Dubble In It -- An Oratorio to the Progenitors of the Human Genome --Lifted and Lofted, Lafted and Lefted by Philip Harvey from lines in Finnegans Wake
‘Dubble
In It’ was a Roaratorio based on words taken from all over Finnegans
Wake. Roaratorio is a word borrowed from the Wake by John Cage as
the title of his own radio sound art piece, based on the book. Composer Rod
Baker and I looked at the theme of the 2008 Bloomsday (‘Joyce and Modernity’) and
chose to celebrate the Human Genome and its Progenitors, as we called them.
This was the second such oratorio written collaboratively by Baker and me,
to be staged by Bloomsday in Melbourne. Some patrons with long memories will be
taken back (or even taken aback) to the church in North Melbourne and to Ches
Baragwaneth playing the Auditor-General, i.e. Here Comes Everybody Childers.
An excellent review of this Oratorio was written by Roz Hames here: https://6fbb0498-09c3-4ba2-8f2a-f86e105c41d2.filesusr.com/ugd/b941fe_1604e6e1038041e58c08e98367152466.pdf
Roz’s review helps give the gist of what’s
happening and what happened.
This
weekend I came across the original script of the Roaratorio in my files. It is
set out below, following these words from the Bloomsday webpage report for 2008,
probably by Frances Devlin Glass.
“The
best advice we can give for understanding Joyce’s Wakese is to listen, and
suspend momentarily that insistent urge we all have to make complete sense of
all utterances, and to surrender to multilingual punniness. It’s an invitation
to play. Joyce, we believe, was profoundly thoughtful on the subject of gender,
gender differences, the possibility of inversions – the he-ness and she-ness of
us all. We take a lead too from Joyce’s eclectic musical tastes, extending as
they did from street songs, via pop to the classical repertoire. We fancy, with
his rings and smart clothes, he not only sang, but tangoed in Paris restaurants
in the twenties and thirties. The elegance of the symbolism and chemistry
of the double helix would, we think, have made great sense to Joyce.”
Dubble In It
An
Oratorio to the Progenitors of the Human Genome
Lifted
and Lofted, Lafted and Lefted by Philip Harvey from lines in Finnegans Wake
I
The
pleasures of love
lasts
but a fleeting
But
the pledges of life
outlusts
a lief-time
How
unwhisperably so
In
the beginning was the gest he jousstly says, for the end is with woman,
flesh-without-word, while the man to be is in a worse case after than before
since she on the supine satisfies the verg to him! Toughtough, tootoological.
Thou the first person shingeller. Art, an imperfect subjunctive. So pick your
stops with fondnes snow. And mind you twine the two noods of your nicenames.
And pull up your furbelovs as far above as your farthingales. That’ll hint him
how to click the trigger. You’ll feel what I mean.
The
pleasures of love
lasts
but a fleeting
But
the pledges of life
outlusts
a lief-time
How
unwhisperably so
You
try a little tich to the tissle of his tail. The soil is for the self alone. Be
ownkind. Be kithkinish. Be bloodysibby. Be irish. Be inish. Be offalia. Be
hamlet. Be the property plot. Be Yorick and Lankystare. Be cool. Be mackinmucks
of yourselves. Be finish. No martyr where the preature is there’s no plagues
like rome. Watch the swansway. Take your tiger over it. For you have – may I,
in, our, your and their names, dare to say it? – the nucleus of a glow of a
zeal of soul of service such as rarely if ever have I met. Numerous are those,
humble indivisibles in this grand continuum, overlorded by fate and interlarded
with accidence.
The
pleasures of love
lasts
but a fleeting
But
the pledges of life
outlusts
a lief-time
How
unwhisperably so
II
[Tango
Lecture]
I
shall have a word to say in a few yards and it will be very convenient for me
for the emolument to pursue Burrus and Caseous for a rung or two up their
isocelating biangle. In order to be truly torso we should evoke the bush soul
of females so I am leaving it to the experienced victim to complete the general
suggestion by the mental addition of a wallopy bound. As comprised, the
climactogram shows up which X and Y (and Z?) may fondly be imagined ascending
and is suggestive of a gentlemen’s spring modes, these modes carrying us back
to the superimposed claylayers of eocene and pleastoseen formation and the
gradual morphological changes in our body politic which Professor Ebahi-Ahuri
of Philadespoinis neatly names a Box of Surprises.
Or,
in briefs then.
This
Antonius-Burrus-Caseous grouptriad may be said to equate the qualis
equivalent with the older so-called talis on talis one just as
quantly as in the hyperchemical
economantarchy the tantum ergons irruminate the quantum urge so that eggs is to
whey as whay is to zeed like your golfchild’s abe boob caddy. And this is why
any simple philodolphus of a fool you like to dress, an athemishued lowtownian,
exlegged phatrisight, may be awfully green to one side of him and fruitfully
blue on the other which will not screen him however from appealing to my
gropesarchblasted eyes as a bleating blatant bloaten blasphorus blesphorus
idiot who kennett tail a bomb from a painapple when he steals one and wannot
psing his psalmen with the cong in our
gregational pompoms with the canting crew.
Good
night.
III
or
haven’t I told you every telling has a taling and that’s the he and the she of
it
her
sugarloaf hat
his bungaloid borsalines
her
frostivying tresses
his rotundarinking scalp
her
fickling intentions
his fearless forehead
her
airy eye
his bimblebeaks
her
pebbled eyes
his laudsnarers
her
joki nose
his walrus moustaches
her
damazon cheeks
his applecheeks
her
fiumy mouth
his curlybard
her
backbone tongue
his loosened talktapes
her
kissmiss
his bruised brogues
her
filimentations
or
haven’t I told you of her furzeborn sons and dribblederry daughters, every
telling has a taling and that’s the he and the she of it
her
fondling endings
his togglejoints
her
encircling arms
his shoulderups
her
jelly belly
his heartseast
her
sullyport
his sillypost
her
catchment rings
his buttinghole
her
hip’s hurrahs
his acropoll
her
little mary
his fatherjohnson
haven’t
I told you every telling has a taling and that’s the he and the she of it
her
splendid halluxes
his halluxes splendid
her
hydeaspects
his hobbledehorns
her
pyrra knees
his kneesknobs
her
iodine feet
IV
You
don’t reckoneyes him, with helixes so splendid?
Who
gave the heinousness of choice to everyknight betwixt yesterdicks and
twomaries?
Who
is too funny for a fish and has too much outside for an insect?
Who
has brain of the frank, hand of the christian, tongue of the north?
Who
was hatched at Cellbridge but ejoculated
abrood?
Who
has seed enough for a semination but sues skivvies on the sly?
Who
passed for baa baa blacksheep till he grew white woo woo woolly?
All
fitzpatricks in his emirate remember him, the boys of wetford hail him babu,
who?
You
don’t reckoneyes him, with helixes so splendid?
Who
lashed out lashings of laveries to hunt down his family ancestors and then pled
double trouble or quick quits to hush the buckers up?
Who
is ace of arts, deuce of damimonds, trouble of clubs, fear of spates?
His
birth proved accidental shows his death its grave mistake – who is this?
Who
is when youngheaded oldshouldered and middishneck aged about?
Who
is heavengendered, chaosfoeted, earthborn?
Whose
father presumptively ploughed it deep on overtime and mother as all evince must
have travailled her fair share?
Who
made man with juts that jerk and minted money mong maney?
You
don’t reckoneyes him, with helixes so splendid?
The
topes that tippled on him, the types that toppled off him.
His
troubles may be over but his doubles have still to come.
V
[The
Plainchant of the Cloudyphiz]
It
is nebuless an autodidact fact of the commonest that the shape of the average
human cloudyphiz, whereas sallow has long daze faded, frequently altered its
ego with the possing of the showers. Whence it is a slopperish matter, given
the wet and low visibility
since
in this scherzarade of one’s thousand one nightinesses that sword of certainty
which would identifide the body never falls
to
idendifine the individuone in scratch wig, squarecuts, stock laveleer, baggy
pants and shufflers with already an incipience
lust
in
the direction of area baldness
one
is continually firstmeeting with odd sorts of others at all sorts of ages!
who
was asked by free boardschool shirkers in drenched overcoats overawall, Will,
Conn and Otto, to tell them overagait, Vol, Pov, and Dev, that fishabed
ghoatstory of the haardly creditable edventyres of the Haberdasher, the two
Curchies and the three Enkelchums in their Bearskin ghoats! Girles and jongers
but he has changed alok syne Thorkill’s time!
Ya,
da, tra, gathery, pimp, shesses, shossafat, okodeboko, nine!
Those
many warts, those slummy patches, halfsinister wrinkles, (what has come over
the face on wholebroader E?), and the large fungopark he has grown!
Drink!
Drink!
Drink!
Drink!
Drink!
Drink!
[Altogether]:
DRINK!
VI
First
thou shalt not smile,
Twice
thou shalt not love,
Lust,
thou shalt not commix idolatry.
Hip
confiners help compunction.
A
coil of cord
a
colleen coy
a
blush on a bush
turned
first man’s laughter
into
wailful moither
O
foolish cuppled!
Give
back those stolen kisses,
restaure
those all-cotton glooves,
recollect
the yella perals
that
all too often beset young gerils.
A
coil of cord
a
colleen coy
a
blush on a bush
turned
first man’s laughter
into
wailful moither
O
foolish cuppled!
Never
dip in the ern while
your
browsers on your suite.
Never
slip the silver key through
your
gate of golden age.
A
coil of cord
a
colleen coy
a
blush on a bush
turned
first man’s laughter
into
wailful moither
O
foolish cuppled!
VII
Your
Ominence, Your Imminence and delicted fraternitrees!
There’s
tuodore queensmaids and Idahore shopgirls and woody babies growing upon her
Bird
flamingans sweenyswinging fuglewards on the tipmast
And
Orania epples playing hopptociel
bommptaterre
Tyburn
fenians snoring in his quickenbole and
crossbones strewing its holy floor
Culprines
of Erasmus Smith’s burstall boys with their underhand leadpencils climbing to
her crotch for the origin of spices
Charlotte
darlings with silk blue askmes chattering in dissent
Gibbonses
and gobbenses, guelfing and ghibbering proferring praydews
Your
Ominence, Your Imminence and delicted fraternitrees!
There’s
killmaimthem pensioners chucking
overthrown milestones up to her
Cranberries
and her pommes annettes for their unnatural refection
Handpainted
hoydens plucking husbands of him
Cock
robins muchmore hatching most out of his missado eggdrazzles
Sun
and moon pegging honeysuckle and white heather down
Timtits
tapping resin, creatures of the wold approaching him
Hermits
of the desert barking their infernal shins
Your
Ominence, Your Imminence and delicted fraternitrees!
Planitude
outsends of plenty to thousands
Truants
of the utmostfear and her downslyder
In
that snakedst-tu-naughsy whimmering woman’s seeleib
My
darling dearest, sinsinsinning since the night of time
Each
and all meeting and shaking twisty hands all over again
In
their new world through the germination of its gemination
From
Ond’s outset till Odd’s end.
And
encircle him circuly. Evovae!
Comments
Post a Comment