It Came From The Garage - A 2015 Halloween Mix

It's Halloween!  When we all treat processed chocolate like one of the three basic food groups.

 

Halloween!  When we lose count of all the little girls dressed as Frozen characters and the big girls half-dressed as things we don't want the little girls to see.

 

Halloween!  When we all dress up like monsters so the monsters won't come and get us, which means we'll all be seeing a ton of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump masks over the next few days.

 

Halloween!  Where we listen to, uhm, uh . . . song about how women are all witches?

 

Yeah.  There's not really a tradition of music-listening for this holiday, which means I had to dig a little to make a mix for it.  I tried to stay away from the obvious, assuming that you're all as tired as I am of hearing Bobby "Boris" Pickett singing "The Monster Mash," never mind all that women-are-witches crap, so I'm guessing a lot of these will be new to you. 

 

1   The Outer Limits – Opening

2   The Beast Of Sunset Strip – Teddy Durant

3   Tombstone #9 – Murray Schafe and the Aristocrats

4   Rockin’ In The Graveyard – Jackie Morningstar

5   Graveyard Stomp – Billy Ghoulston

6   Plan 9 From Outer Space

7   Pet Semetary – The Ramones

8   Devil Gate Drive – Suzi Quatro

9   Voodoo Voodoo – Lavern Baker

10  I’m The Wolfman – Round Robin

11  Werewolf – The Frantics

12  Maria Ouspenskaya Says It For All of Us

13  Werewolves Of London – Warren Zevon

14  The Mummy

15  The Mummy’s Bracelet – Lee Ross

16  The Mummy Walk (Walking Death) – The Contrails

17  I Was A Teenage Monster – The Keystones

18  (I Was A) Teenage Creature – Lord Luther and the Kingsmen

19  Screamin’ Ball (At Dracula Hall) - The Duponts

20  Bo Meets The Monster – Bo Diddley

21  Midnight Monsters Hop – Jack and Jim

22  The Purple People Eater – Sheb Wooley

23  The Purple People Eater Meets The Witchdoctor – The Big Bopper

24  I Put A Spell On You - Screamin’ Jay Hawkins

25  The Outer Limits – Sign-off

      Bonus Track

Here's the link:

2015 Halloween Mix

Play Submission Blues - The Synopsis

Writing a synopsis is like embalming

   A newborn baby while it’s still alive.

That theatres all demand this is alarming—

   They want to read the map, not take the drive.

The build-up doesn’t matter—just the kicker.

   You have to make them feel it with a feeler.

They want the drama summed up on a sticker

   Like some play version of a used-car dealer.

So you remove what makes your play a play—

   Suspense, change, dialogue, time, laughs, surprise—

Till only the And Thens are left to say

   “And then he did this” or “And then she dies”—

     Just so some intern can, from his high chair,

      Read it and say: “You didn’t make me care.” 

Just like a single building’s not a town,

   Two lines of prose are not two hours of mood.

Plays are like vegetables—you boil them down,

   And they become as bland as British food.

The need to sum up so it can be grasped

   By baby fingers or the LCD

Is just as poisonous as being asped

   By the great viper of conformity—

The snake in the creative garden, who

   Catalogues everything by pigeonhole;

Decrees a list of facts defines the true;

   Believes that life is body parts, not soul;

      And doesn’t want your dialogue or scenes

      But just a paragraph on what it means.

 

A good play’s like a roller coaster ride—

   A laugh and scream and thrill delivery system.

And every time someone takes me aside

   And says: “These feelings I should have?  Just list ‘em!”

Something inside me dies—and when I grieve,

   It rises up, wielding a vengeful knife

Against those fools who actually believe

   A tombstone with two dates sums up a life.

When everything must add up at the end,

   Like general ledgers audited by Germans,

It’s not a work of art that I’ve just penned—

   It’s either how-to manuals or sermons.

      You want a message?  Here’s a telegram, Pop:

      THERE IS NO MUSIC IN A DIAGRAM STOP

Copyright 2015 Matthew J Wells

Old Times, or, You Pinter--You Brought 'Er.

Roundabout/American Airlines Theatre

With Clive Owen, Kelly Reilly and Eve Best

Directed by Douglas Hodge

 

 

 

You shouldn’t have to think of synonyms

for “loud” and “fast” when you see Pinter plays.

You shouldn’t have to say: “Oh I see how

that line’s supposed to work.  Too bad it didn’t.”

You shouldn’t have to walk out thinking: “Wow—

that was a buck-a-minute show that made

Pinter look like he won the Nobel Prize

for The Emperor’s New Playwrighting Clothes.”

But I did, and it was. Thanks, Roundabout.

I just learned something that I didn’t know—

the bestest way to botch a Pinter play:

release the anger underneath the surface.

Do that, and all the venom disappears;

do that, and not a line will have a sting.

When you speak Pinter dialogue in anger,

then not a single play of his will work.

Especially when the director has

weird tonal background music playing, that

sounds like someone from Radiohead trying

to be Brian Eno, and score subsonics

beneath the lines to tell the audience

that there’s a big eruption brewing, when

the lines themselves should act like a slow fuse.

Having done that, why, don’t forget to put

your three characters on a set designed

to look like the Pole Star surrounded by

circular white star trails—a set tricked out

to say that there is something universal

in what these characters are going through.

But Pinter isn’t saying that; and this

play’s not constructed to support that weight.

It’s too precise to be some ur-encounter

between two women and a man, like say

Adam and Eve and Lilith in the Garden.

There’s nothing primal here except the need

to own a woman by owning her past,

and that’s not mythical—that’s therapy.

There are no gods here, except maybe for

Robert Newton’s painter in Odd Man Out.

So this production’s grand attempt at lifting

this play up to the Sophoclean heights

succeeds in being just another broad

stroke that smears all the subtlety away,

an act of dramaturgical hubris.

 

And then, if you’re directing this, make sure

you put the icing on the overcooked

cake by telling the actors they can floor it

when they sit in the verbal driver’s seat,

and the play will turn into serve and volley,

not spin and strategy—a power game

instead of sniper fire—where every line’s

a rocket with a payload, instead of

the polite casing for a dum-dum bullet

that does more damage when it hits its mark

than when it's shot.

 

                              Wait—sorry—wrong—in fact,

don’t even think of guns at all. Think knives.

Albee is bullets. Strindberg is dueling pistols.

Pinter is knives, not noise. Each biting line

is part of some death of a thousand cuts,

where you drop dead before you know you’re bleeding.

It’s a knife fight, where every stab and thrust

happens so fast you never see the blade—

you only see the slicing mark it leaves.

And when the verbal bombs are dropped, they’re tossed

like nonchalant grenades into the room,

exploding not with booms but with dead silence.

The only way to tell if they’ve gone off—

to know for sure that those lines are explosive—

is by their victims, not the sound they make.

Except in this production, where the booms

shatter the windowpanes.  

Speaking of which,

windows and doors exist in Pinter’s words

through which an actor can reveal the fire

that stokes her inner engine—but if she

opens these windows or walks through that door

and lets us see the furor underneath

the “I remember you dead” monologue

(for instance), then it shrinks in size and fails

to be more than melodramatic rage

when—if it was delivered with the calm

of a casual shiv between the ribs—

it should have—and it would have—pierced to the heart. 

Sadly, there’s no such piercing in this blunt

production, though it has its little moments

when, despite all the actors and director

have done to kick him to the Times Square curb,

Pinter appears onstage in all his dark

and quiet terror. It’s not like they’re bad,

the actors; Clive Owen is smug and sleazy,

Kelly Reilly is a hot mystery,

and, yes, Eve Best lives up to her last name.

It’s just that what they’re doing doesn’t serve

what should be served up: something that looks chilled

but really scorches.  

The rule is noise here,

and what that noise says through it all is this:  

“You want to make Pinter look like a hack?

Turn all the speakers up to ten, and make

each bomb go off as loud as dynamite.” 

“Want to make Pinter look shallow?  Then make

each subtle dig as deep as the Pacific,

and fill the stage with snarling cats and dogs

instead of men and women who will hide

their inside animals behind the veil

of civilized behavior, and not once—

not once demean the anger in their souls

by freeing it.” 

And yes, it’s possible

To do Old Times as one great big “Fuck you!”

But it was written to do that while saying

“Well, bless your heart.” Anything more than that

is less than Pinter—it’s just acting out,

not acting. It feels wrong when feelings get

exposed instead of covered up in chatter.

It reads as shallow when you play the deep.

It hangs there weightless when you give it speed.

Bring it to a fast boil, and it will steam

but never scald.  To me, Pinter’s all simmer.

You can’t allow what’s cooking to heat up

Enough to blow its top; you have to keep

It frothing, so it never comes to rest.

It is the covered pot that boils the best.

 

Copyright 2015 Matthew J Wells

 

Growing Old Is A Shipwreck In Slow Motion

Shipwreck - Ivan Aivazovsky, 1854

 

Growing old is a shipwreck in slow motion.

   My helm no longer answers to the wheel.

I’m at the mercy of the wind and ocean.

   Decay has made a horror of my keel.

My prow is broken and my sails are tattered.

   The surge threatens to spill me in the drink.

If I should hit a reef, I will be shattered.

   If I try to outrun this storm, I’ll sink.

I look for calm. But there is only one

   That will embrace me when this squall is spent:

The calm after my journeying is done.

   When this old hull’s buried in sediment,

      I’ll take my lifelong promised place below

      And from the great deep to the great deep go. 

 

Copyright 2015 Matthew J Wells

Translations

       for Brian Friel

              I

Green hills rear up to the sky

like an animal untamed

hills where hope and fancy lie

buried like a maiden name 

catalogued and pigeonholed

with a definite position

like the eddy and the shoal

like the devious tradition 

hills with native poetry

paved and garbled by translation

ancient earthy masonry

hidden by the renovation 

till the myth, like extra weight,

is abandoned on the march

to the street sign and the gate

to the label on the larch 

to a country where the breathless

and the breathing live apart

where the tale that once was deathless

is a legend on a chart

So the map becomes the town

and the hand that used to play

marks the shape and distance down

scaling all the land away 

grinding down the mother tongue

separating blood from kin

till the songs that now are sung

smell of drink and might have been 

till each river, pond and pebble,

stream and pasture, land and field

lie imprisoned like a rebel

underneath the tyrant's heel 

              II

I sit in an Irish bar with a dark drink

surrounded by extras and understudies, friends,

and the one girl in the cast who cannot speak, 

all of them politely thinking to themselves

what I think, wondering why the actors with the names

and reputations did not bring my words alive. 

When did they give up, the words beyond them,

and simply move their mouths, making a loud

accented noise, not looking at each other ever? 

When was it when they first turned off their hearts

and all the rest became the vengeance of

the rote mechanical, connect-the-dots?   

When did the life end, and the motion start?

Like God, I offered life and they refused it,

preferring like Frankenstein to make their own. 

Now I sit here sipping a dark bitter drink

and wonder who really makes the monster failure,

is it the fault of life or those alive 

that breeds a death from rows of breathing words?

Is it the lack in us that halts the tongue

or something in the tongue that cannot speak, 

something that plays with us, like a hunting dog

tracking the thing we aim at, shoot at, kill,

only to run away, and leave us fogged  

repeating the heart of a rote speech or a song

till the words escape us, and we end the hard day

as I end this day, sitting and drinking, 

wondering what went wrong. 

                                          And then I think,

well, things go wrong--that is the way of things.

There are no other words.  Not tonight, at least. 

So I drain my drink, and stand in a cloud of smoke,

and a girl with clear tight skin falls at my feet

and gushes while I nod and laugh politely. 

Such a young thing, to be in awe of me,

whose promise hangs behind me like my shadow.

This young thing should find some words of her own, 

not borrow mine, words that she alone will taste

forever like perfection in her ear,

and never be spoken anywhere close to that 

by even the best of speakers, actors, friends,

because they will be her own kissing gifts,

heavily lying on a stranger's lip, 

heavier than the desire for bed behind

two traded tongues, heavier even than love

whose burden is to listen--or pretend to. 

And I shake this girl's hand and watch her leave,

and stumble into the tiny room where drink

is translated; and I think to myself 

that there is a kind of blessing in bad actors.

Because of them, the lines that they deliver,

the things they say that never come alive,  

are never blamed for being less than real.

The actor gets that blame; the fault is his.

Well, I'm all for that.  I'm for anything that makes 

the play look good, the words, the thought, the work.

They all survive, even when translation fails.

And though the heart, the language of the pulse 

which cries a thing unsayable in words,

seems dead, still there is life at the hard end

of this long day's work, because my words 

tonight were seeded into rows, tossed negligently

like hopeful planting in the teeth of famine

on eager fertile ground, on hopeful girls 

with clear clean skin and shining eyes, by those

like me who write and never speak their fears,

but plant a harvest in a field of ears.

 
                 III

Speaking in tongues that are and are not theirs

making their chatter kisses in the dark

dancing apart, two strangers on display

a blood red coat against a dirt brown shawl 

everything else will not be spoken of--

the hatred and the hatred in return

rote jealousy, betrayal, drunken pride--

because the unvoiced is the unbegotten 

because love is the synonym of souls

a man and woman trading pretty names

in bold misunderstood defiance of

a blood red coat against a dirt brown shawl 

 

Copyright 1995, 2015 Matthew J Wells