Mama, Just Filled a Man

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Some things tell you you're living in a small town.

Things like...you meet a bloke online, decide he's okay, shag on his bed...and then find you belong to the same political party. And he works with a friend of yours.

What do you talk about after sex? We talked about drug rehabilitation therapies and the Nature/Nurture debate.

Is that what they mean by Sexual Politics?

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My version of the Burroughs cut-up method. Take an existing song, and divide - so well as you can - each line into two parts which could be bolted onto other sentences, so this...

I see a red door
and I want it painted black
No colors anymore
I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by
dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head
until my darkness goes

...might become this...

I see ... a red door
and I want it ... painted black
No colors ... anymore
I want them ... to turn black
I see ... the girls walk by
dressed ... in their summer clothes
I have ... to turn my head
until my darkness ... goes

There's various ways to divide sentences, but you get the general idea. Now write the first part of each line on the left hand side of a page, and the second on the right. Cut the page in half vertically, and horizontally. Now transpose the two page quarters on the right, and see what new sentences are produced.

The result, with a different song, might look something like this:

Is this to me
Is this killed a man
Caught against his head
No escape my trigger
Open dead
Look up has just begun
And gone
I'm just all away
I need to make you cry
Because I'm not back again
Little high tomorrow
Anyway nothing really matters

Doesn't really matter the real life
Mama, just just fantasy
Put a gun in a landslide
Pulled from reality
Now he's your eyes
Mama, life to the skies
But now I've see
And thrown a poor boy
Mama, didn't mean no sympathy
If I'm easy come easy go
This time little low
Carry on, carry on, the wind blows

Part ungrammatical gibberish, part unexpected poetry, the starting point of a new song that mashes up the old.

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But now, much as I'd like to stay up and refine the method by which one chops up sentences, I need to get some sleep - so I can spend tomorrow teaching students how to chop up sentences.

So I will force myself to gently drift away, to the strains of Boards of Canada, right after trying to think up suitable title for this post.

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