AND WE WERE AN ARMY OF DEAD (WO)MEN by ERIK ALI ANDERSSON

And we were an army of dead women and men, shuffling pointlessly across and through this glorious new century w/a; its interactive toys, Internet prattle, electrified restraining harnesses, billion-dollar death rays and supermax penitentiaries, and its goddamned evermore refined, irrational, and terminal economies of blood, misery and slow fucking doom?

And please know, or already understand, that this record is so fucking useless as a one way transmission, like all one-way transmissions need to cease forever for sure, in this already-existing mess of radiation, electricity and noise and clamor and lies... And & so and but some time somewhere some tiny action took root maybe, and none of us heard about it yet, and the earth did its slow twirl in spite of? And so we all woke up hungover, and always still more tired of, or more spooked or scared, and barely shuffled thru a little bit more?

And while we were sleeping they even took our neighborhoods away, and everything turned into disneyland and marionettes and chipboard and spit? No more lovely aimless strolls allowed, no more long wandering nights all burning w/possibility, wonder, or joy- not here no, not w/the flashing copcar light show and park curfews and the whole "Yeah you can live here, but you can't LIVE here, I mean you can pay your rent and to & fro a little but that's all bub, and don't you forget it hawhawhaw"

And we learned the rules way to well, and they altered the way we felt and lived and breathed even? And what about the story of us all abandoning each other, because we were to self-involved to figure out how we all really felt mostly near all the time? (Meaning that we all treated each other really, really, really, badly, man)? (And crafted our own neurotic soap operas w/our boring sad couplings and irony, television and cocktails?) And in our infinite weakness we figured everything was shit anyways so we might as well get used to the smell? And we gathered in compromised halls that reaked of failure, distance and self-alienation? And so we never really met?

And since we never met, we never schemed or planned or manifested the ruined dreams that didn't have to be ruined at all? And never figured out how to counter all the bland agents of recuperation, who stole our brightest hopes always, and shot 'em out of satellites at a buck-fifty-nine an hour? (And would you believe us if we told you that we built a machine that'll bring all their fucking satellites the fuck down?)

And the arguements for & against were never complicated but were certainly fucking complex? And we crafted slack fact ions, and made believe that we were seditionaries, but were too easily moved or else did not ever move at all? And never stormed the gates or walls? But crafted clumsy things w/our hands and those things were important to us, those clumsy abstracted towers and minurets we crafted w/our own worried hands?

And built our own confused belief systems, which were endlessly and crucially beautiful in their small stubborn tangles of loss, worry, faith and need? And made small gestures w/our hands or eyes that were endlessly redeeming, and made us all sometimes believe in saints and/or angels?

And daydreamed endlessly about living a little more quietly or a little but louder for awhile? And almost always strived for a little more engagement w/this falling/fallen world? Or hardened our resolve sometimes and bent our heads and backs into the tasks at hand or dug and built or erected? Or transmitted occaisional epiphanies or urgent fears w/photocopiers, silkscreens and cdr's?

And found answers sometimes in the empty places like gangs of birds flying out of dead buildings, beneath the sun's blind white hole? Like trees growing thru fences or an abandoned jar filled w/a summer's worth of rusty water out there behind the place where the heavy trains roll? And found hope in the idea of the fultile gesture? And built something here in spite of and will not let them take it from us so easily?

So please, oh please, let's figure out soon what exactly we can build here on this parched and fallow ground. (Knowing all along that sooner or later their bulldozers will come and tear it all down...) (But we can build it in spite of, and leave dusty notes about our journeys behind...) And resistance grew from tender places, and we fought the good fight whenever it staggered down our lonesome, twisted roads... )

Erik Ali Andersson

northern stations correspondent