If you haven’t noticed, I don’t write about anything anymore that has to do with my life. I write whatever comes to my head. I suspect that most of it is bad, and that the only reason I’m doing it is because I am no longer able to write about stuff which even vaguely matters, and that this is my way of coping.
I do not know why the caged bird sings. There is no hope. The only thing you can do is fall out the window and hope you fall on a soft shrub, and maybe that you don’t break your femur.
The caged bird sings because there is no music, and he wants to create some. He sings songs by Prince like “Pussy Control” and songs by Ben Folds Five whose names he doesn’t know. He sings them loud and clear, often in the morning when his masters are still sleeping. When they yell at him he changes his tune to something more upbeat, like “Charm Attack” by Leonna Ness. He is a sucker for female lead singers.
On Fridays he sings classical songs, usually Chopin and sometimes Beethoven. On Saturday he sings 80’s hair rock , namely Guns ‘n Roses and Van Halen. Despite the fact that he always sings “Patience” by Guns ‘n Roses, it is not his favorite song. He only sings it because it has a whistling solo. His favorite song is “My Michelle.”
On Sunday, the bird is silent for the first part of the day. He is letting the Lord rest. The Lord is the only person he lets rest. At exactly 12:01pm (there’s a clock across the hallway from his cage) he lets out a blood-curdling scream. He screams as loud as he can for five minutes, but no one in the house ever notices because they are all still at church. Sometimes he cries and laments his fate to be locked in a cage for the rest of his life. He sings the first 15 seconds of “Coming Down the Mountain” by Janes Addiction followed by the middle 45 seconds of “Rudy Can’t Fail.” He mimics the sound of Joey Ramone; he hates The Ramones.
When all is said and done, the caged bird sings for himself. He sings to annoy his owners, and he sings because he likes the sound of the chorus in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” He will never sing David Bowie, because he would consider that sacrilegious. Not because David Bowie had weird hair or because he was gay, but because he wouldn’t be able to do him justice. Once he broke into “Life on Mars” before he realized what he was doing but then quickly stopped, ashamed of himself. That day momma did not smack the cage with her broom.
In two years, the caged bird will die. He will have sung 5,777 songs. His family will bury him in the plot of earth just in front of the house, and after school one of the children will put stepping stone on his grave to prevent the armadillos from digging him up. In just two more years, he will be all but forgotten with the addition of a new family pet, a ring-tailed lemur that stowed away on a ship from Madagascar to Singapore by hiding beneath a trash can.
This entry was written by , posted on January 19, 2010 at 11:53 pm, filed under Writingz and tagged i know why the caged bird sings, maya angelou, party, your mother. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.