LJ Mini-Idol Week 10: Nonsense, Gibberish, Performance

When I was truly young one of the biggest influences that entered my brain patter was Andy Kaufman. His foreign man and congo act went deep into my mind. It would influence almost everything I would do as a performer when solo. I didn't really get to delve into that until college though. College was where I first got practice speaking non existent languages yet still being understood, or speaking nonsense that was English but didn't make sense like Samuel Beckett dialogue. I performed a chaotic musical performance all improved with tons of gibberish and skat in my junior year even. I wish video footage of this existed. For all I know it does, but I don't have it. I unfortunately didn't become cognizant of capturing and documenting as much as I could till 2003 and not seriously till 2006.

It was after college where things took their real hold of going on stage and just doing complete nonsense, unplanned, saying words that didn't exist, singing random lyrics that were words but they didn't belong together necessarily or were just complete hooleyhoo and hogwash and ballywick. One of these performances even made it onto The Best of NYC-URBANA 2004, as a bonus track.* In the CD credits I am mentioned as part of the production team (actually the Junior Deputy Assistant Executive Director, a ridiculous title). Yet not total nonsense as I handled a lot on the production end of a weekly poetry slam when not taking to the stage to either improv, or read something I wrote THAT day in a haphazard mishmosh of a story that made sense but was also complete nonsense, like a love letter to Miss Piggy.

*

Watch on YouTube

(I also composed the backing track on this live performance in music creation software)

As life takes turns as it tends to do, I was actually away from a regular space performing my silliness focusing on graffiti, street art and photography. Although after more than a few years I found myself at an open mic curated by my now forever friends Fritz and Christina known as HiChristina and I would follow them along to multiple spaces, making new friends along the way and finding new ways to bring my nonsense to a performance space. Being it gibberish, randomly written on the spot songs, or just telling stories that would meander and detour before coming back in a myriad of just pure silliness. Here are just some examples from various venues and evenings:

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

 

It's been a few years since I've hit the stage, but I think if you read my work, or heard some of my ideas then you know how much I still treasure nonsense and especially gibberish. If I thought people would attend and I knew how to facilitate I'd give gibberish classes, as it really is a skill. Alas, when you have folks in politics just talking it without meaning to I don't know how much of a skill it is anymore. That's another topic all together though.

Now for fun, a paragraph or two in written gibberish nonsense.

“Shibblelbledy pecakced daudrily. Todosdoe tek Fruumy Fresnukles gooshry clen sodden, folosoed trell, lacklardy lense reposesen feashishly. Auk oden rebelsen guire wan sienesen, jetcrueller sparklesamsin. Gunceau, git crodder vlig bije forbodden.”

Lesson one in making a ball of yarn is to gather many worms, lick the worms on their toupees and the worms produce steel that can be melted and turned into the proper material for a large ball. The yarn ball will then come alive and recite the prior paragraph and everyone will smile while eating buckets full of carrots and discarded toenails.

{written for LJ Mini-Idol Week 11: Haver}