Craig Smith

This story is about Dostoevsky and Euripides and The Red Baron and Hatsune Miku and Dr Sidney Freedman and The Michelin Man and Terry Thomas and Rei Ayanami and Isaiah Berlin and Thomas Bernhard and Raskolnikov and Bill Hicks and Albert Camus’ mother in her chair on the balcony not really hearing or saying anything for long stretches of time and Hawkeye Pierce when he tells Sidney Freedman about the smell of a wet burlap sack and how similar the melody to Komm, süsser Tod sounds to the Hatsune Miku song Because You’re Here and Terry Thomas asking Someone you know of Jonathan Winters and the Asterix comic where they come across The Michelin Man outside a motel or a service station from memory or the equivalent in Ancient Gaul which I think might have been added for an anglicised version of the story as the original had a French character that might not have been well known outside its country of origin again this is from memory and The Hedgehog and The Fox and choosing exile in one’s old age like Euripides although this is contested now like Dostoyesvky’s gambling debts but how he asked a friend to tell him all about children in a letter the games they play and mannerisms and so on for the book that came to be The Brothers Karamazov with little remaining really of what we might have thought a book about children would include unless a young version of Raskolnikov perhaps or when Bill Hicks talks about a scene from Shane that nobody has ever been able to track down where he says pick up the gun as a metaphor for American foreign policy and Isaiah Berlin when he was mistaken for Irving Berlin and White Christmas and opening a present on Christmas morning and Thomas Bernhard pops out and wheezes about Austria bless him and The Red Baron only twenty five when he died shot down by an Australian gunner if the story is to be believed which it should I suppose so far as memory can be trusted which just ask Hawkeye about such matters he might just start sneezing again like Albert Camus when he kept retiring to his bed on that cross Atlantic boat journey when his tuberculosis would flare up only seventeen when he was diagnosed same age give or take some months when Thomas Bernhard was diagnosed with the same age give or take when Hatsune Miku went on tour but the production company decided to not bring the hologram projection technology along which is the whole point the voice is not enough where is the body tell me Raskolnikov where is the body Terry Thomas frantically saying Have a care, that chap’s run absolutely amok or to quote Euripides love makes the time pass and time makes love pass if he actually ever said that or when Isaiah Berlin said he’d rather be remembered as serious and grave rather than funny which I know the feeling even though Nietzsche would be disgusted the memory where I hold a girl’s hand when I am a boy in early schooling and a friend holds her other hand and laughs and I frown at him and shake my head no you must not laugh while we dance in a circle I want her to take this seriously this is a melancholy moment where I want everyone to be as quiet as possible so she can hear the noise my heart is making in her memory or the equivalent (Where is the body? It never left).