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I.C. Notebooks 1
Page 380
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380 TECHNICIANS OF THE SACRED 1. As the audience is taking seats, "poor man music"* is performed. This is the music throughout 2. The first poet (who thereafter acts as M.c) raps for silence with a sounding stick. The music stops. He reads a greeting poem. The music starts again, & he empties several boxes of crackers into a large wash-basin at center of the performance area & arranges simple gifts on the stage-apron for later distribution. Empty boxes or paper bags are given to the dancers for deposit of crackers & gifts. 3. The second poet (Jackson Mac Low) receives the sounding stick from the m.c. & raps for silence. He reads a (thanking) poem of his own **. The music starts up again as he distributes crackers to the dancers & any other performers he can reach (Distribution may also be extended to the audience). After the distribution, the dancers perform an extended piece to the "poor man music." * [ "Poor man" because the sounds are those a man can make with his own body or simple extensions thereof. In Corner's words] "The simplest materials and the things your own body is and does -claps, slaps, stamps. rubbing and scratching: body - all parts, and clothing if any voices. and all the sounds your voice and breath and throat may make /except words." [The rhythms follow the pulsebeat, faster or slower but with its regularity - beats within the group, starting apart, meeting, changing, entering & re-entering, meeting elsewhere,etc,] In this case, a broomstick (red) was used. (The Senecas use a broomhandle to announce entry of the "husk face" masked dancers in another winter event.) The wash-basin was also a red plastic. The saltine crackers of the Seneca source were almost unanimously overridden in favor of graham crackers (Nabisco) ** The first three poems were designed by the adapter; the rest were of each poet's own choice. The act of finding each other (between participants & audience) was the principal departure from the Seneca source. The event continued to change under this impulse from a situation where community is taken for granted to one where the activity may finally create it.
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380 TECHNICIANS OF THE SACRED 1. As the audience is taking seats, "poor man music"* is performed. This is the music throughout 2. The first poet (who thereafter acts as M.c) raps for silence with a sounding stick. The music stops. He reads a greeting poem. The music starts again, & he empties several boxes of crackers into a large wash-basin at center of the performance area & arranges simple gifts on the stage-apron for later distribution. Empty boxes or paper bags are given to the dancers for deposit of crackers & gifts. 3. The second poet (Jackson Mac Low) receives the sounding stick from the m.c. & raps for silence. He reads a (thanking) poem of his own **. The music starts up again as he distributes crackers to the dancers & any other performers he can reach (Distribution may also be extended to the audience). After the distribution, the dancers perform an extended piece to the "poor man music." * [ "Poor man" because the sounds are those a man can make with his own body or simple extensions thereof. In Corner's words] "The simplest materials and the things your own body is and does -claps, slaps, stamps. rubbing and scratching: body - all parts, and clothing if any voices. and all the sounds your voice and breath and throat may make /except words." [The rhythms follow the pulsebeat, faster or slower but with its regularity - beats within the group, starting apart, meeting, changing, entering & re-entering, meeting elsewhere,etc,] In this case, a broomstick (red) was used. (The Senecas use a broomhandle to announce entry of the "husk face" masked dancers in another winter event.) The wash-basin was also a red plastic. The saltine crackers of the Seneca source were almost unanimously overridden in favor of graham crackers (Nabisco) ** The first three poems were designed by the adapter; the rest were of each poet's own choice. The act of finding each other (between participants & audience) was the principal departure from the Seneca source. The event continued to change under this impulse from a situation where community is taken for granted to one where the activity may finally create it.
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