Saturday, November 22, 2008

NOTES ON “INTRODUCING THE BAND" (Edit from "BUZZ AND THE RAMALAMAS")


When I was young I didn’t sleep in a racecar bed, nor did I really want to. I didn’t much care about racecars, and wouldn’t have been able to identify a T120 like Buzz’s even if I had cared. But what I did in order to get to sleep in my actual bed was, I would close my eyes and pretend that I was down in the creaking hold of an old wooden pirate ship, and that on the deck of that ship, directing me across the motionless sea under the clear, star-lit sky were Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and Goofy, in full pirate garb, utterly silent and oddly serious, piloting my sleep-ship through the night. I don’t know why it was Mickey, Donald and Goofy – I wasn’t that big a Disney fan as a kid, I was much more into old Warner Brothers cartoons and the quiet, classy anarchy of Bugs Bunny and the unbridled rage of Daffy Duck. But it was the Disney characters, nonetheless, that were my youthful psychopomps into the often fearsome and unpredictable land of dreams.




4 comments:

Malialinda said...

That is an awesome image. You musta been a cool kid. Pirates rock. I'm going to try that tonight and see if it helps, but i think I'll have Johnny Depp steering sinstead. ;)

Jason Gusmann said...

huh huh, you said sinstead

Anonymous said...

Cool, that is a delightfully strange. On the surface just a little memoir but there is oddness in the image that is quite disturbing. Disney psychopompery.

Jason Gusmann said...

you would know psychopompery, my good man.