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Hell Mouth (The Night Train To Dis)

from Dr Who Am I and the Zen Trails of Hafiz (album) by Bardonthewire

/

about

What happens

Instead of taking off, we plunge downwards on the Dis replacement underground train service into Hell Mouth - a mouth which announces the comically long list of demoralising Dis-stations to come. We hurtle around its circle line at increasing speed and through increasing unpleasantness towards Dis* - a tunnel of Death, or Love.

Form and technique

Comedy is as always the genre. In the end, however hellish, the plights described are funny because our genuine human being laughs at the folly and indignity of such self-created (and higher self-failing) predicaments. After a hellish - and hellishly extended- litany of Dis-stations announced by a cockney devil, the 'endless' journey itself is evoked by an epic ghazal.

The 'pinched shrill of avant God' is a pun on avant garde/haven't God and is a cordial side swipe at tendency in modern sacred music to screech like a terrified bird up into heartless keys and tones where angels would fear to go. The shrill onomatopoeic vocal emphasis on the two words 'avant' and 'God' imitates this the train's klaxon-blasting wind-squeezing progress through a tunnel.
'Dis-consolation discourse' and the 'heart Dis-ease' hawked by 'self Dis-abusers' that 'dim Dante's Vision' 'as the Dis Mall burns' is my hell-review of the 'vision' offered by many (not all) modern poets and novelists I've taken up with a cry of hope and put down with a terminal sigh. But it's also hell in itself - not being able to appreciate one's fellows.
Following Dante's model, Dis is both the underworld of Hell itself (Hades) and also its Ruler (aka the god Pluto but Dante's Virgil calls him 'Satan'.) The deepest level of Dante's hell (at the centre of the Earth) is icy cold with the giant Satan frozen here, demon wings slowly beating a freezing wind. This represents the coldness at the heart of all the other sins. My version has Dis upside down and extends throughout Hell. Hell Mouth (though which we enter) is Satan's anus. Hell Bottom (by which we leave) is his mouth. Hell Rock and Hell Fire are both aspects of Hell Central but may be pictured as Dis's groin and heart respectively, with Hell Central being his windy stomach.

The allegory

Hell Mouth is traditionally an anus, hence the breaking wind at the start. The devil is as always talking out of his arse. The underground (ie sub-human) train replacement of our flight to heaven represents the sub-humanity we make of being human. The announcer's gleeful litany of Dis-words and Dis-attractions suggest the manifold ways we make a hell of earth.

The train never arrives. It is a circular line and the journey ends not at a terminus but in a blind tunnel. It is moving around the pivot of the ego, of a narrow self-interest or rather a false sense of self, blind to the real self-fulfilment of love . Our Dis-tracking pursuits don't get us any nearer to our real heavenly end. However this trick can be turned against the devil and onward spiritual progress secured if the death at the end of that tunnel is of the selfish 'I' in love.

* Dis is the classical name for hell, as used by Dante in the Divine Comedy. It is also his name for the giant frozen Devil at the core of the Earth (the icy heart of all sins). The Night Train is blues slang for suicide.

Author's rant:

My favourite line in this track is "Endless Scheidt on Radio 3." Not that even Samuel Scheidt's organ routines wouldn't be preferable to the interminable bombastic swillings of Romantic violence and "the pinched shrill of Avant-God"* that hell-bomb every Radio 3 schedule (outside the Early Music Show and any Composers of the Week drawn from all those long fertile criminally under-represented centuries before the 19th and 20th.) We all have a composer to whom it is hell to listen to and to whom to listen to eternally would be hell indeed. Even Bach's entire output played from start to finish forever might eventually pall - or would he actually make a heaven of hell? (What else could? Mozart? Beethoven's chamber music? Monteverdi? Tallis? Ars Nova, Early Medieval?) I invite the listener to insert their own 'Scheidt' to full relish this line.
(* = Modern Sacred Classical. Give me jazz, blues, gospel, rock, r&b, the real life affirming Modern Sacred, instead every time)

lyrics

The 007 to Bliss has been cancelled,
The 007 to Bliss has been cancelled.
There is a replacement Dis service
To the slush fundamental hospital
And a private-I'd Dis-pensary
On every corner. The Night Train
Calling At
Graves End,
Dis Entry,
Dis Pepsia,
Dis Tended,
Dis Temper,
Dis Comfort,
Dis Function,
Dis Grace,
Dis Respect,
Dis Agreement,
Dis Courage,
Dis Trust,
Dis Truction,
Dis Semble,
Passengers are reminded
This is a No Hoping Station.
No hoping anywhere on the station!
Dis Ceit,
Dis Aster,
Dis Pair,
Dis Belief,
Dis Order,
Dis Spoil,
Dis Union,
Dis Cord,
Dis Quiet,
Dis Topia,
Put that Light out!!
Hell City FC
(‘Going down,
going down,
going down)
Hell Mouth
(Alight here for Hell Fire Station)
Dis Mall
(Black Friday All Week!
Every Week! Forever!)
Hell Central, (Daily Hell)
The Slough of Dis Pond,
Put that Light out!
Disomer Murders,
The Head Orifice
Of the Dis-Servative Party,
(CHARYBDIS-PUTATION)
Little England in the Styx
Social Self-Services,
The Headache Q
Of O HELL Magazine,
The Dis Self-Unemployment Exchange,
The Dis Mouth On Sea Folk Festival,
The Dis Pleasure Dome,
The Ego-Pivoting Dis-co,
The Repeat Farewell Dis-
Appearance of Sir Frank Sin
And his Dis-Tribute Band
Passengers are reminded
This is a No Hoping Station.
No hoping anywhere on the station!
Hell Bottom,
(The Rolling Stones - Endless Scheidt on Radio 3
Strolling Bones Tribute Band- Endless Scheidt on Radio 3
Satanic Majesties' Bequest) Endless Scheidt on Radio 3
Put that Light out! Endless Scheidt on Radio 3
The Night Train will Terminate here. Endless Scheidt on Radio 3
Endless Scheidt on Radio 3.... (etc)

The night train West voids a soiled brown note and leaves the downfall station;
Goodbye Cruel World - I trust you received THIS communication?

The Zoo-break heart-freeze sin-beasts of Dante shadow the Circle Line,
Paddle up shit creeks out in the Styx to Dis-on-Vacation.

Spine-chilling out dark half glasses of Daily Hell, Bank Holiday
Messiahs Dis-May my heart; Dis Troy, dim Dante’s Vision.

Blind scentless furies and self Dis-abusers hawk heart Dis-ease
As the Dis Mall burns: Dis-balled Cinderellas; Dis-simulations.

God save me from Dis-consolation Dis-course; Fifty Shades
Of Grave; the pinched shrill of Avant-God; this don't-know-Who we are from Adam.

The name is Bond. Adam in a Bond. The actor who can’t go on.
Wash off this do-do, Not Dis Not Dis, this suicide mission.

God save me from my Dis-tinted spectacles’ bewitching
Bewildering shadows of Dis-appointment Dis-guised as Eden.

Hell isn’t other people…….It’s ourselves, our self-fulfilling
Cock-up conspiracy clouds; our I-land’s alien nation.

Marx says to do is to be; Sartre to be is to do, Sinatra
Do be do be do this ‘Not’ only Love dares to tease undone.

Who to do or not to do? to be or not to be? Who’s that
At the tunnel’s end? Death. I embrace your oblivion.

Who to do or not to do? to be or not to be? Who’s that
At the tunnel’s end? Love? I embrace your oblivion.

credits

from Dr Who Am I and the Zen Trails of Hafiz (album), track released May 27, 2017
A horribly Dis-storted sampling of a snatch of Samuel Schedit's organ music behind the anti-mantrum reference to it.

Instruments: voices, percussion (one handed drums, the back of a hard sofa, thighs) beat box.
Source books for all seven heavens are "God Speaks" by Meher Baba; "The Nothing and the Everything" by Bhau Kalchuri/ Meher Baba.
See garethcalway.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/6-degrees-of-separation-7-degrees-of.htm
The photo shows Gaz on a Dante's trail through modern Florence. Note the Dis-tinted spectacles.
Video performing this ghazal in Florence. youtu.be/bsxHyF1PtWc

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Bardonthewire England, UK

Performance poetry with a library card (voice & drum, folk ballads, ghazals, sonnets, beat poems, sound poems, raps) much of it happening 'on the street' or jostling to be heard in the tavern. Researched stories of folk heroes and real folk. History for you. Bardic poetry striving (as all arts do) for the condition of music (from punk though rap to to prog). Visionary lit. for your average Blake. ... more

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