will

5. Well he was uh, well he was uh, he was uh, he was carrying the skin of a cat that he grew up with and then had, uh, stuffed to preserve its memory in physical  form but decided that with the skeleton inside the cat and all the stuff, stuffing it, it was too heavy so he removed the skin from the wire frame of the taxidermy thing and he, he slung it around his neck like a scarf and, uhm. he well he was WEARING STOLEN RUBBER SHOES-

4. When I greet my bed, the story is the same. My body fizzes like alka-seltzer, vibrating like your girlfriend’s expensive dildo that makes you feel inadequate. The form-constant fractals beneath my skin buzz with electricity and shut down, with my breath inaudible and my sight flickering with phospheres and the static of your VCR. There I am, frozen as though floating in a vat of molasses- at the mercy of the ladle that scoops me from my sleep paralysis and carries me into the mouth of my subconscious. I am swallowed- squeezed down my mind’s tightening esophagus (If you can say “I’m choking!” then you’re not choking) and dropped into the acidic contents of its beastly belly. I turn on the light of my spelunker’s helmet (ajna, ablaze) and I am elsewhere. Perhaps I am staring into a mirror, examining the new row of plastic teeth knocking out my nicotine-stained, favored and reliable ones that are shrinking and popping out from my gingivitis gums. Perhaps I am professing madness to my mother in an alien house that I recognize as my own (I could’ve sworn Itai and Mark were piling furniture up to block my back door) as she washes the dishes and insists it is the result of narcotics that has me crying “Schizo!” Or perhaps I am once again entranced with my contorting face- numbing in the mirror as Nadav prepares my destroyed eyeball for the upcoming show. (It was an RC! There should be no numbness! and it was in an EYEdropper for a reason, right?) But then I am woken by caveman cries cascading out with corrupt cadence from between my cracking lips… Rescued from this horrible reality… yet somehow it seems these worlds are still very real. Somehow it seems that although I am no somniloquist, I’ve been talking to myself in my sleep. A language so familiar, a tongue so recognizeable, a dialect so real. And as I stumble through the Strange Thick of the Woods (the double-black-diamond path) my eyes roll into the back of my skull, stare down my brain, and see new words, neologisms, forming on the page. The story is the same- but I have never read it so readily. My dreams follow me into the daytime, and it seems to only make sense to say… What would Carl Jung do?

3. I can see it now, I… What? I’m being chased, I’m being run out of the settlement I’ve been staying in! But why? hmmm, hmmm… They’re shouting at me, throwing rocks, telling me I’ve done things I know I’d never do! That I’ve been stealing grain from the stock piles, selling snake oils, and false tonics to the local children, making mid-2000’s pop culture focused comedy! But they know me! They, they should know me I would never, I… Ok, now I’ve left the village. Uh, I’m living in a hole now, what was probably once someone’s basement. There are pages pinned to the walls connected with loose bits of string. Clues… I’m trying to figure out who framed me… Ugh, my eyes are bloodshot. I can barely think. I haven’t slept in days, not counting the blackouts. I can see myself slipping past the gate, back into the village, that I’m revisiting my old haunts looking for any scrap of a lead… Alright, I fight the urge to return to my family’s tent to watch my husband sleep. I don’t deserve that, yet not after what i’ve become… What does that mean? I find a doll, a puppet in my likeness, a scar emblazoned across it’s forehead. I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know what it means. I’m back in the hole curled on the floor clutching the doll to my chest, pulling clumps of brown hair from my scalp. Brown hair, straight brown hair, not mine! I scramble across the concrete floor over to a puddle of piss in the corner. I gaze into my reflection. Oh god! I understand now! it’s so clear! It’s been right in front of me! I gaze into the pool and Neil Cicierega gazes back! It’s heartbreakingly obvious now! The music I make is so self-evidently similar to Neil Cicierega’s that we have literally become the same person, and also always have been including now currently. Any and all comparison between our bodies of work makes sense to me. I no longer find them confusing. Both of us have listened to Oingo Boingo before, and that means we’re the same guy. You’d think that’d make people compare me to Danny Elfman, but they don’t because as we’ve established I am literally Neil Cicierega, and that’s cannon.

2. I settled into a new mind, in a flea-bitten tub-ring paradise of a queen-sized suite of a Wyndham-Microtel-Econolodge-Red-Roof-Inn-Knights-Inn-Super-8-whatever outside Richmond, Virginia. Curled up with an old Showtime softcore porno and flipped through my phone for a few hours. Picked up a bag of Swedish Fish and a fistful of chocolate-covered cherries and a pack of Malboro next for three dollars and ninety cents in the bodega by the Waffle House. I spun my eyes over the beautiful floral arrangements blooming and tessellating in the stucco on the walls.  Anything, I figured, to keep my mind off those goosebumps that were rising and squeaking and cracking and quaking and threatening anaphylaxis and asphyxiation with every sharp inhale that I took. With the threat of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome behind my flesh. And I watched as my skin crawled upwards to form a flesh noose to hang me from the rafters of that place I had found myself in, and I watched as my epidermis took on the shape of whatever I feared the most in that moment. And I sat there, down in that fly-trap ash-tray contemplating my next move, and weighing out the pros and cons. Of. Every. Last. Rotten. Pulse. It was either Wilmington, North Carolina or the nearest hospital!

COMING IN AT NUMBER ONE:

Like he’d wear a little suit, he’d gel his hair back, he’d say stuff like “well I can see where ____ gets their looks from 😉” and then the second they’re out of sight he’d instantly be like “holy shit that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life what the hell man”

He meets Noel’s mother and his mom is like “What a nice young man! He’s so sweet 🥰” and Noel’s just like “haha yeah for sure 😅”