This Concludes Our Broadcast Year

ENACT END OF AN ACT. [2012]

(Declension.  Adding.  Marriage.  Adding.  An association.  A one-act play.  And.)  

Or the straight line from Stein A to Stein B.

"It is necessary to recover the primeval force of the shock

taking place at the moment when opposite a man (the viewer)

there stood for the first time a man (the actor) deceptively similar to us,

yet at the same time infinitely foreign, beyond an impassable barrier."

-- Tadeusz Kantor

I have been alone here at this here is not here this is not this blank book a looking back at this I

blankly looking back to alone times when not here I read this book to blank and back it

revealing black and the white spaces reveling in this here this alone this back before

bending was not bending but bent blank space black before it was revealed

to be some other alone some suspect book blinking back a revelation

like the time I alone here at this very here this very not this

went forward into not bending not toward black not

but toward bent black me an alone like white

like me looking back and blinking

at the I which once was alone

which once was blank

once was also          

black.

(One pigeon.)

I am a card collector in Paris.  

I collect cards of rabbits and famous works of art.  

I am a card.  

I collect rabbits and works of art.  

I am sentimental.  

I am married to a pigeon.  

I am not married to another pigeon.  

I have a mother who is also sentimental.  

She was also once married to a pigeon.  

She is currently unmarried.

She is currently looking for a new pigeon.  

She is a card and a collector.  

She does not collect rabbits.  

I am also an as-yet-unknown entity.  

I am growing uncomfortable in Paris.  

You MUST be.  

She is sweating on her cards.

(One pigeon.  One pigeon and a performance.  One pigeon and a performance is two.  One pigeon and a performance is two or two.  One pigeon and a performance is two or two and the story.  One pigeon and a performance is two or two and the story of Cher Ami.  One pigeon and a performance is two or two and the story of Cher Ami the hero.  One pigeon and a performance is two or two and the story of Cher Ami the hero of the Lost Battalion.)

And an association.  This is half indoors or how short longer grass grows short longer than shorter yellow grass.  One pigeon need not be certain of certain associations in order to associate Saint Therese with certain other saintly associations.  Alas.  In doing so said pigeon becomes a magpie.  One might be two doing what one might be trying to be certain of doing if said magpie takes to the sky.  Of course.  This is an indication of the number of acts to be introduced as envelopes.  Envelopes filled with four saints born in separate places.  Four saints.  One two three four saints.  

Four saints in a menagerie.

Four saints alone atop a hill.

Four saints giving birth.

Four saints in blackface.

Four saints scheming to steal your boyfriend.

Four saints limping toward the finish line.

Cross it.  Have to have to at a time in the summer when it is very easy to be winter.  And saints are easy too.  When Saint Ignatius completely tries to be certain he is very likely to be seen as one who is nearly a pigeon and easy.  Nearly.  He certainly might then be associated with saintly doing.  However.  Certain wrongs might be certain while certain beings (Saint Ignatius.  Saint Chavez.) might certainly be wrong.

Subtract one pigeon.

Imagine four benches separately and the four asses upon them.  And this most certainly might lead to wrong doing in the doing of wrong.  It might be wrong then to assume the association with wrong as the sisters and saints assemble to reenact.  Certainly if one is not completely convinced of certain other certainties one must become saintly and act nice.  Certainly.  And it most certainly could be a great wrong if one were to find himself associating certainty and great doing.  This wrong association is most convincingly certain in its being.  Four three two one being.  This being is not flying or posing in the grass of separate places.  It is simple.

One pigeon becoming ugly.

One pigeon stepping across the tabletop.

One pigeon finding forbidden love.

One pigeon in a tree.

One pigeon wrestling Saint Gallo to the ground.

One pigeon ignored.

And where were you when the window opened and thirty-five and forty-five numbers became four.  And the saints relived their numbers and became additionally cunning and away.  And ordinary pigeons became trees.  Trees.  And the pigeons became saints bending in the breeze and involved themselves in casual conversation with themselves.

                    

                              Saint Plan.          Is this scene four.

                              Saint Therese.          Dialog.

                              Saint Plan.          Once in a while.

                              Saint Therese.          Yes is a word.

                              Saint Ignatius.          When then.

                              Saint Therese.          Once in a while.

                              Saint Settlement.          This is uncomfortable.

      Saint Therese.          More than one table.

      Saint Ignatius.          A green plastic bottle.                    

                              Saint Therese.          Or the roots.

                              Saint Answers.          Ten.

                              Saint Therese.          Like four talking to three.

                              Saint Therese.          And three.

Saint Therese.          Pigeons.

[The subject is pigeons not saints.]

[The subject has grown shorter.]

[The subject is yellow.]

Most.

Certainly.

This.

Is.

Longer.

Than. 

The. 

Grass.

Associated.

With.

FOUR SAINTS IN THREE ACTS.

"(this is a stage     and it should be perceived as one)"

-- G. Matthew Mapes

Merztank [2016]

happenstances [2012/2016]

1.

wrest the cigarette from a congestion of rhyme

and the kingdom is cast into happenstance     

underlined in baffles     we are tubular

(totally)     in smoking speaker cones

and we are lungs and tongues strummed birthing

on the stump at midnight

2.

passing as a fracture     a diminished vamp is wishing

is a rhythm     is a canvas usurping jazz

and where circuits tax the brackets of otherwise

corridors are horns blowing     inflating parentheses

and speaking craters into the back of a chair

is confusion     or a punctured afternoon

3.

my own face is strings scraped     an entrapment

as tremors occupy the evening’s body

and we were glass and silence broken     unclassifiable

over the head of any ship’s captain

or a lantern     a platinum quitter at dawn

is everything in language     dust     and television

4.

this abscission isn’t sudden     or flirting with the skyline

and I am flexing happenstance     posing

where animals once articulated the bottom

where nepotism is miniscule and the earth

and where we were once the world’s strongest man

and a decimal     immature beyond all our moons

5.

(leaning     leaning     leaning)     and knots of universe unwind

in the suburbs     in the transition to malignancy

and satisfaction is usually cumbersome

or circular     or a movement shying into language

but this passage is temporal     is teeth chattering
as another cigarette is drawn from the diurnal pack

Meat Market [2010]

(a reassembly of the first piece from Harryette Mullen's S*PeRM**K*T)

Square type family baskets pushing names of frozen gutter space.  Individually, the label faces align, scanning your oddly familiar stand displays.  A share place wrapped in squirming catches incites the ways hand.  Young tail bulging, or her cherished eye line wait; assemble a six pack throwaway outside.  Widows organize eyes and list themselves on the margin, while bold listlessness singles shelve meat all evening.  Divorced express lines and compartments straighten more footage.  Women wait in the market aisle.

Robin Blaser [2016]

Trying to understand this account, as the sun tilts past the center of the sky.  

(I am understanding.)

And I am alone in the living room, with the vacuum and several pairs of 

shoes, listening.

Robin Blaser is out there, somewhere, doing the work.  Or he is dead.

[...]

I've eaten too much something, and my head is the sun, tilting toward 

the trailer park.

Repeat and contemplate, or simply smile, slip into several pairs of shoes, 

and greet a ghost or two.

(This is an anecdote.)  (This is an anecdote.)

Ugh.  Robin Blaser has become his own scribbles, and the living room has 

disappeared into language.

[...]

This is this account.

G[ ]MM -- "Etude #020 (the Palm-Leopold's living room blues)" [2016]

in conclusion [2009]

award the man your trite trophy

dust off a spot on that minor mantle

clear a place for him at this insignificant table
and then get the fuck out of his way

Visceralum artwork: "cable chatter" & "ribbons" [2013]

solo [2010]

(radiator kicks on and hisses)

fingers twitch atop tusk-tipped valves [1] 

oiled and practiced warm

arms up and holding

horn parallel to intention

eyes fixed on accompanist

awaiting

sweating

the plunge of sudden breath

articulating thought months

measures ahead

of Haydn

or was it Hummel? 

even Mozart?

pencils scratching at desk top journals

and my composure

scrawling failures in 2s and 3s

like letters to distant great-uncles...

back to the basement studio:

(outside which THIS was first encountered)

"tu-tu-tu-tu"

steady as it was

tapped out on my thigh

after dinner

a wand whacking

a meter/a strict discipline

in... in... in... timidation

in "t"s

music is not like this!

anguish

"tu-tu-tu-tu"

in the tongue

it's in this tremulant tongue

tasting of steel and garlic and language

not a tune - an attack!

like killing sung to me 

stabbing this music undead

with garlic "t"s!

"tu-tu-tu-tu"

...or hate poems

(wrist watch alarm chimes in)

and attention:

this is it     

the moment

everything for which we've practiced

our whole life at stake

everyone and everything hanging

balancing on me and my horn

my too expensive horn

the horn I didn't deserve

the horn that couldn't compete

                with another tucked away

the horn an extension of my worth

or less

a symbol of a dozen failures

and many more to come

NO!

NOT HERE!

NOT NOW!

concentrate

eyes are darting

their eyes

my eyes on the piano wires

and

I'm

given the sign

that was the sign

Mrs. Sarin's [2] started playing

Fuck! the intro

where are we?

what measure?

o.k.     o.k.     o.k.

get ready

this is it

everything we've practiced for

man, it's hot in here

4... 3... 2... and the tone is right     the note is right     the feel is right     everything is right

I am right...

beside a hospital bed

in Battle Creek

approximately 18 months earlier:

(the man who gave me THIS is nearly gone)

he had tended to roses and raisins [3]

and I'm told he sang like Bing Crosby

but now he's just 92 deflated pounds

benevolently tugging at his tube tether 

offering wisdoms between desperate gasps

I smile and cry and listen intently

afterwords     I make a promise

then I leave him to his dying

...and that's a one

(Mrs. Sarin taps me on the shoulder)

"great job" "congratulations"

I should be so proud

and I am

and my mother is

crying

in realization of her father's dream

to see me

succeed

I am swollen with a choke

fat with my medal

and have kept a promise

these things will have to suffice

though

as my father can't manage

to say

what's to be said

instead

he walks slightly behind me

down the hallway

a stuttering confusion

of jealousy

and a perpetuation

of his father's cold

detachment

I am icing removed 

as we walk

and his stepping behind

is the cadence of my disdain

as we approach

the parking lot

and leaving this triumph

an ugly contrary music is from he to me...

a forward remove in 26 years:

(suddenly THIS finds resurrection)

given the task of composing an epic poem

for my final examination

I have given consideration to a great many topics

and have yet to decide upon one as sufficient

however

I suppose it's possible that we will begin

with something resembling the following

but I can't be sure at this time --

I am not a trumpet

or any longer a note

now I am a word

                                                                              seeking a new education

                                                                              an operation of language 

                                                                              a primal communication

                                                                              brought before the tone

                                                                              before the stones struck

                                                                              and ignited the breath

now I am a complex

                                                                               beyond his cold occasion

                                                                              not to be confused

                                                                               with choking and leaving

                                                                              not to be subjected to removal

                                                                              nor to be known to him

                                                                              at all

I am not the plague horn of me [4]

                                                                              but I am still    

                                                                              the promise made

                                                                              beside a hospital bed

                                                                              in Battle Creek

...and in contradiction     a stifling conceived embryo

post-triumph

and I'm on a victory lap

sponsored by my mother's family

we travel North

through an aunt and two cousins

five and the dog trapping

arrived     at Great-Uncle Reg's [5] double-wide

the horn is phony polished

leaking from spit-valves     a poison

I am pregnant with conceit

and the embryo is cultivated

Cadillac is not significant     

but for the oxygen of the old man's death

there were (of course) misspelled folk stories

and I took a turn     rising back

a day later

we've come around     returned to Battle Creek

one Grandmother a parcel

the other still at the farm

down a mile of gravel road

awaiting her gift performance

and I stand a festering extension

trumpeting where once a tremolo cornet did

before the hate and rebirth

the shades of chickens and a bull

tap ghostly time along     outside

as I desecrate the ground they fouled

and my father seems in communion

with all these deaths     rising back

reaching    as if a reservoir

were there to dip into

out beyond the burned-down barn [6]

his hate and ignorance stock

the day ends     shot through

like another narrow George's Dodge

in the bullet-riddled back forty

and as my head hits the ancient mattress

I too am in communion     a nightmare of it

I wake at first light with morning sickness

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mrs. Palm-Leopold,

     Throughout the remainder of 1984, I continued to experience great successes in my musical endeavors, including a rather glorious (and even somewhat fulfilling) summer run as principal trumpet at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp.  However, following this, any further progress was stopped dead by my increasingly jealous father.  Twice I was denied my right to accept an invitation to travel across Europe with an all-star youth orchestra; and I was not allowed to make the next step up, even with a significant scholarship, to attend the Interlochen Arts Academy in the summer of 1985.  I became increasingly jaded, and my relationship with my studies suffered.  And though I still occasionally felt inspiration, I knew instinctively that the music was decaying within me.  A year later, in the summer of 1986, it would arrive of me, stillborn.

Yours sincerely,

G. Matthew Mapes

ENG 244

T/R 2:30-3:54 PM

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

summer of 1986

back at Blue Lake:

(where and when THIS was necessarily conceived)

before the Jamaican Corporal

disappeared in the night

he attempted to transfuse mine

with Marley's Live!

but 

it flows dead within me

as truth

and the horn honks garlic lies

offending the integrity

of my bunk mates

this is a bent "Taps"

a depraved lights-out

and the dusted weights

need be silently removed

from the longest time

perhaps this composition

is something to consider

(the flash snaps me temporarily blind)

the picture is taken and

I am posing     again

in my first folding chair

blue ribbon and medal dangling

beneath my dangling chin

frown suddenly recognizing frown

"you should be so proud"

"your grandfather would be so proud"

"isn't your father proud?"

I am swollen and stained

blue with balloons and lakes

oddly weary of my success

and its recognitions

I wonder

amongst all these tears of joy

if anyone would notice

a tearful other recognition

the old man

is relaxing   content

television transfixed

in his beaten easy chair

not recognizing 

the flash

or the joy

or his own ignorant contempt

                                                             fall of 2010

                                                      Eastern Michigan University:

                                                      (where THIS proceeds     undeterred and unabated)

                                                                   . . . solo . . .

  AFTERWARD: the Master gifted me

                                            a signed original Man of La Mancha [7]

                                              in recognition of my many achievements

                                                 and this is the best it ever got     then

                                              I regret disappointing him

                                            but...

 

                                                             end notes for solo

[1]  It was common practice, even throughout the 1980s, for your more high-end brass instruments to have ivory finger buttons.  My particular horn, the Vincent Bach Stradivarius Bb Trumpet, Model 182, was no exception.  However, considering the growing concern for the plight of the elephant, the use of tusk was phased-out in the early '90s.  Today's instruments will often offer finger buttons ornamented with semi-precious gemstones.

[2] Anne Sarin had once been a promising concert pianist.  However, when I came to know her in the 1980s, she was the piano teaching wife of renowned trumpeter Irving Sarin.  Mr. Sarin was my private instructor from 1982-1987.  Together we studied "the classical," including performance and theory, and under his tutelage, I rose to great heights.  His performance resume read like a who's who of twentieth century classical music, and included work (as principal trumpet) with such legendary conductors as Fritz Reiner, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Fiedler, Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy.  His trumpet stylings feature on over 50 recordings.  Working with this man in his studio was both grueling and awe-inspiring, and I'm very much the man I am today because of this experience.  And, back to the original topic, Anne Sarin served as my accompanist on several occasions, and was both a lovely person and a sensitive artist.

[3] My grandfather, Frank G. Smith, was my single-most significant influence, both as a man and as an artist.  His personal story, one of great tragedy and inspiration, is far too long and important to deal with adequately within the confines of these notes.  He was an amateur horticulturist, and he was the foreman of the Kellogg's Raisin Bran line from the mid-50s until his retirement in 1980.  His death from lung cancer in August of 1983 was a profound experience beyond words.  Twenty-seven years later, I still think of him almost daily.

[4]  For many years, after my classical experience came to an abrupt and ugly end in 1987, just the thought of touching the horn caused in me a great trauma.  Once, in 1989, I was contracted to perform a trumpet prelude to begin the wedding ceremony of a family friend.  The groom had composed the piece himself, and needless to say, it was of the utmost importance.  However, due to my anxiety, and even though I was thoroughly prepared and practiced, not one single correct note came from the horn.  I massacred the work, and the wedding!  It was not until 2007, after much therapy, that I was able to successfully play the horn in front of an audience again.

[5] Uncle Reg was something like a character from a Flannery O'Connor story or Tennessee Williams play.  As a child, he had narrowly survived the great influenza pandemic of 1918, after losing both his mother and one of his sisters.  Afterward, he was never really able to breathe without assistance, and spent the rest of his long life as an invalid, strapped to an oxygen tank.  As children, my brother, cousins, and I would visit him in Cadillac once a year, to perform little revues that we would prepare especially for him.  These would usually include my brother and I performing the latest works on our horns.  It must be noted that Reg was a man of great correspondence, and throughout the remainder of the year (between visits), he would keep our family entertained with his humorous weekly letters.  These letters were just as popular for their spelling errors as they were for their earthy folk tales.

[6] In the winter of 1963, the barn at the old Battle Creek Mapes farm caught fire.  And, from the way my grandmother told the story, it was a horrific experience.  Apparently, the blaze occurred in the middle of the night, and all the members of the family were awakened by the blood-curdling screams of a few dozen burning animals.  A bull, as well as several cows, sheep, pigs, chickens and goats were trapped inside the building, and all the humans stood by helplessly as the animals died.  The charred remains of the barn fire were never thereafter disturbed.  And years later, even as curious children, we steered clear out of respect.

[7] Mr. Sarin gave me a few gifts, but the most sentimental was/is an original copy of the 1965 Broadway Cast recording of Man of La Mancha.  On the recording, Mr. Sarin can be heard playing principal trumpet.  On the back cover of this particular LP, he wrote (in his inimitable scrawl): "To Matthew: A round of congratulations is much deserved in light of all your inspiring success!  Let's continue to work toward your successful future."  Indeed.