for work and worry, watching a spinning coin, or in Robert Frost’s Pang stanza, the scattering of notes at the start of the solo from 1:42, in Truck Driver Divorce. After the usual smart ass smut lyrics the guitar sweeps up, sweeter, more magic there than the sense shackle of words. It’s grafted from a live show, a Frank cut-up, and I think of Burroughs kneeling between the ash trays and coffee cups, Paris reeking and filthy outside the streaked glass, the newspaper scissored and squared and stuck together again. Frank in his house in the hills, splicing tapes together at four a.m. with the city lights stretched away to the dead, black rim of the ocean. And me, carpet-starred in my teen Yorkshire fastness, just picked up the album from HMV in town, head wedged between two old speakers borrowed from my dad. My guitar gleams in the corner, I’ll spend the rest of the night trying to work out Frank’s lines. The wind presses at the panes. And decades later, watching the coin, its time snatched a-blur, wandering, only a little shorter than my own.
