“I just feel like I might be done.” Another heartwarming song from Manson & Madri on this Sunday morning. Angels become Fillies and Rage evolves to Sirens, then Surge until a Brigade of Maidens feel the need to let off some Steam. Where is this all going? Could it be bliss? Are John and Dan telling us to find our bliss? Where is your bliss? What is bliss? Listen and find out!
Mosaic of Time: Poets
in Series, Mosaic of Time, Poetry, Story
“Film fixes reality in a sense of time—it’s a way of conserving time. No other art form can fix and stop time like this. Film is a mosaic made up of time.”
When director Andrei Tarkovsky put forth this notion, he was before a live audience of cinephiles at the Conference Cinema Thieves: International Intrigue, held at the Centro Palatino in Rome (1982). There, the event itself, was a breathing mosaic of beings captured in a moment with the director. The conference was being filmed, and so, this moment is documented and frozen in time as well. We can go back to this moment and hear the artist carefully describe how he arranges within his artform—as a composer would arrange notes on a scale.
What we think of a mosaic is a whole unit—a piece of art made up of pieces. When we look at each of the pieces—we can see the materials, the tangible elements of which they are made: ceramic, glass, wood, plastic, etc. The mosaic itself comprehensively represents an idea. The object is made of objects but the whole is a concept. The scenes of the movie themselves are a part of the greater, larger, mosaic. The artists and actors who make the film are pieces and parts of the film, the mosaic. The moments a director captures/records is the harnessing of time that Tarkovsky describes.
Short films, specifically poetry films (cinepoetry), can be viewed this way. Tiny pixels are the pieces or elements to make an electronic vignette, or, mosaic. Poems themselves are intangible and only represent (or do not represent) a concept or idea. A part of the whole. Poetry on film is not made of physical film, not made of anything but digital pixels, but is made of the arrangement of digital sequences. When you edit a film, there are scenes and transitions—and these are a part of the mosaic.
This month, we feature a cinepoem by Lina Ramona Vitkauskas (also the curator of this series). This is a cinepoem that captures a moment in time during the pandemic. It was recently featured in the Halifax-based poetry series, EVE OF POETRY. It illustrates how poets (who operate in already isolated, private spaces) have dipped further into isolation and insecurities during pandemic times. The original poem comes from her 2013 collection, Professional Poetry, available on Lulu.
Mosaic of Time is a monthly series that each month explores a cinepoem by a different artist.
The whole body of the “Mosaic of Time” section will create a broader mosaic, over time, and ideally capturing time as the world progresses or regresses—plunging into global events and out again.
Mosaic of Time is curated by Lina Ramona Vitkauskas.
Gae Bolg: Requiem
I first discovered Gae Bolg more than a decade ego, while touring the Pacific Northwest. We were staying with a friend in Olympia, WA, and after playing us the remarkable composition he’d made from frog recordings, he put on a piece of music that would become a regular for me in the years to come, Requiem, by Gae Bolg.
As with everything from Gae Bolg, in this piece of music of French musician, Eric Roger. It is bombastic and medieval, yes, but in the context of the 21st century, it seems appropriately apocalyptic. It is, the appropriate response to the times we are living. You can listen to Requiem below, or check out their equally amazing Aucussin et Nicolette.
In the Mutableye is a segment that sometimes showcases something interesting that is happening somewhere in the world at this moment, and sometimes showcases some fad or person from the past that we here at Mutable acknowledge is still cool s**t.
Chapter 1: Last Week's Broadcast
in Podcast, Series, Weltschmerz
In this first installment of Boyer’s audio memoir of the summer he spent traveling the country, bringing theater to ‘bedrooms across America’ in a 1971 VW minibus with a woman who’d broken up with him after the first week. In this first chapter learn how Bedroom Theater came to be, and the odd set of circumstances that led to this most useless of people somehow finding himself on the road and touring the country in the Summer of 2003.
Paperback Book
8" x 5.25"
560 Pages
$16.00
Now Available
Before the Ghosts Came (2 of 2)
D Howland Abbott
[For the first part of a two-part article go here.]
Dr. Bob wound a chewed pen in his wiry hair and looked at me over the top of his John Lennon spectacles. “So how is your testimony doing these days, David?” I was appalled at the question; he was asking if I was a good and faithful member of the Mormon church, which was none of his business. This question had no place in what was supposed to be a therapeutic relationship; fortunately I knew the language of this particular lie very well. I’d had to recite it dozens of times in my life, and my response was thoroughly scripted.
“Well, doc, I believe that God and His Son appeared to Joseph Smith in the Garden of Gethsemane. I believe that Gordon Hinckley is a prophet, and that God speaks to him directly. I pay my tithing, I attend all my church meetings… My testimony is in great shape.”
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Video: Diplomat
Renowned video artist, Michael Lewy, has created Mutable’s first-ever video, and we are using this video for Diplomat to kick off our new YouTube channel! Diplomat is from our latest release, Different Directions, which is available now on Bandcamp. You can find out more about M. Lewy here and follow him on Twitter (@mlewy). What a delightful monster-filled romp about disillusioned diplomats!
1. It's Alright Merry
2. Break in the Line
3. Different Directions
4. Hiding Out
5. Parents Disease
6. Diplomat
7. Directions Theme
8. Now and Here
9. Home
10. Insomnia
11. World of Angels
Digital album available to stream or download now!
Illustration by Ali Chitsaz
Escape from Mayor McCheese Prison
John Wilmes
In my thirty-first year, what I looked forward to more than anything were my walks. My wife did not know about them. On these walks, I would get McDonald’s—often a shameful amount, double-digit McNuggets and multiple sandwiches. I would take laps around the neighborhood and, while walking, eat it all secretly. The dexterity, the downright athleticism required to do this with my robust pace was considerable. And here we have to add in that I would perversely construct my laps so to pass by our house during them, adding extra levels of hiding complication to the routine. My ingenuity was pushed to impressive heights by the goals and restrictions of my secret McDonald’s exercise; my left forearm grew much stronger over months of doing this, it being so often a tensed narrow table I put all my food on and kept balanced amidst high walking speeds. I was also required to skillfully hold a coat over this mobile dining structure, as cover, when I passed by our home.
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Video: Steam
“Fill your head with steam, dear.” At the end of a long day, John Manson knows just what you need. Another Song-A-Day from the minds of Manson & Madri, who brought us Angels and Fillies, Rage and Sirens, Surge and Brigade and Maidens. Another barroom anthem for the late-night heavy drinking crowd. Fill your head with steam.
John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved 4 years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!
Audiobook: Welcome to Weltschmerz, USA
in Podcast, Bedroom Theater, Series
Bedroom Theater began with a changed lightbulb and ended in a desert in Nevada. The audio book presented here presents the journey it took to bedrooms across America in the 1970 VW minibus pictured above, a journey of two young people, and a journey through the summer of 2003, and its many back alleys and exotic half-stories. This is the abridged audio book version of Welcome to Weltschmerz, unfolding biweekly on the Mutable site. Start at the bottom and work your way up to follow Jill and Gabe through the bedrooms of the past. Enjoy!
AfroSurreal Manifesto
Manifesto of the Month
I'm not a surrealist. I just paint what I see. — Frida Kahlo
THE PAST AND THE PRELUDE
In his introduction to the classic novel Invisible Man (1952), ambiguous black and literary icon Ralph Ellison says the process of creation was "far more disjointed than [it] sounds ... such was the inner-outer subjective-objective process, pied rind and surreal heart."
Ellison's allusion is to his book's most perplexing character, Rinehart the Runner, a dandy, pimp, numbers runner, drug dealer, prophet, and preacher. The protagonist of Invisible Man takes on the persona of Rinehart so that "I may not see myself as others see me not." Wearing a mask of dark shades and large-brimmed hat, he is warned by a man known as the fellow with the gun, "Listen Jack, don't let nobody make you act like Rinehart. You got to have a smooth tongue, a heartless heart, and be ready to do anything."
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Before the Ghosts Came (1 of 2)
D Howland Abbott
Sit beside the breakfast table. Think about your troubles. Pour yourself a cup of tea, and think about the bubbles. You can take a teardrop and drop it in a teacup. Take it down to the riverside and throw it over the side to be swept up by a current and taken to the ocean to be eaten by some fishes, who are eaten by some fishes and swallowed by a whale who grew so old he decomposed. He died and left his body to the bottom of the ocean. Now, everybody knows that when a body decomposes, the basic elements are given back to the ocean. And the sea does what it oughta, and soon there’s salty water—not too good for drinkin’, ‘cuz it tastes just like a teardrop. Goin’ right into a filter, it comes out from a faucet and it pours into a teapot which is just about to bubble. Now: think about your troubles.
– Harry Nilsson
I have heard it said that LSD, once ingested, remains in your system forever. They say that it sits, hibernating or just bored, somewhere in the gnarl of one’s spinal column; waiting for an inopportune moment to put on its hobnail boots and start stomping around. When this happens, often for no discernible reason (although I have found that certain geographical locations have a tendency to agitate the little devil), it is referred to colloquially as an ‘acid flashback’.
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Food Hackers, the 90's, & TAZ
Letter from the Editor
The first time I met a man I will call M, I was traveling across the country in a 1971 VW minibus with a girl who broke up with me after a week, and performing plays in people’s in people’s bedrooms, and he was going to cooking school. Sometimes it takes a really destructive love affair to realize this’s no way to spend your life. Writing code for hours and hours and hours and then? What do I get at the end of the day? A headache. We then proceeded to perform an anarchist musical in his living room.
That was years ago now, and he has since gone on to become a food hacker, his own term.
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Video: Maidens
John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved 4 years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!
Lawrence Ferlinghetti RIP
Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15)
(Lawrence Ferlinghetti, perhaps best known as the champion of the Beats, founder of City Lights, a star lost in the lap of San Francisco, was of course something of a poet in his own right, and is now dead. We wanted to mark this moment with a poem from the man himself. To hear more beat poetry, including by Mr. Ferlinghetti himself, go here.)
Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of day
performing entrechats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence
Gabriel Boyer & Malcolm Felder: 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.
Mutable Sound of the Month
For this Mutable Sound of the month, Malcolm and I thought we’d present you with a song we recorded one fateful night many years ago. I will never forget my irritation when Malcolm nudged me to come out to the car to record another pop masterpiece. I remember very distinctly thinking to myself, Oh. God. Do we have to record every time we hang out?
The idea was to record an inappropriate holiday country song using an array of instruments from Malcolm’s stash, like his chinese accordian and autoharp, in Malcolm’s grandfather’s old Chevy Caprice Classic. What we ended up with was a new year’s song about an absentee dad.
Then Malcolm began recording, on a stereo microphone attached to a simple cassette. After each track had been recorded, he would play it back on the car stereo, and we would record over it on a new tape, then put that tape in the car stereo, and record yet again, until our final track was this bizarre blown-out mush. Then Malcolm performed his usual production magic, and voila. Here it is. Another song I love.
Gabriel Chad Boyer
Mutable Sound is pleased to present a unique musical experience every month or so by ourselves or someone we’ve been introduced to. These are from the reel-to-reels and tascams of the garages and basements of the world. If you have a track you would like us to hear, please feel free to send it on to mail@mutablesound.com along with credits and a brief description.
Boston Bands in the 90's: Morphine
Here at Mutable, we remember the 90s with a fondness, and especially the bands in Boston of the 90s. We thought we’d start this series of live footage of Boston 90s bands with the notorious Morphine as filmed below at the Middle East in Central Square circa 1990. You may not be able to go to live shows currently, but you can remember the world that was, when bands, both momentous and ill-advised, played the venues of Boston with vim and vigor. All footage care of the legendary and now deceased Billy Ruane and his Road to Ruane feed.
Billy Ruane was a staple of the scene at one point, and he documented endless shows throughout the 90’s and beyond. These videos came out of that.
Video: Brigade
“I want to fight when you say fight. I want to kill when you say kill. I want to play for the winning team.” John is taking us further into the depths of the American psyche with his ongoing treatment of themes with Dan Madri. From Angels to Fillies to Rage to Sirens to Surge, John & Dan’s Song-A-Day project is relentless.
John Manson and Dan Madri of The Gondoliers, became involved 4 years ago in a project called Fun-A-Day. (Or FAD.) And now John and Dan are continuing this tradition under the title Song-A-Day or SAD, and over the course of the coming months, we here at Mutable will be posting them regularly for your viewing and listening pleasure. Enjoy!
The Manifesto Manifesto
Manifesto of the Month
1:There is an art form
1.1 There is an art to manifestos as there is an art to anything. Avoid this art form. Make other forms of art. There is no reason to make unfounded statements into strong declarative sentences. Do not believe yourself. Believe others first. Rather than holding yourself up as somehow a larger life form, remember that your unique perspective is a wondrous fallacy. Instead believe everything and anything. Be credulous.
1.2 When writing your manifesto, find yourself hidden behind a potted plant. At other times be other places. Make sure that you are always somewhere. If you are ever somewhere that is also nowhere, then be warned that this is dangerous. This is the sort of place that happens when a person is walking around without formed thoughts. It can be pleasurable. Some people drink themselves silly to achieve this placeless place on a nightly basis. This has little to do with the art of the manifesto.
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Gloomy Sunday
In the Mutableye
According to one anecdote, the song Gloomy Sunday was originally written by Hungarian pianist and composer, Rezső Seress in Paris in December of 1932, the day after a row with his fiancée over his failure as a composer had led to her departure, this being a Sunday, but then again, Gloomy Sunday is plagued by anecdotal evidence. Mostly having to do with its ability to drive perfectly sane people to suicide, and who and when. Rezső Seress’ now estranged fiancée for example? It became famous in the states as the “Hungarian suicide song” before Billie Holiday ever touched it. However, speculation aside, that it was connected with a rash of suicides in Hungary around 1936 seems uncontested.
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Scripted Cocktail Party
in Article, Bedroom Theater, Series
During these strange covid times, perhaps we all need to calm down, down a few drinks, and read aloud the words of others rather than venturing into the dangerous theatrics of our normal everyday improvised speech.
Forced to have a cocktail party for two because you’re under quarantine? Or a cocktail party of one? Worry not! These dialogues are engineered to entertain! Often surreal, occasionally audacious, silly, unrepentant, and embarrassing/humiliating, you are guaranteed a good time if you and one or two friends sit yourselves down on the couch and read and act out the attached plays for your amusement.
With such memorable one-liners as: “Are you the object of my affection? I forget,” and, “Who put the rotten tentacles in my bed,” this Collection of Conversations for Everyday Use is best done over Moscow Mules. These plays have been performed in Chicago, Boston, New York, and throughout America, in living rooms, art spaces, lofts, and of course bedrooms, as many of the attached short plays came out of the two years I spent performing plays in my bedroom, which culminated in a summer spent traveling from Boston to New Orleans to LA to Seattle in a 1971 minibus performing plays in bedrooms and courtyards and all with a girl who broke up with me after the first, a tragicomic experience to be sure.
These short plays are written in the hopes to alleviate the boredom and strain upon my fellow Americans during these trying times. Please feel free to pass them on to your friends. You can view or download the scripts here to throw your own scripted cocktail party or click on the link below!
