girl in amber-- nell smith and the flaming lips
It’s my last year of college.
I work at the coffee shop in town.
I drive there, I don’t walk.
It’s a small town.
It’s a short walk.
But I’m in a hurry,
and sometimes when my shift ends it’s night.
And I’m a woman.
I’m a woman, and in the dark I am afraid.
Like many fears, I cannot tell if this one is well informed or just an excuse.
I drive.
In a car that doesn’t exist in the future, but that I will look for anyways
in passing cars and
in every car I own after.
Low on oil, I drive,
and for some reason
right now
I can’t stop listening to this song.
Listening to this song.
In the daylight
in the darkness
in the shop where I rule the aux
in the future where I remember
and I loop it again
in a different shop
in a different car
in the vast void of the internet
in your ears
sometimes when I’m not listening to the song I research it: The Flaming Lips meet teenage Nell Smith and build a Nick Cave cover album long distance. What? Who does that? I listen to Nick Cave, and then I stop listening to Nick Cave. I wonder why they chose Nick Cave. I familiarize myself with Tom Waits for unrelated reasons, and then I understand. I wonder if there was something strange powering the collaboration. She was so young. It feels like there’s a piece missing. Years pass. I write this.
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Then
I go to get a video link for the song to add to the top of the post, and I find out that Nell Smith died. Car crash. 17. Still working on an album that was eventually released posthumously.