Mew, mew, mew Village cool cats! Your one true and lovely pussy has been slinking about on the prowl, putting naughty whiskers where none belong and leaving long luscious stripes skating down the backs of those who won’t give her a nibble for her sweet-sweet purr-purr. Stay on Madam Alley Cat’s groovy side (you can call her MAC, she loves familiarity and even enjoys the occasional petting party) or find your mug under the tease and tickle of her unsheathed pen! (Still looking for that striped Tom among the big intact males around the trashycans that will win licks from her sticky tongue!)
So what’s up in and about the Village? Let us see!
Who is that kibble dish hanging around monsieur violinist Martin du Gard at the NY Phil? Hot, hot redhead, (and MEOW, with that red dress and ruby red slippers she can click click click me to Kansas anytime, the Madam isn’t picky. Purr!). But no one knows her name—Until now! For MAC has found fresh sardines in the oily can! What will the Ambassador think when he finds Mrs. Ambassador has developed a new enthusiasm for the symphony? Ah the music is so sweet! Kyllä! (That’s Finnish for Ja!)
Now lookee lookee MAC was nosing through the leavings behind ‘Serendipity 3,’ and whose voice came rogue elephanting through the door? Was that the editor of Style 180 breaking decibel levels loud enough to discomfit the ears of this streetwise feline whose soft tufted ears have heard the cry of many a frustrated Tom? Yowl! If one day you find yourself that brassy blue-penciler’s assistant never, ever forget that grand lady’s appointment book. And I hear there is now an opening in the dame’s vicinity for a new lackey peon! So you of stout ears, get your résumé polished! Also, anyone need a slightly deaf assistant? I hear there is one available who promises never ever to forget a daybook again!
So now for the undercover, top secret, report of the month. Madam loves to stretch the length of her line to draw out the wild and wacky world of the Village to a depth only a kitty cat can plumb. And we have a woozy doozy this time! What happens when a minimalist novelist and a minimalist composer smash their heads together to wow us with the claim that they have fashioned the best and most wonderful thing ever? Meow! The screeches of ‘ittle boyds’ mimicking rats? Sound bad? Yup, yup, yup. I’ve eaten better four-day-old fish livers.
So what is it about the water of yon Burly, Idaho that pushes out stud muffins (or is it spud muffins) and minimalists? Turns out the literary writer of wonky lists, Gilda Trillim is friends with the Village’s own spare composer Monty Smith! Both from that art haven Idaho, the state providing a never-ending supply of the French fry equivalents of art. You know greasy and bland but oh so hard to resist. You’ll remember him, kittens, as we have crossed paths in the night a time or two. He prowls in a house stacked to the brim with a who’s who of the local crowd (including that wack, wack, wacky Japanese Beatle heart thief). He’s regaled us with those three-hour pianoforte ‘concerts’ (and let those cute little quotidian marks guide your ideas about what I think of these little ‘gatherings’). Indian gurus wielding a tambura are being dispensed for a shiny dime out of a machine in the corner and the incense never stops smoking in those digs when the gang gets their well-tuned claviers claviering! But one-handed Gilda, meow, yowl, what a weird sour bowl of milk is she. She disappears on a USO tour in Nam and turns up where? Back in the USSR, boys, you don’t know how lucky you are boy, back in the US, back in the US, back in the USSR. How she got from the Nam-ish Southeast Asian pisshole to Moscow is anyone’s guess, but you can bet that old J. Edger has his peeping Tom eyes on her (he would like to get his paws on this prowler, but he’s a fat old paddy cake that can’t find his way to this quick running pussy).
It’s every kitty cat’s dream to be in a room of delicious delectable rats, but does she fricassee their moist and tender bodies? Does she dress them in mint sauce and roast them until slick with paw-licking grease? Oh no, dear reader she does what? She teaches them to sing. So she says. I was there as she talked to the little gang of true believers that gathered to hear the tale (or the tail in a rat’s case). No, she does not gobble them up, she gives them the von Trapp family rodent treatment and lays down the do re mi.
Right then and there our own little tyrant Monty Smithy declares that we will recreate the Hanoi Hilton A Cappella Rat Ensemble, “There will be nothing like it!” He’s got that right, and we can only hope it stays so. The first problem rises sea serpent-like because at what range do our furry friends warble? Eight octaves above middle C! Whoo, I haven’t heard that high a caterwauling since little Missy Whitepads was doing the humph, humph dance with that bobcat sized orange tomcat that stalks down by the docks!
So his highness calls upon his minion musicians to find the appropriate instruments and zip zap they try and try and worry their little heads, but only instruments high enough to reach rat-squeak assai altissimo also lack the je ne sais quoi so lovely in the rat-screech timbre Gilda longs for. Whaah, Whaah, says poor Smithy. But at last a devoted fan (and sometimes lovey dovie, lead singer of a certain local band I will not mention except it starts with ‘Enemy’ and ends with ‘People’ and has a very small word that starts with ‘o’ and another that starts with ‘t’ in the middle). She shows up with birdcalls, wood twisted on wood things that squeak like a rat, or so says our dear one-armed music bandit. Monty the wonder horse runs out to the birdcall/ratcall emporium and buys up more than 200 which give a couple of notes up and down from that high, high, high, high C. He added a few Vietnamese song loans for good measure (they were trying to imitate Vietnamese rats don’t you know?).
To make it authentic (and who would even want to participate in an inauthentic rat choir?), the rat goddess arranges ladders and trundle beds hoisted up the wall with clever little pulleys, so that we can crawl up the walls and sit in the corners like well-positioned rat artistes. “Detail. Detail. Detail people. Let’s make this real!” Monty would call with all the seriousness of the damned and deranged. It was here, dear reader, that your intrepid reporter almost pulled the plug and fled this downer scene. But no, no, no! How could I live with myself if I did not put my readers front and center and do the hard work of exposing the inanity of art gone mad? So in a fit of determination unbecoming of the Madam, I pulled myself up by my tail and faced the music or rather the cruel blasphemous din.
So on the day of the ‘concert’ we took our positions. Me sitting as pretty as a tortoiseshell Manx, up on one of the trundle beds. There were six ladders and four beds hauled up to just the right heights to satisfy the most discriminating rat music aficionado. Monty took a position on a ladder all his own, one with a little cushy seat that kept his tush well tended for the duration of our enduring polyphony.
Then with great portent and seriousness her rattiness Queen Gilda handed out the score. Oh my, oh my, my little kittens, such pretentiousness has the Madame not seen since the reign of Queen Lady Ragnar the Gold at the Wagn’ Drag-on where said lady sang lustily the body eclectic.
The ‘work’ was composed by Miss One-arm, but scored by his Holiness himself and brace yourself for the title, as lovely as the music it represents, Rat Vomit Symphony No. 1 in B8 minor, for Fifty-six Bird Calls and Five Song Loans. I thought nothing could ever, ever be as awful as that title until I heard the music. The atrocious title my dear ones does not capture the vileness of the music. Rat vomit indeed!
Gilda came forward with … with … I cannot say it without a chuckle tremoring my feline frame, a baton medical-taped to her stumpity stump! Oh, yes there she stood wearing a pair of pink overalls and a ghastly teal T-shirt, her hair was cut Twiggy style, except badly, and on her shoes? Birkenstocks! Of course! The abomination was complete.
She raised her arms and everyone brought a birdcall to their chest, one hand on the handle and the other holding the little wooden bowl mounted like a wheel and axle designed to squeak when twisted back and forth. And so we began. We had practiced a bit so had the basics down, but it took a few minutes to get going and the maestro made us stop and begin again ten or twenty or thirty times. But at last we were on the move. Because rats have no way to hold their notes we did some tricky things to overlap one another’s squeaks. “Find the structure in the music, people,” Monty pleaded, “it’s in the structure you’ll find the depth of eternity!” But at last we were rolling. And by rolling I mean we were rolling on a rusty wheel squeaking abominably but with vim and verve and a determination to see the monstrosity through to the end.
To listen to five minutes of this would have been misery. Ten minutes would have been inhumane (I myself would have not even done it to a rat). Thirty minutes? What would you, dear reader, think if it went that long? Surely you would call Geneva and tell them that their lovely conventions were being turned on their head. But, no, even thirty minutes would not have come close to describing the length of that duration. We went, and I kid you not, hand on a stack of catnip, three hours, seventeen minutes, and many seconds each of which we were embedded in the full horror of the sound of wood on wood screeching.
All the while, stumpy Trillim had such an effect of pathos on her face that if you saw her, your heart would break at the power of her thrice-bemoaned countenance. What acting! What fawning. I kept waiting for her to place the back of her one good hand against her forehead and swoon away in a melodramatic syncope. Her look was serious. Oh so serious with an intensity that would have intimidated even the most hardened Soviet politbureaucrat’s eyebrows and all. Comical almost beyond my ability to keep from giggling, but I am the master of composure. I am a cat after all.
Magister composer was no better, save his reaction rather than affective pain was pure ecstasy. Like Bernini’s St. Teresa he looked orgastic, his eyes rolled back into his head and a look of divine bliss blistering his countenance as he twisted the bird call with purpose. Oh when I looked at his face I swear the divine nature rested on it. If by divine nature you mean flatulent silliness.
I must admit dear reader to one moment at about five minutes into the second hour. For just a second. I was caught up in the moment. The spirit of the rats entered into me and I saw a beatific ratty vision of the all. But then at seven minutes into the second hour it was gone and I was back in the world of squeaking inanities. Sadly a good number of the players took on this Trillim inspired method-acting demeanor, a mien that spread throughout our merry band until I was almost ready to deliver fresh wet hairballs to one and all.
At last, at last, when it was over, there was silence. The quiet of the damned when the flames die for a moment and the sulfurous burning pauses. The Queen Mother fell to the floor—overcome with her own vastness. The High King slumped over exhausted. The queen of the rats was weeping. The king sobbing baby-like burbling and whimpering unabashed. She finally staggered to her bebirkenstocked feet and they shook and sobbed in each other’s arms. There was not a dry eye in the room—one cannot keep the tears of mirth at bay for that long. Even a cat has its limits. Finally the potentate spoke:
“Never before in the history of the world has the voice of the rats been spoken more powerfully. There will be none here that will easily forget this day! This music is sublime. Not for mundane ears. This we will put away …” And here his face took a mystical air as he shook the score at us and his eyes wandered to the heavens, “… for it is too sacred for this earth. Too holy to be mocked.” (And you can be sure kittens that it would be. Oh how it would be.) “So it will be sealed to come forth when the great god comes to reclaim his kingdom when this song will be sung again by all the rats of the earth with one voice.”
So let it be written so let it be done.
Then on cue, the one-armed rat woman fell on the floor weeping and screaming Loudun nun-hysterical. Like an alley cat hopped up on catnip and with its tail on fire and being chased by a pack of greyhounds. She started running around the room looking for things, screaming for Fatty. Then she bolted. Out into the street. We ran after her but lost her. No one has seen her since.
So dear readers shed a tear. Gilda Trillim has left the stage. Will she return? We hope not. We certainly hope not.