Robert Pershing Wadlow Statue, Alton, Illinois, USA. Visited May 29, 2021.
Standing adjacent to the statue of Robert Pershing Wadlow is not the same as knowing him. Nor does listening to Sufjan Stevens sing about the tallest man illuminate much of anything.
Not to be confusing or conclusive, but that fissure into which Wadlow toppled, the tumble that broke him into “members of an acapella group meeting for the first time and performing without direction” was not incurable excommunication.
Nothing about the size of a man determines his personality. If I were as tall as Wadlow, I’d belch songs without modulating a single vibration. I’d be the exact same different Andy Brown.
If I were remembered at all, it would be for the songs I belched. The long loud belches mustered from the depths. Untrained in performance, there’d be no polish on my unabashed burps.
I’d stand silently in the corner with my hands folded the way my father folds his hands, appearing to observe everything happening around me but actually thinking of other things, such as how men who want to extract value from the morass only acknowledge the muddle as a means by which to invoke fear.
Strawberries. Television. Chard. Commandments bark orders to the microbes in my gut. The microbes fall into formation. Likewise, scientists want to engineer the return of wooly mammoths, reanimate their bones and flesh, so we can wear their fur.
The statue of Robert Pershing Wadlow wears a mask. His shoes are mismatched.
In the same building, a museum filled with torture instruments. A desolate muddle of pointed objects, blades, shackles, so many ways to cause pain.
The secret to well-aged likability is whether to future generations unabashed silence is received receptively.
Alton seemed as good a diversion as any while we recuperated.