The Chicken Won’t Stop.

The chicken won't stop. The chicken stops here. There's a great deal to meditate upon in these phrases, W. says. They're like mantras to him. Weren't they etched into the first and last side of Joy Division's Still?

They're from Herzog's film Stroszek. Ian Curtis watched it just before he killed himself. Stroszek, which ends with the coin operated attractions in which a duck plays a drum, a rabbit rides a fire truck and a chicken dances. The chicken won't stop.

How much that film means to him!, W. says. To us! Which one am I?, he wonders, Bruno Stroszek or his elderly neighbour, Scheitz, so obsessed with animal magnetism? Scheitz is arrested, of course – he and Bruno hold up a barber shop. The police take him away, and Bruno? He rides off on a ski-lift and shoots himself.

'That's what'll happen to us when we go to America', W. says. 'You'll shoot yourself, and I'll be arrested'. All that will be left is the animals the duck, the rabbit and the chicken, and some blues harmonica music. The chicken won't stop. The chicken stops here.