11 Interrogations from Shadowtime

1. Three Giant Speaking Mouths
(Canon/Heterophony)

GSM: Is the future a memory projected into time or is the past a shadow of a future that never happens?

WB: The future is memory projected into time and the past is the future’s way of forgetting.

GSM: Why must the future already be inscribed in the past?

WB: Only when time stops, only when the scales fall from our eyes, only when history is over, only when tales stop telling, only when the sun rises and sets in the same moment, only when nothing comes to nothing, only when we no longer look at the stars but are the stars . . .

GSM: Why can’t the past ever pass?

WB: The past never passes, but we pass over it again and again, not listening to what it tells but to the empty stories we tell about it.

2. Headless Ghoul
(Isorhythmic Motet)

Are you waking from a dream or are you waking into a dream? Are you remembering your dreams or dreaming that you have memories?

[No reply by WB]

3. Two-Headed Figure of Karl Marx and Groucho Marx, with Kerberus
(Hoquetus/Melodrama)

The Two Marxes (Karl): Is it possible to forget without remembering that one has forgotten?

WB: As a child I mistook my a’s for q’s and d’s for f’s. I looked for the signs between the letters. Later I went to the university but the letters were replaced by vowels which I could never pronounce. I made my way and my way made me.

The Two Marxes (Groucho): Is it possible to remember without forgetting what one has remembered?

WB: The snow falls fresh but it is always soiled, yet it’s at dusk that my thoughts interrupt themselves.

The Two Marxes (Groucho): Say the magic word and get one free ride around Alexanderplatz, say the magic letter and everybody returns to just as it is. A duck was crossing the Strasse and the peacock said, Why a duck? Why a rabbit? Why a pipe? Why a carousel?

The Two Marxes (Karl): How many lyrics does it take to make an epic? How many epics does it take to break an egg? How many eggs does it take to get from Ghent to Aix?

WB: Take me behind the scenes and I will show you another scene and another after that, but the tiny man inside the works is no longer there, for he has gone off to work.

Kerberus:

Why a duck?

Don’t answer so fast or it will all be over before you can say Juden frei, Juden frei, can’t see me!

Nicht voreilig antworten, sonst wird alles vorbei sein, eher du . . . sagen kannst Juden frei, Juden frei, can’t see me!

Mehr Licht, oder ziehst du die Dunkelheit vor, my little kunst-maggot?

Come closer, but not that close.

Viens tout pres mais pas trop pres.

Acércate pero no tanto.

Naeherertreten, aber nicht so nahe.

4. Pope Pius XII
(Dramatic Madrigal a Due)

PP: Why didn’t you take a gun and blast them out of this world?

WB: I have always maintained a modicum of reflection is worth an infinite amount of later adjustment.

PP: Why didn’t you swing and shoot and go down in a flame of transcendent immolation?

WB: The soul is no place for a football game.

PP: Is this the way God has chosen to punish you for your sins?

WB: Even sleeping dogs howl in pain.

5. Joan of Ark
(Palimpsestic Chorale)

Joan of Ark: If history never sleeps then are you the demon of the wakefulness to which we are forever imprisoned? Is forever a bullet or a bracket or a brace? By not telling do you consign us to uncertainty or to abjection?

WB: (simultaneous or overlapping): If history never sleeps then are you the demon of the wakefulness to which we are forever imprisoned? Is forever a bullet or a bracket...