We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

The Penciler

from Wreckage (2004, album) by Paul Sprawl

/

about

This song was recorded with the guitar going through a Leslie speaker and the voice sometimes going through a couple of kid's toys, depending on which way I turned my head. The music was improvised to words I had thought of as one of several sketches for some narrative about an assortment of characters in the comic book business.

lyrics

Big city downtown old building 7th floor
Man sits at a table by an open window
In a straight back wooden chair

There's a constellation of bottlecaps
On the window sill, the table and the wood floor
Empty bottles of Derby beer
Hang around like mini-mart vagrants
And a grove of matchbooks
From rhyming neighborhood hotspots
Black Cat, Can Soldat, Top Hat
Is thriving on the tabletop
Next to a beanbag ashtray, a corncob pipe
and a leather pouch with an illegal smoking mixture

In the ashtray are cigarette butts, two old stogies
and some ashes
On the floor there's a huge stack of underground comics
USA Today from yesterday, some english translations
of Spanish poets, and a novel - Infinite Jest

A pigeon walks by
On the brick window ledge outside
The man stares as it passes

Then his gaze returns to the tabletop
and a collection of tiny electric motors
Nine volt batteries, plastic gears, balsa wood
Tubes of glue, jars of model paint and the whim to
construct kinetic sculptures has passed
Leaving him with the vague dread
That his next inspiration may come with
an equally quick expiration date

His glance darts over to a bag of chips
a jar of salsa and half a black bean burrito,
wrapped in aluminum foil
Pushed aside to a corner of the table
with emptiness but not hunger
He starts in on the chips and salsa again
A blue plastic alarm clock on the window sill
reads 10:39 AM
Outside a crowd of signs straining for access
to the morning street traffic -
some lights still flashing in the morning sunlight

The man at the table is wearing black leather pants
and motorcycle boots
Tank top and denim jacket
are hanging on the door knob

Piled on top of a laptop computer
in another corner of the table
are pens and pencils, a cell phone, a pocket knife,
plastic lighter, three blues harps, and postcards
from Coffee Pot Lake, and Tobacco Root Mountains
not written on
He fiddles with a pen and a postcard
but his focus is mostly on his next career move
He was a penciler for an underground comic book
He has no kids, no partner
Publisher's bankruptcy and a messy break-up
with his girlfriend more or less coincided
Cast adrift
His purpose
He contemplates his purpose
Consults his muse

Mentally constructs a list of options

credits

from Wreckage (2004, album), released April 1, 2004
Paul Sprawl - voice, guitar, harmonica

license

all rights reserved

tags

If you like Paul Sprawl, you may also like: