Normal History Vol. 38: The Art Of David Lester

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. Encouraging the small cat to go home to cross the hall staid reluctance—why? why should it go anywhere? Standing in the warm clutrification of the high-ceiling kitchen noticing guitar picks under plastic on the floor a warm ice layer artifacts from other times gone all soft—I wasn't there I wasn't here I don't know these people And then the car to the cold dark room to watch nearly unbearable video clunkification of a pixelated past I don't even remember A dozen black beans in a colander ants randomly traipsing in a Plexiglas farm doing what? don't they know they're being studied subjects behaving dragging treasure through circulatory channels up and over other ant bodies going the other fucking way hauling some other shit lugging some other treasure Is this the agreed upon dusk we're placing ourselves near? the end? I'm not done yet Is it time now to sit with the others to recall youth drained out in halls and centers Japanese, Ukrainian, Russian, Indian? The weight of a session like that is cement at my ankles I'm not stopping I'm evading a withering unstrong enough to fray or snap at the touch if the touch was to find its way to finger my fragments unhinged from the past I reject a dragging into relevance that relegates doings to coloured surface components sure, I like museums but I don't want to be one I'm going to sidestep the gloom seeping onto concrete floors do a dosey-do an a la main left the building Now is a constant re-writing of the continuum a conditional compendium unlatched on a city road a wooden lock on a tilted gate moving back and forth at dawn low pickets wearing grooves in the earth making the path hard passing around memories drives me to climb into the aluminum confuselage of resistance to speed inside the dank of an impudent vehicle yelling through plastic covered windows semi-sealed with clear tape balled up in a confusion of red twisted letters spewing vitality against nostalgia I won't be filed under old past done