Smog
Julius Caesar

THE REVIEW

Maybe Godot doesn’t come because we are waiting for him in the wrong places.

A room. Empty.

Maybe Godot doesn’t come because we are waiting for him with others.

A person. Alone.

Maybe Godot doesn’t come because we are waiting for him, bowed down by the idea we have made of him.

A chair in the center of the room.

And the chair is ragged, unsteady, worm-eaten: the throne of a King without subjects, a Napoleon confined to Saint Helena, a “Julius Caesar” relegated to four walls.

Lo-fi arpeggios of a detuned guitar wander around the hall, following the thread of a disconnected intimacy, fragile and bewildered melancholy that no longer dares to open the window.

As if the nocturnal psalms of a Nick Drake lacked the altar of a Pink Moon, as if the fluttering wings of a Syd Barrett were denied the refuge of psychedelic groves.

Waiting and absence.

A waiting that has forgotten to be such and becomes the stubborn fixity of a consciousness observing cracks along the walls, the echo of a colorless solipsism. The absence of something or someone that has never been encountered, a lost paradise vaguely evoked by soft lines of cello, a very personal guiding spirit whose features are suddenly scribbled by the hand of electric spasms.

As if the indolent languors of a Dave Pajo were denied the softness of a harmonic bed on which to rest, as if the eccentric crescendos of Gastr del Sol lacked the sure guidance of a David Grubbs.

Godot doesn’t come, but perhaps for Smog it isn’t so important after all.