BLACK LODGE
Libretto by Anne Waldman
PART ONE: THE HUNGRY GHOST REALM and the HELL REALM
Magic Pain (Verdun, 1916)
…My Demise.
Our Demise.
Magic Pain.
+ + +
Spells from Artaud
His humming, praying
hissing, spitting,
Asylum experience:
electroshock at Rodez
55 in all.
Coma leads to Bardo experience
a gap between living and dying.
In the electroshock Bardo, he
confronted parasitic beings,
was brought back to life so that
these “fiends” could live off him.
Electric Cerberus (Rodez, 1945)
Broken limbs, fractured, faze
Sum, bar, ‘gain in this botched life
Ay ay ay
Broken limbs, fractured, faze,
Holes for a demon…
Holy holy
Electricity is a bawdy, a wait!
A resting of a face
The calm-pressed magnet…
Reap/rest surface…
Larvae…
Pulverized states, Ov-mined
La la la la
Death which is black black magic
Va va va va
How a mad man survives the mini-strations of the dock, tours the nurse.
(They go mad)
Prophet eating the rotting bawdies: Ov, the dammed.
(Ov, the dammed)
Electricity is a bawdy, a wait!
A resting of a face,
The calm-pressed magnet…
Coming back from the dead
On a wheel of a hellish life
The howling, howling
Three-headed Cerberus
With out-doctors, know patience
Ta ta ta ta
With out-doctors, know diseased’s culls
Ta ta hiss
Butch her…whip too, fley, two-tore meant
Doctors, ‘cause human (sic) society.
Coming back from the dead
On a wheel of a hellish life
The howling, howling
Three-headed Cerberus
(Out out I want out)
Cut! Cut!
coupe coupe
Sucked by larvae
Meta-sin lies! Meta-sin lies!
Broken limbs, fractured, faze,
Sum, bar ‘gain in this botched life
Cracked and missing teeth
Holes for a demon
Diabolic feeding…
What’s missing in a tortured bawdy?
Electricity is a bawdy, a wait!
A resting of a face,
The calm-pressed magnet…
Reap/rest surface
Frum, the out side, Ov: a savage b(e)low.
I go through it
I go… don’t forget it.
(Death shake of Bardo, rattle shape of Bardo )
Punishment deserved (Tangiers, 1958)
Punishment deserved
Punishment deserved
(I’m the doctor here.)
Interrogate the suspects
Attach electric drills to the teeth!
I’ll give you shocks to the brain
bells and lights,
Become a berserk pinball machine,
blue, and pink electric orgasm
Punishment deserved
Punishment deserved
I digress…
ugly spirit made me write
I digress…
her death my minutes to go
her death my cruel minutes
her death my cruel minutes to go
her death my cruel three-dimensional chess
All writing around the sides the persons a galaxy all writing resounds a hot humbled history. Star stars or stars stars. Look up the stars stars. All writing is in fact cut-ups, kid, and history will decide games heated and heated behavior.
Become a phantom in Hell
On fire in the streets of the world
Become a phantom in Hell, kid
Who me? Quién es? Streets of the world
Commission overheard in a spin a soldiering one that soldiers madmen to Bardo, write and walks in concert in conversation, all selves Artaud rise up the streets of the awakened world. A bilocation of selves Artaud and others, of self and writing other to make cry and then again the streets of the world unite streets of the world. What streets of the world to spin rubric’s yes yes commerce, a no, a no, no. Tanks of the blown-off shock world.
(control control control…)
Punishment deserved
Punishment deserved
I’m the doctor here.
Give you killer virus
– – – – – –
ugly spirit made me write
her death my minutes to go
her death my cruel minutes to go
three-dimensional chess
My childhood (Spokane, 1950)
My childhood was
elegant homes and
tree-lined streets
lawnmowers and
milkman and
backyard forts
My childhood was
droning planes
and blue skies
My childhood was
picket fences
green grass
and cherry trees
Look closer: pitch oozing out.
Always pitch underneath.
Millions of red ants crawling all over.
Look closer.
Look closer: red ants oozing out,
Always pitch underneath.
Look closer: always pitch underneath.
My childhood was
tree-lined streets and
backyard forts and
cherry trees.
The hungry ghost who sings in lamentation (Zürich, 1916)
the hungry ghost
who sings in lamentation
watch the sky for strafing drones
(ghost of yearning)
ancient mind
(ghost of yearning)
glorious white light
(ravage and ravaging, ravaged and will have ravaged
and will ravage and will have been ravaged)
bright or fierce
(feed your ravenous hounds)
radiant colors of seductive desire
illusive beauty adorn your tattered frame
the hungry ghost who sings in lamentation
all shackled
(feed your ravenous hounds)
The Strange Light In The Lodge (Boulder, 2021)
The strange light in the Lodge, repository of dark memory, spectral gesture.
In 1933 Artaud performed an enactment of “The Theatre and the Plague”.
Body as future memory, as inscription, as keeper.
Spectacle for the masses. His face was lean.
The visionary’s thrust to be incomprehensible. Ensorcelled.
The Plague everywhere, death in the street, in garrets, back alleys.
In carts of doom, in aporia, in bardo, the edges between life and death.
His hands were trembling, eyes rolling into the back of his head.
Looking inward, transported to an excruciating Intensity…Artaud in the Black Lodge.
Cave of flickering shadows, sequester and death. What Doctor in this house?
That we all see demon plague take hold, that our hearts break or that fear turns us away.
Us too? Could that be every one of us too? Anthropocene, we lose control.
How close we are to dark Animalia, to a Void, the Abyss.
O generative cyclic flow and grind of meat wheel. That we decompose, lose breath, and still sing.
Artaud’s apotheosis! Palpable dark spirit-babble in the theatrical light, center stage.
Shapeshifting show of demons, all the alchemical nuance as glass shatters.
People in panic, as he gasped, afraid of their own demise. Jeering and hissing.
La Peste they called it, sweeping the land…a crux in your mirror. La Peste, La Peste.
The poet summoning and summoned, poet dwelling in your own gut and burning throat.”
PART TWO: THE ANIMAL, HUMAN, and DEMIGOD REALMS
Premonition of the Worm (Philadelphia, 1966)
(instrumental)
You find a severed ear in a field (Lumberton, 1986)
You find a severed ear in a field. You look into it, falling down into it, sliding down into it into it like cascading down the spiral inside the nautilus which spirals down deeper and deeper into the core of your listening, into the core of what you hear, the core of the earth, the core of the mystery you are perpetually investigating…
down… down deeper…
be careful
be very careful what you need to know…
Petrograd, 1917 (New York, 1966)
You take a television set shut off the sound track and put on an
arbitrary sound track and it will seem to fit.
You see a bunch of people running for a bus in Piccadilly and put in machine gun sound effect and it will look like…
Petrograd in 1917.
Maybe they’re being machine gunned you ask…
Here, my severed digit, part I (Cambridge, 1939)
You cut your finger off to impress a man.
Here, my severed digit – take it.
You find me sexy?
take it.
Here, my severed digit…
Here, my severed digit, part II (Mexico City, 1951)
My desire for you is in this severed finger
take it.
The last resistance I have is my body
take it.
What may I do for you?
How serve up my body for your love?
(take it…)
They call you coward
Not good enough to serve your country
It’s time for our William Tell act
ugly spirit descends
write my way out
write my way out of hell.
The Warring Gods (all places, all times)
and a death rattle electroshock cuts through the void.
A Theory of Puncture (Blairstown, 1986)
They teach: the worm regenerates.
And so you test the theory:
How far gone and still come back?
Will so many small pieces,
Make so many smaller worms?
New syntax brings new meaning?
They teach: the worm regenerates.
Is it also true for you?
How dark too dark to still find light,
Inside of the spiral ear?
Inside a van Gogh ear…
They teach you crucifixion.
And so you test the faith:
A Pilate of the rosebush,
Worm pierced upon the thorns,
You learn the answer’s No.
(When nothing’s true and all’s permitted)
No tiny worms. No risen dead.
No rotting fruit on Aspen Street.
No mold transfiguration.
8 billion empty holes.
When nothing’s true, and all’s permitted.
Be careful…
Be very careful what you need to know,
When nothing is true, and all is permitted.
PART THREE: THE GOD REALM OF THE SHAMAN
Old Shaman on the Wheel (Ivry-Sur-Seine, 1948)
Slow down the clock.
Unravel the coil that keeps you tight, obsessive.
Abomination and beauty, awake and damned.
Arise,
Can you show me,
Arise,
The heart that pulls me,
Arise,
As you stand there weeping?
(all I want is out of here)
Lie down as dead and let the sound come through my bones.
Old bones, old shaman, on the wheel of time.
Arise,
Can you show me,
Arise,
The heart that pulls me,
Arise,
As you stand there weeping?
(all I want is out of here)
(Mother speaks, mother speaks through frames of sleep beyond the door)
(feed your ravenous hounds)
A wood shrine with a picture of the Virgin.
A crucifix, wood idol, feathers and ribbons.
My feet covered with layers of cotton.
All I want is out of here.
All I want is out of here.
A wood shrine with a picture of the Virgin.
A crucifix, wood idol, feathers and ribbons.
My feet covered with layers of cotton.
Twelve sycamore trees and a pool of oil.
All I want is out of here.
Coming at you through frames of sleep (Ivry-Sur-Seine, 1948)
Coming at you through frames of sleep
Threading through frames of sleep
(Sleep, sleep)
(Slow down the clock, unravel the coil that keeps you tight)
(Be careful what you need to know)
(Feed your ravenous hounds)
(Be very careful what you need to know)
(All I want is out of here.)
Sleep…
(All I want is out of here.)
Sleep…
(All I want is out of here.)
Sleep…
(All I want is out of here.)