I'm nostalgic for muzak, a liminal sound lost since we started carrying handheld entertainment everywhere. I seek it out to soothe my streaming-age decision fatigue. Because silence is harsh and music takes curation, but muzak has an artificial appeal, like the silk flowers in Jory Mickelson's new poem "[Sometimes a hotel room]": "beaded with dew--which is actually glue." The hotel room image then expands into a sky filled with stars before one falls.
Akwaeke Emezi's Son of the Morning orbits Lucifer, the original fallen star, his journey birthing imagination in a place that is neither heaven nor hell. Meanwhile, actor Tim Curry's memoir, Vagabond, sings the very virtues of imaginative wanderers. And Bryan Washington's Palaver roves past and present; through Houston, Jamaica, Japan; traversing a constellation of connections to show how others "help us see ourselves clearer." So, maybe my fondness for muzak is a cousin to that old wisdom about how boredom breeds creativity. Because it's a perfect soundtrack for reading.