The Magic Lantern

Charles Mingus / ‘Freedom’ (1963)

Life Without Buildings / “Sorrow” (from Any Other City, 2000)

Meanwhile, Back In Communist Russia / ‘Heatstroke’ (from My Elixir; My Poison, 2003)

Sir John Betjeman reads his poem ‘The Flight From Bootle’ with music conducted & composed by Jim Parker (from the LP Betjeman’s Banana Blush, 1974)

Lonely in the Regent Palace,
Sipping her ‘Banana Blush’,
Lilian lost sight of Alice
In the honey-coloured rush.

Settled down at last from Bootle,
Alice whispered, ‘Just a min,
While I pop upstairs and rootle
For another safety pin.’

Broadcast and The Focus Group / ‘Royal Chant’

(via rubyglass & dminkin)

Roy Montgomery and Kirk Lake / ‘London is Swinging by His Neck’

And there’s a draft blowing through the window
And their curtains rise and fall in the color of old newspaper
And I try and close the window tight shut
But a quarter inch gap is locked in the old sash frame
by a couple of decades of bad gloss paintwork
chipped on the sill so I can count the coats like the rings on a tree trunk
and outside the dog is howling
the sirens are wailing
and the wind is nailing rain into the pavements
And in distant rented rooms in Hammersmith and Holloway
the dreams of New York City and holidays in Paris
the dusty, cracked jewel of Las Vegas
the stinking canals of Venice and Amsterdam
the smog and the swimming pools of Los Angeles
the wonder of Niagara Falls or the Taj Mahal
I’m wishing on Rome
anything but the long, slow, inelegant suicide
of the buried life in London
 And distant rented rooms 
hold dreams of strangers glimpsed in the streets
naked in their own bed
Or getting change from a ten when you paid with a five
Or six numbers, or five numbers
Or even four would be fine
or a bullfight poster with your name printed on it
or somebody running after you down the street with a bunch of flowers
Of getting a job, of losing a job
Or a new  car, or an old car
Or the money for the bus
Or shoes that don’t leak
Or a haircut
Or everything and anything that isn’t this
 But outside the wind is nailing rain into the pavement
And you’re surrounded by the talentless
the graceless
the hopeful
the gentrified
the recidivists
the debutantes
the mourned
the crucified
the criminals
the policemen
the politicians
the hustlers
the hustled
the hideous
the beautiful
the living dead
the never-born
the gamblers
the conmen
the thieves
the saints
the singers
the artists
the sculptors
gravediggers
comedians
the murderers
the street sweepers
the lunatics
and fools in rented, distant rooms
of Los Angeles and Paris
and Stockholm and Copenhagen
hold dreams of London
while a wise man laughed quietly in the shadow of the gallows

Diamanda Galás / “Supplica a mia madre”

music: Diamanda Galás, words: Pier Paolo Pasolini

-

Perfectly captures the resigned sense of longing in the poem.

        And I don’t want to be alone. I have an infinite
        hunger for love, love of bodies without souls.

        For the soul is inside you, it is you, but
        you’re my mother and your love’s my slavery

Piano Magic / ‘Theory of Ghosts’ [Disaffected, 2005]

…But i’ve a theory of ghosts:

They’re alive and we’re all dead;
That they’re trying to tell us is that it’s this way around….

more

 (Thanks, billyjane)

‘Running’ by Delia Derbyshire (via UBUWEB)

from Dreams (1964)

1. Running
2. Falling
3. Land
4. Sea
5. Colour
6. Outro

“Dreams” was made in collaboration with Barry Bermange (who originally recorded the narrations). Bermange put together The Dreams (1964), a collage of people describing their dreams, set to a background of electronic sound. Dreams is a collection of spliced/reassembled interviews with people describing their dreams, particularly recurring elements. The program of sounds and voices attempts to represent, in five movements, some sensations of dreaming: running away, falling, landscape, underwater, and colour.

Delia Ann Derbyshire (5 May 1937 - 3 July 2001) was an English musician and composer of electronic music and musique concrète. She is best known for her electronic realisation of Ron Grainer’s theme music to the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and for her work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

 (Thank you, fuckyeahdeliaderbyshire & prostheticknowledge)

P.S. You should all listen to these. They’re eerie and fantastic.

Piano Magic / “Bad Patient”

There’s rain on the line between his ear and mine/Lost in translation, bad patient/I’m a terrier, a black sheep, half-relation/He’s French, a hack, white, Caucasian/We fuck in sadness, a cold frustration/Then we’re fine for a while, our hearts adjacent/He types, I read and we clash on the keys/He corrects, I direct the bones of the text/But he’s silent, too ill, too fragile, too still and I’m violent and rash, slow down for the crash

Sylvia Plath reads her poem “Lady Lazarus”

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it——-

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?———-

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand in foot ———
The big strip tease.
Gentleman , ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart—-
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair on my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—-
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

(via ratak-monodosico:shinyslingback:awritersruminations:predatorywaspobserver)

Tanya Tagaq - ‘Mahaha the Tickler’

Creepy, whispered fairytale about the Inuit demon Mahaha tormenting a husband and wife.

Mahaha is a maniacal demon that is said to have terrorized parts of the arctic long ago. This creature is a thin sinewy being, ice blue in colour and cold to the touch. Mahaha’s eyes are white and piercing, and they peer through the long stringy hair that hangs over its face. This demon is extremely strong and is always seen barefooted and almost naked.

Mahaha is a stealthy creature that creeps up on unsuspecting Inuit. When it gets close enough, Mahaha delights in tickling its victims to death with its sharp vicious nails attached to its long bony fingers. The only warning a victim ever receives is the giggles of excitement Mahaha cannot contain as it approaches.
Mahaha’s unfortunate victims face an agonizing death of screams and laughter as they are tickled and tickled until their breath leaves their bodies. Many elders have commented on the horribly twisted smiles left on the faces of Mahaha’s victims. (via)

crashinglybeautiful:

Alan Rickman reads Marcel Proust

“I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die as you say. Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it–our life–hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly.

But let all this threaten to become impossible for ever, how beautiful it would become again! Ah! If only the cataclysm doesn’t happen this time, we won’t miss visiting the new galleries of the Louvre, throwing ourselves at the feet of Miss X, making a trip to India.

The cataclysm doesn’t happen, we don’t do any of it, because we find ourselves back in the heart of normal life, where negligence deadens desire. And yet we shouldn’t have needed the cataclysm to love life today. It would have been enough to think that we are humans, and that death may come this evening.”

Proust’s answer to a question posed in the French newspaper L’Intransigeant, 1922

(Yes! Thank you, arsvitaest)

Miranda July / The Man on the Stairs

Writer and performer Miranda July takes us on one of her strange and haunting journeys of the imagination, this time to contemplate the disturbing bond that can be formed between a criminal and his victim. Produced by Curtis Fox, and featuring original music by Winston Rice. (via)

“It was a tiny sound but it woke me up because it was a human sound. I held my breath and it happened again, then again; it was footsteps on the stairs…” (full text here)