Jeffrey Schultz – III. So death blows his little fucking trumpet

Jeffrey Schultz

III. So death blows his little fucking trumpet

Never so noble as music,
Poetry was never so noble
As before music recognized
Its own noble distinction,
And, nobly packing up itself
And its whole equipment,
Abandoned poetry for something
More splendid, some splendid
Career. So many resources!
The hair of the horse and catgut
From a sheep and the brazen horns’
Brazenness, the bones of trees hollowed,
And a whole phalanx of men,
Selected and trained from birth
In the discipline of its movements
And, having been dressed appropriately
So as to distract from the beasts they be,
Arranged in seats opposite the seats
Of their noble patrons, who gaze
Upon them as if upon their own pleasure
Objectified, dominated, trained.
That’s guilt, right there. It’s structural.
The difference now isn’t the guilt,
But the music, which is no longer music,
But, so far as I’m able to understand it,
Pills. I know it sounds like
It could almost be music,
But I’m pretty sure what it is is pills.

Jeffrey Schultz’s artist statement:

Title of series: Fifteen Variations on Themes from Levis.
In a series of fifteen brief variations, Schultz will meditate on a number of themes–some of them poorly recalled from memory, some of them badly obscured or poorly understood–from Levis’s work.