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Sweeping Tendrils

by Superintendent Idle Tiger

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Jonathan Bradshaw
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1.
Prologue / Sweeping Tendrils 07:43
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Scrap was sedated when he boarded the train The train has come for you… Taste and smell the yellow book, Swallow touch and sugar suck The train has come for you… Sedative hollow and follow the swoon And fall out of your century The train has come for you Your pain is done with you I finger the decades that linger as patches in blasted memory banks (The audience responds with blank amazement) You say decay I say OK Sooner or later we all go that way And I said what can I say? I have been sent from the future to slightly annoy you I have been sent from the future to mildly disappoint you But Officer Grimbold’s after me so I cannot stay too long. Now sleep. You’ll love it when you get there. Life cannot go on without a great deal of forgetting. Sleep is tender under sweeping tendrils I doze and live a dozen lives, polite and ornamental Mental illness under sweeping tendrils The sun sets on the century You’re everything you’re meant to be You’re a dandy now You’re everything you’re meant to be Financed by bourgeois industry You’re a dandy now Scrap sleeps tender under sweeping tendrils His mother is a rentboy and his father’s non-essential And he sweeps all over Europe in the 19th century Transfigured by his travels and the circles that he entered Scrap sleeps gentle under sweeping tendrils They’re calling out the witnesses to find out if he’s mental Sleep is tender under bleeding tendrils Parasites and skeletons Eminent in their boredom The old Victorians The garden is a punishment The trees diffuse a lazy scent They’re all on laudanum A sudden and surprising flower Satanic and mechanical Will bloom to torture them O Lord. O laudanum. O Lord, laudanum. Lord Laudanum. Vespers The house Vapours of art Vipers is there: What did you see? Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s wombat eating cigar stubs from the floor of his chaotic home menagerie What does that mean? the cleaner will not clean there anymore And what else? William Morris floral patterns papered all around; fecund to the point of depravity Why? The foremost critic of the age could not get his head around his wife’s pubic hair So what next? The fin de siècle is far from fun but Michael Field is feeling alright. If I were too lesbian lovers under one name then I’d feel alright, says the lad at the station who knows more than lads of his station ought because he hangs round the station at night What do you remember? The kissed mouth and the baleful head, the twin with his fingers shot off, the anarchist librarian mother And what else? The swish of the cane in a serpentine line, the blush of pallid flesh beneath, patterns in gore as crepuscular creatures creep through the door of my uncle’s botanical gardens So what? Heterosexuals are ruining civilization The end is gentle under sweeping tendrils Until my brain was in decay my life was uneventful Scarcely sentient under sweeping tendrils Sleep is tender under bleeding tendrils They’re calling out the witness to find out if I’m mental Sleep is gentle under sweeping tendrils But Officer Grimbold’s creeping round my head
2.
Pageant Boy 05:04
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The coins in the cashbox copulate not. The shops that give him credit are getting rather few. No-one will say where he went; You cannot find him in his room. Make-up was missing, And other things too The youngest child lives a life of great privacy. The youngest child lives a life of great privacy. His mother is upset. She eats nothing on her knife. She should not play the piano. It will only make her grieved. A friendless destitute old man Holds the boy’s head in his hands, With the petals of a lily wipes the blood from off his cheek. Pageant Boy The bloom on a plum You are Pageant Boy. Pageant Boy, The bloom upon a plum You are Pageant Boy Grimbold heard that female sex tourism is a thing. Grimbold heard that female sex tourism is a thing. Scrap walked on the canal with a buttercup-faced boy, His eyes lit up like windows in the arcades. I have heard that female sex tourism is a thing. He walked on the canal with a buttercup-faced boy. I believe that female sex tourism is a thing X2 Make-up was missing. There may be other things. I have subterranean lakes of sadness inside me And it is mostly alright But sometimes the damp rises up and it warps my floor And it is mostly alright But sometimes a rumour reaches me of a hideous unstudied creature making its horrible home down there. But look: this is the next stop: The clientele are unabashed, Foreheads glowing, throats all flushed. There is a sailor; There is a man dressed as a sailor; There is a sailor dressed as a sailor; But are they even necessarily sailors? They are so loud you cannot hear them. And the fellow whose life was an absolute failure Was last seen boarding a ship to Australia. His sexual depravity had so alarmed his family that they had procured his incarceration. A delicate flower will find strength in licentiousness. A shy boy in the police court for the offence of gross indecency. His teacher sent him a postcard from Munich, A woman enjoying the sex of a corpse, And he returned to vague and wily habits. Pageant Boy, Live your life Of great privacy. Pageant Boy, Running out of funds, O Pageant Boy. Pageant Boy, Resume your place In the design of things. Pageant Boy Death is in so in love with the Pageant Boy.
3.
Maquillage 04:33
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The Marquess of Queensberry did not accuse Oscar Wilde of sodomy But, rather, of the much more specific fault of “posing as a sodomite” Or, as the illiterate belligerent actually wrote, POSING AS SOMDOMITE And perhaps the muttonchopped maniac, whispers still on London lips about his eldest son’s so-called accidental death, was closer to the truth than he ever could have known. The crime is always the pose. Didn’t make eye contact with the audience, Didn’t make eye contact with the audience, Didn’t make eye contact with the audience Didn’t make eye contact Mumbled and spoke in a voice much too quiet for people at the back The pose is always the crime. Felons and artists conceal their identity; Scrap queers his face in the late nineteenth-century. Limited eye contact the audience Somewhat projected their voice to the audience The mask will tell you all you need to know. We are a costume, not a culture Don’t be trivial about your make-up Superior eye contact with the audience Commence the carousel Cancel and recommence History turns as a pageant before your burning eyes What you call you flickers at random intervals. The mists on the river, the brown fogs shaping shadows, Shading the monstrous faces you recognize in night-time constellations. There is distance between the world and me And a quivering, always quivering in between. Petals Reflected in a shallow pool Petals Fallen in a shallow pool The mask is perfumed It vibrates between me and objects Like air on a hot afternoon Let me live in your world of lavender-water and sweat. Wearing an outfit of clothes borrowed from your lover’s lover She was applying the white grease-paint with the corner of a towel. She had picked up the hare’s paw and was lightly stroking it over her skin with great concentration. She went on covering herself with rice-powder, taking care not to put any on her cheek-bones. Holding her face close to the mirror, she began dipping her finger in a jar and rubbing on the rouge under her eyes, spreading it gently along to her temples. The gentlemen maintained a respectful silence. She had dipped her brush in a jar of mascara and, with her nose pressed hard against the mirror, closing her left eye, she stroked it delicately between her lashes. With her finger she now added two broad strokes of rouge on her lips.
4.
(No-one liked the) Pictures of You 01:49
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No-one was laughing when you acted the clown At your first birthday party. When you were five You sashayed around the room in your undies On boxing day night. Your male relatives in the front room Were making remarks about you. Everyone predicted that you’d end up arrested. No-one was laughing at all. And no-one liked the pictures of you when you were born.
5.
A Son Like Me (Sex scene involving Charles Baudelaire and a large amount of fabric) 04:49
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Distress For I finger flesh Distress Of the clothing flesh Disinterestedness A drift Adrift of address Pressed Against the layers of dress Untouched By any germ or sperm Unwashed Stretched on my dreamsheet My satanic sea Who wrote this scrofulous feeling in me? The tradesmen are weird And your seed it beats weak Grazing on arteries calls me for meat One does not remarry, mum, When one has a son like me Who wrote this feeling I feel in my spine? Where’s your father? Where’s your father? Where’s your father Baudelaire? You haven’t got one, you’re a bastard, you’re a bastard Baudelaire. Fast fettered in your flesh Closed Cloistered in your clothes The silk wet with human milk I spilt I hold a good position with the sanitary commission. All of Paris is putrid now, An unaired bedroom after sex The ragpicker Like a poet rooting for rhymes Parading in fabric, Trading in grime. A girl named Crucifix A headless hat. Come with me, pretty boy, Kiss and gnaw my battered breast While fully dressed. The darkness stinks like a dying man caressing his tomb. I confused the smell of furs for the smell of woman. Gerard de Nerval, Hat still on head, Swings dead in the gaslight. He’s fucking dead. Do not wait up for me: for the night will be black and white. Occult symbols scrawled on scrawn: Hat Motionless On head. I took off your clothes and did not pay the money Convulsions, stammering ejaculations And the stream of cash between my thighs Would you like to activate my syphilis? I hold a good position with the sanitary commission.
6.
Two Skeletons Having a Scrap (James Ensor) 04:40
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I exist I’m mad I’m simpleminded I’m incapable I’m a creampuff gone rotten. Disparagement beats down on me like hail Disparagement beats down on me Down on me like hail. They like the thrill or adrenaline they get They like to identify with the victims They like to see something that they would never see in real life Above all that, people are malicious. Police are sweeping up the street tonight They’re bringing in the bodies for their medical exams With a playful spirit I document your family. A head in a presentation case, a finger on a table, The filthy remnants of a strange container The woman in a corset holds a palm across the sick man’s mouth And above all that, people are ridiculous. Hairy masks And red-lipped masks And bird-head masks And silken masks And cacked up masks And perfumed masks And greasepaint masks And boneface masks Behind the mask there is a skull you surely recognise Pulling out the Pierrot’s guts, the strings behind his eyes We should not keep this clown around no more He’s always creeping through the cloth He’s always peeking through the walls He hasn’t contributed much at all The other night he nearly died when Sarah smothered him between her thighs But O, the courage of the clown But O, the courage of the clown But O, the courage of the clown But O, the courage of the clown And after all you’ve got to laugh He became a lion-tamer Then he became a laundress Then he became nothing And the sailors keep building their bodies Take off your face, reveal your mask tonight – The mask is going to unmask you So thank you and goodnight. Tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight I’m feeling rubbish
7.
Alphonse Daudet's Boring Syphilis 05:01
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Like all the stupid things you dream your pain is always new to you. Like all the things you dream your pain is only interesting to you. You’re like Jesus on the cross discussing agony with the thieves But my caring instinct’s leaving me My maternal instinct’s withering You’re sleeping on the edge of life, and then… the void beneath Then you’re Away in empty space. In empty space. So you snacked on sensuality Before you met me; after you met me When you were after the kind of filth that you could not quite request of your wife The sudden lapse of memory; the effect of chloral on your skin: patchy blobs like make-up on your face Your hand was shaking when you signed the register at Victor Hugo’s funeral; it was a disgrace You signed a declaration stating Drumont’s father was by far the sanest syphilitic maniac who ever walked the earth The nurse admires your wound like one admires a fresh-bloomed flower and she nods off reading novels by the hearth My father gave you morphine Again this morning, didn’t he? I am not your mother, you are not Christ A prostitute can wash your feet But I have grown bored of your pain Then you’re Away in empty space. In empty space. In pursuit of the kind of filth you could not quite request of your wife With your morphine in the morning my husband it is boring The doctors will inspect you and my father will inject you But where does that leave me? Where does that leave me? Great flames of pain furrowing my body, cutting it to pieces, lighting it up Erebus, thick black waves … As delightful as slipping inside a warm bath You feel yourself taken in, enfolded Sweetness. The garden. Blackbird singing. Leg cut off. No pain. Horrors.
8.
Juice All Down Your Chin (Sex scene involving Christina Rossetti and Jesus Christ) 03:47
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She’s bedridden with religious mania And her brother keeps a wombat in his flat Her brother has a model Who’s dying in a puddle And there’s a brothel where he lost his hat She took the scissor to her teenage arm If you buy persimmons from a fucked up goblin You’ll end up with the juice all down your chin So she lives a life of modesty Charity and faith Volunteering at the Home For Fallen Women Then Jesus drip his juice all down her chin I remembered these scenes from Playboy in the 70s The saviour force-fed strawberries to the youth The man of her dreams Jesus with good muscle tone It’s the one time the she doesn’t only think of death And he feeds upon her face by day and night. Then she’s bedridden with religious mania And the wombat eats cigar stubs off the floor Her brother has a model The puzzle Lizzie Siddal She’s dying in a puddle while he’s painting in the brothel She refused her suitor and dismissed him sadly After her vampire uncle chose to end his life Her suitor translated the Bible Into Iroquois instead Her brother’s digging up the poetry he buried with his wife And she locks the door upon herself again. It was a hell of a scene The fleshly school of poetry Muscular Christianity Sweet with pain Limbs limp in the stream He pulled her body next to him She stretched her gleaming neck to him They were glazed Like two unfallen blossoms on one stem She sucked the succous pasture full and fine He hardens her against herself again She sipped him sweet to tongue and sound to eye They listen And they teach each other how to beat They listen
9.
A Change of Plumage (Sex scene involving King William II of the Netherlands and a horde of mice) 03:19
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Muizen hebben Nederland overgenomen Mice have laid claim to the lowlands Muizen hebben Nederland overgenomen Muizen zijn in Nederland: godverdomme! A corny king Is a horny thing When the grain’s on the ground He is fucking around With the man who has served him so well He fucks his footman, but only in harvest-time The monarch of a bankrupt European nation Extortion When he married he bought himself a gift as a little consolation Extermination He selected discerningly muscular servants from a rentboy circle in Lisbon Blackmail Muizen eten ons ontbijt, dus we hebben honger Accept! Accept! Accept that you are rubbish! He reassessed his policy reconsidered his position He accepted without question The liberal constitution But mice have laid claim to the lowlands And hordes of them are in the corn
10.
No Further Information (the death of Lautreamont and the Siege of Paris) 02:35
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In the siege of Paris Dogs’ meat sold at 2 and a half francs a pound Cats’ meat 12 francs a pound I wrote a poem today It was 20 cm long Something puerile but necessary 2 and a half francs a pound I hope my oblivion will be complete tonight The sewing machine is the surgeon working on this old umbrella I’ve been typecast as the human fool in this insect operetta Since I became an awful person my poetry is better I’m sick of God, who’s spying on my dreams all of the time The sound you are hearing Is not the Prussians in the zone It is the groan of Poetry and Prostitution coupled in a winter wind. There is a problem with the moon. The twenty fourth of November, eighteen hundred and seventy, two p.m., death certificate of Isidore Lucien Ducasse, man of letters, aged twenty-four, born in Montevideo (South America), died this morning at eight o’clock in his domicile, Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, 16 – single (no further information).
11.
Odilon Redon's Summer Holiday 02:12
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I am floating in a swimming pool I am dying on a mattress I am haunted by a cactus man who cries insipidly I am visiting a cyclops Who plants scraps of corpses in a wild wood We’ll pick the flowers like a child would pick a scabby knee Who knows why? I’m asleep at the departure gate At the threshold to the kingdom Surveilled by a winged man who will shelter and molest me I am floating in the summer air I know what made the spider scared The human heart is not all there and beats itself grotesquely I am fun.
12.
The Loneliest Monk 02:06
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The Loneliest Monk It was madness gone mad. How do you like being a man? I dislike being a man. How do you conduct yourself in dreams? Like the last monk out of the monastery. And just because you’re not a monkey Doesn’t mean you’re not a monkey. What are you talking about? My topic is sex and the paranormal; the Good Old Days when we wished we were dead. And how do you see yourself in the future? Plans for a less engrossing sexual life. Someone that you call your cousin Warms her body on the embers of the fire. Detachment is a virtue The Holy Ghost alone will guide you Celibate good times, come on!
13.
Gender Man 05:04
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Post-gender Post-man Post-postman Post-male Post-lump post-limp Post-chimp Post-imp Post-camp Post-posing Post-caring Post-preening Post-staring Post-gaze Post-looking Post-gay Post-fucking Post-partner Post-howdy Post-showtime Post-rowdy Post-boy Post-dad Post-joy Post-sad Post old-boy Post-network Post-future Post-sexwork Post-semen Post-meaning Post-demon Post-human Post-apostle Post-menstrual Post-sensual Post-pencil Post-literate Post-obliterate Post-digital Post-clitoral The boring adventures of gender man Post-Greek Post-Roman Post-freak Post-showman Post-Sapphic Post-Socratic Post-graphic Post-erotic Post-semiotic Post-syphilitic Post-idiotic Post-discotheque Post-biscuit-sex Post-lust Post-ghost Post-parasite Post-host Post my old man’s a fucking dustman Post fuck my life Post kill my husband Post-here’s my wife She’s fucking the dustman The boring adventures of gender man The unwanted attentions of gender man Post-haste Post-chaste Post-appetite Post-taste Post-natal Post-fatal Post-marriage Post-meal Post-real Post-feeling Post-pharmacy Post-philosophy Post-structure Post-fracture Post-scripture Post-mister Post-mistress Post-distress Post-trauma Post-seed Post-bleed Post-leave-the-dreaming-sleeper-in-a-field-of-fallen-fell

about

Sweeping Tendrils is a time-traveling, genderfluid, psychosexual song cycle. Its sedated protagonist, Scrap, takes a train to 19th century Europe and encounters various personalities -- Charles Baudelaire, Christina Rossetti, James Ensor -- who, putting aside their own sensual neuroses, are called as witnesses to comment on Scrap’s own mental fitness.

These songs were conceived after a period of personal psychological crisis and subsequent rehabilitation. The emotional raw material for this work involves ambivalent feelings about aesthetically contrived identities. The songs contemplate the equally appealing paths of creation and oblivion, re-membering and forgetting, camp performance and doing nothing.

This project was informed by deep immersion in Symbolist and Decadent literature and art, musique concrete and industrial noise, incompetent electronic art song and nervous cabaret performance. The songs are fashioned primarily from piano, metal percussion, modular synthesizers, and the voices of Ross Hawkins and Lieke van der Voort.

credits

released July 29, 2019

Words and music ©Ross Hawkins
Vocals on 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 12: Lieke van der Voort
Mastered by Tom Upjohn
Album artwork ©Julia Soboleva
Thanks to Robin Easton at Ratspace Studio, Toronto for lending metal percussion

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Superintendent Idle Tiger Toronto, Ontario

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