I don’t know much about music, so I guess that makes me an expert. My name is Roman Moore. I was born just after the great war, and spent my baby years being what you might call a criminal. While keeping ahead of judgement I ran smack into a dark haired Irish girl who drew my crookedness from me like so much poison. Falling in love like falling in a well, we moved to, and settled in Palenville, NY, which is in the Catskill mountain range. We had one boy also named Roman. Both my wife and child died one summer in separate incidents having much to do with sadness. I mourn for them every day from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. at which time I promptly get on with my business. My business being thus: Digging a right big hole in the ground.

I’ve been digging said hole since my family passed on and the most recent measurements say it’s seventy-five foot across, and nearing one hundred foot deep. I could speak to the purpose of the pit, but I might freak some of you pussies out.

Anywhich, one day I was walking through the pines and heard the sound of a boot keeping time on some contrivance of wood. Keeping on I then heard a lonesome voice and a piano playing. I reached the edge of a clearing and saw a small house set against a stand of tall oaks. Sometimes the forest sways in time. The black-haired figure responsible for the ruckus shouted me a “hey there” and I crossed the field to make his acquaintance.

He told me his name was Auguste Arthur Bondy. He offered me a drink and we spent the rest of the day sipping bourbon and blowing up anvils. To quote Thoreau “It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil."

In the course of our malfeasance I learned that he was descended from a murdering Frenchman who arrived in this country with a pair of monogrammed dueling pistols and a stradivarius violin. Ain’t life grand? He told me that he used to go by the name Scott and had played in a Rock ‘n Roll group went by the name Verbena. I asked him what that was like and he muttered something about being an infant in a crib full of bats. We sent our last anvil skyward and drank the last dram of bourbon just as a sliver of moon began to show above the treeline. As I said farewell he handed me a small box which he explained was a record. “One of them Rock ‘n Roll records?” I asked. “No, a new record that I made this past winter in my barn.” “Thank-e” I replied and hiked on home while the locusts kept me company.

Not owning a mini-record player, I had to sweet-talk my spinster neighbor out of hers. The next day, after mourning, I stood the record player on the edge of  my pit,  put in said record and set to digging. The air rang with sounds of old, new, North, South, and East, but not West. I became aware of a certain lightness in my own movements. I climbed from my hole and stood on the rim. I looked upwards. I then took my shovel, filled it with fresh earth and began to fill in the hole. It took me damn near a month working sun up to down before I could stand in the center of what used to be a sizable bit of nothingness. On the final day I threw on the last bit of dust and walked to the middle of the now filled pit. I drew my knife from my boot and ran the blade lengthwise across my palm. Oh Joy. The blood ran from the mouth of the cut and dropped into the dirt below, where it pooled and grew big enough that I saw all creation reflected in it. And the song sang “World without end, World without end."

 -Roman Moore