Lyrics: Dave Malloy
Music: Dave Malloy
SUSAN
during the days
i’d drift through the rooms of my grandmama’s house
scuffling through closets and cupboards
excavating her mad collection
of knickknacks and relics and oddball curios
the house was packed
with hoardfuls of jewels and junk:
nautilus shells
metal matchbox cars
pamphlets and puzzles
and peculiar pastry tools
and a stunning exhibition
of devil and dragon and demon figurines
disturbing little icons
gathered from all around the world
there was this one cute green dragon that i loved:
a pūķis
POOKIE (SADIE)
pook pook pook!
SUSAN
a latvian household dragon that steals and hoards treasures for her master
legend said if you didn’t feed her for her services she would burn your house down
i named her pookie and put her on my nightstand
POOKIE
hello miss susan!
i have such wonders to show you!
sweet precious trinkets and treasures!
look here, look here, look here, look here!
SUSAN
vinyl!
a cobwebbed closet full of stacks of dusty vinyl
and a technics sp-10
i filled the house with music
i can play music
as loud as i want
there’s no one to tell me to turn it down
i danced and screamed:
i’m alone!
i’m alive!
i’m alright!
hank williams and patsy cline
nine recordings of winterreise
billie holiday, blood on the tracks
and rumours—
POOKIE, BECKETT & WOLF
listen to the wind blow
SUSAN
a curated collection for a broken heart
WOLF
{howl}
SUSAN
and books
my god, this woman’s books
every room, floor to ceiling
with stacks and stacks of books
have you ever fallen in love with someone
by looking at their books?
but they were totally disorganized;
just chaos everywhere
my little ocd brain lit up
and i became a little librarian
POOKIE
mmm yes please miss susan!
tidy tidy tidy!
pook pook pook!
tidy tidy!
pook pook pook!
tidy tidy!
SUSAN (sorting books)
fiction, fiction, non-fiction, non-fiction
fiction, fiction, non-fiction, non-fiction
latvian, latvian, fiction, non-fiction
fiction, non-fiction, latvian, latvian
latvian, fiction, fiction, fiction
non-fiction—
non-fiction?
non-fiction is harder than fiction
after the first few days
i had them separated by room
and then
it was time to alphabetize:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
nothing beats alphabetical order!
A B C D
A B C D
A D G K J J H N M U
atwood, austen, bronte and bronte
didion, jackson—
so much good stuff!
butler, lessing, murdoch, morrison, oates
wharton—
and a surprising number of trashy romance novels
by danielle steele
there were men too
mostly sci-fi guys, beats, and poets:
bukowski, cummings, bradbury, kerouac, simic
poetry got its own section:
six solid shelves of thin modernist volumes
no collected works, always the original editions
in some of the books
i would find newspaper clippings of obituaries
on raymond carver’s she had written “a sad day.”
“a sad day”
in green sharpie
plays—not that many plays
but non-fiction, oh man—
grandmama’s interests were all over the place
certain themes started to emerge:
landscape architecture, interior design
animism, trickster myths, and fairy tales;
including several lavishly illustrated editions
of the three little pigs
erotica and polyamory—grandmama!
jungian psychology
drugs and disease
mental health
autobiographies by people who’d tried to take their lives
and biographies of people who did
depression runs in my family
depression and addiction
POOKIE
miss susan?
what’s this?
SUSAN
i suppose i should also mention here
that during this time in latvia
i had with me an absolutely atrocious amount of weed