I got so much trouble on my mind Refuse to lose Here’s your ticket — Public Enemy, “Welcome to the Terrordome”
Thanks for your time.
I don’t have any time.
Thanks for your trouble then.
I don’t have any trouble either…. nor do you, don’t kid yourself.
— Pete Frame, Interview with Don Van Vliet, 1969 fuckflowers bloom in your mouth will choke your troubles away — Caroline Bergvall, Goan Atom
Take Apart: Room by Room
Not telling someone else’s story: listening. Which is (a) taking part. Which is taking (a) part. Here’s where I (and I-s) come in. What trouble have I? Only what I have reflected (on). We are and are not the same. Every self implies an other, and every other is a self. I am not you, but you are I. When we sing, when we are sung (to), we are the song. The song is (o)u®s1 for its du-ration — takes our place. We tolerate trouble for that span. And more: We embrace trouble for a few minutes, then turn a side.
Right now on the hi-fi, spinning: Ann Peebles, I Can’t Stand the Rain. How can we take part in what we take in? How can we get closer to a song that goes away? The needle spins into the record, away from us.2 Into us, as we remove ourselves. The trouble is the record becomes us, but we do not impress the record.3 There are other troubles, but this one bothers us even when the clouds go away. I Can’t Stand the Rain is too short, not long enough, and perfect. Or just right, which has the limit perfection tosses off, repugnant. All she needs to do is repeat herself: If we can’t trust each other / We don’t need one another. All we need to do is listen — take part. Five more minutes would be too many, after all. We exit through the entrance (or enter the exit) of “One Way Street,” walking on troubled ground.
1 That is, we own each other (our songs, ourselves), but not exclusively; still, we see the song as ourselves, which we pass on. I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company is a sticky bottle of trouble in hand.
2 Meanwhile the record spins into the needle, tightening on the spindle.
3 Except as we wear the record down — a de-inscription.
Annie Clark, Becoming “Kerosene”4
Set me on fire. Or, “ST. VINCENT covers BIG BLACK at BOWERY BALLROOM NYC May 22 2011.” As of April 6, 2013, the video reg-isters 125,391 views on YouTube. Presumably, this represents at least 125,000 conflagrations. Annie Clark and her band set off through Big Black territory, covering not only the song, but per-haps the performance documented in another video on You-Tube, “big black - kerosene.”5 This is a song Jerry Lee Lewis wrote before he killed one of his wives, Albini informs the crowd at the bottom of his breath, before he and his band angle into the per-formance. Albini appears to be covered in blood. His guitar is slung around his waist. Another guitarist walks in place as he carves out his part. Albini paces, hacking away at his dick. The bassist is all over the E string, winding the song.6 The drummer punches his drums. I was born in this town / Lived here my whole life / Probably come to die in this ____7 / Lived here my whole life.
Ominous whine, murderous complaint. There’s kerosene around find something to do.
Someone is on fire. Someone is set on fire. Annie Clark carries her guitar higher on her torso, high on her belly, at her solar plexus. It8 is a shield, and it will become a badge. It is a shield for the song, shielding her from it. It is the shell of the song, encas-ing her. She is carvencas-ing her stomach. She is scratchencas-ing the chakra aligned with Survival Issues. Or it is Manipura, city of jewels, associated with dispelling of fear, and the power to destroy the world. Or create it. The solar plexus absorbs prana, or life, from the sun.9
4 Thanks to participants in two New School Graduate Writing Program semi-nars, DEEP SURFACE (fall 2012) and MAKING TEXT (spring 2013) — two dis-cussions covered in this version.
5 329,726 views
6 or: The bassist marshals the E string, bearing the song.
7 Here the “town” (if not the town) disappears.
8 solar plexus, shield 9 So says Wikipedia.
Annie Clark is ablaze. She shakes her head, Bill Pullman/Balt-hazar Getty’s transformative Fred/Pete gesture in David Lynch’s Lost Highway. Before this moment, Greil Marcus might say the band is looking for the song, or playing it. Then the song plays them. The band is aflame, whereas Big Black is merely on fire.
The precedent is a pack of boys, and one boy on fire. The latter is the voice of Kerosene.
If in both versions, Kerosene is girl and fuel, and in the former version, the boy sets himself on fire, or sets upon Kerosene, the only thing to do in this town, as all the boys have learned,10 St.
Vincent is the apotheosis of Kerosene, not merely the living flame, but the singing flame. She is fire, is a flame, and as she touches the boys, she loses herself. This is her risk, her wager.
Kerosene and the boys, the boy and the girl, becoming-flame.
They consume themselves with otherness, and with the other.
The rest is two videos, a dancing pile of ash, flames in the eyes of the crowd.
10 as all the boys have taught her