And yet this is how memory, song, and story conspire: I will eternally shame myself with this small incident, and two unrelated cultural moments—a graphic catastrophe, a silly song—will be forever entwined in my mind.
Read MoreIn the Morning I’ll Rise Above by Joe Bonomo
Saturday night brings both pledges and lies of limitlessness, of a night never ending, a jukebox always playing, dance partners always spinning, car wheels revolving on roads that never end in daylight.
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Hold Your Phone to this Essay and Select Tag Now by Joe Bonomo
I left the bar humming bare traces, the final moments of the song like excavated bones, already fading in the daylight, in the archeology of my head.
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Mama Loved the Ways of the World by Joe Bonomo
Genuine? It’s hard to tell. What does the kid singer know? Does he really understand the burden about which he sings, that his mother’s naked shame buys him his clothes, the complications at that intersection?
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Field Recordings From the Inside by Joe Bonomo
My younger brother Paul developed a phobia of listening to records played at the wrong speeds. We’d be listening to a 45 or an LP, and if I moved the rpm knob one way or the other and the song lurched into nasal, pinched hysteria or growled down to a menacing dirge, Paul would cover his ears, his eyes flashing. Sometimes he’d dash from the room; sometimes he’d cry.
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