Listen to the Music

The Jester (1972)
Music - Stuart Diamond, Words - Robert Host

The Jester is one of my favorite works. It is an electronic song-cycle created with the first commercial analog synthesizers, including a classic Buchla modular system, as well as the full-studio ARP 2500. For those who know or care about such maters, these were the crucible instruments of their time.

The work itself is primitive, yet perhaps primal. It is an hallucinogenic, nightmare trip into a sonic dreamscape, a place where a Christ figure and The Jester fuse into mocking, jousting Savior.

In certain ways not an easy work to listen to. Yet, for me, in sheer imagination it still amazes and delights.

SD

The Jester

By Robert Host

ZAP!

they ..... the ............. frozen in their moonlight .............mildewed

they
are crying ................................................in the churches ........ glassed offerings
. ..................................................................buildings >>>>>>>>> broken elevators ______________________________houses___________ no curtains
. ============================= boxes ============no shoes

...................but
------something swim(s)
----- in the tears
----- an embryo-----------yawns======stretches--------------------------smiles
----- in itself
----- curls a mouth
=== cries alive
======crying ====== out there === are ===================to
====================================================somewhere

==============================where

888888888888888888 things
22222222222222222curl
====================inwards
======================like
=======================a monkey's
=========================== === toes


where======================patterns ================are

========================frozen branches
========================blown
========================without touching

========================children in crisp
========================striped uniforms
========================grinning pink

========================deep purple sandcastles
========================permanent against
++++++++++++++++++++++++yellow waves

that's where
there
he is ================in the middle of

===========monsters===== three-eyed===== playing with red balls
===========saints ========like poles====== with white eyes raised
===========men ========= at tables =======feasting like beggars

there
himself
the jester

alone

in

roars with the Angels down 42nd on bikes coughing pennies and loaves of bread

wraps cold marble babies in blankets of warm rain on 125th

swirls streams of moving colors in New York harbor

guffaws in the front row of the Riverside Church during the Lord's Prayer

turns rats gold and maroon .... caueses them to repair the holes in bathroom floors and heal the white cracks in the poor

sells spiritual literature in Tines Square on an August day

climbs to the tip of the Chrysler building to throw peacock feathers to the crowd

ties the General's blue suedue shoelaces togedther in triple knots

makes unintelligible gestures with his upper lip while sitting in the audience of the David Sussking show

rode a black tin swan triumphantly on a white-capped Hudson to sea

the jester


laughs


vanishes


in a word