Today I picked up a record in a series called Musik in Deutschland 1950-2000
(BMG/RCA Germany) which has already offered the enthusiast a variety of
riches, for example the CD devoted to works for radio plays, including a
fascinating piece by Friederike Mayröcker & her partner, the late, great
Ernst Jandl. This CD offers a selection of works produced by the West German
Radio's Studio for Acoustic Art, entertaining & inspiring avant-garde pieces
by such as Maurizio Kagel, Bill Fontana, Pierre Henry, Gerhard Rühm or John
Cage (an excerpt from _Roaratorio_), but the work that really gripped me,
moved me to tears actually, was Alvin Curran's _For Julian_(1988), a kind of
requiem for the co-founder of Living Theater: a series of words Julian Beck
recorded before his death is repeated, at differing levels and from
different directions, a women's choir sings an occasional baleful mourning
chord (like something from Berlioz' _Roméo et Juliette_) punctuating the
course of the piece, there are occasional recessed saxophone hymnal
doodlings (Steve Lacy) and Judith Malina's voice, faint at first, comes into
focus reading with searing force the last part of Shelley's _Ode to the West
Wind_, words that refer to the poet's dead thoughts blown by the wind "over
the universe/Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!" etc. I felt I had
experienced the weight of implicit tragedy in this poem , which I've known
(imperfectly of course) since my boyhood, for the first time. This is a
great piece of music & a rich poetic experience at the same time. I was also
taken back to my salad days in Hamburg (my judgment is faded khaki now!),
when I saw Living Theater for the only time in my life (live ~ it had to be,
film can't capture it) in _Frankenstein_, and understood for the first time
what political theater can be (i.e. a dynamically involving projection of
the mechanisms of collusion & violence), as after the initial failure
(agonizingly protracted) of meditation-induced levitation the aisles are
suddenly invaded by screaming freaks & an explosion of retributive murderous
energy takes place. In retrospect, it seems only a day or two later that a
small intense redhead gave an eloquent inflammatory speech in the Audi Max
condemning the hypocrisy etc of the powers that be ~ it was 1966 & the joint
was beginning to jump; years later (mid-70s) I was to live on the ground
floor under Danny Cohn-Bendit in Frankfurt, where I still live. One morning
the house was surrounded by police wagons & overrun by a Commando Strike
Force with machine guns, but it was all show. I've seen violence & people
hurt badly on both sides in demos, but never anything like the recent
cold-blooded shooting by the Swedish police of a foolhardy young
stonethrowing demonstrator to be viewed at
http://www.dr.dk/nsapi.dr/newton/media/ViewVideo.asp?id=33506
Watch it. Then watch it again. This wasn't in some lawless third world
country. No wonder people are re-turning to religion.(See Karl Marx for
further explanation
~ "the heart of a heartless world".) . Though that, in the USA, seems partly
to consist in worshipping at the altar of legal murder. What price "new
birth"?
Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten; I had to get these tumultuous
impressions off my chest; hope nobody is too irritated by the length of this
mail.
Martin