We both sat quietly, sipping coffee and listening to Mahler. By day, I am a shipping and receiving clerk. At night, I am often drunk. My co-worker has 40 years on me, and has been through a shit of a time. He spent his first 40 years lost and alone, traveling from town to town in search of purpose and meaning: sleeping room to job to library to sleeping room, next town same as the last. He had balls.
I’ve been lost for who knows how long, afraid to jump, afraid of what lies ahead, waiting for a beacon that may never come.

Please sit down, dear reader, because what I have to say may alarm you. It seems that lately, people have been disappearing in broad daylight. There are no warning signs or treatable symptoms, and there is no way of knowing when or where it will happen, or who it will happen to. Rich, poor, young, old. One, two or three at a time, without rhyme or reason, it just happens.

I think too much. That’s not to say that I find myself particularly intelligent or deep; it’s just that my mind sometimes goes and goes, dwelling on a particular topic, and I have no control over it. It’s a real problem.
When I was a kid, my dad once told me that I had to control my mind. That I can’t let it control me. Made no sense to me at the time. My mind is me. My mind and me seemed to be the same thing. I really didn’t get it. Looked at him like he was an idiot.

One hundred marines, with the courage and approximate spirit of cross-eyed bulldogs, have been ordered to stop their attack, and now crouch in small, agitated packs. Their target, a village that Intelligence estimates to be filled with enemy combatants, is within sight. It’s 6:00 in the morning. They’ve been up since 3:00 AM; marching in full gear since 3:30 AM. And now, no more than a half-mile from the target, the attack has been abruptly halted.

IN ADDITION TO PERFORMING WITH THE LADIES’ CELLO SOCIETY KNOWN AS RASPUTINA, ZOË KEATING CREATES HER OWN MULTI-LAYERED, EXPERIMENTAL CELLO COMPOSITIONS THAT SHE PERFORMS LIVE UTILIZING ELECTRONICS. SHE SCORES INDEPENDENT FILMS, AND IS POISED TO RELEASE A NEW CD THAT MAY JUST CREATE A BRAND-NEW AUDIENCE FOR INSTRUMENTAL CELLO MUSIC. NIGHT WATCHMAN DISCOVERS HOW A WOMAN THAT STARTED OUT REHEARSING IN A MENTAL INSTITUTION AND PERFORMING IN PRISONS WILL MAKE YOU THINK OF THE CELLO IN A WHOLE NEW WAY.
Night Watchman: What got you interested in playing the cello?