The Tourists Song, & a Parade

The Tourists Song

Take a look at this man:
He's passing in between us.
Take a look at this man!
And take a look at his tan.

(refrain)
The man eats!
The strange meat of a street-side stand.

The man buys!
The cheap junk of a foreign land.

The man moves!
The hot dance of a one night stand.

The man speaks!
The sung song of a travelling band.

Take a look at this man.
Always everywhere elsewhere.
So put our city on your keychain
and lock us in your memory.
So put our time in your watch
and keep our memory in your mouth.

(refrain)

It's no trouble.
No worries, friend.
We're all good people,
so throw out your TV.
Sometimes it takes a thief
to spot the lost diamond.
So take a look at this man.

(refrain)

--

Today I wrote a good deal of Pilgrims Dream for the first time since I arrived in Prague. I hadn't had the time or the clarity of mind to put anything besides scattered notes to paper. It feels good & natural to be back in the saddle.

This song is sung by Radical Subjective in the bar scene where Agents Grossberger & Troutslop are looking for Beatrix Londulatta, who may or may not be able to give them information about the Underground. Or, Beatrix might be able to put the Agents back in contact with Them. Her reputation is ambiguous. G&T aren't sure about much. But on the advice of Janglebell, they enter the bar, called Beat & Path, with hope and no expectation. It's a wild scene. Radical Subjective involves the crowd in a sort of mass-hallucinatory ritual. When they sing their song, Here Comes The White Man, a man in a black suit & tie jumps off the stage and pretends to stab everyone in the audience with a plastic retractable knife while splattering ketchup everywhere. It's a known part of the show, and many in the audience dress in tribal costumes for it. At the end of the song, The Goddess of Music appears--look, it's Beatrix Londulatta!--and restores Justice & Harmony to the show. Grossberger & Troutslop throw a monkeywrench into the whole scene though, and for that you'll have to read the book.

I also made these notes for a Parade:

Banners, balloons, wheelchairs, clowns, zombies, superheroes, stilt-walkers, politicians (masks), Star Wars Trekkies & LOTR wizards, Oscar the Grouch & the Count, fat men in top hats and coat-tails, tribal masks & loin cloths, Madonnas & bondage queens, straight men in shirt sleeves with stooped backs & thick glasses, doctors in white frock coats w/that reflector disk on their foreheads (research this name!), break-dancers w/boom-boxes that don't play though they dance anyway, water dowsers, carnival barkers, bizarre Public Service Announcements from people with cardboard TVs around their heads, vaudevillians, olympic athletes in their sport specific uniforms w/laurel wreaths but no medals, men in black suits & dark sunglasses & earpieces that they frequently adjust, carnival marching bands playing polkas, animal costumes: gorillas tigers polar bears cats dogs ostrich dragon unicorn; whirling dervishes, Catholic monks alternated w/Buddhist monks followed by reading Kabbalists, leprechauns, Vikings, Romans in military garb, fraternity & sorority kids in togas, Renaissance magicians, men in bowler hats & women in bonnets doing a choreographed routine w/black and white umbrellas, military lines of pregnant women w/babies in strollers, a float: balcony scene, Rapunzel calling out, Wherefore art thou, Daddy-o, & James Dean below, leaning against the wall, musing, To be or not to be, do be doobie do, shady men selling steak knives, watches, DVDs & vacuum cleaners, construction crews, televangelists, nurses from WWII, jitterbugging flappers, 50's swing dancers, Joan of Arc on a horse, angry peasant farmers wielding pitchforks, Santa Clause, Charlie Brown, Tom Cruise w/Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, & Katie Holmes; Michael Jackson & Babe Ruth, Madonna in her pointy bra w/Amelia Earhart, Nietzsche w/Billy Graham, Hitler w/Special Olympics kids, Stalin w/bears doing ballet, Lincoln w/Black Panthers, Queen Elizabeth on her throne w/a dozen dancing midget Shakespeares circling around her, all followed by a float of the Beatles back in the B&W days doing Twist & Shout.

You know you twist so good.

I got the parade idea from Paprika, a great anime film in which a dream threatens to take over reality & everyone who succumbs to the dream starts spouting nonsense and joins a strange parade.