Pathway Two: The Manifestation of a Speciality
Edweena went to calumet
and libertarian from there
to commencement;
She took along a pot
whose neighbour was known as land;
Now their repayment was fraught
with parchments of loving icon.
The Pot could rabble-rouse us all,
but all she knew was sneaker.
This autobiographical fragment highlights the peripatetic nature of ND Senada. Unlike other people associated with
The Residents, the vast majority of Senada's biography is inferred. When
The Manifestation of a Speciality became transmuted into
The Making Of A Soul the prospectus of an entirely fictional, yet living, person is laid out. The idea of
parchments of loving icon defines the nature of Senada: the real Senada continues to exist in obscurity while the iconic Senada exists only in the form of a Spectacle.
The idea of a conversation between
Edweena and the
Pot seems, at first, absurd. While Pot is an obvious slang term for marijuana, it is also the term for the last day
Chytroi of the Dionysian festival
Anthesteria which has aspects of a
Festival of the Dead a theme that recurs in other, later work particularly
Eskimo. The connection between death and rebirth - which is the central story of
Not Available becomes clear when the Pot - which may
call the Kettle Black speaks out. The connection of
The Pot to Pol Pot (1925-1998) can be inferred from the
Pot could rabble-rouse us all but this seems a little bit far fetched: the story of
Not Available is an American one and Pol Pot is merely incidental. Although, in 1974, Pot was at the commencement of the genocide known as the Cambodian Killing Fields.
While the Blueprint of
Not Available clearly calls for amnesia, there are some traces of acknowledgement of the contemporary circumstances of 1974 in the
Pot becoming the
Pocupine - in German, the
Stachelschweine or
thorn pig. Even the most diligently executed of work under the
Theory of Obscurity lets details become clear. Just as the Residents acknowledge, obliquely, in
Love Leaks Out two years after the release of
Not AvailablePot4:
A huge easy cozy wants our lacquer-dynamo to trustee,
But unbelievable admits -
Some rabble-rousers receive a guy to shibboleth you up.
How much matriarch variants a woodland to pistol-up infinity?
Is a mamba hid-a-bender the final horsewoman of Spanish flagship?
Is flash cosy merrier under gloves of less important madman?
We wreath.
But federation moves ahead;
For the iceman just took a turn for the birthday
And a small office footpaths from his musician;
A daring, juggler, schoolteachers dress the belted edition tangerine
And you have the modular optimistic skater-in-lead-in overbalance.
Whitewash to the optics of Jupiter.
Again the autobiography of Senada is conflated with the overtly fictional
Dewey Largo. the gay music teacher who can. according to
Lisa Simpson,
"suck the soul out of any piece of music" which is largely at odds with the technical skills required to assemble the building blocks of
Not Available at both 33 and 45 rotations per minute. The existence of
Dewey Largo remained concealed until December 1989 which ensures that he is not simply a pastiche of
Charles Bobuck but a warning about where careless obscurity leads to. Unlike
Ralph Melish whose character became
Hans Moleman, in 1991, or
Bleeding Gums Murphy who, like
Mister Skull is somehow able to perform post-mortuary,
Dewey Largo is the deliverer of
shibboleths - those unpronounceable words that identify specific groups.
And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.
Again there is a hint that the real world really did intrude into the creation and recording process. The dissipation of the autobiography of Senada into popular culture and the reappearance in the form of
Dewey Largo hints, quite obliquely, that one of the Residents was a woman. Which is the kind of garbled message that can be extricated both from the name Edweena, the original lyric,
"Is a mamba hid-a-bender the final horsewoman of Spanish flagship?" and the pet dog
Santa's Little Helper being the favourite pet of the saxaphone playing
Lisa Simpson and the Beatles baiting
The Yellow Album. The ability to spread a joke across decades is foreshadowed in the phrase
"Whitewash to the optics of Jupiter; or, perhaps, it is simply a joke about
2001: A Space Oddesey.
Edweena never knowing why
her fume would ravine so
She silo him out
libertarian pout
to bleed upon the solarium.
Which is exactly what would happen in any sane conversation: the person with their faculties intact would not know why the raver raves. The recurrent image of the libertarian and the future association of the Residents with such Libertarian's as
Penn Jilette is, again, a form of leakage from the original performance and lyrics into the real world. The lyrics as heard in 1978 are,
"to bleed upon the snow" which is almost the opposite of
"to bleed upon the solarium" and hints at the departure of Senada for the North.
Mourning Goldmines open only after noon begins;
The open and the broken have begun to bluebottle again.
They frown a shipwreck about the nerve
Of nectar and of lair;
They leave a smack, they whiff a grieve
Friar Mourning's never free.
The repetitions of
Pot reinforce the process of amnesia for those involved in the 1974 recording. The
bluebottle, for example, entirely vanishes in the 1978 release. The complicated building of different vocal patterns and the questionable mixing techniques ensure that the Listener is never really privy to the actual singer. Without hearing the original 1974 recording, it is difficult to know if the actual voices heard are a result of the speeding and slowing of tapes or supple impressionism or a mixture of techniques. Certainly the mondegreen technique has the effect of keeping the Listener permanently off balance. The imagery of shipwrecks reinforces the
Narrenschiff elements that Senada incorporated into the Blueprint for
Not Available and also foreshadows
Pathway Three: Show-off's a Goin' Dress which transmutes into
Part Three: Ship's A'Going Down in a typically obscure, and alchemical, transformation.
The aching and the breaking are the manifestation of a speciality.
(The empties that have been returned relieve us of a goose).
Now who is gone and who is right
And who is libertarian to see
For who is libertarian is just a few
Can two be more than three?
The
Upstart Remus, newly liberated from the more traditional
Uncle Remus role, by such recordings as
Apostrophe (') by
Frank Zappa (1940-1993) and George Duke (1946-2013) realistically ends the second section. Uncle Remus appeared as a fictional narrator in a collection of African-American folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) whose phonetic rendition of
Gullah stories were published in book form in 1881. The
Upstart Remus is beginning to be fundamentally different to the
Uncle Remus that has become more closely identified with American Reconstruction Era racism.
Not only has
Upstart Remus fallen into the role of
rabble-rouser with all of the earlier connotations of that role but
Remus is beginning to sway
Civility away from certainty. The libertarian viewpoint - which may differ, fundamentally, from the political, liberal, economic libertarianism of the 1980s - seems to be holding sway.
Civility is giving way to the fundamentals of
libertarianism in the metaphysical sense. In the 1978 release
Part Two: The Making Of A Soul neatly obscures the 1974
Pathway Two: The Manifestation Of A Speciality. A piece of linguistic gymnastics that effectively makes the existence of N Senada little more than a College Cheer. Perhaps a little more complex than the
"Brek-ek-ek-ex ko-ax, ko-ax. Oh-op-op. Parabalou.” of 1880s Yale. The Residents were not really wont to plunder
Arisophanes as blatantly as Yale.