The sun sets beyond the Hudson and I am dreaming of the lost snows of Mt. Kilamanjaro. March is but a day away from his annual death and Beirut has returned from a busy month of traveling, wine coolers, Jacques Brel covers, amphibious warfare, cattle drives, desert soliloquies, and navel gazing. SXSW! Beirut played two shows, you may hear them recorded for posterity on KEXP. Alas, I was not in Austin. I was busy dusting the family coat of arms in the Met. Gendarmes on prancing horses threatened mutiny in dark Austin alleyways. Beirut swapped stories of life in the Kolyma gold mines with Blonde Redhead backstage. There was talk of a secret showcase where a certain band, product of generations of inter-band breeding, played to an audience of school children who did not take any pictures and swore to remember nothing of the performance. If a tree falls in Austin and no one hears it... After the KEXP broadcast (no bull was sacrificed), Beirut returned to Albuquerque. Balloons were launched (cottonwoods wept white snow along the Rio Grande), fencing matches were sanctified by the Greek Orthodox church, and Paul moaned in a forgotten corner of the Frontier restaurant, "I am in love with a girl who cannot see out of her right eye". To which Perrin replied, "I once slept with a mime" and Jason ran screaming into the desert.
Brethren! Do not fear, Jason was found, huddled in an abandoned bus station outside of Tuscon Arizona. Beirut, overcome with joy, lifted him into their arms and so strapping him to the back seat of the van between cello and bass drum continued onwards to LA.
The natives to busy with their cell phones and waffle iron sun tans to greet the tired travelers, Beirut headed straight to a giant film studio lot and donned moustaches and ancient roman linens for the filming of the Elephant Gun video. Men wearing elephant mask in a sea of confetti danced with women splendid in woolen stockings who beating their chest and wept like Sicilian widows. Glasses of Champagne were spilled, Zach weilded his trumpet like a Cossack's saber, and the assistant director's assistant spoke of a summer in Latvia where he shot pigeons for sport and how one morning he woke up naked under a headless statue of Lenin, coughed twice and went back to sleep.
