music        news/events        bio        contact        recordings Hog-tied and Bled Dry 1996 mezzo-soprano 2 pan-pipes alto saxophone tenor saxophone 3 synthesizers marimba electric guitar electric bass guitar duration 8' SCORE TEXT The Scapegoat A scapegoat is what we need. What is this scapegoat to be? Will it be iridescent, feathered? A grunt on the hoof? Will it be flesh and knowledge? Whatever the squealing thing is which must be hogtied and bled dry and smoked, let it come now. For we do most desperately need a scapegoat. The Jew would do; but he is used up. The nigger won't do. He has no goat. The queer is nearly  perfect, but too dispersed; and there aren't enough. Women? No. Too many to blame; and anyway many of them are Us. We need a goat that will fit the flame of our daily roast more neatly. And if we do not find this scapegoat soon we shall go insane. And if we go insane, again, we'll slit each other, from here to here, and hallucinate spiders of blood in our beer; and that wouldn't do. Besides, that's the scapegoat's fate. We must take the intensity of the hate we feel as proof of God's will; and cooperate. Please do not donate your sacred cow. We must get one thing straight: this is no charity; this is the slaughter of fear. We must root out from our minds these last two decades of polarization, and sexual violence, and political corruption, and national self-doubt, and you name it, pal. I can see it now. A scapegoat whose wounds the bayonet fits like a tongue does a mouth. Who screams in a gibberish language. Like, say. Arabic, Atheist, Art. We must name the fiend Fiend and then root the fiend out. Or the boat that's been rocked might sink. One more assassination might do it. One more rape. Name your Top Ten, and from these a panel will choose. The pornographer. The pederast. The fetus. The nude. Who is this scapegoat to be? Maybe you? Spread your legs. Wider. Bend over. Moo.  Stan Rice (b.1942)