the birds!

Recipes for Disaster

1.

Just to hear how it clankers
I left the trace of my hand in all
I set alight and left to settle.
Dishes, unashamedly gristle
Sesame, jealousy. Tap, deglaze
Using a sieve I pulverised them.
I am sad for these lukewarm
Whisk, tap, deglaze, whisk.
Once I clarify these melons
I took half the tomatoes and
And striving to pour myself
I did. I thought hard about poppies
It is all over for them.
I mixed whisky and pigeons.

2.

Get closer and rub
Stars and passing custom.
Shift the clean work surfaces
The hatches to the
Pear and stilton salad or
Or be bullied into battening
Your face in it, perhaps it
It’s nice to have walls in your
Grease spots, adapted recipes
Just to hear how it clankers.
But at the end of the night
Kitchen, for instance to cover in
And not always burn your arms
Would be nice to leave

by JW, after the recipes of AO

indexical card

dr dr - DRAFT 3

MEDICAL QUESTIONNAIRE
STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL

State if you have suffered from any of the following:

Tuberculosis NO
A detached voice YES/NO
Fainting or Migraine YES/NO
Blood Coughing NO
Proper names NO
Compulsion to make up stories YES/NO
Coughing or hoarseness YES/NO
Sciatica, of long duration NO
An unholy din YES/NO
An empire of crime YES

Is any investigation pending?
If so please specify I LOST MY VISION IN A PROVINCIAL STATION AND NOW I OBSERVE IT THROUGH FIELD GLASSES. I AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

Have you suffered an injury?
If so state when and how THE ABUSE OF POWER HAS LITERALLY COST ME AN ARM AND A LEG. THIS WAS MANY YEARS AGO NOW. WITH MY WRITING HAND I STRIKE AND STRIKE OUT.

Are you at present on any form of treatment or medical advice?
If so please specify GIVE UP. DON’T GIVE UP. GIVE UP. DON’T GIVE UP. I SELF-MEDICATE BY EATING, SHITTING AND SINGING.

Have you had any specialist advice in the last two years? GET BEHIND VELVET DRAPES. STUMBLE SOFTLY FROM WALL TO WALL. MY GASTROENTOROLOGIST PREDICTED A DIRE SWING TO THE RIGHT BUT I THOUGHT HE WAS STILL JOKING.

Have you lost any time through illness or injury in the past three years?
If so, for what and for how long I HAVE LOST EVERYTHING. WHY DO YOU THINK I AM APPLYING FOR THIS JOB? DO YOU THINK IT IS FOR MY HEALTH?

Do you feel in good health? IS ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM REALLY SUCH A DIFFICULT CONCEPT? LET ME ANSWER THAT, YES. I STRUGGLE TO FOLD DOWN WINDBLOWN MAPS , LET ALONE HUMANITY.

Have any of your relatives suffered from any of the complaints listed above?
If so, please state which and the relationship of the person to you IF BY COMPLAINT YOU MEAN COMPLICATION AND BY COMPLICATION YOU MEAN EXISTING THEN ALL OF THEM. START FROM HERE: ADRENAL HORMONES SUCH AS GLUTOCORTICOIDS INCREASE WITH STRESS AND DEPRIVATION, AND SUPPRESS NEUROGENESIS IN RATS. NOW RUIN THE TOWN HALL.

How much do you smoke per day? THAT IS A GOOD QUESTION.

Postcards

Tongue Sound Poem

I'm trying to put in a link to a sound poem I made but not sure if this will work. Try here

Canaries in Colour, the Opera. Part 1.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

PIANIST
FERNANDO NOTTEBOHM, a scientist
NARRATOR
MARTA NOTTEBOHM, Fernando’s wife
PASKO RAKIC, a scientist
ELIZABETH GOULD, a scientist
MICHAEL SPECTER, a writer for the New Yorker

ACT 1
SCENE 1

Present day, Rockefeller University’s Field Research Center. The PIANIST plays the opening of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 in G, Part 3. FERNANDO enters with canaries balanced on his arms and dances with them. He kills them humanely and starts to examine slices of their brains.

NARRATOR: Male canaries that have reached sexual maturity can, in subsequent years, learn new song repertoires. Two telencephalic song control nuclei are, respectively, 99 and 76 percent larger in the spring, when male canaries are producing stable adult song, than in the fall, at the end of the molt and after several months of not singing. It is hypothesized that such fluctuations reflect an increase and then reduction in numbers of synapses and are related to the yearly ability to acquire new motor coordinations.

FERNANDO: 1981. I published that paper nearly 30 years ago. And I’m still fascinated by birdsong. There’s something in it that won’t let me go. (SINGS TO THE DEAD CANARIES, ACCOMPANIED BY THE PIANIST)

Primates get the glamour, and their labs get all the grants,
But chickadees and finches, you’ve warbled your way to my heart.
How do you do it and why?
Flinging new songs to the sky!
Each year it’s reborn in your neuronal cells as a totally effortless art.

You can keep your rodents in mazes, and get your statistics as planned,
And gaze at your mouse in his cage, and pretend that he’s just like a man.
But I’ve a love never varies
for the songs of canaries
Their trilling is thrilling, it keeps me still willing
I’ll work on it as long as I can.

NARRATOR: But –

FERNANDO: But –

NARRATOR: But something’s bugging you. We’re back in 1981 now.

FERNANDO: Are we? You’re right, something is bugging me.

NARRATOR: Something isn’t right.

FERNANDO: No, it isn’t.

NARRATOR: Something in that paper.

FERNANDO: I thought so as I wrote it. It just doesn’t make sense. We know that adult brains don’t change.

NARRATOR: What do you mean, we know?

FERNANDO: You know, it just doesn’t happen. You’re born with all the neurons you’re ever going to have. But then synapses aren’t balloons, they don’t just swell up. (TO CANARIES) So why are your brain areas fluctuating in size? (EXIT)

Marta comes in and starts eating breakfast. Sound of showering.

NARRATOR: Fernando doesn’t sleep well that night. He’s suffering because he can’t fit what he’s seeing in the lab with what he knows ought to be seen. He’s undergoing a bad case of a Kuhnian crisis. And he’s also undergoing a shower –

The shower door slams. FERNANDO rushes in.

FERNANDO: Marta, Marta!

MARTA: What is it?

The NARRATOR hands FERNANDO a towel.

FERNANDO: They’re dying!

MARTA: Who?!

FERNANDO: They’re dying, and others are being born to replace them!

MARTA: What are you talking about?

FERNANDO: The neurons. In the canaries. Listen, it explains it completely. Every year the canaries learn new songs and forget the old ones.