The Arran 17
30 ml firefly abdomen bottle
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| The blurriness isn’t a sign you’ve had too much Arran…* |
Tasting notes:
PAUL: “Well, she was just sixteen, if you know what I mean, and she was responsible way beyond compare…”
JOHN: That doesn’t really scan right, does it?
PAUL: (peeved at being interrupted) What do you mean?
JOHN: I mean, “sixteen” doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t pass the smell test, if you know what I mean.
PAUL: I don’t know if I want to know.
JOHN: Look, maybe she was dancing a veritable Nutcracker Suite of different honey-scented watermelon flowers bedaubed with lilac perfumes; maybe she was balanced and choreographed like she was gamboling on carved marble skates on a ten-foot thick butterscotch rink; maybe clouds of heaven parted to allow another soul to ascend…but “sixteen” feels too young. Maybe even pervy? And what was she responsible for, anyways?
PAUL: Well, she’s responsible. The oldest! No older siblings, so she always took care of things for her mum. And she had a beautiful mouth—undulating pleasure—ululating pressure—like furled sheets on a freshly made bed!
JOHN: You did not kiss her! Tell me you didn’t kiss her!
PAUL: Of course I didn’t! I drank her in. It was like setting up camp in the middle of my palate, like exploding out of fractal nothingness into the foam on Hiroshige’s woodblock print The Great Wave.
JOHN: Paul, it’s 1963. The word “fractal” won’t be coined until 1975!
PAUL: (still miffed, starts singing) “She was just sixteen, you know what I mean, and the way she drank was way beyond compare…So how can I drink down another, oh when I smelled her standing there?”
JOHN: (sardonic) That’s better, Paul, but there’s still the scanning issue to finish off. “Sixteen” just isn’t right.
PAUL: I can finish this; the finish will be long and gorgeous. It’ll make my heart go boom. It’ll be like a Roman mosaic depicting Dionysius made of carefully plucked and arranged flower petals. It’s Zeno’s bottle! There’s always another half to halve! Er, to have and to hold. It just keeps on going.
GEORGE: Sixteen’s too young.
RINGO: It needs to be older or gaol will be colder.
JOHN: It will scan better. Actually, it’ll be better in every way.
PAUL: (resigned) “Well, she was just seventeen, you know what I mean, and the way she looked was way beyond compare. So, how could I drink down another, Oh, the bottle’s standing there!”
Rating:
The Arran 17 isn’t “I Saw Her Standing There,” because that early hit is too fast and not deep enough. The Arran 17 is “A Day in the Life.”–It goes long, it goes deep, it’s lively and lovely at the beginning, enigmatic and arioso in the middle, and the end…the end…when the pianos (four of them) hit the ending chord and it slowly fades away leaving only joy at the experience and sorrow at the end? That’s the Arran 17.
–Our thanks to Sam Filmus and ImpEx for the sample!
*–…rather, it’s a sign you haven’t had enough.
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