Without a kevordo, we will raise the curtain on the edge. I. Introduction of the new albums of Tom Waits have been waiting for a long time- since the beginning of last year. It was then that it was announced that two were coming at once,

Without Kevordo

We raise the curtain on the edge.

I. Introduction
New albums Tom Waits We waited a long time ago- since the beginning of last year. It was then that it was announced that two, or even three albums were coming at once. And so it happened – in the first decade of May, two new works were published (Alice and Blood Money) and one collection of old (1973-1980) songs. We will leave the collection as long as we have long and are well known to everyone who knows and loves the main outsider of world pop music; We will deal with new discs. As a matter of fact, they cannot be called new ones, because (we will reveal the secret) both ALICE and Blood Money are rewritten songs to the performances of the famous theater director Robert Wilson. Their cooperation with Waits has been going on for a long time-back in 1990, their joint performance based on the play by William Burrose 'Black Horseman' was staged on the stage of the Hamburg Talia Theater and was a great success, and the album in 1993 with a recording of songs From this performance, it was almost more successful than the production.
II. Wilson
Alice became the second joint work of Wilson and Waits – in the same Theater Talia. The premiere of the play took place in December 1992.
Here it is necessary to make some retreat regarding the director of Wilson. In the modern theater, it is a super -circular value, despite the fact that it will not rest on the laurels and releases up to 14 performances a year in different countries of the world. He himself says like this: It is enough to see one of my performance, even five minutes from it to understand my style. In any case, I strive for this.. Of course, this phrase does not explain anything, quickly, intrigues. But here is another quote from his recent Moskvo interview: I asked my sister: if you did not know who put this performance, you could imagine what your brother did? Of course, Bob, she said, because everything is so slow there!. He strives for the actors – and Wilson often has to work, as they say, “from the wheels”, with actors, about whom he has no idea – they realized that a person can think with his body. Listen to the body and speak with the body – these are the original from which I make the theater. Wilson puts shows for the Galerie Lafayette store, for Armani's home, because he considers this a serious challenge as a director, because Perhaps the most difficult in the theater is just to walk along the stage.. And to finish with Wilson, we give another quote: I am never trying to interpret anything. I never fix any meanings. This is not my task. The performance is finally manifested only in the viewer’s head. I give the viewer only acoustic and visual material for independent work of his own emotions.. The end of the quote.
III. Alice Wilson and Dodzhson
As a matter of fact, with this strange man, Weses made his Alice.Or Wilson made his Alice with this strange WATS. In any case, the performance turned out to be unusual.
Wilson: . I made a performance from two acts inspired by two books by Carollah about Alice. The first act unfolds in a room in an artificially created interior with natural objects. The second is, on the contrary, in a natural environment, with artificial objects. The whole play was framed by Persona Charles Dodjson himself , Mathematics, writer and lover of photographing little girls. One of them was Alisa Liddell, for whom he came up with the story of Alice in the Wonderland. Dodgson, he is a white rabbit, he is a white knight, leads Alice through the whole play. It begins. The attempts of Dodgecon to photograph Alice, and trying to run away from him, she falls into the country of wonderful. In the fourth scene, we see Dodzhson alone, sleeping. In the eleventh stage, we see Alisa Liddel, already grown up, she drinks. At the end of each act ( The seventh and fourteenth scenes) are the scenes of the court, as a result of which Alice first, then Dodgson is guilty of their relationship .
Katie Roifi wrote in The Guardian of October 29 last year: “In the preface to the second part of the treatise Curiosa Mathematica, Dodzhson wrote that thoughts about mathematics help to turn away from the mind from the mind Wicked thoughts tormenting the imagination of their hated presence. Strongly said for a book about trigonometry. He switched his passion to the crazy and beautiful world of the country invented by him; He was saved from his imagination, inflamed and dangerous, from the real world. It was this point of view on the addictions of mathematics and writer, who, among other things, by the spiritual dignity, Wilson took the reference point for his performance. And Tom Waits as no one more suitable for no one more suitable for creating a musical framing Alice.
IV. Alice and Waits
Generally speaking, Alice did not attract the same widespread attention as the Black Horseman. Maybe because of a fairly banal plot, maybe because of more than non-banal embodiment, perhaps due to the fact that the realities of the performance were unimportant and uninteresting in the German audience. Waits for a long time did not release the material of Alice; Only a few amateur records of the performance walked on the hands of the fans – so Alice remained for a wide generality mystery and legend. The situation changed in 1999, when a butleg called on the European market appeared Alice, The Original Demos. The source of these studio records is unknown – they say they were stolen from the Wayts car. The inscription on the cover stated that the album was released by Emi Holland, which, of course, did not correspond to reality. A few months later, the second option of Butleg was released on the unknown Label PMS Canada, which was simply called ALICE and differed from the European two additional tracks.
For fans of Tom, the appearance of these discs was an event of almost more significant than the Mule Varis album in the same year.Recalls were made, recall, in 1992 – that is, exactly between the release of the soundtrack for the film Jima Jarmusha Night on Earth and the studio work of Bone Machine, and in music (and the albums included, in addition to songs, a certain number of not enthusiastic instrumental tracks) were heard echoes of both the first and second work. Songs for Alice, written by Waits (like all the last works) together with his wife, Kathleen Brennan, were full of dreams and sadness, madness and humility – in full accordance with the concept of the performance. However, these were boots – and therefore, to the widest masses (which are much wider than the reference circle of the Waith fans) they never reached.
V. Alice and Vysotsky
There is time to make one more retreat and recall that one sound Alice has already been. And moreover, that the story of Wilson/Waits is almost one in one similar to the history of Alice’s double album in Wonderland, released by the company Melody in the distant 1974. The album, which until the beginning of the 90s was frantic: according to unofficial information, the circulation was printed almost every year. The album, to which he wrote – and partly sang – Vladimir Vysotsky.
The wonderful, funny, paradoxical Carroll Alice is carefully read not only by children, adults and literary critics, but also serious scientists: mathematicians, physicists, linguists. In the academic publication, comments and notes occupy almost more space than the text itself. It, they say, is hidden by many times ahead of ideas and hypotheses, satirical hints of modern author’s political realities, logical tasks and riddles.
Director Oleg Gerasimov I came up with this staging as a sound performance for children: it does not interfere with all the above Alice which for decades to be one of the most beloved children's books! Having accepted the Carroll rules of the game, he introduced into the text of the staging based on the classical translation of N.M. Demurova, modern and purely domestic fantasms like The ax with which Peter chopped the window to Europe, turmatic, steering products, attacks of Grisli, the famous writer on fences. Of course, the main success of this work was the participation in Vysotsky’s entry. He composed melodies, wrote songs, performed several roles and became unspoken, but, perhaps, the main character of the fairy tale – and the reason that the plate almost lay on the shelf, and at the same time its savior.
It is clear that at that time the name itself Vysotsky It was a buzz. But on Alice, he managed to step over his own bar, work in the range from the children's absurd song (I miss the terribly, I'm just without strength) to the hard social satire (No, no, the people have an insignificant role: to fall to their knees, what is the problem?) and deep philosophical lyrics (Suddenly there will be an abyss, and you need a jump – do you crush right away, will you boldly jump?), at times amazingly rafting together bothA lot of unclear in a strange country, you can get confused and get lost. Even goosebumps run on the back, if you imagine what can happen.). And the song of the tower watch was the same masterpiece – the same:
Let's raise the curtain on the edge,
Such an old, heavy backstage.
This is what time was before
So flat – take a look, Alice.
Shortly before the discharge of the record, at four in the morning, the editors of Alice Evgeny Lozinskaya I woke the call of the then director of the All -Union Studio of the Frame Boris Vladimir. Boris Davydovich, the smartest and intelligent person, unlike most of the then cultural bosses, was a man in his place. The day before, he visited the board of the Ministry of Culture, where the head of the children's music theater, Natalya Satz, angrily urged to protect our children from Vysotsky. Other performances were also sustained in the same spirit.
What to do in this situation, Vladimir did not say. Lozinskaya called Vysotsky at her own peril and risk. He reassured her as he could, and he rushed to the airport to intercept the flying to Paris Bella Akhmadulin. The result of this crazy night was the appearance of an interview with Akhmadulina in the New Year's issue of Litgazeta, in which she congratulated everyone on the New Year and. An excellent gift, a wonderful plate Alice in Wonderland! If you recall what power at that time had a printed word, it immediately becomes clear that the thunderstorm was in this way allotted and the plate went out within the due date.
Vladimirsky suffered a heart attack. Lozinskaya was not fired – then; This happened several years later, after the recording of another cult plate – Juno and Avos. But this is a completely different story.
Alice was happy to listen to children and adults; Everyone found something in her. Adults instantly pulled out the disk on quotes, correlating with the realities even those fragments that, it would seem, had nothing to do with the Soviet reality – so, for example, the “song about plans” was perceived by caustic caricature for a planned economy!
Now Alice has lost its spicy lining and again has become just a children's fairy tale (though almost forgotten-and not least because the CD-interpretation for some reason was without almost the ideal design of the artist Igor Lemeshev created for the vinyl record). This metamorphosis was painless for her – as is supposed to be a real work of art.
VI. Tom Waits. Alice. 2002
During the time since the performance of the performance, a lot of water flowed. Waits broke up with Major Libel, noting this event by release of the Beautiful Maladies collection, switched to the new Anti label, Inc., released a new album, which was like the old ones (but this is no less beautiful), and worked again with Wilson on the play Wojutzek .
But now – it happened! Almost eighty -minute Butleg turned into a full -fledged album.It turned out to be noticeably shorter, and the songs were re-recorded, but it seems that they only benefited from this. And the design of the disc, almost expressionistic, with a great photo session, is beyond praise.
In fact, only with the release of this album did it become clear that Waits and Brennan had created a cycle of love songs. About love impossible, unthinkable, but existing and therefore insanely painful. That is why Alice is so lyrical, why the usual Waitsian half-circus, half-yard music was taken by completely different sources of inspiration – old waltzes, jazz ballads, European folklore. Instrumental musicians (one of the sons of the great jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, cellist Matthew Brubeck, ex-bassist Canned Heat Larry Taylor, free jazz master, drummer Gino Robert and ex-drummer The Police Stuart Copeland) is very unusual: the so-called Stroh violin, a Romanian instrument – a hybrid of a violin and a hunting horn, marimba, wind instruments and the almost complete absence of a guitar.
Waits: In the seventies, a lot of my songs literally drowned in string arrangements, and I was pretty tired of it. So for the record, I put together a kind of strange, schematic, skeleton-like chamber orchestra, which only hints at the possibility of all the stringed wealth, but does not give it out and avoids the strings platitudes.
The very first, title track is a vague ballad, surprisingly reminiscent of Waits' works of the 70s, with a solemn text. It's almost like a suicide note:
The thread that keeps me here
tied around a pole
and your secret kiss
crazy and blissful
and I will think about him
in the darkness of my grave
let me go by the will of the waves
i get lost in them
but what a fool I am
slide on your name
write it out on ice
Alice name
The only Alice
(translated by Artem Lipatov)
A monologue of either a drowned man or a ghost.
The madness continues – in the song, of course, the Hatter, obsessive tango We're All Mad Here:
hang me in a bottle here and there
let the crows only return my hat
where the baby roars
it's worth listening to the dead
we are all not
sane
(translated by Maxim Nemtsov)
What are these children's horror stories? A whirlpool into which it sucks a restless soul? Spirit dance? Both that, and another, and the third, and it is a lot of that still. It makes no sense to continue talking about the songs – they need to be listened to; we only note the magnificent sketch from nature Reeperbahn – a song about the famous Hamburg street of vice, surprisingly fitting into the story of Alice and Dodgson:
if you washed away the legacy in the toilet
and only common sense remains
if you are not picky, with whom to make friends
and what mattress to lay under yourself
then behind every door, behind every window
even though they ate apples – full of cores
and the seed will rise through any threshing floor
especially if it's Reeperbahn
especially if it's Reeperbahn
(translated by Maxim Nemtsov)
Such simple, understandable and sad melodies have not been heard from Waits since Blue Valentine– but here they are much more refined. Alice is not a return to the past, it is a bold and confident step to where there is neither time nor place, where destruction and loneliness, heartache and darkness of oblivion rule. As a matter of fact, Waits has a lot of songs about this – but it was on Alice that he managed to get close to this place and even step over its borders.
Waits himself has this to say about the disc: Alisa is adult songs for children, or children's songs for adults. . this is an odyssey into the logic of dreams and nonsense. He calls his wife and co-author Kathleen his Alice – it seems that their romance turned out to be happier than the fate of the heroes of the play and this disc.
But in order to know about happiness, in order to be able to experience it, one must imagine its opposite. Of course, this album is not a visual guide to sorrows and troubles: happiness can be sick, distorted, even, at first glance, unnatural, but this will not stop it from being happiness. Actually, Alice is just about that. Like any real work of art.
VII. Goodbye
Drawing conclusions is not a task for the author of this text. Once upon a time, Carroll's book entered his life – and fascinated him. Then Alice Vysotsky burst in, delighting and confusing the soul. Then – a wonderful English adaptation that went unnoticed on one of our TV channels in the early 90s. Then – clip of Tom Petty Don't Come Around Here No More, the pictorial series of which is built on textbook illustrations for the first English edition. Now here's Tom Waits.
The painting is not finished. Each of the interpreters brings something of their own into it, and the book takes on more and more new colors. Each of them manages to catch another reflection of the author's thought, to catch his feeling, to see the reflection in the mirror. We will never know everything anyway. And you don't need to.
Because the attempt is more important than the result. And Alice Waits is proof of that.