Davis - Preliminary Report

Not the language of flurry and ease. Not the song of the defrocked vigilante. Not the hemmed and attenuated. The truculent minnesinger. But the harried flight of the marauding crow. Missile sprung from the desert. Catapulted vixen.

Acrid linguist. Cartwheeling Taoist. Its rumored they could fly, watch you eating your rice your ineffectual chopsticking and long-grained beard hover above you, disembodied, then return before dawn. That they were not given to gossip was a godsend. But what about this sputtering saxophone? How to explain that to the moderate drinkers gathered seatward this evening? Ladies and gentlemen, the modern attention requires disjunctiveness, ballistics, contortions. Requires that we drive this tractor-trailer filled with tortured geese through the Holland Tunnels of your ears.

Forgive us, we can neither fly nor cartwheel effectively. Therefore we have chosen the screams of wounded animals as our theme. That there will be more wounded requiring more such compositions is a given. That ticket prices will reflect this trend. That you should use the exits positioned at the foot of the stage and not burst unannounced through the corrugated steel. The management would like to remind you that one hails a taxi, one does not ambush, derail, or otherwise interfere with or impede such commuter-oriented vehicles.

They are a privilege and not a right. If the perpetrator does not come forward, we will remain in our seats until we have exhausted the abuses we have planned for the various instruments. That you might wish to avoid this. That if the severed hand on the apron is any indication. That announcements from the stage shall be random and without merit. That our purchase on reality seems tenuous.

Please welcome if you will. You may choose not to welcome, of course, but the performance will occur regardless.