It's pasties and a G-string, beer and a shot. Portland through a shot glass and a Buffalo squeeze. Popcorn, front row, higher than a kite, and I'll be back tomorrow night.' Tom Waits
Waits assumes the role of a punter at a seedy, burlesque club for 'Pasties and a G String,' it's a lewd and filthy song, though written from the point of view of an observer, an outsider. What would the same song sound like from an insider? It is possible to use the same style as a framework, and change the point of view? This is my current writing project, and it's suprised me in my initial gathering of ideas, how scathing I am about a community and artform that I have a lot of love for. Waits doesn't paint a glamorous picture of burlesque or himself as an observer in his song, although the last line is 'And I'll be back tomorrow night.'
I took a leap into the unknown this week in taking part in Peta Lily's Take Your Act Further two day workshop. I presented some ideas I had been working on to Peta and the five other participants, and by the second day the basis of my whole piece had changed quite significantly, and I really had to be brave and unapologetic. I ended up writing my own version of 'Emotional Weather Report' and workshopping that, and improvising a very bizarre dance, where I was brandishing an ice-pick! I asked the group what they saw emerging in terms of themes, and if they had questions at the end of my individual session, and here is a list....
Where are in you in this world?
Appearing and disappearing
The power and meaninglessness of words
A sense of being underwater and breaking the surface
Grasping at meaning
Clutching at something tangible
Seduction, Desire and Revulsion, luring an audience in
Beauty and Horror
A non-linear structure, mini-burlesque interludes, exploring the themes presented in the writing - my own writing. Can you be the female, London version of Tom Waits in an authentic way?
Quote Waits like people quote Shakespeare to illustrate their point
Speaking with the quality of a rotting liver
Vulnerability and Strength
The subconscious speaking in rhyme
Consumer war and Black Friday
I'm doing plenty of research into trauma and the brain, and I've been reading Peter A Levine's book 'In An Unspoken Voice.' There is section on war veterans, where he lists the different names given to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, from the American Civil War to the present day - it's interesting to note how the labelling of it has changed with perceptions over time:
Soldier's heart
Battle fatigue
War neurosis
Operational exhaustion
Posttraumatic Stress Injury
The last 'label' was offered by an Iraq veteran, indicting that the condition isn't permanent, and can therefore be healed.
'Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o'er wrought heart and bids it break.' William Shakespeare.
How very Waitsian to discuss heartbreak on Valentine's Day.
On Thursday evening of this week I saw Peta Lily's show 'Imperfection.' The blurb said it was about art, death and Charles Bukowski - so I knew I'd love it! I've been trying to figure out who my audience are for the show I'm writing - not in the target audience sense - but who are they? Peta Lily addressed us as an audience; she mentioned the ticket price and whether we'd got a drink before the show, and she consciously said she was making art about art.
So I made a list - 'My audience are...'
Drinking buddies, strangers in a bar or old acquaintances
Past or potential conquests
Passengers on a journey
Patients awaiting treatment and their relatives
The last possibility links to a the new thematic content I'm playing with, and it's also the most difficult in terms of the existing structure I've already written. But has been fascinating to research....
It's in this interview that Waits famously states that he'd 'rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.' Initially I had titled the show 'Hair in the Gate', but 'Frontal Lobotomy' had more music and less need for an explanation. It led me down a new research path, and I began to find more links with the personal story I wanted to tell and with Waits himself. I'm interested in healing and transformation, and how we pick ourselves up after failure or heartbreak. How laughing and crying are at once the same and different. The space between the limbic, emotional brain, and the pre-frontal cortex, which houses our intelligence and rationality. For someone who has been lobotomised, this link is irrevocably severed, leaving them functioning (though not always) but soulless, like there is a piece missing.
So this week I have given words to my sorrows, written my confessionals, formed the images from the past that I didn't want to see, and then laughed.
'I'm taking your picture, pigeons. I'm writing you down, Dawn. Allen Ginsberg
I don't have a piano to blame my drinking on. I finished writing the piece on Sunday night, and still can't bring myself to look at it properly. It's changed quite a lot thematically even in the past week, so I know there's some stuff to add. It's personal too, and a bit dark...quite a bit dark. I don't know if I can read it back yet. I might have to finish the bourbon first!
Waits speaks a great deal about his creative process in interviews - when he isn't evading questions or talking about moles - and his writing has been described as the result of scavenging or channeling. He's said that he likes to think of himself as an antenna, and that it's always good to get a place name and a type of food into a song. I read a transcription of a conversation that he had with Jim Jarmusch, where he described driving and reading roadside signs and the people he passed - and those listed items became the raw material for a song. He has a very interesting way of talking about food and places....
I did some scavenging of my own when generating the material for the piece. I found it helpful to set myself little tasks. I started making a list of all of the Waitsian onomatopoeia that cropped up in my reading and listening, mostly the words that critics used when they were describing his voice, or the words he likes to use for their rhythm and musicality. I ended up with about 70 words, that I then grouped into 'families', then I wrote a poem from them - here it is....
The soar dirge slurred and churned in the murky, lurid lurks
Screaming, steaming, streaming in seeds
One last wheezy, scuzzy ooze
Before hoisting and twisting into a waltz
The gravel-coated spatula, dipped a staggering rattle in the batter
Trilled with glitter and sniffing out the grotty beats
With a strop-bop stomp, and a honky-tonk hum plonk
It sucked, soaked, and finally croaked
A shuffle, mumble, warble, stumble and gargle later
The slime glided with spice, sighs and metropolitan slide
Leaving a swizzle drizzle, leering on a groaning, moaning bone
And a woozy boom croon, shooting crude skews
The torch was alight with a grunt and a shunt
Snarling, scraping and scratching the surface
To slam the clanging jangles, crash, flash, smash
Time to lick the brick and flick the whip
There was some scavenging on FB too! A couple of weeks ago I posted asking for words to do with Show-business and Apocalypse - the title of one of Waits' albums is 'Glitter and Doom' which pretty much epitomises his style: Grand Weepers and Grim Reapers. There were some very creative suggestions, it seems lots of my friends enjoy word games, and we all got a bit carried away - I know I did! I've listed them below, and I will find a way to get these into the show! I think they need their own scene!
Tits, Teeth and Terror
Ziegfeld and Zombie
ApocaLips
Apocatits
The End is Thighs
A-Pucker-lips, Now
Fall Out Bunker
Armagetiton
Ragna-Rock
Fabulous Demise
28 Sashays Later
Glamourgeddon
World War Booby-Z
Nuclear Frisson
The End is Knee-High
Cracks of Doom
In Diana Jones: Temple of Strewn...Clothes
Luvvies at the End of the World
Armaggedon in the Round
Grease Damnation
Choc Ices at the End of Time
Act One, Scene Oblivion
Skull and Costume Ring
Show and Tell-ophone Call from Istanbul
End of Days Matinee
Annihilation Razzmatazz
Four Unicorn Men of the Apocalypse
Adrenalin Burst
Pantomime and Pain
Armageddon Artistes