sarma

Kenneth King, Amerika's only rope dancer, prophesied the horror of Watergate two years before it happened, at a Free Music Store concert. I wasn't there and I probably wouldn't have understood much -don't now. Understand only that Kenneth King alias Patrick Duncan, alias Zora A. Zash, alias Pontease Tyak is -like many of us these days- heartsick, but unlike most of us, he is fighting. My head is buried too deep in the sand to know whether he's tilting with real demons or with windmills. Or are windmills the real demons now?

If anyone could get on the wavelength of Joseph G. Devadese of the Inner Seercret Service while trance-turning, King could. He dances like an angel. I could believe him a medium for any message, could sense, but not decipher, any number of cryptic codes lying just under the fine skin of his dancing.

To go back -"Inadmissleable Evidentdance." It is the Ancient of Days, September 26, 1973, Washington Square Methodist Church. Candies and flowers on the altar and a framed photograph. I guess it's Nietzsche, but can't verify. Altar-right, behind the rail, a table of tape recorders, microphones, papers. It's getting late. Appears Pontease Tyak, custodian for the TransHimalyan Society for Interplanetary Research. He's hirsute, grizzled, all that. Dark glasses are the only fixed point in a field of gray hair. Slavic, and wheezingly, cacklingly self-congratulatory, he warms to ... what subject? He reads to us at length from his "beloved Nietzsche" ("Also Spracht Zarathustra"). I've gotten fond of him. He peels off hat, hair, glasses, coat to reveal Kenneth in his springy shoes, tuxedo pants, suspenders, shirt, knotted bolero of rope, neat navy and white bandanna. Dressed for axe-tion.

He's grave and worried, believes the news media have deliberately suppressed news of this event. He switches on his taped voice to carry the conversational ball and marshals himself for dancing.

Oh, that voice. It talks for 10 minutes. Pops on the tape indicate that the reader took thought breaks, water breaks, dance breaks, pee breaks, sleep breaks. We're not so lucky; we must try to digest (I give up) on the run. King's deceptively exact words erect astonishing bridges that afford me no footing on the opposite shore, or balconies suspended over mist. "And thus . . . " says the voice triumphantly. Thus what? Why "thus"? "And now we must get down to the raw lean meat of it . . . " (a paraphrase), he announces, and spirals on. He admonishes himself for his word play (e.g., essencespionage), and then throws in a dazzling au revoir of a sentence studded with them. His voice stammers extra syllables into words, making technological monsters of them, "electrototechnotizing". I can't understand Nixonese. Now I can't understand his adversaries either? I get your point, Kenneth, but I don't get your point. I understand about Mesmex, the new energy resource (sort of) and about the Master Control Panel with its ability to synthesize all existing communications media, and more. I can believe that all those government agencies are trying to suppress its use by any old us (they'd have suppressed sliced bread, for Christ's sake), but I don't understand how it does away with banking and the two-party system (among other things). Name me some names: I share your nausea.

Meanwhile, the rope dancer dances. Oh, wonderfully. Every time I see Kenneth King, he looks lighter, more supple. I've never known anyone to skim the surface of things the way he does. The tiny motions of his shoulder, head, hands, the twistings of his long, thin, nicely-made body are very swift -as if he hopes to refract each changing current of air ... OR ... field messages from outer space. Lightly and easily, his dancing feints across the floor. A continuous volley of twisting skips, hops, and glides. Sometimes he springs straight up into the air. Odd hand gestures this time. Some like praying; often he lays a finger beside his nose.

The dancer takes breaks, too. Drinks liquid. Sits. Kneels, crouches, at the altar rail. Stands silhouetted against a bright doorway of stairs. He's proud of his dancer-disguise. Who would suspect a dancer of being a courier of inner state seercrets?

But he's also desperate, and seems desperately sad. The voice stops, and the dancer continues a while to "Let It Be" and another song. Then, he walks around in front of us, his voice (live) breathless, worried, and tired. He had thought that at this point a verbal exchange might be valuable, but isn't sure what a verbal exchange is. Pause. We're cudgeling what's left of our brains. He walks back to the safety of the table, the altar rail, and the electronic devices, and begins to leaf through his manuscript.

I run for my eatpeesleep break, so long in coming, thankful for the dancing, helpless to deal with the veiled warnings. I've had it with being talked at in secret languages; they come at me from all directions. But even if I don't always understand the message, Kenneth, I understand the message.