‘The other day, I was in a record shop. Looking through the LPs, I found the Queen catalog reissues. On one of them, the Virgin Records logo was in the upper right corner. But, on closer inspection, the famous logo that was supposedly scrawled on a napkin had been ‘cleaned up’: the basic shape was there; the letterforms were close, but all wrong…

There’s something slightly off
about the logo in the corner
The basic shape is there
but the letterforms are all wrong

Isn’t that the way things are anymore?
Basically the same from afar
until you get good and close
then everything’s different as far as the eye can see

The shifts are inevitable
degradation and reformation
cause the grains to shift
and the sand to slip to the bottom of the glass

The familiar is no longer familiar
the old façades hidden behind generic fronts
That logo in the corner
has become a luxury disease

(9 October 2015—posted October 11th)