...wherein our hero Special Agent Francis, having hitchhiked to Saskatchewan, meets a trucker whore named Elle Mary at a highway diner. They smoke a hookah, and Francis has a vision in which St Olaf advises him to seek the fugitive Young Manasseh in Mexico. Also in the same diner, a senior citizen named Lenore mysteriously dies after complaining about the restaurant's atmosphere.
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Lyrics:First Vision of St Olaf
At a table by the door,
In a truck stop diner ‘bout a mile outside of Moose Jaw.
Sat an elderly lady named Lenore,
Moaning to her husband that her steak was somewhat raw.
Is it cold in here? I think I feel a draught....
At the next table over,
Was Special Agent Francis drinking Oolong tea.
For two thousand kilometers,
He’d been squished between to two chimpanzees
In a truck transporting monkeys.
Every time he had to pee, the chimps only laughed.
White hair down to the floor,
He thought he saw a goddess, or the oracle at Delphi,
When he saw the trucker whore.
She bid him follow her, & her name was Elle Mary.
She led him to a back room thru a small secret door.
She asked, would you like to smoke?
She lit up a hookah filled with donut-flavored shisha.
His internal senses awoke,
And in the rings of smoke saw a vision of St Olaf.
St Olaf spoke & the galaxies evoked,
Olaf danced & laughed, & the smoke became a storm,
If you want to find Manasseh, go where the winds are warm.
You must go to Mexico.
Go where dahlias grow,
Go where there’s no snow.
Go to Mexico,
Go where the warm winds blow,
Go where Charro’s apropos.
Fly South with the Geese,
Feel the breeze from off the seas,
Neath Paradise trees.
Siesta dogs with fiesta fleas,
Catch the dysentery disease,
Do whatever you damn well please,
Ay yi yi yi!
Francis emerged on the highway.
Exhaled from his mouth & stuck out his thumb due South.
Meanwhile, by the diner’s buffet,
Lenore fell over dead, her head in the basket of bread,
Lenore! her husband said, have you croaked or have you choked?
We need to call the law, oh, she said the steak seemed raw.
(But you & I both know, that the steak was perfectly well cooked.)
©2011 The Manna Tease
The Manna Sustains
An Epic Murder-Ballad Song-Cycle
by the Manna Tease
And the Lord said, I brought you into this world, and I can take you out. -Exodus 16.37
Prelude. The Wind & the Rain
Song no. I. Young Manasseh's Stains
Song no. II. On the Trail of Young Manasseh
Song no. III. What Mary Noticed
Song no. IV. First Vision of St Olaf
First Interlude. The Wind & Snow
Song no. V. Wha' Happened in Oaxaca
Song no. VIa. Who are you, Elle Mary?
Song no. VIb. Second Vision of St Olaf
Song no. VII. Pink Mary's Stains
Song no. VIIIa. Banks of Pontchartrain
Song no. VIIIb. Young Manasseh Complains
Second Interlude. The Wind & Mud
Song no. IXa. Arkansas City
Song no. IXb. On the Trail of Pink Mary
Song no. X. Pink Mary's Marriage
Song no. XIa. Chase Scene / The Spatula / Pink Mary's Death
Song no. XIb. The Manna Sustains
Song no. XIc. Pink Mary's Resurrection / Wha' Happened in Oklahoma / Who Are You, Elle Mary? (Reprise)
Song no. XII. Young Manasseh Remains
Hymn. Sacred Throne
Palinode. And I Will No Longer Smoke My Hubbly-Bubbly Solitarily
July 24, 2011
First Vision of St. Olaf - The Manna Sustains song no. IV
April 24, 2010
January 10, 2010
Department of the Shisha: Disney's Hookah-Smoking Caterpillar
I'm happy someone has a perfect video on youtube of the hookah-smoking caterpillar from Disney's Alice In Wonderland. It's one of the great smoke-ring-blowing shisha moments in American movie history; or, should I say, one of the only ever hookah-smoking moments in American movie history. I love that mouth, which looks like the same genius animator who did the Queen of Hearts & Peter Pan's Red-Man-Reds. And the dialog from this scene is fairly loyal to Carroll's original, with its philosophical logic about identity & growing-up, &c:
UPDATE: I mentioned the (blatantly racist) Red-Man-Red scene from Peter Pan above, but there's also a great peace-pipe smoking moment in that scene too:
November 05, 2009
Shisha Poetry from the Archive: "I want to smoke with you Jesus Christ"
A short story I wrote in college, "The Arabian Bird; or, The Intrigue of the Arabian Bird", a sort of dense pretentious mystical private-eye mystery, had some 'additional poetry' written for it (around 2004). This was the final poem of the set, an idea I've returned to many times, about sharing a hookah with Jesus.
I want to smoke with you Jesus Christ.
I want to pass the proboscis of the nargileh
Between me & you & all the saints & martyrs,
(Especially the visionary teenage girls like Perpetua & Felicitas,
& also especially Ignatius because he’s so damned witty).
We would see the electricity of the campfire
Be orphically mysticized by our fumy exhalings,
But I wouldn’t care, because my savior would sit beside me,
A fat Havana dripping from his lips as he lectured softly:
I give to thee a purer smoke, sans briar,
Although that cigarillo’s also good,
For in it you shall find parts of my fire,
As even dormice bleed grains of my blood.
W.C. Fields once said:
Did I ever tell you about the time,
When we were hiking through the mountains of Lebanon,
& we couldn’t find a corkscrew,
So we had to survive on food & water.
September 20, 2009
Illuminations: Special Agent Francis' Prayer
August 14, 2009
Shisha Department Presents: Hookah in Hip-Hop No. 2
There was a special sub-department of the Shisha Department, Hookah in Hip-Hop, which briefly appeared last June. This morning I got a twotter from "BREWSKYONLINE" saying "@itwaslost Check out 'MY' new single Smoking #Hookah, Its the new summertime anthem!!! ♫ http://blip.fm/~at9wc♫", linking to this song:
We are definitely looking out from the verge of a new era of shisha-themed lyrics. It reminded me that, close to home, Earjuice Records had a song out on their classic inaugural LP "Everyone Stoned" called "smokalottapotalotta" (click on that link to hear it), which prominently features the word 'hookah'--, altho personally I don't care to pack my water pipe with anything but the finest shisha tobacco.
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July 28, 2009
Special Agent Francis' Prayer
And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily, as Special Agent Francis knows,
And the sea goddesses don't know,
And he eructates on the verandah, as disposable as his roast beef toes,
Before he's dislocated, like one of his talking animals,
I snogged him in the gazebo.
And we snogged wearing pajanimals--,
And if I wasn't indispensable, as much gum cancer as you can handle.
And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily, if you can believe it,
Nor without the yellow blackbird,
Neither wear your cap crookedly unless you see fit.
Special Agent Francis hears our fates clearly in our coffee grounds.
He's heard the opiated herd
Has become Trieste's hellhounds,
Unlimited & undistinguishable--, grant him peace to hear his gladly solemn sounds.
And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily, or without nutella banana crepes,
And Special Agent Francis:
He was a silent lover I stole silently from Miss Lousera Comasquerapes.
Dirty mermaids from the Black Sea, like poop droppings from a Hoopoe,
Silent my agent prances,
Like sirens don't know,
Today if not only yesterday Francis promises at deepest a furlough.
And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily, pray for war.
His elephant, my mosquito--,
His male elephant seal washing up dead on the shore, my prayer for nothing more--,
I have a dream of outfitting my whole family in white cotton.
Still I can't forgive his veto.
I don't regret his wet body rotten,
Rotting moistly, mostly unforgiven, choicely on the verandah & unforgotten.
And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily, rustically but alone but for the trepan
And the filthy sea goddesses.
Elle Mary has the bladder of an eighty-year-old man,
And I suspect already that we'll smoke this last one till the choking fine:
Mutated mammal kisses,
And with mammals drink lilac wine,
Like Special Agent Francis suspects the divine, & I'm still here as a dry Hoopoe unripe on the vine.
July 15, 2009
June 02, 2009
Shisha Department Presents: Hookah in Hip-Hop No. 1
The Department of the Shisha, special sub-department of Hubbly-Bubbly in da Hizzly-Hopply, presents a limited edition series of Hookah in Hip-Hop. First, this version of Three Six Mafia's "Smokin on the Dro" was youtube user waambat's final project for an electronic media class! It's long overdue that Lewis Carroll's caterpillar made his debut as a shisha-puffing rapper.
(Thanks to a tweet from @PeteButta, retwatted by @samamidon)
The MC Pseudo-Dionysius / Gold Diamonds song "Hillelujah" (lyric "Hallelujah, pass the nargileh / smoke it like you mean it, now take off your z-cup.") is HERE.
May 22, 2009
The Gospel of the Shisha Illumination on Scribd
Another test of the internet vanity press website Scribd, this older work "the Gospel of the Shisha" will also appear in the upcoming collection Prophecy & Doggerel.
April 29, 2009
Schismatic Board Meeting Minutes, 29 April 2009
The Board of Lost of It held an emergency meeting today, to discuss roma-bulgaric travel plans & also a shuffling in the department leadership assignations (as indicated in the "contributors" sidebar, now updated with relevant links: Olaf encourages you to listen to his Mix Tape Was Lost contributions, Quill to read his chronicles & Grainne to visit the artwork on her site.) There was a nasty schism about corvids, & in the interest of partial transparency we publish an excerpt from the board meeting minutes:
Olaf: anyway, Editor - i would be much obliged if you added corvid neuroscientist or researcher
April 15, 2009
MySpace: So horrible that it's now retro?
Remember when MySpace was, in the words of Christopher Guest & the Folksmen, very "now-tro." I'm wondering if it's now so old school that it's cool again? It's such an ugly messy beast. Anyway, now that MySpace music allows you to post TEN songs, I've added a bunch of my demo mp3 four-part shape-note tunes to the S. Sandrigon myspace - http://www.myspace.com/ssandrigon. The scores & mp3s for all those songs are posted thru-out this website, under the Department of Western Harmony.
Also, if you missed it the first time round, there is a MySpace for the MC Pseudo-Dionysius / Gold Diamonds project The Celestial Hierarchy EP - http://www.myspace.com/mcpseudodionysius. I got bored promoting that album, but I was just listening to it - as it sounds best, way too loud on headphones - & I fear that somewhere out on the streets of Ashby Avenue, the MC-Pseudoh-Pseudoh & his flanks of large-breasted angels are plotting a comeback, if you can call coming from nothing a comeback.
Mr Quill has an interesting post on his no-longer-undisclosed Forgotten blog about what people have searched in google to reach his website - including "Man expresses views by rapping at town meetings" - which reminded me I hadn't googilied myself in awhile. I found that someone misquoted one of my shisha poems in a post quoting a bunch of poetry about hookahs - here.
I have smoked my nargilehI'm honored to be honored as one of the great writers who have written of the hookah, & I believe in holly men, I believe that they exist & smoke the nargileh & I would smoke the nargileh with holly men. I also believe in sing-song, изпееш песен in Bulgarian, & I would write it & smoke nargileh with myself.
With holly men & sing-song writers
(S. Sandrigon: Song of Shisha, Hookah Poetry)
January 30, 2009
Song of the Shisha
There have been missed opportunities, girls I should have approached at the train station,
Some leave it behind after college graduation,
Some men always found it too fruity, or thought it was necessary to be South-West Asian,
There have been losses & mistakes, times I should have agreed to take the bottom bunk,
Hear, my water pipe has saved me from the plantation,
And tho some women are lousy earthquakes, I will remain down on this carpet seated cross-legged like a Japanese monk.
Sacramento has come & gone, & lo, the stars are all the brighter for it,
Some men find it inappropriate in the workplace,
Come the eclipse, & hide behind the sun & moon, tell it to the whores at night court.
This universe is not quite at my level, I’d sell you saved coals, if it wasn’t simony,
My secret place uncovered at the ocean’s lowest phase.
Please don’t tell these ancient whores Nevada’s laws of patrimony.
A true man is still sucking at the nargileh’s proboscis,
And blowing rings into the room.
That man will be seated beside me, we are in the city’s last remaining smoking oasis,
The air is thick with aromatic incense, lit dimly with my oily abdomen’s glistening,
Tobacco has this power & so it is the third-hand fume,
My new wife is monologing about her quirky parents, & today I am listening.
I am lightheaded but I can still walk home,
And curtain down on the creator’s theater, I will carry you to the quarry.
Fall far down into the crater, reach up & grasp this chance while I’m offering it,
Gilt in chrome, freshly polished from the second womb,
This hookah is for the present: smoke it like you mean it.
January 08, 2009
The Celestial Hierarchy 4. Hillelujah
Track Four, against your will, The Celestial Hierarchy EP is coming into your life, ravaging your soul, & this one is called "Hillelujah". Gold Diamonds with the MC Pseudo-Dionysius; also listen to: Track One, Track Two, Track Three. (Download the mp3 by clicking on the angel, or push play below, watch where you click your mouse.)
"Their harmonies are thin because they don't know Jesus.
They may live in the hills but they lack the ascension."
May 18, 2008
Happy Mimosas Witnessing Sunday, May 2008
As we approach the fourth anniversary of my graduation from college, it is time to reflect upon my various non-academic achievements. I've been a vegetarian the whole time; a non-violent non-driver; smoked the hookah; & co-founded the Mimosas Witnesses, a semi-religious organization which meets on Sundays (or on other observant days of rest) & witnesses Mimosas, Lemonosas, Pomosas, blended Mangosas, et cetera, et cetera. There is often fresh fruit & a spread of other delicious brunch foods involved. Someday we will go evangelical. Today we brunched at the Thai Buddhist Temple at the end of our block, which has a lovely non-secular alternative to witnessing Mimosas every Sunday (on Russell Street at MLK in Berkeley! It's all donations to the temple.) We have, indeed, snuck mimosas in there before, which complements the sticky mango rice magnificently. Speaking of rice, my winning Sunday overheard comment-of-the-day was at a table heatedly discussing the global rice shortage. One girl loudly blathered: "Rice is like so fucking easy to grow!" Incredible solution, just teach those stupid foreigners how to grow rice, problem solved. It reminds me of my exasperation at the Irish Potato Famine. Why didn't they just, you know, eat something else besides potatoes?
Friends! Proselytes! You can now become a "fan" of the Nargileh on Facebook! I suppose I'll work on a Mimosas Witnesses Group later this week. Any potential members among the diaspora?
March 10, 2008
Song of the Shisha
I have smoked my nargileh with Dennis Kucinich & Alan Keyes,
With lovers & fighters,
Recherché, white tea, cheese,
And we dabbled in America, our eyes rolled upward, stolid & terse.
I discussed the end of racism with the lost generations,
I demonstrated blowing a perfect smoke ring to a bookstore oligarch,
And seeds from the plantations,
Waiting for the walking shark,
This talk-show knows no boundaries, our editors & our patience.
There was a gay Marfan who laid on the ceiling,
The chandelier grimacing & the fog of our exhalations,
Laws & lawyers & disco fleeing,
Micromanaging the painting of the white fence,
We turned down the radio & let the conversation freeze in feeling.
I left my prostate upon the crystal pavement,
And with a right-wing blowhard covered in boils,
Library's circular descent,
Munching on his own snaky coils,
Let's stay here, the waitress has been tipped thirty percent.
This non-manufactured dialog broadcast to the nations,
The sensation between our nostrils & sacred truth,
Eternal inhalations,
Forty-five Spider Monkeys climbing on Jenny Ruth,
I will invite this galaxy to the table, the midair thickly with suspense.
We must renew the bowl, now pass me the proboscis,
Our goals & coals are finest lemon-tree wood,
Crucified on criss-crosses,
Fertile in the darkest mud,
One last old man joins us on the rug, let the smoke reinvigorate his fossils.
May 08, 2007
From the Archive: Gospel of the Shisha (2005)
I.
The perfect ring of smoke is a perfect circle. Thru the smoky rings thru smoke, a great round wonder rolling thru space can be perceived. You cannot blow a dragon or a sailboat, but a perfect circle can be blown & can hang in space until it dissolves. The perfect circle hates a honeycomb, but a hungry circle finds all bitter things to be sweet.
In one sense the smoke ring is a creation
of the room, so consider.
In another sense the smoke ring is a
creation of our eyes, so
reflect.
How much control does our mouth have?
Awaken in the fumes of the smoke.
Let there be smoke in the middle airs, & let it divide the airs from the airs. The rings of smoke are subject to the whims of the tides of airs. The perfect ring of smoke is as much a whim of the tides of the airs as the hungry ring of smoke. If you do not try to blow the perfect circle, the tides of the airs will dash the smoke into nonsense. When you blow the perfect circle, it will hang in the air & then disappear into nothing. The tides of the airs helped as much to create the perfect circle as they conspired to blow it into nonsense. An imperfect circle in the air is better than a perfect circle inside your mouth.
Jesus said, A perfect circle has been blown outside of the Father, but being unsound, it was dashed into nonsense.
The smoke & the air are one, so consider.
The smoke cuts into the air & disappears
into the air, so reflect & awaken.
The smoke & the air are different colors
at first & invisible at last.
Does the smoke blow the air or does the
air blow the smoke? Discuss & fade
away, child of the smoke.
You see plenteous airs & you are short of breath. You can breathe deeply, but your excretions are lopsided & unsound. You exhale divine perfumes but the middle airs dash them into nothingness. Breathe slower, make your breathing perfect, & your breathing will beget more breathing.
II.
Once the shisha made me rise up & gave me the strength of ten thousand men. Tonight it has deprived me of my life force. My arms stretch from the eastern sea to the western sea. My roots soar with the eagle & my brain is in Mexico. The bards of the plains are corroborating with my flesh.
When the wicked rules,
my rings are hungry.
When the righteous are in authority,
I arise from the shisha with strength.
Who will save me from this prison? Who will lower a ladder for me into this pit? For the shisha has deprived me of my life force, & I am lain upon the ground. The shisha has taken away my deepest breaths, & the voices of the people are shallow. O child of the smoke, perceive the corpse borne slowly from the house. The air is completely changed to smog & the streets are the color of bitumen! Where once I did rejoice, now I cannot detect my rings of smoke in this hoary chaos. I sit upon the ground & weep until the floor is wet.
Redemption does not occur at the end of time, unless the end of time is understood to mean every moment. Redemption is eternal & the end is eternal. Because of this, every bar & chain, every fetter & gray wall of the prison is shaken & falters. The stars are falling. There is a great quaking of the earth, & either the sky is brought nearer to my eyes or my eyes are brought nearer to the sky. The veins of my body are all the rivers of the earth, & alas! they flow no more. My feet are not connected to my ankles, my hands are not connected to my wrists. Each particle of my flesh disseminates, & I from here consider the immortality of the universe. The months & days of years have undergone a great many pains. Tuesday returns, Wednesday returns. My soul is loosened, the seal is broken. I am cold. For the wicked is in authority, & the shisha has deprived me of my life force.
When I inhale, I gather together my elect from the four winds. There is no logic to the shisha. It is like the mustard seed, & the mustard seed is like the kingdom of God.
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