This past weekend, an acquaintance explained to me the feeling of fly-fishing. He talked about the rhythm of it, the beauty of the quietude one experiences while doing it and it was as if he was describing breasts. Having never been fly-fishing, this all seemed more than alright. It seemed like we should go and wade out into a low river right then and get going on it.
The description likely would have been enhanced even more had Douglas Kirby, the lead singer for Sioux Falls, South Dakota, band From A Fountain been describing it, not that there was anything lacking in what I heard. The appreciation for something like standing in a river and throwing a line in, through specific tugs, pulls and conductions would have been thoughtful and colored with interestingly speckled light and starbursts. From A Fountain music can make you feel the honied heavens melting down on you. The shooting stars and lightning streaking like tinsel, physical to hold. It's a soft rain that could be predicted and seen coming from a long way off, anticipated for hours. It creeps in, first gray and then black, looking like a horizon of exhaust fumes coming to take over. They stagger the place for a while, keeping everyone with any sense inside. Kirby writes his scattered thoughts into these warm daydreams of light bodies, orbs and something hard to pin down, but it feels a little like skinny-dipping into a lake that's 15 degrees too cold for such an activity.
The people who move about, who skinny-dip in such waters, are self-described as misdirected men. They are fighting the static, but they're fairly sure that they're following a clear clanging, a tone that rings as true to them as anything. They are drenched in walking sweat and they're not afraid of what they've just done, nor are they concerned that they've got no dry change of clothes. It's not carnage. It's just soggy clothing.