John Domini - Talking Heads - 77

These days, we have the talking head. [ example: up-right at mike ] The talking head. In it resides the truth as we’ve always wanted it — confined to a single simple square of the grid at a time. In it the entire complicated world is reduced to sheer surface — to coat and tie and hair style. And this head implies, of course, the TV docudrama, my thing. [ flash award ] Docudrama extends the rule of image-based media, affirming that the news is news. The talking head knows no limit.

[ ADDRESS TO TRUSTEES ] Soon it will provide the very shape of thought. The talking head. Only those who conform to it, to its simple and shapely truth, will have a place in its implacable new grid.

[ address to others ] I once thought I could see the world in my smudged little weekly, in its scatterbrained layout & pasteup, [ shake head ] But now I see Sea Level level [ smile ]. I see it for what it was — the world of the past. The world of the dead.

[ upright at mike ] For the future, look to the man in the grid. [ TO TRUSTEES ] Look to him, listen. Do as he says.

[ goodbyes, thanks ]

They’re drifting, yes. Shuffle time moves more slowly than our own-maybe to accommodate the extra layering? I could make out details on every passing face. I could hear the heads talking.

And the rest of me? My tuffgrrl biker boots, my ltaliapunk haircut? I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t say where I was — certainly no cellar I’d ever seen. And I wasn’t too sure what Cue and Ayy were doing there either.

The record store, that was something. That took him out of his regrets. Otherwise, though, Kit moved through an unchanging drab enclosure all the way downtown and then back to his offices. He remained in the MBTA construction site, the cold sea-smelling hole where he’d met Leo. That had been his mistake, after all, going to the site. The same mistake he’d made at Monsod, the breakdown he needed to understand. The rest of his zigs and zags around the old city were nothing but a shuttling between different versions of the basic nightmare. The dig, the cell, the T, the stairs — the same.

*

Cue:Talking heads. Even you’ve got talking heads. Ayy:( moves his mouth, but it’s a head in a passing car that speaks —a young Hispanic black, kinda Castro ) Talking about, Icould work for your paper here. Cue:Yeah yeah yeah. Quite a trick. But talking heads? We’re the ones supposed to have the heads. We’re the punks. Ayy:( speaks for a woman this time, a blonde with aristocratic brow and lips — Farrah Fawcett my goodness ) I need some time alone, Kit. Cue:O-kay. These are your motives, I get it. These are the people who motivate you. They’re reason you’re heading — wherever you’re heading. Ayy:( his own voice for once ) Or, then again, maybe this just proves I’m a believer. At the end of the line, I come back to … Cue:Hey, I’m the one who does the explaining. I’m the one who’s hip. Ayy:( Castro again ) Man, all I know is, my Mama’s in a bad way. Cue:Yeah yeah. All I know is, the Talking Heads are the ‘70s counterculture. They’re the emblem. The definitive imitation. Ayy:( Farrah Fawcett ) History appears to me now as this awesome light getting brighter and brighter behind our backs. Cue:Imitation is the sincerest form of anarchy. We take The Man’s worst secret and we wear it on an earring. Ayy:( himself, with a wicked skull’s grin ) You keep saying “we.” I don’t see anybody else but you and me. Cue:Yeah but, yeah but — you can’t be one of us . You’re the tourist. Ayy:( guess who ) Psy-cho-analyze. Seems sometimes like that’s all you white boys know. Cue:O-kay. You’re saying it’s not so important, I get it. It’s not so important to suss out what’s hip and what’s ’60s — or worse … Ayy:( guess ) Most of it’s sheer silliness, to be sure, utter silliness. Cue:You’re saying, come the millennium, who’s going to care? The difference between your Bob Dylan and my Elvis Costello — come the millennium, zip. No difference. Ayy:( still the bony clicksong ) For starters. The punk becomes the success, over and over. For starters. But these days we can do a lot worse than that. Cue:( checks the passing trolley windows, sees only own reflection )

Nor did his building’s hallways offer better. The colorless walls might as well have been plywood and corrugated steel, and most of the equipment on the site had been abandoned. The woman’s counseling setup across the corridor from Sea Level had gotten so short on cash that half the time they had no one in the office. And Kit heard nothing behind his own door.

Ayy:These days we do a lot worse. These days we chuck the whole distinction, counterculture to culture. Outside to inside, Q to A — zip. No difference. Cue:But, but that means no alternative. No alternative press. Ayy:Or it means everything’s alternative. ( I don’t even want to think about his laugh ) Cue:But, but there’s still an authority. In fact the talking head provides media with a terrible authority, more than ever. Big Brother is watching. Ayy:Not from where I sit. ( waves a skeletal hand at the glassed-over faces surrounding us ) Not in shuffle time. Here the future looms as an endless living nexus of passageways lined with information, a worldwide web of passageways that carry us in every direction at once, with every head constantly peering in on every other. Cue:( massages forearm ) And the passageways include the past, I get it. Oedipus faces off with his riddles forever. Ayy:It’s nothing but alternative, the personal all over the media. In these passageways, every least motive is made visible, every last filthy urge. Cue:Oeddie whups the Sphinx, and in the same hot minute, gets whupped by the shepherd. Ayy:It’s all in there, yes. No distance between Sphinx and shepherd. No hero, no whole truth. Only every last little shame or blemish, exposed and magnified, a dizzying highway of reflections of reflections. Cue:Man, oh man, what am I doing here? Ayy:( Castro again, out of nowhere ) I said it gets crazy, didn’t I? Cue:Don’t ask me. Don’t ask the asker. Ayy:( the blonde now, natch ) You must have noticed. You must have seen all the new— Cue:( massaging, struggling to pull that hand from his pocket) Z, my name is Zia, I’m going to live in Xanadu.

*

When he discovered his wife in his office, for a moment Kit thought he’d gone truly crazy at last. Invisible layout & pasteup had given way to actual hallucination.

No. Bette sat at Zia’s desk.

His wife, in her undertaker’s coat. His wife, not so much lips and hair this time as eyes, orchid-blue. She’d looked up at Kit’s entrance, she took him in wide-eyed. Then she dropped her head — lips working, face reddening — over the garish pastels of Zia’s cards. It was a smaller head than Kit remembered, no longer the vast supernatural emblem he’d confronted on the Cottage beach. No longer so unapproachable, because now Kit approached, striding around Corinna’s empty desk. Corinna was gone, Louie-Louie too: the brother Kit had been coming to see since he’d gotten out of bed that morning. But this was no more than a blip in his awareness as he swung through the openings in the office partitions, moving towards his wife. Towards her T-square of neck and shoulders, her face lifting his way again. They went right into it, a full-mouthed kiss.