Tubular Village Bells, a Divine Invasion Game for n-players

public domain image from zorger.com

score and instructions for play: Just ring any and every bell you have my brothers and sisters. Bells apart, bells together, no matter the weather, whatever, bring them bells! Ring them bells! We beseech you, give us a ring and sing on this ALife Bells experiment.

Read on for more context for a December 18^th performance of "Tubular Village Bells," rumored to become, along with "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy" (perhaps the first nano-jingle for itself in self-referential history), a lo-fi doubleB-side flexidesk by an appropriately named upstart band from South Florida dubbed "Flexxehoch", in the form of a set of instructions, a script and score, distilled from as-of-yet written liner notes and spliced with selections from Philip K. Dick's The Divine Invasion. When you notice the repetitious ringing in bold (Ding Dong!) please do not withhold: fill in the gaps between each italicized PKD ribotype (cf Doyle, Wetwares 2003) with your own visions and descriptions and instructions. You are the composer, the performer, and the listener. In other words, where and when you see and hear Ding Dong!...you, too, must ring the bell and cast your spell. Hells bells, for that matter, you can add lines italic, as well. Lines from Poe's “The Bells” would be swell (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/medny/venturi-poebells.html):

"But you play tricks. You always play tricks. I'd like to hear the bells, but I don't want to dance. I'd like to watch the dancing, though."

Ding Dong! Tubular village bells will rock the bells--this seance will resurrect the holy spirits of Saint Ginsberg and Eddie Ally Poe. The bells, the bells, the bells!

Causality had been reversed; he had done what Zina could do: make time run backward. He laughed in delight. And heard the sound of bells.

Ding Dong! These bells are not just to be heard--rendered as information, they are subject to iteration and dislocation, a swarm of sonic ribotypes prone to self-organization.

Emmanuel said, "What do the bells mean? Bells ringing far off."

"When you hear the distant bells it means that the Saoshyant is present."

"The Saviour," Emmanuel said. "Who is the Saviour, Elias?"

"It must be yourself," Elias said.

"Sometimes I despair of remembering."

Ding Dong! Sounding off on the unforgettable memory of the future, these bells are a divine invasion on our alleged immunity.

He could still hear the bells, very far off, ringing slowly, blown, he knew, by the desert wind. It was the desert itself speaking to him. The desert, by means of the bells, was trying to remind him. To Elias he said, "Who am I?"

Ding Dong! A school bell rings? Drop that nog, listen to this .ogg http://ia341341.us.archive.org/3/items/Allen_Ginsberg_Class_part_2_June_1981_81P114/Allen_Ginsberg_Class_part_2_June_1981_81P114.ogg,

where St. Ginsberg drops pure rhythm science--tapping out the spondees and the trochees on the chalkboard "da da da da da da da" and reminding us that you don't have to try" to ring the bells. Keeping time, time, time, in a sort of Rhunic rhyme. Class dismissed. Ringalingalingaling.........

"I would like to show you where the bells come from. The

land out of which their sounds come. What do you say?"

Ding Dong!

"I will postpone it; I will show you the bells that you hear, and as a result that day will-" She broke off.

Ding Dong!

This is the springtime. It is now that flowers grow, and with me there is dancing also, and the sound of bells. You heard the bells and you know that their beauty is greater than the power of evil. In some ways their beauty is greater than your own power, Yah- weh, Lord of Hosts. Do you not agree?"

Ding Dong!

"The fairy queen," he said. "You beguile me. You lead me from the path with sparks of light, dancing, singing, and the sound of bells; always the sound of bells."

Ding Dong!

"The bells are blown by the wind," Zina said. "And the wind speaks the truth. Always. The desert wind. You know that; I have watched you listen to the wind. The bells are the music of the wind; listen to them."

Ding Dong!

He heard, then, the fairy bells. They echoed distantly; many bells, small ones, not church bells but the bells of magic.

It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

Ding Dong!

"I cannot, myself, produce that sound," he said to Zina. "How is it done?"

"By wakefulness," Zina said. "The bell-sounds wake you up. They rouse you from sleep. You roused Herb Asher from his sleep by a crude introjection; I awaken by means of beauty."

Gentle spring wind blew about them, the vapors of her realm.

Ding Dong!

From the distant stars, he thought. Music and the sound of bells.

Score for Coda:

"Do you know what it's scored for? I'll tell you what it's scored for. Four flutes, all alternating with piccolos, four oboes, the third and fourth alternating with English horns, an B-flat clarinet, four clarinets, the third alternating with bass clar- inet, the fourth with second B-flat clarinet, four bassoons, the third and fourth alternating with contrabassoon, ten horns, ten trumpets, four trombones-"

"Four trombones?" the cop said.

"Jesus Christ," the speaker sputtered.

"-a tuba," Herb Asher continued. "Organ, two sets of tim- pani, plus an additional single drum off-stage, two bass drums, one off-stage, two pairs of cymbals, one off-stage, two gongs, one of relatively high pitch, the other low, two triangles, one off- stage, a snare drum, preferably more than one, glockenspiel, bells, a Ruthe-"

"What is a 'Ruthe'?" the cop beside Herb Asher asked.

'Ruthe' literally means 'rod,' " Herb Asher said. "It's made of a lot of pieces of rattan; it looks like a large clothes-brush or a small broom. It's used to play the bass drum. Mozart wrote for the Ruthe. Two harps, with two or more players to each part if possible-" He pondered. "Plus the regular orchestra, natu- rally, including a full string section. Have them use their mixing bQard to downplay the strings; I've heard enough strings. And be sure the two soloists, the soprano and alto, are good."

"That's it?" the radio sputtered.