Photo by Courtney Brooke
Legend
2008 A.D. -- Across the marsh, it was hard to believe that civilization had ever existed at all, much less come and gone and was about to come again. And where the lake met the woods, a group of genteel woodsmen had dropped out completely, I mean, really dropped out and constructed for themselves a bucolic yet no less man-made realm. Giant white moonfruits grew outside their laboratory, spheres as large as playground equipment, and indeed that is what they were. Each morning, the woodsmen would emerge from their laboratory, clad in requisite duckboots and lab coats, and take a smoke break. They’d look across the mist and reflect on what they’d been working on all along: Were they scientists first, or artists? Was their loose, friendly cabal a rock band or a consortium? Whatever it was, it seemed as though it had been there all along, before everything.
It was called THE ASTEROID No.4
Facts
Stacks of books and records made the lab itself (and adjoining greenhouse) impossible to navigate, but nevertheless deeply inhabitable, not unlike an opium den or a space capsule. In one corner, an entire wall full of pedals, tapes and tomes devoted to the archaeology of shoegaze; in another, a tapestry depicting Gram Parsons’ last night in the desert; in still another, a photograph of Lee Hazelwood and Sonny Bono playing golf. On the old console TV set, a decaying VHS tape of Rain Parade in some paisley underground dive. Real work was getting done here at some point, but right now the bass player was rolling one on a Teenage Fanclub album cover.
Fulfillment
The work, of course, came later, and the resulting tome, THESE FLOWERS OF OURS, was what was on the group’s mind this misty morning as they stared into the fog while, as always, each cold grey morning, the fog sang right back to them. In the dulcet tones of a male harmony, in the chime of an ancient, knowing Rickenbacker, in a lonely slide guitar, the fog told them: Science alone won’t save you. It can’t. So to temper it, please accept this treasury of witchcraft and devilry, this humble relic, this partial map of a crumbling continent: THESE FLOWERS OF OURS.
~j. sweeney
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