Black Bobin
oue aet- oua man


BL ACK BO B I - N
One Act
for
One Man
MAURICE ROWDON
PROPERTY OF:
PORTSLADE PRODUCTIONS
5 Tamworth Street
London
SW 6


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SCENE:
This is an elegant interior,
Early secular
a private room in an expensive villa,
music OVER.
and the style may be as antique as
desired.
There is a couch, a table
and a comfortable short-backed rounded
armchair. Upstage actor's left the
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS are set.
There
is a BOX containing JAN BOBIN's various
props---baubles, masks, phallic noses
etc. This box is marked POWDER FOR
PUFFS.
For the audience-introit, lively
early secular music.
JAN BOBIN enters from actor's right,
doing a: mediaeval-type dance to the
VO music, while THE MUSICIAN strolls
in from the left, going straight to
his instruments.
JAN BOBIN is dress-
ed in pantaloons and a loose collar-
less biouse with the sleeves cut un-
tidily short above the wrists, with
a V-neck.
THE MUSICIAN adopts the rhythm and
melody of the VO music, until he has
taken it over.
FADE music,
JAN BOBIN atrolls over to THE MUSIC-
IAN and stands gazing down at him as
he goes into some virtuoso playing.
He then goes to the sideboard and
mixes himself a whisky-and-soda,
returning to watch THE MUSICIAN
again.
The melody changes into THE JAN BOBIN
THEME SONG, and BOBIN begins singing.


SONG:
Jan Bobin!
Jan Bobin!
he's bobbin' along
bobbin' and weavin'
and singin' a song
he's bobbin' and weavin"
his way along
the slippery road
the slippery road!
The song is interrupted by a huge crash
CRASH OF THUNDER
of thunder and there is a momentary
OVER, and BLACK-
blackout.
JAN BOBIN jumps in alarm.
OUT followed by
flashing LIGHTNIN
EFFECT and contin
uous THUNDER.
THE MUSICIAN continues playing uncon-
cernedly.
BOBIN (to THE MUSICIAN) That's not real
thunder!
And look at the lights---!
THE MUSICIAN makes no reply, nor does he
lift his eyes from his instrument.
As the lights change to a brief STROBE
MASKED STROBE
effect from off-right, spilling on to
EFFECT
the scene, a BEAUTIFULLY PLUMED BIRD
RIGHT, FROM STAGE
(dead) fails plumt in front of BOBIN
BIRD falls as PLUMED:.
and is picked up by a spot.
He stares
stage
centre
at it, picks it up by the neck and
under spot,
shows it drooping to THE MUSICIAN.
exploding red flare. into a
BOBIN: Look at this!
(gazing up at
the flies)
The thunder, the strobe lightning die
CUT STROBE
and the scene is normal again.
BOBIN
ING and
LIGHT-
takes the bird and places it on a silver OVER, as THUNDER normal -
platter on the sideboard, then covers
it with the silver hood.
THE. MUSIC-
lighting fades
IAN is now playing only a soft.bass
quickly back.
rhythm.
BOBIN (to THE. MUSICIAN)
He always
SLOW FOOTSTEPS
has to cover a storm with extra light-
OVER
ing! Have you ever heard of such a
guy? And this bird? It's ridiculous!
(Listens gingerly to the footsteps as
they fade again)
He addresses the audience.


BOBIN:
Of course there is a storm outside.
He switches the lights off in a real
storm. And puts fake lightning and
fake thunder on. One of the richest
men in the western hemisphere is afraid
of storms (giving this to THE MUSICIAN
as well) It reminds me of a guy I heard
about four hundred years ago. Guy by
the name of Philip Visconti. He used
to throw himself on his bed in a storm-
and make - his courtiers crowd round him
so he couldn't see the lightning. The
duke of Milan! One of his relatives
used to eat dogs---unlike you who eat :
pigs and sheep. (With an irritated lack
look at THE MUSICIAN because of his
of response) All this was around 1130. after.
I didn't get born until the century
TWith guarded glances off, left and right,
before he resumes) He doesn't like me:
doing this.
One of the richest men in
the western hemisphere has ways of making
himself felt (rubbing his backside). In
hate and love he expresses himself there.
Look at him (THE MUSICIAN). That's why
he's. so thin, he has to play all the time
to cover my voice. Once I slipped out
of the show without telling him and he
didn't stop playing for three whole days.
(Standing and gazing at THE MUSICIAN
quietly, as he runs through a fast
virtuoso piece) Then he fell asleep on
the job.
I was doing the same in
another part of the house.
THE MUSICIAN plays lower,
just a rhythm. BOBIN
sits in the armchair with
his drink, addressing the
audience confidentially.
You see, I know who : I was in another- life.
I remember the name. Every detail. If I
tell you the name you can look it up in your
history books.
It was Jan Bobin. I was
Charles. V's court-jester, in the 1500s.
He again studies THE
MUSICIAN in silence, then
gives the audience a
: shrugging look.
(Still gazing at THE MUSICIAN as he speaks
almost to himself) He's heard it so many


times he doesn't believe it.
Which is
ridiculous. The truth can't get soiled
by repetition.
(To THE MUSICIAN)
Can
THE MUSICIAN makes a nod
to himself.
BOBIN strolls
up to him, looking down at.
his instrument as he plays.
(Defiantly, with a glance at the sudience)
He doesn't even laugh! I was Charles V's
fool right through from when he was the duke
of Burgundy to when he was Holy Roman Emperor
to when he died in a monastery in Spain.
And I lived to see his son Philip. 11 make a
mess of the world.
There is danger of him getting
angry.
(To THE MUSICIAN)
Did you hear that? Charles
v, my boss, borrowed money at 50% interest---
to bribe the German princes---I'm talking about
Charles V---duke of Burgundy, king of Spain and
elected Holy Roman emperor!
And he had a son
called Philip 11. And a hell of a lot you
care!
A certain panic seems to seize
BOBIN. He looks off, left
and right, and now gives his
speech more to the audience.
I've got to be quick about - : Slow footsteps
this.
The guy. I work for
OVER.
now (pointing off), he's no
king, but I'm telling you
he's a quean! He's the
reason I've got piles. I
had to have an operation,
they laid me on my stomach--
though not nearly as many
times as he did!
As fast as
he screws me from behind I
screw a girl in front, which
in psychology is called
compensation.
I'm still the
fool I was four hundred years Girl's giggles
ago, giving the girls
OVER.
pleasure, getting pain from
the men! Four hundred years
ago, just like today, the
giris got a raw deal- -they


only got real love from fools like
They sewed me up in hospital. (Doing an
absurd walk with sewn-up effect behind,
then repeating it in front of THE MUSICIAN,
who takes no notice) I Never have anything
from behind if you can help it. The
lower orifices in the male are designed -
to give not take. The upper orifices,
such as the mouth, nose and ear-trumpets,
are designed to take not give. Don't
get it reversed.
For instance the upper
orifices take in information about the
surrounding universe, through the ears,
the eyes, the taste-buds. But don't
expect intelligent information from the
lower orifices.
You may not like goulasch
anyway.
He strolls to the right
and peers off carefully.
He runs a yacht, moors it
Slow footsteps
at Cannes harbour. He
OVER.
owns three houses.
doesn't really have a nation-
ality. No rich man does.
He started off a mixture of
British and Swiss.
We lived
in London once but he said
living on an offshore American
island didn't please him.
(Addressing the audience fully) Ladies and
gentlemen, let me tell you something: in my
heart of hearts, as an American, I would con-
sider it perfectly valid to line up a hundred
or even a thousand of you ane have you shot
to save. one American life.
And the same goes
for any Americans present too!
British!
Winston Churchill wasn't an English-
man. They. were always::: in each other's clothes--
Roosevelt; Churchill, Dorothy Parker!
It was
a mess!
And as for Yalta---I'll come to-that
later.
(Indicating the man off
again) I keep him in fits
of laughter. Know why a
Footsteps OVER.
fool jokes? Because he
wants to be laughed at!


That's why God threw this dark skin
over me, in my second and I hope last
incarnation as a fool.
Jan, he said,
Jan (deep South), I'm gonna make you a
fool again, all you need is a dark skin
this time, everybody'll recognise you.
Don't I have a court like before, I says?
No Jan, He says, where I'm sendin' you
there ain't no courts, excep' courts o'
law, and don't let me find you in one
o' them, He says, because once you git :
inside one o' them with a dark skin over
your bones, it's more than even I can do
to git you out!
Just bum around, He
says, you'll keep 'em laughin' wherever
you go---Jan Bobin with a dark skin, He
says, why every rich man'll want to have
you!
How do you mean 'have me' 1 I asks Him.
But by this time He's strolling away with
that Divine Chuckle of His!
So here I am, Jan Bobin, Charles V's clown,
back again, with a dark skin' thrown over
me! It's funny, us blacks don't fit any
place much!
We don't even like each pther
too much!
Now the last time I met a
militant black he wanted to beat me up.
Scared the goulasch out of me! He didn't
like the Jan Bobin inside of me---the tears
and the laughter and the 'excess of heart',
as some Spanish mystic said to me once.
It didn't fit his military programmes!
I ran away. He must have thought I was a
coward. I think so myself. That's why
I try to keep people laughing.
Like I did
all those Burgundians and krauts and Spaniards
under good old Charlie.
Know what they said about Charlie when he
was a kid?
'A Hapsburg moron'. His eyes
looked as if they'a been stuck on (THE
MUSICIAN making mime faces behind, as he
plays), his mouth hung open and he had a
job chewing and digesting because his. jaw
was all funny.. He was as pale as most
of your cheeks, and like them he stammered
a lot. (Imitates stammering and farting
noises:) He had Spanish, French, Burgundian,
Plantaganet, Flemish and Portuguese blood in


his veins, with a drop (making a
dropping noise) of Jewish and Arab as
well.
I was with him more or less night and
day from the time he was made duke of
Burgundy at the age of fifteen.
(Glancing round again, left and right)
I've got to hurry about this!
There
was a ceremony in Brussels when he was
made duke and he and his knights ate so
much they had to miss Vespers afterwards.
They had a good screw instead.
Charlie
loved his women.
His first criticism
of Spain was that they frowned on sex.
But he learned to like it, and ended a
monk, like all men.
He had a whole
crowd of advisers and tutors round him
because everybody knew he'd be a king or
emperor one day. A Venetian slob
described him as an idiot surrounded by
a corrupt council.
That's the sort of
thing they used to write in despatches.
Charlie loved women and fun and prayer,
followed by women.
He stops and looks at
THE MUSICIAN, to see if
he's taking any of this in.
He doesn't seem to be.
(To the audience) .OK, so how do I know
all this if I wasn't Jan Bobin? I can
hardly read, so how else would I know it?
I grew up in an orphanage in Maine dammit!
I got my education in the movies!
I used
to play hooky and go from one movie to
the next, three, four shows a day, I never
saw daylight, I was the film-bug of all time!
Twentieth Century
Fox fanfare or the
MGM lion's roar.
I call him the Powder Puff
(indicating the rich man off). Slow footsteps
He: powders it!
It's ridicul-. OVER.
ous! But he does.
He comes
to a film with me most nights
of the week. Time:lies heavy
on his hands, because a rich
man's a poor man, know that?.
Just about his only réal -
pleasure is screwing me because


I hate it. Can you imagine that?
I squeeze up my face and he can feel
it (screving up his face, being jerked
from behind).
All the muscles in my
body are squeezed up like that.
Not
every day. About three times every
other day.
Question: why don't I push off?
(walking up and down brightly and
enthusiastically)
Answer: because
I like the money, I like the girls,
I like the Porsche, I like the dinners,
I like the bed, I like the breakfast in
bed, I like the girls with the breakfast
in bed, I like the travel, I like the
yacht, I like the casino, I like the
private Lear jet, I like the girls!
And I like him. That's a
Slow footsteps
real fool, huh? He's
OVER.
behind me in everything I
do after all! (Imitating
him) 'You enjoy having it
with those girls? You
don't! You can't! I can
see you don'tT It's as
plain as day you're a deeply
suppressed faggot, like all.
the other black men I know! -
It's only shame makes you
hide it! You're ashamed of
of having it with me, that's
all! But, believe me, like
all the white men I know,
you're a roaring pouf!
Lion's roar,
followed by pouf!'
Well, you can't argue with
OVER.
that. Particularly if
you're not face to -face at
the time.
I'll tell you where the
fairies were. queueing up
for each other at the 1
street corners-- -Rome in
her decline, Constantinople
in her decline; Alexandria
in her decline, Venice in
her decline, and Earl's
Court in her heyday!
VO 1: Coleherne!
VO 2: Move along
please!
VO 3: I love being
moved along?


(As he talks he sets about looking for
the limp phallic nose in his box) In
the so-called Theban desert behind Alex-
andria---I got this from the Spanish
mystic-- --this was just about 1500 years
ago---I don't mean he told me 1500 years
ago, I mean he was telling me about 1500
years ago---when he told me it was 100
years ago, and so what he was telling me
about was 1100 years ago from the time he
told me---anyway, he told me the monks in
the Theban desert were so gay that when the
barbarians came they turned their backs!
They didn't éven run away! Well, you
can't fight like that can you?
Have you ever reasoned out why in a city
full of convents and monasteries like
Assisi there are about a hundred orphan-
ages? Take your time!
Work it out!
(Taking the limp phallic nose out of the
box)
In the decline of Venice as a great
sea-borne republic a guy called Gozzi said
that all the men were women, the women men,
and both monkeys.
Men are certainly dikes
nowadays, I mean the ones who sleep with
each other of course.
It won't be long now (looking round).
The lights are going out (troubled,
strange).
I mean all over Europe.
Not to disappoint the ladies (he puts the
phallic nose on).
He sneezes, lifting the
nose up into an erect
position.
Excuse me!
I'm allergic to the dead!
(Trembling, cringing) : Can't you smell
it? The dust!
It's frightening
(backing upstage)---the number of dead
piling up every day---it ought to be.
stopped! Neither hygienic nor just.
I mean, every day, every hour!
The Powder Puff took me to see Macbeth
once. Five words stuck in my mind--
whence is that knocking? Well might
I have asked! The whole town was doing


The sound of knocking
startles him.
(looking straight ahead) Who is it?
VO: I am your
father's ghost!
What do you want? Anyway that's another
play!
VO: Cut it off!
Must I?
BOBIN looks in his box and
takes out a pair of tailor's
scissors.
VO: Yes! All the
Martini people
are getting
syphilis!
BOBIN poises the scissors to
cut the nasal phallus off.
Why should I? (Making the nose swing with
his finger) It's out of service anyway.
I hope dad's gone (looking round). 'Your
father's ghost'! He died of drink in Harlem.
I thought I smelled good bourbon for a
moment!
He tries to drink his
whisky but the nose flops
into the glass, he lifts
it and drinks rather un-
successfully.
Oh! (taking the nose off with annoyance and
flinging it back into the box) And now
(suddenly taking an erect nasal phallus out
of the box) not to disappoint the men!
He puts the erect nasal
phallus on, butting his
head towards the audience
like a stag.
(Confronting the audience confidentially)
Did you hear about the girl who can feel
colours through her fingers? Well I can
feel sex through my nose. A guy said to


me once about a girl we knew she's so
beautiful she blows your mind!
I said
she blows my nose!
He didn't under-
stand. People don't understand on the
whole because teachers don't let 'em.
Teachers corrupt people into the
sedentary attitude, which encourages
masturbation, which drives you crazy.
(Trying to get THE MUSICIAN to laugh with
the erect nose, but THE MUSICIAN presents
a face of astonishing gloom)
Just what
I told you, he keeps on playing.
ought to have my own lyrics on this show.
But nobody wants to be a composer anymore--
not since Ken Russell started making
pictures.
(Glances off right)
If I
get too funny, especially about respected
contemporaries, and top people like film
directors---he doesn't mind about politicians
and kings and queans and all that---he comes
in and stops the show and slaps my cheeks--
I don't mean the cheeks of my face either.
(Studying the audience, then looking round
the scene) This is happening in my room,
in a huge house in Montecarlo, and nobody
can hear you laugh---I mean, this isn't
real---but he can hear the laughter in my
imagination if it gets too loud. He's
(THE MUSICIAN) real. The show's real.
But you're not. You think you are.
I've called you
in my mind. It's my
way of relaxing, "Itin better than acid,
having a show in my room with nobody watch-
ing except him (THÉ MUSICIAN), and he
doesn't.
Yes, apparently I can so persuade myself
that I am giving a show that I can call up
people in front of me!
He eats chocoloates,
feeding one to THE MUSICIAN.
He gives a 'Look at the guy!'
shrug to the audience.
(With another look off
right)
Consider that
Slow footsteps
man's life He opens his
OVER.
eyes to a huge tray of
breakfast---three piping.
hot savoury dishes from.
which he can choose. He
hasn't worked for it.


Not two hours later he's sipping a
glass of gin, and after that slicing
up the corpse of some pig,. heffer or
lamb.
In the evening another corpse,
and more gin, wine, port.
Now all this
feeding without the sweat of toil excites
and inflames two areas only, the imagination
in close connivance with the balls.
He doesn't even play tennis or swim or ski
like other greedy faggots.
So it's almost
never limp.
Now the fool is in the image
of his master (indicating the
erect phallus).
And don't
think you're any different.
Whatever. you do, whoever you
may be, you are the devoted
servants of a rich man some-
where. You may never have
seen him, but lick his arse
you certainly do. And the
bigger your head, the bigger
your kiss. It's what the
pope once called a real arse-
feast, just after he'd..been
visiting a monastery on the
Aventine Hill in Rome. He
A papal blessing
had. to run for it. As. a
and echoing crowds
man of power---here lies the OVER.
moral of the story,. and
especially if you're pope
and probably therefore a
banker-- -as a man of power
you should never show the
face of your arse to poorer
men than you, because they
want to kiss it.
If there
are something like two thous-
and monks standing in front
of you and trying to get
behind you, it's even worse.
Imagine the panic.
Sounds of running footsteps,
gasping breath OVER:
VO: Pope, pope, let me have
a kiss of your arse!
VO: The pope's nose, I must
have the pope's nose!
VO: Pàpa, papa, Vostro culo!'
VO: Un baccetto per piacere,
un baccetto al. culo!"


That's the only extant recording of the event,
from the BBC archives.
Jesuit ordinands are
allowed to hear it from time to time, as the
winter evenings draw in.
Look at all the great fools whose name began
with B. There was Bobo in Spain.
There was
Buhlul in Baghdad at the time of Haroun al
Raschid.
After he died his name passed into
Arabic as another word for idiot. Then,
going even further into the arse-end of
history, there was Bucco, the Roman fool.
All beginning with B. And Bucco means 'a.
He stops THE MUSICIAN
playing.
Here's a thought:
We work to pass the time
the time that remains
or we cease to work
so as not to lose
the time that remains
THE MUSICIAN resumes
playing. BOBIN strolls
over to him.
(Addressing THE MUSICIAN)
There are among
our friends here tonight both hard workers
and what the French called, at least when I
was Jan Bobin, flaneurs or layabouts.
They
are sitting cheek to cheek out there. Each
with his philosophy. of how to employ the last
hours of survival. (To the audience) Actually
you died already. That's why you allow the
dead to address you.
Everything you experience,
everything you hope, can be reduced to a thought
in the head. Therefore you too are in an
excellent position to make it all up! I invent
you, and you give me the illusion that I'm
actually playing in a live show. My God,
if I really was I'd certainly be nervous!
I wouldn't have the balls! In front of real -
people!
But in front of ghosts, why that's
The famous Punch appeared in my time, when I
was Jan Bobin.
He was called pulcinello
which means (makes the sound of a chicken)


and it happened near Naples. He was
dressed like some crazy peasant in the
district who used to wear a loose blouse
and pantaloons (looking down at: his own
clothes in silence). And he had a half-
mask. over his face (touches his phallic
nose-with the same silent wonder---almost
shock).
(Almost to himself, in a slight voice,
trailing off) Thought and number and
Every German prince had his fool in my time.
There was a fool called Hegel, but he wasn't
such a fool as the Hegel who believed in
progress.
(Once more stops THE
MUSICIAN playing)
Here's a fact:
when thought disintegrates
(tinkling sounds,
money becomes the government
giggling OVER)
brass wits and golden foolery
He stares at the audience.
THE MUSICIAN plays again.
How can you kill two hundred million Americans
simultaneously? and give them state funerals?
State funeral music OVER,
with support rhythm from
THE MUSICIAN.
(reciting to time)
thought and number and time
children of order, mothers of crime,
when shall we three meet again--
in thunder, lightning or in rain?
Yes', I called my king Charlie.
Like Henry V111's fool used
MUSIC OVER OUT.
to call him Harry. They
used to spend hours rhyming
together, Harry the English
king and Will Somers his
clown. Henry V111 would say
Within yon tower


Within yon tower
There is a flower
That hath my heart
And Will Somers would have to come up with
an answer straight off.
This is what he
said:
She puts such power
Behind my tower
It maketh me fart.
They had a lot of fun.
But Cardinal Wolsey,
whose skirts had to be double-pleated to make
more room, especially when he stammered a lot,
didn't like it. In fact he hated old Will
Somers, and one day he joined in the rhyming.
He said
A rod in the school
And a whip for the fool
Are always in season..
And Will gave it right back:
A halter and a rope
For him that would be pope
Against. all right and reason.
They say Wolsey sat there biting his lip.
You see how we fools get to the heart of the
matter?
But there were some nasty fools in my time
too, especially in Germany and France, Italy,
Spain, England, Holland, Poland, Switzerland,
Austria, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Czecho-
slovakia and Russia. America wasn't there
yet.
One fool called Conrady Pocher in Germany
got famous as. a wit by hanging a boy on a
tree because he had scabs all over him!
Ribald laughter OVER, with
Ach Gott! and Ich lache mich
tod!
The Count Palatine took him on.as his jester
right away.
The Elector of Saxony spotted Klaus Naar
when he was out hunting. He watched him
wringing the necks of his father's geese


to save them from drowning---as a joke of
course. He laughed so much he took him to
court, much to the father's relief.
The most famous court-fool of my time was the
one I hated most. A Frenchman called Brusquet.
Now Brusquet was a scheming sack of goulasch,
not a: real fool at all. He started off as a
doctor and he killed so many people even the
other doctors got embarrassed. You don't hear
of that happening nowadays do you?---I mean
them getting embarrassed? Philip 11, Charlie's
son, loved him when he came to Spain once.
No wonder, considering the kind of fool he
had---all he could do was sing old Spanish
songs in a cracked voice (going into a hideous
Spanish routine with THE MUSICIAN).
Brusquet used to play practical jokes with
Marshall Strozzi at the French court---they
mutilated animals for fun. That put me right
against him. Hanging boys on trees, throttling
geese, twisting. the limbs off animals---a nice
lot of colleagues I had! Never trust a man who
doesn't love animals.
At least you only mutilate animals after they're
dead---unless you're growing them for food of
course, which is necessary. Or making experiments
on them in laboratories. Which is ncessary.
THE MUSICIAN is silent. They
both stare at the audience for
some time.
THE MUSICIAN resumes playing.
Chicot was another French clown, nicer than
Brusquet but a military man. Now a fool
shouldn't get involved in anything serious.
Fools should be like you. Watching and waiting.
(Suddenly.a prosecuting counsellor)
Undeniably
you eat your brothers and sisters!
'This
filthy witness!' said Macbeth's old lady when -
she took a look at her hands with blood all
over them.
SONG:


Christmas is over
the geese are dead
presents have been given
and uncles fed
carols still lovely
(mediaeval carol
are no longer heard
OVER)
and death was done
to many a bird
(screeching of
birds OVER)
chickens were throttled
turkeys were split
(sounds of thrott-
geese knocked out
ling, splitting,
and wild ducks hit
thumping OVER)
Christmas is over
we had a fine time
our fingers are itching
from a future crime
we live like lords
we give the best
but more than a bird
has died in its nest
crackers were pulled
the port was passed
suddenly a voice
said it couldn't last
the birds all lay
sizzling in fat
while crop and beak
were kept for the cat
tea and sandwiches
at half-past ten
we'll have to make life
all over again
take wing like the birds
build us a nest
be alive again
to unearthly request
we can't'accept
these meals from the past
but change the scenery
alter the cast
(in a soft voice,. almost to himself, .as
he casts his. eyes fron one side to another
among the audience)


Troy is now a tribal çhamber
roof of gold floor of amber...
(looking round at the moonlight spreading
on the scene)
and with how sad steps the moon is climbing!
I shall not intimidate softly or otherwise
your certain knot of peace
nor cause my desolation
to become how ever so softly your distress
nor shall I make my bargains drive
how ever so lightly
on your silver head
nor strike my hours
of how ever so deep a darkness
on your light
and I shall not uncover in all my paths
how ever so thick
one thorn for you
and shall not halt how ever so soft
your silver tread!
The moonlight fades.
You smile at all this butif extra-sensory
perception isn't true how is it I always
know when my wife is licking one of the cooks?
She's a kitchen-maid on the holiday-side as
we say in this house, she works the 'hot'
villas in Greece and southern Italy while I
work the 'cold' ones in London, St Moritz
and Montecarlo.
So I only see her summers. My winter nights
are therefore a kind of extra-sensory sex-
shop.
Experiments have been carried out
in Denver, Colorado, to verify all this.
I was surrounded by a six-foot wall of
concrete---together with Uri Geller of
coure---while she was isolated on Crete behind
a metal sheath resistant to electro-magnetic
waves, to establish a) that I did not bring
her into being mentally to fill my sex-shop
and b) she was not doing with the filthy
Latvian cook only what I had thoughtographically
induced her to. do.
Notice I'm in a constant state of mental
desire (touching the nasal phallus).
This


is because survival is out of the question.
When flies drink arsenic in numbers they
mate quickly before they die. This is a
battlefield and the eleventh hour.
So much
knocking in the.last sixty. minutes!
He suddenly tears off his
nasal phallus and goes to
the sideboard where he lifts
the cover of the silver platter
and takes the bird in his
hands.
He begins gorging
himself on it.
A beautiful song-bird is.
heard OVER.
His jaws are covered with
dark blood. His eyes flash
towards the audience. He
then throws the flesh behind
him and it lands with a nasty
plop OVER.
SONG: a staccato hot-beat rhythm.
Make me a raw red steak
and then I can feel my roots
stretch downwards to my boots
into the raw red earth
where I had my birth
(extravagant
where I had my birth!
bloodthirsty
writhing)
as long as someone willing
does the necessary killing
and I do not hear the screams
or suffer the frightened eyes (screams of
that make me recognise
animals in
the murders for my sake
abbatoirs
the murders for my sake!
OVER)
A bass-rhythm survives as
BOBIN advances towards the
audience.
Now come'on be reasonable!
I have to eat!
I have to have my protein!
I have to have it!
A piece of rump from you! and you! and you!!
A leg of man!
Cooperate (screaming at the
top of his voice).! Cooperate in my survival
animals!
Don't you realise (wiping his mouth on his
cloak) your body's an illusion? Why so


much worry about what parts of it
you lose?
He throws his cloak away
contemptuously.
Here's a physics lesson.
You're made up,
of atoms right? Now an atom means something
indivisible- -a-tom, 'non-cutable'. I kknow
all this from a Spanish mystic who tried to
teach me Greek.
He got so impatient with me
he came down the well of the stairs without
using the staircase. They gave him a pauper's
funeral.
An enormous explosion OVER.
He jumps with hilarious
alarm.
That's an atom being split, because we now
know it isn't indivisible. The first public
lecture on this subject was with President
Truman in the chair: Hiroshima 19/5. His
audience burned to hear him!
Now an atom is like a little planetary system,
a crowd of electrons orbiting round a centre.
This centre is as far from these orbiting
electrons as a pea in the centre of a sports
stadium would be.
Thus you are mostly air, since atoms are all
you are composed of. If you were squeezed
really hard so that.all the air came out some- -
thing like the size of a speck of dust would
be the reult.
(Sneezes) Excuse me, the
allergy again!
In other words you are the stuff that dreams
are made of, like Hamlet always said you were.
You are dead.
That is, the body-part.
It's
been proven. You are :held together by electro-
magnetic waves, thermonuclear energy and sex-
shops.
All this body-business came
in for the first time when
I was Jan Bobin: I mean the
idea that we are "our own
bodies!
Naturally dissect-
ion of corpses started in a
big way too. Instead of
Sawing, OVER.
starting with the energy ::
medicine .started with the


dead body. No wonder it
took 'em two thousand years
VO: He started
to get to acupuncture! But
talking about
the age I lived in then was
Chinese needles--
nearly as- ignorant as the
sticking them in
one I live in now.
the skin and all
that. I just
laughed in his
face and said,
'Really? I can see
a lot of chinks
in that theory!'
In my time as Jan Bobin the first population
censuses were taken, statistics came into
being, and logarithms. Arabic numerals
replaced Roman ones to make calculation faster.
From now on EVERYTHING was calculated.
And
life became a bore.
Bankers started ruling
us instead of real men.
Let me put this as simply as possible--
because all of you have been to school and
had the progress-propaganda pushed down your
throats without the facts.
When I was Jan Bobin paper-money took over.
Instead of you giving me a flock of sheep.
for my daughter, or rather my mother, because
she's for sale too, you give me paper money,
that is to say a' token that will buy me the
equivalent of a flock of sheep, and the other
guy the equivalent of a mother.
So everybody
says to himself, what shall I get myself? A
mother, a flock of sheep or some records from
the sex-shop? And that sum of money is entered
in a little book.
The ghost-society begins.
The Christian becomes a zombie worked by forces
he doesn't understand!
He loses the power of
bold action, like carrying a mother to market
and coming back with a flock of sheep.
SONG: rollicking, saucy.
Take, take my daughter
for a leg'of that lamb--
or perhaps a glass of porter
with a slice or two of ham!
As for my mother
you can have her for a.song---
since the day she conceived me
she's been doing me wrong!


You could have had my father
before he died of drink
but what you could have used him for
I shudder to think!
A flock of sheep is better
than my family combined-
but perhaps we'll do a barter
since your daughter looks so kind!
What's that you're saying sir?
We shall have to wait
until she's grown to seventeen
and old enough to date?
And meanwhile you'll give me money
or write it down in a note
that your daughter one year later
will go for the price of a goat?
But what does a piece of paper
exactly represent
when I'm asking for your daughter's hand--
you must be rather bent!
He told me about the paper
and the meaning of its words---
that day I left the market
without my usual herds!
I never went to town again
I never left my house-
I just. exchanged my paper notes
and lived like a lazy louse!
Oh paper paper paper!
What a world of strife-
either we use it on the backside
or pay it to buy a wife!
Charlie paid'out God knows what in bribes
and interest on loans to be Holy Roman
Emperor. Ring a bell?
'Jan', he said to me once, 'the banks have
screwed me'.
Who were the biggest bankers? The Medici
of Florence. How many Medici popes were
there after 1513? No fewer than four!
Work it out for yourself!
At least 60 bankers from all over Europe
used to meet together,four times a year,


at places like Piacenza fair.
I'm talking
now of the 1570s.
They sat and manipulated
the exchange rates, and the rest of the world
didn't know what was going on in their own
purses!
It was the Genoese bankers who thought
it all up.
They drained Europe of gold---
they sucked the markets dry of cash, I mean
gold and silver, so paper was about the only
thing left, special paper with a promise written
all over it and a guarantee behind it. When
a Genoese banker issued a note it was OK.
And
gradually, as the gold piled up in his coffers,
he forced everybody else to do the same. The
old-fashioned bankers like the Fuggers accused
the Genoese of having mehr papier als baargeld,
which for the benefit of any Germans present
means 'more paper than cash'.
The Genoese
bankers despised cash. They despised trade.
They called it work for beggars and paupers!
Money started living a separate existence
from goods, from work, from human beings!
Can you imagine anything so crazy?
Philip 11 of Spain, Charlie's son, owed
twelve million ducats to one Antwerp banker
by the name of Tucker. They were all doing
it to finance their wars. Mary of Burgundy,
Charlie's grandmother, broke the Medici bank
at Bruges.
The idea was that you paid the money back when
you'd won your war. But you didn't always
win. England, France and Spain all defaulted
on their Antwerp loans.
In other words life started to be a real mess
when I was Jan Bobin. And here I am again
in an even bigger one.
It's such a mess I have a nazi aunt. She's
an evangelist from Dusseldorf, a real sauer
kraut.
When I told her to stop eating her brothers
and sisters on all fours she said, 'Leider
das Eiweiss...' etc
For the benefit of any Germans in' the audience
here's a translation:
'We are obliged to eat
our brothers and sisters!
Sufficient protein
for the human system is only present in soya
beans and we cannot eat soya beans all day!'
(With mounting ferocity)
"So we must have
our salami, frankfurters, smoked ham. slices,


pork cutlets nicely fried (screaming now),
spare ribs, beef tongues and delicious flanks
of horses, pedigree dogs and arses of Jews!'
When I said, 'But I thought the Fuhrer was a
vegetarian', she said, 'Damn the Fuhrer!
Why did he let 6 million Jews go to waste?'
SONG:
I had a leg of Jew once
I had some braised Sephardic! (A little dance)
the foetor judaicus
or smell of the Jews
was judged by the Nazis
like savoury stews
like savoury stews!
Horns and beard and claws
and the tail of a goat,
a Jew and a devil
are in the same boat
are in the same boat!.
(grotesque dance)
oh for a nice Jew cutlet
oh for a fat Jew rump
or a red tartar with pepper
from concentration camp
from concentration camp!
I could have eaten my fill
at Dachau or Terezin
and the rest I could have packed
in a finely-labelled tin
in a finely-labelleditin!
I had a leg of Jew once
I had some braised Sephardic! (mad dance)
Did you know that Christopher Columbus got
the money for his first trip to the United
States from the Jewish financiers round king
Ferdinand of Spain?
Did you know that
Columbus himself was a Jew, or did the school-
propaganda: keep that from you too?
Now king Ferdinand of Spain was Charlie's
grandfather, on Charlie's mother's side.
Ferdinand married his daughter Juana to
the Hapsburg Archduke Philip, son of the Holy
Roman emperor Maximilian; originator of the
Maxi overcoat.
Philip and Juna were Charlie"s mother and
father---and the reason why he got: the


Spanish throne without working for it.
You can read all about this in the sex-shops.
It's the same whether you do it or they do it--
sons and daughters result from it just the
same.
Definition of irony: Christopher Columbus
set sail for the United States on the day
the Jews were expelled from Spain.
was the year. Look it up in the sex-shops!
It takes a fool to explain these things!
The Jews were mostly drowned at sea, or starved
in Naples or died of the yellow fever. For
being the best brains Spain had---apart from
the Arabs, who were expelled too!
Did you know that the Jews and Arabs had such
high State positions in Spain because the
Spanish dukes looked on politics and finance
and administration as dirty work? Only
bishopricks, ambassadorpricks and military
generalpricks were clean enough for them.
Even king Ferdinand had a lot of Jewish blood.
That's why he wanted to be a 100% Spaniard!
Every Spaniard was a mixture. Jews and Arabs
and Spaniards had been Swopping religions and
wives for centuries!
Now the Church was
scared that if they all started screwing each
other too much you wouldn't be able to tell a
goy from a wog, from a yid, and with the Turks
(who were wogs) fucking about all over the
Mediterranean you couldn't take chances.
Therefore the first doctrine of pure race
appeared in my time.
Sorry Adolph!
Every-
thing was set for the mess you're in today.
To show you weren't a Jew in Spain you had to
eat pork. One devout Christian was burned at
the stake because he happened.not to like it!
If you cut the fat away: from your pork and
left it on the side of your plate you might
get a visit from the Inquisition. That was
worse than the CIA!
All this sounds absurd
because it's coming from a fool but it's the
truth.
It can all be read' about in the sex shops.
The reason why the pig has been so successful
in Christian civilisation is''t that its flesh
is closest in taste to that of the human beingo
Cannibalism became dogma under the first
Visigoth popes.


St Simeon the Stylite who sat on a column
'for forty years is said to have had worms
eating his legs but actually he was eating
them himself. The emperor, I mean the one
in Constantinople, treasured his advice so
much that he asked him to start at the toes
instead of the head so that it would take a
few. . years. Look at Henry K today--he's eating
his toes too!
Notice they never give you a
shot of his feet!
There's no need to plead ignorance of all
this in the era of mass education. The
right hand is nowadays: early mobilised-
to write, to paint self-expression pictures
of the shit-and-drip school, and to masturbate.
These three birthrights of education having
been accomplished, the pupil is now ready to
watch programmes on the box, and, if he has
the energy to follow up what he has learned
and doesn't smoke too much shit, he can go
out and committ a crime.
I'll explain all this later, though a simple
visit to your local sex-shop would clear it
all up.
By the time Philip, Charlie's son, became'
king there were no. Jews or Arabs left in
Spain, just a pure state of Christianity,
with pork being eaten and none of the fat
being cut away, and some human steaks frying
from time. to time on the street corner.
Believing in God when I was Jan Bobin was
risky!
(To THE MUSICIAN) Ever hear of the
alumbrados? (A slow nod, without looking up
from his instrument) Otherwise known as the
illuminists? (A slow nod again)
He's one
of then, that's why he knows! He was in
the nick. He had a long time to meditate.
The alumbrados used to have ecstasies! They
were so full of love they had ecstasies!
SONG: soft, yearning, high-pitched.
I'm running away!
to another day!
another kind of space
I'm tired of keeping pace.
with this march of the dead
I'll fly away instead
from all this erime
to where there's no space -or time
and no more competition
but another kind of mission-


just to s-h-i-n-e
just to s-h-i-n-e!
just to S-e-e
just to s-e-e!
just to kn-0-W
just to kn-0-w!
just to b-e
just to b-e!
and no more competition
Charlie used to have ecstasies.
He would
sit and go off while he was praying.
Just
love of God!
And then when he looked at
you his eyes had a great smile in them, even
for a fool like me! I had ecstasies some-
times, but only after he was dead, and when
it was dangerous. A lot of Jews were
alumbrados, you see. Philip's son Don
Carlos had ecstasies, he was privately
strangled. From the Church's point of view
you couldn't have people getting something
straight from God instead of going through
the priests.
In Philip's time there was the
first Index of banned. books. Even the Bible
in Spanish was forbidden!
It had to be in
priest-Latin so only they could understand it!
The palace guards caught me staring at the
moon one night in the grounds of the Escorial
palace. They thought I was having an ecstasy
until they realised, standing upwind of me,
that I was having a shit.
I'm not a fool for nothing,
SONG: a brief reflective echo of the previous
song, as if talking to himself.
I'm running away
to another kind of day!
no more competition
no more crime!
(Then, speaking in a strangely matter-of-fact
voice, quiet, rather awed, with the Running
Away meoldy still playing)
Mary came to my door
I love you she said :
looking at my head
are you my mother I asked her


no she replied
I am the one who died
but surely I said
it was not you who died
but the one with thorns round his head
I am the one who mothered him she said
and also the one who fled
I am the one who gave him that kiss
and took him down from the bitter cross
and you my son were the ond who bled she said
SONG:
The one who bled!
and the one who fled!
the one who gave him that kiss
and took him down from the bitter cross!
The one who died
and the one who replied
to the judge when he. said
there's a crime on your head!
The one who died
and was pierced in the side,
and the one who bled
with thorns round his head!
The one who denied
that he knew him and lied,
the one who got paid
for a lie that he laid!
the one who is all of them
the one who is all
the one born in Bethlehem
and the one who will fall!
The one who shines out
the one in the fire
the one full of doubt :
and the one who's for hire!
One!
There's only one!.
There's only o-n-e!
Seneca, the famous Latin writer who powdered
it, once said, 'When I want to look at a fool
ali I have to do is look in the mirror'.
(Gazing at the audience) I.guess you all
feel the same.
The word idiot comes from idiotes, which is -


Greek for private person'---SO my Spanish
mystic told me before he came downstairs
too quick.
A fool is about the only private person
there is.
Most of you aré leading public
lives and looking for the private guy. You
expect to find him in bed with the girl but
he ain't.
Who is the host
who floods your rooms with light
and in your morning ablutions
secures your happiness?
who lies down by lovers
and rises with the dead?
SONG:
And if he's lost returns!
can never be lost---!
can never be lost!
He'll never let me go!
Because he's the host!
It's his house!
It shines with his light!
That's why it's so bright!
He'll never let me go
because I'm his guest!
Never let me want
because he's my host!
(almost. shouted)
It's his house!
It shines with his light!
That's why it's so bright!
God said to me, Another reason why I's givin
you a black skin, so as you won't be able to
join their. crime-club even if you want to.
First they won't want you and second you'll
remember your mammy and your daddy and your
kid brothers and all the things they bin done
Now I don't have anv kid brothers.
This may sound funny to Christian pig-eaters
but I was in the soul of Jonathan Jackson at
the moment. the police shot him dead outside


the San Rafael Court house near San
Francisco on August 7th 1970.
He was a
kid-brother. He hero-worshipped his
older brother George, who was two years later
shot in the back in San Quentin prison, for
being a black man.
Now the kid-brother was led by his hero-love
for'George to great anger and ultimately
violence. George had been given 'one year
to life' at the age of eighteen for driving
the car while a black friend stoles 70 dollars
from a gas station.
'One year to life' meant,
for a black fool, life. That was back in
For ten years older brother George was shifted
from Soledad prison to San Quentin and back
again, from solitary confinement to 'minimum
security' and back again..
His friend who stole the 70 dollars was
released after three years. Not George.
He spoke his thoughts.
In June 1967 his
knee-cap was broken by prison guards while
another Black prisoner was being beaten up.
All this is written down in the sex shops for
all to see. I know we're Christians but a
little compassion should come into our hearts
sometimes.
It does into the animal-heart,
if they're not been eaten by you already or
been experimented on and have their guts,
wombs or brains lying about at the other end
of the room.
On January 13 1970 a new exercise-yard was
opened on 'O' Wing of Soledad, and the white
prisoners got into a fight with the black
prisoners.
It was all rigged of course,
since the prison guards knew who the anti-
blacks were among the white prisoners and
could have kept them away from. the militant
black cats if they'd wanted to.
Anyway, a crack marksman in
the watch-turret shot three
Shots OVER.
of the blacks dead. One was
left to bleed to death---a
few yards from the prison
hospital.
SONG: a brief snatch, spftly, to himself.
I have no fear
while my beloved is near
while he's watching me!


A local Grand Jury testified within three
days that the shooting was justifiable
homicide'.
No Black witness was called.
Then a white guard was found dying on George
Jackson"s wing. Five blacks were sent into
solitary confinement. They were the militants,
among them George.
With two others he was
accused of murder.
Jonathan Jackson aged 17. walked into the
court house while a San Quentin prisoner
was giving evidence.
He called out 'All
right everybody this is it!' and took a
collapsible carbine out of a bag, together
with a few smaller guns, which he handed out
to three black prisoners. They took the
judge, the district attorney and three women
jurors hostage. They
marched them out of court
to a van.
When the van
moved off some prison guards
opened fire. Jonathan and
Shots OVER
the judge and two of the
prisonerscwere killed.
I felt it happen to me.
I felt the bullets in my
Repeat shots OVER
back, at the precise
moment. I felt his child's
anger, and the absurdity of
his act.. This was what
older: brother George called
'black tilting at white
windmills'.
You see, George Jackson was the last black man.
After him, we're giving up black skins, on a
kind of compact basis-- -that the others give up
white skins. Millions of people are handing
in their skins everywhere.
People get tired of being just bodies.
have so nuch electricali energy inside us,
holding all this electricitt together, this
extraordinary energy that can move things' and
even change black into white and can make new
bodies, so where's the worry about skins?
We're moving on to new psychokinetic areas!
This is the argument that got my arse kicked
by the black militant.
This (touching the erect-phallus) is going to
solve the black-white problem. The result
is going to be a lot of chocolate.


George Jackson said to his lawyer about
the prison guards at Soledad, 'Fay', he
said, 'Fay, most of these men are Klu Klux
Klan types. The rest are so stupid they
shouldn't be allowed to run their own bath.
A responsible state government would have
found a means of weeding out most of the
savage types that are drawn to gunslinger job
jobs long ago! How did all these pigs get
through? You may as well give a baboon a
gun and set him loose on.us! It's the same
here as on the streets out there!
Who has
loosed this thing on an already suffering
people? The Reagans, Nixons, the men who
have, who own. Investigate them!'
Of course I did.
But I had to have an
office, a secretary, and somehow I had to
buy the time to do it all---I mean, this is
the work of months!
And finally some good
people did come forward who wanted to help
me and had the money to do it. They were
friends of Reagan and Nixon.
Reagan and Nixon were quite
honest about it. They said
they welcomed a chance of clear- VO
ing their names.
Which shows
they can't have had much on
am no crook!
their consciences doesn't it?
SONG:
The pigs are the. moneymen
the moneymen are pigs!
(Speaks)
How much money have you. got? A thousand
dollars? It don't qualify mister!
Ten
thousand? Hardly!
A hundred thousand?
Getting warmer. A coupla million?
Show
me a coupla million grand---
(Resumes song, this time black minister
preaching, stamping foot)
Show me a coupla million gr-a-n-d
I'll give you right now a hidden h-a-n--d
in - the elected government of the 1-a-n-d
With a coupla million grand you'll f-i-n-d
plenty of men who'll be unk-i-n-d
you look 'em in the eyes and see they're bl-i-n-d
With a coupla million in therb-a-n-k-s
you'll have pigs enough to fill the r-a-n-k-s
of a dozen armies with street-roaving t-a-n-k-s


to shoot at the people if they run a-m-0-k
if the. banks run out and there isn't a b-u-c-k
and death's the only place they can look for 1-u-c-k!
Pigs and moneymen
they have small eyes!
(high-itched squealing
voice)
moneymen and pigs
they don't listen to our sighs
don't listen to our s-i-g-h-s!
Now ladies and gentlemaniacs you see me before
you tonight by courtesy of the Cemetery News,
Gay Books and other male organs of the Thomson
Press. We are. grateful to the board under the
chairmanship of Her Majesty Lord Mountbatten.
If any of the members of the board are present
and would like theirs powdered, they can step
behind afterwards.
I tell you, ever since banking caught hold
they've been turning the world upside down.
Before: I was born, I mean as Jan Bobin,
Florence used to be governed by bankers!
Imagine that!
No wonder there was chaos!
Hardly a-month went by without a revolution
or a financial crash or a war or unemployment
or a change in the constitution. As for the
government, the more it changed the more it
was the same one, because the Medici family
rigged the elections anyway. The Medici were
democratic people. They didn't have handles
to their names or put on airs. They went
about the streets like anybody else, and they
stepped off the pavement for older men. Just
like the Kennedys.
Families like: the Medici came up when the
Church started allowing interest to be charged
on loans.
Then everything became interest.
It was like a dog chasing its own tail.
never made it. It was always ten percent
behind. On everything you made that extra
ten percent had to be allowed for.
It went
into the pockets of a minority---for no work
done, no goods, no trade. So society couldn't
be balanced however hard it tried. Production
and consumption could never get together. It
made war necessary. You wanted to expand to
cover the gap---and you borrowed to make war,
you paid more interest in order to pay interest.
War became written into Christian civilisation
like the wrinkles in an old man's head! The
10% is only another for.war. War on other
people. For your own ;ocket: People you don't
know or see. Christianity is another name


for war machine.
War on the people,
war on the beasts, the plants, the air, the
seas, the future; the heart! Christianity's
another name for madness!
For crisis and
upheaval and loving it! Calling cancer and
murder vitality!
And all that started in
Florence! Florence in my time was the image
of the future world!
Where the bankers ruled,
with chaos as their guarantor!
And now at the
very. top of the mountain of madness, Florence's
last monstrous child, lies America, at. the
very peak, where it's cold and the air is
heady, and there's no vegetation.
He pants, exhausted, as after
a wild party-speech.
No vegetation.
He hangs his head, panting.
THE MUSICIAN too is silent,
gazing at the audience.
When Charlie was 17 and I was still a young
fool, a kraut called Martin Luther pinned up:
some completely incomprehensible theses on
the door of Wittenberg cathedral where the
powder-vendors used to hang about. The gist
of these theses, so Charlie told me, was that
the Catholic Church stank, and that a certain
Dominican friar Tetzel should stop rattling
his alms' box all over Germany and pouring the
proceeds into Roman coffers to be spent on blue
films.
There was a big argument in front of my
Charlie between his catholics and Luther's
protestants which went on for days. Charlie
said to me over a late-night club-sandwich
in his hotel room after one day's conference,
'I can't understand what the hell these guys
are talking about! 1
Luckily I.could.
It was about consubstantiation,
which means that Christ:i is present at communion
when the wafer is fed to the faithful and the
vintage wine is drunk by the priest. That
was what the kraut Martin Luther believed in.
Charlie and the Catholic Church believed in
transubstantiation which means you're actually
eating Christ's flesh when you take the wafer,
and the priest, characteristically enough,
is drinking His blood. This is just what
I said before. Cannibalisms Now if you
try and start a new civilisation eating
flesh and drinking blood at the altar you're
in trouble.


You create a civilisation of gluttons. I
know by just how much you overfeed yourselves.
You may think I'm the only person here tonight
with this (the erect phallus) on my nose but
you've all got them, according to your sex.
I can see them. I can say exactly who over-
eats and who doesn't. Most of sexual appetite
is due to the body not knowing what to do with
all this combustive material in a sitting
civilisation.
It sends up a kind of steam
that heats the middle area and is another
reason for pleated skirts.
Towards the end of my life a massive amount
of political silver was spent by Philip 11--
Charlie was dead by then.
It went to finance
spies, murders, fake revolutions.
CIA?
He spent two and a half million kilosworth
in the Netherlands, which he wanted as his own,
minus its Lutherans and Anabaptists. Eight
hundred thousand kilosworth in Italy and
eighty-two thousand kilosworth in Germany.
This all came from America, so history. hasn't
changed in this respect.
If you sptead a lot of political silver about'
people can concentrate on this (touching the
erect phallus). Like you're doing.
Sex-liberation follows the political silver.
It's the best insurance-policy against revolut-
ion, that's whyo The first guy to say fuck
on television, the first to stand nude on a
stage, they thought they were blazing a great
new trail. It meant that war could go on
elsewhere---the rest of the world was safely
talking about its genitals.
When the political silver started trickling
to the blacks, and black overeating and
oversitting started, the black revolution
stopped, and it became safe for Eldridge
Cleaver to return to the United States.
Now the black protest is like the first fuck
on television. You get paid for it.
You think the blacks got problems?
What
about the Anabaptists in my day? Most of
them were roasted until their fat sizzled
and the spectators got back their appetites
for their evening pig-dinner.
Know what?---they disagreed with the Catholics
on one little point. Don't throw water over
a baby and call him baptised, they said. Wait


till he can talk and let him recite a
simple declaration of faith in Christ.
Harmless enough.
So why did they sizzle
and get their heads chopped off? Not
because of that!
Not because they believed
in love!
They believed in shared property
and hon-violence!
They were a popular
movement!
They grew with every bank crisis
in Antwerp---with inflation---with unemploy-
ment!
That's why they had to sizzle!
Beginning to figure?
No wonder they set up their headquarters in
Munster, Germany. Prices were steadier.
All this was about 153", when Charlie and I
were in our thirties too.
You. could always
tell what age you were from the year it was.
Everybody started making war on Munster--
the Catholics, the Lutherans, Pelagians,
Solifidians, Erastians, Ultraquists, Synergists,
Anti-nomianists--- -there were quite a lot of
sects in. those days!
Now there's only one
kind (miming the word 'sex').
The Anabaptists called a state of emergency.
Wouldn't you? They elected' a new leader
called John of Leyden.
John knew that God was on his side (ever hear
that before?) so. he left all the earthworks
to Him. The emergency got more so. John
of Leyden had sixteen wives---as I said to
Charlie in front of some bishops, 'That's
sixteen reasons why I believe in Anabaptism'.
One of these wives was rude to John so he cut
off her head on the spot and then stamped on.
her body in front of all the others.
As a
demonstration of non-violence and shared
property it was impeccable.
You see, Anabaptism started
in Europe's most warlike
state, Switzerland, where you
Yodelling OVER
fought other people's wars
them, at a price, and spent
the money at home.
Don 't
talk to me about peaceful
Switzerland. The brute and
the banker live cheek to cheek,
and I don't mean the cheek off
the face,


Poor John of Leyden was tortured to death:
when the other non-violent Christians got
hold of him. His followers were slowly
scorched to death. One by one. We don't
do things like that nowadays. This is the
Ascent of Man after all. We scorch in
thousands at a time.
At Nagasaki their
skins hung from their hands.
Silence. THE MUSICIAN
does not play. He simply
gazes down, hands limp on
the guitar.
Thought and number and time
children of order, mothers of crime,
when shall we three meet again---
in thunder lightning or. in rain?
Still the silence.
Down by pleasant Tempe's shore
no skins were found to fit any more...
For a few more beats,
silence.
Then THE
MUSICIAN takes up a slow,
soft, hardly heard rhythm
once more, elegaic, sorrow-
ing, plucked very lightly.
Yes, mine was the century of the sack of Rome
and the sack of Florence. That meant, as my
Spanish mystic said before he stepped down the
well of the stairs, that meant the sack of
our hearts.
There was no more passion after
that.
The women came off bad. They always did.
Sometimes I think only fools and fairies
really love women!
Not that all women in
my time were angels.
But as the Christian
male behaved like a dog, it naturally gave rise
to: the bitch...
I believe women started angels though.
They
were nearly always angels to me. And I never
had a hard word for them. Not for women.
Fools and women understand each other. Far
from being the missing rib of mankind, they're
its very heart!
SONG:
Women, women!
(a lightly scored play on this
one vord, to. floating and rapid
guitar-play)


The Arab, Greek and Israel woman was
degraded. So those worlds fell.
The
Indian world never did, the Indian world
where the woman is divine!
That's what
my Spanish mystic told me before he went
down three floors in a matter of seconds
and some centuries before the invention
of the lift---but he was a forward-looking
man.
When Rome and Florence fell, the Spaniards
took over.
Very austere. No more painting
and singing. They weren't bad people.
They were just the most devout Christians.
They were very moral.
Now morality's a
whore. She. slept with Philip 11, Napoleon,
Hitler.
Ànd now she has a permanent bed
at the White House. Cosy huh?
You've got to recognise the barbarians in
all this. That's where we came from and
that's where we're going!
I refer to the
Franks, who used to bury their enemies and
sometimes their close friends alive.
refer to the Goths and the Visigoths and the
Huns.
Now seven or eight centuries after Christ,
when the Roman empire was a mess, the monks
started trying to cool them off. They were
very clever about it, the monks.
They said
to themselves these guys believe in rewards
and if they don't get the rewards they believe
in revenge.
So we'll give 'em heaven as the
rewards and hellas the revenge-- --revenge for
them if they don't behave and revenge for their
enemies. if they do.
And we'll put the whole
thing after death so as they're never quite
sure how they stand until they're just about
to kick off.
What could Christ do about that?
It worked.
But the monks lost out. For
them it was a temporary patch-up compromise
just while the barbarians cooled their pants
off.
But: we barbarians held 'em to it!
We're still on top today aren't we? And
the monks are down in the goulasch. So?
Choirs 'AMEN' OVER.
: As George Jackson said, 'Good people don't
like to. cut throats. This unnatural arrange-
ment allows the sediment to remain on the top
while the cream rests on, the bottom'.


But that's how it goes in the Ascent of Man.
We're going higher so fast we can't get up
off our knees!
That's more or less what God said to me
when he threw this black skin around me.
'Jan Bobin', he said, 'it'll stop you ever
thinking they've got a civilisation down
there'.
How about this? Between 1521 and 1550 my
Charlie published 11 edicts against people
having their own ideas about God. At
least 50,000 people had their heads chopped
off, were burned or buried alive, or hung.
Of course nowadays we do things better.
Between 1921 and 1950 over one hundred million
people were buried alive in debris, burned
alive by napalm---bombed, blasted, machine-
gunned, drowned, tortured or starved to death
just for being there! They didn't even
disagree with anybody!
But that's the Ascent
of Man!
SONG:
It's the Ascent of Man
the Ascent of Man!
(speaking like a liftboy)
Going up!
(song resumed)
The Ascent of Man'
is an Hegelian plan!
At first it was theory
all German and beery
but it fast became fact
and today it's hardly tact
to deny it
to defy it---
the Ascent of Man!
(speaks)
Going up!
We've been going up downwards
since the year dot
with the full-time assistance
of a German Herr Gott
a German Herr Gott!.


And we're still going up
though it's dark for a bit--
we should soon reach the top
of the bottomless pit
the bottomless pit!.
(speaks)
Going up! Up to the basement!
The further up we run
in this eternal race
the less we see the sun
or the moon's lovely face!
The Ascent of Man
is an Hegelian plan
at first all beery
a mere German theory
but it fast became true
and now everything new
seems to fit it--
you must admit it!
We may be a tough lot
and have more wars
than Hottentots or Aztecs
or Victorian Boers
but one thing's certain
that we're better equipped
and can travel faster
than when troops were shipped!
Our wounds may be deadly
but surgery's there
to heal the burns
and replace the hair
replace the hair!
(speaks)
Going down! - Down to the roof garden!
And as for the animals
we've proved this at least
that we're nearer to God
than the reptile or beast
the reptile or beast!
That's why He gave us
the earth as our own
to do what we liked with
and turn it to stone!
Herr Gott being German
made us pure thinkers'.
to plot our great future
while behaving like stinkers!


It is surely Herr Gott
who helps us a lot
to think ourselves higher
as we build the last pyre
to burn ourselves on
to burn ourselves on!
The Ascent of Man
was a well-thought-out plan
based on Kant and Descartes
to clean up the world
with a good human fart
its speed determined
by computer and chart
computer and chart!
(speaks)
Going up!
The Ascent of Man
the Ascent of Man!
We've been going up downwards
since the year dot
with the full-time assistance
of a German Herr Gott
a German Herr Gott!
And that brings me back
to Yalta.
(With mock
poise) Yalta! The year
Sound of Second
is 19:5, the month February
World War type planes
and the: place Yalta, on the
OVER.
Black Sea, where the leaders
of Great Britain, Russia and
the United States are to meet
in order to kick the world
around. Can't you see it?
Special pleats have been sewn
into all the skirts! The
Japanese navy has been crushed at the Battle
of Leyte Gulf in the interests of Sony cassette
recorders and Seiko watches.
General Macarthur
is egging on his faggot-ridden battalions to
victory in the Philippines, where the boys are
good and don't have to:be sewn up afterwards.
The British will soon be behind the teenage
population of Rangoon, even the girls. As for
the famous krauts, they have tried a counter-
attack in the Ardennes and been compelled to
turn arse-about-face and put it back int their
trousers. Hitler is firmly going mad and
wishing he hadn't shot Rhoeme for getting his
orifices mixed up.
The Russian armies are
within raping distance of Berlin.
And the
pope has already announced, in a famous
declaration from the balcony of St Pêters,


'This war is nothing but a sex-feast! 1
So it was time to call a conference on the
Black Sea.
Can you see the picture?
Welcoming
They touch down at Sevastopol
military bands
airport, hundreds of allied
OVER
visitors.
(Hand on heart)
The American President to
sleep at the Palace of Livadia,
winter residence of Tsar
Nicholas 11. The maids who will
serve him have black dresses and
white aprons, and special micro-
phonic finger-traps in case he
tries to pinch them. The
President's daughter, Mrs
Boettiger, has her hair cut on
board HMS Franconia which bobs
up and down at its moorings in
the Black Sea as officers and men
meet again in each other's bunks
Heavy male love-
after the privations of the long breathing OVER
voyage from Southampton.
General Macarthur stays in the
Tsarina's bedroom, Admiral King
in her boudoir, which results in
an unprecedented mix-up with
clothes.
The president has the
Tsar's own quarters, where his
pleated skirts are confused with
those of Mrs Roosevelt.
What a
mess!
Troy, Rome, Byzantium,
Venice---Yaltat
Luckily The Last Tango in Paris hadn't been
shot yet, so there was plenty of butter.
That was a funny war.
It took some working
out who was fighting who.
The capitalists
were fighting the nazis who were fighting
the communists who were fighting the capitalists.
The idea that Hitler committed suicide is
crazy!
How could hundreds of millions of
people committ suicide simultaneously?
I used to talk'to Charlie
in this enigmatic way. The
krauts hated it. They told
him to throw me down the privy,
Whistle-plouac-
which was a 60-foot drop.
ucch! OVER
that. time you sat on a hole
on the top floor and could see
down into the courtyard.
Goulasch travelled in those days.


OK life was bad when I was Jan Bobin, but
today! - -Jesus!---tthere's no more foolin'
today!
We're right in the goulasch---and
not even air-bubbles!
Given the choice
between being Jan Bobin then and Black Bobin
now I'd say give me old Jan every time, give
me 100 years ago and I'll take the risk of
early death by plague or religious conviction!
Sure life was uncomfortable sometimes! Take
the journey we did from Flushing to Spain
when Charlie was made king of Spain at the
age of 17.
Forty ships full of Burgundian knights!
Two pictures on the king's topmast and one
on the mainsail with Charlie's motto plus
oultre which means 'push on and keep it
well powdered'.
Of course a storm comes up in the Bay of Biscay a
and blows all the pictures off.
We abandon
ship and the Spanish fishermen take us for
pirates and pass the warning inland.
fight off a local army and the Burgundians
keep shouting 'Spain! It is your king! I in
Flemish!
Savage country, yes! but by God we were healthy!
Our skins were as tough as hide, we laughed
and sang and prayed and felt. God's sun and rain
on our faces. There was a plague on---no
horses were available. The inhabitants with
hair half-way down their backs and nothing on
above the waist.
September and stifling hot!
A 150-mile walk across the Asturian mountains.
We get to Tordesillas footsore and angryo
Charlie's mother Juana lives in a castle there,
in a darkened room.
She's crazy and none of
the Hapsburg family want her shooting her mouth
off, which like all. women she could do. She
once went for her maid with a pair of scissors.
'You've been screwing my husband!' she said,
and cut her throat.
But people loved her.
They believed in her kind of behaviour. It.
was sincere, whereas ifisomeone cut your
throat today it would probably be hypocritical.
Sincerity was important in the matter of
throats! OK, the Spaniars were conquistadors
and carried the image of the Virgin Mary
across the waters and slit your throat if
you didn't cross yourself when you saw it,
but at least there was the hope of things
getting better.
And now? Here I am back
again 100 years later and it "seems to me things


are just about 100 times worse!
there's 100 times less hope.
Those Burgindian knights were certainly
crazy. The way they jousted to show off
to the Spaniards!
But you could feel life
coming through your skin---it was your own--
it's difficult to say what I mean. I
jousted once.
I missed my opponent as he
was galloping past and ran my weapon through
a tin of chippolatis that was to go with
Charlie's sauerkraut for that night's dinner.
From that time on he had a Diet of Worms.
Well, So do you.
(Backing up from the
audience in a strange way
as he did before)
At first we thought the Spaniards were just
crazy church-cats in love with war. Then
the spell started to work.
There was some-
thing special about Spain.
It was in the
air.
You felt God lived there, in the dried-.
up bare hills, in the warm breeze at night,
and the chanting. from the monasteries.
It made me feel good, because I was a fool,
and it made Charlie feel good because he was
a king, which is another version of the. fool.
But fighting for God is dangerous.
I saw
more anger, cruelty and pointless revenge
than I thought the human breast could contain.
And how the women cried when they lost their
men. Or their babies.
It always comes
down on the women.
(Going to the gramophone) I'll play you a
record from 1552. It's the oldest 78 in
existence. A Spanish officer named Mancio
Sierras de Lequizano is addressing his king
Philip 11, who can be heard rolling a joint
in the background. He's talking about the
Incas in Peru, as the Spaniards found 'em and
as they left 'em! It didn't make the top 10!
'His Catholic Majesty must
This VO
know that we found these
against a
countries in such a condition
scratchy
that there were no thieves, no
background:
vicious men, no. idlers, no
atmosphere of
adulterous or evil-living
quiet study,
women.
We were a very small
deep quiet,
band of Spaniards when we
with pauses.
undertook this conquest, and I
desire His Catholic Majesty


to understand why I draft this account.
is to unburden my conscience and to acknowledge
my fault.
For we have changed these natives,
who had so much wisdom and committed so few
crimes, so few excesses and extravagances,
so that the possessor of 10,000 gold and silver
pesos could leave his door open, and by fixing
a broom to a small piece of wood across the
door, show that he was away or absent.
This
sign, conforming with custom, was enough to
prevent anyone from entering and taking anything
awayo Also they despised us when they saw
amongst us thieves and men who incited their
wives and daughters to sin'.
Sometimes Ifeel sorry for myself. There's
this zombie (THE MUSICIAN) wandering around
the house all day, shooting up horse or whatever
it is, or maybe he was just born that way,
but (gazing across at him) he's like an angel
when he plays, he can be as drunk as a fiddler's
bitch but when he gets into that guitar, at
whatever hour of the night, he grows as intell-
igent and tender as one of Krishna's maidens.
He goes to God inside him, and asks for no one
to do his evil work for him. That's all his
function is, to play, and play he does, all
the time.
SONG:
Oh wicked man!
Oh wicked Christian!
what have you done
to the shining heart
what have you done to the joy,
what have you done to the tender earth
to destroy it like a toy?
Oh wicked man!
Oh wicked Christian!
No wonder you have no God any more-- -
you never let him right inside
you thought he was yours to further your ends
and to bolster up your; pride
to bolster up your pride!
Oh wicked man!
oh wicked Christian!
'How long', asked the' Spanish mystic who
demonstrated the lift four centuries before
it was invented, 'how long do you think it
takes to turn a barbarian into a civilised
I said, 'I'd be a fool to try and answer that'o


'Let me tell you', he said.
'Not even by
the year 2000 wili Christian civilisation
even have suggested itself!'
'Aren't you afraid of your genitals being
pulled off for saying that, or at least
your eyes gouged out, or your body pulled
in four different directions by horses?' I
asked him.
'Don't worry,' he said, 'I eat pork'.
'I'm relieved to hear you say it!' I said.
It was just a pity he tried to teach me Greek
and missed the staircase.
SONG:
Barbarian!
Barbarian!
Grab what you can
gold woman. or man
and sit on it
as hard as you can
cause fighting's all
you were ever taught
it's in all your wishes
and plans and thought!.
Barbarian!
Barbarian!
The world's yours to conquer
and even God's space
so keep on flying
). to stay in the race!
There's an enemy everywhere
man of the tribe
the sea and the sky
and the beasts seem to jibe
they'll spit in your face
unless you split theirs
So get in first
and show them who dares
destroy the serpent
the birds on the wing
because unlike you
they don't feel a thing!.
Barbarian!
Barbarian!
I'm not going to say what. I learned as Jan
Bobin. Most people aren't ready for it yet.
This is what I learned. The devil is the


face of God. - If you don't squint at that
face but keep on looking, if you make yourself
go on looking---it takes all your strength
and much more to do it, and you've got to be
alone like poor Jan Bobin to do it, without
a soul as his friend, and every laugh followed
by. a kick---if you keep on looking you can see
it's only a mask, a trick of the light, an
illusion, and there's no devil there, you've
been looking into the face of your own illusion,
there's only the face of sin passing like the
unsubstantial rainbow across the light of the
sky, and the light is all there is, all there
SONG:
The light!
The light!
It's his house!
It shines with his light!
That's why it's so bright! etc
Jan Bobin was the only guy to survive as a
human being in all that bunch, the. Burgundians,
the Spanish, the kraut princes. Except for
old Charlie maybe.
But I thought of him and
me as two sides of the same coin.
I lived to be a very old man, and towards the
end of the century---I'm talking of the 1500s---
I heard people talking about the end of the
world like they talk about it now. They were
right then and they're right now.o The end of
the world takes time. After all, Rome wasn't
built in a day.
But we'll get there! We'll
make it!
So there's the whole picture---bankers,
inflation, poverty, unemployment, rigged
riots, paid assassinations, bankruptcies,
crazy religious persecutions, terrorism,
and war war war.
That's how I used to talk when I was a very
old man, sitting outside the walls of the.
monastery at Juste, where old Charlie died.
Nobody listened to me.
SONG:
I'm going away
to another kind of day!
etc
A storm is heard in the
distance." BOBIN stops
singing abruptly and looks


round.
He is trembling,
cowed. The storm comes
nearer. - The lights begin
to fade.
THE MUSICIAN
THE MUSICIAN stops playing,
looks round too.
Slow measured footsteps OVER.
They come nearer.
BOBIN creeps towards the couch.
THE MUSICIAN creeps off.
BOBIN is crouched at the
sofa, his face tensed up,
waiting for his master.
The footsteps come closer.
BOBIN begins lowering his
trousers, trembling, making
frantic crying noises under
his breath.
(in an idiot's voice)
It's good to know it's a different world today,
and that all I've been telling about is just
history. Of course it didn't really happen!
Only today's real!
I nean, we're real.
People then. weren't real. Of course they
weren't!
They were---well---funny. And--
well---funny. Not real. Only we are real.
They were funny because they weren't real.
It must have felt very funnyo Not being real.
It's different, being real, whereas then wasn't--
well---serious. We're serious, hecause we're
real--not funny-- -it must have been---well--
like being in fancy dress- --like dressing up-
a Cecil B. de Mille film---it's different being
real---we're real---it's serious, not like
dressing up and talking all funny---it's
different--- (whimpering to himself).
The footsteps cease.
Blackout.
BOBIN and THE MUSICIAN stand
close together downstage for
the curtian number.
SONG:
Jan Bobin!
Jan Bobin!
he's boobin' along
bobbin' and weavin'
and singin' a song


he's bobbin' and weavin'
his way along
the slippery road
the slippery road!