The Dark Balloon

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Full pause.

It’s time to talk about tower music. What it could’ve been. What it wasn’t. What never came to be.

We had a chance after 9/11 to create a new genre of music. Something bold that spoke to our generation—Generation Aww. Because we were the generation that saw those tragic events on TV and went “aww” for a week; maybe two weeks if you had a particularly boring life. We’ve seen it before, and how we’ve envied it. How classical-era music was born of the Renaissance. How blues were created when racism was invented. How folk music started when Peter Falk threw a guitar at a street urchin that had been bothering him but now, dead, bothered him no more. How alternative music started because “miscellaneous” was too hard to spell and “et cetera” was too pretentious. A pivotal event in history calls for a pivotal breakthrough in music. 9/11 could’ve been that pivotal event.

But we were lead astray by the sexiest, most alluring of all faults: the human ones; the ones of hubris. One catastrophe was enough but the flocks of problems and reasons for discontent multiplied. When we needed a single issue to lead the humble music scene, history failed us. And what do our children listen to? Hip hop. Thigh tussle. Rap. Liver l’accord. Clitoris clash. Hanna Montana. Idaho Schmidaho. Jaundice jangle. In short, pre-9/11 music. The last generation gave our generation the worst gift of all: Its music.

And, even when the moment is most dire for innovation in spangly instruments and quivering trebles (that’s synecdoche, mind you), no help arrives. For we had our chance, and we lost it. 9/11: It’ll never happen again goddammit.

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Vindication.

Jark walked past the tall Finance building on the Ninth Street as he did every morning, right before the sun rose and the rest of the city stirred, restlessly, its coffee.

“I’m going to jump!”

Jark squinted upward at the voice.

“I’m going to jump,” the man said, with a hint of uncertainty about his voice.

“I dare you! I dare you to jump!” Jark screamed at the man.

The man squinted down. “I’m serious,” he said in a voice loud and weak.

“I dare you, you coward! I bet you can’t! I bet you can’t!” Jark screamed until blood pigmented his cheeks and his eyes ran crazy and he ran in circles on the sidewalk, gesturing and gesturing.

“I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” And he jumped.

“You don’t have the guts to land!” Jark screamed at the man passing by the fifth floor.

“I will! I will!” the man passing by the second floor said.

Jark timed it. He had been timing it for years. He hadn’t walked this route to work, this route that took twice as long as the subway. He was ready. He counted under his breath. He tapped his toes. He did everything right.

As the man neared the ground, Jark leaped at an angle, pushing himself under the man while pushing them both onto the soft mud nearby. (Curiously, it hadn’t rained in weeks, and everywhere else the ground was baked rugose. Indeed, the grass here had acclimated itself to a man wearing sunglasses and a trench coat who came every day to pour a liter of water. It was way too much water, but natural selection has a way of sorting itself over the decades.)

The men lay there breathing and bleeding for a few minutes while the hysterical crowd around them generally panicked. Jark, deformed spine and all, stood up.

“Ha! Ha! I fucking cock-blocked you! I fucking cock-blocked you!”

He danced in front of the groaning man, alternating broken ankle to broken ankle.

He took out a checklist no bigger than a grocery list from his jacket pocket and tore off the piece that had the man’s name, throwing it on the ground in victory.

“This is How the Universe Behaves,” he intoned. He put on his sunglasses because he looked good in them.

He waited patiently until the spaceship arrived, boarded, and left. The ambulance people came a little while later, only to find a bunch of people spouting gibberish. And, in the center of it all, was a broken man, severely cock-blocked.