WEBVTT

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That's the first of the four.

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And I'll read the
fourth of the four.

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"Glenn On Monk's Mountain."

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"Glenn on Monk's Mountain" is
actually a phrase from a novel

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by the Austrian writer,
Thomas Bernhard.

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It's called The Loser.

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And it has to do with
a character modeled

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on Glenn Gould.

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So the Glenn on Monk's
Mountain, in that phrase,

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is a reference to Glenn Gould.

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And the Monk's Mountain is not
a reference to Thelonious Monk,

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but to a place in Strasbourg.

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Glenn Spearman died at age 51,
and Glenn Gould did as well,

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and the book has
much to do with that.

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The book was
actually given to me

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by a friend as a birthday
present for my 50th birthday.

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And I'd also been in Vienna
recently, so some of that

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comes in.

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"Glenn On Monk's Mountain."

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"Next it was Austria we were in.

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Unexpected rain soaked our feet,
unexpected snow froze our feet.

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A bitter book took us there.

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A bitter book in our stomachs,
an aftertaste on our tongues,

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a book based on another
Glenn, Monk's Mountain, not

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the monks we took it for.

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"A book of overlay, a
book about death at 51,

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a book we lay awake at
night reading, a book we

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read wanting to wake up from.

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So it was another Monk's
Mountain we haunted,

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sat upside it cross-legged,
lotus-headed, humped,

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heads encased in
crystal, it seemed.

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"Bits of straw, like unexpected
snow, filled the sky.

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Stars were bits of straw
blown about in the crystal we

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were in.

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The rags on our backs, a bolt
of black star-studded cloth.

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The jukebox dressed us
in gabardine, burlap,

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scratched our skin
with raw silk.

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A bit of straw caught
in my eye made it water.

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"Water filled my head with
salt. Straw, ridden by water,

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filled my head, my
throat, my chest.

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Salt filled my head with sound.

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A sound of bells, not of
bells, but of pounded iron.

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The Falasha spoken to by Ogun

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"I played Asaph, the horn's
bell, a swung sensor,

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wafted scent, the
furtive sound I sought.

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Liturgical ambush, fugitive
straw, limbic ambush,

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Nastic address.

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Pads and keys cried out for
climb, clamor, something

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yet to arrive we called rung.

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"Rickety wood, split
reeds, sprung ladder,

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more splinters the
more steps we took.

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Rung was a bow made of
air, an unlikely plank

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suddenly under our feet
we floated up from.

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Rung was a loquat limb,
runaway ladder, bent,

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miraculous branch, thetic step.

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Flesh beginning
to go like wax, we

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sat like Buddha, breath
and abiding chime.

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Chimeless.

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Bells had we been rung."

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