Studs Terkel Interviews Allen Ginsberg and Philip Glass on WFMT, Chicago 1990 - part 2

 [Philip Glass - Photograph by Allen Ginsberg - Kiev Restaurant, NYC, 1993 - Photo c. Allen Ginsberg Estate] 

continuing from yesterday

ST: Resuming with Allen Ginsberg and Philip Glass, poet (and) composer working together. We heard just a piece of the very haunting "Satyagraha - the Evening Song", earlier, that opened the Lyric Opera season. It was a pip of an opening. Critics and audience both (raved). That was three years ago...
Liquid Days?  (Songs from) Liquid Days) is what?

PG: Well, it's a collection of songs I did. In a way, it's kind of a problem to talk about because it was the first songs I did in English, and now, four or five years later, I've done a whole set of songs with Allen in English. And I wanted to do a set of songs using the English language,  because I 'd done..Satyagraha was written with....
ST: Well, Satyagraha was Sanskrit. That was quite a job for the performers.
PG: Yea, that's right. And Akhenaten was done in Ancient Egyptian .
ST: The what was?
PG: The Akhenaten
ST: Akhenaten was done in Ancient Egyptian
PG: And Einstein.. used..more and more used numbers. One, two, three, four.
ST: In numbers?
PG: Yeah. So I wanted to do something in English and I asked friends of mine who were songwriters to.. if they had.. basically, I said, "Look, do you have any lyrics you're not using, something that I could...?"  And I asked David Byrne for a set of lyrics (in fact, the song that we're going to play is from him). Suzanne Vega gave me a set of words, Laurie Anderson did, and Paul Simon did. And, actually, the funny thing is, I asked at a time when Suzanne Vega hadn't done her first record yet, and I wanted to pick an unknown writer or a songwriter (because I had Paul Simon and Laurie Anderson and David Byrne and I was feeling really self-conscious about all these, I wanted to pick someone that no one had ever heard of  - so I picked Suzanne Vega - and then she.. her record came out about the same time that our record did, and so she's hardly an unknown songwriter anymore! - At any rate, this song..  They each gave me lyrics to write. The one that David (Byrne) gave me was written out on a number of pieces of paper, just two or three lines in different colored ink and he let me assemble it together, make my own set of lyrics out of it. And the Roche Sisters are singing this song, by the way
AG: Who are they?
PG: The Roche Sisters
ST; And, actually, Laurie Anderson also did something for it.
PG: She contributed lyrics for a song also.
ST: I call her Laurie-and-her-magic-violin.. No, there used to be, there used to be a radio star, years ago, named Rubinoff-and-his-magic-violin
AG:  Rubinoff.
ST: Yes, I speak of Laurie-and-her-magic-violin
AG:  And Jack Benny, wasn't he..?
ST: That's right. So, Laurie-and-her.. but this is David Byrne's piece
PG: Yes, it's David Byrne's words and my music and The Roche Sisters are singing  

[Beginning at approximately thirty-six-and-a-half minutes in (and continuing to approximately forty-one-and-a-quarter minutes in), Terkel plays"Liquid Days (Part 1)" (vocals by The Roches) from Philip Glass's album Songs from Liquid Days)]

ST: And so it ends - like that
AG: That's very pretty
PG: Thank you.
ST: You've heard this before?
AG: Yeah, I wasn't aware of it, but ,  I immediately, as it got on..
ST: What is it that happens ? (I'm just curious. It.. I imagine, technically, what happens there?, technically?)
PG: In which way?
ST: The sound, as we hear the sound..
PG: You mean how it ends?  or..?
ST: Yeah, I mean, just generally. I know the keyboards are electronic..
PG: Yeah..well, that's a combination of electronic and acoustic.You heard a flute and there are strings, real strings, and a.. The way we recorded it? We reorded it in the studio. But we did do a tour. I got a little tour together, and I toured.. (it was a little mini-tour, we did Europe, San Francisco and Los Angeles. But on the record, I also had …Linda Ronstadt sang on the record and she came on tour, the Roche Sisters came on, Doug Perry, who was also on the record. So it was..
ST: The guy who played Ghandi in Satyagraha
PG: Yeah and we did a little mini-tour, and it turned out we can do it live
ST: I was thinking The Roche Sisters - they're three sisters and they're natural sisters
PG: Yeah.
ST: And I thought, here we go, World War II, the 'Forties, the Andrews Sisters, much has happened technologically  in so many ways. And the Andrews Sisters, the Roche Sisters you have the history of America of the past forty years.
AG: And changes..
ST: The changes. 
AG: ..in the psyche.
ST: "Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me" - and David Byrne
PG: David Byrne's from Baltimore, by the way. He grew up in Baltimore.
ST: You, David Byrne, Billie Holiday and H.L.Mencken
AG: And don't forget Edgar Allan Poe's grave
ST: "And felt the strangeness of Baltimore again"
PG: Yes, that's right

ST (to AG): Allen, as you were listening to..yourself.. You go back and forth during this concert, I gather
PG: Well, I play some solo piano, and Allen reads some poetry.

ST: Allen, your turn. 
AG: Well, I thought there's a.. there's a piece from the opera, which is done with Australian aborigine songsticks, which I was using, so it was rhythm instruments performing that little "Dope Calypso". But an Australian aborigine, as a songman, takes perhaps thirty years to learn his trade, because what the song is   is a,like, an encyclopedia of the nomadic cycle that he travels with his tribe when they.. It has to be all the information of where you can get wichetty grubs, where you can get food, where the stars will be at what portion of the year. So, they have little clap-sticks (AG displays them, sounding them out). And they repeat the verses, each verse, a number of times, and the village, the whole village repeats the verses with them. So this poem is modelled on that and it fits also with our notion of the transitoriness of nations  (Fall of America, or Hydrogen Jukebox) 

[Beginning at approximately forty-four minutes in (and comcluding at approximately forty-five-and-a-half minutes in),  Allen reads "Ayers Rock/Uluru Song"  ("When the red pond fills fish appear.."…  "When the raindrop dries, worlds come to their end")]

ST: Yeah, That's fantastic, Because I was thinking, as Allen was doing it.. I was thinking about what we talked about earlier - "It all begins with me".  Coming back again to the person. Simple. In the real sense
AG: Well, the latest in scientific information is that when two molecules clank together, it takes an observer for that to become scientific data. So it all comes back to subject.
ST: Yeah
AG: Or, the universe is subjective
ST: Yeah, I was thinking the craziest thought. See if it makes any sense. As Allen was doing that, in that very... Suddenly it haunts you (just as (in) Philip Glass, the music haunt you),
 I was thinking of the (RMS) Titanic, - Why do you think I was thinking of the Titanic?…   Because of the arrogance of Man. You know, "Nothing's ever going to stop this!", and that should have been at the right moment, (if you think of man's humility). We haven't learned, tho'
AG: So when's Earth Day? 
ST: Coming up
AG: April 22nd? 23rd?
ST: Twentieth anniversary
AG: yea, there's going to be a big action on Wall Street, a whole bunch of people are going to sit in on Wall Street and get arrested. I think. And in Central Park, in New York, there going to have a giant music festival to celebrate Earth. And I think the tuna companies have declared finallythat they'll stop catching tuna fish in nets that catch dolphins also. That's.. (oh, while you were in Brazil (Philip), that came out, they finally..Heinz tuna-fish said that they'd no longer accept (or) buy tuna fish that involves the capture of dolphins 

ST: Just to remind..  Not to interrupt but to remind listeners that Allen Ginsberg (who we've been hearing) and Philip Glass, together - that's tomorrow-night, and you can see, it'll be.. there's a spontaneous air to this, and a refreshing one too. At the same time there's a theme,  and the theme is the one we've been talking about really - it all begins with you (there in the audience). Center East -  because they're.. under the auspicies of, or rather for the benefit of a Buddhist organization, Jewel Heart, and Center East is the place, Center East at 7701 Lincoln in Skokie. So that's eight o'clock tonight.
One more round to go.

And so I was thinking this is the last round for now, until you guys, tomorrow-night on stage, Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg. And there's another piece of music - [to PG] - You say you play solo piano
PG: Yeah, this is a piece that…
ST: Acoustic piano too . This is a piece that was identified with a movie called The Thin Blue Line. It's a film about a man who was put into jail for a crime that he..apparently he hadn't committed at all - a guy named Randall Dale Adams - and a filmmaker named Errol Morris stumbled across this case and began interviewing people and filming it and, as a result of the film, the guy was actually released, and the real killer confessed. During the..
ST: This is The Thin Blue Line you're talking about? - Oh, that's right
PG: So this music is thematically from that. Maybe if we have.. I would think that maybe we should just hear part of it, because the piece is a
ST: Let's fade part of it and then we'll hear Allen once more, to close with whatever it is of his choice. So this.."Metamorphosis"
Any connection here with the (Franz) Kafka theme?
PG: Well, I also use some of this music for a staging of the Kafka play, and, in a way. I thought the whole thing that happened to Randall Dale Adams.. In the Kafka, there were a lot of  reverberations that seemed to me very authentic. 
ST: You haven't set Kafka yet, have you?
PG: No. no I haven't, but I've done music for it,  plays that were based on him.
AG: Well, that would really be up your alley, in a funny way. 
PG: You know I've finally worked with (Edgar Allan) Poe. I've set Poe, and I find….
AG: What Poe?
PG: The Fall of the House of Usher
AG: Uh-huh
ST: Oh, "The Fall of the House of Usher", you did "(The) Fall of The House of Usher, did you?
PG: Yes, that's right. Yeah, and that.. maybe because I was from Baltimore, but that.. in a way, Poe was such a forerunner of much modernism, so I felt very at home with it.    
ST: Here then, "Metamorphosis"

[Beginning at approximately forty-nine minutes in (and concluding at approximately fifty-one minutes in), Terkel plays a recording of Philip Glass playing his own composition, "Metamorphosis"]

ST: This is a slow reluctant playing, very reluctant, because you can see it building. And you'll hear some of this tomorrow-night. There, Philip Glass at the piano, and that was certainly..  several of these pieces….

to be continued

[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately thirty-four- and-a-half minutes in and continuing until approximately fifty-one-and-a-quarter minutes in]

Philip Glass - 2

More Glass - Philip Glass's birthday today - continuing from yesterday, a Philip Glass weekend.

PG: "I had met Allen Ginsberg many times after I returned from Paris and India in 1967. He, of course was close to William Burroughs, whom I knew from the Chappaqua film work when I was assisting Ravi Shankar. We had shared the stage quite a few times at music-poetry events and at the Nova Convention in 1979 in New York City, a celebration of Burroughs' work. But we didn't do any work together until 1988. It then happened that a theater group that emerged from the Vietnam Veterans Against the War was organizing a fund-raising event that had, as its major event, an evening at the Shubert Theater on Broadway. Tom Bird from the theater company called me and asked if I would participate. I agreed but really had no idea what I would do.
A few days later I was in the St. Mark's Bookshop and Allen happened to be there, in the poetry section. I was inspired to ask him if he would perform at the event. He immediately accepted. I then asked if we could perform together, using a poem of his and new music which I would compose. In a flash, he picked up a copy of his Collected Poems off the shelf, deftly opened to the section, "The Fall of America", and in a few seconds his fingers pointed to the lines, "I'm an old man now", from "Wichita Vortex Sutra". I went home and, starting with that line, in a few days had composed the music, stopping after the line, "..stop for tea and gas". We only had a few weeks before the Shubert performance and we rehearsed at my house, where I had the piano. This, our first collaboration, came together quickly.After that we began to see each other often, and since we lived not far from each other in the East Village, our regular visits were no problem."    

    



See further selections from Hydrogen Jukebox on the Allen Ginsberg Project - here

See other Ginsberg Project Glass postings - here and here 

Here's Philip and Patti Smith celebrating Allen together

Friday's Weekly Round-Up - 244

            [Howl & Other Poems - Allen Ginsberg - recent edition -  Mojo Publishing House, Taipei,Taiwan (2015)]

All this talk about Allen Ginsberg's ubiquity. "Did you know", I said, "Did you know that there are Columbia students, Columbia undergraduate students, who don't know who Allen Ginsberg is!"  (Betsy Ladyzhets, writing in Bwog, Columbia Student News)

[Steve Silberman, Allen Ginsberg and Marc Olmsted, San Jose, California, 1986

 - Photograph by Marc Geller]

Steve Silberman might also be considered ubiquitous these days. A wonderfully positive response to his new book on autism - "Neurotribes - The Legacy of Autism and How To Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently" (he was recently awarded the prestigious 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize)  has led to a whole lot of press including this (from last weekend's UK Guardian - "My Hero - Allen Ginsberg" - "Allen's voice had an expressive range and gravity that atttested to his belief that, "the only poetic tradition is the voice out of the burning bush". Allen seemed like the happiest, most-awake middle-aged man I had ever seen" 


We've spotlighted before Allen and ASL (American Sign Language) - here. 
Here's more, and a more recent manifestation of it - Crom Saunders signing Allen's "Homework",  (the poem he wrote, in parody of and hommage to Kenneth Koch). 

John Sinclair - It's All Good - A John Sinclair Reader - Fifty years of poetry and prose. Read about it in the Detroit News 

Poetry Summit in Woodstock tonight - read about it here.

Michael McClure, a rare appearance at the opening of his wife's show (Amy Evans McClure). Read an extended account in the San Francisco Chronicle  

Hydrogen Jukebox presentation this weekend in Nashville  This version, "a slightly altered version" - "Instead of a poet-narrator…(John) Hoomes (Nashville Opera's dramatic director) has substituted an actor (Henry Haggard) who will serve as kind of guide during the performance. Otherwise, Hoomes is staging (it) as it was first presented - uncut - and, most importantly, uncensored".

You're a regular Allen Ginsberg Project follower? (you follow our daily posts?)
Then sign up as one of our "Google Friends" and let us know. You've delved into our voluminous archives? (if you haven't, check them out immediately, at the bottom right hand corner of this page). You're conversant not only with Allen but much of "the Beat Generation" (in both its literary and social manifestations)? 
The recently-published compendium/survey from Backbeat Books, The Beat Generation FAQ - All That's Left To Know About The Angel-Headed Hipsters by Rich Weidman, seems to be pitched to you. 
You know everything, but still maybe there's a few things you should know.

The Heart of The Hydrogen Jukebox - ASL

Here's something we've been meaning to post for some time now. 

The extraordinary development of Allen and ASL - American sign-language. 



From Miriam Nathan and Don Feigel's remarkable documentary, "The Heart of The Hydrogen Jukebox". 

The date is 1984. The location, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf  (NTID) in Rochester, New York, (a workshop entitled "Two Worlds, One Spirit" (with Allen in attendance), designed to address the topic of poetry and deafness). Patrick Graybill is the deaf poet-performer who shakes up the room and blows everybody's minds. 

Jim Cohn describes it (a significant, breakthrough moment) in his definitive book, "Sign Mind - Studies in American Sign Language Poetics", Graybill's extraordinary "improvisational translation" of one of the most enduring images of Howl - "Hydrogen Jukebox"   

"He (Graybill) took an imaginary quarter out of his pants pocket and placed it on the make-believe jukebox he had outlined before him. Becoming the jukebox..one arm retrieved a record, and in its vertical position, brought it towards the center, turned it horizontal, and laid it on his other upturned hand, the turntable. With the platter on the table, and the axis for its spinning created by his middle fingers, down came the needle. A look of concern crossed his face, then fear, then terror as his body, his hands, convulsed wildly spinning; projecting the chaos of the machine out of control. The moment has hung eternal in my mind. The facing, outstretched palms - no longer rotating, but like heavy pistons - drew all the energy in the room to their last compression. Then, exploding outwards, with open-mouthed agony, mushroom clouds slashed through our collective brains." 

AG: "Hydrogen Jukebox" - "What is a "Hydrogen Jukebox"? A Hydrogen Jukebox. Of course, that refers to a sound thing, the jukebox anyway...a jukebox is a record-machine, a mechanical record-machine, in the bars...  oh, the "Hydrogen"?  (that's) the hydrogen bomb..The noise of the jukebox is apocalyptic...so the emergence of that kind of rock n roll, that kind of heavy noise, is almost like the beginning of the explosion of the end of the world. "Hydrogen Jukebox"...but it depend on...it's a very abstract one...but there are two concrete things -  there's a jukebox, and then there's hydrogen. Hydrogen is real and a jukebox is real, and when you put them together it makes an unusual kind of jukebox... What I'm wondering is, once it is explained, does any kind of interesting sparkle come through with that combination? or does that go dead in translation? how would you translate it?

The incident made a lasting impression on many people in attendance. According to Cohn, Ginsberg talked fondly about it for years afterwards. Graybill himself was inspired to go further, not merely working from English to ASL, sign-for-word, but composing directly in sign language. Others began composing directly in sign language too, notably Peter Cook (soon to develop his work, alongside hearing collaborator, Kenny Lerner, in The Flying Words Project). Here's Cook in 1995 on PBS's United States of Poetry. Here he is six years later, at UCSD (introduced by UCSD Literature Professor, Michael Davidson).  



In the Spring of 2012, Swarthmore College hosted Signing Hands Across The Water - An International Festival of Sign Language Poetry from the United Kingdom and the United States, utilizing BSL (British Sign Language) as well as ASL. The main event can be watched here and a selection of videos from the workshops may be viewed here 

Happy Birthday Philip Glass

Not the 75th (with all the big hoopla - see here!) but the 76th (just as worthy!)
 - Happy Birthday, Philip Glass!

Here's some further selections (from Hydrogen Jukebox) to celebrate the occasion
here, here, here, here and here.

A Thursday Round Up

[The Ginsberg visage looming colorfully over First Avenue & East 9th St, New York City, announcing this weekend's upcoming Howl Festival. Art by Chico]

A Thursday Round-Up instead of a Friday Round-Up today, in preparation for tomorrow, June 3 -"the big day" - what would have been Allen's 85th birthday!

Howl Festival in full array, kicks off tomorrow, Friday-night, in Tompkins Square Park, “just before dusk”, with the annual group-reading of the poem, “conducted in a symphonic manner”, by Bowery Poetry Club’s Bob Holman, and featuring, this year, amongst others, Ed Sanders, Steven Taylor, Eliot Katz, Hettie Jones, Bob Rosenthal, David Henderson, John Giorno, Miguel Algarin and Andy Clausen. For more on the multitude of other Howl events – see here

And meanwhile in Edinburgh, Read This Press and The Forest have combined to host Happy Birthday Allen Ginsberg

And, as we mentioned last week, in Atlanta, Georgia, there’s the Atlanta Howl-a-Thon.

In the meantime...

We like to start with stories about the apocalypse, how's this? - taking shelter from the tornado (twice!) during the performance of Hydrogen Jukebox!

Jerome Weeks recounts - he actually had - this experience (recently, at the Sanders Theatre, Fort Worth Texas) here - and Peter Simek, here. John Austin's preview, in the Star-Telegram (of the piece he describes - flatteringly, it should be pointed out - as "the love child of Ginsberg and minimalist composer Philip Glass"), may be read here. Scott Cantrell's review, an enthusiastic review, in the same paper, several days later may be read here.

Speaking of enthusiastic reviews. We know we've sung its praises before, but here's another review (Jarren LaLonde Alenier's at The Dressing) of The Beat Atlas

And Lewis Huxley at Popmatters looks at another of Bill Morgan's books, The Typewriter Is Holy.

Lest you missed them, and strictly speaking only peripheral to our Ginsberg concerns, but worth reading, two from the West Coast - Carolyn Kellogg (in the LA Times) on Kerouac in Orlando, Florida - and Ron Dart in San Francisco writes of the Beats and the California mountains.

Drinking tea/without sugar/no difference. We love Allen's haiku - and we love Tim Joiner's under-stated film evocation of it.