Johnny Satan and Various

Then Johnny played. He chose an upbeat tune lost to almost all the world. It was considered too lowbrow and popish when recording was first invented, and then too dead when that sort of thing was considered worth remembering. Most think of songs that move to tears, but this moved to laughter. Light and careless, it spoke of a thousand childhood carnivals full of wonder, even while parents grumbled about scam artists. It spoke, really, of a world that isn’t: impossibly gentle and vibrant, and it asked those listening not to mourn for the fact it wasn’t real. Johnny took care to honor that wish and wound it down slow to end, so that the return didn’t jar. Still, Georgia found it far shorter than she wished.(Johnny visits a woman named Georgia and tells her how it really went down.)