My Visitor does not have a high opinion of Jandek; I heard her wince just now from the kitchen, where she’s waiting for rye bread to rise in the oven. Early on in her visit, we had the Jandek conversation. It’s about microtones, I told her. A non-tempered scale. A guitar detuned from Western tonality. And a voice that, if it seems gloomy, is in fact stretched and supple and explores an idiom, a mood, rather like a raag. And the lyrics, too, are interesting, I said. Oblique – fragmentary: don’t they belong alongside – say, late Scott Walker?
That’s what I said, and then I put on the music and she looked – horrified. But in the spirit of generosity, as she bakes she said to put it on again – she wouldn’t notice. But I heard her wince in the kitchen. The CDs are lined up on the shelf, her copy of Clarissa on top of them. Clarissa trumps Jandek, she says.
‘What music would you normally put on when you come home from work?’, she asked just now. ‘You don’t have to ask’, I said, and especially today. ‘Put some on then. I won’t notice’. I put some on. She winced. ‘It’s the reptile brain’, says W. – ‘it knows there’s something deeply wrong with this music. It protests’. And he reminded me of our passed out friend, dead to the world and our entreaties. We threw things at him; he hardly stirred. And then – my idea – Jandek. We played it and then his arm rose into the air. He wasn’t conscious, but – his arm. It’s his reptile brain, said W. His reptile brain protesting.
For his part, W. admires Jandek. He plays the CDs, but he can’t be in the same room as them. I either go up, or down, he says. Up to the bedroom and study, or down to the kitchen. It’s involuntary, says W. It’s his reptile brain, he says.
Lars Iyer's Blog 