An Evening at Soulshine

 

 

     The event was produced on December 20, 2023 at the Soulshine Market in Pine Bush, New York by James Pogo.  Dan Andreana performed poetry scored like music stretching words to their limit with expressive variation in pitch, volume, and timbre.  Then James Pogo and his associate Kevin, performing as Flux Duo ++ passed out party hats and lay on their backs shirtless with lit candles in their navels while playing a little toy organ and leading the audience in “Happy Birthday.”  The third portion of the program was a set of simultaneous readings by me and Patricia.  The evening was concluded by Steve Roe who carefully set the stage, lighted it, and performed a moving song dedicated to the children of Gaza.

     Artist Tom Gargiulo, only just arrived from Florida, introduced the performers.

 

 

document 1:  a sample of Dan Andreana’s texts

 

Softly 1/8/19

 

nil ad sense a)voided

oh doze on the lid!

brat shines boldly

bodily in every nigh(t

hangar shut down

with doug fir sprigs

needling the crossing guard.

they sings the songs

and sonnets of tar

burnt under a frond

like paper clippings.

your’sis hours in t)his.

a gradient of wan

to wax above

the rippled sea

in a gully of sand.

she waits on the bar(d

expecting any moon

for the path(age

over the moss.

 

 

25#2 (2017)

 

S take urn

table lego BL

ox E blew shrill

tower over crow

D lighted my lift

on 47th teen strut

terd door from the Reich

a champion rains on

foul ingot morsels

stuck to frozen lip edge

G oughtta rat a tat

sir man on the muonty

red queer queen a miss

blacking out the middle

slight offended shuffle

T rye red shot guzzler

shooting from hip

corner pocket

got a rocket in?

lawn before the dawn

tossed out the water

grayer than black is white

just before going to work

she said why knot?

So we tied one on

 

 

 

document 2: William Seaton’s simultaneous readings

 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning/ Henry Miller

 

 

Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed

And worthy of acceptation.  Fire is bright,

Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light

Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:

And love is fire.  And when I say at need

I love thee . . . mark! . . . I love thee—in thy sight

I stand transfigured, glorified aright,

With conscience of the new rays that proceed

Out of my face toward thine.  There’s nothing low

In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures

Who love God, God accepts while loving so.

And what I feel, across the inferior features

Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show

How that great work of Love enhances Nature’s.

 

 

Sauntering along the boulevard I had noticed her verging toward me with that curious trot-about air of a whore and the run-down heels and cheap jewelry and the pasty look of their kind which the rouge only accentuates. It was not difficult to come to terms with her. We sat in the back of the little tabac called L’Elephant and talked it over quickly. In a few minutes we were in a five franc room on the Rue Amelot, the curtains drawn and the covers thrown back. She didn’t rush things, Germaine. She sat on the bidet soaping herself and talked to me pleasantly about this and that; she liked the knickerbockers I was wearing. Tres chic! she thought. They were once, but I had worn the seat out of them; fortunately the jacket covered my ass. As she stood up to dry herself, still talking to me pleasantly, suddenly she dropped the towel and, advancing toward me leisurely, she commenced rubbing her pussy affectionately, stroking it with her two hands, caressing it, patting it, patting it.

 

 

Nicene Creed/deSade

 

I believe in one God, The Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, Of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, The Only Begotten Son of God, Born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, True God from true God, Begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation He came down from heaven, And by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, And became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, He suffered death and was buried, And rose again on the third day In accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven And is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory To judge the living and the dead And his kingdom will have no end. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, Who proceeds from the Father [and the Son], Who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, Who has spoken through the prophets. I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins And I look forward to the resurrection of the dead And the life of the world to come. Amen.

 

The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind. To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell. There is no stupidity religions have omitted to revere; and you know just as well as I, my friends, that when one examines a human institution, the first thing one must do is discard all religious notions. They are poison to lucidity. Let nobody doubt that religions are the cradles of despotism. The first of all despots was a priest; the first king and the first emperor of Rome, Numa and Augustus, both allied themselves with the priesthood; Constantine and Clovis were abbots rather than sovereigns; Heliopolis was the priest of the sun. In all times, in all centuries, despotism and religion have been so thoroughly interconnected that, as is easily demonstrated, in destroying one you undermine the other, for the profound reason that each will help the other to gain power.

 

 

Hitler/Marx & Engels

 

Aryan tribes, often almost ridiculously small in number, subjugated foreign peoples and, stimulated by the conditions of life which their new country offered them (fertility, the nature of the climate, etc.), and profiting also by the abundance of manual labour furnished them by the inferior race, they developed intellectual and organizing faculties which had hitherto been dormant in these conquering tribes. Within the course of a few thousand years, or even centuries, they gave life to cultures whose primitive traits completely corresponded to the character of the founders, though modified by adaptation to the peculiarities of the soil and the characteristics of the subjugated people. But finally the conquering race offended against the principles which they first had observed, namely, the maintenance of their racial stock unmixed, and they began to intermingle with the subjugated people. Thus they put an end to their own separate existence; for the original sin committed in Paradise has always been followed by the expulsion of the guilty parties.

 

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.  Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.  Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

 

document 3: the Flux Duo ++

 

document 4: Steve Roe’s song

 

“Blue”

 

Intro (spoken): “it is said that our understanding of happiness comes from the experiences of our childhood.”

 

Hold up sign “blue.”

 

Hold up sign “for the children of Gaza.”

 

Sung:

 “keep things simple, my love, and look at the sky….. it’s blue”

“Sit by my side, my love, and stare at the sea…. It’s blue.”

Keep your heart true, my love, for we are all born to die…. It’s blue.”