I was working in my studio. I needed to alter some arrangements for a Residents show coming up at the end of summer and to be honest, it wasn’t going so smoothly. I had taken a break to shake my fist at the cruel world when Roman popped his head in and said, “In case you are curious, I think you put two cans of stewed tomatoes out for our, um, visitor. Tomatoes are missing from the pantry.”

In all the stories I had ever read, in all the movies I had ever seen, transients and cowboys ate beans. I felt like I had betrayed centuries of American culture by giving out tomatoes, stewed tomatoes at that.

Underlying not getting the beans right was a feeling I was losing control in general.

It takes a lot of, perhaps unjustified, ego to foist art and music on others. A normal person would be satisfied with the act of producing art. Demanding that others purchase and listen to it requires a sense of self importance that bordered on me being as nutty as the guest running around in the yard at night.

But I did it, all the time. As I pulled back from performing, part of me wanted to be a puppeteer continuing to control what goes on in front of the audience even though I elected to not even be present. So here I am trying to alter arrangements that originally included me so they work without me being on stage. I can’t seem to let go.

Sometimes I don’t even feel like I am in The Residents anymore. I’m the ghost writer for their music, hidden away in a studio on a chicken farm that has no chickens. And if that isn’t enough I have an uninvited guest.

I wasn’t afraid of this entity, it was that I couldn’t control the unknown. I lay awake at night listening for the sound of him out there, maybe sitting in the same chair on the porch I napped in earlier in the day. Though I tried to focus on writing the musical arrangements, my fantasies kept jumping to electric fences and filling pits with sharpened stakes.