The train from Vienna took us through the mountains,
spectacular and blue- covered with enormous firs and pines..
We roared through tunnels into the dark underbelly
and out again into blazing sunlight,
the Italian countryside rolling past the window..
After eight and half hours of train travel
and then the long boat ride through the canals
I find myself back on terra firma,
but still swaying slightly, dizzy
from so much continuous motion-
everything still feels like it is moving
and I have failed to regain my sense of equilibrium..
Venice is unreal- like no other city on earth..
Completely mysterious, I follow her
secret passages through deserted squares
over the dark water, murky and redolent
with seagull offal and tourist trash.
A nasty looking spiked chastity belt
in the ducal palace caught my eye today,
surrounded by immense swords and helmets,
thumbscrews and slim daggers..
the Veronese murals overhead,
wreathed in gaudy rococo swirls
and the swarms of people
and pigeons out in San Marco.
The Basilica reeking of frankincense,
flooding from a swinging censer.
I follow the plumes of smoke up to an open window
where one golden shaft of light pierces the dim
a sign warns-
OUT OF RESPECT FOR THIS SACRED PLACE,
EXPLANATIONS ARE FORBIDDEN INSIDE THE BASILICA
all is byzantine gilt mosaic,
ex-votos silvery and glimmering behind glass-
A rifle hangs inexplicably beside a stautue of the virgin,
rows of penitents, kneeling, confessing..
Grandfather and I are finding concerts in every city,
orchestras and sting quartets in palaces and churches,
and my last night in Vienna, electronica with a newfound friend
in a great club below the tram station..
Oh, and we have a bidet in the bathroom at
Hotel Bonvecchiati, and I am eating gelato every single day.
And this is what I sing as I sit beside the canal,
watching lovers swooning in gondolas..
The Last Beat of My Heart

Walked in the cold air
Freezing breath on a window plane
Lying and waiting
A man in the dark in a picture frame
So mystic and soulful
A voice reaching out in a piercing cry
It stays with you until
The feeling has gone only you and I
It means nothing to me
This means nothing to me
Oh, Vienna
This city is every bit as majestic and impressive as I had imagined.
I have been confronted by so many examples of the purest genius here,
I stand amazed, shattered and silent:
The marionettes come to life on a tiny stage, perfectly lifelike
every motion as human as each slender string will allow
acting out that wonder masonic allegory, The Magic Flute
in the city where Mozart was buried as a pauper
and now marzipan chocolates are named after him..
I meet my imaginary lovers, Albrecht Dürer in his Ventian drag-
every line a testament to his perfect sense of proportion..
Egon Schiele and his long, lovely fingers of which he was so proud,
his portraits of Wally and Edith and Edouard and that Rainer boy
echo and glow in an empty room, his eyes going wild
until in 1918, fever took him.
I can feel those eyes on me there,
appraising and outlining
the light limning every edge..
There is a voluptuousness here, and revelation.
And dear, dear Gustav- natürlich! his golden kiss
and lovely maidens surrounded by halos of gilt fish scales and flowers..
Here you can smoke in banks, but not in taxis..
People are shockingly amiable, the sacher torte is dreamy
and there is a coffeehouse are on every corner.
I made a pilgrimage to Cafe Mentone for letter-writing
and nearby the obligatory record buying,
many rare treats were found, and I was not one to deny myself them, alas..
Grandfather has a cold from all this autumnal bluster,
but it has not slowed him down a bit-
He is quite an intrepid traveller for all his 89 years..
And then today we saw this:

Having never seen an actual Bosch in the flesh,
it took at least two hours for me to take it all in..
If this is purgatory, I am glad to be a sinner.
He makes paradise look so damn dull.
Tomorrow I shall endeavor to visit
the Deutschordenhaus on Singerstrasse
and if the weather turns,
perhaps a ride on the giant ferris wheel?
And more cake of course, in the meantime..
The music is weaving
Haunting notes, pizzicato strings
The rhythm is calling
Alone in the night as the daylight brings
A cool empty silence
The warmth of your hand and a cold grey sky
It fades to the distance
The image has gone only you and I
It means nothing to me
This means nothing to me
Oh, Vienna

Our last day in Prague..
I journeyed to Kutna Hora on a bumpy road by bus
that bruised me coccyx and careened past golden fields
of dying sunflowers, rows upon rows of nodding black heads.
The lazy bees cruise past apple trees, heavy with fruit
harvest time here and the sun cascades down
over my shoulders and warms me as I enter the ossuary,
the bone church at the monastery of Sedlec..
Inside the air is cold and dead,
the smell of dust and plague permeates, and all is calm..
Florettes made of jawbones, a grisly chandelier
strung with garlands of skulls, decorated with hundreds
of femurs, tibias, vertebrae..
40,000 victims of plague and the Hussite wars are interred here.
Six enormous cairns, pyramids of bones lay stacked,
by a half-blind monk in 1500..
Later, mad Frantisek Rint and his family
bleached the bones with lye and constructed
these fantastical sculptures with them.
It is a wonder to behold.
Tiny votive candles glow and the skinheads buy Kostnice keychains..
The cathredral of Saint Barbara and the Royal Mint
were both decorated by another Frantisek,
an unknown genius of Art Nouveau.
He and his wife Maria painted the King’s Chapel
with flowers that would put William Morris to shame..
His stained glass windows with their delicate colours
brought tears to my eyes and my hand to my heart.
A last dinner at the Kavarna Imperial Cafe,
Wintertraum tea and Forest Nymph ice cream sundae..
Comfortably ensconced within its byzantine recesses,
listening to crackly records of Josephine Baker,
it is easy to imagine this majestic tea-room in 1923.
Framed stills from Czech films of that era adorn the walls,
and every other surface is completely covered in tiles and mosaics.
You get a free donut with every cup of coffee,
and on the counter rests Saturnin’s bowl.
For a steep fee, one can purchase this bowl
filled day old powdered goo-filled doughnuts
and hurl them at the other customers.
The staff treads lightly in fear
that one might decide to enact Saturnin’s doughnut revenge,
the chaos that ensues, and incredible mess to clean up later..
As I still must pack later, I thought it best to demure.
This morning in the breakfast room, I invoked stares and titters
from my Princess of Moravia costume..
I sat and sipped my chocolate and peered
at the beautiful and ancient Mrs. Hana Pravda,
who later came up to me and uttered,
in her heavily accented English,
“You look vunderfull..”
Tomorrow we take the train to Vienna,
and what wonders will we encounter there?

good mornink little yickens!
yes, i have arrived safe and sound on the other side of the atlantic-
three flights later, far too many hours of travel and those verdamme irascible dutch stewardesses not withstanding..you could have both your arms hacked off at the shoulder and they wouldn’t blink at you. at least we were upgraded to the comparative luxury of business class klm on the way to prague, and these dutch ladies were full of smiles and i got to practice my dutch the whole way there..
An entrance, of sorts. through many crowded passages pushed
and at last found our way here to fairytale land, full of grimm’s trees,
firs and weeping willows..
i’m switched, waking every day at 7am and eyelids getting heavy around 10pm..how extremely odd, that. it’s damn cold, and i need a scarf. so far, what? saint vitus and the marvelous mucha window- i could have stood in front of it for a lifetime, staring in wonder..i couldn’t find saint adalbert’s tonuge hidden ANYWHERE, though when i die, you can just stick me in with saint neponuk- he’s got the fanciest silver tomb anywhere..marionettes theater and casanova ballerinas, and today to try and find mister svankmajer somewhere..opa ist nappink now, so i must get back to wake him so we can sightsee..i have to find the way to kostnice in sedlec before we go on to wien..the bones will be well worth the journey. give me even more art nouveau, and a real pillow. the one here at axa is like a hand towel wrapped in a sheet. my dreams are filled with young boys, who have flowers for me in their hands and dirty seeds in their mouths. now i must go out into the day, and find what is there..

ja, so.
a report from the front.
a veritable torrent of rain the other day
brought a good-sized chunk of ceiling down
upon the freshly-made guest and my ersatz studio,
covering all with a thick layer of black grime and
grit-filth and, oh yes, lots and lots of fetid water.
lovely.
all this an hour before our mysterious guests from japan
were to arrive to stay in the now much airier, and much more befouled room..
leaving me quite distraught to find myself in such a disagreeable predicament,
squinting sorrowfully at the two ruined sewing machines, and heaps of fine fabrics
and hand-tatted heirloom laces now all sodden and soiled.
as many benefits as our miraculous homestead provides us,
this whole ceiling falling in business has simply got to end.
somewhere.
i had thought it was over the last time they fixed the roof, alas-
apparently not. i suppose if you want to live in a gorgeous 250 year mansion for next to nothing, you should just accept that caving in firmaments go part and parcel.
still. misguided as it may be, i derive a large portion of my inner sense of security from that old roof over one’s head notion. and my things, well, i like them. i like them much better when they aren’t sodden and soggy and soaked in scum.
i wonder if the chimney hasn’t caved in.
this morning a bird flew down it and was trapped.
this one, i couldn’t save, as the fireplace is bricked up
and covered with a decorative grille
(which i did manage to wrench off, to no avail..)
i drank my morning tea listening to its frantic flutterings.
then, stepping out for even more tea, i nearly stepped on
another unfortunate bird-
this one, embryonic, encased (partly) in a tiny white eggshell.
fallen from the nest too soon.
a red stain on the road, and the hatchling long-necked
and blind, bleeding- skin gray with feathers unformed.
i took it on a leaf as a gift.
our guests, oof or oni (demon, in japanese) and pika (as in pikachu)
are two very sweet performance artists and musicians from osaka.
an interview with oof , and her photographs .
we had never met them before, but the mess and missing roof
seemed not to bother them, as they described our house as being
“like a dream..”
they went wandering today and found the man that takes the pseudo-antebellum pictures.
very bellocq, no? well shades of pretty baby, anyhow. damn cute.

on their way home they reported that they had been followed by a large man who was “doing masturbation”. ahem.
also, my excellent purchase of the day- ESSENCE OF CHICKEN (with tangkwei!)
to cure wot ails ye.


i bought a second bottle to be given as a prize to the one
who can answer me a riddle i will posit at a later date,
when it is not so late.

Come one, come all! Play Victorian parlour games with me! (..Involving curious sofas, I’m sure!)
I will be reading delightful stories from 3:30 on, and there will be much yumminess and fun had by all..

Hello Me Lovelies-
Today I will be performing as High Baristess at Z’otz (943-ZOTZ) @ 2003 Royal and Touro,
from 1pm-7pm. It would behoove you to come and see me and delight me with stories of your daily adventures, and I will serve you an icy cold beverage of your choosing. When I get off at 7pm, anyone who would care to join me in a schwim at yonder country club will be rewarded with my eternal admiration and camraderie. It’s too damn hot- let’s go get wet.
With Fond Regards,
Mlle. Angel Eirlys Tanglewood

Some recent additions to bolster your burgeoning vocabularies-
Your assignment, boys and girls- should you choose to accept it:
To compose for your headmistress, Miss Matilda Marchpane,
a little ditty to tickle her fancy..
Go to it! Edify and Amuse!
Or you shall have to go out into the thicket
and cut me a switch!
Urdicate – To flog with fresh stinging nettles
Whimling – A miserable or insignificant creature
Opsomania – A morbid longing for dainty foods
Xiphopagus – A twin monster united by a band extending down from the sternum.
Xyster – An instrument for scraping bones
Vespertilionize – To turn into a bat
Vespoid – Resembling a wasp
Vulpecated – To be robbed by a fox

Today I found out that a dear friend of mine, Dorothy, died around seven this morning. She was 68 years old. She had an aneurysm. I had just walked past her new house, and had been thinking of her and missing her.
I dearly wish I’d stopped by and said hello.

Dorothy was one of the most amazing people I have ever met – there was truly no one else like her! She was this tiny, birdlike old woman who was always so spritely and filled with effervescent joie de vivre. I think of her dressed in green velvet with black lace-up high-heeled granny shoes. She lived on the third floor of a warehouse where she had her studio, filled with her marvelous musical instruments, giant zithers, hammer dulcimers and hurdy-gurdys. She would hold soirees there, and impromptu concerts and performances where guests would play music and drink red wine into the night with a bizarre oddment of bohemian characters. Dorothy was more nimble at her at age than I am at mine, and dwelled quite blithely in her drafty atelier that had no shower or kitchen, no heating or air-conditioning – in fact, I’m pretty certain that no one was really supposed to be allowed to live there, but maybe the landlords turned a blind eye. She was pretty damn charming. I remember her traversing the many flights of stairs (which were quite formidable, mind you) to let guests in and out all night… I’d be out of breath (at 23, and a smoker!) and she’d be a flight ahead of my trip-tropping on her little goat hooves.

The first time I ever heard of Dorothy, my friend Haley Lou Haden was telling me about this strange old lady who played weird medieval instruments and how cool she was. She’d made friends with her, and had been going over to visit. I remember being so intrigued by this story, and immediately wanted to meet her. Something sparked in me at hearing her name, and wouldn’t let me alone until I figured out what it was… I had just gotten the Mediaeval Baebes album Salva Nos, and was listening to it obsessively. I had always been a fan of Katharine Blake’s other band, Miranda Sex Garden, and so when she formed an all female group singing songs in Middle English, I was completely captivated. I immediately set about learning the songs, and was burning with a desire to somehow join the Baebes and sing this amazing music with them! This was the first time I really felt moved to play music, and to really learn how to use my voice. A fire was lit under my ass by these ancient melodies, and the powerful revelation of women singing together. An inspiration whispered in my ear to grab the album’s liner notes and… Sure enough, there was Dorothy Carter listed as playing autoharp, hurdy-gurdy, and dulcimer. Turns out she was one of the founding members!

When we met, I told her of my passion for the music of the Baebes, and she encouraged me to find a way to follow that dream. In a matter of days, I went from suddenly being struck with a seemingly impossible longing, to potentially having such a possibility within my grasp. She made it seem so doable, and in reality, it could have been. If I had picked up and gotten myself to the UK, she made it sound as if there could be a spot for me in the line up. I was flabbergasted at the very idea, but Dorothy nonchalantly filled me in on the comings and goings of former Baebes and felt sure that Katharine would approve of my enthusiasm. I was a wee young thing at the time, with no money for a plane ticket, and no experience with music other than growing up around it since childhood, so I decided I had better start working with the Master herself, and asked her to be my teacher.

Around Halloween that year, the Creative Arts Center in New Orleans offered Dorothy a concert of her own to curate, which she asked me to sing in. We sang A Lyke Wake Dirge and I Ain’t Got Nobody, two songs that still always remind me of her. Well, everyone else did – but after weeks of rehearsals, I had gotten a terrible cold and my voice was wrecked. I could barely speak, and was paralyzed with stage fright, but determined to not let my mentor down. My voice was a pitiful croak, and the fear made my throat close up, so I had to dash offstage mid-show to a deserted stairwell where I had an intense coughing fit until I threw up. My first concert! An old pro, Dorothy had seen it all, and was unfazed. She encouraged me to get right back in the saddle and keep at singing.

She was the musical mentor I had always dreamed of finding. I was beyond thrilled and humbled when she gave me an Irish harp to learn to play, but I had no idea what to do with it really, and it went out of tune quickly in the New Orleans humidity. She took it back to tune it for me, but passed away before I managed to go get it, and I didn’t want to bother her children about it after her death. I truly regret not spending more time with her. There was so much I had wanted to learn from her, so many more evenings I wish I could spend in her company. Now she has gone. I am missing the twinkle in her eyes, watching her riding down the street on her old bicycle, and her hauntingly lovely voice…

From her Wikipedia entry:

“Dorothy Carter (1935 – June 7, 2003) was an American musician.
She was born in New York, New York in 1935 and died in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2003. Carter performed contemporary, folk, traditional and medieval music with a large collection of stringed instruments such as the hammered dulcimer, zither,psaltery and hurdy-gurdy. She was a founding member of Mediæval Bæbes. She began studying classical piano at age 6; she studied at Bard College in New York, the London Royal Academy and Guildhall School of Music in France.
She is survived by a son and daughter, Justin Carter of Los Angeles, California and Celeste Carter of Picayune, Mississippi and a grandson, Damien Helgason.”

I love this recent tribute from our mutual friend Danielle De Picciotto:
“In 1996 I opened my own Gallery in Berlin Mitte which would last for three years. I decided the first exhibition would be of my own work so that i could concentrate on other artists after, so I created an exhibition called “Heroines” in which I depicted my personal heroines from the past (collages), present (photo objects) and future (video). At that time it was still very difficult to find any books about influential women and I wanted to make clear how many there are and have been every where. The photo object below is the one I did of Dorothy Carter, one of the most inspirational women I have ever met. I lived together with her for two years when she was around 64 years old. She was an incredible musician specializing in unusual medieval instruments. She introduced me to the hurdy gurdy which I play today, the dulcimer and many others. In her youth she lived in a commune, worked on a Mississippi steam boat as a ships boy, raised two kids and ran away to a Mexican cloister with an anarchistic priest. When i lived together with her she was part of the English band “Medieval Babes” with whom she toured and when she was at home she would listen to BBC Radio, write her memories or go busking in Italy if bored ! At one point she moved back home to New Orleans and sadly died a couple of years later. Her main credo was to be free and wild – never accepting any restrictions which did not make sense to her – totally dedicated to her music which was magical. I will never stop missing her and this portrait which I always have close to me is a constant inspiration of what is possible.”

Danielle dedicated a chapter of her Berlin memoir, The Beauty of Transgression, to Dorothy and her incredible life. I’m in that chapter too (!), as I met Danielle and her husband Alexander Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten when they came through town. We met by chance, and bonded over our shared love for Dorothy. It’s a gift she gave us, because we’ve been friends ever since! I wish I could share the entire chapter here, because it’s just so full of gems – such a moving testament to a truly inspiring life! For now, I’ll just share this great quote from Dorothy that eventually came true:

“When I’m old, I’m gonna get myself a little house back in New Orleans! It’s warmer there than it is here and I can parade on Mardi Gras and throw my bra into the crowd, but until then, I’m going to stay in Berlin.”

Waillee, Waillee – Dorothy Carter

Troubadour by Dorothy Carter
1. Troubadour Song (French Medieval)
2. Binnorie (Scottish Melody)
3. Troubadour Songs on the Psaltery
I think this quote captures her well:

“Many of the songs are sung unaccompanied or with percussion, but lurking at the back is the endearing figure of Dorothy Carter, who wields the assorted strange and wonderful devices with complete confidence and the expertise of years of practice. For a couple of numbers, she also provides the vocals, and gives you a sense that behind the image of your beloved, but somewhat eccentric aunt, is somebody with wicked sense of fun, somebody you can imagine singing rumbustious songs while tankards are banged on the table.” – Ian Walden

So Spricht Das Leben (So Sayeth Life)
So sayeth life, the world is mine
The flowers that bloom and the song of the birds
I am the daylight and the sunshine
So spricht das Leben, the world is mine
So sayeth death, the world is mine
Your daylight is but vein display
Stars and moon sink in eternal night
So spricht das Tod, the world is mine
So sayeth life, the world is mine
You make great tombs of marble and stone
But love, you cannot entomb
So spricht das Leben, the world is mine
So sayeth death, the world is mine
I have prepared a graveyard
And created pestilence and war
So spricht das Tod, the world is mine
So sayeth life, the world is mine
Every grave is a plot of land
Into which my eternal seeds do fall
So spricht das Leben, the world is mine