Conversation · Egg Head

No, that would be silly. Your body isn't for thinking. It's for robust, wholesome things. Things like discus, javelin, and 400 metre hurdles. Mmm... discus.

Did someone say disco?

"Why are there lungs on your belt buckle?"

"Lungs are for love!"

"Good to know."

"Why would lungs be for love?"

"When Dolores Dei was anointed innocence, her lungs started glowing through her body, for the world loved her and she loved it back! YEAGH!"

Why wouldn't they be? Are the lungs not the place where you hold the breath of your soul?

"Bourgeois love from a bourgeois god-queen towards a world getting rapidly more bourgeois, that's lungs for you."

"Objectively, it was good for its time. And they sort of screwed it up after she passed, like they always do."

"Don't listen to that retrograde class warrior, Egg."

"Really?"

"I think so."

"Thank you for the story."

"Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds!"

"Well. The lungs are where you hold the breath of your soul, aren't they?"

"Heiligeili!"

"That doesn't sound like a thing that would happen."

"But that's what everybody saw. Explain it as you please, but it doesn't really do to just deny it ever happened."

"L'amour, la compassion, l'autodiscipline."

"LOVE!" he suddenly yells and the world seems to stop. "In a woman's lungs! Lonely as I am, I'm not afraid! This strange, damaged feeling grows on and on, 'cause I've never loved someone like you before!"

A dopamine surge accompanies the words. It feels like electricity flowing down your scalp, dissipating into your neck. Feels good, like a spark of life in that moribund sponge you call your body.

"Oh yeah. That makes perfect sense."

"Eat the poor! Yeaaaaaah!" He waves his hand in the air. "Harder core!" The words echo magnificently throughout the nave.

"Welcome to Revachol! Yeaaaaaah!" He waves his hand in the air. "Harder core!" The words echo magnificently throughout the nave.

"A better deal! Yeaaaaaah!" He waves his hand in the air. "Medium core!" The words echo magnificently throughout the nave.

"Good morning! YEEAAAHHH!" He waves his hand in the air. "Harder core!" The words echo magnificently throughout the nave.

"Dolorian church, the place to be! Make some noise, my church people!" Large speakers are set up behind the young man, blasting a familiar song.

Vibrations thump through your blue soul. The music sounds much better in the church.

A hawthorn tree on Rue de Saint-Ghislaine. Tangled in its branches, something bronze flutters in the wind...

He stands on stage behind a table, nodding along to the music and waving his hand in the air. In front of him -- the audio mixer, one reel spinning.

The other reel deck is empty. Cables run hither and thither. On one side, you see an auxiliary line-in with the number 4.5 written next to it.

The large-headed youth has closed his eyes, lost in the music. Sensing you, he opens them...

"Good morning, comrade! Yeaaaaaah!"

"Good morning, tycoon! Yeaaaaaah!"

"Welcome to Revachol! Yeaaaaaah!"

"Incremental progress! Yeaaaaaah!"

"Good morning! Yeaaaaaah! Pump it up, pump it up, pump it up!"

"We're close!" says the young man with the tape player and the large boiadeiro boots. Lung-shaped trees sprout on his silver belt buckle.

"True, hard, full core!"

"Is it?"

"IT'S HAAAAAAAAARD CORE!"

"You're just gonna keep saying it's hard core, aren't you?"

"Skibadee, skibadanger! I am the rearranger!"

Your cop training did not prepare you for this. What to do?

Could there have been a right way out of this garden of forking paths, you think?

"I don't know what to say to that."

Say nothing.

"HARD CORE!"

"But is it? I mean, really?"

"YEAAGHH!"

This young man adds a capital G before the H in his YEAGHs and AAGHs. This produces a guttural, Gottwaldian accent and makes him sound more animal, more in it.

Or maybe it's not Gottwaldian, maybe it's Oranjese -- probably an homage to Oranje, where Arno van Eyck is from, judging by his name. Could you be listening to an Arno van Eyck creation right now?

"So this is the famous van Eyck I'm hearing?"

"You know about him..." He moves his mouth, but sound doesn't come out. His eyes are the size of saucers. Looks like you've rendered him speechless.

He's overcome with some mysterious emotion. It's not merely adoration for what a Hard Cop you are either. It's more. Could it be gratitude?

"You know van Eyck?"

"No, it was just a turn of phrase."

"Oh. Well, it really is him. It's an honest to god van Eyck beat. Well, actually a reworking of a Pepi Popikarnassos track, but let's not get too deep into that whole mess."

"THE ADVENT!"