WEBVTT

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I'm going to change a little
bit and read some prose.

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This from a broken bottle.

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From a Broken Bottle
Traces of Perfumes still

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Emanate, which, as Charles
noted, is a series of fictions

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that I've been
writing for a while.

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And they take the
form of letters--

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epistolary novels, I
guess you'd call them.

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And Bass Cathedral, the
one I'm going to read from,

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is the fourth in
the series so far.

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In this work, I write
as a musician trying

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to turn fantasy into fiction.

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I write as a
musician named "N."--

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n, period.

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And based in LA,
late 70s, early 80s--

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founder of a band called The
Deconstructive Woodwind Chorus,

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whose name changed to
the Mystic Horn Society

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and then changed again.

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And the letters have to do
with the music compositions.

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They're often
accompanied by a tape.

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The letters are
addressed to an angel.

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They all begin,
"dear angel of dust".

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Dreams have a lot
to do with them.

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They're dream books, of sorts.

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The very first letter begins
with the dream in which--

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N. Dreams that he is
playing John Coltrane's tune

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Naima on a bass clarinet.

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No doubt, the bass
clarinet that was

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owned by Eric Dolphy that
was given to John Coltrane

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after Dolphy died
by Dolphy's mother.

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So there's a lot of
that, and this is one

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of those that dips into dream.

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Or what might have
been real as N. says,

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he's not sure whether
he dreamed it or not.

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It's a long letter.

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Some of the letters
get to be very long,

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and this one is too long
to read in its entirety.

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But I wanted to read
the opening of it.

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And then I wanted to read
the last few pages, in which,

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in the course of
Bass Cathedral, N. is

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playing more and more trumpet--

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and having started off
as mainly a reed player.

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And they do a number
that he takes a solo

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on, and then the other
members of the band solo.

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And then he decides
to take a second solo.

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And I want to get to that second
solo which ends the letter.

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But let me begin as
he does with telling

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a bit about this incident
that might have been a dream

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and might not have been a dream.

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"Dear angel of dust, my mother
and everyone else in my family

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insist it never happened.

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So maybe it was a dream.

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Or maybe it's something I
hallucinated at that time

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I had a serious fever
when I was four.

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Whether it was a stage, or a
gymnasium floor, it was on,

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I can't say.

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People sat in seats,
the rows of which

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receded at a steep angle--

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higher up as they
went farther back.

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They sat looking down at us.

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I stood on the stage, or the
gymnasium floor, a small boy--

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three, perhaps four years old.

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A tall man wearing a
tuxedo stood on my left.

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A woman in a one piece bathing
suit stood on my right.

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She was wearing high heels.

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He wore a top hat.

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He repeatedly called
her his assistant,

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his lovely assistant.

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No action of her's is not
introduced by him announcing,

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his lovely assistant
would now do this or that.

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I stood on a stool I
had been helped on to

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by the two of them, each of them
taking hold of one of my arms

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just above the elbow.

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The man in the tuxedo held a
funnel and a glass of water--

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the woman in the one piece
bathing suit, a porcelain bowl.

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My lovely assistant will
now hold the bowl up

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to the boy's ear, he announced.

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And she did.

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He asked me to tilt my head
to the right, which I did.

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Whereupon he put the tip of
the funnel into my left ear

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and proceeded to pour
the water into it.

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The water went through my head.

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It went into my left ear
and came out of my right,

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slowing somewhat as it did
so, but flowing through

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nonetheless.

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Trickling out of my right ear
into the bowl the woman held.

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The man in the tuxedo completely
emptied the glass of water

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into my ear.

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Once all the water
was in the bowl,

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he said I could bring
my head back up,

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hold it straight again--

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which I did.

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I must have looked
perplexed, alarmed,

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at a loss as to how the water
had gone through my head.

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The audience applauded, and
laughed as they applauded.

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The joke, if there
was a joke, I couldn't

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help sensing was on me.

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When the applause and
laughter subsided,

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I heard the sound of
water, trickling water,

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deep inside my ear--

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the sound of a
babbling brook almost.

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An nsansic, mbiric,
thumb pianistic sense

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of ongoingness and
flow, ictic insistence

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to the n-th unremitting degree.

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So it began, as far
as I can remember.

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So began the trickle
I've heard ever since.

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The sound of water that's
never not there, and that came

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into play, overt play, during
the gig we played last night.

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Yes, we at last got a gig
after all these months.

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The fellow who runs
the Blue Light Lounge

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called on Thursday.

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And said, the band
from Portland that

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was scheduled to play
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday,

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couldn't make it, and
asked if we could fill in.

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Needless to say, we said yes.

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We were about to burst with
the new pieces we'd written,

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and the call came out
a minute too soon.

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It was a gig which
had its moments,

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more than a few moments.

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Many of these provided by the
new pieces we played publicly

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for the first time.

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Book of Elysian Escort
and Sekhet Aaru Strut.

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The former, for example,
offering among others,

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what we've come to
call an X-ray moment--

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see-through amenities afforded
by extreme self-inflection."

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