Disorderly conductors waving violent flags, prophesizing dalmations in curdled Southern drawl, speaking speaking speaking, shouting marching in a lackidasical fashion over hot coals and regenerated organ music archives, the blood of the poet, the blood of the lamb, the sacrificial blood, Dali's symbolic blood and milk, Garcia Lorca underneath the pale sky, siamese cats on a mission, canned goods and laughter, tobacco, neuro linguistic programming for the masses, postmodern images of war, peace, altruism and mundanity, gypsy fortune tellers, gypsy bankers, gypsy milkmaids, gypsy gypsys, gypsy intellectuals, pirate gypsy hall monitors working late night shifts at Ivy League law offices, their cock-eyed laughtered punctuated only slightly by the rising falling melodies of atonal raindrops on slanted formica, Duke Ellington's final symphonic work, bestowed upon the Queen for a small sum, Schoenberg on a Saturday afternoon, Donald Barthelme writing in four dimensions, Daniel Levitsky-Aubin writing in two languages, Zhana Levitsky-Aubin speaking in tongues, the glossalallia of the modern age, the last gasp of a dying zeitgeist, !Zeitgeist!, Don Quixote translated backwards for the captain's last withdrawn sigh, the landlord's only dying wish, the puddle-hopping pilot's semiotic association of trees to deity, cloud formations resembling rabbits
The captain of this ship. The fiercest of the fierce, the quickest of the quick, lantern-brandishing phantoms of the old apocalypse. Token strangers and lost souls, Charles Ives and his bag of tricks. The slanted fireworks, the truest truth, the neighbors call-forwarding, the alarm of the chosen ones. People who ride scooters.
Cannon's Jug Stompers. Three piece brass bands. Minimilist string quartets along the boulevarde. The sounds of spoons/mug. Sea shanties and tiger rags. Bones, cradles, cup, mortar and pestle orchestras. Moog synthesized cat cries. Jacque Brel's sympathetic drone. Python operettas. Subatomic chimes in syncopated rhythms. Mictrotonal choir music. Ornette Coleman.
Spaghetti Westerns. Nouvelle Vague. Robert Bresson. Films involving donkeys. Films involving Klaus Kinski.
"I used to attend the King's levee once or twice a week. and had often seen him under the barber's hand, which indeed was at first very terrible to behold; for the razor was almost twice as long as an ordinary scythe. His Majesty, according to the custom of the country, was only shaved twice a week. I once prevailed on the barber to give me some of the suds or lather, out of which I picked forty or fifty of the strongest stumps of hair. I then took a piece of fine wood, and cut it like the back of a comb, making several holes in it at equal distance with as small a needle as I could from Glumdalclitch. I fixed in the stumps so artificially, scraping and sloping them with my knife toward the points, that I made a very tolerable comb; which was a seasonable supply, my own being so much broken in the teeth, that it was almost useless: neither did I know any artist in that country so nice and exact, as would undertake to make me another." -Jonathan Swift
"As we doubt not but you will have especial care to observe the ordinances set down by the King's Majesty and delivered unto you under the Privy Seal; so for your better directions upon your first landing we have thought good to recommend unto your care these instructions and articles following.When it shall please God to send you on the coast of Virginia, you shall do your best endeavour to find out a safe port in the entrance of some navigable river, making choice of such a one as runneth farthest into the land, and if you happen to discover divers portable rivers, and amongst them any one that hath two main branches, if the difference be not great, make choice of that which bendeth most toward the North-West for that way you shall soonest find the other sea.When you have made choice of the river on which you mean to settle, be not hasty in landing your victuals and munitions; but first let Captain Newport discover how far that river may be found navigable, that you make election of the strongest, most wholesome and fertile place; for if you make many removes, besides the loss of time, you shall greatly spoil your victuals and your caske, and with great pain transport it in small boats.But if you choose your place so far up as a bark of fifty tuns will float, then you may lay all your provisions ashore with ease, and the better receive the trade of all the countries about you in the land; and such a place you may perchance find a hundred miles from the river's mouth, and the further up the better. For if you sit down near the entrance, except it be in some island that is strong by nature, an enemy that may approach you on even ground, may easily pull you out; and if he be driven to seek you a hundred miles [in] the land in boats, you shall from both sides of the river where it is narrowest, so beat them with your muskets as they shall never be able to prevail against you.And to the end that you be not surprised as the French were in Florida by Melindus, and the Spaniard in the same place by the French, you shall do well to make this double provision. First, erect a little stoure at the mouth of the river that may lodge some ten men; with whom you shall leave a light boat, that when any fleet shall be in sight, they may come with speed to give you warning. Secondly, you must in no case suffer any of the native people of the country to inhabit between you and the sea coast; for you cannot carry yourselves so towards them, but they will grow discontented with your habitation, and be ready to guide and assist any nation that shall come to invade you; and if you neglect this, you neglect your safety.When you have discovered as far up the river as you mean to plant yourselves, and landed your victuals and munitions; to the end that every man may know his charge, you shall do well to divide your six score men into three parts; whereof one party of them you may appoint to fortifie and build, of which your first work must be your storehouse for victuals; the other you may imploy in preparing your ground and sowing your corn and roots; the other ten of these forty you must leave as centinel at the haven's mouth. The other forty you may imploy for two months in discovery of the river above you, and on the country about you; which charge Captain Newport and Captain Gosnold may undertake of these forty discoverers. When they do espie any high lands or hills, Captain Gosnold may take twenty of the company to cross over the lands, and carrying a half dozen pickaxes to try if they can find any minerals. The other twenty may go on by river, and pitch up boughs upon the bank's side, by which the other boats shall follow them by the same turnings. You may also take with them a wherry, such as is used here in the Thames; by which you may send back to the President for supply of munition or any other want, that you may not be driven to return for every small defect.You must observe if you can, whether the river on which you plant doth spring out of mountains or out of lakes. If it be out of any lake, the passage to the other sea will be more easy, and [it] is like enough, that out of the same lake you shall find some spring which run[s] the contrary way towards the East India Sea; for the great and famous rivers of Volga, Tan[a]is and Dwina have three heads near joynd; and yet the one falleth into the Caspian Sea, the other into the Euxine Sea, and the third into the Paelonian Sea.In all your passages you must have great care not to offend the naturals [natives], if you can eschew it; and imploy some few of your company to trade with them for corn and all other . . . victuals if you have any; and this you must do before that they perceive you mean to plant among them; for not being sure how your own seed corn will prosper the first year, to avoid the danger of famine, use and endeavour to store yourselves of the country corn.Your discoverers that pass over land with hired guides, must look well to them that they slip not from them: and for more assurance, let them take a compass with them, and write down how far they go upon every point of the compass; for that country having no way nor path, if that your guides run from you in the great woods or desert, you shall hardly ever find a passage back.And how weary soever your soldiers be, let them never trust the country people with the carriage of their weapons; for if they run from you with your shott, which they only fear, they will easily kill them all with their arrows. And whensoever any of yours shoots before them, be sure they may be chosen out of your best marksmen; for if they see your learners miss what they aim at, they will think the weapon not so terrible, and thereby will be bould to assault you."
from "Instructions for the Virginia Colony" (1606)
Robert Bolano, James Joyce, Nick Cave.