Here, then, is what I think is going on in Leon – or Ramona, as it should probably be called; Ramona and Grace in Cyberspace, perhaps. At any rate, here are the lyrics again, corrected (again) and this time with character attributions. I’ve reordered the three “suites” (“Leon takes us outside”/”The enemy is fragile”/”I am with name”) but otherwise left the unknown bootleggers’ handiwork pretty much intact. Reading the observation that “Leon takes us outside” is the only suite with both a start and an ending, I was tempted to reorder the “tracks” more comprehensively, but in the end I decided that the chaotic ending of “I am with name” makes a more fitting conclusion than the dreamy slow fade at the end of “LTUO”. I did move the “Stuck in a Web” monologue down a bit, though, on the basis that we should meet Baby Grace Blue in the outside world before we hear her cyberspace avatar. (Assuming that is who’s speaking at that point, which of course is debatable.)
Anyway, here’s what I ended up with. Share and enjoy!
Leon Blank: “25th June, 16th, Wednesday, July 6th, 2001 midwinter, June 6th, Wednesday, August 18th, 9th, 1999, 12th, Michaelmas, August, 13th, October 13th, afternoon, in view of nothing, 2001, Martin Luther King Day, 12th, August 13th, 17th June. 19th January, midwinter”
Narrator: “First time that I felt your grace, a tear [meaning ‘rip’] ran down my cheek. The first time that I saw the boil – put it on the neck…”
Nathan Adler: “I never see English anymore. Last time I saw him he was standing by a pile of cantaloupes under the lamplight. I look up at the blood-red sky and I saw the words ‘Ramona A. Stone’ – as sure as you can see the nose on my face, or the graze on my arm, or the boil on my neck, or the foot on my ankle, or the car in my garage, or the wife in my kitchen, or a cloud in the sky, or a cow in a field, or the sun and the moon…. holy sun!”
Narrator: “We go through the crowd in Oxford town, moving on the sidewalk, faces to the ground. Oxford town…”
Rock star: “You got a breath-filled crowd here tonight, Eli!”
Nathan Adler: “Someone once said that beauty is only a deep skin. Why, it’s always been a stone in my flesh, I’ll tell you that for nothing. You’re better off without it. I mean, who eats the hard skin now? It ain’t Ramona A. Stone, that’s for sure. That don’t-wanna bitch is hanging around with cannibals, producing shots of white babies fastened to the arms of blind heifers. All the babies left home and the sky’s made of chrome – a breath-filled sky and it’s made of chrome. It was the night of an OK riot – she swanned along the street with her waving hair and her research grants… Choc-a-bloc babies in the heart, a block of black decay in the room – O what a room it was, what a womb, what a tomb it became! I’d rather be an OK riot; I’d rather be chrome than stay here at home. Don’t go near the bones, Leon can you hear? Get away Julie, don’t go there, there’s really a lot to fear. A breath-filled crowd, they might be super loud. They eat the hard skin, they sit on the lamplight, they’re white and black and loud. I’d rather be sitting on a cloud, I’d rather be eight foot loud, I’d rather be chrome. Well, I’ll bitch slap her home – I’m gonna be chrome! Beauty is a stone! I wanna be chrome!
Protector: “Friends of the Trust, you’ve been a breath-filled crowd tonight! You’ve been positively fly boys! We are surely on our way upon that superhighway of information. As far I’m concerned, you are all number one packet sniffers! So sing with me. We’ll creep together, you and I, under a bloodless chrome sky. We’ll find the small things, you and I; we’ll just have small friends, you and I; we’ll be small together, you and I. We’ll end together, you and I.”
Nathan Adler: “Huh! As far as I was concerned, there was always the slime end of the silicone chip biz. It seems that Ramona and Leon had just spiralled down into the cesspool. Like I always say, a person who loses a name feels anxiety descending. But hey, if I heard it right, she was always behaving like some don’t-wanna bitch. She was a well-blind woman, he was a well-intentioned man; this makes for a bad end. As I always said, it would end in chrome. But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.”
Narrator: “Oh Ramona, can you hear me?”
Connoisseur: “What are you in terror of? Life needn’t step on baby fingers. The minutes fall, and the daemons find their ways unencumbered, half dead, poisoned by their own fatal art. Each dirty tune produces its own nobility of form; each pays a different piper – a daft pauper. O machine, how did we fail thee? I guess I feel like a machine that cannot be cranked any more. My gadives[?] are broken and bent, like a wall strangled by ivy -”
Nathan Adler: “I remember a dame called Ivy – drove around in a hearse. Some way south on Oxford Town, near the mosque. Graffiti, cappuccino, you name it – they had it all. Those were the days. In those days everyone was psychopolitical – not the humbug packet sniffers they are now. Take Leon… please!”
Connoisseur: “The editors have done an excellent job. The selections are generous, the notations are scrupulously scholarly. To believe that the quality of a CD-ROM can be conveyed through translation may seem presumptuous, but I believe the enterprise is greatly successful.”
Narrator: “This is a magnificent achievement, a major triumph of Wolof music; a truly precious addition to the sum total of Wolof in English.”
Connoisseur: “The editorial apparatus of this CD-ROM leaves nothing to be desired”
Narrator: “The editorial apparatus of the CD leaves nothing to be desired. It leaves nothing to be desired!”
Voices: “Nothing to be desired!”
Narrator: “Mind changing! Mind changing! Change your mind changing! Stand by!
Voices: “Nothing to be desired!”
Narrator: “And there’s nothing to be desired – if not fishy! Nothing to be desired! Nothing! Nothing to be desired! It’s your mind changing!”
Radio announcer: “In far off California, there is no natural plan. Its mighty branching and its preponderant boughs weigh heavy on a Sontag morning.”
Baby Grace Blue: “Test, testing, testing. This… Grace is my name. And, and there was… It was a phot… a fading photograph of a patch, a patchwork quilt. And they’ve put me on these… Ramona put me on these interest drugs, so I’m thinking very, too, bit too fast like a brain patch, like I’ve got this… this soul brain patch, and it’s got… I got the shakers on it with this neuro-transmitter. And… they won’t let me see anybody except the breeders in the enclave and the check players, and I can still hear some…. if I want to sometimes and I ask I can still hear some pop… popular musics and aftershocks. And they say what… they say what were… what were you doing? what was I doing when I saw the small friends? And I said that I’ve been watching a television of, a television of Jeffreys In the Press, about the British revolution and something about the second Protector, who was a news coaster in the homelands – yes, the new homelands. And then I recognized the small friends because one of them was a very infamous, and he was a grand visioner, he was the grand visioner, the one who was on a television, who made soul patches the law, and… that’s all I can remember. And now they just want me to be quiet and to worship the lot, and I think something is going to be horrid.”
Director: “Hello Leon. Would you like something really fishy? I gave up flogging in Oxford. The enemy is fragile! Who has seen this furious man? Who will rid me of this shaking head?”
Narrator: “It was just a fading photograph, slumped on the black leather sofa, glass fronted, forgotten by the last tenant.”
Director: “Who will rid me of this shaking head? Who has seen this furious man? The enemy is fragile! But he has no… The enemy has always been here. You could have been fighting to the death, but no! Well, wrap up and we’ll go dancing, Leon! Dance fishing? Something in her mouth. There’s something in her mouth, something mysterious. Between patois and Beckett. I bet it is a speech.”
Narrator: “Sample techniques, exponents of the greatest Wolof band of the 21st century. Phase techniques, and rich 21st century Spanish incantations.”
Director: “You are: a permutation! You are: a patois! You are: Chinese poetry! You are: something mysterious! You are: speed through delay! You are: patois and Beckett! You are: fighting to the death! You are: flogging! You are: something really fishy! You are: whispering! You are: warning!”
Baby Grace Blue: “I think we’re stuck in a web. A sort of… nerve net, as it were; a sort of… nerve Internet, as it were.”
Voices: “Red dog! Red dog!”
Baby Grace Blue: “We might be here for quite a long time – here in this web… or Internet, as it were.”
Voices: “And, and, and red dog!”
Baby Grace Blue: “Got to get away, get away, got to get away”
Algeria Touchshriek: “My name is Mr Touchshriek, of Touchshriek Mail Over and Fantasy. I sell ache shells off the she-sores and empty females. I’m thinking of leasing the room above my shop to a Mr Wolof Bomberg, a reject from the world-wide Internet. He is a broken man; I am also a broken man. It will be nice to have company; we could have great conversations. Possibly, just maybe, after a nice cup of tea, from a trip of the tongue we’ll creep together down a memory lane, and then we’ll be young and full of bubbly ambition, instead of the slump males that we are. Looking through windows for daemons, watching the young advancing, all electric… A small shop on the corner is really no more than a dark spiral with no end. I’m in a street behind the Museum of Modern Parts. The buildings are close together, no more than ten feet between one side of the street and the other. There’s not much in the way of daylight, but at least we don’t get the rain, which is a blessing. Some of the houses still have inhabitants in them; I’m not sure if they’re from this country or not. I don’t get to speak much to anyone, or that sort of thing. If I had another broken man – oh, I dream of something like that.”
Touchshriek (fading): “Not sure if they’re from this country or not…”
Touchshriek (full volume): “I mean, who am I supposed to be driving?”
Director: “A snapper with a foetal heart who resents all stupid questions, Ramona A. Stone put her arms around a boy – the golden boy with a lion’s heart, the boy who lives outside, an urchin among immortals. Leon! Lift up your eyes! The very stars are calling! Your name is Leon, Leon is your name! Murder you will do! Leon, lift up your eyes! [repeats with variations and embellishments, rapidly becoming unintelligible]
Ramona A. Stone: “I am with name, I am Ramona A. Stone. A night fear female, good timing drone.”
Narrator: “And she should say:”
Ramona A. Stone: “Twitch and scream, it’ll end in chrome, the night of the female good time drone.”
Narrator: “And she should say:”
Nathan Adler: “A person who loses a name feels anxiety descending – left at the crossroads between the centuries, a millennium fetish.”
Narrator: “And she should say:”
Ramona A. Stone: “I am with name, I am Ramona A Stone”
Narrator: “Anxiety descending, anxiety descending…”
Anxious man: “I won’t eat me, it will hide me, he should take them, I won’t tell it, she can’t take them, it will do less, he said tell it, he said smell this, he should do this, he should be there, she can’t hide me, he said do less, he said tell it, I won’t take them, she can’t eat me, he said kill that! He said take them, he said be there, I won’t kill that, it will be there, she can’t eat me, I won’t hide me, it will tell me, he said hide me, I won’t be there, he said hide me, he said be there, I won’t hide me, they won’t smell this, he should hide me, I won’t kill that, it will take them! They won’t tell it, she can’t be there, they won’t hide me, he should hide me, they won’t hide me, she can’t be there, it will hide me, he should eat me, he should take them, he should take them, I won’t kill that, they won’t be there, they won’t tell it, I won’t take them, I won’t eat me, I won’t eat me, I won’t eat me! They won’t do less, he said tell it, they won’t take them, it will hide me, it will smell this! They won’t kill that, he should hide me, I won’t hide me, she can’t be there, I won’t tell it, I won’t eat me, they won’t tell it, he should smell this, he said be there, he should kill that, I will take them, they won’t eat me, she can’t eat me, I won’t hide me, they won’t do less, he should eat me, he should hide me! They won’t smell this! She can’t tell it! I won’t be there! He should eat me! He said tell it! Smell this!”
Nathan Adler: “Old Touchschriek was a domain name server, suspected of being a shoulder surfer or finger hacker. This old guy didn’t know from shit about challenge/response systems – he was way back in the age of cellular clones. We knew that Ramona A. Stone was selling interest drugs and magic cookies; she got males all hung up on her mind filters. She was a router and a swapper – she was, if you don’t mind me saying so, a fuckin’ update daemon. But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me take you back to when it all began.”
Ramona A. Stone: “I was Ramona A. Stone. I started with no enemies of my own; I was an artiste in a tunnel. But I’ve been having a MIDI-life crisis and I’ve been dreaming of sleep and apemen with metal parts. I’ve spat upon deeply-felt age – come to my real goddess! I’ve hid my hard skin under a freckham[?] sky. I’ll get the funny-coloured English… Oh… we’ll creep together, you and I. We know who the small friends are. My, this is a crazy world. At this time, you could think of me as a ‘syllannibal’: someone who eats their own words.”
Lounge singer: “We’ll creep together, you and I. Just a trip of the tongue from a slump male – a mumble slouch unreal… (How many a true remark!) We’ll creep together, you and I. Way back in the Laugh Hotel, I’ll reel out the window…You die for diamonds but you won’t live for love!”
Leon Blank: “She’s a don’t-wanna bitch, behaves like a don’t-wanna bitch, but she is all I’ve got.”
Ramona A. Stone: “I am with rose, I am with babies, I am with chrome, I am Ramona A. Stone. It’ll end in chrome. This is the chrome, my friends, the chrome.”
Nathan Adler: “Then there was nothing left to do but to bring on the Nut Soldiers, round up the packet sniffers and clear up what remained of that sensational mouth. It’s sensational, her mouth – just a little untight. Excuse me while I wax poetic. The ashes that ran, fleshy debris and silicone chip-bits, electrocutes the evil and smells. Thank you. For me, it’s like plain chaos, and I am the fixer.”
MC: “Thank you very much! Well, you asked for them, so here they are – The Leek Soldiers! Twist, fly boy, brace for me, twist, fly boy, wrecked, flexed, heaven erect, brace for ready, twist, fly boy! Twist hardware, push the ziplock, twist hardware, melt them, wreck them, break through, go for the flare, fly boy!”
Nathan Adler: “At this time, before you could say boo to the goose, Leon was up on that oh-so-heavy party stage, with a kris-kris machete. He could not wait for 12 o’clock midnight. He slashes around, cuts a zero in everything – I mean, a zero in the fabric of time itself. I says to myself, Whoa! Quelle courage! What nerve!”
Anxious man: “They won’t kill that it will hide me he should take them I won’t tell it she can’t take them it will do this he said tell it he said smell this he should do less! He should be there she can’t hide me he said do this he said tell it I won’t take them she can’t eat me he said kill that he said take them he should be there! He should do less!”
Expert: “Some day the Internet may become an information superhighway. Don’t make me laugh! A 19th century railroad that passes through the badlands of the Old West. Someday the Internet may become an information superhighway. Do not make me laugh!”
Narrator: “It was a great conversation.”
Comic (with ventriloquist’s dummy): “Hey Bunny, say goodnight” [“Say goodnight”] (repeats with variations)
Comic: “Hey hey, here we are back at the Laugh Hotel! [“Back at the Laugh Hotel!”]
Comic: I was sittin’ there at the Laugh Hotel the other night looking for window daemons, when in comes this Leon in a jungle weed, a mumble slouch unreal, maybe a triple-lock, a trip of the tongue from a slump male…”
Algeria Touchshriek: “I’m Mr. Touchshriek of Touchshriek Mail Over and Fantasy, and I sell ache shells off the she-sore and empty females. I met Leon once. Bit of a dark spiral with no end, I thought. Sunday mail-over with his deeply felt grace.”
Workers’ Playtime 