There was no lack of accomplices. The Mind King assembled legions, which one could effectively count, and storming the streets,
always on the streets, he, they, decided (—but was it really a decision?) to inhabit what were known as streets,
turning them all into the guise of what could thereafter be known as living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms.

The paraphernalia, the improvisation, all gently moved under by the imagination; the breeze that slid
under all things until that rush, gentle as it was—softened all enterprise into what memory alone
heretofore presented in its agreeable and disembodied form.

Legions? It was because numbers were invoked, that the whole process
could be seen as a process rather than a series of events. And
generalization became, not just acceptable, but
a glorious accomplishment of
the human mind, so well-
embodied, of course,
by the Mind King,
though it
wasn't a
body.

 

   Nobody Books Presents
No-Body Zone: an exploding audiobook
from No-Body, a novel in parts by Richard Foreman

fragment recordings by:                                                    
David Patrick Kelly, Henry Stram, T. Ryder Smith, Dylan Davey, Eric Magnus,
Richard Foreman, Juliana Francis-Kelly, Danny Snelson, and Tony Torn
and live performances and events with:                                  
Jay Smith, Sarah Dahlen, and Arthur Burkle

with music by John Zorn                                                     
and video and images by Marie Losier and Paula Court

Nobody Books is: Greta Byrum, Stephen Mosblech, and Danny Snelson

Contact Us with queries or comments

Here is the molten core of Richard Foreman's visionary theater—stripped
of the sets, soundscapes, and choreography. In these often darkly comic
prose improvisations, interspersed with startling serial poems, Foreman
reveals the unconscious becoming consious of itself. No-Body is Richard
Foreman unplugged: shivering and shimmering.
                                                                              Charles Bernstein


From Edge: But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available". A new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance—as we all become "pancake people"—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.
                                                                                                     Richard Foreman

< < A Selection from the Book > >    

Samuel II
as read by Richard Foreman

 1

Samuel was a writer who knew he had nothing to say. And knew also (did an angel whisper it over his shoulder?) that only by plunging directly into that fact would he discover his strength.

Nothing to say—The air hovered in front of (outside) his window and vanished, like air does. His feeling for other people was like glass, like Marie was glass and could be touched, but the invisibility of what he was touching barked back.

Marie had nothing to say to him, and so it was like an echo, though it was like a noise, and Samuel accepted totally (that was his effort or his adventure) everything momentarily visible on the other side of that dumbness (a sheet of glass) that seemed to separate him from everything he could see the minute he touched it (like glass).

 2

Samuel had nothing to say, nothing to give to the world.

The left side of things entered him and passed through like butter, pulling the lips after it like waves of the ocean, and Samuel felt himself licking the ideas that went too fast to catch.

So the tongue—dethroned. So the language, demounted and secret, speeding through the streets, convertible style, and Samuel's weary arms ached, holding out into space, hands that wanted to seize something.

And those same muscles, gripping the pencil that fell from his fingers onto the page, left nothing but the tiniest evidence.

Samuel smiled to himself in the mirror. Where was that? Quick, it flashed by as the ocean flashed by, shaped like a wave, no shape, just something that undulated, stealing from Samuel, theft as reward.

 3

Samuel, floating on the stream of events, had nothing to say about the events. His head exploded (oh, that was his wish) but no head exploded, indeed, events wrapped seemingly tighter and tighter around his cranium.

He lifted himself from sloth and depression one way only. He disappeared into the "before I was born and after I have been dead," but he was not very good about such lifting, it was only a dream.

Oh, the escape into a dream. But, he explained to Estelle, not an escape, a slow and meticulous pushing back of a heavy door. That took effort (great effort) and the results were small (so small) and the two—efforts and results—factored together, made Samuel feel himself a hero of sorts, but he was aware of the dangers of vanity and for that reason called, internally even, no attention to himself.

Samuel had nothing to say, his heroism, self-judgment from a position of rigor.

 4

Samuel is asked to come into the midnight arena of self-regulation.
The double clocks doubt, that is their best, beloved, function.
Arenas of stairs, starting in direction,
Choose self for a narrative fiction.
Oh, none of this possible.
Therefore
Into the flesh:
Where the word leads the adventurous choice,
Who is without honor.
Down valleys
Down through open windows
Home-let
Where problems lie.

The grain most alert
self-focal dissolve
sea on sea
We-weave
of the aberrant, too-much
Almost:
the final construct
Almost:
The name itself:
Almost.





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