stone-faced officials. there was my stepfather, staring at a brown box that served as his portal into a game i didn't understand or enjoy, in which muscular men tried to maim one another while advancing an ovoid wedge of cowhide from one end of a manicured field to another. and at moments that didn't seem special at all, there would be these flashes of barely-there music i was almost certain only i could hear. just a few notes played on some unseen idiophone. when i think of football, that's what floats into the frame for me. all the rules and runs and punts and goalposts fall away, and i'm left with a fugitive skeleton of song made sweeter by all the years i've spent without it in my ears. 251028 what's it to you? who go blather from