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Necessary Monsters

by Carla Kihlstedt & Rafael Osés

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1.
AN ANIMAL DREAMED ‘Being that sings unsung.’ Nothing but a song, or at least wishing that were so, this beast is blessed with unprecedented ‘thoughtlessness’. As pure as the unspoken word, she yelps and howls joyously in the forest, a guileless song sung for no one. DESCRIPTION: She is great and beautiful and dumb. The most delicate and glorious of all beasts. VOICE: Thick–coming trills. A glossy throat. Wonders at its song. HABITAT: The thickest centre of untraveled woods.* * from Perelandra by C. S. Lewis
2.
The Squonk 07:17
THE SQUONK ‘Being that cries at the drop of a tear.’ The Squonk is sorrow herself – the embodiment of sadness. A creature of rare elegance and melancholy, her capacity for compassion knows no bounds. When cornered, she has the unique ability to entirely evaporate in tears, thereby returning her salt to the earth. DESCRIPTION: A moling dollop, ready for deduction. A sprung set of locks. A frothy and glittering body of water. A great salt lake. VOICE: A sort of wail song. A soothing and wavering blubber. HABITAT: Pennsylvania coal country. Minnesota forests. The night burns frosty moonlight. She’s retired, her empty, burrowed coal bed filled with tears; hemlocks point at tarry stars. A blackened pollock swims in the pit of her mineshaft. Eyes shine with icy water, cry. Bubbles char the cold. Bubbles char the Coal Sack, dissolve her into salt.
3.
Hochigan 07:23
HOCHIGAN ‘Being that would rather leave us speechless.’ Spiteful and suspicious, the Hochigan is a miserly bushman found on the various plains of places. With a wariness of language and a hatred of animals (especially men and monkeys), he stockpiles speech with hostile vengeance. DESCRIPTION: Envious. Stoopy. An extraordinary hoarder. The type that takes his toys home in a huff. VOICE: Caught breath. A choral shh. HABITAT: Wherever everything is best unsaid. I ain’t no baby, in no mood to smile. I won’t ape ‘em cuz our ears are alike. Nothing will ever make me say uncle. Who do they think they’re talking to? Calling me cutie, begging with please, nothing will ever make me say cheese. Nothing will ever make me say. God, they’re ugly: behind bars, driving cars in diapers, talking, taking up air and space. Something tells me to take it away. Something tells me to take it.
4.
The Nisna 07:49
THE NISNA ‘Being that as half is whole.’ A simple case of addition by subtraction, The Nisna is an unfinished dream: half- thought, half-life, half-assed, half-cocked, half-blood, half-breed, half-aware, half- awake, and half-asleep. A phantom limb. DESCRIPTION: A partial completion. It leaves where it goes, destined for less. Enough. VOICE: Drops off. HABITAT: Here & there. A beach in Borneo. On an island in the Sea of Es-Seen is an eye; half its tongue lies twisted in the sand. Head, heart and hand are spread apart, dropped or abandoned on the Bornean shore, dead. With fragile agility, the splintered self persists, hops on in the pitch: a single, limber limb growing lighter at each step, and searching for no other, better half. None of it is missing, yet littered on the beach. Its trail following the way of all flesh, its tail drags along discarded sweetmeat. This being, far from cured, is endowed with speech, can tell a tale: “Saint Anthony of Padua, patron of amputees, gave a famous sermon to fishes on the bank of the Brenta River. Heretics never heard, cuz their ears were alike. With vocal cords of vanilla beans, burnt matches & tear jerky, the word was made silver! O blessed tongue that St. Bonaventure held in his tender hands to kiss! Fish listened! The man married limbs!”
5.
The Double 03:45
THE DOUBLE ‘Being that is that being.’ DESCRIPTION: An interminable tagalong. A Doppleganger. VOICE: An echo, or else Geppettic. HABITAT: Where the other half lives. Everyone on this Ferris wheel is me, a revolving door where I never see myself, the riddle with me in the middle, impossible to solve, an inverted inner replica, more evolved, a better person (I bet), the me I’ve never met. Whose is the hand up my back? The other tenant in the house I rent. Who throws a voice through me? My invisible sibling. What am I called behind my back? “The False Prophet.” What is my surname? Fetch. I speak out of both sides of my mouth, but hear only half what I say, coming and going, not knowing, in through the out door. I am speaking out of both sides of my mouth.
6.
THE INK MONKEY ‘Being that indicts writing, resents text.’ The Ink Monkey is a critic with an unwritten grudge, an unforgiving Censor of the sensory, the ultimate editor. An ink junkie ever since the liquid’s been in print, this dumb simian hates, more than anything, the writer’s aimless, wasteful ramblings... like this one. (Sorry!) DESCRIPTION: Feral. VOICE: Gravel. HABITAT: Inkwell. Red carnelian slits sip the jet, sit squat and silent, squinting. A slurry of words, wet, smudge jungle parchment with printing. Poised and parched, it waits to slurp ink, out of instinct. Unfolding hands, uncrossing legs, it laps up the word’s marrow, no poet, and pounds the dirt with pen and brush when done. Everything written is a waste, it thinks, letters are ragged, wrinkled little fuses lit with lampblack. It damns the muses.
7.
A ONE-EYED BEING ‘Being that is what it ate.’ This dashing little twerp is the culmination of culture, pinnacle of evolution, apex of our migratory formation ever-stretching tomorrow, the living end. He is the light at the end of his own tunnel vision. Head of the class, fruit of the womb, king of all kin, the filial full of itself, the mongrel with a pedigree, the heir that puts on airs, he is the biggest cock on the block. DESCRIPTION: Oof. You know the type. Lives on lambs’ milk. Eats the cat’s pajamas. Thinks it’s the crown of creation, and wears it out. VOICE: A sophisticated singer. A baritone blowhard. Vulgar. HABITAT: The public domain. Architectural structures. Various vehicles. Restaurants. Theaters. Halls of power. My blood has a history, a legacy. My family has a tree. No relative shrubbery. I’m a creature with numerous nomenclatures, a no man-eater unadorned with double features. I am the monkey’s nephew, in his own image; I’m the fish with legs, built to laugh last, the cultivated primate, manicured from head to hoof, with talons tapered to scratch my uncle’s eyes out. A being. One-eyed. A being being one-eyed. A one-eyed being being one-eyed. A one-eyed being being. A one-eyed being being one. An omni. An omni seeing. Singing. An omni being. Am I the descendent of evolution, a beneficiary, happy inheritor of a kingdom and some change, or negligent executor of paradise, an ungrateful lush collecting dividends on a trust fund turned slush? An unworthy successor perhaps, but better said. You’ve lost an animal and gained a man.
8.
THE LAMED WUFNIK(S) ‘Being that carries on. A yeoman no one.’ Patient, humble, and all but invisible, a Lamed Wufnik cannot be named, else his humility would be shattered, and the lowly, elevated place which his purity holds in this world would vanish. He unknowingly justifies all of mankind with unremarkable grace: an everyman, an anyman, but nobody’s nobody. DESCRIPTION: Some schmo. A he-man Milquetoast, hunched and radiant, carries himself with characteristic anonymity. VOICE: “Ahem,” often interrupted. No song. HABITAT: Undisclosed. Random, hidden anchor-holds. A safe loser limps, gains no ground. Disabled satellite, one of three dozen, he circles the world to scrape bottom, raise dust. Sidesteps erase every footprint. Just men scour us by saintlight. Just men guard us by the hour. Silent. Just men truss the substratum. Just men tower underneath us. Just men constitute a wishing well. Just men tether the nether. Just men speak a dark streak. Just men spoke a green circle. Just men sweep the sea floor. Just men till the riverbeds. Just men plumb. Just men crawl on their shoulders. Just men bury their hands among us. Just men see the world like Spaniards. Just men have no retinue. Just men canvass. Just men sprawl. Just men bend. Just men place. Just men strut. Just men justify. Just men testify. Just men make an x. Just men act as axes. Just men join the Union. Just men wear boots to sleep. Just men go without saying. Just men tender resignation. Just men arrive and depart. Just men are sometimes just women. Just men are civil servants. Just men are public defenders. Just men are a vanguard. Just men are a general assembly. Just men are a kingdom. Just men are pillars of salt. A moving target. A human fortress. A living mattress. A falling buttress.
9.
Odradek 04:09
ODRADEK ‘Being that was, is & will be.’ Odradek is all that remains. He is an assemblage of odds and ends, bits and scraps, bric-a-brac and loosened parts held together with faded memories. Attached and detached, he is an elaborate dust bunny of orbiting detritus. Hapless and laughable, yes, but no one’s practical joke; it’s made of us. Objective, without purpose, Odradek is the uninvited houseguest that never leaves, a timeless, unfinished New Year’s Eve noisemaker. Year after year after year after year after year... Odradek will outlast us all. DESCRIPTION: As is. A domestic pest. VOICE: Rusted watch works. Lungless laughter. HABITAT: One in every home. There’s a star on the stairs. A spider, a spur. A crab, a crank. A cat toy. Broken & intact. Wooden, with snapped black sutures, bitten bakery string & fish line gnarled in its wings, there’s a star on the stairs. Ascending. A weathered pinwheel. An untold spindle. A star with a kickstand. Misunderstood. Doubt it can bob in the sky and orbit the neighborhood. It hides, and rises in degrees. There’s a star on the stairs. Staring. A derelict Christmas decoration on a gutter or roof of a garage. At times, like tackle in the trees. Cackles like a ratchet. A dry heave of leaves. Sits knotted, tangled, in stitches. Never tells all that it sees. An aimless, senseless being. An unintelligible living. Lifeless. Deathless. Mechanical. There’s a star on the stairs. Existing.

about

The nine monsters you are about to hear -- nine borrowed from over a hundred contained in Borges’ The Book of Imaginary Beings, a collection of fantastical creatures culled from literary and mythological traditions from around the world -- sought us out as we flipped through the pages. We chose them and they chose us.

These particular creatures are concerned with the creative act, somehow. They thrive on our communal experience and our collective imaginations, with the mind as their habitat.

credits

released October 16, 2021

Music by Carla Kihlstedt
Words by Rafael Osés
Design by Anna Hurd

THE PLAYERS:

Rafael Osés - spoken voice
Carla Kihlstedt - voice, violin, viola, piano, bass harmonica, marxophone Ethan Filner - viola
Chris Fisher-Lochhead - viola
Dina Maccabee - viola
Jennifer Kloetzel - cello
Theresa Wong - cello, piano
Simone Baron - accordion
Rob Reich - accordion
Nina Rolle - accordion
Freddi Price - guitars, trumpet, euphonium, car horns
Ben Goldberg - clarinet
Cole Kamen-Greene - trumpet
Nicolás Castañeda - Colombian harp
Jon Evans - upright bass, electric bass, lap steel
Michael Mellender - electric bass, trumpet
Matthias Bossi - drums, percussion
Shahzad Ismaily - percussion

“Ink Monkey” music -- CK w/ Matthias Bossi & Shahzad Ismaily Arrangement of “Lamed Wufnik” and “Odradek” -- Mark Orton
String arrangement of “The Double” -- Simone Baron & CK

Crowd sounds in “The One-Eyed Being” obtained from www.zapsplat.com

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about

Carla Kihlstedt Falmouth, Massachusetts

Make things. Brake things. Start from scratch. Scratch the surface. Let it bleed a braid of music, sound & words.

Bands:
Rabbit Rabbit Radio, Tin Hat, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, 2 Foot Yard, Minamo, Causing a Tiger

Composed for: ICEnsemble, ROVA, SFGirls Chorus, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Variant Six, inkBoat, Present Music

Faculty:
NEC Contemporary Improvisation Dept., VCFA MFA Music Comp Dept.
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