Sometime soon after the song began, after the verse but before the bridge, he left the flannel shirted folks to his left and right and began to imagine himself a part of the jungle atmosphere. As a part of the first hunt a young cat makes in the woods, of that first instinct upon seeing a small rodent in a moonlit sphere of moss that declares to the world and himself most of all, hey, I will catch this. I can catch this.
As the guitar and drum flirt and dance around one another, accreting as layers of anxious soil, churning and roiling on top of one another, he imagines himself perched behind a large hooked root, his polka dotted hindquarters trembling back and forth with an as yet unexplored reservoir of agility, waiting for the tiny figure in his view to attempt an escape.
Suddenly, the guitar and drum recede into the darkness, carried away by an ocean wave.
Nothing makes noise for the longest time. The woods become silent. Frogs consider the temperature of water. Distant planets of gas move in orbit around the hot fist of the sun. Pluto, as always, muses about abandoning course, cutting its leash and wandering out into other realms of fused and blasted colors, where it will be at last forgotten by its family. A mournful humming is the only noise to exit the stage during these moments, delivered by the lead singer, now on his knees alone, rocking back and forth, offering a whale’s song for the morality of elements, for the senseless distance of space, hoping above all else that his youngest brother would make a clean break of it just this once.
And way down below, the cat remains perched on a coin of earth, focused now more than ever, not even within himself any longer, this feline, so intent is he on catching the small thumb-sized life form now marshalling its courage to run. He has become the space between them, the atoms of oxygen he will soon surge through and scatter like golf balls.
When the kick drum finally breaches the silence it does so like a military blast, and several things happen at once. The mouse rockets away, and the violin follows, moving at an incredible velocity. A thin willowy white arm emerges from behind a curtain, whirling like a manic painter, somehow touching chords with a chestnut bow. The guitar and bass, returned from the depths of the ocean, again apparent on the shore and chasing the others with renewed energy. And of course the cat, the young cat, definite as a boulder, hurtling with them. All of them sprinting like madmen, headlong, as fast as their muscles will take them, like drunkards cast loose from the swinging stomach-high doors of the saloon, glancing through alleyways of root, dodging under a roof of fern.
Things continue this way until after many minutes of pursuit, they are faced by a wall of rock directly in their path. Both pursued mouse and its predator are forced to brake suddenly at one hundred and ninety degrees, leaping and then landing, in an instant, on the side of the edifice.
As it does this, the cat feels literally the entire weight of the earth’s crust suddenly appear in its shoulders and move down its torso and into the bottoms of its calves. But the cat knows this to be a wicked force, and he knows that to submit to it is to be still, so he bottles that fire and holds it tight in the joint of his ankle, where it strains but does not escape. In such a fashion the guitar and violin reach a moment of inertia in the chaos, after minutes of dead sprint, where a turn is necessitated but heavy, and in this moment it seems that the very wood of the instruments will explode under the activity, and the skeleton of the cat along with it.
But they do not. They hold the stage, and pivot, and shoot back towards whence they came, alive once more.
On this stretch there are no obstacles to stop them, and minutes of blistering activity seem to stretch and warp in texture. A maximum thermal temperature has been reached, and certain instruments begin to loose their shape. The neck of the violin becomes softer, composed of a thick wood jelly that is bending towards the floor. Flakes of paint from the face of the kick drum cover the stage like dandruff. Specific organs and systems in the cat’s body begin to flutter and signal distress. Its lungs fire off adrenaline surges towards its muscles. The cat recognizes the urgency and moves faster still, expending everything in this final attempt to secure a meal. Something that is not located in any organ at all is issuing commands in a deep baritone. A second hungrier shape emerges from out of the sweet mist surrounding the first. It is becoming ghostly in its desire, and the mouse finally reveals its failure, and slows ever so slightly.
The lungs of the cat constrict tightly as it prepares a final leap. On stage there is no sense of whether or not the violinist is actually conscious. Her arms are continuing to move but she is rocking back and forth violently, chanting, eyes closed. The singer stumbles forward but catches himself on the microphone stand, steadying for a final yelp. The drummer has abandoned culture, striking the cymbals like he wants to kill them on the spot.
Finally the moment of attack arises as the majority of systems are spiraling out of control. The noise of the music is too loud to isolate whether any of the players have collapsed. Portions of the cat’s muscular system are locking up. His calves are cramping. He is not taking in oxygen. Blotches of color bloom in his visual field. He has not felt his paws in minutes. But then he is in the air, propelled and surging forward, and the music bursts through the hall doors and envelops the street. The planets spiral swiftly now, yanked by a leash.
When the cat lands, the ground falls away beneath it, in large chunks of continent, and the musicians are suddenly in empty space, revolving in perfect circles of disorder. Forms and colors lump and gurgle around their progress. Before they faint, they see images of brilliantly colored fish swimming up the sides of mountains, of building-sized candles relaxing into butter.
