THE MOON AND SERPENT GRAND EGYPTIAN THEATRE OF MARVELS
David J, Alan Moore, Tim Perkins
Staged July 16, 1994 at Bridewell Theatre, London, England.
Cleo 96882
THE MOON AND SERPENT GRAND EGYPTIAN THEATRE OF MARVELS is an astounding introduction and invocation of Alan’s concept of ‘IDEA SPACE’ which is central to his personal view of consciousness and magical reality. With his deep profundo voice conjuring imaginary mindscapes of greater and greater abstract complexity with each successive track, reading against a sound-collage by Tim Perkins and David J and Melinda Gebbie providing the voice of The Enochian Angel, this is Alan Moore at his most thought- provoking and mesmerizing.
Just as extraordinary as the performance, is the photograph of Alan taken by Melinda Gebbie that graces the front cover of THE MOON AND SERPENT GRAND EGYPTIAN THEATRE OF MARVELS. Alan describes it in the liner notes:
“Taken during rehearsals, the photograph shows a masked David J holding a mirror up in both hands while I sit behind a wood table on his immediate right. The hand that appears to emerge from a point behind David is not his, nor did it belong to anyone that was visible on the stage when the photograph was taken. The curtain or veil that appears to drift from the hand over the foreground was likewise not visible, although it seems to be lit by the same spotlight that is illuminating the stage area around David and I, ruling out a simple double-exposure. Today, a year after the picture was taken, we do not possess the faintest idea what it means.”
————————-
THE BIRTH CAUL
By Alan Moore, David J, and Tim Perkins
Staged in Newcastle upon Tyne, November 18, 1995
CHARRMMCD22
Subtitled “A shamanism of childhood” , THE BIRTH CAUL is a hypnotic evocation of all the stages of life, regressing back from adulthood into the very womb. The piece was inspired by Alan’s discovery of a carefully wrapped birth caul in his mother’s belongings after her death. The liner notes describe a caul as “the ancient English name for the residual membrane from the amniotic sac that envelops the head of some newborn babies. A traditional belief holds that if the caul is kept (usually by peeling it away onto paper) it can be used as a talisman that will protect the child from death by drowning for a lifetime”. Alan’s introductory note follows:
“The birth caul is a bell-flower membrane blossomed from the amnion that masks the newborn head. Its presence is occasional. Its purpose obscure, a vestment signaling involvement in some silent and unfathomable elite; some sect of Trappist embryos that dream the Absolute beneath these wan, translucent hoods.
“The birth caul is an evocation, both in poetic and ritual sense, of our first landscape and the forces that inform it. Alloying spoken human text with landscaped sound and ritual enactments, it attempts a vortex; winds an inspired dream from the site and date of its unique performance back towards the drowned, pellucid territory of our origins.
“The birth caul, gradually unfolded, is a fragile tatter, a lost map to be restored with these faint tracings, lines as thin and tentative as veins. The flaking membrane charts a monstrous and forgotten continent, each vivid splash of motherhood an archipelago. It is a crumpled and mismanaged postcard from a vanished state, its message in an antique hand not readily deciphered.
“The birth caul documents a personal Atlantis, a preverbal dreamtime, a naive shamanic state rich with abandoned totems; unremembered dance and fire; the florid signatures of mediaeval demons half-apparent through the strange-attractor loops of scribbled chalk upon a playground wall. A dark without a doll.”
Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
View All
Minimize
