Synopsis: The summer before moving back to Memphis from Washington, D.C., I was particularly missing the South. The political turmoil of D.C., the blind greed and ambition, seemed to leech into the ground and air and it steadily grew worse. Day after day as the air became heavier, pregnant with the stifling humidity of a D.C. summer, it also seemed to pulsate with a violent electricity. As if the dialect of violence and hatred was twisting and shifting the very atmosphere:, the colors buckled, the people clicked and clacked like a mindless machine opening its screaming, all-consuming maw, ripping the earth, exposing its flesh and our bones.

The morning of May 29th, I was painting in my rental’s garage, ignoring my work emails, hiding from the awful noise, the bloated barking red faces.

Doors open facing the alleyway and neighborhood garden park. I looked up, realizing that the world had gone silent, no cars, no people, no clicking clacking. The screaming, grinding vomit of words seemed to disappear from the mouths and the air in an instant. Dead silence, with a beautiful clear blue sky. The graupel lay suspended, and the anvil ascended, electrons rose, colliding invisible above the city. Then the rolling, crunching pop of dusty drums and guitar began playing over my bluetooth speaker…”OOOOH Smokestack Lightnin’”…….