Saturday, February 18, 2017

Quantus Barney: Secluded Residence @ Radio Shack, Parts III and IV


"Bing Zi eats noodles most loudly, but he does it away from the main table, sitting hunched like he's pooping.  It seems he thinks the sound of eating is vulgar and he is embarrassed by it as if it farts.  The elves and Cold Lake and the other traditional musicians, however, had much merriment at the great table that Quantus Barney provisioned with his simple monk's meal.  That is how we supped in anticipation for the great day of symbolic music ahead of us."

Monkletto
That night, Monkletto brought casks of wine and had arranged a delivery of feminine zithers, arched and clothed in silk.  The monk wishes his city friend would not visit him here, at the secluded transmitter, but he tolerated Monkletto's patronage and had the wine placed in the basement by the dog, and he put the kotos up in a rack above the transmitter.

As he was leaving, Monkletto prepared a black hole mouth and white noise eyes. He showed this to Bing Zi and the elves, who were tending the ceremonial fire in the courtyard.  The white noise eyes meant that Monkletto was to upset the Confucian orderliness of the ensemble with his debased and confused city ways; the black hole mouth meant they should wait for the right moment to wild out but until then, play lute and flute.

The pines grow well here because of the sand in the soil and the windy location.  The pines thrive on wind but my microphones do not; this is a thought in the monk's head.  Fortunately in the morning, it was bright out and quite still, and little birds chirped the air.  A perfect day for lutes, chimes and winds.  The visiting musicians played from dawn to dusk, with a break in between to get ice cream, kimchi, a hard premade bun, and chips whose bags have many morals.

The musicians made perfect music, in that mistakes were accommodated by improvised harmonization.  They were transmitted well by the 800 watt antenna that day, and I received it in my kitchen, cooking and sitting with my son.

That night, Monkletto arrived again as headlights approaching from far away in the fields.  When he crunched up the gravel driveway, Bing Zi and the elves were known to jump up.  Monkletto had brought women to play the kotos and the cask of wine was broken open.  Laughing in the firelight of the lodge, the women with jagged teeth first allowed the men to stroke their straight zithers, then commenced to play chirps and squeaks and also deeper bendy moans on their kotos.  Bing Zi and the elves were blowing lackadaisically on panpipes when some of the "lesser" women approached them and as was prescribed by Monkletto, these women were seduced. 

In the next installment of "Quantus Barney: Secluded Residence,"
What is the aftermath of Monkletto's debasing incision, especially in the receptive sensorium of the dog?  A note on the video practices of the overarching institution of the Temple.

Bing Zi and the elves were blowing lackadaisically on panpipes when some of the "lesser" women approached them and as was prescribed by Monkletto, these women were seduced.  While they were out in the courtyard bonking, Quantus Barney was playing "At The Watertower" on his zither.  The song's simple hot urban rhythm and funky harmonic effects wafted the courtyard the music of patchouli and other sonic desert scents.

His dog remembered a past life as a "desert dog," napping by day in the cool shade of a cistern, and prowling in the sagebrush at night for lizards, crickets.  At twilight, his master, a leathery human, came out in the courtyard, and with fallow glistening beady eyes, rubbing his crotch, on a lady, on a cactus, in a video still...

You see, Quantus Barney was documenting the whole "scenario" with the video cameras provided by the Temple that, of course, sponsored his residency at the transmitter.  The documenta was for his secred "monx-filez", a bunch of tapes labeled in sharpie with various mitigating quotes from the literature: "Andy Warhol- no touch monk", "Monks exercise every organ"...  He fast forwards the tape to the part where Monkletto is pointing his tongue to her anus.  It flits on the musk and she jumps like electricity but he pursues her with his triangle tongue.

Sensors and a discussion of microphony in the Pavilion
"The pavilion has a snake running from it to the radio shack, where various microphones are mixed into an ensemble for broadcast. "

When the monk plays alone, as often is the case, he puts his zither down on the resonant pine table inside the radio shack.  There he can sit for hours on a short stool, with a ceramic bowl of bitter tea by his sides.  He is playing alone in this shack because that is the proper way to play the zither, out here in the pines, where the corn-cob-pipe men grow corn and listen to his station, which tries to be virtuous, although all sorts of people do come through, even Monkletto and his women, which have much to offer the fine airwaves with their multiplicitous plucking and subtle singing close into the condensers, where farmers can hear their whistling breath and glottal wordage. 

The monk not only samples his favorite selections from the repertoire, but as part of his mandate from the temple, he is to discover new pieces and indeed new configurations of his zither in the secluded residence.  His dog knows that he puts wires inside his zither to pursue the CHAOS arts along with the speakers in the radio shack.  The wires bring out something unseen from the air, while the zither provides a physical basis, a body for the monk to work on.

Something is going on around the wood body, and the dog can only hear the ultrasonic result of this radio process.  It sounds like the bats which are cultured near the temple, but much louder and much more synthetic in tenor.

In the next installment of "Quantus Barney: Secluded Residence,"
The dog is gaseous and shaggy.  What is the power of the zither, and how to use it properly?  Monkletto scores as electronic music is used for torture and war.

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