Storybookland by Gareth Wilson

My brother’s oldie-but-goodie deserves a close reading

The Enchanted Forest in Turner, Oregon (artist’s own image).

Storybookland

Plastic castles six feet tall.

The animatronic band playing music in the hall.

Reality crept up oh so suddenly

It was enough to startle me

In the mirror house

At the carnival.

I took a photo from nowhere

I tried to see from no perspective.

I took two steps back so that I could be objective.

I’m the only one I’ve ever known

But my mind is not my own

I’m a forest.

I’m a field of corn.

I was bored but I couldn’t sleep.

I can’t feel the wind but I feel the heat.

I was reading fairytales in my bed.

Baby baby she lost her head.

2X

This song is trippy, and one of the great things about it is its structure. Rather than progress through the typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus pattern, it progresses as verse-verse-chorus-chorus. The transition halfway through the song is unexpected, and it resolves into a Paul…