Mix Tape was lost! Vol. 25: Part 2 of turk/bulgo/centrasia

LISTENING TO THIS IS LIKE BEING WITH THE MAJORITY OF THE ITWASLOST! BOARD AS WE TRAVEL THROUGH THE LANDS FROM WHICH THIS MUSIC COMES FROM

Report from the Danube

The second half-length river report/eastern European edition.

I've stopped eating, I stick with the velcro mobs,

On a yacht in the beautiful polluted wearing a floral May dress,

I embarrassed myself by ordering ten blowjobs from the waitress,

And she blushed hard as if I had just ordered ten blowjobs.

Some have said our love is growing inward,

Like a festering blister on St David's Day,

She didn't look thirteen, she was immortally pretty,

She was a member of a grumpy butt-chinned cricket horde.

Work it. Drops dript,

Now leaving the small city for exponation only,

My long intestine has never felt this lonely,

A child is boring, the wings of a swallow clipt.

Alexander Phonoff

In Sofia last night, we finally met up with a man we had been referring to as "Alexander Phonoff", because he had said "sure! come stay" but then proved impossible to track down. He found us by the stadium, we bought some beers & went into a park which was formally a zoo, where a bunch of his friends began to congregate with backpacks full of climbing gear. Apparently the plan was to go to these two large trees in the middle of the big park & string a zip line between them. The precision & patience of the setup reminded me of the stealthy rigging for Philippe Petite's Twin Towers tightroping (in "Man on Wire"). The rides on this lasted many hours & many beers, long long after dark, after Olaf & Grainne had wandered back to their hostels, & after I had fallen asleep in the park. I woke up & they were doing progressively crazier things, & suddenly a guy & girl zipping together caming crashing down from the high tree. Everyone was okay, but he went to the hospital to have his purple finger xrayed, & I imagine she'll be a bit bruised today. It took another hour to pack up the rigging & then it was a long ride home.

We took a taxi way out to the old communistic bloc he's lived in for 11 years, since he moved here with his parents & now as an adult with his cousins. It's a crazy world out there, today in the extreme heat it felt more Indian than European. Okay, then, we're going to find Mr Quill in Vratsa today, keep in touch. Wish you were here. Live long & prosper.

TRAUMMUSIK Episode XIII - "But I Can Walk Much Faster Than You"

AND NOW, another classic radio show from Sarah Lawrence College WSLC 105.7, from Spring 2002. TRAUMMUSIK, Episode XIII, "But I Can Walk Much Faster Than You". Drug up from the archives while we're shagging & carpetbagging in Bulgaria.



Again, I suggest, download the mp3s of this show HERE, put them on your Fancy Music Player, burn them onto a disc, play them on your boombox while you walk around the Bronx.

Listen to human-programmed radio!
Listen to classic college radio!
Listen to TRAUMMUSIK!

Little Bloc by the River

Yes! Welcome to Sofia, city of the imagination. We didn't have as smooth of luck couchsurfing here as in Bucharest, but found a charming small hostel right away. Our hosts in Bucharest were strikingly good-looking, long-haired Moldovans with boundless hospitality. They had a painting on their door pictating the following rules: No ice cream; no boots; no heroin; no big boobs; doobie okay. We asked, why no big boobs, & Alex said he no longer appreciated them. We asked, what if someone with big boobs showed up with a doobie, & he thought for a long time & said "she could hang out." Bucharest is a city with humongous gray buildings imposing along every grand boulevard, culminating in this bafflingly huge palace, the second-largest building in the world (after the Pentagon) which all Bucharest residents begrudgingly ignore (it was built by their old wacky dictator.) Grainne Proinseas spent all day getting some footage for some mini-documentaries, which we're narrating in an exaggerated Werner Herzog impersonation. I wish I could divulge more about this project, but I am bound like a furious chasm.

Mr Quill & a friend met us in Ruse on the border, where we were met with rakia, traditional bulgarian feast, pub-crawling, & a drink on a yacht in the dirty Danube. It was the night before the election, & the sure-to-win center-right Gerb (flag) Party was sponsoring some national dance in the town square, this dancing was so tight. It ended with fireworks on July 4th, which worked out fine for us. We have several more places to hit around Bulgaria before we go with Mr Quill up to the Big Little, & we plan to work on some of the Herzog narration around Sofia today & elsewhere this week. He's been discussing the mannequins, which are terrifying & ubiquitous in this town. Pictures to come. Mr Olaf Mary & I have been learning new songs on our two ukuleles, so we will hit the streets today & hope to make enough leva for domen & the nasty beer in this land.

Report from the Dâmboviţa

Here's a half-length poem in the style of last year's river reports - - - poems I wrote in pubs on rivers in Northern English cities. In lieu of proper travel reportage, some allusive nonsense:

Seventy-seven bats ago, since I left my home town,
I have sinned at his expense,
And forgotten to pay terraneous rents,
Way to be thrown down when the volcano come down.

Away down past the jetlagged sunrise,
Saying like a spiriduş with a gypsy fiddle,
I will unclothe you with an easy ancient riddle,
I will unclothe you like a routine morning exercise.

That's all they really want, an interview
Before the sweat & celebrity cologne,
Thrown down like a mouse from the sky is thrown,
Alone waiting for my Irish wish's curfew.

Nomination for the Greatest Patriotic Song of All America

To think that I was horrified when I first heard this song, at a live Toby Keith concert in the basketball stadium in Sacramento, California. Now I can't get enough, he really captured the zeitgeist of the Bush Era & made an immortal anthem. "Put a boot up your ass, it's the american way"? Amazing - - -

ODE ON SCIENCE: Arrangement of this old patriotic tune for voice, two pianos, & percussion

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

"Ode on Science" is a patriotic tune in the Sacred Harp (Page 242) - written in 1798 by Jezeniah Sumner. I've always felt the folk hymn arrangement left something to be desired. I made this arrangement rather quickly last year & for no real purpose: scored for high voice (soprano or tenor), two pianos & some abstract percussion. ("Drum" sort of drone, which could be elaborated upon, & "hit". which in my MIDI playback is a synth "orchestra hit", ala Miles Davis' Tutu. It could also be a kettledrum.) Since there is no likely premier performance of this ever upcoming, I'll post this little home recording I made with the MIDI playback - remember it's just a demo, MIDI playbacks are always robotic & unsatisfying, & my singing is, merely a demo. (The two piano arrangement could be a sketch to possibly orchestrate it someday, if any specific ensemble wanted an extraction.) OKAY: shout, Long live America!


Download that mp3 here. I love the anachronistic young-country nationalism in the lyrics:

The morning sun shines from the east,
And spreads his glories to the west,
All nations with his beams are blest,
Where’er the radiant light appears.

So science spreads her lucid ray
O’er lands which long in darkness lay:
She visits fair Columbia,
And sets her sons among the stars.

Fair freedom her attendant waits,
To bless the portals of her gates,
To crown the young and rising states
With laurels of immortal day:

The British yoke, the Gallic chain,
Was urged upon our necks in vain,
All haughty tyrants we disdain,
And shout, “Long live America.”

The score can be downloaded on Scribd. My arrangement is in the public domain:
Ode on Science - Arrangement for Voice, Two Pianos, Percussion

Mix Tape was lost! Vol. 24: ROMANIA, BULGARIA, TURKEY 1

FIRST INSTALLMENT OF BULGO-ROMANICK-TURKICK-CENTRAL ASIAN MIXTAPE.

How to Use the Loo Part 2: Pissing as Performace

Images from Hindustaan part 1: how to use the loo

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Here we go - Olaf Mary, Grainne Proinseas, & I are all now en route to our BULGARIOUS BLOG REUNION. We've pre-scheduled a few posts for July, as we won't be able to access the series tubes as often, but when we do post, it will be for our TRAVEL DEPARTMENT. We will be rendezvousing in Bucharest, drinking rakia in Rusa, making a movie with young girls, fields, & donkey carts in the Big Little. So look for our travel correspondences, be well & bye bye!

Note: Keen observers will notice that there are temporarily ads on this blog. Don't worry, it hasn't become itwaslost.com. It is only to take advantage of the temporary windfall of tens of thousands of clicks on that Michael Jackson castrato article - & I'm beginning to fear that if something IS leaked from the autopsy, there might be a shitstorm which could possibly put that essay into even great exposure. And fund our trip. Great heavens. Anyway, SAFE TRAVELS!

PROPHECY & DOGGEREL - Illuminated Nonsense Poetry Book FOR SALE

Years in the making...
150 pages... over fifteen hundred really good words (including "proboscis" & "stalactickle")...
With over a hundred original illustrations by Grainne Proinseas, Olaf Mary Mohammad, & James Quill...
I am proud to publish - ONLINE only - on scribd.com
PROPHECY & DOGGEREL
All the poetry published on the website www.itwaslost.org over the past three years, in one colorful poetry book -
Nonsense, doggerel, prophecy, songs & a few long poems.
After long consideration, I have decided to SELL this book for $2.15, altho I'm making a bit of it visible for free. I realize it is quixotic to dream of making any money off a non-physical collection of weird & sometimes dense nonsense verse, BUT I reckon I'm offering a pretty good product which we put a lot of work into. You could e-mail me (o [[at]]itwaslost .org) for a trial copy. Please support the nonsense vanity press! And a lot of the poetry is still on www.itwaslost.org here or there, just not with the classy layout & fancy illuminations, which is well worth two dollars & fifteen cents. Maybe convince a wealthy friend to purchase the digital edition from scribd, curl up with a cup of hot cocoa & your uncle's color printer, & print a nice double-sided physical copy. I believe in physical books. But this one will doubtful never be published as one. Meanwhile, a new hardcover copy of Barbara Walters' Audition: A Memoir sells for $29.95, & she doesn't do things like rhyme "cuddle" with "butthole."
Tell your friends & loved ones!
Prophecy & Doggerel is published.

S. Sandrigon - Prophecy and Doggerel 2009

(I recommend, if you're in firefox, clicking F11 to full-screen the browser, then clicking on the full-screen toggle on the upper-right-hand corner of the scribd box.)

Mix Tape was lost! Vol. 23

THIS MIX TAPE WAS LOST! FEATURES THE MAJORITY OF THE A-SIDE OF A beautiful FAVORITE RECORD:
"STARS OF GHANA"
BE SURE TO CHECK IN NEXT MONTH FOR EXCITING TURKO-BULGICK-CENTROASAIN MIXTAPES