Gate, Gate
IDLE (2026)

I remember when I was really little, in a car on a rainy day, I would watch the raindrops dance on the window as we drove. Amoeba-like, jerky, blobby globules that would jerk and stutter, merge with smaller ones or larger ones into mega-drops, then a shift or turn in the vehicle would make that mega-drop descend down the pane in a line. I would be transfixed, my little mind totally immersed in the raindrop spectacle. "Gate, Gate," its seemingly carbonated panorama of sudsy aliphatic aldehydes first greeting my nose on application, immediately reminded me of my four year old wonder of the jerky, blobby, globules of rain. Shimmy and hiss, pop, fizz, enjoy passing through gate into childhood imagination.

It's effervescence soon pops bubbles in my nostrils, heavy on a reliable, white soap, 99.44% pure. Cleaning the filth off, in the midst of a shower time, or bath time, in perpetuity. The elongated joy of cleaning oneself, dirt be gone. I remember a Mister Rogers episode where there was one of those operas performed in the Neighborhood of Make Believe: "there's never ever ever ever ever ever ever any trouble here in Bubbleland, Bubbleland, Bubbleland." The heart here are the aldehydes and fluffy, foamy musks serenading each other in Bubbleland. "For bathtime, for playtime." This isn't clean beauty, that stuff is daft—this is more cleaning away the nonsense of the memetic and flat to the great expanse of sensory deliverance. Pop!!