Voice; Bb clarinet (also Bb bass cl.); cello

1996-1997 – 40mn

Ensemble Accroche-Note : Françoise Kubler : voice; Armand Angster : clarinet; Walter Grimmer : cello / Selections from PPS recorded live by Othon Schneider – Auditorium France 3 Alsace, Festival Musica 1997, Strasbourg – September 20, 1997

Words

• I. Nous vous informons que cet arbre est mort [solo cello]
• II. Again
  The warmth of the lone candle in the center
  Radiates cold comfort
  I lie silent in the mild liquid
  Ear suctioned to the soft porcelain
  Nose fingering asphyxiation
  Breath slows
  Body stiffens
  As pellets roll from the icy metal to break
  The surface with a solid pop
  Eavesdropping
  A world echoes beneath my tapping fingernails
  Concentrating
  The indistinguishable distant
  Tones of my breath
  Unable to dry my tongue I snuff
  The candle and leave the sunken
  World behind again
• III. Rising
  The cat rests
  Gently pressing his backbone to my stomach
  Across the room
  The window pane reflects the luke yellow
  Bulb floating
  Thick musty crimson
  Touches my nostrils which stretch with curiosity
  The pastiness breaks
  Yielding to a warm sauce
  A minty inhalation
  Casually crawls my thigh
  I place the cat on the tile
  Rising
• IV. Where? (à Thermos Malling et Bob Log III)
  I don’t know where…
  I put it in my pocket…
  I wanted to take it somewhere…
  I don’t know which pocket…
  I put it in my damned pocket…
  Because I wanted to take it somewhere…
  But I don’t know which pocket…
  And I don’t know where.
• V. What?
  He was unable to hear the pounding ondo
  He focsly onthophing
  Why am I cold?
  Is the window closed?
  I know I closed it.
  He was unabto hear tepondit onth door.
  He focused onthy lophing
  My feet are so cold.
  What’s that?
  … But wood swells, so it creaks.
  He was unable to hear the pounding on the door.
  He focused onthy lophing
  Did I close it?
  God it’s so cold.
  My fingers are so cold.
  He was unable to hear the pounding on the door
  He focused on the telephone’s ring.
  He advanced slowly and picked up the receiver
  Only to hear a dial tone.
  It’s the stairs. Is it the stairs?
  That’s a foot… that’s a footstep.
  What?
• VI. Sound
  A golden spiderweb is breathing
  Beside the pale yellow clouded glass
  My feet knock against one another
  To the rhythm of
  A metal machine locking
  The bottle caps on
  The austere transparent characters
  In a cold factory
  Cold repetitive
  Efficiency
  Luscious blocks of metal slamming against one another
  The wooden blocks of a child
  Who refuses to build
  Lusting only for the noise
  Lust for rhythm
  The safety of sound
• VII. Eyesting
  Sure
  Sure
  Mother’s fat face – sure
  Fat face – fat
  You’re swollen child
  You’re fat
  Fat fly
  Squashed can’t fly
  Fly
  Fly
  Fly
  Fy
  Fya
  Fire
  Fire! Mist sweeps smouldering fog
  Blaze devours carpet devours carpet
  Devours lampshade the fever choking
  Charred walls wood dead blue flowing
  Blue orange river swallowing the ceiling
  Shrivelling ceiling Danger! Fire!
  Eyesting eyesting eyesting…
• VIII. Pit
  Lounging
  I attach my eyes to a blade
  In the ceiling fan above me
  Like in a car
  Trying to fool myself into immobility
  The waltz seduces me
  I squeeze my eyes shut
  Knocking my chest with my chin
  A drop of saliva
  Propulsed
  Into
  My
  Belly
  I eat another cherry and suck the pit
• IX. Enjoy (I.B.)
  Quiet colorless one
  Wouldn’t you taste this fucking sweet second
  For your thoughts to turn into white acid
  Wouldn’t you feel like
  You could beat to death
  Any unknown face
  You cross along the promenade
  And enjoy
• X. Ouvert ou mis-clos [bass clarinet & cello]
• XI. Fingernails
  The shock of a hopping television screen
  Stirs me.
  My eyes fix the swinging image,
  Swelling with the unfocused glow,
  Swinging back to black, surrounding me.
  My eyes center on the scorched shrivelling flesh.
  The unfocused, unsought glow now
  Seeps into my inflated melting eyes.
  I see my hand rise.
  Unattached skin, scarlet soaked
  Beneath uneven fingernails…
• XII. Me
  My fingertips burn white
  From my grasp of the bottle
  As my copper eyes
  Hold the amphibian claws
  Searching the small green stalks
  Of his forest
  Just beyond the cascade of glass
  Covering his bloated torso
  My fingertips a pale green
  Now as I petrify my lungs
  I watch the foreign red spill
  Steaming on the petit forest
  Beneath me
• XIII. 21st Century Housewife
  Take twenty of best glasses
  Lie in center of any room in house
  Placing ten glasses beside each arm
  Using an upward stroke,
  Keeping arm as straight as possible,
  Forcefully toss one glass directly to ceiling.
  Repeat until all twenty glasses
  Have been shattered