Evacuation: A Story

            Henry Donniger, terry-robed and latte sipping in the comfort of his newly purchased Greenwich Village Brownstone, luxuriated in the recent success of his latest art performance “Get Shot” where in a swanky Soho gallery an expert marksman succeeded in piercing the flesh of his left triceps with a .22 bullet.

            The blood was paid for in dollars.

            He contemplated his next move.

            He had been suspended in harness from a gallery ceiling, his body and face riddled with needles and nails.  Blood dripped profusely – (ex-pressively) – upon the floor – Pollock was So yesterday.  The piece was entitled “Pain.”

            He had done “Merry Bovinity,” where in a recreated barn he copulated with a cow.  Although this performance received vast attention, after a few days it was closed down by the authorities, a collision which merely served to enhance his popularity.

            What to do next?

            Struggling with this conundrum, Henry grabbed The New York Times and made for the john.  Legs a splay, enjoying this moment of relief, this period of pleasurable release, it came to him – it came to him not in pyrotechnics and choruses, nor in technicolored superlatives laced with cymbal crashes, but – in a sustained exertive-alimentary squeezing-out , as all true truths emerge, truths that are truly truths, truths from the gut, feelings from the in-side.

            He would shit.

At first even he was embarrassed by the idea.  Taking the basic life function of evacuation and transforming it into performance art?  And that’s when his brilliance once again came home to him, -- “but of course,” he told himself, “the elemental, the deified functional, what could be more suitable than a good shit?”

            Copulation was old hat.  An internet tapped-out pornographic cliché.

            Pissing was two-dimensional.  It didn’t offer the multi-dimensional sculptural forms that #2 did.  Ah, sculpture! … the plastic art.  He was so excited with his brainstorm that the remaining sphincter squeezes were a bit rushed.  He wiped, buckled, washed his hands, then raced to the living room to call his agent.

            “Morris!” he spoke excitedly into the phone, “I’ve got it!”

            Behaving like an anxious mother, Morris was always burdening him with perturbations about how he was going to top his latest act.  Worries about ambitious newcomers trying to edge their way into his client’s market (and, of course, his pocketbook) plagued his every thought – in short, he was your basic nervous Nellie-palm sweating-money hungry-highly strung-cell phoneclutching – middle man.

            The opening was packed.  Rock style.  Lines around the block.  Balloons, ribbons, reporters, photographers, flashbulbs, bass drums, trumpets, searchlights – Excitement!

            Morris was earning his keep.  He had arranged appearances on TV talk shows, radio interviews, alerted all the media, prodded the paparazzi, and pumped out tantalizing pronouncements such as:  “Experience Neo-Post Modernist Dadaistic Nuclear Futuristic

Excretionism!” “See The First Artist Who Dares To Bare His Insides!” and other trumped-up promotional doozies.

            Henry Donniger paid special attention to the time of the event.  And to what he would be having for breakfast.  Scheduling, Orches-trating, stretched the very fibers of his artistic imagination:  too soon and the creative flow he would be exhibiting would suffer from insufficient tension; if he took too long, he would risk producing ennui.  He knew he needed to insure a large demonstrative evacuation and, at the same time, be able to hold it long enough to build a proper period of suspense among his audience, his fans, his – shit worshippers.

            Habitually, he would breakfast around eight o’clock and dump about nine thirty.  This would be his major bowel movement of the day.  Okay then, exerting his ratiocinative capabilities, he brainstormed and through force of insight concluded to schedule the event at 10 a.m. and to breakfast in walking distance of the gallery.  He would breakfast slightly heavier than usual.

            Installments, angles, lighting, seating, what toilet paper to employ for the denouement – maybe even get a signing-deal like athletes – there was much for an artist to think about.

            The toilet would be of glass, scrupulously cleaned only hours before he mounted the throne, and then buffed and pampered minutes before the doors opened, as if it was a rare automobile at a car show.

             But here we encounter an artist’s internal struggles, the profound, and often tormenting, decisions men of genius must grapple with.

            Henry Donniger’s initial instinct was to hide his face.  To only show from the hips down.  But as a painter steps back from the canvas to assess his latest brushstroke, Mr. Donniger perceived a flaw.  And it is these decisions that separate the Great Artists from the mere mortals.

“Hide my face!” he said to himself, “What cowardice! Utter nonsense! How could I have entertained such an idea?!  Facial movements, groans, grimaces, contortive jowling, are all integral to the art of expulsive expression.”

He called to advise Morris of the results of his deliberations.
            “Brilliant,” was the reply.

Morris was busy lining up lawyers to protect Henry’s first amendment rights and to insure smooth flow at the exhibit.  He was also confabulating with a film crew he had hired to take his client to the next level:  Film, DVD, MTV (he mustn’t forget to arrange vocal instruction for Henry), and print exposure – Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report.

The morning of the event (or, more colloquially, the “big dump”) – champagne, cameras cameras cameras, journalists, art critics, foreign correspondents from France, Italy, Germany, the U.K., the Balkans, African nations, Australia, New Zealand, South America, they came from the four corners of the earth. – all were on hand to witness what would perhaps be the most pioneering artistic event of the 20^th and 21^st centuries.  Sony Entertainment’s (Henry was in the process of signing a five year deal with Sony) top brass had arrived nattily navily suited with sharp pocket squares and laptops housed in cushy black leather briefcases, mini-skirted nubiles quickly escorted the Sony contingent to reserved front row seats. The mayor’s office had been presented with legal documents in advance to prevent any disruption, the police had arrived to manage crowd control.

Morris was pumped with importance.  How many agents could boast a contemporary Michelangelo? Or greater? 

It was 8:30a.m.and Henry Donniger was breakfasting on three fried eggs sunnyside up with sausage, toast, orange juice, and plenty of black coffee.

He ate alone.

He wanted to concentrate on digestion, on mentally escorting the food as it progressed through his body; keen concentration was required; the process of nutritious assimilation was a very essay in artistic commitment.

The bodyguards whisked Henry from the limousine and guided him through the back door.  Ten Minutes till Showtime.

Meticulous calculations determined that he’d be able to hold off for ten to fifteen minutes once seated upon the throne.  This was an important interlude.  A critical element in the success of the overall composition.  Building dramatic tension was crucial.  A low rumbling in the intestines caught his attentions.

Henry approached his medium.  Strutting down the red carpet to the locomotive blare of rap music, decked out in a colorful orange, maroon, and white satin robe, he resembled a favored prizefighter as much as a world renown artist.

The gallery was packed wall to wall.  He marched down the red carpet to where his canvas lay perched upon a raised cylindrical surface that was set to revolve slowly, affording each member of the audience an opportunity to feast upon a “frontal”.

Stage directions called for red curtains to surround the toilet until Henry had disrobed and was fully established upon the throne.  Curtains to be opened at First Grunt.

Kathleen Baedecker, Art Editor for the New York Times, was furiously composing for tomorrow’s headlines:  “Donniger Dumps On The Art World!”; “Dadaism, Expressionism, Post-Modernism, -- Excretionism!”

            Scholars were already at work updating Art Survey books:  “From Van Gogh’s Sunflowers to Donniger’s Dump”.

            Morris was all aflutter, delirious with the attention, the activity, the sheen and scope of world-wide celebrity hood, he visualized buying an estate in Connecticut, a brand new red Ferrari, -- he could barely control his pee as he chided with the boys from Sony.

            The curtain parted.

            Donniger sat.

            Great achievement, virtuosity, demands practice and Henry was not one to shirk this essential.  He paid a small stipend to those responding to his ad in the Village Voice:  “Artist Needs Assistants”.  Of course, just meeting the renown Henry Donniger was payment enough for the young and ambitious.  Other artists employed models; he had shit-gazers.  He would diligently practice (having benefited from Madeline Bruser’s book “The Art of Practicing:  Making Music from the Heart”) relieving himself day after day with a minimum of ten persons watching until he got to the point where he could eliminate as comfortably in front of people as he could in isolation.

            He had woodshedded.  He was ready.  And in anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes, his well-rehearsed “art” would emerge.

            The toilet was gleaming!

            Henry, deep in concentration, apparently oblivious to his surroundings, flipped a page of Newsweek.  He had instructed that air ducts be installed near and around his canvas so that the proper odors disseminate to the audience.  It was imperative that they suffer no sensory deprivation. 

            Like connoisseurs relishing every note of a Mozart Piano Concerto played by Mitsuko Uchida, the audience grasped at the melodic flatuses, fastened to every groan and grunt, to each grimace, to each vacillation in his physiognomy, applied their critical capacities to interpret the nuances in odor issuing throughout the room, they committed their entire beings to this privilege of being able to attend what was surely the Artistic Event of a Lifetime!

            Concomitant with the relaxation of his sphincter and the initial emergence of matter,

Henry Donniger....plotted his next move.

Cymbalology

(for Anke L. Nolting

Zildjean           Sabian             Meinl               Wuhan

metallurgical crash cousins synoptic palimony           circumlocu-navihabitational

thinnest of instruments           sound

resounding bound round         clown sound

pound down clown round      pound pound     ping     a-ling

Samba sound   Rock    Mambo   Hop   Night In Tunisia sound

go round round           around bound              circu-larity       cymbal-solidarity

cymbal-hilarity            cymbal celerity

cymbal-sizzle cymbal pop       cymbal singularity

singularly cordial-convivi-al-ity

                        [This is an installation piece.  The Galaxy Gallery in Chelsea created an acoustical marvel to showcase my CymbalOlogy installation.  Cymbals from around the world, cymbals of all shapes and sizes, are arranged in Smash-Fashion.  Striking implements -- sticks and mallets, brushes, etc. – are placed on wall mounts to enable gallery guests to contact the various cymbal-essences.  The Galaxy Gallery champions the world’s first Cymbal-Scape.]

::  The cymbal was first used by an orchestra in the 1680 opera Esther, by Nicholas Strungk, performed in Hamburg, Germany.  The Zildjean company in the United States manufactures the most widely used cymbals in the world.  The company has been making cymbals by a secret method since 1623. ::

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A musical cymbal sound is one that blooms or grows after it is set in motion.

amalgamation agglomerator cruise missiling diameter stretches a shame if Kangaroos lose that grace                    

identifying marks establish creature-hood      the bell is cymbal-hood

                   (salt solutions salinity palpable saliva stations)

providential-ity     in psalm 150, David exhorts “Praise him upon the loud cymbals; praise him upon the sounding cymbals.”  and here they come, the janissaries, loud sounding and Terraplane rousing, with their armies, their shouts and hurrahs, their edged weapons spitting fire, their clanky shields whacking through enemy and field, surmounting fiefdom and moat, sound as support as chronicler and bastion basher as cavalry and charger siege engines trebuchet trench counterweight torsion master masterful mankind mastermind cymbal STRike

cymbal MiGHT

the sound of two great cities – New York & London, or Paris, say – performing, rising up, melted and hammered into format, tempered, and should they strike in this fashion, crash together, two giant Cymbal-Cities (New York & London, or Paris, say), & were it pleasing, would other cities conjoin, succubussed by the music in their ears, their very marrow ringing, could this be the start of a movement –

Barcelona & Naples -- *********

Chicago & Baghdad --*********

Tampa & Tehran -- *************

Moscow & Mogadishu -- *********

Milano & Michigan -- *************

Bogota & Berlin -- ****************

Sao Paulo & Reykjavik -- ####*******

will this sound production, ringing from the center to the extremities, create a global giddiness, a planetary parade – drum sticks, bass drums, cymbal crashes, trumpet voluntaries, color garrisons overloaded, unconventional and ultra-beaming, could this musicality/communality/commonality (and why not) produce a paradigm shift, a political revolution, a ... – P-A-R-T-Y!!?

            and does this (and why not) spell an invitation to the solar system to respond, to behave in kind, for earth to clay & clang with Moon and then with Venus, & Venus with Mars, & Mars with Jupiter, inciting a chain – planetary – reaction, -- each planet being granted a “musical-leave-of-orbit,” & as this jangling carillon honking prospers, producing squeals & peals of planetary ploans, won’t other galaxies take notice, desire to plunge into this alloy spinning dervish fest, ...

            Important to the symphony orchestra is contrast.  Seek exaggerated highs & lows in choosing your cymbals.  Cymbalic mood swings.  Prescription drugs to promote Cymbal-Calm ....

‘working the iron cymbals

I take the low road gouges

in the esophagus of the right eye

nuyon kidi

nuyon kadan

nuyon kada

tara dada i i’

corralling the gold cymbals

I load the high road gauges

in the big toe of the engine room

cyber spume     crypto cycadaceous syllogistic jisms

splash sumptuosities

crackling correlative cambiatas

cymbalogy-biology-symbology-astrophysiology cartographygeographytopographyapostropechoreography

Suggested Cymbal Soundings:

Chico Hamilton’s 32 second Eric’s time, Romeo and Juliet, Mozart’s opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Max Roach’s simoom-cymbals / tongue-wafters/on Delilah/Clifford Brown & Max Roach, Elvin’s entrance on A Love Supreme – buoyed harem sizzle – Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2, the New World Symphony, Das Rheingold, Scheherazade, ... your hometown marching band

‘Most cymbals are made of an alloy comprised of varying percentages of copper, tin, & silver.  After the cymbals leave the hammering area, they are lathed for a consistent & uniform taper.  Lathing is a process in which the oxidation is removed and tonal grooves are added.’

Schooling/lathing – school children de-oxidized, spun into vapor, vapid mind pits, calcification clusters, wrapped around technical gadgetry, drips spilling – intensive care unit -- from their brains,

mind-lathing our young with – unlike cymbals – no redeeming sound feature

‘Characteristics that affect timbre are the bell size , cymbal weight & profile.  The larger the bell, the more overtones the cymbal produces.’

shoaling buoyancy fanfare dollop truce

a fruit repast                calabash, pineapple, oranges, gourds zingling from cymbal slake

a flying citrus fiesta       encountering in air, seed spluttering playful humbuggery

            tintinnabulation saltatory salutation stall

B.B. King’s Lucille truss rod endlessly rocking

‘A full sound is one that produces partials.  It is not the distinct sounds but rather one broad articulation that blends the sound of both cymbals.’

coming together the coming together & entailment outcome contact outcroppings the misuse the use the downright utility/futility of entity-crash ... no abbreviation capable of diagnosing the plagiarisms of horn flagellant overexposed bushwhack cafe air pocketed coffers trilogy

does one morph free like sound?  an emotional organism rippling into the ether?  at point of contact, where is one?  suction cusped?  compressed into a dualistic blur?  a duality posturing fusion?  a flight to the elusive and legendarily promising One?

navigate sound, laboratize sound, navigate contact-ings, penetrations, trip the peel lids to child slide boatswain bowsprit pistol whip the blueprints

                                                                                            gas firing

oven splutter triadic marshmallow sundae sliver timbre palette roastings      psychedelic blues biopsies                  dream bends                climax seeds                sequin hammers

glimmer arousal jostlings splash eighteenth century enlightenment rakings

Hal Bennink at Tonic1/9/07:

‘I play what they give me.  I used to bring my own cymbals ... but now I play what is there.  My goal is to come into town with a matchbox and 2 matches and play the hell out of it.’

to the playground

to play is to ground

                                    to be ground-ed

clown sound resound bound round

                        Formica filly growth the bloom

frills & flummeries

                         frolic frolic candle bake

                         show me yours I show you make

rousing mandibular veracity fustigant perse

playground corporeal coil corporal the body preach the body Sound the Body Cymbalic!

lungs collude & collide – oxygen SPlash

kidneys thunderclapping

right atrium/left atrium

small intestine/large intestine forte-piano crash // clams prestidigitating

vulva lips

testicle gong

buttocks bash

hallelujah hip lock hammerheads

traditional hand hammered cymbals in pure B20 bronze

smash lash envelope CRASH

‘For I was Inca but not King.’

                                                  (Elvin cymbal scintillator

and I am stable and horse in the dying heart of the cloud

ringing perpetuosity prayers from fractious plates

palettes unwhettted & scolded on  the  eve  of  levitational  storm

Sources:

1.  The Ultimate Guide to Cymbals by Nick Petrella.

2.  Antonin Artaud quotations from Here Lies (Exact Change, Boston, Translated by Clayton Eshleman, 1995, page 201).