Dateline: 19, June 2009 Anno Domini
This transmission originates from astride a donkey as dictated to my humble man-servant and confidant Chester von Lhotse (lineage unconfirmed), during an annual trek across the southern tip of Sinai to collect Porites negrosensis corals from the Red Sea’s Eilat Reef (medical reasons...if you must know...but you should ask Mrs. Sgt. Gary Flowers [ret.] how much she likes my skin diving, if you catch my drift).
I just had to get out of town ya’ll. Consider this my Spring Break, my Panama City or Myrtle Beach, just with less airbrushing and more gypsies (but surprisingly enough, roughly the equivalent amount of wet t-shirt contests). Chester von Lhotse and I have been recreating here since spending time on a recruiting mission in the area while enlisted with the Dutch Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indische Leger in an effort to revive those once great mercenary forces who’s ranks had never quite recovered from the bloody victories of the Aceh War (hence my distrust of all Tiger related balms). We spent countless hours combing these barren hell-scapes searching for recruits willing to throw down their lives for the glory of the LowLands, usually with limited results, generally with genital chaffing, and always with the plaintive tones of some local shepardess’ flute accompanying our sojourn. We fell in love with the rusted red mountain crags casting their mile long shadows across the brittled silence of the desert plateau. We became intimate with every Bedouin bazaar, every gypsy festival, and every pilgrim tent city (and no, I don’t know where the “burning bush” was...quit asking already) along the way. We forged a deep understanding and appreciation of what constitutes survival versus what it means to just, “get by”.
It all makes me a little home-sick.
Now, this might be the shwarma talking(Chester makes the darndest tzatziki sauce, I mean, we are nowhere near yogurt, much less refrigeration of any kind, and he won’t tell me what the base of his sauce is, but boy is it tasty), but something about this place always reminds me of dem Noot boyz. Thriving in the desert as it were, not unlike the fabled Tamarix mannifera tree which in biblical times was the source of the resinous “manna from heaven” (it’s really just sap...people in biblical times were simple and easily impressed), or the Bedus folk, emerging from their houses of hair just long enough to settle a blood feud and snack upon a date palm. Survival steez.
Noot d’ Noot scan a hostile horizon looking for the day’s kill upon which they will dine. By what victim will this evenings supper be hast?
The musical landscape is every bit as antagonistic as the desert floor upon which my very donkey has rendered his steaming dung. Very little can be expected to flourish amid the sun baked chalk of modern music, and how could it? What is left to do? Where can I find even a luke warm Taybeh Beer Golden in this god forsaken wasteland? Why wouldn’t a rag-tag assemblage of drug addled freaks be the new rock-n-roll construct? Who else you got?
I have laid down with Noot d’ Noot on many an occasion, biblically and otherwise, and I feel I have been granted privileged access into the brain-trust (and I use that term lightly) of this cult. But even with my exposure (again...biblical and otherwise) to the inner Noot sanctum, I dare not glean any rational explanation for their guiding philosophies, credos, doctrines, or values, lest my medulla oblongata liquify and slide down my spinal column into a gelatinous goop on the inner cheeks of my sweet, sweet ass. Ideologically, this group has taken two opposite maxims, and made them into one glorious lifestyle that I would not wish upon my worst enemy (I’m looking at you Ed...).
One the one hand, you have the heuristic maxim of advised economy and simplicity; entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. Okham’s razor basically, the anti-spiritual reductionist tenet which advises us to cut the proverbial shit. The d’ Noots routinely do just that, crystallizing the Acid Test tomfoolery of Fifty Foot Hose with the conga fueled sex funk of Jungle Boogie’s D.C. go-go rhythms, extracting the Frafra talking drum ensembles from Northeastern Ghana and marrying them with vaudevillian humor of Manual Training High School twice-over dropout Pat Cooper, or synthesizing the infamous 1978 Grandmaster Caz versus Afrika Bambaataa battle at the Bronx Police Athletic League with the Teutonic progression-from-aggression-to-communication that characterized Gila’s “Free Electric Sound” album. They are currently in a tapestry covered, back light lit, ganja hazed den doing all that, cutting the shit.
But then on the other hand, the Pataphysic side of the Noots have never meet a sound they didn’t like, or rather, couldn’t wrestle into submission until it became a sound they liked. It was the Fireking who has been heard quoting, muttering really, Karl Menger’s Law Against Miserliness; “it is vain to do with fewer what requires more”. Of course, he was saying it in Latin, and it might not have been in reference to music, but to “the ladies”, it was late at night, so I can’t be certain. The point though is that if music is a collection of organized sounds, why aren’t all organized sounds music? Or are they? Or did I just blow your mind? I don’t know, I’m just a retired veteran (hero really) on the back of a jackass traipsing across the blessed desert. Bimbi G. claims that a true artist can only perform aleatory music, and that the randomness of chance is just as important as the notation of melody. Sounds fine, but then how do you justify that with Skins Malones’ assertion that only via tonal mystic minimalism (usually smoothed out on an Estonian Orthodox tip) can one transcend mere cacophony? Confusing right? Then please don’t make me bring up Circuit Diva’s Voltaire tattoo...no the one next to the “F.T.W”, the one that says, “All styles are good except the tiresome kind”.
Do you see what I’m saying here? I’m saying, it’s no use saying anything about Noot d’ Noot, much less to them. They don’t care, or didn’t care, because they are already gone. They are but a multi-headed Naga, each with it’s own diabolical fangs poised to devourer another helpless square, foolish enough to tempt entry into the Temple of Boogie. Who really knows to what bounds these malefactors will go in order to keep the party going, and worse yet, what might they do if you should stand between them and the last dance of the night. Having this much fun is no joke to these people, and lest you think I’m kidding, check the Atlanta Journal-Constitution next Sunday morning, towards the back of the Metro section...you’ll see their handiwork.
Look, it’s hot here, and the amount of dairy I’ve been ingesting multiplied by the oppressive roar of the sun overhead equals one thing. And unfortunately dear reader, that “thing” rhymes with onomatopoeia, but what it smells like rhymes with rotting hobo corpse, so I need to find the nearest Arabian jujube to squat behind post haste. So in closing, I want you take credence to these words I’ve said this day, and I want you understand one important notion in regards to Noot d’ Noot; you can try to follow in their wake, you can track their stink (and what a magnificent stink they spread), but realize that they themselves are on no path at all, no road is leading them to any conclusion, they tread where there is no path and leave a kaleidoscopic trail of their own divinations behind. If you choose to journey with them, bring a change of clothes.
Not to belabor the point, but oh lord, I hope Lhotse packed extra Wet Ones.
Keep ‘er vertical,
Sgt. Gary Flowers (ret.)
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