Edit
A Poem
I miss the razor blade, positioned just right
Naked and gleaming under studio light
Diagonally slicing the tape tucked into the groove of the block on the machine
I miss getting genius at scrubbing the reel
Finding the edit-point quickly by feel
Blind before tech showed us what it would look like to see it laid out onscreen
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Memory flakes off like magnetic emulsion
The echo fading of youthful compulsion
My energy spooled into twelve-inch spirals, shelved head-out, proper form
Evidence that sonic strangeness once beckoned
Captured at fifteen inches per second
Inverting the signal-to-noise of convention, desperate to challenge the norm
I miss the passion to make my mark
Grease pencil white against carbon’s dark
Imagining amplitude, timbre, and space on the featureless matte-black strip
But I won’t have an impact, it’s kind of too late
And I won’t be remembered for anything great
And there’s no use regretting the dead air I spent that my story can easily skip
So splice a montage of my highlights and low
Cleverly soundtracked for maximum flow
Post it on socials where no one will see it and bury the file in the cloud
Then it might pour down, return to the earth,
Nourish some seedling and die with some worth
But that rain is acid, polluted, distorted, a soundwave recorded too loud
I miss the degausser, buzzing and pulling, erasing a day in a minute
The dream to wipe the slate clean and start over is timeless, however you spin it
