The Liner Notes for What’s Up Down There, 2018:

so when i found a nylon rope end sticking out from under a cactus i knew there was a canvas bag of rusted ship chains buried just a few feet underneath maybe twelve feet tops so i kicked on the rocks and sand and cactus roots and i pulled on the rope until my skin tore and i could feel it move a little so i said ok i'm coming back tomorrow with some gloves and a shovel but it was more like five years and a half a dozen funerals and when i got back i was somebody else with dead friends but they could speak like dried up leaves rattling on a branch but i knew what they meant and i wanted those chains so i said hey guys listen to this and they said (rattle) so i pulled on the rope again and this time it gave a little more way and i could feel the roots tearing and hear the chains clanking under there and every time they made a melody i'd scratch the notes onto a rock with a knife and throw the rock down the wishing well that was sitting off to the side and then i pulled on the rope some more until my fingers bled and the cactus leaned and groaned and said cut it out and then the chains froze up so i knew i had to leave and come back again so i flew through time from the end of another story all the way to the middle of the next decade and then i ran through fields of weeds and molasses and broken glass across highways between houses stealing clothes from clotheslines and meeting bums and scaring kids and trading made up stories for shovels and a kick in the head for a wheelbarrow cause i could still hear those damn chains clanking and i had a plan but then on a whim i rolled some dice and i got a six so i built a box to sit in for six years as some kind of art project but i got bored after six days so i said i bet that's what the dice were really saying and i sold the box to a guy coming down the road asking if anyone had a box for sale and immediately spent the next twenty words running all the way back to the cactus and the rope pushing my wheelbarrow full of shovels ahead of me but damn if there wasn't a backhoe pulling the canvas bag full of chains up out the hole where the cactus used to be and dumping it on the ground right next to me and i said hey backhoe man those are my chains i was just coming back for them and he said tell you what i'll do i'll let you have the damaged ones so he gave me eight or nine big old chain links and i was just sitting down to bite the rust off when i noticed three more nylon rope ends sticking out from under three more cactus plants right over by the wishing well and i said man does it ever end