I have been half in love with easeful Death / Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme

EPISTLE TO SUZANNE (POSSIBLE LEONARD COHEN REF., CONSIDER) DRAFT 2.1:

"We are all terribly, terribly lonely." Read this and though of how weird it is to be human. How we fire these grappling hooks into nowhere and hope to hook on to something (in this metaphor I guess we're all floating along on parachutes. Poetic, innit?). I'm learning guitar because of a picture I saw of Neil Young.

Day 2. Did you find the present I left in your locker? It's a bootleg recording of Shellac playing covers of Herman's Hermits songs, with Fred Schneider on vocals. I'm sure you noticed that the case is made out of steel and that you need a combination to open it. I'll give you the numbers if you give me yours.. Ha ha.

Day 4. Did you not like the XL Bauhaus shirt I flung at you from across the hall? I thought you could wear it in a kind of 80s throwback sexy shoulders type of thing, or maybe you could wear it to walk around my apartment at night. Or nothing at all >:D. Wait, I don't have blinds, that might be weird.

Day 10. Please stop staring at me while I'm reading Gravity's Rainbow or trying to win me over with your dew drop eyes while I'm mentally toying with a list of the best Werner Herzog movies. It's kind of annoying. Ha ha, just kidding, I'd definitely like to have sex.

Day 30. I'm including a character in my latest short story that's based on you. It's about a young 17yearold who falls in love with a beautiful coquette but is torn between the fulfillment of romantic cliche and a life of spontaneity; a life of artistic pursuit; a life of constant reminders that Death has always his spindly hands wrapped around your neck; is always ready to throw his black cloak over the scene; to cast a shadow--a palpable darkness--over happiness; to take all meaning from flesh; to widen the gap between signifier and signified, to place you in that gap; that gap of no-feeling-no-loving-no-passion-one-way-or-the-other-no-drive-to-even-place-pen-to-paper. Worse than listening to "Idioteque" on repeat.

Love,
Kevin "The Emperor of Ice Cream" Bowen

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MUSIC: best of garage punk (that I've listened to in the past 6 months, mind you)

Compulsive Gamblers - Crystal Gazing Luck Amazing. Thanks to W.B. for the recommendation. This album rules. Full-bodied production with hearty horndog vocals.

Headache City - Headache City. "Tearjerker" was one of my favorite songs of 2008. Seriously sounds almost like something off Marquee Moon.

The Mummies - Tales From the Crypt. You know these guys. Wild and crazy and they dressed like mummies on stage.

The Muslims - The Muslims. "Nightlife" in particular. They also have a 12" or whatever with a cool cover of "Walking with Jesus." Recently changed their name to "the Soft Pack."

Yokohama Hooks - Turn On 7". There are so many bands that do the Yeah Yeah Yeahs thing better than YYY, my mind literally swells 3x its normal size when someone asks me why I don't listen to YYY and I blurt out all of the band names at once, a mystic shibboleth that turns my muscles inside out and that's really why I don't talk about music IRL.

Kim Phuc - Wormwood Star 7". Snarly, guttural. I don't know, I'm out of adjectives.

The Menthols - 848 7". "848" is a great catchy/funny garage song, one of those weird things you'd find on a 2020 Nuggets record and probably be embarrassed about if anybody heard you listening to it, but secretly you chant it in the shower, as if the words were an stopper to plug up the horrible drain of loneliness through which you find yourself falling day in and day out.

The Feeling of Love - Rapeman 7". Ignore the rude-ass title and listen.

Here's The Electric Bunnies - Chewing Gum 7". It also is good.