Bridgetape, Transfigured Choirboyby Merle Leonce Bone |
***Cross-reference with: Bridgetape, Monsieur Cave, the transfigured lupus choirboy (a sound essay)
The Song of the Dead Souls, or, Transfigured Choirboy by Silkworms Ink
***Rather than reproduce Merle’s essay here exactly as it appears in the book, I thought we’d use this space for the English translation he provided with his manuscript. This is by a friend of Merle’s, Laurent Benoist (bio information below). The stunning recording of Merle’s original piece that makes this Bridgetape worthy of the name is by Nocturne (bio below, also).
– S.K.S
A defrocked sound, a varicose voice. Yet everything sings. This world is huge when I feel it, curled inside my pocket. Mister Cave. Frowning, he tells you he loves you, all the while increasing the sounds. Streaks of light whisper faintly. The water trickles down from the forehead to the neck, from the neck to the shoulder, no skin left to hold back the remaining flood. His gaze is severe, then. And his voice rises, thunderous with imprecation. Ever so little, you huddle in whatever’s left alive, in the shadows. Freed from all births, he returns there continuously. Two fingers on the piano, crouched underneath, on the carpet of crumbs with the dog. Over there, even the small wood shingle prisons are painted in white. A stranger, barely to his own childhood.
Soon, the bliss of contemplation: chubby knees, curves of an angel, rosy cheeks and fingers of a surveyor. The roundness of the nose will remain. Soon, the balance of the hues: dungarees padded with fluffy happiness, a little lavender blue sweater adorned with minuscule rose buttons. The top of the dress is straight yet life flows out of it. Graceful little one without a stole. The collar of a stripe shirt under a well-worn pompom hat, hiding a large forehead.
Take a closer look, everything is getting darker, the wind bears down on us. Look at this child. His scarified life, freed from the two sacraments; proud and tender, he sinks into it. A bloody page and a lightning bolt across the skies, thirty-nine shards of wood in the skin of the child. One for each season. Yes, his gaze is hard but Mother is here to comfort you. The wind is strong; soon it will be raining buckets, empty tin cans and blond souls. The wind is flat from rain, yet dry; in it we make our graves. Not one, not two shallow lungs, infected by the air vents. His phrasing goes almost over the edge. Precisely where what he tells us is strongest. The moth-eaten note, it fades away. His breath rises as the same time as tears from our eyes. The loss, it fades away. The mist, it fades away. Wiltshire lace cross stitches on ancestral boomerangs, Mister Cave. Covered in dirt and dried blood. His little dreamy and puzzled head stoops. His stare and severe pout staring at the mouldy bindings of Mary’s books.
There are two kinds of rain. The first lingers on the stained porthole glass. It is the one that mists our eyes caked in grey cracks; through the grooves, it aims for the abandoned overnight toys on the ground. And there is the other one, its consistency more hurtful. It insults the never-ending lupin fields and the oats, full of pioneering excessiveness. The voice collared in low-pitch clings on with both hands to the mane. There is the other rain, autocephalous; it uses its hair between our sheets, a veil of fear for our dreams. The water runs down haphazardly from the locks of hair. He did not like that, you stared at him suspiciously. Our eyes bulk under the pressure. Water trickles down from the roof, there to rot under the carillons. And no tarpaulin to prevent it from falling down.
Dead mosquito larvae in the foul reflections of a round moon. Crossing over the fences makes the sheep nervous. We make use of their moving flock to run away from the homily. Our shoes stumble on the earth mounds. Fear and laughter. His gaze then becomes hard, the reprobation of Jericho. Our delicate ankles falter. Along the streams. Mother, pick me up. At this moment, our lives stretched. The sheep are made of stone. Corseted up to their souls, they are dead, my childhood friends. Exhausted, they are dead, cindered butterflies.
I will be their praying undertaker, their street preacher. I will not stand in line, I will carve a cross on my bare torso. Like a precocious and dignified protest instead of signing up at the counter of the unscathed and the shadowless. I will plant three seeds in my father’s mouth while on his deathbed. My streaks of hair will be adorned with sparkles of charcoal. I will go to boarding school. The end of the line isn’t a scarf yet. Our eyes didn’t meet very often, too much modesty in the eyes of the solemn child when he gazed upon his child. He raised me his own way. The voice dialyses during vespers, beautiful and piercing; gripped by the hammers, infused by the strings, it breaks free and settles itself, deep, saddened and bawling.
Beyond the land, there is the jingling sound made by angels. They bang together their blades and their blades, wings ruffling. A great big dogwood bush, but only the fruits of the male plant are edible. An old abandoned white house; in the winter its roof turns the same shade of red as the road. They share the entrance to town. Beyond that, Warracknabeal is just made of Anglican alignments and old bricks. Mother, help me, I am looking for Calvary at the crossroads, where his tomb should be. Your ochre is my blood. I will be back amongst my own, all buried, with no resentment. One day, I will come back home.
The people inland bow down, kneeling and gathering. Dogs with their tongues cut out, flowers swallowed by the earth, sleeping agents. Flood and drought. He whispers, one foot on a chair, one hand on his hip and the other resting on his leg, the other hand, arrogant and demystified, signalling with the tip of his fag the advancing desert. Rooster of fire, he murmurs, telling us a story, looking down on us; this is how he loves you. You can always try to use linen straws to mix cob and use it as insulation. It keeps the bats at bay.
The old timbered post office will be our last date. They will admire my graceful stature, dressed up to the nines, my figure bared of its legend. I will lift the child abandoned on the steps. I will put him down in the stoup inside of Anderson Street, on his carpet of laurels, holy water and freshly cut branches of Red River gum. I will go back and sit at the foot of the memorial, my head softly tilted, nestled in my arms, dungarees and a pompom hat. And I will wait for the night so that shadows will appear before me once again. They will come closer, out of the woods and out of the cities, bad seeds brought in by the wind. My shadows are my angels. Melbourne, London, Berlin, São Paulo, New Orleans and London. Landscapes of transparent shit. Huge cities, waste grounds, empty factories, weary syringes, shards of glass and neon in our notes. Our deviant blues for stray dogs. And at each passage their hands and their claws will stroke my delicate hair; my angels are my shadows. They have switched their blades for tears and airwaves.
My angels are my shadows and their choir resonates with strength and joy and suffering. In unison. My companions. Even bald, shabby, all are superbly magnificent. They have switched their blades for tears and airwaves.
Every two or three years, when it is time to re-pot, take stumps with two or three leaves, four to eight inches long, with their long roots. Cut them with a sharp blade exactly at the foot of the stem. Re-pot them with compost in flower pots, three to six inches high. Keep the barely damp mixture warm and in half-shadow, it will help the plant to take root. All this time, only water the mixture when it is almost dry. As soon as the roots begin to grow on the surface, the young seed can be considered an adult, poised for mischievousness. It will bloom the following year. Fierce, defeated, proud and dark.
Mister Cave sways his hips, classy, majestic and haughty above the years. He blows at us, in all majesty, his powerful arrogance. Like his German friend before him, he has impertinently picked up the guitar again, playing it like a yo-yo or a sling. That’s his way. Manuals are made for parents. Today he is an Amish Mennonite cowboy from before the schism, who would have this time banished the holy beard but saved the moustache. Or a distant memory from the Turkish quarter of Kreuzberg.
I noticed yesterday on my grave, as I was about to cut the floral stem, a little plant. It was frail and resistant. I picked it up and placed it, between two pieces of cotton, in a small vase on the altar, taking some water from the holy water sprinkler. I poured the wine and several hosts were safely put away. Slowly, I drew the curtains and hung the purple cassock. I swept the floor three times, disturbing neither the prie-dieu nor the marble patron saints. I cleaned the bells with a cloth. I dusted down the covers of the Bibles, rinsed the reliquaries and the chalices, without forgetting to fill the censers. I took good care of the crosier, the bars and the balustrades. I rearranged the lecterns with their partitions, as well as the organ. I soberly positioned the guitar, the bass guitar, the snare drum and the violin. I installed the mikes, the amps and checked the sound. I lit the candles all along the Stations of the Cross. I sat myself in the twilight.
A defrocked sound, the voice a spasm. And yet they all play and chant. Swamp, harsh and full of echoes. Father, lift me up once again in your arms, carry me on your shoulders. This world is so frail when I see it rise away from me without your voice. I miss you. And yet they all play and sing along in unison. Lined up, stoically, they tell you they love you, by bringing the sounds together.
The dawning light breaks in a growl. Look at the clouds floating by unhurriedly. Lean your head over, softly. He isn’t there any more, yet he watches over you. His eyes are gentle and their reflection can be seen in your eyes, the ones you use, Mister Cave, to gaze upon your children. Water runs down from the forehead to the neck, from the neck to the shoulder, no skin left to stop the remaining flow. The collar of a striped shirt under a well-worn pompom hat. Hiding a large forehead.
Laurent Benoist is both a painter and an art critic. He paints with his head filled with quotes from his ridiculously large collection of art books, and writes with his mind swirling with great master paintings. At 39, he still hopes to get it the other way around some day.
Nocturne: obviousness is used to hide the truth. We make noise because we are alive, and we will have time for the calm. At first my concerns were that of global memory and guilt, the notion of choice and free will. I come from a generation born guilty of what we haven’t done. It is the burden of history and of original sin, and we end up guilty of what we would like to do. What characterises a free human being? Its ability to make choices? But choices I do not make: when I face a situation, I do not choose to fight or flee or inhibit myself from acting. I find only an attitude to adopt in order to react to emergency. It is on these grounds that Nocturne puts down its roots: on ruins. Let us destroy our ruins. Good luck.