Pynchon cut-up: Mike Coopers "Spirit Songs"

[Allan Balliett]

http://www.cooparia.com/spirit-songs-the-pynchon-project/

Mike Cooper is/was an accomplished blues guitarist hailing from the
pre-commercial era of British blues bands (you know, before Woodstock) The
man, who for heaven's sake, must be over 70, has more than 60 albums to his
credit.

Recently he's been doing improvised performances that use lyrics derived
from using Burroughs' style cut-up techniques to "V" and "GR." As I said,
every performance is improvised to the lyric sheet. You can see one such
performance complete here <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GB5EvTZZzI>

In spite of all its promise, to me it's music that you'd have to be Keith
Davis to enjoy. (Which means it doesn't always have a good beat you can
dance to)  (I do love the guy's Hawaiian shirt collection, though!)


MIke Cooper talking about Spirit Songs

For several years I have been working on a number of song texts which are
the result of applying cut-up techniques, similar to those used by William
Burroughs, Brion Gysin and British artist Tom Phillips, using two of  *Thomas
Pynchon’s* novels, *Gravity’s Rainbow and V*, as source materials. Both
novels that are set in the years of the second World War, when I was born.

The technique is one of erasure, choosing words at random from a page and
stringing them together, leaving out the words in between to make a whole
new text with a completely different meaning.

Once the texts are completed I then attempt to perform them as songs but
with no pre-conceived form *or*musical accompaniment. The music, both vocal
and instrumental backing, is improvised during the performance rendering
each performance unique. I also re-arrange the text sometimes even knitting
two or more sets together or leaving out sections.

It was only recently I discovered that there is actually a school of
writers that utilise this method of generating texts. When I told a friend
that I had stopped writing songs at one point because I thought there were
already enough in the world, he sent me to Kenneth Goldsmith’s book *Uncreative
Writing – Managing Language In The Digital Age.* In the introduction
Goldsmith writes –

*“In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote “The world is full of
objects more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” I’ve come
to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be re-tooled as “The world is
full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It
seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced
with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing
to write more of it; instead we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity
that exists. How I manage it, how I parse it, how I organise and distribute
it – is what distinguishes my writing from yours.”*

I had been introduced to the school of un-creative writing and had not
realise that I was already a member and had been for several years, several
c.d.s and many concerts and I continue to be today. The video above is a
version of  *The Migrant Song*, recorded in Beirut and released on my *Radio
Paradise*c.d. on the Lebanese *Johnny Kafka* label, which was constructed
using this method.


Allan in WV
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