Some Mahler

Victor Shortt (With Three Ts)  Part III:

"Some Mahler"

Written, performed, edited by Charlie Price

Mahler's 5th (excerpts)- performed by Klaus Makela and the Concertgebouw Orchestra at the BBC Proms 

Content Warning:

Infrequent Strong Lanuguage

Transcript

III: Concert/A Prom/Some Mahler

VICTOR sits in the auditorium watching a concert. It is the Adagietto of Mahler’s 5th, conducted by a young, blonde Norwegian.

VICTOR: They’re getting younger and younger these bloody conductors/when I get home I’m going to google this young blonde bastard/I hope to God he’s not in his twenties/thirty three at least/I’m so jealous/however old he is, I doubt he’s spent twenty years suffering, like the rest of us/biting our tongues and biding our time working with…idiots/they always find a way of rubbing it in your face don’t they/the talented/the good-looking/the Oxbridge-educated/those at the top of their game/always find a way of rubbing it in your face/my face is rubbed fucking raw/fucking raw/stop it Victor/relax/stop torturing yourself/he’s far older than you, this conductor conducting the orchestra/he’s probably in his forties/he’s probably forty-five/people don’t age like they used/faces remain fresh and boyish/he’s a baby-faced forty-five year old/well, forty-two/he’s a baby-faced forty-two year old/very well preserved/artificially preserved by expert care/lotions/selectively curated diets/expensive personal trainers/concentrate on Mahler/oh, yes/lovely/yes/m-hm/yes/very nice/very moving/very…/I have to say I’m not feeling too well/I feel/digestively unwell/it’s definitely abdominal/this…gripe I’m experiencing/an abdominal gripe/its moving lower/it’s voyaging further south/the sensations are hard to describe but/yes/that’s definitely going to come out as/diarrhoea/loose not liquid/I’m not enjoying myself/I’m having a terrible time actually/oh, god/I feel awful/I can’t stand these beardless baby-faced conductors/shiny forty-five year old freaks of nature who look nineteen/look at the swing of those arms/that flowing hair/oh, fuck it, he’s not forty-two/he’s probably thirty one, if that/I hope to god he’s not twenty-eight/I will really feel so low later, and tomorrow, if I look up this baby-face and find that he’s not thirty/no-one should be at the top of their game, on a podium like this, before thirty/they always have to rub it in your face, don’t they/the prodigies/the high-achievers, the high-flyers/the precocious/when I was developing, there was nothing I wanted more, nothing in the whole world I was more desperate to possess, than hairy armpits/hairy bushy black-haired low-hanging manly gorilla armpits/it was just my luck/even when I was nineteen I was pink as a nine-year old under there/under my arms/I really don’t feel well/but…but they always rub it in your face/the hairy-pitted/standing around in changing rooms after games practice/airing their offal/vaunting their pits/stretching needlessly/some eternal scratch necessarily plaguing the backs of their necks so they could scratch it, endlessly, rubbing their hairy pits in my beardless baby-face/not literally/well, once literally/but it was a woman that did that/her pits were, indeed, emasculatingly hairy/I really don’t feel well/It’s a doom-laden feeling/a feeling like the world, literally the world, is going to fall out of my arse/be given birth out of my own arse/like all the castor oil on the globe has been unknowingly ingested/I think I can hold those dogs back/as in/I think I can hold those dogs…up/stop them going down/those downward dogs/it requires effort/internal effort/it really is low now/that feeling/it’s in my intestines/I don’t know what’s going on/maybe it’s all the coffee I drink/some diuretic vengeance/but I don’t drink that much coffee/not really/maybe it was the croque-monsieur/how could all that cheese, and pig, and thick white bread result in anything but constipation/I am not constipated/yet there is a/there is a feeling of/mass/compaction/impaction/maybe I’m suffering from both diarrhoea and constipation/maybe there’s a hard, solid stool behind the long dribble of liquid, melted stool/this eventuality is not without precedent in my own life/except in that instance, the hardened, stubborn stool came first and the diarrhoea was actually trapped behind… trails off

Return to A section, modulation back to F major occurs here _________

O Jesus/that’s the moment/the A underneath the C/getting that harp started/don’t get him started/there’s no going back now/what a return/like a sigh deeper than hell/an angel, on high, pulled down to earth by something/something crying out for help/

I wonder how hairy this guy’s pits are/he was probably…orangutangal by thirteen/yet how does that square with his baby-face?/I really love this bit/feels more painful than usual/a different sort of painful, a less pleasurable, less contained or…mastered sort/I see it for what it is/this beautiful charade/when one is unwell one sees everything beautiful for what it is/I don’t want to be here anymore/I want to lock myself in a cubicle, a cubicle a hundred miles from anywhere/a cubical in a room where no-one comes in/where there are no footsteps or voices/I want to sit, huddled, over the toilet bowl and be ill/I am ill/I must be/the music shows me how unwell I am/it is beautiful and I am not/the people making it are beautiful and I am not/the instruments are beautiful and I am not/the conductor, this baby-faced glistening bastard is beautiful and I am not/I got a splinter in my finger this morning/tip of my ring-finger, right side/just under the nail/it smarts/woke up, ran downstairs, clutching the banister/splinter/miniscule wound, not even any blood/agony/I was in a good mood/then I was in hell/just like that/one to the other/my therapist says I should eat something, something nutritious/a banana or a bowl of cereal with sliced apple/ as soon as I come to consciousness/increases serotonin/it’s all too much/almost too much/I look perfectly composed from the outside/at least, I think I do/perhaps I look mad/ill/be in no doubt, I am suffering/here/more than the Prommers/they’re standing up/but I’m sitting down, suffering/I had enemies/I had enemies before/before they rubbed my face in it/

I remember that snare drum, near the beginning of the first movement/first time I ever heard this symphony live/like a universal rattle/this hiss of every snake combined/my cousin is annoyingly good at the trombone/did the music make me think of that?/does it make me think of the fact that I don’t feel well, in my bowels/does it make me think of arm-pits/my armpits/his armpits/Gareth’s armpits/Bianca’s armpits/Mahler’s armpits/my therapist’s armpits/my friend, Raymond French-MacCabe’s armpits/I say friend/I can’t wait to get out of here/I’m having a terrible time…

Tutti diminuendo