Russell Edson Would Very Much Enjoy MySpace If He Would Only Give It a Chance

by Matthew Simmons


We say, Russell, you get you a MySpace page, and everything is certainly going to be all-better.  All those feelings that you feel—the ones that make you write the way you do, always with the animals sewn together and the shoes and the old men thinking and the tits and cunts of the world—they would all melt away like so much crushed ice in a Dixie cup of lemonade on a hot day in front of your mother and father's house, and there you are, sitting at the lemonade stand waiting, sure, you're waiting for customers, but they just don't want a glass of lemonade today, because probably most of them are working today, you know?  Why are you out pushing lemonade in the afternoon, in the spring?  You are not expected at school.  You are home-schooled.  Why are you home-schooled?
      I imagine you are home-schooled.  Or, were home-schooled.  Mom had a blackboard, and she could never wash the chalk out of her pantsuits.  The chalk stains covered her pantsuits.  It tortures you, doesn't it?  Because you know that if you were really small, those chalk stains would separate into a field of tiny, white stones on the hill and dale landscape of your mother's pantsuit.
      But, a MySpace page would change all of that.  You'd have friends, and one would be me.  And, maybe KRS-One from the Boogie Down Bronx would add you!  He'd absolutely add you if you wanted.  He thinks a lot of you, KRS-One.
      KRS-One made the album Criminal Minded with his hip-hop group Boogie Down Productions.  It's an important record, and one we all think you should go out and buy, Russell, if you don't already have it.  Because we think you'd like it.  And, maybe if your lemonade stand had been more successful, you would've purchased it long ago.  It would've made you think.  Maybe you and your mother could've discussed it during home school.  She would've talked about that with you--she would've discussed Criminal Minded with you.  She would've wanted you to understand where KRS-One was coming from.  For her, context is everything.
      Everything.  And, really, isn't everything everything, too?  
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