Animal Is My Inner Animal

Kermit: What’s wrong with the drummer? He looks a little crazed.

Zoot: Oh, he’s just upset about missing the Rembrandt exhibit at the National Gallery. Animal: RENOIR!

You think it too, that you know him.

Have an opinion on his private mind: aggressive, male, an animal, typical. Hell, even his own inner voice says he’s all sex, sleep, food, drums, and pain. But take a step back, pause and look closely.

Look past the wild red hair, gripped sticks, and teeth gnashing; past the twin shows of chasing skirts and anger; past the hand of The Man jammed up his ass right to the jaw.

See him in pieces, minutely, observe how his body stills before the music starts, how he lags, unfocused, stares out at the lights agog; an attack dog calmly panting on a loose choke chain.

He was led here, brought to his spot through a strange world of people who think he’s nuts, set downstage on a spinning stool, anchored to the kick drum of his art to wait for the next song to start.

Watch for that second he takes to himself, the single beat of calm exposed by contracting googly iris, by determined grind of a maw that once hung open as though in stupid joy.

He lives for this, just like you, for what ticks of the clock are left; not the ones in which he’ll roll rim shots on cue or play nice with guests, but those in which his quivering lips and bugged eyes reveal real tension, a feral heave of chest and lung, anticipation of the moment to come, in which he can push every bad impulse out through constricted pupils, be unchained at last, let go, solo, blast.