Words and narration by Heathcote Williams. Montage by Alan Cox. The President is obsessed with deporting Arabs Although, by a superb comic irony, It was an Arab who modeled for the United States’ icon – Namely the Statue of Liberty. The sculptor’s monument was initially designed For the opening of the Suez canal: The original depicted an Arab woman holding a torch. It was destined for the canal’s southern portal. His first drawings show “a gigantic female fellah, or Arab peasant” With a veil modestly hiding her lips, The … [Read more...]
Ridgewood Radio
... from a subterranean region of Queens, New York. Later today, beginning at 3 p.m.ET, David Weinstein's web-only broadcast on WFMU.org will stream a program called "Spheres of Influence!" featuring David First's "Western Enisphere," which you can also hear (and watch) here, something by Andrea Parkins & Brian Chase, Richard Kostelanetz's 1988 radio opera: "Americas' Game: Baseball," and a taste of Harry Partch's music. … [Read more...]
‘Ghost’ + ‘Smarty’ = Opposite Attractions
Updated with new information. "A short video and electronic music work created in 2008, inspired by Theresa Duncan's blog. It is a small tribute to her memory." -- William Osborne + Theresa Duncan's video. Postscript: Aug. 9 -- Per William Osborne's comment, here is her best video. Theresa Duncan's The History of Glamour from M.Duncan on Vimeo. … [Read more...]
‘The Last Dodo and Dreams of Flying’
A reading at the Albion Beatnik Bookshop in Oxford from a book of poetry published by New River Press. ‘I hope you love birds, too. It is economical. It saves going to Heaven.’ -- Emily Dickinson, from a letter to Eugenia Hall ‘Why,’ said the Dodo, ‘the best way to explain it is to do it.’ -- Lewis Carroll, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland * * * Lewis Carroll was nicknamed the Dodo Because of his inveterate stutter. Asked his name, he’d reply ‘Do-Do-Dodgson’. He found ‘Carroll’ easier to utter. So Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, … [Read more...]
Lost: Whatever Happened to ‘Severe Joy’?
When Heathcote Williams died recently, I heard from many people who recalled the lasting impact he'd had on them. Jay Jeff Jones, Michael Butterworth, and David Britton were three. They remembered a manuscript of Heathcote's called "Severe Joy" that never saw the light of day. John Calder, a major London publisher, had failed to bring it out despite signing it up and advertising it as a forthcoming title. Jones and Butterworth both went looking for the manuscript in their files, but neither found it. Butterworth, who recounts a key period in … [Read more...]
A Great One Died Today
Updated with new information. 'He was the Shelley of his age and more.' -- Gerard Bellaart A memorial service is to be held Friday (July 14), 3 p.m., at St. Barnabas Church in Jericho, Oxford. All welcome. July 17 -- Malcolm Ritchie, whose friendship with Heathcote spanned decades, attended the service. This is his description: Dear Gerard, I stayed overnight in London with John Lahr, an old writer friend, and we both went together to the funeral. First, everyone convened at H's old house (an artisan's cottage in … [Read more...]
Music Theater Where Truth Can Appear
The last time we looked it was a work in progress. That was a year ago. William Osborne and Abbie Conant had been working on it for so long, Osborne said at the time, that it felt like "forever." But now their music theater chamber piece is about to get its world premiere. The name of the piece, "Aletheia," comes from the ancient Greeks, who "had several words for truth," he pointed out. "'Aletheia' is one and means creating a space where truth can appear." Conant is to perform the work on Friday in Southern California at the University of … [Read more...]
Burroughsian Credo: ‘Include Me Out’
"Learning a hieroglyphic language is excellent practice in the lost art of inner silence." -- William S. Burroughs, The Third Mind "Cup of tea at dawn a room with rose wall paper wind stirs cigarette ash on a naked thigh calm miracle of apomorphine dawn . . . . ." Burroughs Lecture Series: Iain Sinclair from The Photographers' Gallery on Vimeo. … [Read more...]
The Evolving NY Times Nameplate
From 1851, to 1857, to 1896, to 1914, to 1967, to last week: David W. Dunlap's story, "Modern Identity in Ancient Lettering," does not include a reference to the overprinting that the designers of The NYT Magazine prefer. (Style aside, Matthew Shaer's interview did deserve that kind of prominence.) … [Read more...]
Norman Mailer on Almost Everything
If there's a richer radio archive of interviews with cultural figures and others from all walks of life than the one amassed by Studs Terkel, I'm unaware of it. Here, for example, is Norman Mailer talking with him on March 17, 1960, about writing, critics, self-censorship, and American life. It's great stuff. Mailer offers his thoughts about "affirmative" literary works, apathy, and a lack of passion in modern life generally; about Samuel Beckett and theater; about Jack Kerouac and Beat writers, and their reception in the United States; and … [Read more...]
When Trump Hog-Called His Cabinet: Sooie!
Trump's first cabinet meeting was the perfect reminder of one of William S. Burroughs's most satirical "routines." Burroughs wrote the piece in 1953 and had it published for the first time in a little mimeo magazine called Floating Bear. Since then it's been reprinted many times, most famously as a mimeographed booklet by Fuck You Press. It begins like this: Immediately after the Inauguration the President* appeared on the White House balcony dressed in the purple robes of a Roman emperor and, leading a blind toothless lion on a gold chain, … [Read more...]
Rauschenberg Had a Sense of Humor
And it's now on view at MoMA, too. To hell with the god of music, poetry, and art ... … [Read more...]
Please Insert
My staff of thousands thinks this paragraph by Barrett Brown should be inserted like an unsheathed stallion's penis into every last one of the obituaries plaguing us about the late Roger Ailes . . . just in case the corpse hasn't been properly mounted: I don’t really mind Fox on ideological grounds, as a nation with this many prisons and military bases clearly merits at least one openly fascist news network, but I do object to the shamelessness with which it insists on coarsening the culture. For half a century, there was an unspoken … [Read more...]
On View: Mary Beach’s Witty ‘Illaminations’
Mary Beach deserved to be an art star. Her collages are in a class with Richard Hamilton's. But she was incapable of bullshitting her way to the top. She also submerged whatever ambitions she may have had to advance the work of her partner Claude Pélieu. She translated him, published him, promoted him and, when she had money, supported them both on their restless odyssey from Paris to San Francisco to Hawaii to London to New York and other landing points before finally touching down in upstate NY's Cherry Valley. Mary died in 2006. She would … [Read more...]
As the French Say: Dégoûtant!
The print edition logo for Michael Kinsley's new opinion slot in The New York Times says it all. Well, almost all. What it doesn't say is how disgusting it is. Kinsley's first column is not only awful, but worse, he will be "revisiting this theme regularly." It looks like The Times is repositioning -- a better term might be auditioning -- to accomodate el presidente Twitter Fingers and his tweet followers. Which is even more disgusting. Postscript: May 8 -- This is the tagline for the column: The president’s flaws are well known to … [Read more...]
360 Degrees of Separation . . .
. . . from Madhattan . . .... where Straight Up's tireless staff of thousands took a break. … [Read more...]
From a Secret Location
Once upon a time hundreds of editors, mainly poets, and all manner of bohemian riffraff took to their mimeo machines. They produced an avalanche of little magazines, lovingly collected by Granary Books as a wonder of the age. This literary avalanche was documented in "A Secret Location on the Lower East Side," a 1996 exhibition at the New York Public Library. The curators also produced a catalogue with the same title. Unlike the mimeos it describes, the catalogue was not mimeographed. It is still in print (also unlike the mimeos). The "mimeo … [Read more...]