(The suite of songs called, on the CD, ‘Afternoon of Insensitivity’ (Manhattan Tuesday) is a sequel of sorts to ‘The Cell’ (Glasgow Monday); there have been other sequels since, recorded live like these albums, that are still unreleased. Considered in the context of Jandek’s many releases, ‘The Cell’ arrived from nowhere; conventional chops, a steady tempo, an august beauty obvious to any admirer of Bach. ‘Afternoon’ suffers by comparison not musically – it is an extraordinary brew – but lyrically, with the obtrusion of the lyrics. There’s too much directness, too many long words that do not scan; they do not explore a mood, but force it. Anyway, here are a few impressionistic notes I wrote to accompany my 10th listening of the album.)
You can hear it as it comes into being, the music. Crawling out of nothing like the first amphibian from water. Comes into being, condenses as from the air. A mist that is sometimes a fog, becoming suddenly dense. And then dispersing a little – white, blank forms drifting apart.
The bass, discovering a pattern, a pulse seems to tread. The guitar squawls without notes. Textures matter, not forms. The bass treads, the organ seems to follow it. Then the vocals slide in. Vocals, spoken-sung, a little above the simmering music. A speech-song above the pulsing tread.
A resigned singing. A singing that begins in a mood, out of a mood, not questioning it, but searching within it. A voice in the fog of a mood. Washes of guitar – no notes. And the drums and the bass locked together, forward-treading. And the vocals, a new style for Jandek. Drifting mist above the cauldron. ‘There’s just this empty time/ I must persevere throuuugh’.
A speech-song borne. That searches above the musical bed. Horizontally, moving from side to side like a snake. A singing in two dimensions, restrained, half-crushed. That does not rise to look around. That slinks forward with the music’s wash.
Are these songs? Slices of mood rather. Slices that seem to end almost aribtarily, that start up again, after applause, in the same way. That begin again as they began before, spinning out guitar squawls over the void. And the Korg synthesiser set to organ treading forward. And the percussion starting up, rolling forward. A pulse discovered. A pulse that holds the music steady. That gives the music its measure.
But it is all about the singing that, with this second track, glides into the music like a crocodile. And as usual with Jandek, singing is followed by a break from the lead instrument in a call and response. Words drawled, though clearly sung. And then a keyboard run. And behind this, the squawling pulse of the guitar.
The steady trudge of the drums. Forward somehow. But as though in orbit around a pulse. Forward, though turning around a pulse, measured by it. The music throbs, simmers. There is a tension – will it boil? Will it wander off the pulse and break into noise? But it is steady, so far. Steady two tracks in. Patient and measured. And the singing sliding along the surface of the water like a sea-snake.
Percussion bubbling. Bass pulsing, bursting from itself. And guitar squawls without notes. This a slab of music. A swamp, heavy and bubbling. A swamp of some poisonous brew, some foul mix of chemicals bubbling from the depths. Bubbling up and releasing its fumes.
A jungle scene. Life everywhere, but life gone wrong. Strange mutations. A foul, creeping menace. Steam from the water at midday. Tar swamps. Swamps of what disgusting substance? what brew? That seems to be gathering itself up now. Led by the organ as the organ rises in pitch. That seems to reach upwards a little. That has advanced onto some lower slope.
The tempo rising. The music intensifying. ‘React with indifference/ As bombaaaarded by the woooorld’. ‘God knows the uuuuuuuse’ -and that last word howled high and torn apart. And now the music simmering back down again, off the boil. Why did it boil then and simmer now? No why, no pattern. It is, it spins on, a bridge over nothing. Simply a slab of song, a swamp. That bubbles.
And now the guitar plays rising notes – lovely. Rising up like the neck of some diplodocus from the jungle. Before it is allowed to wash again. Before it washes over the trudging pulse. And again comes the singing. Comes again, without melody, an instrument like any other. ‘Crazy dumb thoughts/ Afternoon of in-sens-i-tivity’ – lyrics in couplets. Two couplets and then on, the plunge back, the sea snake vanished.
Steady as she goes. Steering in the marshes. Brushing aside the dangling fronds. How long is this song? How long can it be? ‘Why – am I – so – empty?’ The song carries its own Law. ‘Living long and living deep/ I did not see – relativity …’. ‘But I don’t mind/ I don’t mind.’ ‘There’s a kind of numbness/ that I know …’ And the organ stops. The music stops with it. Applause again, and now?
A few seconds gap. Suspense. Then the organ starting lower. The guitar. And the organ walks along. Just organ and guitar for now. The jungle again. The marshes again. Back to the foul and fetid scene. What is that wierd squeaking? The song of birds turned inside out. The pain of minerals. Nothing is alive here. Beyond life, or life gone strange, unrecognisable.
And now the singing. ‘It seems I’ve been depressed all my life/ I was about 11 years old on a summer’s day/ I was aware of the nothingness/ I said to my mother, there’s nothing to do/ She said just go outside, you’ll find something/ So I went outside and – did things.’ Comedy, but no laughter.
This run of lines spoken. Intoned. ‘Now it seems/ There’s more to do inside than outside/ But still there’s nothing to dooo/ We simply manufacture circumstances that give the necessity to do something’ – the last line awkward, it does not scan. It obtrudes from the music, forcing its way forward. Too present, and so with the next lines. I want the music again. I want the organ to enclose the scene. And it comes.
He sings something about the mind. Escaping nothingness. ‘It doesn’t seem we humans are happy/ we’re just in situations that force us to act.’ This is a treatise, a reflection. That comes into clarity in the fetid swamp air. That rises into lucidity, a kind of swamp noon. As if to say: the mind itself is wrong. The mind is where it went wrong, strange life, strange mutation. That correlates with nothing. That looks out, but for what? That searches, but for what?
‘Just go outside/ the elements will teach you to respond.’ And all these lines sung more firmly than before. And now it ends, shorter than the second part. Applause. And on again. I think of Aldiss’s Hothouse, and the idea he has that the mind comes from without, outside, as from a parasite or an infection. A Burroughsian idea. Or of Kerans heading SOUTH in The Drowned World. There are keyboard washes now, for the first time. The pulse has fallen back.
‘Staring out the window/ No expression/ Must have seen things/ It’s – the highway …’ Sung-spoken a little higher. Intoned more breathily, and higher. There’s more lethargy in the music. The swamp in the afternoon. The organ playing a rising flourish of notes (was it the organ playing these rising sounds earlier? the guitar?). The diplodocus’s neck craning up. More wierd squeaks. More birds turned inside out. Obscene life. Life gone wrong.
‘Don’t want to hurt/ Don’t want anything/ It’s no use/ Just lay low …’. ‘They have hope, those – creators/ No creation here/ record of falling – erections/ the edifice of meeee.’ The lines coming quickly. Words staccato. Blankly sung-spoken. Climax: ‘I can’t let them have me/ God how worse can that be!’ Sung in horror. The singer wanting to keep – what? The non-creation. The crumble of edifices. Land slumping into swamp.
‘Depression is consoling/ At least it’s mine/ I can be a slave to depression/ But at least it’s mine/ The scary world of losing control/ is far worse/ No reason to be/ is something I know/ There’s no overpowering outside force/ To excuse myself/ Well, I don’t care.’ So literal. Too literal. Absolutely clear over the music, which I want to come back again. ‘I don’t want to care/ it seems alien/ oh sure, there’s beauty/ it’s quiiiet heeere …’ And on, in the same metre, pretty much. ‘Nothing’s interesting/ The only interesting thing is nothing/ That’s all I want/ I care – about nothing.’ And the song ends. Applause.
What stage have we reached? The third and fourth pieces, which straddle the double album were confessional. The lyrics do not wind and turn, but seem to have hardened themselves into a theme. A theme has coalesced. I feel uneasy. As though the lyrics were too dominant, too clear. That the sunlight burns the swamp vapours away. What am I looking for as I listen? The murk. The river of tar spread everywhere.
‘Is it just go outside/ and you’ll find something to do …?’ A continuity of concern links song to song. A reflection intoned. A musing. Do I need to set out its principles here? But I’m listening, not analysing. ‘I can’t die/ to the why/ that loooms/ in my consciousness’. I listen to the long ‘loooms’, and without understanding. I want to force the music back into obscurity. To let it lose itself, away from the lyrics. I can’t stand the over-explicitness of the lyrics. Their obtrusiveness. Their crude non-scanning. That makes the song serve them and not the other way around.
I’d prefer a feverish vocal. Lyrics that bubbled, that rose up of themselves from the music like parts of dreams. Fever-dream lyrics, the dreams of Colonel Kurtz, lost in the jungle. ‘Okay, so what now/ What does one who doesn’t care do?/ Does he step to force himself to deal with the result of those steps’. I’m being forced to think. Forced to lift myself as a listener back into the first person, to ponder the lyrics, to muse with the singer. But I want to listen – and without understanding (with no miiiind as Jandek might sing).
But now this song, the fifth, has worn away and the sixth, too, has passed. The last song begins with more urgency. The tempo’s up. The current’s quickening … There’s no guitar anymore. It fell away somehow. No squawls … And the music is wrapped around the voice, the lyrics. The steam has almost been burned away from the river. A clearing has been hacked into the jungle. The undergrowth’s been cut back …
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