The mistery of the balances is there.
The Masonic secret lies in there.
The church forbids its angels entry there.
The Gypsies camp there/Blood is exchanged there.
Mothers weep there/It is night there.
30 and some number is 62/And that number with 10 is 42.
That number translates now to then./That number is the answer.
In the way the numbers answer.

That simple notion, a coincidence amongst coincidences is all one needs to know.

(Perfect Lives, Robert Ashley)

... "one of America's greatest XX-century poems"...

(...)

Robert Ashley's voice appeared on stage for the first time ever in 1964. An opera singer had asked Morton Feldman to compose a pièce for him but Morton asked Robert if he wanted to write it. And Robert "jumped on the occasion" proposed by Feldman, and he wrote a composition knowing pretty well that the singer would never perform it as devised. 

In fact it was a feverish composition in full noise-friendly pump and electro-vocal circumstances called The Wolfman: a hard-core, pre-industrial "tune" that Feldman's acquaintaince (the opera singer) quite understandably refused to sing. So Robert had to - well, let's say - "sing it". But it was a lovely one-syllable rigmarole and, to give you an idea, I have no idea of which syllable it consisted of. Bob assures that he did not emit any vocal sound at a level higher than a normal conversation, but if I listen to The Wolfman it sounds as if five Huns are screaming right into my ears, thanks to Reverend Larsen and its associated razzamatazz.

(...)
 

Published on BlowUp magazine, #236, Jan. 2018