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Atlantis Express

by Ira Cohen + Paradise Now

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1.

about

composed and recorded in 1996 in an apartment in Liège (BE) on a 4 track cassette recorder by Fabrice & Philippe Franck on an original poem written and read by Ira Cohen.

« Atlantis Express » from City Sonic 2005 (audio catalogue), courtesy Transcultures.

credits

released November 5, 2012

Atlantis Express

Let's take a silver train underground
to the back streets of Atlantis
thru the corrugated iron roots &
then to the peak itself, to the
saddle of the last ridge past strewn
boulders,
finally meandering thru cascading snow
wearing miner's hats on the perpendicular
dark night &
going up to the edge of the Southern Cross
where we reach at last the pure white
glistening glaciers &
begin to chant over bones in rags
of Scorpio
Armless in the sticky substance how could
they ever have had a chance?
Permission will not be required
only poems of blood offered to
the memory of TREE
It is not ice which is eternal
but the fury of the absolute
separating the void from the spirit
of man,
uplifting like life when it is used
against itself,
that is, Radical Love - & again, we
are reduced to living beings
Caught by the instant
we are taken away
We live in the imprint of the flame
& we are helmeted within the internal
blackness
where the ray begins its passage
across the indignant sky
Vain clouds uncaring in a tangle of
crossbeams
culminate in the hermaphroditic mirror
of the epileptic dancer
asleep
And during sleep
the light is joined
to the light
It is all a matter of getting up
and then to abandon the pain
It is there that the journey beings
in the self generated flame of
Spontaneous Combustion
(Swayambhunath)
The main line running counter
to the triangle comprising the
MAELSTROM, the DOLDROMS & the
SARGASSO SEA where sleeping Atlanteans
dream forever,
this line, this battlefield of the ages,
crosses the divide of my most wandering
backdoor heart.
We will all have to go
if we want to reappear
in the rhythm of the ritual
It's the wheel of fools spinning
over my bed
If I put my left foot first
they will find a way to call me
by that name
tracking tremors
like glyphs
on drunken walls
in the negative palace
just before taking eave
of my senses
the white powder dissolves
in the sunlight
& making noise like a peacock
he hops on one foot up the mountain.

Ira Cohen

Ira Cohen (February 3, 1935 – April 25, 2011) was an American poet, publisher, photographer and filmmaker. Cohen lived in Morocco and in New York City in the 1960s, he was in Kathmandu in the 1970s and traveled the world in the 1980s, before returning to New York, where he spent the rest of his life. Cohen died of renal failure on April 25, 2011. Ira Cohen's literary archive now resides at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Cohen was born in 1935 in the Bronx, New York City, to deaf parents. Cohen graduated from the Horace Mann School at 16 and attended Cornell, where he took a class taught by Vladimir Nabokov. He dropped out of Cornell, then enrolled at the School of General Studies of Columbia University. Cohen married Arlene Bond, a Barnard student, in 1957. They had two children, David Schleifer and Rafiqa el Shenawi.

Sound and intermedia artist, producer, curator Philippe Franck (BE/FR) has developed the Paradise Now project since the 90's, which favors an actively transversal and collaborative approach. He has worked closely with various poets (Ira Cohen, Gerard Malanga, Bernard Heidsieck, Eric Therer, Catrine Godin,...), video artists (Régis Cotentin, Hanzel & Gretzel), choreographers, digital artists and other musicians (Christophe Bailleau, Gauthier Keyaerts, Stephan Dunkelman, Maurice Charles JJ...). Since 2005, he has been working closely with holistic masseuse/performer Isa Belle for a series of sensory sonic installations/performances shown in many international festivals/events, cultural centers/ museums.

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