The Wicked &
Unfaithful Song Of
Marcel Duchamp
To His Queen (1961)
by Paul Carroll with music composed by John Austin
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A
drawing by John Austin, 2000
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A
heavy soul carried the belief in purity and vitality of poetry, it
would not be a surpise to learn the kinship that the poet Paul Carroll
inherited from Dada and Surrealiem in an undisguised passion. Written
in 1961 under the inspiration by Duchamp, interestingly, "The
Wicked & Unfaithful Song of Marcel Duchamp to His Queen"
seems foreseeing the presnece of Duchamp's posthumously revealed installation,
Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas (1946-66), and resonates
with the substantial reading of contemporary thought - meaning literally
is a mere perception resided in humnan mind, and perhaphs nothing
more.
Tout-Fait is delighted to present the collaboration of poem and music
as an eternal marriage of arts beyond space and time.
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Marcel
Ducahmp , Dust Breeding, 1920, from the Green Box
of 1934
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Marcel
Duchamp, Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries, No. 2, 1914
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Photograph
of Duchamp's
Unhappy Readymade (1919) taken by Jean Grotti or Suzanne
Duchamp Grotti, 1920
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Marcel
Duchamp,
Given: 1. The Waterfall / 2. The Illuminating Gas, 1946-66
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A trifle pompously, my love, you move among
the mass of nerve-
tissue in my cranium:
and as you move
you have become the last
of my inconsequential ironies. At best
chess, too, just
a question of pure chance.
A film of dust
girdles your body: for once
I shift you on the board, you will become
a solution for which
there never was a problem:
that old itch
for order, which we like to hint
exists in what we do. And yet, that blueprint
I fashioned once
for the motions of the body
ended nice-
ly in a cemetery
of empty uniforms: priest & bus-
boy, butler, gendarme,
undertaker, horseman—jointless
Art? A form
of intimate hygiene for
the ghosts we are. More work, those wolftraps for
the intellect
(one must always work
sweet, to contradict
one’s taste)—the hanger tack-
ed upright to the floor; that urinal
I signed: R. MUTT.
And that geometry textbook to dangle
in diagonal at
a corner of my porch
Until, buffeted by raw winds, bleach—
ed by sun & sleets,
it got the facts of life.
Or those glass discs
twirling on the phonograph
to tease the ear & eye. How predictable
poor Picabia
became. And such a fool
to bitch all day
& thrash about, sob-
bing how slovently God goes about his job.
I’ll let you sit,
my sweet, and move the Rook
instead. Why not?
Death is the only good joke.
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