La
Pataphysique et Les Sans Culottes
Les Sans Culottes, as everyone knows, take their name from a band of sartorially
deprived ultraleftist citoyens of the French Revolution (1789); as keyboardist
Beau suggests, the men of this group preferred the more functional pantalon
to the fashionable but prissy culottes, or knee-breeches, as worn by the aristocracy.
In modern parlance, however, the literal meaning of their name is perhaps best
translated as "Without Underwear." In terms of the equally fashionable
but ridiculous concept of linear time, almost exactly between these two groups
lay Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), modern discoverer of the "science of pataphysics."
Resolutely apolitical, one might say that Jarry was sans pantalons ("without
trousers"), since he wore knee-breeches almost exclusively, which were
by then completely unfashionable, but which allowed for greater mobility of
the legs, Jarry being an early champion of the recently invented bicycle as
the most modern and efficient mode of vehicular transportation.
Pataphysics was Jarry’s way of poking fun at what he saw as the "plagiarism"
of ancient myth and philosophy by modern scientists and physicists. He saw all
the "new" mathematical (i.e. non-Euclidean) and astrophysical explanations
for the cosmos only as reiterations, now in "modern" terms, of concepts
that had been known for thousands of years, particularly to the ancient Greeks.
For Jarry, the ideas of "the Enlightenment" and "the Scientific
Revolution" were nothing but shams perpetrated upon an unsuspecting public
by philosophers and mathematicians who did not know their "universal history."
His expressed interest in such anachronism is reflected in the music of Les
Sans Culottes: "a music from yesterday, for tomorrow, stopping only today
for a moment (and perhaps, a drink?) before it is away once again." But
do not be misled: Les Sans Culottes are très Now, and très, très
Wow.
One might say that Jarry was something of a devotee of Calliope, leader of the
ancient Greek Muses, the nine sister goddesses who were the daughters of Zeus
and Mnemosyne; they were the patronesses of poets (who were originally musicians
as well) and later of all the "arts and sciences." Calliope herself
was the Muse of epic poetry, and in the 19th century she lent her name to a
steam-whistle organ with a loud, shrill sound audible miles away, used to attract
attention for circuses and fairs. A calliope’s tones carried four miles
against a breeze, and produced a sound which, even with everything working properly,
could best be described as wobbly. From all indications, this was one of Jarry’s
favorite kinds of music.
Why the interest in wobbly? One might think that this may have had something
to do with Jarry’s typically French predilection for drink, and his personal
campaign against what he referred to as aquatisme, or "water dependence,"
a malady whose sufferers today far outnumber alcoholics, the sadly ubuiquitous
"water bottle" being a far-too-common and pitiful sight. While this
may certainly have been part of the reason, it had much more to do with the
distinct and yet largely imperceptible wobble of the Earth on its axis as it
rolls through space, a wobble which has a period of some 26000 years, caused
by the slight tilt of the Earth’s axis at 23.5 degrees to the vertical,
and which was not unknown to the ancients. As a biblical prophet once wrote
(6th century BCE): "The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and
shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy
upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again."(Isaiah 24:20) "Hic;
wheeee!, said Earth, Won’t shumbody help me up?"(Pseudo-Isaiah 24/7)
That must have been some très formidable ether that Earth was swimming
in, long before Prohibition, and well before physicists like Einstein "proved"
that this ether "does not exist." But as Nietzsche wrote in his Twilight
of the Gods, section 5, "The Problem of Socrates": "What must
first be proved is worth little."
This makes Jarry something of a follower of a contemporary of Isaiah, the ancient
Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who professed to hear the "music of the heavens"
as manifest in the "harmony of the spheres," the planets and stars
following their own tune in the "synchronized swimming" of a gigantic
"water ballet" in the ether of outer space. Jarry’s collaborations
with French composer Claude Terrasse exhibit characteristics of such a "heavenly
music," as did that of another of Jarry’s contemporaries, Erik Satie.
The music of Les Sans Culottes, while certainly "up to date," is no
less heavenly, no less "out of this world," and their performances
have been known to transport those in attendance to the "outer limits"
of the celestial sphere, to the far reaches of the cosmos, the collective luminescence
of the band reflecting for some the light of the Empyrean.
The relatively sober Les Sans Culottes, however, as self-described "Franco-phoneys,"
are only giving the French a taste of their own merdecin. They copied our Revolution,
our democracy (itself borrowed from the Greeks), the colors of our drapeau,
and even tried to entice our Ben Franklin away with their wine, women, and song.
This before they turned their aquiline noses up at Americans, forming an entire
Ministry to keep English words (and particularly "Americanisms") from
"corrupting" their language, itself almost entirely derived from the
Latin. Les Sans Culottes, as one will note, speak a delicious brand of "Pig-French,"
a somewhat redundant term borrowed from a similarly corrupt version of the original
Romantic language, as practiced primarily by American schoolchildren. As Jarry
said of his most famous creation, the theatrical figure Ubu, a disgusting character
of enormous appetites, "and that is why Ubu speaks French."
Those who know their pataphysics, or their ancient Greek philosophy, know that
while he was in prison at the end of his life, the last of the "pre-Platonic"
philosophers, Socrates, was visited by a daimon that appeared to him, sitting
on the lobe of his ear, who said, "Socrates, practice music…common,
popular music." Hardly common, but soon to be immensely popular, the celestial
music of Les Sans Culottes is not to be missed.
88 constellations - 88 keys on the piano. Coincidence? Just ask Beau Pantalons…
(signed),
Dr. Faustroll, Directeur
Los Angeles Research Institute for High Pataphysical Studies
Our Motto: "Fac Saltum Volantem"