The Cliffs of Insanity

Barry
by Gerpho
on Sketchfab

Rosalina. Woman.

You constantly revile me with your singular lack of vision. Be aware, there is an essential truth and beauty in all things. From the death throes of a speared gazelle to the damaged smile of a freeway homeless. But that does not mean that the invisibility of something implies its lack of being. Though simpleton babies foolishly believe the person before them vanishes when they cover their eyes during a hateful game of peek-a-boo, this is a fallacy. And so it is that the unseen dusty build up that accumulates behind the DVD shelves in the rumpus room exists also. This is unacceptable.

I will tell you this Rosalina, not as a taunt or a threat but as an evocation of joy. The joy of nothingness, the joy of the real. I want you to be real in everything you do. If you cannot be real, then a semblance of reality must be maintained. A real semblance of the fake real, or “real”. I have conquered volcanoes and visited the bitter depths of the earth’s oceans. Nothing I have witnessed, from lava to crustacean, assailed me liked the caked debris haunting that small plastic soap hammock in the smaller of the bathrooms. Nausea is not a sufficient word. In this regard, you are not being real.

Now we must turn to the horrors of nature. I am afraid this is inevitable. Nature is not something to be coddled and accepted and held to your bosom like a wounded snake. Tell me, what was there before you were born? What do you remember? That is nature. Nature is a void. An emptiness. A vacuum. And speaking of vacuum, I am not sure you’re using the retractable nozzle correctly or applying the ‘full weft’ setting when attending to the lush carpets of the den. I found some dander there.

I have only listened to two songs in my entire life. One was an aria by Wagner that I played compulsively from the ages of 19 to 27 at least 60 times a day until the local townsfolk drove me from my dwelling using rudimentary pitchforks and blazing torches. The other was Dido. Both appalled me to the point of paralysis. Every quaver was like a brickbat against my soul. Music is futile and malicious. So please, if you require entertainment while organizing the recycling, refrain from the ‘pop radio’ I was affronted by recently. May I recommend the recitation of some sharp verse. Perhaps by Goethe. Or Schiller. Or Shel Silverstein at a push.

The situation regarding spoons remains unchanged. If I see one, I will kill it.

That is all. Do not fail to think that you are not the finest woman I have ever met. You are. And I am including on this list my mother and the wife of Brad Dourif (the second wife, not the one with the lip thing). Thank you for listening and sorry if parts of this note were smudged. I have been weeping.

Your money is under the guillotine.

Herzog.

I hear this song and am now reading the words for the first time…..and am stricken with a feeling that can’t properly be verbalised ~ but I’ll try..For me, ‘Evaporation’ is a tapestry of the bittersweetness of the undeniability of Love and how it so often comingles with Death or the idea of Death.  It’s the drawing into something else as the origination dissipates…becoming and unbecoming simultaneously. A love that kills the self by letting the adored one inside the essence of You, making you more whole than ever imagined, but releasing all that you are into Everything. Light within the deepest Dark, a blinding shelter ~ content with silence since touch is the most intimate and honest tongue, and one needs no other sense in the arms of desire. The spark of Life in the stillness. Something so extreme that it transforms into its own opposite and, in so doing, neither polarity exists but in the other.  The ascent of joy into the realm of Death as defined by passion (la petite mort ~ the infamous ‘little death’) ~ a succumbing to the natural proclivity for union and the immersion of Self in an Other ~ there’s no choice but for us to love and release and die in order to love again. It’s as certain as a bird will take flight.

Evaporation

It was 82 and Viv and I were living at Burghley Rd (Carl and Jo upstairs).

The basement was inhabited by Mr. Paul Scrivens (a very old man indeed - with an old man's name - a watchmaker and heavy smoker). Mr. Scrivens had been finally moved out to some place where they could keep an eye on the poor old sod. He'd started pissing on the bedroom floor because his legs were too dicky to make it to the toilet down the corridor. Viv - a keen collector-of-things - wanted to get down there upon his leaving and I was curious about his set-up down there. Neither of us was disappointed: there were many objects recalling Paul's non Old-Bloke past - long locks of his ex-wife's hair laid on the mantelpiece - a book of Shelley with a sexy (for 1940) dedication..all his watchmaking gear - he was a skilled geezer - oh loads of stuff. The local squatters kept up a steady ant-like procession through the back windows for a week or so after. We got some nice little crystal bottles; a few books. And there he was gone. He was precarious at the time - there's no way he's still alive. It was a moment of Looking at It: Death. Love. Loss. All that. I had a night job dismantling shelves up in Hendon and while Viv slept and I organised myself to go to work at midnight I stooped over the cassette machine playing the groove from the studio (working title: 'quizzical little bastards' because we thought the toms sounded like curious prairie dogs in a wildlife doco) and I wrote 'Evaporation' full of Mr. Scrivens' life and death and lost lovers - the huge vacuum beneath us in his vacated flat, which you couldn't help but picture yourself in at some much later date. The night, the empty rooms - only dust and rubbish left, really now. It doesn't take long to disappear. That was it.

I'm still really pleased with that tune ~

Lee Perry was the presiding spirit, of course (Dub that you can't dance to - you can only lie down to) and the tune could be Ecclesiastical or Celtic - killer combination. And the smouldering vocoder which flickers around the voice and allows me to sing a melody I'd otherwise be embarrassed to sing. We played it to Groucho Smykle, the Reggae producer who did Jam Science and he turned it up on the big speakers at Island so you could really feel Dave's huge bass-line (all the huger for being so gentle) and he said approvingly 'dis ya Bad Music'. Bad and Sad, I thought. That's the human condition for you..

~Andrews (6 April, 2001)