seconds_before_the_fade raze i've loved harry nilsson since way back when i was a kid and he was so recently departed his body was probably still warm. he was always my kind of guy. unwilling or unable to sit still. incapable of being boring even when he wasn't at his best. and when he was on, no one could touch him. i'm probably the only person alive who would bring "sandman" to a post-apocalyptic listening party. if i could carry just one nilsson album with me until the end of my days, that might be my choice. it was recorded after he ruptured a vocal cord making "pussy cats" with john lennon. the scars still show. there are moments most hear as hopelessly self_indulgent, like "the flying saucer song", which is sort of a warped, condensed book on tape in which harry plays every character and ends up getting kicked out of a bar by another version of himself while joe cocker screams his guts out at the bottom of the mix. i think i love it as much as i do because it feels like the album on which he was most himself, warts, halitosis and all, allowing gorgeous ballads like "something true" and "will she miss me?" to rub shoulders with songs about the end of the world, the laziness of the fourth day of the week, and the plight of being very tall. but that isn't what i listened to today. i always put a record on before i run through my exercise routine at the beginning and end of each day. music helps me make my body move. this morning i grabbed "harry". it was the second song that got me. "nobody cares about the railroads anymore". i'd probably heard it fifty times before. it's one of those neat little nilsson tricks where a joyous soundtrack kicks against the sadness seeping through a set of words about growing old and watching the world move on without you. it should have been the train reference that fucked me up. but that wasn't it. maybe it was twenty-six months of nowhere near enough sleep and all the emotional body blows suffered along the way finally catching up with me. i started thinking about "the_point". i saw oblio being cast out of the only home he'd ever known. just because he didn't look like everyone else. because of an accident of birth. i felt my eyes fill up with tears. right when i was about to crack up over a cartoon character, harry stopped scat-singing and said, "don't_cry." like he was in the room with me. and the same thing that almost tore me apart stitched me back together seconds before the fade. 241218 what's it to you? who go blather from