Bent Arcana – Bent Arcana

One finds it very hard to not treat the Bent Arcana LP with kid gloves, as most media ear worms aren’t herbivorous. They see the name “John Dwyer” and they give it one blurry thumb up. This is because they just don’t understand it but are afraid to say otherwise. I don’t completely understand the Bent Arcana LP as I played no part in its conception. My understanding goes about as far as this:

So I got this great sauerkraut grandpa right, and ancestry dot com won’t tell me whether he was a Nazi or not so I figured I’d just give him the benefit of the doubt. That was until I was stumbling around his backyard one kind afternoon while doing a number on this jazz cigarette. So there I was, giving that old Clinton state of the union when I see a part in the ground out by the woodshed that’s older than you and me. Upon closer inspection, I see the lord’s waterworks made a choice erosion, revealing a gate. Thee gate? I’d say so. The gate of my life insofar. So I decides I’m gonna crapshoot the matter and open the bastard up. I looked down the open and unknowable gape. I can hear some tinging around down there. Sounds of subterranean cave man ensemble. I decide to press my luck Peter, and slide down that black mass, ready and welcome for whatever was down the drain this time.

I slid straight downward in pitch black for a good while. Pair that with the peace pipe I partook just prior and you got yourself a laser show (hold the Floyd). So finally the party came crashing down and I landed rather softly at my predestination. I would come to realize this was just the waiting room…

A bomb shelter with an overzealous entrance. A rather swanky sign of the times with some Bebop records, a turntable, and a full bar. Hanging on the wall above it all was a rather racy painting of my Mimi. She was riding a horse without a saddle. I went over to the records and pulled one out. The wall turned and I was elsewhere.

“Now Entering Oblivion” a neon nitrate sign read. “Population: Everchanging.” I found myself in a humid back alley. I walked out onto a marketplace of alien commerce. Jell-O warblers dissolving MRE’s outside the Gastropod chow hall. Parchment cranes squawking Sanskrit, “Fucking Tourist,” Centipedes the size of you and me. A rabid band of misfit monsters plays Sun Ra covers in the Avant Garden. It’s hard to see through the green smoke blown from winged civil serpent’s happy hour hookah, but he blows rings every third and fifth puff and I’m just fine with that. I feel the contact high of an oriental rug muncher, but see nothing. I float in and out of the ectoplasm crowd. Street mongrels beg for new rows of teeth while a three-legged hooker limps up and down the street. Be here or be an octagon, no one seems to give a shit anyways. But, anyways, the culture shock gave me a migraine and a hard-on. I’ll let you know when it wears off and when I find my way out of this hole.

In sum, then, the Arcana may be Bent but it sure as hell ain’t broke.

And my understanding ends here.

There!

Bent Arcana
Bent Arcana
[Castle Face]