GG- Swingin' Glenn

[Josh Randall <joshr@glyff.com>]

Thought you all might be interested in a cameo by Glenn Gould, or by his
unnamed persona, at least, in a work of fiction. The late American writer
Edward Abbey produced great personal history essays and semi-comic novels
with a highly individual & iconoclastic voice. He is frequently
incompletely understood as an "environmental" writer due to his horror and
outrage at ecological degradation. _Good News_ is a novel set in
southwestern USA sometime after society has irretrievably broken down into
local semi-feudal  outposts & general chaos. Sort of a _Mad Max_ scenario.

In one chapter, a scene is set in a barroom with entertainment provided by
a pair of itinerant musicians: "Singin' Bob", a thinly-disguised Bob Dylan
on guitar and vocals, and "Swingin' Glenn", a pianist who can't stand the
honky tonks in which he's obliged to play. He protests, rebels, & plays
some of what he wants to hear:

"...He sits slumped on a rotating stool screwed down so low that his hands,
as he plays, are on a level with his strawberry-colored rhinophymic nose.
In his bloodshot eyes shines the light - not particularly noticable in the
eyes of his friend - of genuine human intelligence. With hints of
exasperation, frustration, smoldering rage. ...Glenn's large, pale hands
descend. Softly. Like memory. They touch, depress the keys; the hammers
strike the taut strings inside the frame. Gently, gently. A wordless song
rises through the stagnant air of the barroom, a strange kind of music -
precise, eternal, remote but intimate - never heard before in Dixie
Dalton's Bar & Grill. The first voice completes its phrase and goes to the
next as a second voice enters, imitating the first. The second is followed
by a third and fourth, each voice singing, in counterpoint, the same clear
melody. There are no vertical chords; the interweaving voices, flowing on,
create a different kind of harmony, like that of braided waters pouring
toward an ultimate, unimaginable sea... ...Swingin' Glenn goes on, head
back and eyes closed.  Above the flying fingers and the music comes another
sound - sound of a man moaning, groaning in ecstasy: Swingin' Glenn sings
along, humming the theme..."

Nobody but, I think. "Rhinophymic?" And hey, where's the chair?!?

regards, Josh Randall

smtp://joshr@glyff.com
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