PREFACE
The general sense of insecurity was expressed in growing levels of violence and bigotry. Vicious skirmishes between political opponents were common. The calls for a strong leader to take command grew louder. Thus the culture of the Weimar period, which had stood for democracy, for internationalism and for a new order, started to founder even before 1933. A massive backwash of resentment was building up in Germany, against the government, against foreign influences and against a perceived breakdown of traditional values. When the surge of reaction hit the arts, it swept aside the whole edifice—Constructivism and topless revues, Thomas Mann and Tarzan of the Apes, Bert Brecht and Josephine Baker alike. —Gwendolen Webster, Kurt Merz Schwitters
SCHWITTERS CRACKS UP HITLER
A century ago—between World War I and World War II—the artist Kurt Schwitters spent ten years developing an unusual nonsense poem. He gave dozens of recitals, in Germany, Czechoslovakia, Holland, and Switzerland, then later in Norway and England. His poem grew and changed with every performance. He invented a method for transcribing the piece, and self-published a thousand copies.
In that era of resurgent nationalism, Schwitters was a pacifist and Utopian supranationalist: he opposed the idea of nation-states. In 1924 he wrote, “Anyone who is supranational cannot understand the hatred that nations have for each other.”
Schwitters could get along in several languages; he understood that people are divided by language. Our mother tongue is a mechanism for internalizing our nation’s prejudices, clichés, metaphors, knee-jerk associations, and lies. We are polluted from our earliest years with baked-in historical agendas. Someone who does not speak my language may be my enemy.
In writing about his sound-poetry Schwitters announced his personal mission to free words and letters from the imposition of meaning. Behind this proclamation one discerns a deeper understanding: he is referring to the evils linguistic differences encourage. Rather abstractly, Schwitters explains:
Abstract poetry evaluates values against values. You could also say “words against words.” This makes no sense, but it creates the sense of a world, and that is what matters. (The common soldier must show respect and deference to every officer.)
Transference of the artist’s worldview. (Callus and corn ointment in a society at peace, war merchandise.) Total experience greens brain, but the shaping is what matters…. And you? (Sign up for war bonds!) Decide for yourself what is poem, what is frame.
The dada movement, back in 1916, had proclaimed that government lies led to World War I. Literary historian Jed Rasula explains, “[Hugo] Ball, like so many other artists, flinched at the platitudes used to whip up martial fever, he felt that language itself was being poisoned.” Kurt Schwitters’ response, after the war, had been to take scraps of these poisoned languages and reassemble them into collage, concocting fresh language with no denotation—no corrupt social meaning.
Schwitters said, “The Ursonate is the most purely abstract of my poems.” All instrumental music is abstract: music without lyrics makes no referential statement. When language is similarly freed from making referential statements—as with Ur Sonata—our unconscious can freely apprehend.
Abstract words seem funny; we laugh. Then, as the poem begins to sound beautiful, we feel joy. Credit Kurt Schwitters with awakening the joyous, preverbal awareness we experienced as little kids.
Consider the schoolbook series from the sixties, Phonics Is Fun. Is it fun learning to read? Through phonics lessons, beginning readers figure out that phonemes are meaningless letter-combinations lodged inside of words: “-at” is in cat and hat. The picture of a cat wearing a hat is funny. But Kurt Schwitters is funnier than phonics, immersing us in a phonemic bath that never dries up into meaning. His Ur Sonata theme tatta tatta frees “-at” of any mission to denote cat or hat. In Ur Sonata, phonemes escape social language; they attain the autonomy of musical notes—as in composer Oliver Nelson’s song-title, “The Blues and the Abstract Truth.” The abstract truth we experience bathing in Schwitters’ sound poetry is transcendental. For an hour, we’re transported to translingual Utopia.
In January 1937, Kurt Schwitters—that tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired man—fled for his life from Germany. The deadly serious Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had singled out Schwitters as an exemplary degenerate artist, since in his collage-making Schwitters famously specialized in elevating garbage to the status of art-material. In June 1937, Hitler was photographed for a newspaper, standing in front of Kurt Schwitters’ signature artwork, the Merzbild collage, confiscated from a museum and now hung, askew, in the “Complete Insanity” room of the “Degenerate Art” exhibition in Munich. In the photo, Hitler is laughing.
Score one for Schwitters, self-titled “bourgeois and idiot”: he cracked up Hitler.
LIVING UR SONATA
I first heard Ur Sonata when I was a boy in the sixties—recited by my father. In the eighties, when I was performing it regularly, my audiences seemed to experience Ur Sonata as a novel discovery, not the landmark classic I knew it to be. Today—forty years on—an Internet search turns up dozens of Ur Sonata performances on Youtube, along with hundreds of articles and blogposts, yet few people I chat with in my bookstore are familiar with this century-old artwork.
Kurt Schwitters knew Ur Sonata could be a baffling poem, but he hoped it would outlive his era. His 1927 essay Meine Sonate in Urlauten aims to help make the poem accessible. The essay is descriptive (“The sonata consists of four movements….”), explanatory (“The gathering of the themes and inspirations was dadaistic and arbitrary….”), analytical (“Many interpretations are possible…imagination is required to read correctly….”), defensive (“Work improves the reader’s receptivity much more than questions or thoughtless criticism….”), instructional (“Every performer can put together his or her own Cadenza based on the themes….”), and reflexive (“My explanations are a document concerning the inexplicability of a work of art, or, as Raoul Hausmann, puts it: ‘First comes art, then piano playing.’”).
In Living Ur Sonata—written a century after Schwitters—I too aim to help make the poem accessible. My tactic is to mix personal storytelling with historical narrative. Ur Sonata is a poem that’s accompanied me for sixty years, offering joy and solace. I hope Living Ur Sonata assists you, dear reader, in gaining as much benefit as I have from Kurt Schwitters’ delightfully baffling, profound composition.
Here are two reasons to celebrate Kurt Schwitters today especially: he puts us in touch with our common humanity, and he inspires us to defy our own era’s resurgent nationalism. A hundred years after he composed it, let’s conjure Kurt Schwitters to transcend authority and seize the hour, by singing Ur Sonata.
CHAPTER BEEEE?—THEME 1
October 5th, 2021
To: Eric Blitz
How is your recovery going? I have been thinking about our resolution back in 2010 that we would do an album together. Because I’m in Karl Berger’s extended circle, I can use a studio up in Woodstock for low price. It’s also possible through Karl’s Patreon program to work with him.
***
When Pronoblem died, his hard drive of Urchestra music became inaccessible. Then, his Fluxmass Internet account went offline; links he’d posted to Pennsound’s Kurt Schwitters webpage no longer worked. As the years passed—with Eric’s health crises, my heart surgery, mom’s and dad’s deaths—to make a professional Urchestra recording was feeling more urgent.
***
August 8th, 2022
Clubhouse Studio
Rhinebeck, New York
“Fümms bö,” whisper, mutter, and chant Jenny Gonzalez-Blitz, Rebecca Migdal, and Creative Music Studio co-founder Ingrid Sertso—born 1934 in Mannheim, Germany—overlapping, disjunct, simultaneous. “Fümms bö wö,” they intone, garbling and tangling the syllables. “Fümms bö wö tääää?” It’s chaos at their mics.
“Fümms bö, fümms bö wö, Fümms bö wö tää zää Uuuu?” They’re the Three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, conjuring and invoking, furious and ecstatic, spinning, measuring, and cutting the thread of life—Wantee, Helma, and Henriette, ”Rattatata tattatata tattatata.”
Creative Improvisers Orchestra director Karl Berger—born 1935 in Heidelberg—ranges up and down the grand piano, Eric‘s percussion percolating, my shakuhachi all hiss, swish, chirp, and coo.
February eighth, after surgery, John Landino passed away. Last Sunday, in Montague Center, Eric, Jenny, Mitch, Bob Wilson and I played John’s memorial Ur Sonata.
“Rinnzekete bee bee nnz krr müüüü?” The voices collide, overlap, and merge.
“Fümms bö,” they mourn. Karl’s chords block and roll.
“Fümms böwö,” they pray. Eric’s cymbals tingle. My shakuhachi’s unsure.
“Fümms bö wö täää?????”
CHAPTER ZEE—THEME 18
December 15th, 2017
Easton, Pennsylvania
“Zätt üpsiilon iks, Wee fau Uu, Tee äss ärr kuu,” Rebecca, Jenny and I exclaim, as Eric crashes behind us. “Pee Oo änn ämm, Ell kaa Ii haa, Gee äff Ee dee zee beeee?”
We’ve taken advantage of our book-release tour supporting Fight Fascism!—the new issue of World War 3 Illustrated attacking Trump—to squeeze in an Ur Sonata evening at Book & Puppet Company, the place Rebecca and I just launched. Artist’s-book maker Maryann Riker—one of our Mangled Myths puppet-show regulars—sits with a friend. Maryann asks, “Andy and Rebecca, have you met Lette?” We have not: we only moved to Easton this year, when I got fired by Bank Street College.
Turns out we’re not the only dada refugees around here: eighty-two-year-old Lette Eisenhauer, the taboo-busting young Fluxus performance artist from the sixties, is one of our neighbors.
CHAPTER DEE—THEMES 3, 11
We play until death comes to fetch us.
—Kurt Schwitters, Letter to Christof Spengemann, 1946
February 14th, 2017
Anchor House of Artists
Northampton, Massachusetts
Sparkling kaleidoscopic swirls, projected from Youtube onto our portable movie screen, morph, burst and implode. We’ve muted the robotic text-to-synth Ur Sonata soundtrack because nine Urchestra members provide live accompaniment for Pronoblem’s abstract animation. It’s our first time together since Bailey’s memorial.
“Rakete rinnzekete, rakete rinnzekete, rakete rinnzekete, rakete rinnzekete, rakete rinnzekete, rakete rinnzekete,” sing Rebecca and Jenny, as I riff on flute, before stopping to point out, “Beeeee bö.”
Borrowed motorcycle, curving gravel road. September eleventh, Pronoblem died.
His son Miles is sitting in on guitar. John Landino’s neighbor Jack Nelson contributes double bass, Landino himself is playing trumpet, Eric Blitz is on percussion, DJ Glove’s on sander, tape-measure, and guitar. Bob Wilson brought homemade synths.
Psychopomps of Merz.
Today is Pronoblem’s birthday, and the city of Holyoke has officially designated it James Bickford Day. Maybe some city councilors are privately glad Pronoblem isn’t going to annoy them anymore—but at least they’ve honored his love for Holyoke.
We’re stomping and shouting, “Bumm bimbimm, bamm bimbimm, Bumm bimbimm, bamm bimbimm, Bumm bimbimm, bamm bimbimm, Bumm bimbimm, bamm bimbimm, Bemm, bemm, Bemm, bemm, Bemm, bemm, Bemm, bemm.”
For us to play, does one of us have to die?
CHAPTER EEE—THEME 2
March 1980
Uptown, Chicago
I’ve been living in Chicago for seven months, working as a receiving clerk for a B. Dalton Bookseller chain-store on North Michigan Avenue. I’m dating my boss.
I dropped out of Yale to study music with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. My once-a-month teacher is sax and flute master Douglas Ewart. I also take twice-weekly theater improv lessons with Josephine Forsberg, founder of Players Workshop of Second City. I rehearse every other night with singer/songwriter Ellen Rosner’s band, Fine Tuning. I perform in schools sometimes, as Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island, opposite Earth Theater founder Rudolf Munro’s Long John Silver.
One night, I get home to find in my mailbox a thick nine by twelve manilla envelope from Germany. My high-school friend Laura Kelsey’s familiar handwriting is on the outside. I wait till I’m at the kitchen table in my eighth-floor studio apartment before opening the package.
Laura is spending her junior year in Munich. Her letter explains how, on receiving my request, she’d visited the university library, and yes, there were the collected works of Kurt Schwitters. Five volumes. She’d copied the pages I needed.
I flip the stack. So beautiful. I can hear Peter Froehlich.
I try reciting. It comes out jazz. Tapping my foot, I sing, off-beat, “Dedesnn nn rrrrr, Ii Ee, mpiff tillff toooo. Dedesnn nn rrrrr, desnn nn rrrrr, nn nn rrrrr, nn rrrrr, Iiiii Eeeee, m, mpe, mpff, mpiffte, mpiff till, mpiff tillff, mpiff tillff toooo. Dedesnn nn rrrrr, Ii Ee, mpiff tillff toooo, Dedesnn nn rrrrr, Ii Ee, mpiff tillff toooo tillll. Dedesnn nn rrrrr, Ii Ee, mpiff tillff toooo, tillll, Jüü-Kaa?”
Will I ever perform it?
***
March 1997
Downtown, Chicago
Lynn Book moved to New York a few years ago; last March, she had a solo Ur Sonata show in Brooklyn, at Roulette. I’m working a thousand hours a week at our new Navy Pier place: Children’s Museum Store. A regular customer from my killed-by-chainstores Children’s Bookstore, mentions, at the register, that he saw a photo of me in the MCA.
What?
I contact Lynn. A couple months ago, a Museum of Contemporary Art curator phoned, asking for relics of our Ur Sonata shows to include in the exhibit Art in Chicago, 1945-1995. Lynn dug up some photos and a piece of gardenhose.
I’ve got to see this. Our store is super-busy, but I zip over on a Sunday morning.
The museum is packed: I’ve never seen a crowd like this at the MCA. I’m scanning left and right: it’s paintings, sculptures, more paintings. On the lower level, there’s a Time Arts side-exhibit. There, in a plexiglass case, sits a five-inch segment of green hose, plus a photo of Lynn and me doing one of our Club Lower Links shows, wearing industrial hoses.
Thousands and thousands of Chicago artists—fifty years’ worth—and from all these—along with the two-hundred-odd others in this retrospective—the curators chose us.
CHAPTER ÄFF
“I slept in a small glassed-in porch off the dining room. There was a huge chest near my couch; the first night I was astonished to hear distinct stirrings inside it. At breakfast I felt impelled to mention the phenomenon. The twelve-year-old Schwitters boy had filled it with guinea pigs.”—Paul Bowles, Without Stopping
Kurt Schwitters had a special relationship with animals. Inside his Hannover house, this meant lots of pet guinea pigs.
On January 2nd, 1937, Kurt left for Norway—secretly. He’d learned the SS was planning to interview him about the political activities of his friends; Helma’s mother was pro-Nazi and if she’d known Kurt was fleeing, she might warn the SS. Ernst was already in Lysaker, outside Oslo. Helma remained in Hannover to safeguard the house full of Kurt’s art and to look after her father, her Nazi mother, Kurt’s mother Henriette, and the guinea pigs.
For three years, living with Ernst outside Oslo, Kurt kept up professional life, painting, making collages, writing letters, traveling, and assembling another Merzbau. But he spent part of every summer on the remote island of Hjertøya, where, based in a storage shed—the Merzhytta—he created in solitude. While he worked, Kurt habitually sang Ur Sonata.
In 1940, the Nazi invasion of Norway pushed northward; Kurt and Ernst engaged in a dangerous flight, during which Kurt used pet mice to manage stress, helping stave off an epileptic seizure (he did have a seizure later, after they’d crossed the North Sea to Scotland). Biographer Gwendolen Webster relates,
An English soldier remembered how he was struck by the sight of a figure standing perfectly still during an air-raid alarm. While everyone else scrambled for shelter, the man merely took some white mice from a jacket pocket and let them loose. When the soldier found an opportunity to question him, the man replied: “Yes, I run after them and try to catch them. You see, I can’t bear the torments and harassment of alarms anymore. I can’t stand it! So, I thought to myself that it would be better if I catch the mice. Then I don’t hear the alarm, then I don’t register the war, then I don’t take any notice of aeroplanes, then I am not afraid and just concentrate on getting the little animals back again.” When I asked him for his name, he replied, “I am Kurt Schwitters from Hannover.”
Sixty years later, on June 11th, 1997, during a pilgrimage to Schwitters’ long-abandoned Merzhytta on Hjertøya, Wolfgang Müller—Valerie Caris Blitz’s Die Tödliche Doris performance partner—was startled when, “All of a sudden, I heard a starling uttering strange sounds […] Somehow these sounds had a familiar ring. Suddenly I realized that the bird was reciting parts of the ursonate which some unknown ancestor had picked up from Schwitters long ago and transmitted over generations. Starlings are known to be masters of imitation […]. They learn the song from their parents (or parts of the song). Here, parts of the original ursonate had been transmitted without notice by the world of art.”
CHAPTER GEE—THEME 7
Sent: April 25th, 2016
Subject: Ursonate performance for Bailey
Bailey has a mass in his throat—we can't afford the biopsy and MRI so we don't know if it’s malignant, but he is on painkillers and steroids which seems to be enabling him to eat again. As for whether he would survive surgery and likely subsequent chemotherapy—at a cost of possibly $10,000—it’s all too depressing to focus on. So—we thought of at least—a medical benefit concert in which he could perform as a member of his ensemble.
June 3rd, 2016
Spanish Harlem
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” yells Jenny, encouraging the audience to cut loose. Eric’s crashing cymbals heighten the energy.
I’m running Bank Street Bookstore in Manhattan now, and have the privilege to be playing Japanese shakuhachi-flute every few months with free-jazz legends Karl Berger and Ingrid Sertso, in the new incarnation of their forty-member Creative Improvisers Orchestra—first convened back in the seventies. Our CIO concerts are held in the Casa de Musica at El Taller Latino Americano, run by Rebecca’s old friend Bernardo Palombo—who has provided his space to us for this Urchestra evening.
Rebecca calls, “Bee bee bee bee bee.” DJ Glove’s twanging guitar supports a blues run from Don Rice’s soprano sax.
John Landino’s not here: he’s had esophageal cancer. It’s in remission, but he can’t travel.
As Eric’s snare rolls, Jenny and the audience are yelling a lower note, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaa.”
Don on soprano and I—on alto sax—exchange sonic bursts, while Rebecca chants, “Zee zee zee zee zee.”
Pronoblem’s not here. His back and leg are bothering him. Cortisone injections only help so much.
Jenny and the group shout an even lower note, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.” DJ Glove’s electric sander revs.
Rebecca intones, “Rinnzekete, bee, bee.” Don and I sustain a long-tone chord.
Jenny and company hit a much lower note: “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.” Eric’s cymbals shimmer.
Mournfully, Rebecca calls, “Enn ze, enn ze.”
All together, in pain, we cry, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” thinking of Bailey, howling in spirit.
Two weeks ago, we put him to sleep.
CHAPTER HAA
Kurt Schwitters wanted to preserve his ever-evolving Ur Sonata for posterity, but it wasn’t clear how to accomplish this. Ernst Schwitters writes:
Kurt Schwitters had realized all along, that a phonetic way of noting down the Sonata was essential, if it should not die with him… With each successive publication he improved on the form of notation, and finally, in 1932, the Sonate in Urlauten was published as his last number of the MERZ magazine, no. 24. But although this is undoubtedly the most phonetic way of notation to date, it is virtually impossible to recite it correctly, simply by reading it. A prime necessity is, that one has heard Kurt Schwitters recite it as often as possible.
Audio documentation was the obvious solution. In 1924, Kurt Schwitters edited together a three-minute recording, featuring selections from a dozen phonetic themes. Biographer Gwendolen Webster suggests,
Recipients of the Merz magazine…must…have been taken aback to find that Merz 13 was a gramophone record with Kurt reciting…from the Ursonate.
Creating the record had been a challenge. Art historian Kevin Concannon explains,
Kurt Schwitters was among the first to approach sound recording as a plastic medium. Using sound film, Schwitters edited and collaged his nonsense poems after he recorded them and before he pressed them into records.
Preserving the relatively short sampler of themes had been a big project. To capture the entire piece, Schwitters would need professional help. But the second time he was able to record Ur Sonata—in 1932, at the studio of Southern German Broadcasting Company—time permitted, once again, only a thematic selection, featuring primarily the “Lanke trr gll” Scherzo.
As the years passed, uprooted by flight from Nazis, Schwitters continued to seek an Ur Sonata recording opportunity. Exiled, in 1947, weakened by heart disease and a stroke, Kurt finally got his chance. Outrageously, because of middle-brow BBC taste, the recording was not to be. Gallery owner E.L.T. Mesens explains that his place,
London Gallery organized two MERZ Poetry Recitals. Their reception by the public was characteristic of the post-war mind. If I say that there was a total lack of interest, I am not exaggerating! At the first reading, Wednesday, 5th March, 1947, the attendance was of sixteen people including two journalists.
Stefan Themerson was also there:
Two gentlemen from the BBC were invited and came. The idea was that they would record the Ur Sonata. Just record it. Schwitters read his Ur Sonata, but the gentlemen left in the middle.
Kurt Schwitters referred to Ur Sonata as the second of his two masterpieces. His principal lifework had been his Hannover “Cathedral of Erotic Misery”—later called Merzbau—an elaborate complex of constructions developed continually over fifteen years, occupying first his art studio and subsequently more and more of his house’s interior. During World War II, while Kurt lived as a refugee in London, his hometown of Hannover was playing a major industrial and logistical role in support of the German war effort. On the night of October 8th, 1943, five-hundred-and-four Royal Air Force bombers attacked military targets and residential neighborhoods in Hannover. Schwitters’ house was hit, his Merzbau ruined—surviving now only in photos and the written recollections of its visitors.
When Schwitters died in 1948, the unique way he declaimed Ur Sonata had not been documented. Just as the Hannover Merzbau was lost, so Schwitters’ masterful Ur Sonata performance also was lost.
CHAPTER II—THEME 3
“I heard Schwitters practising his Lautsonate in the crown of an old pine on the beach at Wyk on Föhr. He hissed, swished, chirped, fluted, cooed and spelled.” —Hans Arp
April 18th, 2011
Bushwick, Brooklyn
“Zikete bee bee, Rinnzekete bee bee, Rakete bee bee,” I demonstrate, tapping my foot.
I’m in a bedside chair. Jenny Gonzalez, sitting on the bed, joins the jazzy rhythm, chanting “Zikete bee bee ennze, Rinnzekete bee bee ennze, Rakete bee bee ennze.” Eric Blitz taps on the desk while we sing. Jenny warns, “Don’t annoy Bonney and Luna!” Too late, their two rats are nosing the bars.
In a few days, we’ll drive up to MUCCC, in Rochester, for a return gig.
Eric and Jenny have been together for a year—she’s seen several Urchestra shows; now she’ll join the group. Jenny’s a painter, singer, performance-poet, and contributor of comix to World War 3 Illustrated, the long-running political-comix magazine where Rebecca Migdal is an editor, and for which Eric and I provide musical accompaniment during slide-show performances.
“Schwitters didn’t perform it this way,” I tell Jenny. “At least—no one knows for sure how he handled it. His son Ernst made a recording in 1958 that he said was the same way as his dad. But Ernst does it slow and unaccented—I don’t believe Kurt was boring.”
Eric asks, “Isn’t Ernst the one who went around suing everyone?”
“He threatened Jaap Blonk and sued Eberhard Blum,” I confirm. “They both had to withdraw their records. It wasn’t just about rights: Ernst said you had to perform like Kurt. So, should John Coltrane play My Favorite Things like Julie Andrews?”
Jenny adds, “Or Frankenstein movies be like the book? Have you heard other versions of Ur Sonata?”
“Sure—lots are online, all different. It’s crazy Kurt was never filmed.”
Eric mentions, “We caught Kurt on Youtube.”
“Right, you can hear the short part they recorded.”
Jenny asks, “So, the way you’ve been doing it--?”
“Just how I started in the eighties—with jazz rhythms. How I heard it. But you should totally do it how you hear. It would be great if you’d do it differently. Steve Lindow did it his own way, last September.”
Eric remarks, “We need to issue a record. We keep talking about it, but we don’t do anything. It’s as much my fault as anyone’s.”
“Yeah, Pronoblem is sitting on all those recordings he’s made—he must have a dozen on his computer. We should edit together the best parts. I guess none of us has time.”
Art by J. Gonzalez-Blitz
CHAPTER KAA—THEME 1
“He yelled, he sniffled, he barked; his rrr rolled; his body, his hands vibrated with the rhythm of his words, flabbergasting, hypnotizing his audience.”—Kate Steinitz, Kurt Schwitters: A Portrait from Life
Noon, September 4th, 2010
Dada Invasion of West Haven
West Haven Beach, Connecticut
Psych-med interaction, seizure, ambulance fuck-up.
The first seizure is the most dangerous. Sam will not have a second.
He was twenty-three.
It’s two weeks later.
People look unreal. I’ve started wearing sunglasses.
Rebecca is in Seattle for niece Chani’s wedding. Bailey and I have driven the hour-and-a-half from Holyoke. We’re strolling from the van to the bandstand, where Landino in white gown, Bob Wilson, Pronoblem in grass-covered camo coverall, Steve Lindow, Denis Luzuriaga, and DJ Glove are testing mics and plugging together gear.
Pulling on his leash—Bailey has seen a squirrel.
Landino calls over, “You okay, Andy?”
“I’m fine.”
He comes off the stage and hugs me. “Four months,” he says. “You’ll be okay in four months.”
“I don’t know about it,” I manage.
What a terrible thought, that I should ever get over losing the person I loved more than anyone in the world.
I’m sitting at a picnic table. Bob Wilson joins me, offering, “My friend was twenty-five when he killed himself. Schizophrenia. His mom gave me his guitar.”
I smile. “That’s great she did that.”
Wow, people do not know what to say to me.
The group is warming up onstage, but I can’t do that. I crouch on the ground, blowing trumpet-blasts through my gardenhose. Bailey barks and howls. Landino bends a mic down. I share it with Bailey.
It’s time to start. I climb onto the bandstand, tying Bailey’s leash near my feet.
Performance-poet Stephen Lindow is standing in for Rebecca. A few days ago, we ran through the text. He doesn’t particularly know Ur Sonata, but he’s a great vocal improvisor. Depending on how I hold up, he may find himself carrying the show.
Guitar, synths, and tuba build a bed of sound. I’m glad to be adding a few saxophone notes. Last week, my old roommate Tobias wrote me a Facebook message: “Play a sax solo for Sam.” I will when I can.
I glance at Steve; we lean into our mics.
Slow, forceful, melodic: “Fümms bö wö tää zää Uu, pögiff, kwii Ee; Ooooooooooooooooooo.” We’re off.
We’re swimming.
He’s enjoying this, so—me too: I’m in tune with his enthusiasm. I’m suddenly all Ur Sonata, bouncing familiar dialogic syllables back and forth.
“Fö.”
“Bö.”
“Fö.”
“Bö.”
“Fö.”
“Bö.”
“Fö.”
“Bö.”
“Fö.”
“Bö.”
“Fö.”
Bailey has been growling; now he yips and jumps.
“Böwö.”
“Fümmsbö.”
“Böwö.”
“Fümmsbö.”
“Böwö.”
“Fümmsbö.”
“Böwö.”
“Fümmsbö.”
“Böwö.”
“Fümmsbö.”
“Böwö.”
“Fümmsbö.”
“Böwörö.”
Bailey’s got a pattern: bark twice, wait, bark twice, wait, bark twice. Thrice!
“Fümmsböwö.”
“Böwörö.”
“Fümmsböwö.”
“Böwörö.”
“Fümmsböwö.”
“Böwörö.”
“Fümmsböwö.”
“Böwörö.”
“Fümmsböwö.”
“Böwörö.”
“Fümmsböwö.”
Bailey’s now barking in erratic clusters. On hind legs, he strains his muzzle up—barking, barking.
“Fümmsböwötää.”
“Böwörötää.”
“Fümmsböwötää.”
“Böwörötää.”
“Fümmsböwötää.”
“Böwörötää.”
“Fümmsböwötää.”
Bailey’s now mixing bark-clusters with jumping and howling.
Steve and I have been voicing this as a quarrelsome conversation, but we’ve switched to flirtation.
“BöwörötääzääUu pö.”
“FümmsböwötääzääUu pö.”
“BöwörötääzääUu pö.”
“FümmsböwötääzääUu pö.”
“BöwörötääzääUu pö.”
“FümmsböwötääzääUu pö.”
“BöwörötääzääUu pö.”
“FümmsböwötääzääUu pö.”
Howling, howling, howling, Bailey, firmly seated, howls, howls, howls.
“BöwörötääzääUu pö.”
“FümmsböwötääzääUu pö.”
“BöwörötääzääUu pö.”
“FümmsböwötääzääUu pö.”
Steve and I blame each other for ruining the love, but--we desperately need to make up.
“FümmsböwötääzääUu pögiff.”
“BöwörötääzääUu pögiff.”
“FümmsböwötääzääUu pögiff.”
“BöwörötääzääUu pögiff.”
“FümmsböwötääzääUu pögiff.”
“BöwörötääzääUu pögiff.”
“FümmsböwötääzääUu pögiff.”
“BöwörötääzääUu pögiff.”
“FümmsböwötääzääUu pögiff.”
“BöwörötääzääUu pögiff
True confessions:
“FümmsböwötääzääUu pögiff.”
“BöwörötääzääUu pögiff.”
Silence.
Bailey yips. We forgive:
“Kwiiee.”
“Kwiiee.”
“Kwiiee.”
“Kwiiee.”
“Kwiiee.”
“Kwiiee.”
“Kwiiee.”
“Kwiiee.”
“Kwiiee.”
“Kwiiee.”
“Kwiiee.”
“Kwiiee.”
Bailey is prone.
CHAPTER ELL—THEMES 8, 9, 10
DADA, DADA, URSONATA!
Ecstatic nonsense is every child’s birthright! All ages will gurgle and coo over Kurt Schwitters’ 1920’s Dada masterwork, Ursonata (Primeval Sonata), performed for children by Lynn Book and Andy Laties. Two Saturdays: Sept. 12th & 19th, 10:30 AM. Please reserve ahead. Free. —Press release, The Children’s Bookstore, 1992
“Lanke trr gll, pe pe pe pe pe, Ooka ooka ooka ooka,” sings Lynn Book. We’re costumed in our industrial hoses. I respond, “Lanke trr gll, Pii pii pii pii pii, Züüka züüka züüka züüka.”
She’s wiggling fingers at the dozen babies in the front row, proposing, “Lanke trr gll, Rrmmp, Rrnnf.”
I query, “Lanke trr gll, Ziiuu lenn trll? Lümpff tumpff trll.”
She assures me, “Lanke trr gll, Rrumpff tilff too.”
Not satisfied, I check, “Lanke trr gll, Ziiuu lenn trll? Lümpff tumpff trll.”
She reminds me that, “Lanke trr gll, pe pe pe pe pe, Ooka ooka ooka ooka.”
I recall also that, “Lanke trr gll, Pii pii pii pii pii, Züüka züüka züüka züüka.”
She’s wiggling fingers at the babies, “Lanke trr gll, Rrmmp, Rrnnf.”
I agree, “Lanke trr gll.”
Why did I wait all these years to perform Ur Sonata for kids? Over a hundred people attend these performances, among them my own children, Sam and Sarah, aged five and three. Everyone—baby, grade-schooler, parent—ooo-ooo-ing, grimm-glimm-ing, tilla-lalla-ing along.
It makes sense. Ernst Schwitters wrote:
I shall never forget those many “MERZ-evenings,” where, as a four-, five-, and six-year-old, I used to have my regular place in the centre of the front row of seats, directly opposite my father, marveling open-mouthed at him.
It was during those evenings that the Sonata grew. It never was read off a manuscript, although in its various stages of development it had been published in art-magazines everywhere. But my father knew it by heart, and preferred to improvise the recital, as this gave him the chance to develop it continuously. Thus a great many people became witnesses of the slow development of this unique piece of—shall we say—“music” and/or abstract poetry.
Of course, Ernst’s presence informed Kurt’s experience and shaped his performance. Ur Sonata had to be perfect for children.
CHAPTER ÄMM—THEME 1
“In recent years, both Eberhard Blum, a German flutist connected with SUNY-Buffalo, and Peter Froehlich of the English Theatre at the University of Ottawa, have performed this poem brilliantly, each of them surpassing Schwitters’ own partial recording.”—Richard Kostelanetz, Text-Sound Texts, 1980
March 8th, 1979, Yale University
“Tesch, Haisch, Tschiiaa; Haisch, Tschiiaa.” I’m in the last pew. Passing Dwight Chapel after class, I’d noticed the sign. Schwitters—from dad’s Priimiittitti—free, now?!
“Haisch, Happaisch; Happapeppaisch.” The dark-suited actor radiates energy as he recites a piece he’d called “Fury of Sneezing.” Forty people are up close, I’m alone back here. “Happapeppaisch; Happapeppaisch; Happapeppaisch; Happa peppe; TSCHAA!” These abstract sound-poems—absurd dialogues—non-sequitur vignettes: seriously funny.
Ten-minute break. He’s back, announcing, dramatically, Die Sonate in Urlauten. Takes his time. Deep breath. And…. “Fümms bö wö tää zää Uu, pögiff, kwii Ee, Ooooooooooooooooooo.” His command, possession, force of will! And there’s so much! Beautiful in a way I’ve never experienced. Unpredictable, yet familiar and—romantic. Backwards alphabets? So moving.
I’m producer for Yale Dramat Children’s Theater Company—we’ve got Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem The Hunting of the Snark touring schools now. I’m always looking for pieces to adapt. This Schwitters poem? Half hour: the right length.
Too weird for schools. Leaving church, I read on the sign: Peter Froehlich.
***
Midnight, May 5th, 1979, Yale University
“Bö, bö, bö, bö, bö, böwö, böwö, böwö, böwö, böwö, böwö, böwörö, böwörö, böwörö, böwörö, böwörö, böwörö, böwöböpö, böwöböpö, böwöböpö, böwöböpö, böwöböpö, böwöböpö, böwöröböpö, böwöröböpö, böwöröböpö, böwöröböpö, böwöröböpö, böwöröböpö….”
After four hours of thirty sound-poems recited by shifting clusters of Sheep’s Clothing’s fifteen members, Scott M. is reading Ur Sonata.
If I hadn’t seen Peter Froehlich’s one-man show eight weeks ago, I’d be thinking Scott was doing great just to pronounce the syllables. But I know how wonderful this piece can be. Scott’s version is monotonous, relentless, unending. I want to leave.
How would I stage Ur Sonata?
Peter Froehlich performs his Kurt Schwitters one-man show, “MERZ”
CHAPTER ÄNN
“I cannot agree that I should pray. I cannot see any point as God has different concerns.”—Kurt Schwitters, Letter to Helma, 1940
Behind his family’s cottage, fourteen-year-old Kurt Schwitters created a garden with roses, strawberries, an artificial mountain, and a reconstructed pond. Bullies destroyed the private paradise. Poor Kurt had an hours-long attack he later called St. Vitus Dance—really an epileptic seizure.
More seizures—sometimes several daily—kept Kurt isolated. He graduated high school at twenty. Although he suffered attacks in adulthood, they were less frequent: he learned to stave off seizures with physical activity—walking and bicycling in town, hiking in the mountains, dancing at parties—plus an assortment of pharmaceuticals.
In 1920, Schwitters wrote of his teen years, “My interests changed because of the illness. I discovered my love for art. Initially, I composed rhyming couplets in the manner of music-hall comedians. During a full moon one autumn night I noticed the clear, cold moon. From then on I composed poetry in a lyrical, sentimental manner. Then music seemed to me to be the art. I learned to read music and played music all afternoon. In 1906 I saw my first moonlit landscape in Isernhagen and began to paint. One hundred watercolor landscapes by moonlight, painted from nature. Lit by stearin candles. I decided to become a painter.”
Martyrdom redeemed by creativity. Of Schwitters’ collage work, art historian Jonathan Fineberg asks, “Could his detachment with regard to his materials and his project of reorganizing fragmentary experience have been a symbolic reordering informed at least in part, by his epilepsy?”
The Nazis listed epilepsy as a condition to be eradicated. A critical task for Schwitters became to avoid seizing in public, since this could bring arrest, concentration camp and death. Before the Nazis though, Schwitters was already exploring themes of martyrdom. His 1919 story “The Onion” (Die Zwiebel) tells of a king ordering the narrator’s gruesome execution and evisceration. The king then eats our narrator’s eyeballs; this causes the king’s horrible death. The narrator’s body is reassembling, he’s resurrected! The princess begs him to bring back the king, too. Narrator instead blows up the king.
In 1940, Schwitters was imprisoned, along with thousands of other refugees, at Hutchinson Internment Camp on the Isle of Man: the English had decided any German might be a spy. The leading lights of German liberal culture, penned together, created a university for themselves, giving lectures and running discussion groups. Kurt helped launch a series of performance evenings, regularly reciting Ur Sonata and his other poems.
Outward sociability as a survival technique, concealing inward distress. In autumn 1940 letters from internment camp to Helma, Kurt wrote, “I go to our church, unable to believe in the love of humankind.”
Still, at the deepest level, he retained faith: “I retreat more and more from the rules of the Church, but I am still religious.” … “At night I hold conversations and you appear to answer. In spite of war and separation we belong to each other, forever and all eternity.”
CHAPTER OO—THEME 4
August 6th, 2009
Lower East Side
“Rr rr rr rr rr rr rr rr rr rr rum!” drawls Bowery Poetry Club founder Bob Holman.
Rebecca Migdal tries placating with, “Rrummpff tillff toooo? Ziiuu ennze ziiuu nnzkrrmüüü ziiuu ennze ziiuu rinnzkrrmüüüü!”
Unsatisfied, Bob demands, “Rr rr rr rr rr rr rr rr rr rr rr rr rum!!!”
Rebecca urges, “Rrummpff tillff toooo? Ziiuu ennze ziiuu nnzkrrmüüü ziiuu ennze ziiuu rinnzkrrmüüüü!”
I side-comment, “Rakete bee bee!”
Bob is fanatical, insisting, “Rr rr rr rr rr rr, Rr rr rr rr rr rr, Rr rr rr rr rr rr, Rr rr rr rr rr rrumm!!!!!!”
Rebecca strives with him, “Rrummpff tillff toooo? Ziiuu ennze ziiuu nnzkrrmüüü ziiuu ennze ziiuu rinnzkrrmüüüü!”
I have to point out, “Rakete bee bee.”
Bob—exhausted—relents: “Rakete bee zee.”
An emotional evening, this cremation-expense fundraiser for Valerie Caris Blitz, who passed away last week. Onstage, our ten regular Urchestra players are joined by comix artist Fly on guitar, and punk rocker Steve Wishnia on double bass. Among our dozens of friends—batting around black balloons I placed under every chair—are Fluxus co-founder Alison Knowles, who performed Schwitters in the sixties, and Lower East Side counterculture historian Clayton Patterson. Bob Holman has contributed the venue and—himself a longtime Ur Sonata performer—joined the show. His cowboy accent is a stimulating twist. Towards the Finale, Bob slips, cutting himself on his wine glass. He concludes our backwards alphabetization freely bleeding, a martyr to poetry.
CHAPTER PEE—THEME 5
I myself deployed Schwitters’ abstract art to bridge cultures, on behalf of anticommunist free enterprise. From “Trading Places”—chapter six of my memoir, Rebel Bookseller:
In January of ‘95, American Booksellers Association education director Willard Dickerson called me up and asked me to sit down. “Andy, how would you like to be dean of this fall’s booksellers school in Latvia?”
The Children’s Bookstore was headed into a demanding year. Since October of ‘94 we’d been running a small full-time outlet at Chicago Children’s Museum’s location on North Pier. Now we were immersed in planning the museum’s much larger shop at Navy Pier, to be opened in September of ‘95. We also had seventy-five book fairs on the docket. The count of superstores in the Chicago area had risen to eighteen, six of them close to us.
But how could I say no? I’d taught at several ABA schools, and I loved them.
ABA’s Eastern European program had been going for several years—it was a function of the Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute. OSI had identified bookstores as some of the threatened institutions to try to assist in their transition from the centralized economic system of the communist era to the free-for-all capitalist marketplace now emerging, since bookstores perform a vital informational and educational function in every free society. I’d been on the American Booksellers Association education committee when this overseas schools program had launched, and I’d alerted Willard I’d like to get involved.
***
After the first day of their September booksellers school, the forty Latvian booksellers are visibly uneasy. We’ve been told one of the difficulties is tension dating from the period when they’d been locked together into the Soviet bookselling bureaucracy. Some of the booksellers did cruel things to others. Now they are trying to run their shops like independent competitive capitalist enterprises. It isn’t easy for them to relax and act collegial.
At dinner I announce there will be a special lecture and everyone should assemble back at the hall at 8 PM. No one is happy about this but they do all come. My colleagues—Stan Bolotin of Harvard Bookstore, Tracy Danz of Zondervan Publishing, and Valerie Lewis of Hicklebee’s Bookstore—present storytelling performances and songs before my lecture, so the Latvian booksellers are alert something unusual might be coming.
I step to the podium, clear my throat, and launch into Ur Sonata. After a minute—as I’m emotionally declaiming, “Dll rrrrrr beeeee bö, Dll rrrrrr beeeee bö fümms bö, Rrrrrr beeeee bö fümms bö wö, Beeeee bö fümms bö wö tää, bö fümms bö wö tää zää, fümms bö wö tää zää Uu,” but Berutha is providing no translation—the Latvians begin to express annoyance.
Berutha interrupts me, “Is it German poetry? From the early twentieth century? Is it Christian Morgenstern?”
I’m delighted. Morgenstern was a nonsense poet who preceded Schwitters by a decade; I love “Das Grosse Lalula” and Morgenstern’s other Gallows Songs. I tell Berutha it’s Kurt Schwitters’ classic Ur Sonata. She gives the booksellers a quick explanation. She has a degree in poetry!
I continue with Ur Sonata and realize something is happening I’ve never experienced in my decade performing with Lynn Book. Our audiences were English speakers, so the text was always non-English, but here, the syllables are equally non-English and non-Latvian. Although our day of bookselling classes has been spent communicating via translator, now we need no translation. Ur Sonata blossoms translingual.
Valerie, Tracy, and Stan coach the group to join in chanting. We transform to a jolly ensemble.
CHAPTER KUU
“If that’s art, I’m a Hottentot,” declared President and racist-in-chief Harry Truman. Further, “I don’t pretend to be an artist or a judge of art, but I am of the opinion that so-called modern art is merely the vaporings of half-baked lazy people.”
The year was 1947. Highly publicized congressional hearings had condemned the US State Department’s Advancing American Art, as a waste of taxpayer funds. This huge exhibition—pushing anticommunist PR about free expression in capitalist America—had been touring to international acclaim since 1946. Now it would be recalled, its hundred-and-seventeen paintings sold off cheap.
Simultaneous with this anti-modern-art grandstanding by conservative US politicians, Kurt Schwitters, over in the English Lake District, successfully solicited three thousand dollars from the Kaufmann Family—modern-art-loving Pittsburgh department-store magnates. Now Schwitters was awaiting the money’s disbursal by his financial intermediary, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), in New York.
Art historian Adrian Sudhalter delicately explains,
The issue was entrusted to the museum’s legal counsel and drawn out for many months…. The complexities of postwar international law delayed the delivery of the fellowship to Schwitters for over a year…. Schwitters proposed constructing a…Merzbau in England, and of using part of the scholarship to underwrite a recording of his Ursonate, the second of his two life works…. Sadly, Schwitters only received the first two payments of his fellowship, in increments of $250, before his death in January 1948. Two more payments in the same amount were used to underwrite his burial.
“Used to underwrite his burial.” Schwitters meets Kafka.
But really: what made MOMA sit on Schwitters’ money for a year, when he was living in poverty and could not afford medical treatment?
What “postwar international law” prevented rapid disbursal of US funds to an artist living in ally England who’d personally corresponded with his US patrons?
Let’s be honest. MOMA was paranoid word would leak they’d sent funds to a crazy German abstract artist overseas, giving an opening to the New York Post and right-wing politicians.
Two years later, the Central Intelligence Agency was the secret founder of Congress for Cultural Freedom. CCF toured Abstract Expressionist exhibitions internationally, resuming the propaganda war contrasting America’s “free enterprise painting” with the Soviet Union’s state-mandated representational style, Socialist Realism.
The CIA didn’t seek authorization to found CCF: they already knew that their political bosses—just like Soviet and Nazi leaders—despised abstract art.
According to Porter McCray, who in 1953 became director of the (also secretly CIA-funded) MOMA International Program,
This was the context in which [founding MOMA curator] Alfred Barr felt compelled to write a scathing article in a 1952 issue of the New York Times Magazine titled, “Is Modern Art Communistic?,” which compared statements about modern art made by Eisenhower, Truman, and Churchill to those made in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Valerie Caris Blitz creates an action painting in accompaniment to a performance of Ur Sonata, in Rebecca Migdal’s Gonzo Comix Loft. Holyoke, 2009. (Rebecca Migdal’s painting depicting Mammon bursting through the sidewalk of a town just like Holyoke can be seen to the left.)
CHAPTER ÄRR—THEMES 11, 15, 16
August 12th, 1989
Emit Gallery
Lynn Book is a working performance artist, creating original pieces and presenting around the country. Once a year, she phones me with an Ur Sonata opportunity.
School of the Art Institute of Chicago students have gotten hold of an abandoned warehouse in the West Loop, for one night only. They call it Emit Gallery. They’ve lighted the space with a dozen gigantic candles suspended from wood beams. Each candle has six flaming wicks. This gallery of shadows is jammed with a hundred art students. Lynn has also invited a dozen kids from her neighborhood; they sit up front.
Last summer, I bought ten-foot-long, one-foot-wide industrial hoses which we cut, assembled, and wore as costumes for our ten shows at Harry Hoch’s place on Elston, Cabaret Voltaire. We’re wearing our crazy hose-outfits now.
Lynn and I thrive on participation: we get people revved up during the Presto, chanting rhythmically, “Grimm glimm gnimm bimbimm, Grimm glimm gnimm bimbimm, Grimm glimm gnimm bimbimm, Grimm glimm gnimm bimbimm, Grimm glimm gnimm bimbimm, Grimm glimm gnimm bimbimm, Grimm glimm gnimm bimbimm, Grimm glimm gnimm bimbimm.” During the development, when I’m ranting like a politician haranguing supporters—“Graaaaa graaaaa, Graaaaa graaaaa,” and ”EkeEke ekeEke ekeEke ekeEke, EkeEke ekeEke ekeEke ekeEke, EkeEke ekeEke Rrrumm! EkeEke ekeEke Rrrumm! EkeEke ekeEke Rrum, Rrum! EkeEke ekeEke Rrum, Rrum! Rrum Rrum Rrum Rrum, Rrum Rrum Rrum, Rrum!”—Lynn is in the audience shouting back, while distributing pieces of gardenhose and handfuls of black-eyed peas. People are spitting peas at me through the hose-peashooters.
The kids go nuts. They’re marching, shouting Ur Sonata, spitting peas.
Dada is supposed to be provocative. Everyone knows this, so, no-one at a dada show can be provoked. But some of these college students don’t like the kids’ unruliness and start walking out.
Most of the crowd stays with us, yelling along. Mid-cacophony, I find myself extending hose-encased arms upward and complaining, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani?” No one hears.
Transcendental.
*** *** ***
(The photos below are from our Cabaret Voltaire shows in the summer of 1988.)
CHAPTER ÄSS
Schwitters’ work, and the magical exaltation of the object, give the first hint of the place of modern art in the history of the human mind, and of its symbolic significance. They reveal the tradition that was being unconsciously perpetuated. It is the tradition of the hermetic Christian brotherhoods of the Middle Ages, and of the alchemists, who conferred even on matter, the stuff of the earth, the dignity of their religious contemplation.
—Marie-Louise von Franz and Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols
Nonsense, abstract, nonrepresentational: these labels define by negation. Why be negative? To protect the status of sense, rationality, and representation.
Alternate labels like transcendental and visionary better highlight modern-art practices’ mystical, hermetic essence. Hermes, Mercury, Merz.
As nonsense performance-poets and abstract artists, we seek—and strive to provide access to—higher dimensions of experience. So, best to call Ur Sonata not nonsensical, but transcendent. Best to call Kurt Schwitters’ and Valerie Caris Blitz’s collage and painting not abstract, but visionary.
Kurt Schwitters had a one-man show in 1944 London, at Jack Bilbo’s Modern Art Gallery. Art historian Herbert Read—theorist of anarchism and, later, editor-in-chief of the English translation of Collected Works of C.G. Jung—wrote in his introduction to the Schwitters exhibition catalog,
An art of abstract incantation…to hear Schwitters recite his poems is to be convinced that he has invented still another art form….
I doubt if Schwitters would like to be called a mystic, but there is nevertheless in his whole attitude to art a deep protest against the chromium-plated conception of modernism. The bourgeois loves slickness and polish: Schwitters hates them. He leaves his edges rough, his surfaces uneven. He realizes that the created object is always an approximation to the imaginative conception, and that it is only the fussy and irrelevant intellect that would like to give precision to the organic reality of art.
Schwitters was so pleased with Read’s essay that he included copies in correspondence with galleries and patrons in America.
Kurt Schwitters collage: “ohne titel — fur Herbert Read”. (Yes, that’s Herbert Read, in the center of the collage.)
El Lissitzky, Theo van Doesburg, Hans Arp, Nelly van Doesburg, Ernst Schwitters, Helma Schwitters, and Kurt Schwitters (the tall one), 1922.
CHAPTER TEE
June 26th, 2009
Holyoke, Massachusetts
“Vegan cupcake?” calls James Bickford to a passing car. The driver stops, his window opens, an arm extends. James moves close with a tray of green cakes. A selection process, a taste test, and the gratified driver inquires, “Say, what’s going on here?” Canal-side, twenty neighbors sit at folding tables, chatting over paper plates and plastic cups filled with free food and drink. Behind them, eight more tables groan under the platters of goodies provided by all.
It’s Bring Your Own Restaurant (BYOR), the open-to-anyone gatherings Bickford invented a few months ago. If the police are aware of these pop-up potlucks—which take place on public roadsides—they’ve decided not to get entangled. Social Democrat James Bickford—also known as Pronoblem—is good at attracting media attention.
Eric Blitz and I have just arrived from Manhattan: I’d left the bookstore I run in Amherst, at Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, just past two, picked up Eric and his equipment on 28th Street before five, and gotten back to Paper City Studios at seven—in time for dinner at BYOR. By eight, we’re up on the third floor in Rebecca Migdal’s Gonzo Comix loft, finishing with the set-up of Eric’s percussion.
It’s time again for Final Fridays, the community open mic Rebecca and I launched last January. A dozen poets and musicians will offer their work to neighbors and one another. The evening is structured around Ur Sonata, presented in three twenty-minute segments—interspersed with open mic guests. Anyone may join with Ur Sonata. Over the past months, ten performers have added themselves to the shifting ensemble we call Urchestra.
Our group is leaderless, with no direction for the improvisers. The only constraint is, each time, we declaim the entire Ur Sonata. This isn’t about sounding good for listeners, but rather the direct experience of each artist in collaborative interaction with other artists and participating audiences.
Consider: encountering this thirty-page nonsense poem, we feel compelled to respond, since it’s strange. If we reject, this is a missed chance. When we look at a Schwitters collage, on the wall of a museum, we can’t hammer on our own stuff. In contrast, Ur Sonata invites us to become its next development. So, the most fruitful response is to declaim it our own way.
Performing Ur Sonata means joining Schwitters in his mystic zone.
The BYOR diners have drifted up to Rebecca’s studio for Final Friday. The open mic’s first Ur Sonata movement is ready to go. At the last minute, John Landino, Eric Blitz and I sneak down a side hallway to share a joint, in honor of Valerie Caris Blitz.
Valerie can’t be here this time, though she accompanied Eric from Manhattan for our March show, when she participated by creating an action-painting to our sound-art. She came also in May, bringing a roll of twenty huge, rapidly-completed, abstract paintings. We’d pinned these up, completely covering a wall of Rebecca’s studio, and then—as a thunderstorm raged outside the window-wall overlooking Holyoke Canal—in front of Valerie’s paintings, we’d played Ur Sonata.
Valerie is an important member: she presented Ur Sonata in 1984 Berlin with performance artist Wolfgang Müller’s group Die Tödliche Doris (“The Deadly Doris”). But Valerie’s been in hospital for weeks. She’d finally had enough of how her AIDS cocktail made her feel, and she went off her meds. A few days after our May Ur Sonata, a mouth infection turned to pneumonia. She’s in St. Vincent’s—the AIDS hospital on Twelfth Street—unconscious.
We’ve had a few puffs, Landino has offered an invocation to Valerie, and we’re moving down the hall toward Rebecca’s studio.
The landlord is in our way. “Were you smoking weed? The cops could shut my building down!”
I’m stoned, thinking of Valerie possibly on her deathbed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”
I never realized how huge he is. He leans, growls, “You didn’t think; you smoked. You had to smoke your ma-ri-jua-na. In my building.”
I expect he will back away. He does not. He gets close to our faces, repeating, “You want-ed to smoke your MA-RI-JUA-NA.”
Eric has slipped off. Landino tries, “Hey, brother—”
“I’m talking to Andy.”
“I’m sorry. I apologize. We won’t do it again. Please. We’ve got a house.”
He steps aside.
As we move toward the studio, filled with friends and neighbors, Landino murmurs, “I think I just lost my mojo.”
CHAPTER UU
Collective Unconscious: Hermes, Mercury, Merz.
Schwitters identified so fully with his one-man movement that he often signed letters “Kurt Merz Schwitters,” and sometimes simply “Merz.”
His word Merz—snipped and pasted into the collage later titled Merzbild (“Merz picture”)—was in original context a middle syllable of KOMMERZ UND PRIVAT BANK. The German word Kommerz—from the Latin com + mercari (together + trade)—refers to Mercury, the Greek Hermes—God of commerce, tricksters, thieves and travelers, inventor of the lyre (gifted to Apollo in apology for stealing cattle), and psychopomp who escorts souls to the underworld.
At no time did Schwitters write anything about a Hermes/Mercury/Merz relation.
Kurt Schwitters was born June 20th, 1887: astrological sign Gemini, ruling planet Mercury.
Schwitters wrote, “I don’t believe that…the time of birth…can tell anything about a person.” … “Seek your good fortune within; there you will find it.”
But, says legendary philosopher-priest Hermes Trismegistus in the ancient text Hermetica, “As above, so below.” Thus, planet Mercury magically influences cinnabar—vermilion-red mercury-crystal—in Arabic, zinjifrah or “dragon’s blood;” in German, zinnober—also known as “alchemist’s stone.” Since antiquity, Spanish-mined cinnabar—mercury-sulfide ore—has been distilled to release metallic mercury: quicksilver.
Kurt Schwitters always used cinnabar-red paint for his trademark “KS” signature on collages and paintings.
The German word zinnober has a second definition: nonsense. My father Victor Laties was a toxicologist who in the nineteen-sixties helped prove that mercury—used historically in medicine and industry—is a heavy-metal poison that accumulates in the body, eventually causing tremors, speech disorders, and hallucinations. The phrase “Mad as a hatter”—as in the nonsensical Mad Hatter of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland—refers to the weirdness of nineteenth century hatmakers; this was due to toxic mercury nitrate used in felt. By the twenty-first century, mercury was widely banned; few artists today would risk neuropathology just to paint in authentic red cinnabar.
Mercury to Merz: in 1928, archetypically mercurial Kurt Schwitters cofounded Hannover Zinnoberfest, a nonsense festival. In Kurt Schwitters, A Portrait from Life, frequent collaborator Kate Steinitz, recalls,
All the artists of Hannover forgot their “isms” and manifestos. Even the old-fashioned academicians became suddenly gay and made quite jolly drawings for the big event….
[Kurt Schwitters] turned up the idea of Cinnabar as the festival theme…. Naturally he wrote the text for the festival songs…. It was supposed to be the wildest, reddest Cinnabar ever held in red-decorated rooms! The songs came jumping full-fledged out of Kurt’s head, just as Pallas Athena jumped out of the Greek god’s…. “Jump right into the Cinnabar! Wallow in it!” … [Concert pianist] Walter Gieseking composed the theme song…he let off steam in jazz, without inhibition….
Kurt Schwitters ducked in and out of the crowd when he wasn’t dancing. He danced with powerful enthusiasm, even the very latest dances, all the while emitting his enraptured, “Arrr….” He really held his girls tight. It looked as if he might crack their ribs.
In 2000, Hannover’s artists, gallery owners, and municipal cultural office honored Kurt Schwitters by resurrecting Zinnober; they now present the arts festival every fall. This way to the Cinnabar!