Tonguing Meaning 6: Mark E. Smith

Mark E. Smith: «Puerile Slurred-word Rigmarole» [.zip]

Here's one for all you aspiring authors out there…

As indicated by the recent lack of writerly activity on this here blog, Toilet Guppies has been grappling and wrestling with the written word, always losing. It simply won't do to keep penning the same old improvised blog fluff, rambling and inconsequential, so I turned to the Fall's Mark E. Smith and his «Guide to Writing Guide»:

Day 1: Hang around house all day, writing bits of useless information on bits of paper.

Day 2: Decide lack of inspiration due to too much isolation and non-fraternisation—go to pub! Have drinks.

Day 3: Get up and go to pub. Hold on in there as style is on its way. Through sheer boredom and drunkenness, talk to people in pub.

Day 4: By now, people in the pub should be continually getting on your nerves. Write things about them on backs of beermats.

Day 5: Go to pub. This is where true penmanship stamina comes into its own, as by now guilt, drunkenness, the people in the pub and the fact you're one of them should combine to enable you to write out of sheer vexation… to write out of sheer vexation.

Day 6: If possible, stay home. And write. If not, go to pub.

This really rather splendid advice was recorded for radio in 1983, when Smith's words were still somewhat intelligible—before his meth jaw had turned the inside of his mouth into a chewed-up pulp out of which slurred half-syllables of beer-slobber drop limply onto the floor, the meaning of his speech conveyed not by words but by its constantly sarcastic tone of voice. (Quite clever, really; who can tell whether you can still write, let alone review your stuff, if they can't understand a word of what you're saying?)

So if you, like Toilet Guppies, were disappointed by this year's dismal Fall album—which sounds as if it were backed by a band of random pub yobs playing amateur covers of '90s Rollins Band funk metal jams—have a listen to Mark E. Smith's hilarious but actually quite sensible guide to writing, as well as his ruminations on some of current civilisation's most exciting cities («Amsterdam», «London»), recitation of seemingly random newspaper clippings and, from sometime much later than 1983, a mysterious and eloquently scathing attack on artists who do what Smith himself is doing these days («I'm Bobby»):

Get ahead with your puerile, slurred-word rigmarole and put it out. On the lids, it's down, congealed both the rest of your post-nearly, half-realised, bird-like thoughts clogging the solo '70s or new intellectual skinhead morass!

Whether hilarious self-loathing, a parody of a critic or a cutting down to size of some imitator who remains anonymous (except that he's called Bobby-something), it takes one to know one and it's a fair cop—and a masterly written one, at that…

So, enjoy:

1. Mark E. Smith's Guide to Writing Guide
2. London
3. Manchester
4. «The rouge smeared on the aged profile of the local THF Cologne branch chairman»
5. Village Bug
6. Amsterdam
7. «A piece I found in an international newspaper on the floor»
8. I'm Bobby

Beát!

This girl I like expressed an interest in beatnik recordings. Hence this compilation of beat poetry (sucker that I am):

V/A: The Beatitude of Hip [.zip]

This is not some lit. history class, and the collection is not representative of what the «Beat Generation» was all about. It features only one original, bona fide beat poet (Jack Kerouac), ommitting the boring ones (Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, et al.). William Burroughs' stuff stands so apart from standard beat fare that it didn't make the cut. (He was too wise to ever join a movement anyway.) Also, I left out music by the obvious inspiration to many of the original beat poets—most notably Charlie Parker and Slim Gaillard. Those cats ain't groovy enough to dig. I've also skipped the scat-jazz so typical of beat comps. (In the immortal words of Vince Noir: «We don't need scat at this point.»)

Some forgotten café poets of the era are on here (like Felix Lupus, Ringo Angel). And sometimes, fake is better than the real thing, so I've also included examples of beatsploitation (Edd «Kookie» Byrnes, Babs Gonzales) and parodies (Del Close & John Brent, Bob McFadden & Rod McKuen). And of course, I've included some of the jazz performers who tried their hand at poetry (Charlie Mingus) or who originated the Afro-American hipster jive lingo later adopted by the would-be cool white cats of the beat generation (Cab Calloway).

Most of the selections could be called novelty songs or comedy recordings, but this is not an exercise in irony or nostalgia. Hepsters talked like James Brown danced, and jive and beat poetry are easy on the ears and a joy to your Wernicke's area, so forget kitschiness and enjoy.


Here goes:

The BEATITUDE Of HIP—Genuine & Phony Beatnikmania:

1. Patsy Raye & the Beatniks: «Beatnik's Wish»
I've no clue who Ms. Raye was or is, but the Gene Krupa-style drums, nasty trumpet and sultry poetry recital of this 1958 Christmas number is certain to get you in the mood…

2. Charles Mingus: «Freedom»
Here jazz composer, double bass virtuoso and band leader extraordinaire, Charlie Mingus, tries his hand at the old poetry-and-jazz combo. Concerned as his poem is with civil rights and the racism of the day, one could argue this number isn't really beat poetry. The beatniks got their hep cat jive from black jazz, but none of the social commentary. They were middle class white people, after all, and to them being black in the US in the 1940s, '50s and '60s was all about being enviably cool rather than outrageously oppressed. Still, reciting poetry to jazz accompaniment was predominantly a beatnik obsession, and it's easy to assume that's where Mingus got the inkling to add poetry to his composition.

3. Phillipa Fallon: «High School Drag»

This is from a scene in the 1958 film High School Confidential! (a/k/a Trouble at Sixteen or Young Hellions), one of those Hollywood B-movies trying to make a quick buck on the beat phenomenon. As is often the case with beatnik stuff, it's hard to tell whether Phillipa Fallon's performance is a parody or not, but it most probably is and still manages to be better than most genuine beat poets:

Either way, whether you're laughing with or at beat poetry, this one is funny:

I had a canary who couldn't sing
I had a cat that let me share my pad with her
I bought a dog that killed the cat that ate the canary
What is truth?

4. Felix Lupus: «The Night Was a Bitch in Heat»
True blue beat poetry by some beatnik history forgot. Sometimes parodies work better than the real deal, but Lupus' sincere poem is decent enough, and what it lacks in humour it makes up for with syllabic skill.

5. Cab Calloway: «Are You Hep to the Jive?»
Calloway wasn't a beatnik as much as an inspiration to them. Like the wiggas of today, the beats longed to be as cool as trendsetting African Americans (then jazz hep cats) and adopted their jive talk. And no one popularised hip jive quite like Cab «Minnie the Moocher» Calloway:

6. Oscar Brown jr.: «But I Was Cool»
From Oscar Brown, jr.'s 1959 debut album, this novelty song is a terrific send-up of the jazz cats' and beatniks' ultimately pretentious obsessive compulsion to never ever blow their cool.

7. Ellie Girl w/Seven Beat Sulks: [Untitled track]
A truly obscure, apparently sincere beatnik café performance from 1950s Greenwich Village, complete with bongos! Some things simply cannot be parodied. This track is so darn cute you just have to love it…

8. John Drew Barrymore: «Christopher Columbus Digs the Jive»

Another scene from beatsploitation flick High School Confidential!, acted out by the son of thespian John Barrymore and father of, er, lesbian Drew Barrymore, this is one half spoof of beatniks, one half square society's baffled, helpless take on the younger generation:

Wow… Now do you get why jive is so good?

9. Edd Byrnes: «Like I Love You»
A novelty song from the main character of the series «77 Sunset Strip», Kookie, such mainstream co-option of beatnik culture must surely have been the final nail in the coffin of the beat generation. But what a hilarious nail:

Beats the Fonz any day…

10. Del Close & John Brent: «The Loose Wig»
This isn't some square big wigs' cash-in on popular youth culture, but two comedians' piss-take on hipsters, contrived as a radio interview with a Greenwich Village jive hep cat by the name of «Geetz Romo». Zing!

11. Ken Nordine & the Fred Katz Group: «Down the Drain»
Where to place suave radio voice Ken Nordine and his Lewis Carroll-meets-Franz Kafka routine? Like a more sincere beat Nordine eschews hipster lingo and instead encapsulates certain preoccupations of the beats, such as criticism of straight society and the consumerist conformism of 1950s America. He was never a part of the beat movement, really, but Nordine's improvised tales set to jazz accompaniment—what he calls «word jazz»—is very close to über-beat Jack Kerouac's defining concept of «spontaneous prose»: riffing on a given subject, stream-of-consciousness stylee. Nordine's absurd and slightly unsettling wit, but soothing baritone make him one of the greatest in the genre. A class act!

12. Stevenson Phillips: «Stevenson Explains Beat to the Unbeat»
Another sincere, but forgotten beat poet, taking the piss out of people who attempt to be hip:

Seems prophetic of all the agents of square society who would later try to jump on the beatnik wagon to fame and fortune (much like many of the artists on this comp).

13. [Unknown artist]: «The Hipster»
This is from a 1966 car commerical campaign for the Plymouth Barracuda. By '66, of course, beat was no longer hip. The facile parody of beats and its lateness both seem typical of the cluelessness of «square» society. Nonetheless, anything with jive talk is a winner as far this cat's concerned…

14. Lenny Bruce: «Hip Diseases»
Stand-up pioneer and free speech martyr Lenny Bruce waxes hip on disease.

15. Babs Gonzales: «Manhattan Fable»
Here's an African-American jazz singer taking the jive talk beatniks took from African-American jazz players and trying to
cash in on it. Ironic, isn't it? But you can tell Babs Gonzales isn't the real deal—despite his autobiography being titled I, Paid My Dues: Good Times… No Bread—A Story of Jazz… and Some of Its Followers, Shyster Agents, Hustlers, Pimps and Prostitutes. Still, this time capsule track is an exercise in convoluted hipster-speak. Its language needs to be deciphred for the story to be understood, which in itself is a funny, little brain teaser for one of those slow Sundays…

16. Bob McFadden & Dor: «The Beat Generation»
Voice-over actor Bob McFadden and «Dor» (really poet Rod McKuen) in a mildly amusing send-up of beatniks.

17. Ringo Angel: «How to Put a Broad Down/All Broads Are Common»
A failed and apparently fiercely bitter, misogynistic beat poet in a vitriolic and over-the-top attack on some ex-lover. Its excessiveness is what makes this poem noteworthy. (Don't you just love it when somebody takes things too far?) In any case, this venomous recital serves as a reminder among all these faddish recordings that the beats had fangs once…

She's from the Westside
And she sat on the East side
Of her bedside
Painting the front side
Of her backside
With peroxide
Because she heard that on the (w)hole
Gentlemen prefer blondes

18. Harry «the Hipster» Gibson: «Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?»
Here, novelty song pioneer Gibson combines two of the beatniks' main obsessions—«square» society and drug-of-choice Benzedrine—to make one great, little party number. Unfotunately, it seems the Hipster never recorded his follow-up song, «Who Put the Nembutals in Mr. Murphy's Overalls?»… By the way, Harry Gibson was king of hipsploitation and contrived jive, dig:

19. Jack Kerouac & Steve Allen: Reading from «On the Road» and «Visions of Cody»
After much mediocre (albeit entertaining!) poetry and smarmy satire we arrive at the undisputed master (and the root cause of all this beat stuff), Mr. Jack Kerouac himself. For all the hype and hooplah—and after all the derivative writers in his wake—it's easy to forget just what an accomplished assembler of syllables this man was. This is a highlight among his recorded output, recorded on the Steve Allen Show:

There you go. Apart from the last song, none of these tracks convey the ecstasy or beatitude that gave the true beats—Kerouac, Ginsberg, Gregory Corso—their name in the first place. But like any movement, the initially so inspired Beats degenerated first into mediocrity (beatniks) then into a hopelessly misguided mainstream bandwagon free-for-all, which killed what started it all dead, until what we're left with now is a quaint pop culture reference.

At least it's a funny one.

Love (Pt. 8), or, Circling the Rim of Complete Love

Charles Bukowski: «The Best Love Poem I Can Write at the Moment» (live) [mp3]

Who doesn't dream of unconditional love? No such thing, of course, but it's one of those things you catch yourself longing for nevertheless. One of those lamentable, if obvious truths you'll intellectually acknowledge to yourself every once in a while—whenever you remember to, or the subject comes up: «Of course love's never unconditional; what are you, a child?!»—but which your behaviour and unconscious assumptions forget all about when you find yourself in love, skipping down the street daydreaming about a bright future devoid of life's pesky challenges, when everything will finally have come together, forever. Like a little kid who cannot get his head around not getting his will yet, you continue to expect and demand—or simply just want, in vain—this unreasonable, unconditional devotion, of yourself and of another. Perhaps you're even one of those sentimental, maudlin people who always promise what they cannot possibly keep, telling yourself as well as your significant other(s) that your love knows no bounds…

But what does this unconditional devotion really entail? Charles Bukowski—that no-nonsense bullshitter scribe of half-empty glass truisms—shows us in this poem how romance taken to its logical extreme is, well, perversion.

The closer love approaches the event horizon of the limitless and unconditional, the filthier and less morally or socially acceptable it becomes. And so perversion doesn't stand in the way of love, or cheapen it, as much as it heightens, strengthens and confirms it. It's simple, really: The harder it gets to go on loving someone—when, to paraphrase Ford Fairlane, the object of your desire doesn't play hard to get as much as hard to want—the more unconditional your love truly is. (Unless you bail, that is.)

The sappy romantic tends to dream and says things he doesn't even know that he doesn't really mean. Not if put to the test. Like bandying about with the term «forever», or tattooing their lover's name on their chest. The romantic can be all floaty words sometimes, and then it's only through the baptism of fire of perversion that the ideals of love are tested, proven and vindicated.

Similarly with depravity. Without love or romance, it's merely filth, degrading to everyone involved. The kind of filth that's in the gutter when you're not looking up at the stars. A cheap thrill isn't redeeming, isn't sublime until you've shared it with someone you love. But if you're lucky enough to be with someone with whom you may throw propriety (and, perhaps, hygiene) to the deviant wind, you'll find that the most depraved and repulsive act is pure. What's right is already right and what's wrong is merely wrong, but to make what's wrong right is transcendence, baby. You need to deviate, let loose and act like an out-of-control animal following irrational, unseemly, unhealthy and meaningless urges with love.

And so it's high time the romantics and the perverts come together. (Pun squarely intended.) There's no romance like a perverted one, and no perversion like a romantic one. Want to know if your love is real? Where romance meets perversion is where you'll find some truth in that minefield of self-delusions. So grab your dearest and go do something so nasty that you'd be ashamed to tell another living soul about it… and do it for love.

So whether you're in the gutter looking up at the stars, or in the stars looking down into the gutter, love your pervert and pervert your loved one today!

the best love poem i can write at the moment.

listen, I told her
why don't you stick your tongue up my ass

no, she said.

well, I said
if I stick my tongue up your ass first
then will you stick your tongue up my ass?

all right, she said.

I got my head down there and looked around
opened a section
then my tongue moved forward

not there, she said
ahhahahaha
not there, that's not the right place

you women have more holes than swiss cheese
I don't want you to do it
why?

well, then I'll have to do it back
and then at the next party you'll tell people
I licked your ass with my tongue

suppose I promise not to tell?

you'll get drunk, you'll tell

o.k., I said
roll over
and I'll stick it in the other place

she rolled over
and I stuck my tongue in that other place

we were in love

we were in love except with what I said at parties
and we were not in love
with each others ass holes

she wants me to write a love poem
but I think if people can't love each others ass holes
and farts
and shits
and terrible parts
just like they love the good parts
that ain't complete love

so, as far as love goes
as far as we have gone
this poem will have to do.

Tonguing Meaning 5: Captain Beefheart

Don Van Vliet: «Stand Up to Be Discontinued» EP [.zip]

1. Fallin' Ditch
2. The Tired Plain
3. Skeleton Makes Good
4. Safe Sex Drill
5. Tulip
6. Gil

Even more annoying than the hype surrounding mediocre artists in the mainstream is the hyping of overrated underground legends at the hands of cultural elitists. Captain Beefheart is the stuff of legends. His name (and the myths surrounding it) are far better known than his music. Why? Because the tall tales—the Cap'n taking impressionable young musicians practically hostage, his sect-like regime causing post-traumatic stress disorder in some—are more entertaining than his music.

Not that he set out to entertain us with his cerebral attempts at artistic innovation. Still, the genuflection at the feet of his asexual, heartless mathematical jazz rock and his faux-Surreal aphorisms by chin scratching, would-be cultural subversives (read: music lovers living in their mother's basement) has a tendency to deafen even the din of his musical output.


[Garage-era Magic Band playing desert blues on a sandy Cannes beach.]

That said, Safe as Milk is a rocking garage record to be reckoned with, and the Cap'n's late-'70s/early-'80s albums abound with the kind of demented spazzticity that the fashionable New Wave bands at the time so wished—alas!—that they could summon up. As for Trout Mask Replica, the album that made (and still makes) Beefheart's name, leave that to the musicologists and the jazzturbators. (And to people who listen to music for the novelty, obscurity or shock value. Yeah, yeah, so the Cap'n is «eccentric». How does that imbue his work with validity, again?)


[New Wave-era Magic Band playing desert blues in, er, the desert.]

The Cap'n, as much as his adoring fans, seems to consider himself something of an artistic genius. He's not—even though he has made up for himself a distinct sound unlike that of anyone else. The Cap'n will never appeal to a larger audience, not because he's misunderstood or because he's too special for the average population (people who are, by definition, mediocre), but because his songs aren't generally valid to the human experience. For some, maybe. But for most it's gibberish. And grating, at that.

But Trout Mask Replica doesn't sit in untold snobs' bookshelves for absolutely no reason. The Cap'n has his moments. He even has a way with words—although they don't strike heart strings, the gut or your funny bone. They miss all those, but hit everywhere else, which causes a strange sensation. Briefly. Before you move on to something great.

Toilet Guppies endeavours to spread audio otherwise unavailable to consumers, while avoiding to post stuff that's out of print or deleted simply because it's shit. Sometimes it's a tightrope walk. These spoken word pieces by Don Van Vliet—the Cap'n's real name—are not shit. Well, two out of the six readings («Fallin' Ditch» and «Gil») aren't; the Toilet Guppies jury is out on the other four. But I can safely recommend those two. Sure, I don't listen to them when I'm crying in the shower, but there's a certain quality there that his fans, I'm sure, would call «je ne sais quois». And we all know what that means.

But I've been a bit harsh here. Legend has it that in the early 1970s, Beefheart's long-suffering backing band had had enough of artsy-fartsy obscurity and cornered the Cap'n into recording a more accessible album. The results—Clear Spot and The Spotlight Kid—are some of the Beefheart's best and least wanky albums. See what I mean on this groovy German TV performance:

Tonguing Meaning 4: Ageing, Young Rebel

Ken Nordine w/Jerry Garcia & David Grisman: Selections from Devout Catalyst [.zip]:

1. INSIDE OF IS... is a half real, half unreal bar called the Bubble where I've spent a lot of liquid, maybe you've been there, it's a place where forgiveness erases the awful things you said or did the night before.
   
2. AGING YOUNG REBEL... is a shaggy doggerel.
   
3. ZODIAC UPRISING... is an illogical extension of the astrological. I'm an Aries, damn rambunctious... what's your sign?
   

Ken Nordine—surely one of the most captivating raconteurs the world has ever heard, what with the almost psychedelically beatnik Kafka-for-children nightmare comedies conveyed in that deceptively soothing baritone of his—has always delivered. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of his accompanists, who've grown gradually worse since the '60s. From the tasteful, classic jazz flavourings of Fred Katz, deftly colouring and elevating Nordine's tales with altered consciousness cocktail lounge scores, Nordine has since let the cheesiest dilettantes, armed with '80s-sounding synthesizers attempting (but failing) to replicate guitars and pan flutes(!), distract from his still mesmerising, funny and almost frightening stories—the New Age easy listening accompaniment all but ruining the sensual experience that is hearing the voice of voices intimate existential nonsense, tickling your Wernicke's area silly.

Case in point is Nordine's currently out of print 1991 collab with David «Dawg» Grisman and gratefully dead Jerry Garcia, Devout Catalyst. The resulting musical backdrop consists of noodling acoustic string improv that's as random and unmotivated as the nowhere to which it goes, all interspersed with synthesizer impersonation of show-off session jazz vibraphones and the most offensively plastic harmonica sound this side of Stevie Wonder. Baby Boomer jazz folk… ugh. This whole enterprise is confirmation that skill and know-how do not soulful energy make.

So don't let the liner notes pull the wool over your third eye. In case you ever need proof that LSD should never be administered to fools, this producer's gibberish is it:

The recording philosophy was to create a time-aligned realm justifying all microphones in the stereo picture. When we mixed this we carefully brought forth the original time spectrum, the net effect yielding a holographic-like quality whereby in normal playback the sound exists not just in front of the speakers but as an image in the listening environment.

It's sad, really, because Nordine is on top, abstractly menacing form. Out of the twelve tracks, I've chosen the three best stories. They're all ruined by Garcia, Grisman and various other musos, but Nordine makes it all worthwhile, as always. Note that one of Toilet Guppies' all-time favourite tales of his—«The Ageing Young Rebel (Gentle Cruelty)»—can be found elsewhere, not only in better but also a properly swingin', wicked version, in collaboration with DJ Food on the still commercially available single «A Dub Plate of Food, vol. 2». While you're waiting for that CD to arrive in the post, enjoy these little word jazz gems…

Mp3 Killed the Vinyl DJ 3: Devendra Banhart

Devendra Banhart Vinyl Exclusives [.zip]:

1. Untitled poem 2
2. At the Hop (live)
3. Little Monkey/Step in the Name of Love (live)
4. The Good Red Road (live)
5. Untitled poem 1

1 & 5—recited by Michael Gira—are from the limited edition vinyl-only double set of Rejoicing in the Hands of the Golden Empress and Niño rojo.

2 is the B-side of an out-of-print vinyl-only single for «At the Hop».

3 & 4 are from an out-of-print vinyl-only album split between Jana Hunter and Devendra Banhart. (The rest of Banhart's side—radio session takes of «In Golden Empress Hands», «At the Hop» and «We All Know»—can be retrieved here.)

Rare or Unreleased 26: Your Only Friend

Marianne Faithfull & the Master Musicians of Joujouka: «My Only Friend» [mp3]
Nico: «The End» (live) [mp3]

The guy—probably middleaged, but looking older—was sleeping in the park, oblivious that the patch of sun had turned into cold shade. Every once in a while he'd make sounds intelligible only as plagued pleadings and aggressive recriminations as he half-woke and tossed a little.

How many tough breaks, how many faults and failures… how much resignation, quitting and bitter, spiteful self-destruction had accompanied him to this point, as he'd childishly sabotaged his own existence so that others couldn't take credit for any happiness, but rather be blamed for his misery?

Now he probably only has his drink, junk or prescription pills, all the people he once knew either dead, busy with marriages, children & careers—or as alone as he is, but separated from each other by irreperable, mutual betrayals (real or imagined). Wasted lives waiting to go, riding out the survival instinct…

As for your only true friend, there's always music. People come and go.

Tonguing Meaning 3: Matt Burt

Deathprod. vs. the Death Dwarf: «Albino Monkey Organgrinder in the City of Lights» [mp3]

Back in 'Tache Town for a couple of weeks, I thought I'd post something Trondheim once had to offer the world (but which the world ignored).

In 1997, dBut Records released the now out-of-print various artists comp Det norske hus. (The Oslo Agreement upon international release.) Besides various branches of the Origami Republika anarcho-collective (Galaktika and Teknika), the album featured Jaga Jazzist and once-hyped Norwegian electro acts such as Palace Of Pleasure, Perculator and Sternklang. Naturally, the sleeve was designed by Kim Hiorthøy.

But the real gem was the last track, credited to «Deathprod. vs. the Death Dwarf». This is obviously a collaboration between Helge Sten and Trondheim's resident expat American dictaphone poet, the self-deprecating shorty Matt Burt, reciting something that sounds unmistakably like passages penned by William S. Burroughs (probably from Naked Lunch, possibly The Soft Machine).

It's only after your mind has drifted off to Burt's monotonous Burroughs impression and the minimalist drones of Deathprod. that you notice a sudden change of tone. The contrived deadpan drops from Burt's voice, and you awaken to realise that the words now come from a different place altogether. No longer the cold satire of the sci-fi junkie straight out of Surrealist Hell, after about nine minutes Burt starts reciting his own material, tacking it onto the end of Burroughs' hypnotic gibberish, as if bashfully wishing no one would notice his awkward confession, or else hiding it behind another's stoic work, secretly ashamed at the self-pitying soft core at the heart of his own, thus sabotaging his own attempt at communication.

But the communique's truthful, it's honest, and the words nail the meaning they seek to convey right on the head. And although Burroughs' words are hilarious («What in God's green earth do these telecommunications transvestites think they're doing?!»), it's not until Burt's turn that «Albino Monkey Organgrinder in the City of Lights» is injected with sincerity and an emotional nerve that's hooked into the mainline of everdyay reality, rather than into the abstract, comic nightmare of a hallucinating, cock hungry junkie on the run.

Tragedy teaches us that the objects of our contemplation—ourselves, each other, our world—are more diverse than we had imagined, and that what we have in common is a dangerous propensity for overrating our power to comprehend that diversity.

When the assumption that we have very much in common with each other is rejected by Burt as an illusion, his statement—being an attempt at communication, at meeting another mind—is a contradiction in terms. Because if it were true, would it make sense to utter it? Would anyone even understand it? To whom is he speaking? Then again, if you do understand it—do identify with it—perhaps that's simply because what little we have in common is precisely how little we have in common…

Whatever the case, the bottomless solitude Burt touches upon—hemmed in as it is by our limited empathy—remains, both for Burt and for the listener… But at least there's some sort of consolation: You're not alone in being alone.

Whatever that's good for.

Tonguing Meaning 2: Charlie Kaufman

Charlie Kaufman: Hope Leaves the Theater [mp3]

On 13 May 2005, Sirius Radio recorded two audio plays, performed in front of a live audience in London's Royal Festival Hall. The first was written by the Coen Brothers, the other by Charlie Kaufman. The music was composed and conducted by Carter Burwell and played by the Parabola Ensemble, with foley artist Marko Costanzo stealing the show as he manually (magically!) provided sound effects centre stage, behind the reciting stars. The Coen Brothers' Sawbones featured Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marcia Gay Harden, John Slattery and Brooke Smith; Kaufman's Hope Leaves the Theater was performed by Hope Davis, Meryl Streep and Peter Dinklage (with a cameo by Philip Seymour Hoffman).

Even for a Kaufman script, meta references abound—not worlds within worlds (although there's that too) as much as different layers or types of meta reference. The entire thing's not really neurotic (in that classic New York City sense) as much as it plays on (and lovingly parodies) it. And despite the convoluted cleverness, shot with compulsive bursts of sarcasm, somehow some kind of sincerity survives (in large part thanks to Burwell's score).

Fuck it. I'm not going to write about writing that's far superior to whatever I'd manage to write about it. Just download the damn thing. It's funny. And it's free.

Tonguing Meaning 1: Paul Bowles

This isn't really a music blog as much as an audioblog, and now and again I'll be posting spoken word material for you to slip into reverie to whenever you're on drab public transport or safe in (a lonely) bed. First off, one of my all-time favourite authors, the eminent Paul Bowles—the writer who, like no other, rips out the smiles from garden walks. So, if you're into travelling, introspection or violence, check this out:

When striped snakes shall creep upon us
And the nervous screams of birds
Make silent all the fountains and the orchards and when these
Have caught upon the wing each wing
That flutters from the sky
Then shall I and then shall I
Rip out the smiles from garden walks
Transform the minnows into hawks
Tarantulas and bees
Then shall I and then shall I
Unmake each whining thing

Paul Bowles (1910-1999) was an American author, composer, poet, travel writer, translator and musicologist. In addition to albums of his compositions, several records of readings have been released—and consequently discontinued. Typically, these also include field recordings from his adopted country, Morocco.

Paul Bowles: You Are Not I—Rare Bowles [.zip]

1. Baptism of Solitude (excerpt)
Although a travel writer who'd been to many corners of the world, Paul Bowles was renowned for his expatriate existence in Morocco (and visited there by «every traveller not wearing shorts,» supposedly). His literature is associated with the northern African desert. Snippets such as this portrayal of the Sahara—from travel book Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue—Scenes from the Non-Christian World—explain why.

2. You Are Not I (excerpt)
The two first sentences of a much longer short story.

3. The Sheltering Sky (excerpt)
Bowles' first novel, The Sheltering Sky (published 1949) remains his most famous novel. This excerpt describes the fever suffered by traveller to the Sahara, Port Moresby, as he is nursed by wife Kit.

4. Up Above the World (excerpt)
Up Above the World (published 1966) was the fourth and last novel Bowles wrote. A kind of murder mystery, it's not so much the plot as the creatively empathic, introspective prose that evokes perspectives, inebriation, insanity, breakdowns, fevers and dreams, with a vivid accuracy that's as unnerving as it is exhilarating. As with so many of Bowles' stories, consciousness and reality itself are, in a way, characters.

5. A Distant Episode (excerpt)
«A Distant Episode» is a short story about a professor of linguistics who goes into the Saharan desert to study Moghrebi dialects, only to run into a band of rogue Reguibat.

In Eroticism, Georges Bataille points out that

At one end, existence is basically orderly and decent. Work, concern for the children, kindness and honesty rule men's dealings with their fellows. At the other, violence rages pitilessly…

These extremes are called civilisation and barbarism… But the use of these words is misleading, for they imply that there are barbarians on the one hand and civilised men on the other. The distinction is that civilised men speak and barbarians are silent… Many consequences result from that bias of language. Not only does «civilised» usually mean «us», and barbarous «them», but also civilisation and language grew as though violence was something outside, foreign not only to civilisation but also to man, man being the same thing as language. Yet observation shows that the same peoples are alternately barbarous and civilised in their attitudes… If language is to be extricated from this impasse, we must declare that violence belongs to humanity as a whole and is speechless, and that thus humanity as a whole lies by ommission and language itself is founded upon this lie.

… Common language will not express violence… If violence does occur, and occur it will, it is explained by a mistake somewhere, just as men of backward civilisations think that death can only happen if someone makes it by magic…

But silence cannot do away with things that language cannot state. Violence is as stubbornly there just as much as death, and if language cheats to conceal universal annihilation, the placid work of time, language alone suffers, language is the poorer, not time and not violence.

6. Each Whining Thing
An early poem, from 1929.

7. The Delicate Prey (excerpt)
Regrettably, Bowles only reads an excerpt from this, one of his most haunting short stories.

A young man, Driss, and two of his uncles travel through desert to sell leather goods, when they encounter a lone Moungari. The stranger murders the two uncles and wounds Driss—which is where this excerpt starts off.

The story concludes with the murderer being caught trying to sell the leather. The victims' tribesmen eventually find him, bind him to a camel and take him far into the desert. There they remove his turban, shave his head and bury his body, with only his head protruding from the ground. The avengers then leave him to the elements:

When they had gone the Moungari fell silent, to wait through the cold hours for the sun that would bring first warmth, then heat, thirst, fire, visions. The next night he did not know where he was, did not feel the cold. The wind blew dust along the ground into his mouth as he sang.

8. Reh Dial Beni Bouhiya
Performed by Cheikh Hamed bel Hadj Hamadi ben Allal & ensemble, this is one of Bowles' field recordings.

9. Allal (excerpt)
«Allal» is the story about an outcast—the son of a disgraced woman—scorned and mistreated by his fellow villagers all his life. Then he meets this man.

10. The Garden
A short story written in 1964.

11. Love Song
A poem.

12. Points in Time XI
A snippet from Points in Time—Tales from Morocco, a kind of travelogue.

13. Nights
Poem.

14. Six Preludes for Piano
Supposedly one of the compositions Bowles was most satisified with, performed here by Jean-Luc Fafchamps.

• 1-7 and 11 are from Baptism of Solitude (1995), with sound design by Bill Laswell.
• 8-10 and 12 are from Tellus #23—The Voices of Paul Bowles (1989).
• 13 and 14 are from Black Star at the Point of Darkness (1990).
• All currently out of print.

I cannot recomment Paul Bowles enough. Should you decide to go out and read something by him, do yourself a favour and make it the novels Let It Come Down and The Sheltering Sky, as well as any collection of short stories that contains «Call at Corazón».