music        news/events        bio        contact        recordings Three Arp Songs 1978–1982 voice piano SCORE On Your Back Or On Your Stomach Cook Me a Thunderbolt The Master Nailer In 1982 I collected 32 songs, including these, to be performed individually or in sets as Songbook 1. Most of the very earliest of these were virtually unperformable as originally notated: unrealisticallly fast, vast vocal leaps, obsessive use of articulations and dynamic swivels. As they appear here the most egregious naivities have been cleaned up, but I've tried to maintain the spirit as intended. It was kind of sweet to see what the 25-year-old me was doing to desperately try to appear 'modern' on the page, when my music has always been, at heart, deeply triadic. TEXTS On Your Back Or On Your Stomach The day is flat at times. Try as you may you just can't get up. There is no room to soar. You're forced to remain flat on your back  or on your stomach flat as a sheet of paper in a writing pad.  Cook Me a Thunderbolt Water the moon for me Brush the teeth of my ladders for me. Carry me in your flesh valise onto my bone roof. Cook me a thunderbolt. Clap the earthquakes into a cage for me and pick me a bouquet of lightning. Cut yourself into two and eat one of the halves. Ejaculate yourself into the air haughtier than the fountains of Versailles. Turn yourself roll yourself into a ball Be a ball with archaic laughter rolling around a pill. Stick out all your tongues at roses. Give your tongues to the gentle rhinoce roses Go stew yourself into a stew Toady yourself into a toad Append yourself as a signature under my letter.  The Master Nailer  When I arrive my friends drop everything and dash up to watch me nail. My hammer and I are one. I can only nail nails into a bread crumb But when I nail nails into a bread crumb I nail so well that my friends forget everything and are literally transported transfigured into pure welkin. Only gradually gradually do they reappear do they recover in running azure then in flesh and blood after I've stopped nailing my nails into a bread crumb   Jean Arp (1887–1966) trans. Joachim Neugroschel