The infinite value of transcription. Taylor Wright, a Creative Nonfiction MFA candidate at UNLV (University of Nevada, Los Vegas), contacted us recently regarding a project she’s been working on, comparing Allen’s “Written Under the Effects of Powdered Sassafras” ((performed at a reading at Naropa Institute on July 30, 1974, along with Diane di Prima and Anne Waldman, and noted by us here) with Lenny Bruce‘s celebrated February 4 1961 performance at Carnegie Hall, “measuring and analyzing the effects of laughter in live performance as an act of rebellion and a measure of revolution”. She notes the instances of laughter in the audience reception to Allen’s piece (there’s plenty of it) as well as hesitancies, stuttering, swiftly corrected thought, particular qualities of intonation (all, important parts of his transcription, tho’ not included here).
The audio from which Wright made her transcription may be listened to – here
There was a.. news story I saw in the Denver Post, the Sacramento Bee, two days ago saying that the Food and Drug Administration.. was considering banning Sassafras!
The… You know it was in the Denver Post. It was in yesterday’s Denver Post, actually.
This a poem.. written under the effects of powdered sassafras.
An intellectual poem, in a sense that there is some observation of present reality, but a great deal of it is just thought association.
Is Dulles Airport run computerized by Guanyin?
Staring through window, I, at sleek aluminum square windowed cabs… we who depart from Washington to Denver, Portland, New York, United, 167 sleek passengers dressed for cloud travel,
necktied wool sweatered… aluminum handbag-secret document case attache with blue paisley necktie…
Brown old shoes and woolen socks, reading the Post, some are staring out through eyeglasses… the cab with metal whale-fins, mammal nose sensors, orange eye-globe tipped, steel magnetic conductor antennae, four feet long above the aluminum bellows mouth snout, conducting to the ticket counter x-ray passenger baggage gate… (laughter)
An empty Chinaman, sitting, cornered, chewing gum, brown sport shirt collar spread over blue jacket, out the runway, up there in the white-globed control tower pagoda, antennae calls in the planes, coordinates time, distance, angle – East and West – above the green farm fields and woods hundred miles.
Great rock! Is it my soul that carries my soul? Holy Garuda! Self-born out of an empty egg… plane-wing turning under international airport roofs buttress, concrete fields under open sky, blue clouds at 14,000 feet. Voice, “Don’t hesitate to call on us,” through the metal speaker. Inside muzak, outside roaring thunder, green fields beside the runway, concrete squared, precise wing extended iron jet drum-power lifting this throne above farm towers, suburb sections, big brown fields a mile long edged with wood rings, leafed billionic green.
Was it sassafras, white fruit powder I gummed in the Aztec Yankee small plane uplifted from Lexington by car? Radioed and radared into the air, 5,000 feet, clouds slowly dissolving over Virginia’s lakes, Potomacs, green belt below. Sort of MDA mellow nasal-drip in the white mist, and wing-tip riding on abstractions, dials and zeros and needles and mind. Time measured and rolling like ship through ether, wavy in heaven. Blind clouded, Eidolonic jet plane, flying machine, exacted to the very weight of air cloud.
And girls in harlequin sleeves carry plastic tray-loads of yellow, metal-bagged chips. Walking sweetly, amazing, most amazing to be privileged here! Looking children in this..in the.. in their eye… all children, looking like pig-faced Buddhas eating beef sandwiches and magic mushrooms…
…essence of calamus, cactus, sassafras, mushrooms, Yerba buena. Entire earth visible, boiling sunlit white-water-vapors, mountained and plains valleyed, empty and drifting together under arch-heaven dome, degreed to every horizon encircled. Sky rising above clouds, lit sun bright, and this plane in the middle, carrying humans as Gods in a Brahmaloka.
Empty heaven, filled with metal fffortunate brain-thoughts. I, seeing such space ahead, stretched with harmless clouds, untouched through eyeball window, throat suffering of cough, cold-sweat in the spotless cabin, orange juice in Garuda’s belly, Smirnoff and 7Up, cigarettes, all sunlight clear ahead, cluttered blinding light-spector. Sound, the murmur of thunder, (tongue click) roar and gossip, muffled by carpet and plastic. Great window that gives on earth-clouds below. How far down, the land-floor and bodies, rotting in swamps, Mekong thought a way around the world? (Deep breath)
Or Washington’s lovers struggling in bed, jacking each other off, sprawled, balls-to-balls, belly open to dark space, slippery cock-head throbbing jism-thrilled release? Ah!
Timothy Leary jail-celled venturing thy mind into space? Prayers for thy flight from earth-egg spoiled by our jet-stream. Into clear heaven? Into black galaxy? Emptiness everywhere same filled with clear-cloud vast-vision. Armies of misty energy moving diaphanous above the wing. What plane for the planet? How can I scream at the army? Scream at the police? The military defense? The airplane freaks, enthusiasts, orgiasts of space of thrill? Myself, right now, high in atmosphere above the planet’s cloud-floor? Myself, enjoying the sun in heaven? Marveling space?
There’s only one thing better than lookin’ out of the window and writin’ poetry and that’s sssittin’ silent in meditation and indifference. to sense phenomena. Breathing the same ssspace. Exact inside, outside, empty-eyed. 6:28 PM, flying across the continent. Portland, Atlantic to Pacific. Surveyed, costly. Easy. Sassafras roots the answer. Veery in Vacaville. White powder. “Have some.”
Same as not being high, being high, everybody agrees. No attachment. “Even a pill,” as Krishnamurti said, “Is too much effort.” Ancient chemicals. India, gurus and yogis, all fail. Look at poor, suffering India now, dear sir! Holding Leary’s hand. All failed. Speaking passionately clear. “We can end the war in Vietnam with LSD!” said faithful Tim. Hopeful, vulgar human panic! Brave man that die so often twice new lives.
Nixon’s Tapes! Expletives! Half an hour. “Would you like some…ribs, porkchops, or Mahi Mahi?” “What’s Mahi Mahi?” “Mahi Mahi is dolphin meat.” “I’ll take Mahi Mahi!”Chögyam’s shining eyes, suffering. “Love!” Above the clouds. Intelligent dolphins. My brown pancakes. Look down on earth. Boise’s electric grid there. All day cross-continent. Nixon’s voice transcripts in the Times. His expletives: fuck, damn, shit, motherfucker, cocksucker, asshole. “Yes! That’s the language of the President of the U.S.! Same as mine!” Standing.. Standing naked as in Dylan’s cosmic-eye. A babbler! A hypocrite! A language deceiver who swears and acts pious, naive…an image dealer. Publicity manipulator. Hypnosis. Mass Media double-talker. One set language public, another set private, different. “That causes schizophrenia – just like me and the FBI!”
“Just like police or poetry-mongers.” What poetry they got for the average man. Can’t read the secret poems… the long conversations that took place. Dean asking Nixon to save his ass! Sweet Dean. Cute Dean. The double-crossing intelligent lawyer. Handsome, short-haired Dean. “Please, save my ass!” How can I save my ass? – And Nixon, and his ass. Can Nixon save his ass? (A bunch of asses, like us all. Masquerading as men of distinction. Honest. Rectitude. Yay! Rectal probity and genital efficiency and cleanliness!)
“Keep it clean in between! Keep it clean in between!” Peter Orlovsky chanted ten years ending in Denver. Did Nixon wash his behind after he shat? What’s expletive to his mind? Each expletive in the transcript is an an- (silence 47:09-12) -mark. A mole on the cheek of the public smoothie. That’s how he got irrational. (Smiling) LOST control! “What the fuck? Who needed that?!” Lost control of the bombers over Cambodia. “What the fuck? Who ordered that!?”
Calley could blame Nixon, the highest up. The buck stops here. Keep it clean in between. “Motherfucker!” in vast space at dusk. The sun gilds yellow, the pissy wing. And all the boys from Boise down there wrinkled, old, or jailed, exiled, or disenhearted. Scared of sucking cock. (with snotty affectation) “Think what they do in the White House.” (with nasal affectation) “They don’t do that.” (Ginsberg’s voice) There, they shoulda done that! ..Shoulda been suckin’ cock all along, not orderin’ men about like slaves to burglary?
Supreme sir. Masters of the S&M Wars on a planet-scale. Global ass-fucking. What’s humiliation on the Vietnamese? 20 years under Nixon’s assfuck. He got out there with the French on the battlefield, 1952. Or 1945 was it? Smiling on the way… encouraging rape. All Indochina. And since his “peace” a year ago, 800,000 refugees… 50,000 dead since his “war end”… 70,000 wounded by our guns and money-machines… Food for Peace funds, $350 million dollars, stolen from Sahel, Chad, and Upper Volta, where the folks starve, spent on Saigon, to store piastres up – subsidizing Thiệu government
Contempt of Congress. Limits of Thiệu’s economic aid. He spent three billion dollars last year, South Vietnam and Indochina War again, and only half-a-billion all Africa and Latin America starving combined. And the dark falls on Idaho, under-wing. No one can read all the papers. The conversations,
year by year, Kissinger? Lying, in every direction. “Watergate,” says Ellsberg. “And the war,” says I, “It’ll all come out… someday, too late.” Another million died by nerve-gas. Shrapnel, bombs, starvation fuck up.
Out of hand? The entire world, out of hand… half-starved. America, fat. Worshopping strange Gods. Mammon? Material palaces. Towers electrified and air-conditioned. Windows frozen shut forever. And I ride this place United, consuming orange juice gasoline like General Westmoreland, or any airplane murderer cushioned above the clouds, dropping thought bombs across the nation, calling for its Fall.
A prophesying police-state. Torture. Tyranny. Armored and uniformed by the Pentagon. Bullshit and daydream. Words and voice. Self, not suffering, yet. The mortal death that my own Father is near. And half the world decides, suffering skeletons, while we ride the scandals through gray clouds.