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#Post#: 409--------------------------------------------------
DISFIGURED NIGHT (Project of the Week for 1st of May)
By: moleshow Date: May 1, 2017, 9:20 am
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Silly Billy bought his breakfast from a fat old man...
this was actually going to be the PotW a couple of weeks back
but sometimes stuff doesn't work out perfectly.
#Post#: 413--------------------------------------------------
Re: DISFIGURED NIGHT (Project of the Week for 1st of May)
By: CheerfulHypocrite Date: May 7, 2017, 2:08 pm
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[quote="Disfigured Night"]
Devastated by the shock of feeling death and pain,
Billy began to understand what he had lost and gained;
[/quote]
Like an oblique quotation from God In Three Persons Silly Billy
wanders around the world feeling what others feel. A catharsis
incarnate. Silly Billy was, in the history of clowning, a
stooge. Unlike Tweedles, Silly Billy was not so much stalking
the experiences of others as surviving their passage.
The historical costume of Silly Billy were short, white trousers
with a long white pinafore, white shoes with a strap around the
ankle, red sleeves, a ruff around the neck, and a boy's cap. A
wig was arranged to stick out behind the ears. Daubed red face
emphasised with two smeared black eyebrows. Performances
required multiple of trousers. Women liked to tease the clown by
smearing gingerbread or sticking pins into his legs so that they
bled staining the trousers.
Sometimes, something is just a sketch. Which is not a bad thing
- it gives an idea of the Residents as something other than
Musicians. Disfigured Night is something like the Fever Dream of
Roger in The Bunny Boy. A pared down and almost archetypal
heroic figure having a small adventure. The detail of the
storytelling is almost absent. A narrative that sits on top of a
gush of noises and a splash of images.
In London Labour And The London Poor, Henry Mayhew (1812 -1887)
described some of the songs a Silly Billy might sing.
[quote="Silly Billy"]
he, higgety ey ho!
Billy let the water go!
[/quote]
A couplet about letting water out of a water butt.
[quote="Silly BIlly"]
Ain't this wet! Ain't it dry!
Cut my throat if I tells a lie.
[/quote]
A couplet about the lapidiary arts of the Cutler and the Cobbler
- both trades given to working with knives. The Silly Billy
Character was good for decades of work. Associated with such
songs as Clementina Clements
[quote="Silly Billy"]
You talk of modest girls
Now I've seen a few,
But there's none licks the one
I'm sticking up to.
But some of her faults
Would make some chaps ill;
But with all her faults,
Yes, I lover her still.
Such a delicate duck was Clementina Clements;
Such a delicate duck I never did see.
[/quote]
The story meanders on, telling how Clementina faints at the
sight of a Dutch Doll with no clothes on, that she does not like
table legs - shocking things, some Victorians believed - and
would not walk over a potato field because they have eyes. Which
is all very close to the experiences of Disfigured Nights
Even closer to the Disfigured Nights experience is the Clown and
Silly Billy Mesmerism Act. Clown arrives in a tall white hat,
with a cloack on and announces he is the the Great Doctor Bokani
- the most celebrated mesmerist in the world.
[quote="Doctor Bokani"]
Look at me
Here I am
Ain't I mesmerised elephants?
Ain't I mesmerised monkeys?
And Ain't I going to mesmerise him!
[/quote]
And there then follows the business of Silly Billy taking on the
feelings of the Audience in various ways. Doctor Bokani
manipulating Silly Billy for giggles and innuendo and to keep
the Audience in high spirits. Much of the time is taken in
having Silly Billy flirting.
Which is where Disfigured Night seems to be performed for the
international audience in Koln. It is not a studio work. It is a
sketch. One filled with ideas that are mixed together as though
improvised. There are hints of The King And Eye and Tweedles and
even premonitions of Animal Lover but none of them are so fully
developed that they slpt together like a jigsaw.
Silly Billy undergoes a journey with the Monkey in search of the
Girl. This is a Hero Quest and is structured the same way as,
for example, Gilgamesh. Unlike the classic Hero Quest story,
Silly Billy encounters the mundane and discovers that,
everywhere they go, the mundane is pain. The endless,
uncontrolled purging of the World into one person. No longer a
cathartic experience, Silly Billy has become an anode: endlessly
storing the fantasies and the life stories of people. An
endless, overwhelming river of humanity - almost A River of
Crime in microcosm.
The Journey with a sick monkey gradually changes Silly Billy;
much like the examination of the life of New York Clown David
Friedman - known as Silly Billy - who, in his late 30s, was
earning six figure sums performing at the birthday parties of
the New York elite. The constant examination of the world
becoming a burden to Silly Billy with the truths of the world
increasingly hard to bear. The real world scandal surrounding
Friedman followed, long after, Disfigured Night but the
coincidence shows the value of sketching: Tweedles followed as
though Disfigured Night was a premonition.
Which, inevitably leads to the apotheosis: the transformation
from Silly Billy into the Golden Girl and the horrifying
realisation that the one legged woman has simply been reproduced
by the Hero Journey: nothing has changed as everything is, in
essence, become a death and resurrection show.
Which makes the strange version of We Are The World a strange
commentary on the morality of music. As a charity single, the
original song was described as being a Pepsi advertisement by
Journalist Greil Marcus. Placed against the first four parts of
Disfigured Night it becomes a complex narrative around the
ethical nature of the Music Industry: endlessly recycling the
pornography of suffering for unit sales; the privileges of
musicians such as Michael Jackson - whose connection to both We
Are The World and monkeys is well documented; the insinuation of
racism.
It is a sketch and so the narrative does not flesh out a
complicated and finely tuned narrative about race. But the use
of the word monkey as a term of racist abuse cannot have been
lost. Silly Billy endlessly keeps the song of the Golden Girl as
a background to the journey. Until it eventually vanishes.
Whereupon, Silly Billy transforms into a one legged girl. Not
simply reproducing the possibilty of some new Girl-Monkey
relationship but also the perpetuation of the same sort of
sneering about monkeys. But it is a sketch which puts claims of
that sort beyond the definite.
Yet the parallels between Michael Jackson and Disfigured Night
allow the kind of reflection that comes out of that. Unlike the
original We Are The World the Disfigured Night version has
arisen from actual suffering: the journey with the Monkey, when
taken allegorically, outlines that Silly Billy will be
transformed by racism just as much as the Monkey will be killed.
It is a thuggish allegory but one that makes a perverse kind of
sense. A disfigured sense.
The total story begins in bliss - unlike most music careers
which begin in relative poverty - and ends in pain - unlike the
'successful' who become enriched as Croesus. The version of We
Are The World is an artistic mirror held up to any Musicians who
would want to contemplate their place in the world. It inverts
the supposition of a desirable course of a music career and
foreshadows the real suffering that We Are The World omitted by
its overproduced and oversentimentalised presentation to the
world.
Which is why the Residents are not musicians but Artists.
Musicians, for all their creativity and talent, very rarely
criticise themselves. They make astounding music but suffer from
a need to "Please check your egos at the door.". Which the
Residents seem to achieve by creation in obscurity. The sounds
for Disfigured Night are not the greatest music in the world;
falling far short of things such as Black Barry or even Stars
and Hank, Forever. But the music sketches something bigger.
Packing the possibility of a critique of racism and a hero
journey into something that was created, it seems, as a
performance before moving onwards, is an ambitious - like Giotto
drawing a circle with a single sweep of the hand.
Which is why the music of Disfigured Night takes a secondary
place to the images created by Steven Cerio. In a serendipitous
turn, Cerio, a musician and artist, was raised in Liverpool, New
York and so allows oblique reference to the ongoing
Residents-Beatles narrative. Disfigured Night illustrates how it
is possible to be discontent with the accidents of something
while caring for the substances. The core of Disfigured Night is
the imbalance between what can be seen and what must be
experienced. Much the same as racism, Silly Billy cannot
experience being The Monkey not through lack of empathy but
because individuality and a sense of identity prevents it for
everybody. In essence: Silly Billy experiences the Satrean Hell
that is other people directly and comes to a state of empathy
bordering on identity without actually being other people.
Which all suggests that Silly Billy might actually be Autistic -
unable to cope with the barrage of stimulation that is social
existence and unable to concieve of other minds - yet having a
final insight into The Golden Girl which, in fact, transcends
that of ordinary people. In the sense of some Buddhist
teachings, Silly Billy manages to still the mad monkey. Unlike
the real world where We Are The World sought to point at
suffering yet entertains, Disfigured Night, in a strange and
perverse way, points away from suffering yet fails to distract.
Such is the power of the sketch.
#Post#: 414--------------------------------------------------
Re: DISFIGURED NIGHT (Project of the Week for 1st of May)
By: moleshow Date: May 7, 2017, 3:17 pm
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i recall first stumbling upon Disfigured Night and feeling
utterly overwhelmed at how much of it i loved (all of it).
it's really got everything: clowny costumes, a protagonist with
an involuntary hyper-empathetic sort of ability, a shocking
story and of course, The Residents.
i don't really have much to say in terms of interpreting the
story, because it sorta comes at face value for me. Silly Billy
learns to care for the Monkey and through that caring, he finds
himself on a slippery slope of caring about all the pain the he
used to see and feel so differently. the pain that flowed so
easily and comfortably though him stuck to him as he lost what
little he had. and of course, from this, he finds a way out and
has a revelation- that he can care for others without being hurt
or something like that.
but there's a liveliness to Molly's mostly wordless performance.
she makes excellent use of body language! plus the costume is
super cute and i love the little freckle thingies on her face
and the white gloves. Singing Resident, as the monkey, seems to
frame Silly Billy's motions throughout a majority of the
performance. he may be telling the story, but it is by no means
about him. the story of Silly Billy is merely brought to us
through him, just as the most horrific experiences of others are
only visible to us through Silly Billy. (bit of a reach.)
i feel like a piece of the story is also made clearer through
the Icky Flix rendition of We Are The World, Just For You. the
lyrics become joyously spiteful and selfish. it's a sarcastic
reflection of the original song, and an expansion of the first
rendition of it by them. where the "me"'s of "you and me" are
repeated, the basis for Just For You are laid. the seemingly
charitable behavior proves itself to be, in actuality, deeply
motivated by a desire to seem generous when in reality, they are
being done by someone who recognizes their own selfishness,
their own greed, their own... horrible-ness, really. one little
bit of the song that always struck a chord with me is...
[quote]But if my words of wisdom fall underneath your ears, I'll
try to find forgiveness in me, just for you.[/quote]
i don't think it's a song about Silly Billy, nor is it about the
monkey. instead, i think it is pointing out the improbability of
Billy's journey ending in any sort of care without ulterior
motives. it is only possible for Silly Billy due to the fact
that he is defined, until the point where the monkey changes
him, by his lack of suffering. he experiences the suffering of
others without understanding it, and believes that by
experiencing it, he frees them from it. his contact with others
is so fleeting that he cannot possibly come to understand or
care. and when he does, he is stripped of that joyous innocence.
but he returns from it, still having a warmth to his soul. and
that just ain't likely in many other cases. a pleasant thought,
sure. but Just For You is harsher, more realistic outcome.
still, Disfigured Night has a dreamy quality to it and i can get
behind that. a favorite for sure.
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