Soundbytes 10.30 / Kubla Khan

Kubla Khan

THERE ARE TWO PROBLEMS with relating the story behind Kubla Khan, a tune I started writing a decade or so ago and finally finished (for now) and recorded just recently.

First, the song already is a short story. A short story in the form of a letter in the form of a song. A lover has left, doesn’t call; the writer finds himself alone with the artifacts of the affair. Some he breaks, some he saves. Boasting and pleading, the usual romantic tactics of most men. Sadness, regret, tantrum. It’s all in the song.

Second, and perhaps more to the point, it’s all made up anyway. Every detail. Best I can recall, I once spotted a pair of shoes by a doorway—just that, a pair of women’s shoes, a little muddy—and the song tagged along after.

As to the rest, I’ve only lived by myself once, and very briefly at that, before I met my wife and we lunged into our adventures. Sure, I could probably flesh out a credible backstory for Kubla Khan, possibly giving the shy clarinet player upstairs a bigger part, maybe some speaking lines (personally, I think there might be something going on there) but where does that get us? Nailing it down only narrows it in.

Anyway hey, it’s only rock ‘n’ roll.

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Thinking this week about my first musical collaborator, my old friend Thom from the neighborhood, who is having a hard time of it, health-wise. Maybe you could send him some healing vibes, if you can spare some. Can’t we all sometimes use healing vibes wherever we can get them, even from perfect strangers?

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Kubla Khan (click to play)

Your raincoat in the closet
Shoes still in the hall
I get a dial tone
But you never call  
Kids play on the landing
Here on 2nd Street

That shy girl on seven 
Plays her clarinet
Still working on her scales
She ain’t got ‘em yet
Keeps right on trying
Here on 2nd Street

   If I had a wish, anything at all
   The pleasure domes of Kubla Khan
   The Taj Mahal
   Only one wish before I’m through
   I’d never ever wish for you
                           But I do

You know, I bought another bottle 
Of that pricey French cologne
You said everybody’s wearing, 
But to each his own
I’ll keep it in my cupboard
Here on 2nd Street 

I should tell you incidentally 
I broke that cup of yours
You left here by the bedside
I knocked it on the floor
This morning without you
Here on 2nd Street

So I go to get a paper
They’re bringing down the gate
Nice Korean family, open late
The night feels like rain 
Here on 2nd Street

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Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Review and other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie