Emily

[directed by Geoffrey Pigeon] 1. It’s Canadian Music Week. Sound bite: “It is very relevant in Canada today.” Visuals, in CHALKBOARD jagged fonts: “An affluent suburb” “EMILY” I’ve been on set all morning in my plaid Eddie [born December 23, 1964 in Evanston, Illinois] Vedder outfit. How do I feel? Like I have won a contest no one entered. I am remixing my property fetish and writing my graffiti on the “bedroom” walls. Over and over I write Emily “Amadeus” Haines on the bedroom floor. The walls are yellow and pink. I am bored and grey / black.   2. My graffiti letters are being filled up by busy hands in crayon n wax, or enamel spray-paint. The same busy hands are pasting samples of my 1992 High School Greatest Literary Hits in the foreground. In the background, a story about a spaceship taking my father off our front lawn. The pages are photocopied. I live with cups of water under the Emily stand-in’s combat boot. She is instructed to mimic a 17-year-old girl / boy at home drawing pictures of combat babies—“so bikinis and tanks,” the director says. She shrugs and rubs the crayon across the big page. She’s on her pink knees. Her miniskirt calculates no shadow. She’s gesture drawing like crazy. “With her on top!” Geoffrey yells, telling Emily to draw her own likeness, “or, you know, whatever you feel like.”   3. Conquering the tanks and planes, she is my King Kong with cadmium hair and short-skirted legs raised in a V. She does a combative silver kick for an outtake. Today is just like the day I heard Emily of Metric ruined my world. It’s hard to cease thinking about it. “Just walk around the room, like you’re angry.” She is my King Kong. I am her airplane glued incorrectly. She may break a nail on my skull. “Like your parents have just said you can’t go to the biggest party of the year.” Dead disco bombs from her eyes in soft, maroon tear drops. Because I’m Eddie V. I sing: “Leslie didn’t give attention to the fact that Queen Emily of Metric ruined his world! Emily spoke on set today! Emily spoke on set today!” “Look down. Now up. Okay, good.” I sing about staring at her leather coat, how she seemed a harmless little tawny twit, how she unleashed a sea lion, gnashed my heart with a sneer, and stomped in the mild dust of my quest. I sing about how she clocked me near the craft table with a surprise left, and left my jaw blurting. “Queen Emily of Metric ruined my world!” I am singing about her so I can forget about her, so I can erase her forever from the monochrome Billboard.   “Emily” appears in Pastels Are Pretty Much The Polar Opposite of Chalk (DC Books 2009)