Thursday, November 13, 2014

Don't Hurt the Radio for Against All Solid Testimony Machines Have Feelings Too




  • That's Planet's latest piece. She's home for Thanksgiving break a week from tomorrow. Yay me!
  • I get email, the synopsis? Who are these people you are talking to? Earthgirl is my wife, Planet is my daughter, Hamster is a dear friend, Landru is BFF. And no (from same email), I won't shut up about My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game, though a consensus that I should seems to be building. But no.
  • I asked a WFMU DJ how new schedules work, do DJs jump or are they pushed off the schedule, and he told me no one is pushed. Listen to the first mic-break in Julie's show last night. Sure sounds like she was pushed (and she implies Meghan was pushed too - and listening to Meghan and reading her comment board as I type this suggests she was pushed too, though some jumping caused by bad is implied also ). I am ridiculously fascinated by this. I am stupid - I like to imagine WFMU as an attempt at the fairy tale utopia that has misguided my politics for four decades. I'm sure it's the same King of Anarchist shittiness as everywhere else. Fine metaphors abound.
  • UPDATE! I've listened to the early-in-the-show mic-breaks from Meghan's show that I missed this morning, there is no doubt she was pushed. You can hear them at the fuck show link below, the playlist is clickable.
  • Today's music stolen from today's Meghan's fuck show.















RADIO

Tom Clark

Don’t hurt the radio for
Against all
Solid testimony machines
Have feelings
Too

Brush past it lightly
With a fine regard
For allowing its molecules
To remain 100% intact

Machines can think like Wittgenstein
And the radio’s a machine
Thinking softly to itself
Of the Midnight Flower
As her tawny parts unfold

In slow motion the boat
Rocks on the ocean
As her tawny parts unfold

The radio does something mental
To itself singingly
As her tawny parts unfold
Inside its wires
And steal away its heart

Two minutes after eleven
The color dream communicates itself
The ink falls on the paper as if magically
The scalp falls away
A pain is felt
Deep in the radio

I take out my larynx and put it on the blue chair
And do my dance for the radio
It’s my dance in which I kneel in front of the radio
And while remaining motionless elsewise
Force my eyeballs to come as close together as possible
While uttering a horrible and foreign word
Which I cannot repeat to you without now removing my larynx
And placing it on the blue chair

The blue chair isn’t here
So I can’t do that trick at the present time

The radio is thinking a few licks of its own
Pianistic thoughts attuned to tomorrow’s grammar
Beautiful spas of seltzery coition
Plucked notes like sandpaper attacked by Woody Woodpecker

The radio says Edwardian farmers from Minnesota march on the Mafia
Armed with millions of radioactive poker chips

The radio fears foul play
It turns impersonal
A piggy bank was smashed
A victim was found naked
Radio how can you tell me this
In such a chipper tone
Your structure of voices is a friend
The best kind
The kind one can turn on or off
Whenever one wants to
But that is wrong I know
For you will intensely to continue
And in a deeper way
You do

Hours go by
And I watch you
As you diligently apply
A series of audible frequencies
To tiny receptors
Located inside my cranium
Resulting in much pleasure for someone
Who looks like me
Although he is seated about two inches to my left
And the both of us
Are listening to your every word
With a weird misapprehension
It’s the last of the tenth
And Harmon Killebrew is up
With a man aboard

He blasts a game-winning home run
The 559th of his career
But no one cares
Because the broadcast is studio-monitored for taping
To be replayed in 212 years

Heaven must be like this, radio
To not care about anything
Because it’s all being taped for replay much later

Heaven must be like this
For as her tawny parts unfold
The small lights swim roseate
As if of sepals were the tarp made
As it is invisibly unrolled
And sundown gasps its old Ray Charles 45 of Georgia
Only through your voice



3 comments:

  1. they are so allusive to the Bible - the world's shittiest, most incoherent and crappily written work of fiction

    this is unfair - parts of it are excellent

    i had the pleasure of taking a 'bible as literature' course from an ex-nun with the unlikely name of diane christian - not only had she married, but instead of marrying an ex-priest, as many ex-nuns do, she had married someone of the hebrew persuasion

    this was in buffalo - my own personal religious background is (inter alia) new england unitarian - in the northeast many unitarian universalists are former catholics, whereas in the south they are ex-baptists

    speaking of crossing man-made boundaries in a spiritual search, here is part of what Rabbi Jack Bemporad,
    Director, Center for Interreligious Understanding (NJ) and of the John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue (Rome), wrote about Jacob Needleman's book What is God?

    >>If you are looking for a theologically erudite discussion of the nature of God, the Divine attributes of creation, revelation, and redemption -- then this book will disappoint you.

    But if you are concerned with asking and answering the question, "How can one approach the question of God in an honest and authentic manner?" then this is the book to read.

    Jacob Needleman, emeritus Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State and prolific author of such insightful books as, "Why Can't We be Good?", and "The Heart of Philosophy", is a truly wise individual. Wise in the sense indicated by Ben Zoma, who, in the Jewish sayings of the fathers asks the question: "Who is wise?" and answers, "Not one who has amassed a great deal of book learning, but one who can learn from everything and everyone."

    As we read his latest and most intimate and self-revealing book, "What is God?", Needleman traces his search for knowledge of God by taking us on a biographical and intellectual journey, from his early childhood discussions with his father, to significant contact with deeply wise individuals, to his many interchanges with his students and colleagues over the years, and finally, to the present day. This book details an inner journey searching, not necessarily for concepts or borrowed definitions of God, but rather, for a genuine idea, an idea that is transformative and vital. <<

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    Replies
    1. I find it unreadable for multiple reasons, some are literature, some are not, but that too is no doubt on me.

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  2. It's funny: I used to play the why-did-my-favorite-WFMU-DJ-get-knocke-off-the-schedule game when I lived in NYC in the 80s and 90s. I heard, IIRC, one of them say once it had to do with how much they volunteered and raised in the annual fund-raisers. That could've changed—or misheard. I'm glad you found the station; I thought you would like it. I mean, how could they ever knock Bill Kelly or Frank O'Toole or Bob Brainen or, heavens, Joe Block off.

    Re: the Bible. Read most of it. Some in Greek. Some in Hebrew. Some in Latin. [So, fuck me] It's not one book. It's a library. Multiple authors. Multiple redactors. Multiple editors. Multiple centuries. Some mythology. Some law books (of course you're not going to want to sit down and read a book of statutes and rules; pick up the Federal codes sometimes.) Some legends and oral tradition. Some serious history. Some preaching. Some interpretation and criticism. Some hymns and liturgies. Some poetry. Some biography. Some correspondence. Some proto-sci-fi, post-apocalyptic fantasy. Inter alia. Just sayin'.

    ReplyDelete