cities raze i don't know what the musical equivalent of a poet laureate is, but there are people who have filled that role before. they always start out in a grade school gymnasium. i guess that's where they swear you in. there's a lot of strange scrambled history i don't understand. the last woman who held the position disappeared into the trees. no one has ever produced much of anything. they've all been overwhelmed by the responsibility of speaking for a city that doesn't care about anything they have to say. i talk myself into the job without meaning to. not that i want it. not that it pays much of anything. i tell the woman who decides these things that i won't wilt like the others have. i'm not sure i believe it. there's no ceremony. i just become what i always was, only on a larger scale. my first act as an invisible bard is to smudge my camera's telescoping eye with one fingertip and improvise a doo-wop song in honour of a state that sits on a peninsula marked by dune-backed beaches. "delaware," i sing with the voice inside my head. "you have the prettiest hair." it echoes from dover to wilmington. no one says anything back. those aren't my cities, though with their chosen deafness they might as well be kin. 240125 what's it to you? who go blather from