And Thus Was the Man Deeply Enmeshed in Painful Self-Expression

 

Her Tender Skin, Her Legal Appetites (They Frightened Me with Their Sincerity)

As in a Thermal Dance of Commitment

Each tear making its way down the course of her cheeks contained a full crew of pilots, engineers, navigators, and technicians.  When later asked about the difference between engineers and technicians at a press conference in the band’s suite, I was evasive.

            “You must understand that while I am regressing, a deep and abiding silliness hovers about me like a cloak reluctant either to warm my shoulders or lend an appearance of authority to me.”

            “Why must we understand this?” asked Little Joe, called the White Boy in Bologni’s sadly overlooked comic strip.

            I nodded; the band, already confused by Jim Morrison’s presence, or absence, nodded in return, committing themselves to nothing, but open to suggestions.

            “Why don’t you tell us about one of your many acquaintances?”

            Chocolate inconsiderate, up and down, wasting half his time in pointless socializing, the mind no longer interested in much of anything besides the satisfaction of physical needs and the avoidance of unpleasantness.  My dreams are like an orange gymnastics mat, providing a soft background for the day’s blind fumbling.

            “He’s really more a poet than anything else.”

            What I am is something I didn’t plan, didn’t expect.  The kind of painter, the kind of writer I am is apparently beyond my control.  I really have nothing to say and yet I will say it anyway.

The Inside Mechanics of the Left Elbow and How it Hurts

            A smattering of interest in the old ways among the impatient festivalgoers resulted in the publishing of Lord Ewing’s Nocturnal Archie Shepp Wanderling, a collection of poem-like pieces accompanying intricate diagrams of total bullshit machinery.  This alone was enough to enrage Harlem Infreque, one of the original Nabiscope.  The band now calling itself Nabiscope has but a single member with any link to Harlem Infreque and the other three originals.  Such trivia enrages you, you say?  I can understand.  The Council on Foreign Medicine has hired me to explain the similarities between Lord Ewing’s book and that as-yet-unpublished by Infreque.  Its limited budget should not be squandered on lecturers who waste time with the kind of details that only a fan would appreciate.  However, before I go on, I must confess that I am just such a fan.   I even still listen to whole albums.  Well, I try to.  For example, just now, I skipped a track on an Iggy Pop album.  The song didn’t specifically reference his over-rated penis, so I felt no need to subject myself to it.

            Of course, the obvious similarity between the two books is that each is composed primarily of short pieces of writing that resemble poems in many respects, accompanying illustrations of objects which, although clearly machines, yet have organic qualities.  What is not so obvious is the fact that both books are veiled commentaries on the life and work of Charles Mingus.  Harlem Infreque and his bandmates often cited Mingus as a major influence on their own, nervously gelatinous music (said to resemble a Danish youth bouncing around in his folding chair at an early David Bowie concert).  Recent investigations by the Lost Eighth Percent Movement, the enforcement arm of the Council on Foreign Medicine have discovered that Lord Ewing also has a connection to the late bassist and composer: He is, in fact, Eric Dolphy reincarnated as a white man, but without the sandals.

            My own analysis of the situation is colored by an indifference of orchestral proportions as to whether or not anyone in this crowd of Danish youths and professional colleagues and fellow fans of the Booger Metal genre, of which Nabiscope was arguably its finest example, is persuaded of anything I might have to say on this subject or related subjects.  That being said, I must admit that I am an analyst of situations just such as this, making my way from day to day, enduring the pain and lack of full mobility with all the aplomb demanded of a member of the Royal Society of Subjective Situation Analysts.  My sunglasses, I’ve left them on the piano!  There they are in that archival footage from some earlier festival, clearly visible between Bud Powell and a trombone case.  That trombone case, by the way, doesn’t contain a trombone.  No telling what Eric Dolphy might have accomplished.

Not Even a Magnetbox Can Contain the Self-Conscious Hexagram

            No one knew what to make of the diagram until Moof suggested we look at it upside down.

            “It’s a cake!” Chandra ejaculated.  She ejaculated.  She ejaculated her words like a mighty, live-giving burst of seminal fluid crowded with wriggling man-tadpoles.  Several of us in the crowd of diagram interpreters exchanged glances and juvenile grins.

            “That’s enough, that’s enough,” growled Captain Begottomy, pushing his way to the front with his heavily tattooed paddlehands.  He stood with his snout only inches from the framed diagram.  “I see nothing to snigger about,” he commented.  “It’s only a cake.”

            “It’s not a cake,” I objected.  “It’s an architectural machine.”

            “Get your minds out of the gutter, boys,” Captain Begottomy advised.  His enormous, lumpy body was ambulatory only with the help of the gravity-defiance suit. 

            “Do you see?” I pointed to several details in the technical illustration.  “It’s an architectural machine.”

            “Why can’t it be a cake too?” Chandra wondered.

            “It can,” I admitted.  “But its general inedibility negates any perception of cakiness in the mind of the average person.”  I waved at the window, outside of which were to be found these average persons.

            “You’re all a bunch of dirty-minded children,” Begottomy accused, whipping halfway around in a gelatinous undulation to glare at us out of one eye.  (He had four)

            “Wait a minute,” Palmeira begged. “Is this a diagram or a technical illustration?”

            “Well, technically speaking,” I later repeated for the benefit of the committee,  “It’s a cartoon, but that’s only because its accompanying text forms a caption of sheer meaninglessness.
            “He and his hippie companions have only one thing on their minds:” the Captain delivered his testimony by way of sub-etheric wave transmitter.  “Dirty, kinky sex with no intention of ever repopulating the planet.”