1. |
Snapshot
00:44
|
|||
|
Snapshot
red hair pulled back
tightlytightlytightlytightlytightlytightlytightly(“have a look”)tightlytightlytightlytightlytightlytightly
time is wrapped
Snapshot
no two alike
“I would -um- like to...”
revealrevealrevealrevealrevealrevealreveal(do I dare?)revealrevealrevealrevealrevealrevealreveal
“unravel the strands”
standing end to
Snapshot
“this feels like a CAT scan”
an open end
“there is a probe up here”
get upget upget upget upget upget upget(“that’s OK”)upget upget upget upget upget upget upget
“there is a finger down there”
decomposing
“I’m sorry, it’s positive”
Snapshot
my Sunday rest
“This is forged - there’s no title!”
but whybut whybut whybut whybut whybut(now go on)whybut whybut whybut whybut whybut
“I won’t even consider”
with wrinkled sheets
Snapshot
the picture show?
so longso longso longso longso longso longso(“good day, sir”)longso longso longso longso long
I think I’ve been
Snapshot
|
||||
2. |
A Proposed Extension
03:16
|
|||
|
I’d like to extend the currently fashionable
practice of placing blame for emotional or personal
deficiencies on one’s parents, to have it include diseases
and biochemically-induced abnormalities.
I’ve hypothesized that if a mother, a father,
or even a guardian misguides some incalculably crucial
stage of a child’s development, that child’s
susceptibility to certain diseases (those relating
in essence to the nature of the specific ontogenetic
deviation) will be increased, despite our understanding
that early experiential phenomena may be formative, but ought
to have no bearing on the prevalence of such a disease.
For instance, I suspect that a newborn baby left too many hours
untouched, may one day develop Parkinson’s;
or that maybe an infant who always waits wailing
through the night for snoozing parents to come, will mature
into an adult suffering from obstructive sleep apnea. I haven’t
bothered undertaking research to support these ideas,
but often when I asked my father for help with homework
assignments, he stayed hibernating on the couch, jobless.
|
||||
3. |
Letter to Brian
02:22
|
|||
|
Dear Brian,
My nerves are discombobulated. There’s an organ-grinder in me noggin. He remembers how we feel. He has a fucked-up Russian name that isn’t very musical. Something like Pickovskavich. When you saw him last, he was dressed up in a fluffy hat that you just wouldn’t acknowledge. He played. You thanked him warmly. Introduced him to the ducks in the park. He tried to tune his organ to their duck-sounds, but he wasn’t very successful
Sometimes, I still recite your poem about him: “Pick me up/put me down/wipe away that goddamn frown.” That’s from somewhere in the middle, I believe. “Maybe I’ll just swim away:” that’s towards the end. I’ll never be sure. You tossed your composition to the wind as we were rowing past the ducks. The part I remember best went something like this: “The coast is getting closer. The coast is getting closer. In the big old boat there will be a man. Pay him five dollars. Tell him a story of the sea-faring days of yore. He will take you to the coast.”
Anyway, that’s how I remember it. I told you later that thieves had snatched the poem, because you forgot about the day in the park, the wind, and the ducks. You looked startled by the thought of stealing. You said “Thieves won’t tell you nothin’ ‘bout their past: stale lives drowned in the stench of a rum-soaked beard.” I was startled by the beard comment, having one myself.
The organ-grinder kept on playing. He tried to make the ducks acknowledge him. He wanted to affect the course of their lives, but they were consumed by their paddling and their waddling and their other ducky business.
You once told me the organ-grinder was the manifestation of your opposite self. I laughed, and then you laughed too, and shouted at him: “Toccata loud next time!”
Your friend,
Chris
|
||||
4. |
||||
5. |
Paganini
01:40
|
|||
|
His hallucinatory sonic stratum
emitted a solitary beep for every life,
acting as a postmark for infinity
(instead of infinity, one
could substitute
a blue swirl
condensed indefinitely by means
of magnetism [the world’s doubt]
with the intention of [at one point]
coalescing into quite a rejuvenating pill).
With four or five manic slides
(his unstudied decrescendo)
the upstart’s bow had latched
to the tail of the sun and past
the flailing (naked) masked
assemblage: all white (inferior)
romantic [expletive]...
...and veiled behind the black dressing curtain:
a typewriter – his secret art
(this was the real sound that wowed
[les critiques] those bandits
jesting in their {offensive color}
swirls of gloom)
so Eureka! then the big clang
and the violin that breaks
the postman’s name is Paganini
that pacemaker flinging notes
and letters to the Melancholy Age:
many a hell hound nipped at his trousers
though only two or three modern historians knew
that a few flames in the candelabra
and Europe’s great furor of tea-drinking
all but extinguished
merely at the sight of him.
|
||||
6. |
In This Room
01:22
|
|||
|
In this room one can only
look into the past.
There are no doors no lights
and no windows.
In this room there are no
plants or animals
no night and no
day.
There is only the same
repetitious feeling–
a feeling not unlike
the glare you might receive
from some skittish stranger
pacing and clutching
an unlit cigarette.
|
||||
7. |
||||
8. |
The Betrothed Girl
01:25
|
|||
9. |
||||
10. |
||||
|
Everyone gets a piece of the body
the starving moralist
the purchaser of wooden planks
Everyone gets a piece of the body
with nails clinging to nails
wire springs forth from the chest
Everyone gets a piece of the body
she weeps for the disparaging ego
he kneels at the illumination of pain
Everyone gets a piece of the body
we see the Everyman as exhibitionist
our synapses forge a synthesis and
Everyone gets a piece of the body.
|
||||
11. |
Projected Reflexivity
02:34
|
|||
12. |
||||
|
when i was young i was frightened of so many things.
i would wake up in the mornings and see the rectangular black hole between the wall and my closet door, and a long shiver ran through my body. the shadows cast by the curtains in my room blended with the gaping darkness in the closet, like demons returning home. as i rose from my bed, my timid bare feet stepped across the cold wood floor, and i thought about all the terrible names i might be called that day by the children at school. even if they invited me to play a game at recess, i tensed up and cried whenever the the bright red ball was thrown toward me or when another child ran close to tag me.
how could I know their true intentions?
as i continued to walk through the halls of my house each morning i could hear water coursing through the pipes in the walls. the sound made my toes curl up and pause. I crossed my arms and hoped that the sound hadn't been made by anything that could cause me harm. the days and nights continued on in this way - ducking behind corners, hiding from everyday objects.
i guess it's normal for a child's imagination to reinterpret common sights and sounds- to be frightened by what they could be, rather than what they are. but for whatever reason, this happened to me with almost every last breath of my childhood.
the only thing that brought me any relief was music. there were times when the fear gripped me so tight
that my entire body felt buckled to my bed - trapped and stiff - i imagine that must be what it's like to be paralyzed. and the only thing that could penetrate through the fog of paranoia in my consciousness to pull me out of those moments, was a song. i just lay there in that state, staring at nothing for what seemed like years, and suddenly some old hymn or playground song would charge into my brain, raising me up from my bed:
(song)
|
||||
13. |
Paganini (Reprise)
00:19
|
|||
14. |
The Porpoise is Evolving
03:30
|
|||
|
The porpoise is evolving,
the tortoise sticks around.
A tortoise foot flung down is stamped in sand
at ancient altitudes I often can
recall this tortoise in his formless years...
Abstraction trapped each new millennium
attaching us to tortoise fears.
The porpoise spoke his serial song
twelve equal tones–a mantra preened
from each millennium.
The porpoise was evolving with tortoise feet
still screaming toward abstraction–
what purpose was unraveling
through our slowly spun millennium?
The tortoise stamped the ground
while Rothko hung his shadows in a belfry
and searing lines swung upside-down
to swell the sweet life in a Virgin’s belly.
She flew through sand and swirling smoke
as helicopter blades blew overhead;
a dying porpoise hidden ‘neath her cloak
who (though it never was deciphered) spent
twelve hundred lonesome decades
unraveling that tortoise print.
|
||||
Christopher Costabile Tampa, Florida
If you like Christopher Costabile, you may also like:
Freeland
by William Ryan Fritch
The soundtrack to the award-winning film “Freeland” functions beautifully as an album in its own right, with stark, evocative instrumentals.
go to album
featured on Bandcamp Radio Sep 19, 2023
go to album
NY outfit N to The Power cite Erik Satie, The Meters, and Steve Reich as influences, and you can hear it in their free-roaming songs.
go to album
An esoteric and eerie live performance from multi-instrumentalist J.P. Shilo conjures up haunting images with a multitude of dark tones.
go to album
Winds of Change
by Jon Keliehor, Signy Jakobsdottir
featured on Bandcamp Radio Mar 5, 2024
go to album
Written and recorded on a reed organ, “HULDA” is a haunting work of sustained drone that is simultaneously soothing & unsettling.
go to album
Public Flowers
by Robin Saville
featured on Bandcamp Radio Nov 23, 2021
go to album
