My Secret Career 27: Invalid Nymphalidae

Manhattan was crazy for butterflies.

The exhibit arrived at Manhattan’s Natural History Museum with great fanfare and everyone rushed out in droves to go. These days you can trip and fall over a butterfly exhibit making a jaunt to the corner store. But 1999? It was a new phenomenon.

I was no exception and all of a Thursday I found myself sweating inside a museum sized terrarium pushing a stroller as butterflies swarmed around me. As someone who has very little interest in nature, I don’t know why I was shocked to discover that the experience was an unpleasant one for me. Others delighted at the flashing colors and the flitting flight paths. To me it was a giant butterfly coffin that I was trapped inside.

At this particular time in my life, I could only process this experience in one way. And you are about to share it with me. Not for the faint of heart.

Sidebar: Very proud of the guitar work on this. All I knew was I wanted it to sound like a butterfly slowly dying. Not to pat myself on the back but…nailed it.

Please take a listen to Invalid Nymphalidae off of Bomer-B’s 2000 album, “Act II: Americana Subversive”.