Everything this person has written for TUNETHEPROLETARIAT

Persons

Written by

Arrested Development – People Everyday

A song made, in four minutes and four seconds, of cigarettes and thickshakes in the Georgian afternoon wearing an apple-red silk shirt under bright yellow suspenders. Its been years now, but on the first day Sly cried: “Different strokes, for different folks!” It’s still right.

Speech married young. He lived in a one-room apartment on the west side of town with his bride, Laura. She worked long hours at the bakery and he roamed the streets, doing odd jobs to make ends meet. In the evenings, he cleaned the place from bottom to top, vacuuming stray crumbs from the carpet and wiping down the windows. He touched his hands to the bed, carefully smoothing out the creases in the blanket. Every night, Laura waited until he left the room before slipping in and ruffling the sheets, throwing the pillows across the room. Speech would go into the kitchen, toast some bread with crispy bacon and scrambled eggs with sprinkles of ham and tomato. He would make two. Speech called Laura into the living room and she would come, smiling quietly. A breath of something sweet in her ear, a touch on his arm, then they would sit side to side and ease into their toasted sandwiches. [Buy.]

Send me one, please

Written by

11

Written by

Rattail – Green Guitar

Yesterday the city was filled with lights made of confetti and tofu. People walking in clusters of eleven; no less, no more. Everybody awoke that morning with tangled vines instead of their auburn/jet-black/ginger/aqua/golden/grass-green (!) hair. Tangled vines with dead cherubs at the ends, strangled. Planes fell from the sky.

Tezcatlipoca checked his foundation in the mirror, the watery lines of mascara running down his cheeks and staining his lips, staining the cigarette between his teeth casting grey fumes over his troubled expression.

Pre-teens fucked in alleyways. The elderly played Scrabble and snorted cocaine. The middle-aged died in a factory line throwing themselves mindlessly over the edge of the San Francisco bridge. Everybody was suffering.

The cats and rats and Christmas beetles were happy. Cross-legged in lawn chairs out the front of suburban households, sipping on Mai Tais. Phones were ringing in every block; cordless phones in apartment stretches, pay phones out front of Dino’s pizzeria, every iPhone and Blackberry in abandoned suit-pants. Nobody answered. [Buy.]

Stupid, but what the fuck do I know?

Written by

succumb

Written by

Broadcast – Tears In The Typing Pool

Can we just talk about all of our bad qualities? You should know.

“I am selfish with food and with things, and I spend more money on the most luxurious food than anything else, I starve myself away from everything else, I routinely snip people out of my life if I feel like they aren’t understanding me and I don’t make an effort to be understood, or do I? I hoard things and my apartment and purse are overflowing with receipts and trash and bottles, I’m narcissistic and I’m condemning and I call everyone out but refuse to take anything from them and I brood and cry and I’m never able to escape my emotions and if I hold it in all day I let it out destructively at home and when I’m good I’m great and when I’m bad I’m awful and I buy a lot of things sometimes and then I will threaten myself with death because I will feel so stupid and I judge people based on how they view animals and how they treat their pets and I am enlisted as the supportive friend of those who want to stand on me and I let them and I resent myself for it, and I will be unforgiving if someone leaves me but I can leave without care, and so I’m a hypocrite and I break things when shit goes wrong and I will never tell anyone what I really want out of life and I don’t ever put the lids back on things and I tear open bags the wrong way and open boxes upside down and leave a trail of mess everywhere and I never do the dishes and I am patient with everyone but not myself. I have high standards where I should be accommodating and no standards where I should have more self respect, I guess. How can I know these things? How stupid for me to say them. It’s trash, this is such trash!!!!! I’m a good person.”

[Buy / Myspace / thank you, Allisun]

ANOTHER MORNING

Written by

Ryan Adams – Damn, Sam (I Love A Woman That Rains)

In the carriage of a train on her way to the outskirts of the city, she thumbs through the pages of a discarded newspaper and leans her head on the rattling window pane. BUSINESS. flick. HOMEOWNER. flick. CAREERS. flick. ENTERTAINMENT. flick. All the seats on the train were taken but for one where a sizable tear in the upholstery had warded people away, because sitting on a damaged seat is a reflection on your character.

***

5:54am. The timetable said the bus would arrive at 5:58am. 4 minutes. 4 minutes or a 30-minute wait for the next bus and the clouds were ominously arm-in-arm overhead. “Where you going, lovely?” squealed some woman, hunched, homeless, from a mangy bench. “Far away,” he shouted, mid-stride.

***

Pulling into the station, she waited for the rest to shuffle past her before getting up. She hated that awkward standstill of courtesy. A man staring aimlessly fixed his gaze on her, mumbled something with the word Love in it, and smiled. She pretended not to hear him. Ambling down the stairs and fumbling through her pockets for her ticket, she worried – for the umpteenth time – about the turnstiles malfunctioning and crushing her thighs like a crab whose intestines were made mostly of metal and shredded train tickets.

***

6:01am. He waited for the bus.

[Pay for his heartbreak.]

From Coney Island to the Sunset Strip

Written by

Louis Armstrong & The Commanders – Cool Yule

Christmas is rubbish. We’ve touched on this lightly. Well, Daniel did. He didn’t particularly say it was rubbish, just demystified maybe. I loathe the holidays. Family feasts and forced bloodline conversation. “Oh, how’s Aunty so-and-so? Still taking those arts and crafts classes?” Alright, I don’t have an Aunty that does arts and crafts but I betcha some people do. And I bet you a few people hate this fucking time of the year. Bright lights and decorations and hordes of presents that everybody knows – yes, even children – come from the pockets of nine-to-five drones looking to meet the expectations of those around them. We trade material goods for company. Bring drinks and converse!

But maybe Louis Armstrong can make me feel better about it all. That grumbling voice sounds so goddam pleasant, doesn’t it? As if you’ve heard it before, as if you know it well. Maybe it’s that familiarity that warms the heartsichords and douses your skin in hope. [Buy a bit more. Fuck.]

Benoit Pioulard

Written by

“LASTED”

[GO.]

I always feel like running. Not away, because there is no such place.

Written by

Gil Scott-Heron – Running

…running will be the way your life and mine will be described.
As in, the long run or
As in, having given someone a run for their money or
As in, running out of time.

When do we stop? When does it calm down? When do these hurried years slow down and wait for you to make up the distance and meet them by the fountain in the park? I don’t know. A childhood friend, Alistair, ran ran ran. I begged him to walk, pleaded that he breathe deeply, asked him to envision a snail in the downpour of a rattling thunderstorm and how slowly it slithers in the midst of chaos. I was young. I was wrong.

Who thinks these thoughts? Athletes in hundred meter sprints, muscles and ligaments sweating through their skin. Homo sapien housebodies quiet by the dining room fireplace, partners handing them mugs of decaf coffee to sip on while the room is bare; the air, silent.

When do you think these thoughts? In your waking moments, blurred-eyed and disinterested. In your sleeping moments, abruptly shaken from film noir night terrors. In the seconds you hesitate before saying, “I do.” In the seconds you contemplate before leaving the room. In your living room thumbing through chocolate biscuits, crumbs sticking to your skin, watching Swedish films with taglines like Att fly är livet, att dröja döden (To flee is life; to linger, death). In uncertainty. In every breath. [I’m new here.]

Gil Scott-Heron – The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

On June 18th, 2071, at 12:34am: televisions will turn off. Monochrome sets. Colour sets. High definition, three-dimensional sets. Television screens across the planet will hum, black out, leave a minuscule circle of despair in the center of the frame. People will stop, look at each other, pull their arms from the shoulders of those next to them. Feel uncomfortable. Scrape the musky bottoms of their brains for conversation, for something to say. The wires will fray and burn. Satellites will tumble quietly from the midnight sky. Some people will make salami and cheese sandwiches. Some will rifle through cupboards for one of few straggling paperbacks. Some will riot and revolt and kill. Some will stop, sigh, use their thumbs to pull down their eyelids, die. [What remains of all the pieces of a man.]

Skin’s blistering; violent females

Written by

Violent Femmes – Blister In The Sun

“It’s heroin music,” Sara croons, linking her fingers with his, sidling up against him. “Heroin music?” he asks, eyebrows raised. “Were they on heroin when they released this?” She laughs. “No – well, I don’t think so. It’s just so addictive.” She kisses his cheek. “Let me go ooooon! / like I blister in the sun / let me go ooooon!” Tightening her grip on his fingers, whispering. “Big Hands, I know you’re the one.” [Cornucopia.]

** Wait, before you leave: Sara never sleeps with Big Hands.

(illustration by Kim Sielbeck)