by Don DeLillo
“Laden with faggotry,” Maje said.
I began to nod my head, trying to find a counterpoint to Bohack’s nonstop bobbing. His slight diffident voice, never cresting, seemed to belong to an alternate entity, a small man lodged in his chest cavity, the square root of Bohack, a chap who wore shabby three-piece suits and combed his hair to one side. There was a sound in the darkness outside, rainfall, a sudden tumult over the city, strange, coming down like fury released, the passion of a summer’s rain. Longboy scratched his straw head and then moused around in bulky pockets before coming up with a bent cigarette butt. He had the stale rangy look of someone who drives other people’s cars coast to coast. He wore jump boots and a field jacket. Maje wore a lumber jacket identical to my own.
“What’s in that airline bag?” Bohack said. “Just out of curiosity.”
“Bubble gum cards.”
“I’ll tell you where we’re located on the spectrum,” he said. “Everybody misinterprets what Happy Valley is and where we’re at. We get nothing but faulty interpretation on these subjects. First, what is Happy Valley? Happy Valley is the Happy Valley Farm Commune. We’re defining ourselves as we go along. We’re seeking our identity. That’s why we came to the city. We came here to find ourselves. Second, where are we located on the spectrum? Okay, I have this to say. To heck with the environment. To heck with fresh vegetables. Heck with the third world. Heck with all idea of religion, God and the universe. We believe in the idea of returning the idea of privacy to the idea of American life. Man the primate has given way to man the mass transit vehicle. Mass man isn’t free. Everybody knows that who’s got one iota of common sense. Happy Valley is free. Free and getting freer. There’s no land left. You can’t go out West to find privacy. You need, to build inward. That’s the only direction left to build. We’re building inward. We’re hoping to wholesale dope to make the money to build inward. This isn’t an easy concept to explain, understand or defend. But we believe you’re the last person we have to defend ourselves to. We’re your group-image, Bucky. You’ve come inside to stay. You’ve always been one step ahead of the times and this is the biggest step of all. Demythologizing yourself. Keeping covered. Putting up walls. Stripping off fantasy and legend. Reducing yourself to minimums. Your privacy and isolation are what give us the strength to be ourselves. We were willing victims of your sound. Now we’re acolytes of your silence.”
“What are your plans for Hanes?” I said.
“We’ll find him,” Maje said.
“Then they’ll find him,” Longboy said.
“Belly up in shit’s creek,” Maje said.
Longboy kept blowing on the gnarled butt to keep it lit. He never put it to his mouth to smoke. He merely whistled into its tip, forcing an occasional glow, man the primate making fire, a brown hem appearing on the paper as the heat bit in.
“Whose picture is on those bubble gum cards?” Bohack said.
“Watney’s.”
“Mind if we take a look? Just out of curiosity. Maje, go look.”
“I see bubble gum cards.”
“Whose picture on them?”
“Watney’s,” Maje said.
“Tear one card carefully apart, separating front from back.”
“I don’t know if they’re thick enough to tear that way.”
“Tear,” Bohack said. “Pretend you’re tearing apart an English muffin. Gently. Little by little.”
“Here we go.”
“What’s in there?”
“Nothing.”
“Take five more cards and tear them the same way. Front from back. English muffins. Easy now.”
“What are you looking for?” I said.
“I’m not sure,” Bohack said. “But Watney is Watney, a man with a reputation for being unpredictable. I’m sorry we’ve had to encroach on Bucky Wunderlick like this. But at least it’s just about over now. We’re on the verge of freeing Bucky Wunderlick from connection with the product and we won’t have to encroach anymore.”
Longboy licked the tip of the butt and returned it to his pocket. On his field jacket was an 82nd Airborne patch. Maje looked at Bohack.
“Take five more cards and tear them front from back,” Bohack said. “Just five more. Just out of curiosity. A random sampling. Five more and then just five more. Front from back. Gently. English muffins.”
20
“THE EFFECT of the tapes is that they’re tapes.”
“Sure, sure, sure. I agree. Absolutely. I’m with you. It’s you and me. Absolutely. Teammates. Rah, rah, rah.”
Globke was a toy motor in my ear, evidence of the muggy passion of telephones, his voice feverish with allegiance. He was largehearted in his sovereignty, dispensing benedictions to every quarter, a healer and teacher, prepared to animate what was moribund in me, to lash what was reluctant, to tease and feed the smallest fires of my mind.
“Talk, I’m listening. Tell me freely what’s worrying that boy-genius head of yours. I’m sitting here with so many answers they’re coming out of my clothes. Just make sure you don’t ask me where I was with the tapes last night because I can only answer that in the flesh, person to person, and even then I’ll have to whisper it in your ear just to make sure there’s no security leak. I don’t tolerate laxness in that area. My people know that. So do my people’s people.”
“How do I face crowds?” I said. “I can’t do the material on the tapes. I don’t want to do old material. I don’t have new material. So how do I get back out? I don’t know how I do that.”
“You don’t know how because it’s not your appointed task to know how. It’s not your professional identity. It’s not your blood and muscle. But I know how, Bucky. I know exactly how.”
“Okay.”
“Guest appearances,” he said. “We’ve got bands touring all over the country. You show up with one group in one place, a different group two nights later a thousand miles away. Surprise appearances. We don’t announce anything to anybody. This way we build up tremendous interest. It’s not only your return to action. It’s not only a secret appearance. It’s a whole series of appearances, different places, different times, weeks on end, never any clue where you’ll show up, or when, or which group. Nobody knows, including the bands you appear with. You just show up, say hello and go on. We build up fantastic interest and suspense. Tremendous speculation on your movements and whereabouts. You’re in Seattle one night, New Orleans the next. Crowds go wild wanting to know where you’re going to turn up next. Every band you perform with is under contract to Transparanoia but that’s the only clue anybody has and we’ve got enough bands blasting away out there to make it impossible for anybody to pinpoint your itinerary. We build up unbelievable publicity for the tapes. All these performances lead up to the release of the mountain tapes on a two-record set. By the time you’re on the road, word will be out about the tapes. So all the time you’re out there, you’re building up unprecedented interest in the tapes. You tour. Then we release the album. Then you tour again. I know what you’re about to ask.”
“What material do I perform?”
“You’re about to ask what material you perform for all these concerts weeks on end with totally different groups. Bucky, it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference. You can jam, you can whistle, you can hum, you can do top-forty AM schlock, you can just stand there and shout at the audience. It doesn’t make any difference what you do. The idea is to get you out there, get the whole mystique going again, make them wet their pants, make them yell and scream. Jam. That’s what I say. Tap the mike and start picking. Do twenty minutes’ guitar work and get the hell off. Make loud sounds, that’s the thing. Move your lips, that’s even better. Stand there and move your lips. Don’t think of it as a performance. Think of it as an appearance. You’re back on the road, that’s the thing we’re concerned about. Twenty minutes and run for the airport. You pick up one group in one city, zoom over to another city and another group, hit a third city and a third group, jump into a four
th city and pick up the original group there. We build up incredible interest this way.”
“And the day after my funeral you release the tapes.”
“You can’t wait to get out there. Admit it, Bucky. You know the truth about the tour. You know you need the tour. It won’t be long. Six or eight weeks, more or less. Then we release the material on the tapes. Then you hit the road for six or eight more weeks. A two-record set. Early spring release. Obvious title: The Mountain Tapes. We’d be crazy to call it anything else since that’s the name everybody knows it by. Right now we’re culling. We’re editing down to twenty cuts. Getting rid of tape hiss and other noises. Snipping and clipping. Moving things around. Making up titles. Mixing in some instrumental work on about three quarters of the cuts. The thing’s going to be rough as hell. But I think that’s what we need right now. We’ve had enough of instant phasing and sixteen track and synthesizers. The people want something plain. Plain but complicated. The kind of material you and only you can deliver. I don’t go in for levels in popular music and I don’t even know if this is level-material or not. Maybe that’s the power of it. Is it one level or two levels or no levels at all? Are the levels simple levels or profound levels? That’s the power of the mountain tapes as I view it from my own particular viewpoint. It’s not my sound. It’s not the sound I listen to when I look across the river from my bedroom window on a summer night and my wife is sitting up in bed reading the Eastern teachers and there’s moonlight on the river and the great rotting towers of Manhattan are arrayed across the night and I turn off the air conditioner and open a window and insert a cartridge in my music system. Your sound frankly isn’t the sound I listen to at times like that. But it’s a valid sound and it should sell by the carload. So right now we’re culling and mixing and refining. The technical minds are hard at work. We aim for early spring. Definitely a two-record set. Positively called The Mountain Tapes.”
“First pressing of a hundred million billion,” I said.
“I’m in the middle of arrangements for the tour. Everybody’s working on it here. Late nights, weekends, quickie lunches. It’ll be unprecedented, Bucky. Give me a few days to work out the second tour. Then we’ll talk again. I’ve got tour one just about nailed down. Then we have to do some coordinating. Then we have to work out chart cities versus test cities. It’s a valid sound. No doubt about it. I’ll tell you where you’ll be traveling the first time around. You want to hear? I’ve got the list right here marked confidential in big red letters.”
“Not now,” I said.
“The third, a Wednesday, Atlanta. Fourth, Memphis. Fifth, San Antonio. Sixth, Dallas. Seventh, New Orleans. Eighth, Albuquerque. Ninth, L.A. Tenth, Portland. Twelfth, Seattle. Thirteenth, Portland. Fourteenth, Tampa. Jacksonville the fifteenth. Miami the sixteenth, a Tuesday. Milwaukee the seventeenth. Flint the eighteenth. Grand Rapids the nineteenth. Grand Rapids the twentieth. Long Beach the twenty-first. Phoenix the twenty-second. Emporia twenty-third. Oneonta twenty-fifth. Cortland twenty-fifth. Brockton twenty-sixth. Toronto twenty-seventh. London twenty-eighth. Salt Lake City thirty-first. Lubbock the first, a Thursday. Houston on two. Galveston on three. Baton Rouge on four. Nashville on five. Memphis on six. Chattanooga on seven. Knoxville on eight. Alliance the tenth. Millersburg the eleventh. Ripley the twelfth. Bradford the thirteenth. Wellsboro the fourteenth. Hazelton the sixteenth. Woodland the seventeenth. Calistoga the eighteenth. Cloverdale the nineteenth. San Francisco the twentieth, a Tuesday, fog rolling in, sea gulls sitting on the pilings.”
The Mountain Tapes
Press Preview and Record Industry Orientation
Edited transcript of lyrics—Tape 4
Prepared by Esme Taylor Associates
in collaboration with Pulse Redactor Co.
DIVISIONS OF TRANSPARANOIA
15: Near and far
Night so high
Water falling
Water falling
Night so high
Water falling
Night so high
Water falling
Water falling
Water falling
Near and far
Water falling
Near and far
Night so high
Water falling
Water falling
16: Dadmom sis
Driving in the black car
Dadmom sis
Sighting on the white line
Long come something
In a blinding light
Long gone something
In a blinding light
Dead all dead
Oooh all dead
Bloody foot
Bloody head
Eat the nose for Christmas
Eat the toes for Lent
Eat the car for Eat-A-Car
Send the bones to Kent
17: Roses roses never red
Sweet the buzzard sings
Tell me tell me tell me
Time weather seasons
Story tell
Lesson give
Maiden words to learn
Being young restores the god
That eats itself
That eats itself
Better than the feast that ends
When they pick us from their teeth
Tell me tell me tell me
Cloud that’s making
Less of sky
That more of flying
Tries to make
Down the wind it comes
Something flying down the wind
Time weather seasons
Maiden words to learn
Standing sitting
Strip by strip
I pick the skin from off my face
Becoming god
Begin to glow
Behead the rose
Better than the feast that ends
When they pick us from their teeth
Tell me tell me tell me
Roses roses never red
Soft the vulture croons
18: I was born with all languages in my mouth
Baba
Baba
Baba
This and that
Egramine and woe
Sandwords on mud
High taljonics
Everything ever spoken shines from my teeth
Baba
Baba
Baba
Halda Ny Wadji
Hilda Krywicki
Mildred Hayes
Bionongenics
Mambo magic
Oh oh oh oh
Mambo madness
Oh oh oh oh
Dancing on a Latin balcony
Swaying to a starry symphony
Mambo mania
Oh oh oh oh
Undreamed grammars float in my spittle
Baba
Baba
Baba
Gadung gadung gadung
Uma childa nobo
Distiptics in wine
Insane today
I was born with all languages in my mouth
Baba
Baba
Baba
Nothing-maker
But to blurt
But to sing
Baby god and goo
19: Nighttime come
Mountain dark
Treetop wind
Mad dog bark
20: I know my toes
One to ten
This one’s big
This one’s no
Big one big
No one no
I know my toes
One to ten
I touch my hand
One touch one
One is touching
One is touched
Touching touching
Hand touch hand
I touch my hand
My hand touch me
I smell my nose
I smell my nose
I know my toes
I touch my hand
I smell my nose
I close my mouth
21
IN A MILLENNIUM or two, a seeming paradox of our civilization will be best understood by those men versed in the methods of counter-archaeology. They will study us not by digging into the earth but by climbing vast dunes of industrial rubble and mutilated steel, seeking to reach the tops of our buildings. Here they’ll chip lovingly at our spires, mansards, turrets, parapets, belfries, water tanks, flower pots, pigeon lofts and chimneys.
I turned south on Broadway.
Scaling our masonry they will identify the encrustations of twentieth-century art and culture, decade by decade, each layer simple enough to compare with the detritus at ground level—our shattered bank vaults, cash registers, safes, locks, electrified alarm systems and armored vehicles. Back in their universities in the earth, the counter-archaeologists will sort their reasons for our demise, citing as prominent the fact that we stored our beauty in the air, for birds of prey to see, while placing at eye level nothing more edifying than hardware, machinery and the implements of torture.
Hanes was sitting in the last car on the downtown local. The package angled out of an airline bag between his feet. I sat next to him, drawing a tap on the wrist. The noise was devastating, a series of bending downriver screams. Conversing I tilted my head and spoke directly into his ear. There were four or five other people in the car. Hanes looked weak and sick, a reproduction of my image in the mirror when I first arrived at Great Jones and cut myself shaving.