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
