Review Summary: Jack Kerouac Reviews: Sharon Van Etten
For some reason everyone thinks of pain as a momentary sensation, and that’s it,
bang - gone! But me? When I think of pain, I always think of diamonds.
Alrightalrightalright… allow me to explain. Look, every time we feel pain, it becomes embedded in our chests. All the shame, the failure, the regret, the heartbreak, everything: all of it enters through the mouth, sinks down the oesophagus and gets lodged right beside the heart, where it turns as hard as a stone. We carry our pain around like bullets: heavy little wounds that remind us of the wars we’ve fought and the battles we’ve lost. Eventually, we end up with our own personal Japanese rock gardens full of pain. The stones sit there, all bundled up in scrappy makeshift quilts made out of food, sex and nine-to-fives - virtually unnoticeable but weighing us down all the same. Sometimes, if you move too quickly or you’re not paying attention, a blanket might tear; and no matter how hurriedly you stitch it back together, others can see it in your eyes - seriously, it’s as obvious as anything! Most of us spend our whole lives tending to our stones; we wrap ‘em up in cloth, string ‘em up with twine and finish ‘em off with a bowtie. We stow these neat little packages deep inside ourselves, in the darkest cracks and crevices, never to see the light of day. If you’ve ever been a pallbearer, you know how f*ckin’ heavy a corpse is, right? Well, guess what friend: that’s not the fine-grained Mahogany and Walnut coffin you’re sweating over! No, that’s a lifetime of pain, stashed away right there behind your recently deceased relative’s sternum. And it’s funny, because although everyone knows about this stuff -
everyone knows, right? - no one ever musters up the courage to see for themselves. I’ll let you in on a little secret though, ready? The secret is this: if you leave those little rocks long enough - I mean
really let ‘em harden up - and you reach inside yourself and you-- yeah, cut yourself open and reach inside, that’s right; if you grab one of those little stones, all wrapped up neat with a bowtie and - well yeah, of
course it hurts ya dickhead! - if you pull it out and dry it off; untie the string, pick the stitching, have a peek inside… Well, let me tell you right now, you won’t find no f*ckin’ rock my friend! Honestly, I swear on my mother’s grave, you won’t find a goddamn rock… Nope, you’ll find a
diamond. And guess what? Sharon Van Etten’s chest is
full of diamonds.
