It’s uncertain how long this industrial thing is going to keep going. It just feels right these last couple days and I suppose it will feel right until it doesn’t and then I’ll switch it up. FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY, originally a spin-off of Skinny Puppy is as good a direction to take it as any, also, so let’s just let it grind forward. The whole sound reminds me of this time an old hippie came skelling up to me in a diner in midtown, all spun and manic, asking me, “can you hear the machine, man? Can you hear the machine?”

Hell yes, I can hear the machine. I had no idea what the motherfucker was talking about that night. I had some ideas. There were suspicions that are no longer suspicions. They are not rumors. Yes, my scabby friend, I can hear the machine. And if you’re wondering what the soundtrack for the high-tech-low-life future will sound like, it’s not going to be techno. It’s not going to be ambient or vaporwave or synthwave or any of that. It’s going to be industrial. That’s pretty clear. It’s not going to be pretty but it will be anatomically correct. The anatomy of the future is industrial and it will sound just like this.

But I guess we’re all going to have to live long enough to see if I’m right. Or maybe we’ve already lived long enough and the future is right this minute and that’s why this resonates the way it does.

I don’t know.

I just don’t know. That would sound too evangelical, wouldn’t it? I believe I’m right though, or at least on the right track.

This was not a bad day. Quite the opposite, actually. The sun was shining. There were very few clouds. It felt an awful lot like a late summer day and not a damn thing like mid-October. I hung out on the river on the west side, with my lover. We kissed. We held hands. We walked. We took it easy. It always seems there is so little time to take it easy so when it happens it’s magical. There were no invasive thoughts of the other realities that were all happening simultaneously. We took advantage of the bubble of opportunity to ignore all that. Not ignorant bliss really, but the mutual knowledge that we couldn’t will the bad stuff out of existence, nor keep it out of our existence forever. There was just this brief window of time where none of it was happening right where we were standing so we took advantage of that and just loved.

We just loved. We turned down the volume a bit, because we could, and tuned out the machine. We just loved.

We just loved.

Have you done that lately? Have you had one of those moments where you can turn down the volume on everything else and just be in that moment? It’s like a vacation abroad. Sure, you end up back in the world. You wake up from the dream and end up right back in it, but…

But…

That’s a realistic wish though that I can make for everyone, that each and every one of you has a window every now and again. Not too much to ask for.

Anyway.