As with other elements of the BELLIGERENT PIANO story (as with ongoing audio/audio-visual/multimedia explorations for stories in FOLKTALES), I'm experimenting with various ways in which the characters from the tale might be expanded or elaborated upon through the use of mediums other than comics proper (please see MTH OF JACK RADIO HOUR posts previously included in the BELLIGERENT PIANO category of this blog). Below is a very rough, first shot recording elaborating on the character of "the Cowboy", who as of yet remains nameless (and possibly will always remain so, depending how far I want to push the homage to Eastwood and Sergio Leone). I recently read this piece live at NOIR AT THE BAR (just last night, in fact), so I quickly decided to record it, as well. I'm sure Frank Oros and I will refine, collaborate on it, and very possibly turn it into something new altogether....but I'm excited by this rough recording, so I want to share it with you. Think of it as an inside glimpse into the process of expanding nuanced layers of a character and the conceptual cross-pollination from one medium to another. Incidentally, if you're currently following the BELLIGERENT PIANO weekly strip, you'll notice that this piece is an elaboration on exactly what is happening in that narrative. Although neither are exactly the same, they compliment one another and occupy the same space in time. Below are both the recording and the original written word text:
THE COWBOY'S LAMENT
The sweaty toad is crying now;
the cowboy can hear his fragile,
effeminate sobs rising up from under
the barrel of his Smith & Wesson M&P
Victory Model –
the officer’s revolver Smith & Wesson
manufactured to commemorate the Allied
victory over the Nazis and the Japs
as yesterday’s war came to its
abysmal close.
Meanwhile, the toad, down on his knees,
hands clasped behind his back, begins to
press his tongue gingerly to the tip of the
cowboy’s brand new snake skin boots.
“Now I want you to clean the sterling toe
of my boot,” the cowboy instructed,
“I want you to clean it with yer tongue.”
The cowboy’s boots were of the elaborately
decked out Cadillac variety: A beautifully
handcrafted mix of embossed and etched
sterling, embroidered leather, snakeskin,
and hubris.
…the toad is sweating profusely,
sniffing back the tears.
Some people secretly wish to be
humiliated, and there’s always
somebody willing to accommodate.
People of opposite-but-similar needs
have an uncanny way of finding each other
in this windblown life.
…but the cowboy isn’t thinking about that;
the whimpering fearful groans of the
grown man on his knees before him might
just as well have been a radio show playing
crackly from another room.
No, the cowboy is thinking about
something else entirely…
He’s thinking about Vera,
the accordion player,
the songbird
who he saw earlier that night.
….He’s thinking about her sweet tune,
the one filled with the words he didn’t understand,
but somehow it didn’t matter.
…He’s trying to think of whom she reminds him of.
Gene Tierney? Jane Greer? Lauren Bacall?
He knew all of these women intimately:
He was an avid moviegoer;
didn’t matter what the picture was about.
Anyway maybe it was Veronica Lake,
although she doesn’t particularly look like her.
No, it was something else –
something likeable
and vulnerable
and illusive,
something otherworldly –
something he didn’t have the tongue
to articulate.
He’s thinking about Corrina,
that girl he’d known in Fayette,
who he’d stop in to see from time to time back then;
that precious porcelain Jane who finally off’d herself
without ever leaving a note.
His mind stretches like an urban weed
all that distance without losing
a single willowed detail.
He’s thinking about life before the war;
about those dusty tumbleweed winds;
those raven clouds cascading
like thunderstorm ghosts
above the flattened wastelands,
blotting out the sun over
Dodge City in 1935…
the year Kansas was swallowed
by the Apocalypse
and the Wizard of Oz
and suffering and suffering and suffering…
He’s thinking about the black plumes of soot
covering the withered and barren fields
that once had prospered…
those black plumes of soot
that filled the depressed lungs
of leathered old men
with the black remains
of once-fertile topsoil.
He remembers the sting of that dirt
carried by the violent, determined wind;
he remembers it ripping at his sweaty skin
like pellet-like shards of icy-hot glass
as it blew westward toward the mountains,
taking with it histories
and tightly-bound families and legends;
folktales, businesses, towns, livestock,
hopes, dreams.
…and he could’ve sworn he’d felt the spirits
of those families who’d perished
in those rolling billows of black dust
blowing right through his chest,
tattering his clothes,
warning him that it was time to press on,
catch-out, beat it out of town.
He knew it was time to leave;
it was time to find something
else to do to earn his keep.
He was a true son of the cracked earth
and busted-down fallen weathervanes.
The prodigal son of the prairies
and gold fields and farmhouse clotheslines.
But all of that was gone now.
He remembers the dead cattle carcasses,
tents of bone covered in empty hides;
he remembers the sign on the fence posts
that read:
CONGRESS CREATED
THE DUSTBOWL.
And without knowing it, he’d left himself there,
left himself for dead.
Those were the days of a different chapter in his life;
now he was something else,
something that he himself was afraid of.
Because something important of himself was buried
beneath that dust or had blown
like flakes of gold into an oblivion
of the ever-changing, eternal earth.
…. He’s thinking about the suit he just bought
with the money he’d earned,
and how hard it had been to find a clothing shop
that sold suits in the western fashion.
He’s thinking about his new bolo tie –
the one with the bull’s head dead embossed into it
like a silver coin;
the one he bought instead of
the Gene Autry ribbon variety.
Gene Autry, he thought, had always been
a little too flamboyant in his opinion,
but he liked Autry’s taste in two-tone shirts
and elaborately embroidered boots.
After all, even cowboys have a sense of fashion.
And every western man, like any other man,
needs at least one sharp Saturday night
honky-tonk suit.
…He’s thinking about peace and quiet;
about the way things sometimes are.
…he’d had enough of idiots and sinners;
he’d had enough of himself.
He’s thinking about peace and quiet
and the warmth of a woman’s arms.
Not just any woman’s arms:
A woman of poetry,
a woman of the earth and salt
and incomprehensible words.
Someone musical.
Someone who didn’t talk too much.
He’s thinking of all the weary miles
between himself and his salvation.
…. He’d had it bad and he’d had it good;
he’d been rich and poor:
Now he was just trying to get to Heaven
before they closed the door.