and sometimes we find ourselves weeping I found myself writing on the cover of a notebook as a title, pretty sure, for this musical inquiry, this inquiry on music that has to start with how I found myself (yes, I was lost) under the covers, shivering and crying on a day I’m supposed to be at work, watching some old videos of De La Soul, one of whose members, Trugoy the Dove (govt name Dave Jolicoeur) has died. Of heart disease, at fifty-four. Motherfucker.
One of De La’s famous songs off their first record, “The Magic Number,” samples “Three Now De La is two. Why do we keep dying so young? I don’t know what my temperature was, but goddamn I was hot with heartbreak over this soft-voiced wordsmith, this wordsmith like Mike’s (apt. 273) nunchuks with the thin foam wrapping the handles so if you went slow they’d bounce off you, but if you went fast, you might lose a tooth or cut a little grin into the thin skin over your eyebrow. Sleepy might’ve been what we’d’ve called him if he was on the football team—remember those kids, how some of them were just lulling you so they could put a crackback on you that puts you to sleep? You know that Paul Mooney bit about black people and sleep, or, I guess, sleep, don’t you? It’s always about practice.
