Robert Wilson - SCHRODINGER'S CAT TRILOGY

Then Furbish Lousewart came out of the lavatory wearing a laboratory smock. "The masses are female," he sneered, drawing a rotary saw out of his toolbox depository. He methodically began sawing off Dashwood's head.

"Give me head!" he screamed. "The whiteness of the wall! Gothin haven, annette colp us! Give me head!"

And then Linda Lovelace was there, with Dracula's old red-lined cape, starting to suck him, starting to suck the purity of essence from him, biting down hard hard hard, a blood-smeared mouth with canine fangs.

And he woke up.

He looked at the alarm clock blearily, still haunted by fangs and blood. Six-fifty-eight; the alarm would go off in two minutes.

I am Frank Dashwood. All that other was just a dream.

He depressed the alarm switch and put his naked feet on the cold floor, so he would not roll over and dream he was going to work.

Fangs and blood. Why do people see such films? Weird species, we are.

Dr. Dashwood staggered to the shower. White tile, white on white: the whiteness of the wall. Vibrations from outer space, she said. Not too hot, now: careful. Ah, that's good. Watch that it doesn't heat up too fast, though. Fangs and blood: average person has seen one hundred, maybe two hundred, of those films. Hundreds of hours of horror grooves in the brain: neurological masochism. YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

He turned the hot-water spigot down quickly. Always does that: starts tepid and then boils you.

He leapt from the shower and began toweling. Oral sadism: she looked good enough to eat, we say. Little Red Riding Hood. Eatupus complex.

Dashwood surveyed his features in the mirror, combing his hair. As the world sees me: this not unhandsome, definitely nervous, middle-aged face.

Radio will bring me all the way back. Try KKHI, maybe catch some Vivaldi. Dashwood's Law: whenever you turn on KKHI, they're either playing Vivaldi or will play Vivaldi within fifteen minutes.

De de dum de dum de dee

De de dum de dum de dum dum dum

Sounds more like Bach. Wait: listen:

De de drum de drum de DRUM

Drum drum de droom de de

Wheeeee dumb de!

And that was the Concerto for Harp by Jan Zelenka. And now the news. In Bad Ass, Texas, School Superintendent B. S. Curve was murdered last night by a bombattached to the starter of his automobile. Superintendent Curve had been under attack by local clergy and the John Birch Society for proposing the teaching of the metric system in schools. In Washington, President K-

Dashwood snapped the radio off irritably. Whenever you want to hear some pleasant music, they break for the nws. Ah, well: time to head for the office, anyway.

De de dum de dum de dee… Where the hell did I put the key? Oh yes; alarm clock, next to. Dum de de:

sure sounded like Bach at first. Dum drum de dee! Really bounced along, music of that period. Baroque.

He started his car.

Crrrumph rumph rumph.

Oh, damn. Try again.

Crrrrrrrrrrrumph rumph a zoom.

Dashwood pulled out into the traffic. Always fails to ignite first time. Dum dum de. Zelenka, he said. Who the hell was Zelenka? Same period as Bach, I'm sure.

Dr. Dashwood turned onto Van Ness and headed for Orgasm Research: da dum da dum da dreee!

And drove straight into an entirely different kind of novel.

Qol: Hua Allahu achad; Allahu Assamad; lam yalid walam yulad; walam yakun lahu kufwan achad.

–al qoran

One day earlier and three thousand miles due east, Bonita ("Bonny") Benedict, a popular columnist for the New York News-Times-Post-Herald-Dispatch-Express-Mirror-Eagle, sat down to write her daily stream-of-consciousness. According to her usual procedure, Bonny began by flipping through her notebook. This usually served to fructify her imagination, but that day proved rather sterile. Items which had already been used were crossed out with large X's and what was left was weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable. There was literally nothing timely or exciting enough for a lead.

Bonny was only stumped for a minute; then she remembered the ancient maxim of the great pioneer of modern journalism, Charles Foster Hearst: "If there isn't any news, invent some."

Ms. Benedict, whose hair would have been gray if she hadn't decided it was more chic to bleach it pure platinum-white, had lasted in the news game for forty years. She did not lack the faculty of imagination.

Bonny inserted a fresh sheet in the typewriter and began at once, trusting her years of experience to guide her. What emerged was:

Who is the man in Hong Kong who looks exactly like Lee Harvey Oswald? Believe it or not, darlings, that question is causing a lot of excitement among the members of the new Senate Committee on Congressional Committees on Assassinations. In case you forgot, they're the ones who are trying to find out why the various Congressional Committees on Assassinations couldn't find out anything. What they're asking each other is: Could the man in Hong Kong really be Oswald? And, if so, who was the double that got shot in Dallas? Doesn't it make your heads swim???

That was what was known as a fail-safe item. If (as was likely) the Senate Committee simply ignored it rather than fan the flames of rumor, many readers would believe it on the grounds that it had been printed and not denied. If, on the other hand, the Committee did deny it, even more people would believe it. A 1981 psychological survey had shown that 67 percent of the population experienced uncertainty, indecision, suspicion, or downright paranoia whenever they saw the words "government denial" in print.

Bonny went on to use up the not-totally dreary items in her notebook, jazzing each one enough to give it a coat of sparkle, or at least of tinsel. But she still needed a zinger for the closing. She followed the sage advice of the prophet Hearst one more time and wrote:

Wasn't that Furbish Lousewart of the Purity of Ecology Party eating steak and drinking Manhattans (made with Southern Comfort, my dears!) at Sardi's last night? What would the Party regulars think of this flagrant disregard of POE principles?

Bonny, in her youth, had been a disciple of the famous feminist and psychologist Alberta Einstein. It was Ms. Einstein, in her epoch-making Neuropsychology, who introduced the concept that every brain constructs a different "island-reality" from the billions of signals it receives every minute. This concept had revolutionized the social sciences and even led Heisenberg to propose a similar relativity principle in physics. Bonny knew that the POE people lived in an island-reality where eating meat and drinking fermented spirits were atrocities comparable to ax murder or Burgering in the well. This item would make them hopping mad.

A columnist's career depends on amusing most of her readers most of the time and making some of them hopping mad some of the time.

The owner-publisher of the New York News-Times-irc was Polly Esther Doubleknit, relict of the late Dacron Doubleknit, the leisurewear king. When the leisurewear fad had peaked in the 1970s, Dacron had shrewdly used the cash flow to "diversify," as his accountant called it. Engulf and Devour, his competitors called it. When he died Dacron owned over a thousand retail stores coast to coast, a tapioca mine in Nutley, N.J. (a bad investment, that one, suggested by a plausible but Machiavellian midget), a large hunk of Canadian forestland, three South American governments (his leisurewear was thereafter made with very cheap labor), sixteen Congresspersons, three senators, a shipyard in Yellow Springs, Ohio (suggested by Eva Gebloomenkraft), seven state legislatures together with four other whorehouses in Nevada, and the New York News-Times-u.s.w.