Ergo Phizmiz Eats The Heart of Robert Ashley

Where I stood
I stood and waited Where I stood
I stood and thought
I stood and thunk
And thunk it hard

The night before

I'd found myself
before the television
I wore no trousers
and I laughed
at a televised funeral

Where I stood

I looked up and thought
About years ago
when I would fill
these cavernous spaces
with the deep and drawn-out
voices of wolves
and wolf men

The lady prostrate

laying out her soul
before a merciful God
is sexy

Then there I stand

and “Here lies the heart
of Robert Ashley”

In a little room

the wolf will squeal
In here
the wolf will roar
I will steal the heart
of Robert Ashley
and I will run away
with this little petrified
flesh biscuit

in a sandwich bag

in my pocket

then I will go home

and play piano

then I will stand and think

for a long, long time

then I will eat the heart

of Robert Ashley

then I will play piano

until my own heart stops

or at least until

my fingers ache a bit

I will steal the heart

of Robert Ashley

then I will run away

and nobody will find me

Robert Ashley will love me

like he has never loved
another man
And I will keep
him in my pocket

The lady who prays

will turn around
and see me with
sharp objects
she will see me
reach into the walls

my arms like

a cucumber plant
reaching for the sun

she will see me

steal the heart
of Robert Ashley
and she will see me
run away
with the heart of
Robert Ashley
in my pocket
in a sandwich bag

and she will roar

like a deep-wolf
in a cavernous space

I will run for a long time

with the heart of
Robert Ashley
and I will never stop running
until my own heart stops

or at least

until my feet ache a bit

Then I will sit a long time

and think
and I will hold the heart
of Robert Ashley
to my ear
and it will whisper to me
the prayer of the prostrate lady

When the heart has

finished its recital
I will open it
with a penknife

It is almost dust

it is not a cavernous space
from inside the heart
of Robert Ashley
the wolf will squeal
but only dogs will hear

And thus I, Robert Ashley, prove

that the heart of man belongs to dogs
that the heart of music belongs to dogs
that the world belongs to dogs
and that dogs are cavernous spaces

I will stand still

I will wave at dogs
until my heart stops
or at least until my arm aches a bit
I will cut out my heart
and feed it to the dogs who wave back
then I will lay on my back
with no trousers on
and no heart
and no Robert Ashley
and no dogs
and no lady
and no afternoon
and no funeral
and no telephones
and no television
and no sandwich bags
and no flesh
and listen, finally, to the voice of the wolf.


* written in Warsaw, September 2011

** passages of this piece appear in the new Classwar Karaoke compilation

*** Ergo Phizmiz Sextet performs Robert Ashley's "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" is out very soon on Populista, part of Bolt Records.

New Ergo Phizmiz electronic album - "Music For Your Party" - Free download

We present for your delectation a new mini-album, 27 minutes of rhythmic electronic sample music and sound-collage by Ergo Phizmiz.



It is intended, as the title implies, for parties and right royal knees-ups, but can be listened to at your discretion (or indiscretion) in any chosen environment or context.

* (Any of the rare breed of Ergothusiasts may be interested to know this is the first of Ergo's works produced entirely using the taking, juxtaposition and processing of samples in a timeline since 2007, back in the heady days of Phuj Phactory & 1000 Year Mix. Goodness gracious. It must be something they put in the water....)

NOW - put on your dancing shoes, buy a few bottles, and have a party.

Created Bridport, March 2012, at the kitchen table.

Cover photograph by Martha Moopette, of Ergo Phizmiz, in the aftermath of a party appropriate to listening to this album, dressing up as a chauffeur in Zombina's house. And why not, eh?

Sampled on this album are: Art Shaw, Augustus Pablo, Die Todliche Doris, Anton Webern, Pete Um, Delia Derbyshire, Bohislav Martinu, Der Plan, Anthology of Dutch Electronic Music, Kosmos, Klaus Nomi, Puaj-Ahem's Glitchy Bitchy, Kraftwerk, Erik Satie, Moondog, Arnold Schoenberg, The Cheeky Girls, Claudio Monteverdi, Daphne Oram, Sounds to Come, Little Richard, various bits and pieces from Youtube....amen....

This album is dedicated to the simply gorgeous Elvis Herod, may he rot like an abandoned vegetable languishing in the early morning of yesterday's market....

Elvis Herod & Ergo Phizmiz Dance to the Bells - New performance for 2012

A 12 hour durational performance from Elvis Herod & Ergo Phizmiz, for performance festivals, social interjections, private amusements, and community events.

Elvis & Ergo will arrive in your town attired beautifully with a ramshackle formality and sartorial elegance, and from 6am until 6pm will stand in the vicinity of your local church, interpreting the ringing of the church bells through the art of rhythmic movement, a form in which Elvis & Ergo are both acknowledged masters.

(One only has to discover these two gentlemen tearing up a dance floor in the Slug & Lettuce throwing Cubist disco shapes to realise this.)

Performances may also include special guests....

This long feast of wizard-moves and fancy footwork is available for booking now.

Contact ergophizmiz at gmail dot com with details of your local town and local church.

And just to get you in the mood, here's Ergo Phizmiz, Oblivian Substanshall, and Martha Moopette dancing to ABBA.

Ergo Phizmiz sings Gilbert & Sullivan, on Radio Boredcast

Ergo Phizmiz has joined the boredom of the Vicki Bennett curated, mammoth 744 hour broadcast Radio Boredcast, commissioned by AV Festival 2012.

Thu 1 March – Sat 31 March

Radio Boredcast is a 744-hour continuous online radio project, curated by artist Vicki Bennett (People Like Us) with AV Festival. In response to our ambiguous relationship with time - do we have too much or not enough? - Radio Boredcast celebrates the detail, complexity and depth of experience lost through our obsession with speed.

With over 100 participants Radio Boredcast includes new and unpublished works, freeform radio shows, field recordings, interviews, monologues and much, much more. Thematic playlists will run throughout from “Acconci” to “Zzz…”

 

You can listen continuously for a month, or for hours, minutes or seconds. Online 24 hours each day, at www.avfestival.co.uk or www.thepixelpalace.org. To launch Radio Boredcast live from 1 March you can click the red radio icon in the header above, or via the individual link for each day below.

 

In the meantime, the schedule for the whole month is listed below, with details of each show and information about the artists. You can also subscribe now to the Radio Boredcast podcasts. Thanks to all the contributors.

 

Co-commissioned by AV Festival and Pixel Palace, hosted by BASIC.fm.

Ergo's contribution involves acappella performances of the entirety of "The Pirates of Penzance", "HMS Pinafore", "Iolanthe" and "The Mikado", comic operettas by W.S. Gilbert & A.S. Sullivan.....oh dearie me.....

Around the age of 11 or 12 I became obsessed with the comic operettas of Gilbert & Sullivan. This fascination lasted around 3 years. There were posters of W.S. Gilbert (the "S" stands for Schwenck, rather spectacularly) and Arthur Sullivan on my bedroom wall.

For years the thought of returning to their works "from memory" has been at the back of my mind. My very boring contribution to Radio Boredcast is "acappella" versions of the G & S operettas "HMS Pinafore", "Iolanthe", "The Pirates of Penzance" and "The Mikado".

Some of them I know better than others. In the cases where I didn't know the melodies, I made them up or roughly talked through them. I also decided to not use different voices for characters (these recordings are my second takes - the first takes sounded like The Goon Show and to be honest I had far too much fun doing them for it be genuinely boring), and to omit stage directions, so we are left with a very boring barrage of Victorian words, tuned and untuned, from my tired, monotone voice.

Ergo Phizmiz is a composer, writer, and multimedia artist. He makes pop, theatre, installations, opera, radio-art, radioplays, sound-collages and performances. He lives in Bridport, UK, and has a headache. He never wants to perform Gilbert & Sullivan again. http://ergophizmiz.net

"The Carnival in the Mirror Marches Into The Sea" - 2011 Ergo Phizmiz radioplay now online at Sonosphere.org

Ergo Phizmiz's 2011 radioplay "The Carnival in the Mirror Marches Into The Sea" is now available to listen online at Sonosphere.org

Commissioned by Marcus Gammel at DeutschlandRadioKultur, the piece combines semi-autobiographical spoken-word with sound-collage and original composition to create an impressionistic journey through memories and dreams of carnivals.

The piece is part of the line of semi-autobiographical "first person" radioplays by Ergo Phizmiz that also includes "The Faust Cycle", "Paul Klee, a Balloon, the Moon, Music and Me", "Disappearing Boxes", "UpsideDownisms", and the forthcoming "Conversations With Birds".

To listen to the piece click here.

Conversations With Birds

Ergo Phizmiz is now in production on a new radioplay "Conversations With Birds"....

.....written in a mixture of English, German, Polish, and Bird languages, in collaboration with translators Denis Kundic, Caroline Stupnicka, Robin Gill, and Pretty Polly ......

..... it is commissioned by Katarina Agathos at Bayerischer Rundfunk, where it will broadcast this year.....

....the cast includes Ergo Phizmiz, Elvis Herod, Oblivian Substanshall, Martha Moopette, Vulnavia Vanity, Michal Libera, Robin Gill, and more to be confirmed ....

........ tweet tweet ........

Public Service Announcement! Techno Service #2

Ladies, Gentlemen, and Machines, we present Ergo Phizmiz's Techno Service #2.



Are any of your machines in pain, infirm, dying?



Techno Service provides custom-made electronic compositions to soothe, ease, and comfort your machine.


Send details of your machine and its infirmity ergos.techno.service@gmail.com, and in time you will receive a piece of music. Ideally, the machine should be left alone with it’s music from the Techno Service, for a one-to-one experience.

Thankyou for your time.

Like this? Try Techno Service #1