I know I invoked the name of Roky Erickson at the outset of this blog, and so am moved at this point to make a few notes concerning his work. The immediate reason is that in preparation for an upcoming show of his, I was rereading the book of lyrics, Openers II. I came across this line:
"Modern science turned down reality for industry."
Not exactly your standard pop-rock lyric. For some reason that really hit me; think about the pharmaceutical industry, or Cold War military-industrial complex with its store of nuclear physicists to make it go. For me, that line is just one of those slam-bang moments that make language worth all the hassle. And puts the lie to the claim of science to any kind of absolute truth concerning the world. Everyone, even or especially a research scientist, has an ax to grind or a Boss to answer to.
I have been dreaming for years of writing a big essay (maybe even book) on Erickson's work. Alas, I do not yet have my critical ducks in a row yet to bring it off; someday perhaps. Anyway, I think what got me started on that thought was when I noticed just how much the lyrics on the page appear to be right out of a Jerome Rothenberg anthology. In Technicians of the Sacred, Rothenberg writes that "the translations themselves may create new forms & shapes-of-poems with their own energies and interests..." Erickson's lyrics, translations from song to writing themselves, read just like some of these decontextualized works. There also is a noticeable similarity to several more modern branches of poetry, many of which are themselves a response to some newly discovered primitive forerunner, such as are found in the Poems for the Millennium anthologies, albeit devoid of all the surrounding theory. Erickson accomplishes without self-consciousness or pretense what many poets do only after explaining away the magic with a protective shell of ass-covering conceptualism. To close:
"God horrors fills me I can't write
my hair turns white
but only I know the things that go bump in the night are alright."
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