John Domini - Talking Heads - 77

“Talk,” Leo said. “You, your business, it’s nothing but talk . You think you could beat a man who really does something? Really makes something?”

Hey believer, what was that click? That click and then that clunk, just behind your head?

“Didn’t even have a round in the chamber,” Leo said. “Safety was off and you didn’t have nothing in the chamber. What, you going to shoot me with talk?”

Kit didn’t see a ladder, below him. He didn’t hear anything good from the onrushing workers. Leo! Fuckin’ A !

“Whatever happens now, cunt, I call it self defense.” And believer, what’s that against the back of your neck?

“Self defense,” Leo repeated. “How’s that for talk?”

Kit wasn’t about to make any sudden moves. It was all he could do just to master the new bloodrush of his fear, a fresh chill, stinging. Against his neck, Louie-Louie’s.38 was the worm on his back turned to worse. But he found himself starting to talk. “Leo …” Starting to talk: the old man had been right about that. It was what Kit did, talk: his business, his fallback, his last straw. And it had its advantages. It meant, for one, that Kit knew the old man. He wasn’t going to blow up, the old man, and leave a thousand loose ends hanging in the air. He wasn’t that kind of gunslinger, any more than Kit himself. There at the edge of the lower site, as he weathered his blood rush, Kit discovered again this root clarity. Starting to talk. He began even to overcome his soggy remorse over how stupid he’d been, and he may have realized his mistake — realized why all this had happened.

But then the gun came away from Kit’s neck and he took a belt across the back of his head. Once more he was nothing but nerves, shock, body.

NOTES

[ Remember — DON’T READ YOUR NOTES. Talk. Spontaneous. ]

Thank you. [ wait, applause ] Thank you.

Of course I’m happy to accept this award, so weighty with esteem — and so generous with the checkbook! [ wait, laughter ]

I’m happy to have the Emmy, yes.

[ smile, thoughtful ] It’s pretty, isn’t it? Very pretty, very clean. [ sincere ] I always believed in my brave little newspaper; I always believed it might be good enough to get on TV.

[ no smile, thoughtful ] And now I stand here honored and rich, while the men I exposed as crooks lie ruined and wretched. They’ve been sent to Monsod — Monsod, my God!

LAST SEEN

Dig this: unearthing the future .

How do you tell a tourist?Zia see — if you jump to conclusions, it’s not the fall that kills you. Jump, and what does the damage is all the other dead souls out there.

This one’s a spooky one, my basementals. Spooky scary Kult Klassic. I’ve been in some undergrounds in my time; I’ve seen my share of more dead than alive. A punk’s night out is nothing if not Nosferatu in 3-D. The lips all too real and the skin hardly there. But today my Show & Tell is just the opposite. Today, it’s not the deathy revelry of the sick and abandoned, my usual hang (o, these fragments I have shored against my ruin). Instead, I’ve got the desiccated fossil of a person who should still be alive.

Justice! [ wave award ] Justice! [ wait, applause ]

And great ratings, too. [ wait, laughter ]

The story was a natural, wasn’t it? A public building scandal in Massachusetts — fascinating. Heroic stuff, [ pause, reflect ] Do you remember the scene where the bad guys had me down in the mud, tangled in twine? Do you remember? I was down and shivering and they stood up there, pointing a gun.

[ pause, suspense ]

A fearful moment, yes. Fearful — and heroic. [ pause ]

My point — aside from bragging on myself — [ wait, laughter ] is that we in this room understand, as professionals, the power of story. We know High Concept and how to fit it on the small screen. [ smile ] But outside this room [ gesture, doors ] remain the unprofessional. The proles — outside the media. And when I was down in that muck, tangled and exposed and scared, then I too was outside the media.

An actual long-dead, my Sandinistas. The lips turned to tree bark and the clothes hardly there. And yet the corpse is contemporary. The fossil is us.

The cutting edge, in this case, cuts backward: it’s archaeologists who’ve been hep. Dig-sters, get it? They found the guy down in the soon-to-be T, the station under excavation. Only, some Head Guy somewhere declared the find, uh, sensitive. Uh, requires further study. Uh, needs protection from public scrutiny.

Ah, but theydidn’t count on our kind, did they, my compañeros? Cellars by starlight means celestial navigation, and a little razor wire and security can’t hold back the likes of us. I was in a hot minute after nightfall. Into the “lower site,” hee hee. And as for the stranger on the floor — barkeep, I’ll have whatever he had.

I could have been anybody, tangled and exposed and scared. I couldn’t have been further from a hero. [ wave award ]

But now [ lean into mike, intimate ] I’m in. I’m up here.

[ pause for emphasis, & CHECK TRUSTEES. okay to keep talking? ]

Now what made the difference, you ask? I went from a naked nobody in the muck to a one-man judge and jury in a silver suit. [ smile ] What did it? [ wait ] Well, my colleagues — I had to get arrested, [ wait, laughter ]

The police had to come and cuff me, yes. They had to hold me — actually put me in a cell. [ gesture, bars ] You all remember the scene, I’m sure. My heroic call to my lawyer, you remember, [ gesture, telephone ]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nonetheless, this one’s a weird one. It’s this year’s model, and also the last millennium’s fossil. It’s our leather, also leather-y. Like, what sort of a story have we got here? Like, a historical novel about the present?

Chapter One: In the Grid . Why, what’s that strange grid, down there? That grid or graph or sumpin, laid over the stinking earth? Why, it is a graph! A sorta 3-D graph, sticks and string! And good Lord, what’s that under square A-3 …

Chapter Two: Criticism/Self-criticism . Man, oh man, what am I doing here?

Chapter Three: All Alone by the Skele-tone . Judging from the dimensions of the pelvis (squares H-2 through H-5), and the.

Popkin had, as before, his own vocabulary. When Kit at last reached him from the phone in the police station: “Finding other counsel seems indicated.” And when Kit explained why he’d missed their appointment: “Not a useful development, certainly.”

I had to get arrested, yes. I had to make that humiliating call to my attorney. That’s what it took to become a hero.

[ CHECK TRUSTEES — if no okay to go on, cut to last graphs ]

Or that’s part of it, at least. [ IF okay TO GO ON: ]

You see, all I knew was verbal. [ head down ] That was my problem, before I joined the media. Everything was verbal. I was muttering, I was dreamy.

I was a loser. [ wait, laughter ] In order to join the winners, [ smile, ESP. AT TRUSTEES ] to break the grip of my word-based mucking around — word-based and low-paid [ wait, laughter ] — well I needed more than my lawyer. I needed the cold, stony city itself. Only when I got back out into the city did I at last realize that, nowadays, winners don’t bother with words.